Writing Prompt (#6)

Looking around you at all the people you come in contact with each day, about what percentage would you say are fully human and what percentage are zombies or pod people? How many strike you as having relatively fully-formed personalities and intellects (even if you may not care for them) and how many of them could, for all you know, simply disappear as soon as they leave your presence? That is, if you interact with a hundred people over the course of the day, with how many of them do you make human contact or sense that such contact is possible? 90? 63? 12? 4? How do you explain this figure? What does this say about you as a person? What are the commonalties among the people you identify as human? That is, do they tend to be the kind of people who do well on standardized intelligence tests, or is there some other factor which makes people be truly human? Could this humanity be measured? If so, what kind of "soulmetrics" would you use? If not, how do you know it exists? Are you simply missing the humanity of a large number of people or is there something fundamentally strange about the human condition? Or strange about you? If you are becoming more of the kind of person you want to be, will this number likely go up or down? What does this say? Please be specific and cite examples.

Writing Prompt (#5)

Write down a list of five regrets you have about your life.

Now, choose one and write about how your favorite character from literature would have handled the situation differently.

Writing Prompt (#4)

Micheal Nesmith's mother was an inventor (of Wite-Out).

Charlie Brown's mother was a housewife.

My mother was a banker.

Chelsea Clinton's mother was a lawyer.

Using fewer than 500 words, please describe what your mother does.

Writing Prompt (#3)

Please write 25 completely true things about yourself.

A Writing Prompt (#2)

Please write a story of at least 8 sentences beginning with the line:

The first time I saw that dwarf, I knew he was nothing but trouble.

A Joke or Not?

I can't for the life of me figure it out

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/7634153

A Writing Prompt (#1)

K-Sofa Means K-SOFA

"If I had to choose between pain and nothing I would always choose pain." - William Faulkner

If you had to choose between each of the following pairs, which would you choose and why?

Rock and Roll



Nirvana and Pearl Jam



PC and Mac



Past and present



Spiderman and The Hulk



Cars and trout



Laughter and horror

First Chapter of Untitled Book

Just minutes to go on the last day of school and Jonah was out in the hallway with Mrs. Dingle for about the hundredth time this year.
"Jonah," she said, wiping her chalky hands on her navy blue jumper, leaving ghost-like white marks, "I'm just so disappointed with the way things have gone this year. You're not a bad boy by any means, but I can't let you behave the way you do. You can't be so disrespectful. Asking me in front of the class if I wear a jumper when my family goes to a nudist colony. That's just mean for the sake of a laugh."
"I'm trying to be funny for the sake of a laugh, actually."
"Right there. That's what I mean. I'm trying to talk to you person to person, and you have to turn it into a joke."
He had been serious, but either being serious and having kids and teachers think he was joking or kidding around and being taken seriously had caused most of his trouble in life. Either way, he spent a lot of time in hallways talking with teachers or in offices talking with the principal.
"You've got a lot of potential, Jonah, but you're not living up to it. The future is a big place, but you have to do something to get where you want to be."
"I know, Mrs. Dingle. I'll try harder next year."
"It's not just your effort, it's your goals. Trying harder to be the class clown and to avoid doing your work won't result in success. It'll just be more of the same."
Whenever teachers talked like this, they got a soft, wet look in their eyes, like they were saying something new, something Jonah hadn't heard every day of life. That's the problem with having "potential," whatever that is, it's just another way of adults saying they're disappointed. Sometimes he wished he were retarded, so people would be happy he didn't drool or grab his crotch. Instead, he heard words like dismayed or baffled or chagrined or dissatisfied.
Luckily, the bell rang and he could leave school and shut the door on sixth grade. He'd set a record for days suspended by a 12-year-old, eight days altogether. Mr. Levine, the principal, had informed him of his accomplishment, but he did so with sorrow rather than pride.
He waited by the back door for his friends, so they could walk home together. Unfortunately, before Scott and Gary got there, Bradley Hocker showed up.
"Hi, Jonah," he said in his soft, almost whispery voice. His hand reached up toward his bright red helmet with the Ranger Rick sticker and he scratched his head through one of the holes. "You wanna walk home with me?"
"I was waiting on some other guys, actually."
"Scott and Gary, I suppose," Bradley said with a sniff, like maybe somebody had farted. "Can I walk with you guys?"
"Sure. I guess."
"Jonah, can I ask you a question?"
"I guess."
"How come you don't like me any more?"
That was the kind of question that contained its own answer. Guys don’t ask that question. Guys don't talk about that stuff. Guys do stuff; they don't have conversations about feelings.
"I like you okay, Bradley. You just don't like the same stuff as me."
"I know. I just wish things could go back to the way they used to be."
Jonah thought that sentence would fit in on "As The World Turns" or "General Hospital." In response, he hocked up the biggest lugey he could muster and spat at Bradley's left foot. Missed by an inch.
"Ewww, gross," Bradley said, which was just the wrong thing to say.
Bradley wore a helmet all the time. He had been in a car accident about a year before, with his mom and dad talking in the front seat, right before they drove off the road. Nobody was hurt. Even their car didn’t need to be fixed. But from that point on, Bradley’s mom made him wear a helmet, even watching TV.
Before the Cilleys moved in, Bradley had been his best friend, even though Jonah didn’t really like him much. Oh, he had a cool tree house that his dad built using some fancy architectural plans from a magazine, but he wasn't allowed to go up in it. He also had a canoe docked down behind his house on Beard’s Creek, and his mom didn’t mind if Jonah went out in it, but Bradley had to stay on dry land. He even had a mountain bike, but he was only allowed to ride up and down their long driveway, back and forth, like a guinea pig trapped in a cage. And wearing a helmet.
"Hey, Jonah," said Gary. "I knew I recognized that smell. Hey, Bradley.
"With that schnozola of yours, you can probably smell a Chinaman's farts," Jonah said. "And you probably get off on it."
"Hi," was all Bradley could muster.
"I got all A's except for a D in math, a C in English and a couple of C pluses," said Scott. "I'll leave off that last part when I tell people, though."
The boys walked down Drag Hill behind the junior high. All summer long early in the morning, like one or two, beer-drunk high school boys would line their cars up at the bottom, kill their lights to avoid detection and race to the top, the driver in the left-hand lane knowing that if, perchance, a car came down the hill, this would be the last ten seconds of his life. Jonah couldn't wait to be old enough to distill that much fear and excitement into the flash of an eye.
"Hey, Jonah, did you ask your mom about going camping?" said Gary, the wind blowing back his Army fatigue shirt, purchased at the head shop downtown, and carrying the ludicrous name Zybitzky on the nametag. Gary was both big and fat, almost six feet and 250 pounds, while Scott was even shorter than Jonah, probably five feet flat, and maybe 120.
They didn't look anything like brothers, what with Gary being dark-skinned and hairy, even on his chest and back and Scott being redheaded and fair-skinned. Jonah looked more like a brother to either of them than they did to each other. Gary and Scott were both 14, but they were what are called Irish twins, because their mother got pregnant with Scott about a month or two after Gary was born. Jonah would picture her nursing Gary while Dr. Cilley was banging her from behind, and then get kind of sick to his stomach. Much of his free time was spent envisioning what his friends' parents looked like when they were doing it, or what he would look like if he were doing his friends' moms. It was his hobby.
"She said she'd have to talk to my dad, which I think means yes."
"You guys are going camping?" asked Bradley. "Where?"
"Out on the Lamprey River," Gary said. "By the railroad trestle."
"I've heard it's dangerous in those woods," said Bradley. "My dad said he thinks there's somebody living out there. He was with his forestry students, and one of them thought she saw a man following them."
"Well," said Scott, "We'll be the men living out there for the next three days. We'll head out after dinner tonight and spend two nights out there, being free men. Jumping off the trestle and dropping forty feet into the river."
"That sounds dangerous and kind of scary," said Bradley, further demonstrating his inarticulateness in the language of boys. "Cool," "bitching" or "a blast" were the appropriate response to an adventure. Not scary. Never scary.
"It'll put some hair on our balls," said Jonah. "That's for sure."
"Or in your case on your pussy," said Scott, punching Jonah's arms.
"Fuck you," Jonah said in a singsong voice.
"See what I mean?" said Scott. "It takes a guy and a girl to fuck, not two guys."
"Oh, I know, you're the real fuckmaster, aren't you?"
Scott was older on paper, but way younger than Jonah inside. Scott still thought girls were gross, but Jonah was interested in getting to know a few.
His first suspension had been because of a girl. In October in science class he’d begged Carol Tillock to go to the fall dance with him. Before that, he'd never said anything to her other than, “What page are we on?” She turned him down, with a sneer and a laugh. Instead of accepting defeat, though, he went over to the aquarium in the corner of the room and used the little net to nab a sea minnow. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he walked up to Carol.
“Do you like animals?” he demanded.
“Go away, you creep!”
“Because if you won’t go to that dance with me, this little fish is gonna get it.”
“Gross!”
“Last chance, Carol,” he taunted. "What’s it gonna be?”
She turned and walked away. He lifted the flopping fish over his mouth, opened up and dropped it in. Without biting, he swallowed it.
Two day’s suspension for disrupting the classroom environment and cruelty to animals. It was the second part that pissed him off. Mrs. Andrews, the science teacher, had tuna fish for lunch every day. Jonah knew. He'd had to smell her breath from 12:18 to 1:04 all year. All Jonah had done was eliminate the can. He had been environmentally friendly.
"Stop arguing," said Bradley. "It's the first day of summer vacation. We should be happy."
"Okay, Mommy," said Jonah, with a sneer. "Ya know, even Mister Rogers farts sometimes, and probably swears."
"I just don't like fighting," said Bradley.
Bradley was an only child, which Jonah's mom said makes all the difference. Jonah had fought tooth and nail with his older brother Sean, before Sean joined the Army and went to Vietnam. Fighting with a brother or a friend was one of the best things a kid had going for him.
President Nixon had gotten elected a year ago, promising “peace with dignity,” whatever that means. Well, what it meant to Jonah was that Sean was now carrying a radio with the signal corps in Vietnam, and he was stuck here in New Hampshire. At least he had the Cilleys to bicker with.
"Why don't we each say one thing we're happy about?" said Bradley, suggesting the kind of solution girls the world over enjoy.
“I’m just glad I can’t get suspended from summer vacation,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Scott. “I know what you mean.”
“What kind of dumb-ass thing is that to say?” I demanded. “You’ve never once been suspended from school, but now you’re trying to jump onto my delinquent image by saying, ‘Yeah.’ You couldn’t get suspended, Scott, on account of everyone knows you’re one step short of retarded. They don’t suspend mouth breathers like you. For chrissake, you move your lips when you watch TV.”
“Shut up,” said Scott.
“Ooooh,” I mocked. “'Shut up.’ Good one.”
“At least I don’t get suspended.”
“Then don’t freaking say, ‘Yeah.’”
"Shut up, you guys," rumbled Gary. "You're getting on my nerves. I just want to go fishing."
Gary was going to be an ichthyologist, so he knew a lot about fish. Jonah figured he just wanted to sit around all day fishing. He also talked about becoming a priest, another job that doesn’t involve any heavy lifting. He and Scott and their parents went to church once a week, usually Saturday afternoons to get it out of the way.
Jonah's father’ was Jewish and his mother was nothing, so Jonah thought of God like a wooden farm cart, something that used to be important to people, but had long since been replaced by newer and better technology.
Still, religion was the reason for his second suspension.
At Christmas, his mom made a couple dozen sugar cookies in the shapes of crosses. On the way to school, he brushed the sugar off them and got out the can of Cheez Whiz he’d snuck out of the house. By the time the party started at nine o’clock, he had created a new taste sensation—Cheezit Christs.
Two day’s suspension.
"Bradley," Gary said, "Do you wanna join us? Go camping with us?"
While Jonah felt contempt for his former, friend, both Scott and Gary would periodically reach out to Bradley, who always seemed to view the offers as candy from strangers.
"I don't think my mom would let me," he said. "I know she'd never let me jump off the trestle. Anyway, it sounds dangerous, sleeping in the woods where there might be a fugitive lunatic."
"What are you going to do instead," sneered Jonah, "stay home and polish your helmet?"
"It hurts my feelings when you say things like that," said Bradley, leading with his chin. The other three boys knew the proper response was a round of "Fuck yous." This was in stunningly bad taste, like telling a guy you wanted to bang his sister.
When they reached the cul de sac that was Beard's Landing, Bradley and his hurt feelings continued down the street, while Jonah, Scott and Gary went up the Cilley's driveway to draw up lists of what they'd need for three days in the woods. They offered the departing Bradley no farewell acknowledgement, and he trudged down the street, his face hanging down as if someone had cut his spinal cord.
"What a loser," Jonah said.
"I feel bad for him," Gary said. "He's like a girl trapped in a boy's body. That's gotta be some lonely space to farm."
"I guess," said Jonah, jealous of Gary's generous and expansive nature. Even though Gary knew the schoolboy code, he could rise above it. Rise above it and float. Jonah just seemed to lack that glowing respect for humanity that Gary emanated in waves. His last suspension showed that.
In April, Mr. Hodgdon’s social studies class.
“Mr. Hodgdon,” Jonah asked after raising his hand and being recognized. “Could you do me a favor?”
“What’s that, Jonah?”
“Could you give me back my socks?”
“What are you talking about? Why would I have your socks?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have them here. I left them under your bed last night while you were out bowling. Tell your wife thanks for me.”
Four days. School psychologist.
Summer at last. Two months of peace.
Or war.

Durham, New Hampshire, is a college town, where if you don’t teach, you’re basically nothing. Bradley’s dad was a professor of forestry, and their family used to take Jonah up into the White Mountains sometimes when Dr. Hocker was doing research. Now, though, Bradley stays home with his mom and his helmet.
Doctor Cilley was a real doctor, a physician. When you live in a place where everybody makes their living through the work of their minds, even Dr. Cilley was kind of suspect, because he actually used his hands in his work.
Jonah's dad made dentures, which made his family a little bit less than nothing.
Jonah's parents promised him living on Beard’s Landing would be great. There were these ten lots and they were the first family to buy one and build a house on the little peninsula, this little strip of land going out into Beards Creek, which is an estuary, which means it's both salt and fresh water mixed. Jonah's father says the most interesting stuff happens at nature's borders, like the edge of a forest where it changes into a meadow or the base of a mountain, when it's just starting to rise.
Jonah had lived here since he was eight, though, so seeing horse-shoe crabs living with muskrats and red-wing blackbirds just seemed normal to him.
It's like the old joke where a guy goes to a doctor who asks him about his morning routine.
"Well, I get up, pee, throw up, then brush my teeth."
"Wait a second," the doctor says. "You throw up every morning?"
"Sure," the guy says. "Doesn't everybody?"
Jonah already lived there three years by the time Scott and Gary moved in. Before them, there was just Bradley for kids on the street. And his eight-year-old sister, Jennifer, who doesn't really count for anything. I mean, she barely even knows she's alive. And Sean. Before the Army.
Then the Hockers, Bradley’s family, moved in across the street. Jonah's parents said the other eight lots would sell, and soon there’d be a ton of kids for him to play with. That was their version of peace with dignity, because Charlie White, the developer of the lots, got caught in some kind of scandal and went bankrupt and killed himself. His widow and his kids and the people he owed money to all fought over who got what until the lawyers collected enough there wasn't much left to fight over, and so none of the lots were sold until last fall. For a year, there was just Jonah and eight-year-old Jennifer and Bradley on this long strip into a creek.
Then, the previous fall, the Cilleys moved in and everything changed. For one thing, Scott and Gary were guy guys, not girly guys like Bradley. Almost from the start, Jonah had hit it off with the Cilleys, as they explored the woods stretching on for miles behind their houses. With Bradley, Jonah had never thought about looking for muskrats or Colonial treasure at the falling-down house foundation or pretending to be Indians on a scalping mission.
The boys were lounging in the Cilley's back yard, each of them lying on the freshly mown grass.
"I've prepared a list for each of you," Gary said. "Look it over and make sure you have everything you need.
Jonah glanced down at his list. It seemed complete.
"Besides our personal supply and fishing stuff," Gary continued, "Each of us needs to provide a few other things. I'll bring along the tent, a cooking pan, a first-aid kit and wax-dipped matches."
"Why wax dipped?" asked Jonah.
"You dip kitchen matches in wax," Gary explained, "so that even if they get wet, they'll still light. The friction on the striker melts away the wax when you light it."
"Pretty cool," whistled Jonah.
"Scott, you're in charge of food. We'll be able to eat fish, but we need other stuff. I've put together a separate list for you. Make sure and snag the stuff from the kitchen. If we're missing anything, let me know and we'll buy it on the way."
"What do you want me to get?" asked Jonah.
"You're in charge of firepower," Gary said.
"I thought you were handling fire."
"Not fire. Firepower," Gary said. "Armaments."
Jonah closed his mouth while his eyes widened.
"Bradley may be a little timid," Gary said, "but he's right to be concerned about some guy living out in the woods. We'd be stupid not to be able to protect ourselves. Jonah, I want you to get your old man's revolver and five or six rounds of ammo. Make sure the damn thing's not loaded and keep the bullets separated from the gun. This is for real, not like The Plan."
While serving the third day of his April suspension, Jonah had discovered a revolver in his garage, hidden in a white plastic food-service bucket and covered with rags. He pulled it out slowly, amazed by its heft. Jonah had gotten a bb gun when he was seven, followed by an air-powered pellet gun at nine and a .22 rifle for his eleventh birthday. He had killed a few squirrels and a rabbit with the .22, and even gutted them out with his father's help and eaten them. It was conceivable you could kill a man with a .22, although it would probably take a few shots.
When he held up the revolver, though, and sighted for the first time down a real gun barrel, Jonah felt he was at the nexus of power in the universe. He was king of all he surveyed. He was Shiva, the Destroyer. Carefully putting the revolver back on top of the scattered bullets, he covered it with the rags and came up with The Plan.
At dinner that night, he was as casual as could be.
"I was cleaning up in the garage this afternoon," he said to his father, "and I found something pretty weird."
"Pretty weird is how I'd describe the idea of you cleaning anything without being asked 20 times first," said his mother with a smile. "I was pleased when I got home to see you'd actually done as we asked.
"Was it Chatty Cathy?" asked Jennifer, referring to a talking doll he and the Cilleys had summarily executed with his .22 for the crime of collaborating with the enemy, either the Confederates or the Nazis, he couldn't remember. Her last words, taken down for posterity, were: "I'm wet. Change me."After 15 shots, Chatty Cathy had been nothing but shards in the woods, and the boys hadn't even bothered to clean up after the event.
"Nope. I found a gun, a revolver, in a white bucket, covered with rags."
"Oh, that," said his father, putting down his fork and taking a sip of iced coffee. "Before your grandfather moved to California, he gave me that old thing. I hate to throw it away, but I don't really have any use for it."
"Oh," Jonah replied.
"Now that you're done with this suspension," his mother said, "can you promise us you'll stay out of trouble?"
"I can promise I'll try," he said. "That's the best I can do."
That night in bed, Jonah plotted the next day's events.

First Chapter of ON ACCOUNT OF BECAUSE

Chapter One
In Sunday newspaper magazines, you’ll see advertisements for family crests and mottoes. You know, a lion with crossed swords and a Latin phrase translated as “Faith with Honor,” that kind of thing.
Up until six months ago, if I were going to order a family crest, it would have shown two crossed bottles of cheap fruit-flavored brandy, with a man passed out behind them, X’s for eyes. A scroll would display a Latin phrase meaning “Used to It.” I’d grown used to a lot of things—a drunk for a father, a runaway mother, moving from place to place every three or four months.
Things started changing about a year ago, though, when Rota Fortuna (and you’ll learn a lot more about her) started spinning for me. My family crest and motto changed, too. Even my name was shortened, from Clayton to Clay Clevinger, which is a dud of a name either way, I know, but I didn’t choose it. . Before I tell you about my new life, though, you’ll need to know about my old one, starting just about a year ago now.
* * *
It was the morning of my eighth-grade graduation, and Pops and I were staying, for the umpteenth time, with my grandparents, Gramper and Cookie, at their house in Mastricola, New Hampshire, a town without even a 7-eleven. I was excited about the ceremony, although I couldn’t have told you why.
I had lived in Mastricola off and on for years, so I kind of knew some of the kids who were graduating, although I couldn’t call any of them friends. Just knowing I had completed something made me happy, even if the something was only eighth grade.
I had learned at birth that nobody really cared if I were miserable, so I might as well be happy. I generally kept any happiness to myself, being afraid that Pops or fate would yank it away from me and smash it on the street like a pumpkin. I buried good feelings along with the bushels of bad feelings I’d been handed over the years. Maybe I was an emotional minefield, but it didn’t really matter. I was used to it.
Pops drifted from job to job and I drifted with him from town-to-town, mainly because of his drinking, which came in binges. Guys who drink every day live under some pretty gray skies, but Pops saved up his thirst and unleashed it like a hurricane. The forecast with Pops was ninety percent chance of sun, with a ten percent chance of gale-force winds, torrential rains and devastation.
I straightened my tie in the boys’ room. I’d borrowed it from Gramper and he’d tied it twenty minutes before. He laid it around my neck like a ribbon or an award. Pops had promised to teach me how to tie a tie one of these days, but it was just one of many “one of these days” that never came. If I were going to learn, Gramper would have to teach me.
Usually, I tried to keep a blank expression. Some people probably thought I was wicked smart but keeping my opinion to myself. Other folks might have thought I was borderline retarded. Neither smiling nor frowning, my mouth remained the world’s simplest horizontal connect-the-dots puzzle. One. Two. Done.
“Don’t ever get too high or too low,” I wanted my face to say. “You never know what’s going to happen next.”
I liked my eyes when I looked in a mirror, but I was the only one who saw them most days. I spent a lot of time staring holes in people’s shoes.
Even though I’m a little short, I am muscular, because of a near-obsession with lifting a pair of twenty-pound dumbbells, found in a Boston dumpster. I didn’t know anything about weightlifting, so I lifted and saw what worked. First, I made the exercise a habit, and then, after a while, the habit made me.
My name was not going to be called for any award. I wasn’t in the program for sports or other extracurricular stuff. It didn’t matter. I might still be a nobody from nowhere, but I would be a bona fide, genuine eighth-grade graduate.
Adjusting my tie one more time and thankful for the new khakis Cookie had bought me, I walked out to join the sixty seven other graduates, milling around the cafeteria until we were called to line up for the march into the auditorium. None of the other kids looked for me. Not more than a handful even knew my full name. To most, I was just “that kid who moved back again,” better than being “that fat, smelly kid” or “that slutty girl,” but still not much.
I had been paired up with Kelsey Cahoon, known as “the girl with big boobs.” Not “the girl whose uncle was a veterinarian who specialized in turtles.” Not “the girl who can sign her signature equally well with either hand.” Not even “the girl who can whistle ‘Hello, Dolly’ like nobody’s business.” No, Kelsey, the first girl in our grade to develop breasts, bra straps apparent under her shirt by the end of third grade, would always be “the girl with big boobs.”
To be fair, Kelsey did have huge breasts sitting guard over her equally large belly. Unfortunately for Kelsey, her breasts were more freak show than peep show. They scared me. I was no expert on big boobs, of course, or even small ones. I could barely talk to guys, much less hope to get inside some girl’s shirt.
Kelsey’s face was like a cow’s, serene and blank. I couldn’t imagine what anyone would say about Kelsey if she were to die today except, maybe, “for a girl with large breasts she was not very popular.”
Not once in my years of wandering the planet had I walked into a room and had someone call out my name to join them. So I did what I always did, and searched the room for a few kids standing in a sort of group, not too close together, maybe one of them talking a little bit more and a little bit louder than the others. I found my target and walked over, not exactly to join the group, but close enough that someone looking over might think I belonged. Now, I would stand half-in, half-out, until we were called to graduation.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do this summer,” said the designated loudest, Frank something-or-other, who could burp both the alphabet and various swears. “My parents have a place on the lake and a speedboat. Every day I’ll be out there waterskiing with the cutest girls on the lake.”
Frank looked around at the faces, searching for jealousy I guess. I was pleased Frank looked at me too, making me, in my own mind at least, a member.
“That’s nothing,” said Rico LaPlenza, a boy with a pinched face wearing a real tuxedo. Most everyone else wore blazers and khakis. I just had my tie. Rico had a reputation as a ladies man. I’d overheard him tell about girls he’d done stuff with..
“I’m going off to Camp Mi-Te-Na for eight weeks. They’ve got archery, riflery, baseball and, best of all, weekly dances at Camp Foss with some of the hottest girls I’ve ever seen.”
I tried to picture my summer, but all I could get was a haze and all I could feel was dizziness. When other kids talked about the future, they seemed so sure it would hold good things. All I knew was it would be different, and yet the same. When it came to uncertainty, though, I was used to it.
Mrs. Andrews, the assistant principal, came into the cafeteria and clapped her hands three times, like she was some preschool teacher. She cleared her throat. It was time to line up for graduation. Kelsey and I were near the front and I tried to think of something to say, but all I could come up with was, “So, how are your breasts on this fine June day?” which didn’t sound quite right.
Even without anything to say, being paired with Kelsey was way better than marching in with a popular kid, who would have about twenty-five friends and relations cheering them when they walked in. Kelsey was unlikely to have more than a mother or father out there.
We’d walk out of the cafeteria, onto the back of the stage, then march double-file to the front, split up, boys to right and girls to left.
I knew Cookie and Gramper would be there, and figured Pops would be too. He’d been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings again, a good sign.
We walked onto the stage. I was wicked surprised at how nice the room looked, with congratulations posters on the walls and balloons everywhere. I saw Cookie, in a flower-print dress, and Gramper, in a black suit with his hat perched above his face. They smiled at me.
When I got to the front of the stage, I heard the voice I dreaded most, thick and slurred, and washed out.
“Would you look at the jugs on that girl,” Pops shouted from the back, weaving back and forth in front of his seat. “Way to go, Clayton. Those puppies are huge!”
Pops oozed himself into his seat, oblivious to the disapproving looks thrown at him by other kids’ parents. Throwing himself back into the auditorium chair, he passed out, his head dropping over the back. Too far away to hear or smell, I still knew Pops was snoring and reeking of booze.
I guess I could have gotten angry.
I guess I could have cried.
Instead, I just accepted the obvious. Pops was drinking again.
After all, I was used to it.
* * *
The ceremony itself was as much a blur to me as it was to Pops. When it was over I blinked hard walking into the sunshine looking for Gramper and Cookie. They didn’t say word one about Pops. It was weird, but the more noticeable Pops acted, the less we mentioned him.
We climbed into their old black Buick Park Avenue, a huge beast of a car without even looking back for a minute to see if Pops might need a ride. I sank back into the deep burgundy seat as if it were a recliner.
“That was a real nice graduation,” said Cookie. “And you looked very handsome. You were easily the handsomest boy in the room.”
“Thanks, Cookie,” I said. “I’m mainly just glad it’s over. Finally I’m out of middle school and now I can spend the summer looking forward to high school. Pops was talking about looking for a job over in Oxford, so I guess we might be moving there.”
“That’s something we’ll need to talk about when the time comes,” said Gramper stiffly, although he kept a smile on his face. “Now, let’s figure out what you might like for your graduation dinner. Lobster, steak, shrimp, whatever you say.”
“I guess I’d like some hamburgers on the grill and maybe some of your potato salad, Cookie.”
Cookie’s potato salad was legendary in the neighborhood. She used two kinds of potatoes and three kinds of mustard, even making her own mayonnaise instead of using the bottled stuff.
“Potato salad, yes. But today calls for steak, not hamburgers. We’ll also grill some corn and make that asparagus with Hollandaise sauce you like so much. And that’s not something we’re going to talk about. Period.”
When Grammy Cookie spoke that way, I knew she was serious. I hadn’t had any say in my own name, but I had named Cookie myself. “Cookie” had been my first word. I said it when I was one, reaching for one of her home-baked cookies. Even neighbors called her Cookie.
Now that we were back with Gramper and Cookie, things like dinner and clean clothes could be taken for granted. Sometimes I wondered how they could have raised Pops. For him, things like paying the rent and buying groceries were optional. Pops had been making noises about finding another job, but he made even talking about it a day’s work in itself.
We were back with Cookie and Gramper because Pops was trying to get back on his feet again, having been fired in April from the horse track in Salem. As a joke, Pops had tried to feed one of the horses a bowl of dog food. Even though the horse hadn’t eaten anything, any race horse was worth more than Pops. The owner demanded Pops be fired, which didn’t bother Pops much at all.
“It just struck me as funny to turn a horse into a cannibal,” said Pops when he came home from work. “No matter how fine a horse that might be alive, it’s going to end up dog food eventually. I was just giving it a preview of its future, doing it a favor, really.
“They’re all too uptight over there, anyway,” Pops continued. “Just my luck to get mixed up with them. Bunch of morons. Anyway, getting fired is just nature’s way of telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place.”
From the dizzying smell of booze on Pops’ breath, I doubted it was just showing that horse its destiny that got Pops fired. The job gone, Pops sat around our rented trailer, complaining about his bad luck and drinking until our money was gone. We called Gramper and Cookie to rescue us in the middle of the night, because the trailer’s owner was threatening to take the back rent out of Pops’ hide.
When Pops was sober, he was a quiet mouse of a man, with gray-speckled brown hair that hung down to his shoulders. His beard, which pretty much grew up to just under his eyes, was long. Together, all the hair gave him a Rip Van Winkle kind of look, like he’d just been awakened and didn’t quite know what was going on. Even Pops himself probably couldn’t remember what his chin looked like. On some men, all that hair could have looked tough or rebellious. Pops just looked like a man who didn’t take care of himself..
Other than drinking buddies, who went away as soon as the booze was gone, or AA buddies, who disappeared as soon as the liquor came out, I never knew Pops to have any friends, or to even have acquaintances, really. I remember reading once that Willy Loman, was “liked, but not well-liked. It seemed like Pops was “tolerated, but barely tolerated
He wore oversized brown tortoise-shell glasses, and hadn’t had the prescription updated in years. Those glasses were always filthy, not just with grease, but with real dirt and eyebrow hair and stuff that I didn’t even want to think about. I always wondered how Pops could possibly see anything through those things, but I figured there wasn’t much that Pops wanted to see anyway.
He almost always wore the same blue overalls with one button unbuttoned and the bib folding itself into a triangle. He thought that showers were overrated, and he always had a distinctive odor, which I thought of as the smell of death. What with his dried sweat, dirty clothes and the three packs of cigarettes he smoked every day, many people thought he was homeless.
If Pops sat on a bench, kind-hearted strangers sometimes offered him spare change and he would always take it. A funny thing about Pops, though, was that if a man gave him a quarter, he’d thank him like crazy, but if the guy gave him a dollar, Pops would curse him out for not giving up everything in his wallet.
When Pops drank, he was an obnoxious back-slapper, calling all men “buddy” and all women “babe.” People often talk of happy drunks and angry drunks. I always thought it was more like likeable and unlikable drunks. Pops was the undisputed king of the second group. The best thing I could ever see about Pops drunk was that he always passed out pretty quickly.
I was used to the fact that Pops could only hold a job for so long before either the boss man, his co-workers or the work itself became impossible . Either he would quit or he’d be fired. Then he’d stay at home drinking until a week or so after the last paycheck was gone.
During these times, Pops would look back over his life, spotting time after time when luck had failed him. No matter how long he searched, he’d always find a sign of luck’s unfairness, but never see any of his own mistakes. Pops had an almost religious faith in his bad luck and he liked nothing better than showing me times he had been a victim of life’s circumstances.
“If only I could find a boss who would understand me and my problems,” Pops would say, “instead of always harping on me. If I could get just one shot of luck in my life, the way other folks do, things could be different. It’s not like I want my luck buttered. I’ll take a hard, dry piece of good luck and be thankful.”
I had my own theory on luck, but I never bothered to tell Pops about it. It seemed to me luck just kind of flowed to people who took care of their responsibilities first and let pleasure find them later. Pops liked to drink first and then hide out from responsibility. He would chart out his bad luck, being a cartographer of failure. Once Pops had fully reviewed his ill fortune, we usually ended up back at Cookie and Gramper’s.
A local beauty as a girl, Cookie, now more than seventy, still carried herself like a woman accustomed to having a full dance card, as they used to say. From the pictures on her walls, you could see Cookie’s different stages of beauty. Cookie’s graduation picture from nineteen fifty shows her looking away from the camera, her face telling you that if you could look into those eyes you would probably be in heaven. When she got married, ten years later, she looks up into the sky as if God Himself was begging to get a look at her. In a portrait taken on her seventieth birthday, even though she was a lot heavier than she’d been in the earlier pictures, she still carries herself like a queen. Each time I look at her, staring into the camera, she seems to be saying “life has not been easy for me, but, look, I have maintained my dignity.”
Gramper still believed Cookie the most beautiful woman in the world. He had pulled off a great victory in getting her to marry him. She was his first and only love.
Retired from the post office now, Gramper did odd jobs around the neighborhood.
During World War II, while the fighting and dying went on in Europe, Asia and North Africa, Gramper served his country at the Oakland Army Terminal, making dentures for soldiers shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Personally, Gramper said, he thought it would have made more sense to fix teeth when a soldier was mustering out, sort of a going-away present. Instead, Gramper toiled away to fix the smiles of men who might have nothing to smile about ever again. Leaving good-looking corpses throughout the Pacific seemed an odd way to do his part. Still, it got him a veterans’ preference, which got him into the post office, which got him a chance to marry Cookie.
# # #
I remember when I was six, and we lived with my grandparents for six months. Cookie took me to the Well Child Clinic for free immunizations, check ups and all that stuff. Each time, we played games there.
Sometimes it was “Hide the Penny,” where one of us closed our eyes and the other hid a penny in the waiting room. The finder followed “warmer” and “colder” to find the coin.
We also told jokes. My all-time favorite joke at the time, which I know is pretty lame, would get told.
“Cookie, I bet you don’t even know how to spell your own name.”
“Sure I do.”
“Okay, spell it.”
“C-o-o-k-i-e.”
“Nope. You spelled ‘cookie,’ and I told you to spell ‘it.’ I-t.”
In the waiting room were copies of “Ranger Rick” and “Children’s Digest” and “Highlights for Children,” with their rip-out subscription cards. I knew only rich people got those magazines. No kid at the free clinic thought about ripping one of those cards out.
It was “Highlights” I liked, looking at snapshots of normal. I’d thumb through “The Bear Family,” look at the pictures kids my own age had drawn, realizing even at six I had already fallen behind. My favorite feature, though, was “Goofus and Gallant.”
It wasn’t clear whether Goofus and Gallant were brothers or classmates or complete strangers. They divided every moral or ethical decision into two possibilities. You could do the right thing like Gallant, the happy kid who loved to please authority, or the wrong thing, like Goofus, who was angry except when he was laughing at bad things happening to other people.
I knew Gallant was who I should follow, and I tried to. Still, I also knew, deep down, expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting a wild bear not to kill you because you are a vegetarian.
I thought of Gramper as a grown-up Gallant. Gramper said all it takes to be happy is to have something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for. He kept busy, he loved Cookie and me, and he walked with a hopeful bounce.
My life didn’t have a whole lot of other Gallants. It was overrun with Goofuses, from my mother when she had been around to Pops to the kids who teased at school.
“Gallant sees a new student and invites him to sit down in the lunch room” but “Goofus sees a new student and makes fun of the boy’s accent and clothing.”
“Gallant notices his elderly neighbor’s lawn covered with leaves and rakes them for her, not accepting any money” but “Goofus notices his elderly neighbor’s lawn covered with leaves and tells her the yard is an eyesore, but he will clean it up for twenty dollars.”
“Gallant plays nicely with his younger sister, helping her build block castles and praising her for good work” but “Goofus kicks his younger sister’s block castle apart and teases her when she cries.”
I felt like my life was one big example of Goofusness run wild and I wished I could meet just a few more Gallants.
# # #
Overall, the latest stay had gone pretty well, but with Pops’ getting drunk at graduation, I figured this visit would be drawing to a close, giving Pops another site to visit when he strolled down Hard Luck Lane.
When we got home, I helped Gramper start the fire in the grill, and we waited for the coals to turn from black to white.
“Clayton, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” said Gramper, poking at the briquettes with a stick. “And it’s not easy for me to say.”
“What is it, Gramper?”
I was terrified that Gramper was going to try to tell me about the birds and the bees. I’d heard the outline on the back of a school bus in third grade, and had done some book and magazine research into the subject later on.
“It’s about the future. Your future,” Gramper said. “You’re a smart boy and a good boy and you deserve to have some stability during your high school years.
“And, much as I love my son, your father, he is no more stable than a Golden Delicious in an apple-bobbing contest. Life is a grindstone. Your father has chosen to let it grind him down instead of polishing him up. You deserve better.”
I’d never really thought of myself as “deserving” anything. I tried to accept life as it got served up. I tried to be like Gallant, Goofuses surrounded me, and that, pretty much, was that.
“So, your grandmother and I have talked about this for a long time. We are both getting older and don’t need this big house any longer. We are placing the house for sale soon and moving to a two-bedroom apartment in Plattsfield, probably by Christmas. While we can’t promise to take care of you forever, we’d like you to live with us for the next four years, until you finish high school.”
“I don’t know, Gramper,” I said. “Pops and I have barely ever lived in one place four months, much less four years. I’m not sure Pops would be able to stay put that long. And a two-bedroom apartment might be a little too small for the four of us.”
“This is not an offer to your father, Clayton. It is strictly an invitation to you. Your father has, quite honestly, been a disappointment to me since he was your age. I learned a long time ago you don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying in the water. Your father is drowning, but he has no reason to drag you with him.
“He dropped out of school in tenth grade and ran off. He got your mother pregnant, but he couldn’t hold on to her, not that she was such a prize package. He has gotten no further training and he is now incapable of providing for you properly.
“Without wanting to betray any confidences, Clayton, I can tell you throughout your childhood your grandmother and I have tried to guide, shall we say, your father in his raising of you. He has chosen not to take our advice, nor, except monetarily, accept our help. In addition to his other shortcomings, he is a very proud man. But pride without portfolio is empty. Still, he is your father, and I do not wish to speak ill of him any further.
“Unfortunately,’ Gramper continued, unable to stop himself, “there is also the problem of his drinking. You don’t have to give me an answer now to the question of moving in with us. Just think about it.”
“Sure, Gramper.”
The size of this offer grew in my chest. The idea of life without Pops was hard to fathom. He wasn’t the greatest father-—when you came down to it, he was pretty lousy—-still, life with Pops was all I’d known. I was used to it.
As we tended the fire, I drew on the only moral compass I had.
“Goofus betrays his father, who loves him, and goes to live with his grandparents, just because they’ve got a home and money and don’t drink.”
“Gallant moves in with his grandparents, to help them and perhaps to set an example for his own dear father.”
“Gallant recognizes his father truly needs him and, despite his personal loss, sticks by him no matter what.”
“Goofus ditches his father, a drunken loser who can’t hold the jobs he doesn’t like and can’t find a job he likes.”
This last piece, liking work, had always bothered me. It just seemed so unnecessary. I mean, if you’re going to change jobs every few months, shouldn’t you go to a job you liked not trade one dead-end boring position for another?
Pops was really only happy about work for eight weeks every year, from mid-August until mid-October, when, in addition to working whatever laborer job he might or might not have, he worked the New Hampshire county fair circuit.
He’d start with the tiny North Haverhill Fair at the beginning of fair season to the big Sandwich Fair that closed the season. Pops would sign up as a casual worker, and the fair organizers would direct him to someone who was driving from where he lived. Pops would make a phone call or two to arrange for a ride to come by on Friday afternoons and Saturday and Sunday mornings to take him to the week’s fairgrounds.
Before I was born, Pops had been a traveling carnival worker, a carny, for seven or eight years and he would sometimes tell me what it was like in the old days, about life on the road in small-town America. Most of these stories starred people named “Oklahoma Red” or “Fertilizer Phil” and the funny things they had done when they were drunk in a tiny burg in Arkansas or Pennsylvania.
“Clayton,” Pops had once said, during the tiny window between his first drink and his being drunk. “The carnival life is no life for a child. That’s why your mother and I quit when you were born. Children aren’t made for the constant moving, the hard work and the long hours.
“Time gets turned on its head in a carnival. You’re constantly going from ten in the morning until midnight or later and there’s no such thing as a day off. When I was a First of May myself, I once asked an older carny, ‘When do we get to sleep?’ and he said to me, ‘Not until the season’s over.’
“Nope, that’s no life for a little child. Still and all, life on the road with a carnival can be a little taste of heaven for a young man, a little taste of heaven. It’s a chance for a man to see the world, meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. I wouldn’t have met your mother if it weren’t for the carny life.”
Here, dreaminess came into Pops’ voice. Whenever Pops talked about my mother, I hated the affection in his voice. When I was three I had given her all of my love; now that she was gone, all I had left was hate. I’d heard this story a bunch of times, and was really tired of the way it made this woman I didn’t have much use for sound like some kind of saint. Still, I knew he was going to tell it anyway, so I just sat back to let it roll over me.
“I remember one morning in August we’d just pulled into this tiny little town in Ohio, Duncan Falls, population no one, hardly. It was in Muskingum County, just southeast of Zanesville,” Pops said.
To me, whose traveling had consisted of moving around Boston and various small New Hampshire towns, Pops might just as easily have been saying, “It was the little village of Elysium, right northeast of Xanadu.”
Still, other than the story of how Pops had met Lucinda Watkins, I always really liked to hear Pops talk about his carnival days. His eyes got a certain brightness that I wasn’t used to and his voice carried some excitement for once.
“I was, what, twenty five or twenty six, just rolling in alfalfa, because there wasn’t much to spend your money on. Hell, we wouldn’t leave the carnival for days on end. You’d get a buddy to buy carton of smokes and maybe a couple bottles of blackberry brandy and you were all set. Food we’d just get from a friend working a cart. Nothing like a sausage sandwich with onions and peppers and brown mustard for dinner, followed by fried dough and cinnamon sugar for dessert. That’s living, I tell you.
“I remember the carnival owner said we could burn the lot, just take the town for what it was worth, because we’d never be back there again. I was working a jenny at the time, one of those real old-fashioned merry-go-rounds, and I needed to get it set up before the marks poured in.
“Anyway, there we are in this one-horse town, when I look up from the greasy underbelly of the jenny. I must have been a sight, covered with oil and dirt, but there, Clayton, right in front of me I saw the most beautiful girl in the entire world standing there, waiting to take a ride as soon as I had the contraption put together.
“She was only seventeen, and wearing a black R.E.O Speedwagon t-shirt and cut-off jeans, cut off way up her thighs. She had huge red hair and the most beautiful blues eyes, with blue eye shadow to set them off. I told her she was so beautiful, she didn’t have to pay, that if she’d give me five minutes to finish up, I’d let her ride free. She just smiled the prettiest smile.
“The minute she climbed onto that chipped red horse and I got the jenny going, I turned to my buddy, Michigan Slim was his name, and said, ‘No more dirty magazines for me. I’m going to get that girl.’
“Well, that pretty little girl was dying to get out of her hometown, and she became a carny herself. It took some time, a couple of years, and I wasn’t the first man she’d been with, not by a long shot, but eventually I made her into your mother, Lucinda Watkins.”
Here, Pops would wave around the walls of whatever apartment we were living in. On them were always four needlepoint creations, one for each season, in dime-store quality black frames. Winter, for example, was a needlepoint of snowmen and children sledding down a hill with “Merry Christmas” in red and green letters. Spring was a collection of flowers of no particular type, waving in a field with a sun shining down on them.
I guess the pictures were nice enough, but I couldn’t see the difference between the craft of needlepoint and the art of painting by numbers.
“Each and every one of those was done by your mother,” Pops would say with pride. “She has always been quite an artist, could have gone pro if she’d wanted, and needlepoint was what she liked doing best. I suspect she could have put those in a museum.”
These days, Pops got his carnival fix for eight weekends running at each of the New Hampshire fairs. Sometimes he would run into carnys he had known back in the day, and almost always there was a friend of a friend to catch Pops up on carnival news and gossip.
Like some baseball player called back for an Old-Timers’ Game, Pops would go to the fairgrounds and rub shoulders with the same kind of men he had traveled with when he was younger and a genuine carny. He would relive his youth by cleaning manure out of livestock areas or tearing tickets at a front gate or running ride.
Even during the years we lived in Boston, Pops had always found some way to work the fairs, even if it meant quitting the job he was currently holding, or honestly, especially if it meant quitting a job.
While Pops had no real marketable skills, he did have a number of talents that a fair could use. He could spot a pickpocket with pretty good accuracy. He could prepare a ring for horse riding. He could keep on eye on drunken teenagers on the midway to make sure they didn’t try to steal anything or pass out in a public place.
Pops could even fix rides, because when he’d been a carny, everyone had been a jack-of-all-trades. If a ride broke down in Orangeburg, South Carolina, you couldn’t just go to the Yellow Pages and look under carnival ride repair. You had to be able to fix whatever ride you were working.
Yep, at a fair Pops was useful. At a fair, he was somebody who mattered. At a fair, Pops looked men in the eye instead of staring a hole in the ground. Throughout the year, I looked forward to fair season, so that for once I could look with pride on Pops, instead of averting my eyes in shame.

#
My thoughts were disrupted when Pops stumbled up the driveway, having walked from the school. He had the embarrassed grin he got when drunk, a look that seemed to say, “I know I’ve made a big mistake, but what choice did I have?”
“Where’s my boy? Where’s my scholar?” Pops asked, weaving slightly on the grass, waves of alcohol drifting off him. “Sorry about this afternoon. I guess I was pretty tired and all the emotion must have gotten to me. Just my luck to take a nap at your graduation. Really sorry.”
In some families “please” is the magic word; in ours, the magic word was “sorry.”
“C’mon Clayton, give your old man a hug. What, now that you’ve graduated eighth grade you’re too big to hug your father?”
Pops’ lit cigarette fell out when he spoke. With the deliberateness of a man trying to convince others he is sober, he bent to look for it. Once he spotted it, though, the booze in his system attacked his fine motor skills. He picked up the burning end of the butt, immediately dropped it and stood up, keeping his back falsely stiff. He tried to be invisible as he stepped on the cigarette and ground it out.
“Damn thing bit me,” he said, laughing and pulling another cigarette out of a mostly empty pack in the pouch pocket on his overalls. Appearing to recognize that lighting a cigarette might be even more challenging than picking one up, he tried to put it back in the pack, breaking off the filter.
He held his arms out, apparently expecting that I would ignore his drunkenness and hug him.
“C’mere, Clayton,” he slurred. “I said I was sorry. How ‘bout little love for your old man, huh?”
I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted to hold Pops, if only to keep him from begging again. On the other hand, Gramper’s words were in my head. I imagined making a floating apple into a lifeboat.
“That was fine graduation, Clayton,” Pops said, hands back at his side, “Real fine, and you looked good, real good and that little filly you were walking with sure had a nice pair . . .”
“Enough, David!” Gramper’s voice boomed. “That will do! You’ve been drinking and you’re behaving like a horses’ ass!”
“Aw, Dad, I’m just playing around. Don’t be so serious all the time. Just lighten up for once. I had couple drinks is all.”
Pops voice sounded hurt, with a sense of injustice that people would think he had been drinking when he had been drinking.
“Dad, I can still talk a straight line. I mean, I can walk in complete sentences. Aw, heck. Well, one good thing about having a couple drinks is can’t fall off the floor. Now Clayton, how about that hug?”
Pops again held his arms out, closing his eyes slowly. I looked at Pop, then at Gramper, then at the ground.
Most fathers must inspire either fear or love with their actions. Pops, however, chose a third route: humiliating embarrassment.
“Gallant sees his father’s desperate need for love. Although Gallant disapproves of the man’s actions, he holds him closely and lovingly.”
“Goofus is disgusted by his father’s existence and pushes him to the ground, easy to do because his father is drunk.”
“Gallant holds his father tightly, and guides him to bed.”
“Goofus puts his father to bed roughly, then goes through his wallet, swearing at him when he finds the old man has spent all his money”
Luckily, I didn’t have to decide anything, because Pops decided for me. Without a nod, Pops buckled, dropped to his knees and threw up on the grass. He passed out, face down in his own vomit.
“Just think about our offer,” Gramper said.
Together, the two of us rolled Pops over and cleaned him up the best we could. Gramper dragged his body into a flowerbed. I looked onto Pops’ face, and then up into Gramper’s. I guess evolution doesn’t mean things get better, just that they survive.
After Gramper and Cookie went to bed, I brought a light blanket outside, tucking one end under Pops’ feet and pulling the other end up to cover his head. After a moment, I folded the blanket back down, revealing his face. I realized then if I’d had two coins, I would have happily used them.

First Chapter of WHAT TROUBLE LOOKS LIKE

Chapter One

I never intended this, of course. Nobody intends to be locked up, facing indictment and almost certain conviction. Nobody intends to have MSNBC, FOX and CNN offering updates on his case, with headlines like: “School Svengali Creates Killer Cult.” Nobody wants to hear Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly and Don Imus calling for his life. Nobody intends to have the families of the victims demanding the answer to one question: What the hell happened?
I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you. As my attorney, you gave me paper and pens to write down anything that might help you with my defense. All I know is that I never intended any of this.
Of course, I haven’t intended anything for a long time. Nothing that has happened to me has been the result of foresight, planning and hard work. Things just sort of happened, the result of my particular curse, a curse I have not been able to shake, a curse that hangs over me: the curse of good luck. No matter how bad a situation has seemed, how bleak the circumstances, my curse has been to come out of everything untouched, enlarged even for having lived through the crisis. I’ve always told my students that it’s not what you do wrong that determines your fate, it’s how you handle yourself afterwards that matters.
In retrospect, this advice was a license for bad behavior.
In retrospect, this advice was the embodiment of Heinrich Heine’s credo: God will forgive me; that’s his job.
In retrospect, I am guilty of heresy: let us sin freely so that grace may abound.
There’s probably a name for that particular heresy, but twenty years ago, I was ordained as a Baptist minister, not a Catholic priest, and Baptists don’t really believe in heresy; they believe in local control. If a local Baptist congregation decides that God has called it to increase the grace of this world through rampant sinning, that’s between them and their God. It’s their business.
I may have left the church in disgrace, but it hasn’t fully left me. In fact, in spite of my circumstances, I may be the most God-obsessed man I know.
I have a hard time staying focused.
Rather, I can focus like a laser beam.
Then something happens.
I obsess on things with a passion and then I get distracted. I apologize in advance for this flaw. I know that as an attorney, you would like a straightforward narrative flow. Unfortunately, I suspect there will be a number of distractions along the way.
I mentioned being cursed with good luck. Considering my circumstances, I should cheer up. After all, maybe my curse is finally lifting.
I mentioned students. For fifteen years I have run alternative schools.
When you hear “alternative school,” you might think “granola.”
When you hear “alternative school,” you might think “progressive.”
When you hear “alternative school,” you might picture a liberal place with students who come from money, live in money and will be buried in money. Those are not my people.
Instead, I run alternative schools for rough-and-tumble kids who don’t fit into school and haven’t for a long time. Kids with moderate criminal records. Kids who need some guidance and vision to help them turn their lives around. That’s what I do. Or did. Supply vision to help kids turn their lives around. Only this time, I turned some of them 360 degrees. And armed them with vision. And pulled the trigger.
My alternative schools are always off-site from a public high school, so that I can create a culture in my own image. I spent a year as an assistant principal in a regular school, the longest year of my life, and I know that I would hate to have to supervise me.
My last school, Z-SOLAR, is located in a previously-deserted schoolhouse. Z-SOLAR is an acronym for Zdravo School of Life and Reality. “Zdravo” is Serbo-Croatian for “hello.” The Hello School of Life and Reality, named for no particular reason except Lucky Boy, one of my favorite students and a current prisoner himself, thought it was funny.
Z-SOLAR is small, with twenty-five students, two teachers and a large hangar-like classroom. More accurately, it now has twenty-two students and no teachers. It also has a small office, with two couches, an easy chair and a telephone.
I mentioned the Baptist church. I was once briefly a minister, ordained to marry and bury, to preach and teach, to frighten and enlighten. I left the ministry for two reasons: I couldn’t believe a word I was saying and I was locked up in a psychiatric hospital.
The two are related. Now, God doesn’t return the phone calls I don’t make and I don’t tell lies. I was locked up in the hospital after bodysurfing down seven flights of stairs in a parking garage.
The secret to stair surfing is to keep your head up and your arms over your head like Superman flying.
The secret to stair surfing is to wish you were dead but lack the energy to kill yourself.
The secret to stair-surfing is to sleep two hours a night, burst into tears for no reason and to carry the constant taste of aspirin in your mouth.
Also, it helps your technique if your wrists are freshly bandaged from where you hacked at them with a set of keys, as if trying to find the ignition in a nightmare car. Drive down the Interstate, listening to a radio talk show about cooking, and scrape your inner wrists, trying to work keys into your forearm and get something started. Just try to feel something. Pain, joy, it doesn’t really matter. It never does.
Also, it helps your technique if you have a seven-day growth of facial hair, not because you intend to grow a beard, but because you don’t quite trust yourself with a razor in your hand.
Also, it helps your technique if you are married to a former Miss Teenage New Hampshire, a true believer who only married you because you are a certified Good Man with a fast track to God.
I believe that I was the world champion stair-surfer of my or any other generation, but that’s difficult to prove, as stair surfing is not a sanctioned Olympic sport. The psychiatrists may have saved my life, but they took away that particular claim to fame. These days, if I take my medicine, I don’t even want to surf down staircases.
Until the recent unpleasantness, I took my medicine every day, one hundred milligrams of Zoloft, right after I shave, but before I get into the shower. Being in jail has broken that routine, but I still faithfully take my medicine. I am a good patient.
Somewhere in there, that wife left me. I don’t really blame her. Marrying a man as a way to cozy up to God is one thing. Having to actually visit that man in a locked psychiatric ward is another matter altogether.
Being served divorce papers in a locked ward put me in an unstable legal position, to say the least, so I lost all the nothing I had and re-created myself.
But that was all years ago. I live in the present, blind to the future and with a two-dimensional pasture. Anything that happened there is simply a tacked-up clipping. Some clippings are yellowed. Some are fresher. All of them are just notices on a wall. Some I read daily. Most I ignore.
But I digress. I did take good advantage of my time in the hospital, arriving as I did at a conclusion I still hold today: Being crazy is neither good nor bad, it simply is. What matters is the environment. As a Baptist minister, my particular form of craziness didn’t work. Wacky, quirky, eccentric, smart-ass Baptist ministers become, fairly quickly, ex-Baptist ministers.
As a director of alternative schools, though, these very same qualities made me memorable, endearing and charming. I am still a maniac, but now I am a functional maniac.
I must admit to a concern that model defendants are not typically described as wacky, quirky, eccentric smart-asses. Sorry about that.
As I said, I have been cursed by good luck. So far.
As I said, I am easily distracted, a veritable sand flea on crack. Because of this, I keep dozens of index cards on me, so that I can write down the random thoughts that bombard my mind. By the end of each day, I have a dozen or more cards filled with jottings that barely make sense, even to me.
For example: I never wanted to hurt you/I just think cruelty is a virtue.
For example: Marketing plan for imaginary product. Sell virtual product on Internet. Retire to Adelaide
For example: Whatever happened to videodiscs?
For example: What if a psychologist specializing in the treatment of untreatable personality disorders decided that his patients with narcissistic personality disorder were not humans, but actually demons or wraiths?
For example: Career leader in wins by a left-handed pitcher less than six feet tall?
For example: What if a drug could disable a patient’s conscience?
For example: The four funniest words in literature? “Shut up,” he explained.
For example: Heard the word “inevitable.” Is anything “evitable”?
For example: Buy bananas
I even have a leather carrying case for carrying these cards, called an executive jotter, purchased from an ad in the back pages of The New Yorker. The jotter holds a dozen or so three-by-five cards in a burgundy wallet, with four triangle cuts made in the front to hold the card I’m writing on. When I’m done with a card, I flip it over and write on the other side.
But I digress.
As I said, or at least alluded to, very bad things happened. Perhaps the active voice is more honest: What I did led to some very bad things. Even more honest: I did some very bad things. I guess. I just can’t remember what was bad. Things just happened. I never intended.
The last intention I can honestly remember was in Germany twenty-five years ago. I was in the Army and I had just quit heroin through a twenty-eight day program based on scream therapy, which involved role-playing and shouting. For four weeks, my fellow addicts and I role-played each other’s families, teachers, drill sergeants and friends.
Catharsis was the goal.
Beginning over with a clean slate.
Being born again with a sore throat as a sacrament.
Scream therapy has been clinically discredited as a bunch of hooey, but it worked for me, if not for my co-addicts, three of whom were dead from overdoses within a month of discharge. May they rest in peace.
I stayed clean. I haven’t done any drugs in twenty-five years. That is a point of pride for me. Although quitting heroin was a good thing, I never really intended to quit. I just sort of ended up in rehab and it just sort of ended up working.
No, the last intention I can claim came the summer after I quit using. My intention was to become bi-sexual. It was 1978, I was a military journalist, writing a humor column and feature stories for “Stars and Stripes,” having started out as an infantryman, a “grunt.” All of my closest friends were either gay or bi-sexual, and I intended to join them.
Having gone through a David Bowie, glam-rock phase in high school, I was comfortable with androgyny, even wearing make-up for a brief period. Likewise, I liked the in-your-face 1970s gay attitude. It said, “I’m a man. I’m a bitch. Deal with it.” Gay soldiers seemed immeasurably cooler, hipper and closer to reality than most of the straight soldiers, whether blacks from the inner city or white kids from Alabama.
Gay people had chutzpah.
Gay people had pizzazz.
Gay people had the best taste in clothes.
I was going to be gay.
Except I couldn’t.
I could fast-dance with a man.
I could flirt with a man.
I could even go home with a man.
I just couldn’t touch a man without feeling nauseous. Time after time, I would lead a man on and then bail out at the last minute. Or, actually, the first minute he tried to touch me. I was the worst kind of tease. After that intention, I put away the notion of intending anything and just let things happen.
Although I have a wonderful memory, and can picture almost every room I’ve ever slept in, I find that I can’t remember anything.
For instance: I once tried to figure out how many women I’ve slept with. I came up with more than fifty faces, bodies and situations, but I can only remember a handful of names.
That girl I lived with the summer after undergraduate school was a blonde from Ohio who loved anal sex and kept the same princess phone she’d been given for her thirteenth birthday. She had a freckle on her butt and made very good strawberry jam that summer. I just can’t remember her name.
That college girl who brought fresh-baked apple pie to my cabin, then used a combination of crushed ice and hot herbal tea to demonstrate her skill at oral pleasure. It was fun. It was pleasurable. It was memorable. Her major was forestry or wildlife management and her ex-boyfriend was from India. I just can’t remember her name.
That married girl who worked with me at a collection agency for a couple of months a couple of lifetimes ago liked to have sex in a file closet, talking all the time about the dirty fun of taking my load home inside her, then begging her husband to unwittingly consume it while she writhed on the bed. She smelled nice. She had a caesarean scar from her third child. Her husband was in the National Guard. I just can’t remember her name. Or most of the others.
For instance: Although I’ve been married and divorced three times, I don’t remember wanting to get married. I don’t remember how I happened to ask them to marry me. I don’t remember falling in or out of love. I don’t remember exactly what happened to them after we divorced. I do remember their names, though. Another point of pride: Marry me and I’ll remember your name.
For instance: The reason I’m writing this is that I’m in jail. While I can remember in vivid detail everything that happened, I don’t remember what went wrong or feeling any guilt. I’ll tell you the whole story, and maybe you can help me find my guilt. Or, as my attorney, maybe you can help me find my innocence.
Wait. I can tell I’m starting out wrong. Let me begin again.
More formally.
More calmly.

First Things First

I am an unpublished novelist who would like to remove the "un" from that adjective. To that end, I am posting the first chapter of three of my novels today, along with a writing prompt. Any feedback is appreciated, especially if you are an agent or publisher.