Check out the site for the webseries I have been working on:
http://www.fourthwallensemble.com/
Enjoy!
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Check out the site for the webseries I have been working on:
http://www.fourthwallensemble.com/
Enjoy!
I recently was published in beautiful magazine called, In Parentheses. Check it out!
There’s a dirty fucking secret hiding inside me. It’s not a secret about fucking, though. She says, she looks at me and she says, with sincere eyes, and a pouty little half-frown, and her dark, pink lips are so perfect and kissable it makes me want to just kill myself if I can’t have one more, just one more chance to press my slim, my thin, my beard-bordered offering against hers and do what the birds and the bees somehow do even though, anatomically speaking, there’s no fucking way those birds and those bees could do it with those big felt grins the teachers slap up there on felt-boards in elementary schools in lieu of felt penis’ and felt vagina’s (not felt like touched, but felt like fabric, and cut-out like Jesus and Joseph and Mary and those Three Robed Kings carrying various sundries and remember that star that’s always up in the far right corner bursting with yellows and sharp points in Sunday School?) that’d make all the kids laugh and snicker and run home and ask their mom’s and dad’s (or their mom’s and mom’s, or dad’s and dad’s, or just mom’s, or just dad’s depending on the result of the custody war) what their felt penis’ and vagina’s, respectively, looked like. She says, she says, I just want you to be happy. I say, I am. I am here. I am happy. I am with you. I love you. She blinks and she doesn’t believe me. She tries to turn that frown upside down and sit criss-cross-applesauce. She says, I just want you to be happy. And I say, to myself, talking, stroking, stoking maybe?, the dirty little secret that no one knows except me, about the cure, the key, the path to untethered happiness, that all it takes—it’s simple really—is a little mother-fucking caffeine. And then bzzzz! and hmmmm! and yessss! and if its coffee that’s fine and if its in the form of that slow-drip single-fucking-origin black tar shit that drops from one hand-blown glass orb to the next it’s even better but if its in the form of a small thimble-size pool of swirling black and gold and brown-frothy-topness in a little cup they call espresso it’s BZZZZ! and HMMMM! and YESSSS! and but then the real secret, I say to the dirty little secret boring a hole into my small or large intestine—or, fuck, I guess the hole could be in my kidney or my liver or my throat even because they’re all connected aren’t they?, all the organs and membranes and life pumping things connected by other life giving things that we all stared at in glossy text books, our names written in cursive red letters in the front of the book where it says NAME, that may or may not have had, but on second thought most certainly did, who are we kidding?, a historically-and-philosophically-and-socially-and-racially-and-religiopolitcally-incorrect (and [unabashedly] pro-white-Americana) slant to them and laughed and snickered at the human sexual apparatus drawn and detailed in full color and the teacher asked us to go outside and stop disrupting your neighbors because some of us are actually here to learn Mr. Thomas and you won’t amount to anything if you don’t take anything serious Mr. Thomas and if you don’t show your work and if you don’t learn how to write cursive legibly and keep your fucking elbows off the table and hold your pencil correctly Mr. Thomas and don’t stutter your words and g-g-go outside and take a break and a deep fucking breath while you’re at it (sans the f words), they said, with their fleshy and blotchy underarms and their 80’s curls and there was that one teacher who only had one real eye and the other one that looked and rolled around like a hazy green marble and had dark yellow lens’ in his thick eye-glasses, but I guess that was Shop Class, and that pretty much explains how he lost the eye doesn’t it?, and we stood outside in the rain and we looked at the playground with the monkey bars and the big-chip sawdust under our Keds and the king of the hill nut-crushing balance beam and watched as water ran down to the tip of our nose with our eyes almost like basically crossed and we felt like the rain was alive, so fucking alive, tingling through our skin—was that when we were young the dirtiest little secret of them all was that our happiness came and went, naturally. She says, I just want you to be happy. And I say, my hand grabbing her hand, trying to pull her close, but she says I hate when you try and pull me close instead of actually talking, and I say (now intentionally not pulling her close), then get me a fucking cup of coffee. Sans the f word.
Even a traffic jam looks majestic, blinkingly terrific, from the sky, from the window of a plane, seat 6c. In the dark of the night the red and white lights piled up on freeways, chugging through urban grid like blood through the arteries of a fat man, fake at being picturesque.
It’s been confirmed: the man that came long after his father left was responsible for the Aunt’s black eye the summer of ’84. She stepped in front of his Mom, heroically it’s now revealed, and took the red-knuckled fist to her face, before falling. Sober, not drunk as was previously stated by all parties present. That explains the broken coffee table with the glass inlay. The broken lamp, too. The Aunt, a heroine of mythic proportions now, took those with her as she fell to the purple carpet. His Mom had swept the broken glass up, silently, wiping the August sweat from her threaded brow.
The plane tilted, banked left, and from the window a bright blue square amongst the houses far below caught his attention. A pool, possibly? That too a mystery that could take thirty years to solve.
Empty tumblers of whiskey and scotch, forgotten bottles of beer, line the stage floor. They more than line it, the empties hold the stage up. Straws thrown aside, abandoned, stepped on. Ice melting at the bottom of the sweltering glass. Puddles of inebriation. All of us empty, waiting to be refilled. Wanting the next round. And they play on. The wood floors creak, part, groan under their weight as the sax player dips and sways to the drummer’s hypnotic, feverish, beat. Neither weigh more than a pound combined. Food not as important as this: the ability to stand here, sway here, rock here, play here, on this makeshift-stage before a sweaty room of drunk faces. Delirious in their music. A dream? No, but something close. Play harder. Play faster. Then slow… Then quiet…. Stomp us back to a waking cheer, slowly…
More drinks. More smoke. More sax. More piano. More everything. Excess. Rumi writes on and on, scribbling now as the imbibed faces blur, about the art of listening above us, his words hanging over bobbing heads. We’re all part of tonight, hoping to be part of tonight. We listen. We drink. The drummer’s rib cage peeks through his thin cotton shirt. But he plays so effortlessly. A skeleton with two wooden sticks. Face gaunt. Turn the lights down. Look: his eyes nothing but black holes, his brain nothing but music notes flitting by, through, the black voids in his skull at unpredictable speeds.
The crowd sways to their music. Its called jazz. Categories are meaningless, though. The unified feeling of temporary departure all that matters. Solely important, to them, to us. The buildings of downtown loom high above the club outside. Green lights atop faceless skyscrapers. No one knows where we are.
Floor boards blue, purple, maybe even magenta, the hues of a soulful person, thoughtful in placing them here, but no one cares. The sax player pushes on, for us, he blows harder and harder, knees knocked, feet pigeoned as he takes us to higher and higher notes. Another beer for the guitar, another manhattan for the piano, more of anything for the drum. Air. Just a breath, maybe.
I found myself feeling nostalgic for a trip to Europe a few years back. After fighting jet-lag with copious cups of coffee, here is something from the time of nostalgia:
***
There’s more bikes in Amsterdam than people. Fact. They stopped making bikes in the 70’s. Fact. Everyone must show up for work, dates, play, et-fucking-cetera, sweaty. Hypothesis.
The buildings are smushed together like play-do. Do I need a hyphen there? Some of them lean to the right, left, and out over the street like a wind blown tree. I think I needed a hyphen back there. The women are beautiful. And they all ride bikes, but not like some girls do in Santa Barbara with their ugs and short-shorts and wanting to be seen. This is riding bikes because they want to get from here to there. A-B.
I should start a company making cheap bikes for Amsterdam. I fell in love with a hooker. In the redlight district, there in the window, the pinkish-red light, her thong in the mirror behind, smiling, pointing, wanting me, only me, out of all the guys on the street ogling her, dreaming of being with her, she wants me. Fact.
A man just rode by with three kids in the bucket connected to the front of his bike. If someone did that in America they’d be homeless, crazy, or a hippy. People would blog, rant in their local newspapers about how unsafe and un-good-parenting this is, and start a petition to have this act abolished from their community, because now their kids are asking to be carted around in a bike and bucket instead of that big damn SUV they have in the garage wasting gas just sitting there. Fuck those blogs. This guy had a tie and his kids ate rice cakes happily. Blonde hairs blowing in the wind. Will I ever have that? Does he have a wife he’s riding towards? Are they still married? Maybe he’s dropping them off for the weekend, but why would he have custody and not the mom? Drugs. Or she’s a hooker in the window. He fell in love, they had three kids – but she went back to it, even though he saved her from the glass box and she promised never to do it again, she couldn’t resist the longing looks of all those men walking before her window. All wanting her. He doesn’t look at her like that anymore.
I found this great little coffee shop to write at. Its called Starbucks. Back to the bike making business. Cheap. Reliable. There are beautiful black women here. How did they get here? Were they on boats too? Were they dragged from homes and families a million years ago to help build this city, too? To raise the Dutch rich kids? Fuck colonialism. It seems like they only lock their bikes up to a post or something, a rail, if they are not within eye-shot of them. They just lock the wheels to the frame otherwise. There’s something here – a business, money to be had, a life to be changed. Why hasn’t anyone built new bikes since the 70’s? Maybe there’s a moratorium on new bikes. An important bill has reached an impasse with legislation. Behind the legislation is the man who fixes all the bikes. He wields his power like the Godfather… parts 1 & 2. I should write a memo to our local congressmen/women about this injustice.
The roads are tiny in Amsterdam. Cluttered with people and bikes and mopeds. A-B. Cars feel odd. Cars have no place. I haven’t seen a gas station since Los Angeles. No Shell. No Citgo. No Arco. No Chevron. Just these small cobbled streets that everyone rides bikes down. From the 70’s. Beautiful women on bikes. Fuck cars. Fuck gas stations. I’ll ride a bike with a beautiful woman. There’s a road for bikes, they ding their little bells at you angrily if you’re in their way. But that’s rare. It’s a passive dinging anyway. Like it’s almost pain-ing them to ding it at you. Fuck you they say with their bells. Fuck you for making me have to be the asshole and ring this bell. Thank you.
Can I be honest with you? I want to fall in love with a girl here, in Europe, somewhere, and never go back to LA. Never go back to the states. Leave it all behind. I want to ride a bike to her house and ask her to marry me. Her parents will watch from the window, candle lights behind them, maybe they’ll have tears in their eyes because they hate me, or because they love me so much they hope she says yes. I’ll get down off my bike, ring the bell to let her know she can come out, and go down on my knee. Probably the right knee, because when the left knee bends down like that it feels like cement mixing with steel on the way up. We’ll have a place above a bar in one of those crowded little streets in the center of town, a florist next door too, and live simply and easily. Fuck Chevron. We’ll cook food we can afford, walk down light-lined canals at night, holding hands European style, and take wine tours in the country. Everyone will know us and love us, except the ones who used to sell the bikes from the 70’s, because we brought the new, cheap, reliable bike to them, changed their damn lives with two pedals and a seat. Maybe they’ll wave to us from store fronts. Maybe they’ll welcome us in, a drink on them, a roll, a sweet, an anything we want for free, because she teaches their kids at the local montessori school and they all love her. They want her to be their moms. They tell their moms that, the kids. So now only the men wave, because the women hate her, are jealous of her, my wife and her easy way with their terrible kids. And I’ll hate the men because they all love my wife too, and want to be with her, so maybe I’ll only wave at the women. Everyone wants to have sex with us. Together or separate. It doesn’t matter to them. Because they’re european and we’re not. I’m not. She is. My wife. But we’ll say no, won’t we? We’ll always say no. Smile and laugh politely at the millions of euro’s they want to throw our way. Smile and laugh politely as their hands tremble at the sight of our happiness. Smile and laugh politely as we pay for the free things they give us, because we’re so generous and loving we can’t just take something for free and not at least leave a little tip of gratitude. They’ll hold their hands to their heart as we leave.
This is all I want to do. I can do this every day. Wake up. Work out. Or not work out. Probably. Run along the canal. Or whatever. Probably not work out. Maybe pick up rowing with some strong Dutch or German guys who can yell at me in their foreign language – I can’t tell if they’re angry at me for how beautiful and untouchable my wife is, or because I’m the weakest link in the boat – and then I’ll go to work, after I retire from making these new reliable cheap bikes that no one can steal because they are voice operated, fingerprint encoded, so only the owner can get the pedals to work, and I’ll work as a writer in my new post-cheap-but-safe-bike job. Writing for some foreign publication on the intricacies of publishing abroad. She won’t be a teacher for montesorri kids, sorry kids, she’ll be a ballerina teacher/instructor/coach…whatever… she’ll be graceful and gorgeous in those leotard things and the shoes and the ribbons around her ankle… and the mothers will still hate her because she’s stern with their bad kids but they still love her, because she is stern but loving. And the mother’s don’t know how to do that. Fuck Chevron.
There’s a really big church across the canal from where I sit. The guy next to me left his girlfriend sitting here with me while he went to order coffee, so she put new lipstick on, looked at me and smiled. What a dumb boyfriend. We laughed politely about a couple that passed, dressed to kill, both wearing smiley-face yellow, going to some wedding or something, matching like toddler twins. His tie to her dress. Disgusting in a cute way. I’d do that with my wife.
And the mothers will pick up their kids from her ballet studio in the chill of the Amsterdam night and wave goodbye passively to my wife, the ballerina teacher, and then go off on their bikes and buckets full of kids to their homes and tell their husbands how much they hate my wife. And their husbands will smile slightly at the mention of my wife. And they’ll want to know more about her, passively. About why, specifically though, they hate my wife. Because whatever the reasons are the wives hate my wife, the husbands will love her for – will secretly want to hear stories about her, in a round-about way, so as not to raise suspicion from their stupid wives. Because she is beautiful and graceful and stern and loving.
And we’ll have kids and my dad and stepmom will come visit me, because I finally have kids to visit. And even though we live in Europe we can talk on skype to my mother. And she’ll love my wife and be so proud of me for bagging that. As she wouldn’t say. And we’ll skype and put the kids to bed and one of them will run back down to show Mimi their new toy, and they’ll laugh and run back up the winding Amsterdam stairs, and we’ll say bye-bye and goodnight and maybe for a second wish we were closer, wish we could be home more often, but I’ll look outside at the canal below, the lights, the bikes, the cobble streets, and we’ll go for a walk and be simple and happy.
I had a dream last night. It went something like this: The God of All Things Sport came down to me and said, “Kevin, you have a choice! I will bless your favorite team (The Portland Trail Blazers) with a roster, management, and ownership replete with unequivocally good, morally outstanding, people… but who, in all honesty, probably won’t win many games… or, oR, OR!, I will fill your team with players from all over the figurative moral map: some from the Good coast, others from the Bad, still more from somewhere in the heartland of the Middle; and also management, ownership, who will, unquestionably, mess up just like the rest of humanity. But! You will most likely win many, many games.”
I chose the latter before he could finish his sentence. And in the new history of my dreams the Blazers went on to win eight NBA ‘chips in a row while fourteen players experienced a run-in with the law during that time for crimes ranging from off-shore money market schemes to domestic violence, cussing at opposing fans, and failing to pay child support.
In my dream the team and the league at large dealt with problems as they came like rational human beings who are self-aware enough to admit that we too are prone to mistakes, bad judgement, and morally corrupt actions. They dealt with the problems on an individual basis. They modified rules and procedures as needed. Players were suspended, fined, and in one case where the starting shooting guard who was caught one too many times with his hands in the cookie jar, released from the team.
We the fans also dealt with each incident on an individual level. We didn’t let our emotions get out of hand. We didn’t feel the need to point our self-righteous fingers at someone and declare them morally defunct and totally, completely unfit to serve a purpose on the team or in society as a whole because of their transgressions. We accepted with the punishment that came as a result of due process and wished them well on their road back to being whole. We realized that we too, individually and collectively, have engaged in morally corrupt actions that, surely, had we been in the spotlight like these players, would have been pointed at accusingly. We remembered the times we drove home a little too drunk, or the times we got high and stole someones leather jacket from a bar – it was excusable because it was our first time getting high, we remember, and who wears a leather jacket these days anyway – and weren’t expelled from society, we remember how we flipped off refs in highschool, we remember that year we didn’t claim 100% of our income on our taxes, we remember all those yellow-almost-red-oh-now-its-red lights we ran, we remember all those times road rage and competitive rage boiled up inside us and caused us to do things that if caught on camera or done in front of thousands of screaming fans we would have been ejected from the game, and probably also from the good graces of the small circle of morally elite sport fans.
In my dream we fans did the mental work necessary to realize society is full of morally gray citizens, and while we didn’t need to condone the actions and simply look the other way, we also didn’t feel the need to group the whole organization/team/league in with one person’s bad actions and completely withdraw our support/fandom from said team/leagues. In my dream we realized if we were to live life that way, everything we buy/support/watch/love would have to be fully vetted in order to support, say, something as seemingly amoral as the iPhone6. If you found out not every single founder/employee/distributor of Apple and the iPhone6 were morally awesome, or that every single business practice/policy/decision made is 100% morally amazing, or maybe they have even employed what surely smell/tastes/looks like a sweat shop in the past, or that they aren’t concerned with laws regarding, say, hypothetically, taxation, would you still support Apple with your dollar? Apple is just an example. It could be any company. How about Coke? WalMart? Sony? Microsoft? Kroger? Addidas? Nike? Converse (oh wait, they are Nike)? 1-800-FLOWERS? ABC NBC CBS AMC FX FXX HBO SHOWTIME CINEMAX COMEDY CENTRAL ESPN/2/3/U/CLASSIC… the FOOD CHANNEL? I mean, what if you found out that Chopped was helmed by someone who once got so angry that he grabbed his kid a little too hard by the arm and left bruises on his young, innocent flesh?
The NBA, NFL, MLB and their individual franchises are money-making enterprises putting out a product you choose to buy or not buy. I am fan of the Portland Trail Blazers, and not because the Franchise is full of nice people. I am a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers because when I was young Clyde Drexler and Co. almost won the NBA Championship, twice.
You want me to believe that professional athletes weren’t doing the same things back then that professional athletes are now? You want me to believe that we, the fans, are somehow more morally righteous now than we used to be? You want me to believe that if the internet and camera phones and instant-everything existed when guys like Chris Mullin, Doc Gooden, Lawrence Taylor, Rex Chapman, Andre Agassi, etc., were making their money doing what they are great at doing, while probably not being great at being perfect, everyone would have loved them, adored them, cheered for them, revered them, the same way? Al Gore and the internet changed everything. We now know, immediately, that our sports heroes aren’t perfect, and instead of dealing with it individually, we point our collective righteous finger and cry out to cut the sin from our life before it ruins everyone and everything else around it. Banish ‘ye Sinner!
I am not a fan of domestic violence, child abuse, illegal use of drugs, or anything of the sort, but I am a fan of self-awareness, personally and collectively. I am a fan of being honest with yourself about why you support the things you do.
I woke up from my dream and turned on my Insignia TV so I could watch ESPN on DirecTV; knowing full well these companies most likely aren’t full of great people. Everyone on TV who was wearing fancy clothes by fancy designers employing workers in such great, worker-friendly countries like Bangladesh was so angry about athletes being human beings. Real, righteous, anger. We love to have someone to point at. Everyone loves to have an enemy. It makes life a lot easier when we think we know who’s good and who’s bad.
The Portland Trail Blazers still only have one championship, not eight. My dream was just that, a dream. The Blazer teams of Rasheed Wallace, Damon Stoudamire, Isaiah Rider, Brian Grant, Kenny Anderson and Arvydas Sabonis, Bonzi Wells, Dontonio Wingfield to this day are some of my favorite Blazer teams of all time. Why? Simply because they won games at a time when my interest in basketball, and ability to watched it, were coming of age. They collectively didn’t do great at decision making off the court, but as someone who knows how often I mess up, I don’t hold it against them. I am just thankful for the memories I have of Rasheed getting a pass from Mighty Mouse as a trailing Sheed stepped to the three point line and hit a beautiful high-release shot as the whole morally gray crowd, the whole city, collectively, rose to their feet and screamed “SHEEEEED” to the sky. For that, for those memories, those moments, for the sweat they gave us, for the desire they had to win it for us, I will forever be grateful. They gave us wins. And wins are amoral, no matter how much those in the SEC praying for their team to beat the other God-Fearing team on Saturday believe God wants them, and only them, to win. Wins are amoral. Well, unless you cheat. But no one cheats! I sure don’t, that’s for damn sure.
1.
It’s not so much a mist, but a spray, hanging in the air from the crashing waves below… down there past the edge where the hearty green coastal grass gives way to a deathly drop along black and gray rocks. Of course they’re sharp and can hurt you. The murky sky above mocks the sun struggling to break free, to their faces. They stand near the edge. The spray washing their cold skin. No, misting their cold skin. I guess the whales aren’t migrating today, she says.
He hasn’t told her yet. But he’s leaving. He’s had enough. Oregon is too fucking cold. It rains too fucking much. He keeps saying to himself, it can’t rain this fucking much, it’s not possible. But it is: he Googled it: expected rainfall for Canon Beach? He slammed his computer shut. She doesn’t know it yet. She pulls at his sweatshirt. The same sweatshirt he’s worn every day since they’ve lived here. Six months. No, four? He’s not sure. It’s all just one big gray blur. She knows that he washes it, at least once a week, but it’s still the same damn sweatshirt. “Should we go?” She asks. Then she wipes her fingers clean.
Carter grew up in Portland. North Portland. His mom worked at a grocery store, and his dad whipped him with a leather belt. But they went to church every Sunday, and his dad asked God for forgiveness every time he thought he might have hit his only begotten son a little too hard. Carter didn’t know that though.
“Yea… let’s get some coffee? Actually, listen…” They were already walking back to her car. Her dad bought the car for her. It was nice when he did. A loving gesture. But now he lords it over her. It’s just a fucking car, Dad, you didn’t buy my life. She never actually said that to him, he would only laugh. Dad’s got a big job with a big title and an office in the spare room of the house. What does Carter want to do, again? She wasn’t sure. He’s not sure.
“I’m leaving.” The rest of the conversation came and went. Mostly the waves continued to crash.
2.
The way he searched for the bathroom key, the way his mouth momentarily opened to ask the barista, but closed again when he found it – tight, lips pursed, sealed, like he was holding something in, made his search even more urgent. There’s not much he can do these days without being within arms length of the bathroom. Or at least arms length of the key to the bathroom. It helps with the mental part of it.
His prostate is huge. His daughter is married. She married a guy with no middle name. No fucking middle name. But it doesn’t matter anymore, because his prostate has become a thing. It’s been spoken about. It exists every day in quiet moments now. He hasn’t gone to the doctor yet, but he will someday, and his wife will hear the bad news later that night as they scrape their forks against their dinner plates. She hates the plates. She picked them. She put them on the registry forever ago. She only has herself to blame. There were so many other options. She went with the stale white ones with the light brown trim. No one ever comments on them. They barely even notice the plates are there.
Her plate has a chip on it. Top left corner. She can’t stop looking at it as he tells her about the exam. The x-ray. The procedure next week. I’m going to have a bag for a while for, well, you know… She doesn’t know. But she’ll deal with the bag. She pushes the plate with the chip away and grabs his hand, feigning reassurance.
3.
She wore slippers to church. Can you imagine? Slippers to church, honey! Everyone noticed. Say something to YOUR daughter. Always his daughter when she did bad things like wear slippers to meet God, or even worse, clothes that didn’t match to the Farmer’s Market. I just want to buy some fruit and not have my fucking daughter look like a god-damn clown or a fruitcake. He rolled over, wished she would stop making sounds, and grunted back something that could be taken whatever way she wanted it to be taken. He just wanted to fall asleep to the sound of the rain dripping from the gutters.
He should’ve left that day it was misting at the cliff, or spraying, or whatever, but he didn’t. They got coffee instead.
She changed her name. That was the first thing she did. A different last name would be the wall, the gap, the chasm, the separation between her and her father. Later, she would change her hair color. Blonde to Brown. Maybe even Red someday. Everyone knew him. Of him. She knew the time would come when someone would recognize her face from the news. All those damn mug shots and pictures of him standing there in the front yard with that mustache and those children. Her. Even here, way across the country, or in a totally different part of the world, someday.
The coffee shop was the first place she caught herself. It was a simple question, are you from here? But she stumbled, her answer, eventually, when it trickled out in spurts and spats, was confusingly suspicious. Her insides bubbled. No, burned. The familiar feeling that always worried her. Is that him? Who can’t remember where they’re from? A simple coffee with a simple boy and a simple smile turned to a turn of words meant to hide three hundred dead bodies from the conversation’s life.
The second time was on the train to work. The Old Lady across the aisle with the blue scarf wouldn’t stop looking at her from the sides of her eyes. Fuck you lady. Her hands quaked. Just like his. I didn’t ask for him as my father. It’s as if people think I had a choice, she thought to herself, her face growing flush with anger, as if I chose to be that Monster’s daughter instead of some kid from Florida, or Montana, who learned how to ride a pink bike in the street with their father’s steady hand on their back, pushing gently, lovingly, and watching proudly as they rode, laughing and happy, away on their own for the very first time… we don’t have a choice. No one has a choice. She looked away. So did the Old Lady. She had a tear in her eye. The Old Lady noticed it.
At the next stop the Old Lady hugged her and told her it would be okay. The train honked and chugged off. Another train screamed by, an express train probably. When they parted ways she hoped the Old Lady would never be a part of her life again. And that’s when she first wished her Dad was still around.
The pointy trees blow lightly in the fake winter wind. The kind of wind that allows a man to wear a blue shirt that says Mickey Mouse on the front. This is winter in Los Angeles. He chose to wear that T-Shirt. The wind allowed him that singular delight. Imagine the sheer joy he felt when he awoke this morning, his moderately attractive girlfriend at his side, or maybe she was already up playing Mario Party in the living room, we can never know – he looked at the weather report, his heart skipped a beat, because yes, my friend Mickey, a resounding yes! – you will be worn today. Loud and Proud. Fucking winter in Los Angeles.
People came West. Traversed mountains and deserts and storms that tried to kill the weary travelers almost every damn day. They were pioneers. They gave everyone new sicknesses. Enslaved whole tribes. And when they took that final, tired step over the last ridge and laid their eyes on the mighty Pacific Ocean – sparkling and blue, green at the edges, islands out farther than the eye cares to see – they took a deep breath, silently confirming all they had been through to reach this point. One man looked to another man, and said, his voice hoarse with a hard winter’s journey behind him: one day, a young man will be able to wear a Mickey Mouse shirt in the dead of Winter. This, I promise. The other man looked at him, nodded again in silent confirmation, thinking of all the people they lost on the trail behind. His wife, his daughter, three cattle, two horses, six broken wagon wheels. He looked again to the Pacific, majestic, endless, the Sun rippling orange and red just above where the world drops off to the other side, and he smiled. You’re welcome, Mickey Mouse Man. And, Thank You.
Kevin Thomas, Writer