On Bridges As We Speak

It was a Spring Evening—a long, long time ago— a time that, if I reach far enough into my body, deep into the places of my memory still immune to bitterness, I would call the happiest days of my life.

So on the happiest night of my life—a night within the happiest days of my life, is by extension the happiest night of my life, yeah?— I was wandering alone in an unfamiliar parking lot beside a rustic looking church.We had just attended a boychoir concert, which Taylor’s brother Connor was in. It was his last boychoir concert and he had been in it for about ten years, which was long enough to make it significant for him to leave it. And since he was leaving, what came after the concert was a long series of goodbyes to old friends we might never see again—except I was glad to never see them again. This part I loathed. The performance, you know, the reason I came, was excellent (much clapping), bravo, wonderful! But the rest I wanted nothing to do with.

Because these goodbyes were not just for Connor. No, Taylor knew them too, from the childhood friends to the ex-boyfriends to the ones who wished they could be ex-boyfriends— yeah, you know those ones. They just kept coming up to her, and every time I would fade into the background, pulling out my phone to check the time, as if I hadn’t just checked it ten times. I mean, it was time to say goodbye, time to GET GOING… And of course she saw these thoughts across my face as if I had written them there, so she turned to me and said “Just keep taking your phone out, that’ll help”.

So in what she called Regular Dylan Fashion I looked right at her, and just subtly enough so I could get away with it without being nasty, I turned my phone off out of spite, out of loathing for both my predictability and her comfortableness with the situation. Well, then I was embarrassed. Then I was defenseless. Then I was just this guy standing in the corner, with his hands sleeping in his pockets, looking everyone up and down and up again, and I couldn’t stand it if they ever looked back, because then I’d force a smile and feel fake, fake, fake. I needed a reason to be out of there. So under my breath so nobody but myself could hear, I mentioned I needed to throw something away.

And there it was, something to throw away! In my pocket, a tiny balled up piece of paper, possibly a receipt for a couple 12-packs of Coke from Rainbow, and I felt an overwhelming need to throw it away, as if it were the cause of my social awkwardness. But there was no garbage can. I looked everywhere, roaming around the church like a madman, and when I found none I went outside— my quest had gained momentum, I was now searching for a dumpster! That was how I ended up in the parking lot wandering alone, and I wandered until I found myself behind the church. It was one of them big churches with the giant stained glass windows, it's possible someone saw me throw my receipt into the dumpster—where I didn’t feel a bit different.

I never made it back to the church. They found me, weaving between cars in the parking lot: Taylor, Connor, and the trumpet kid Robert Reeve, who I despised neither secretly nor openly. They had no clue where I went, and couldn’t call me, because of course I had turned my phone off—it was time to be off, to celebrate! 

We held counsel in the parking lot, the four of us plus our respective mothers. Everyone was debating where to celebrate, and the longer we stood there, the bitterness I thought I had thrown away came creeping back to me. I couldn’t explain it if you asked me to, all I knew was that this was not where I wanted to be and when that happens, my eyes shoot fireworks and it doesn’t matter who I’m with or what I’ve got. I just turned to my mom and told her that “Maybe, maybe it would be best if you went home.” And when she asked why I was being so rude, I lied and told her that I “didn’t like her.”

“Clearly.” She believed me. It was at that moment I ran after her. I begged her to come along, and asked if I could ride with her to the place that had been decided: Café Latte. And on our way over there, driving down a dark street I wouldn’t recognize even in my dreams, she pointed out the window, into the blackness, and told me that that house, that tall one right there, was where my Father had lived for nine months after the divorce. Before he had moved to Oregon. And so it was. It looked like a haunted mansion, and it always did. Mom would drop us off there, and we’d follow Dad through the dark hall past a few occupied rooms—it only occurs to me now that he must not have been living alone – and up a tall, carpeted spiral staircase to an alcove in the attic. There were pictures of naked women covering the wall. And Dad used to climb out his window onto the roof, and he would take us up there with him whenever Mom came to pick us up. I think he did that to hurt her.

I was thinking about all this even when we found our table at Café Latte, a real dive place with great stairs leading up to a balcony overlooking the rest of the café, and sitting there with the three of them I couldn’t help feel that something was dreadfully wrong. I felt like this was too good of a place for me to be sitting in, and as this feeling washed over me I ordered a chai tea from the smiling waitress, and pretended to be enjoying my perfectly enjoyable company, but by the time the chai tea came I felt even worse, which isn’t supposed to happen during the best days of your life, and what was worse, I couldn’t understand WHY and so I started drinking my chai tea. But with my nose stuck down the glass touching the rim of that hot gingerbread beverage, I started crying, crying straight into my chai tea, and I was so embarrassed that I couldn't look up so I just kept drinking my tea with my face in the cup. And I couldn’t SEE anything, my glasses had been so fogged up by the warmth of the drink! And I may have been crying for ten seconds or for ten minutes, but someone seemed to notice — Taylor of course —and asked me if I was ALL RIGHT, and of COURSE I was all right, what could be wrong! But I kept crying anyways, and we left the table and walked outside that dive place out onto the dive sidewalk, where people were smoking and making calls and where I was breaking down, and it wasn’t until she asked “What’s wrong?” that I knew what was wrong.

“I’m just an awful son. My father is gone and you know I rarely talk to him, yet here I am alienating my mother for no apparent reason and if I keep this up someday I’ll have no parents.”

And this made sense to me. When you’re down to one from two, you’re only one away from zero. And I did not like the sound of zero.

Then she told me that I was wrong, that I was a wonderful son for caring so much, which sounded okay to me, and I realized that she would always, always be right. So with tears still streaming down my face we hugged outside of Café Latte, and I couldn’t help but feel like a real casino-city bum—because all the homeless in Las Vegas are wearing their finest clothes, after coming to the city with everything and ending up with nothing, nothing, nothing! So they beg for quarters just so they can gamble and drink a little bit more, it’s the riches to rags story of America and I was a part of it, standing in my fancy clothes but with nothing in my pockets but lint!

I’ve only been to Las Vegas twice. The first was on a grand road trip that my mother, brother and I took across the country coming home from California: My whole back was a dark red, peeling and bubbling from the Californian sunburn I had picked up, and I couldn’t think of much else as we walked along the strip.

But the second—I wasn’t 21, but I sure as hell wasn’t six years old, I was THIRTEEN BABY! I was ready to hit the entertainment capital of the world, we were staying in the Monte Carlo on the thirteenth floor, which was a good sign of course that things were going to be crazy, so we ate McDonalds three times a day and floated down the lazy river without a tube, because in Las Vegas you don’t NEED a tube to be lazy, baby!

And so for the mystical three days that we were there, that’s how it would happen. We (my brother and I plus our childhood friend Will Braun, who our friendship with was largely found on our mother’s friendship and our shared interest in video games) would wake up, have breakfast at the McDonalds in the food court, play hard in the currents for hours, until we were hungry. Then we would get some fries and a shake and head back up to our room and play the game of the day which was X-Men Legends II, cool off in the water for a few hours, then eat McDonalds before we headed out for the strip at night. We swore off McDonalds for a few months when we got home.

These days were so relaxing, in fact, and care-free that at times I had completely forgotten why we had even came. Then, “Oh, yes. Mom’s getting married.”

It was an indoor ceremony made to look like it was outside. We were in the shopping district of the Venetian hotel, which had a canal running through it that you could take gondola rides on, and the ceiling was painted and illuminated to resemble a perfect blue sky with perfect white clouds spaced evenly from each other. Gelato stands. Accordion playing some song I don’t recognize while my mother walks down the aisle. I believe my mother went to Italy when I was just a little boy and this was her way of getting married there without ACTUALLY having to go there.

She is a resourceful woman, my mother. Strong too, to raise two boys. Something I never realized while growing up. My mother’s like money. You never understand where it comes from, or how much you’re going to need it one day, until day by day, you start to get it. Even still, I was very proud of how my mother raised me—though this might have more to do with arrogance than pride. I would tell my friends that I’m going to raise my children exactly how she raised me, in the hopes that they would turn out like me. I guess that means I planned to raise them by myself; this was the basic plan. Then she found a guy. And that guy stayed and it became very surprising to me that she ever actually needed another man after my father.

They got married on a bridge arching over the narrow canal, with sixty or so friends and family members watching who had dropped the money to take a vacation in Vegas. And attend the wedding of course. But also take a vacation in Vegas. And on this bridge just a couple feet away from where Miss Andrea Thomas was about to become Mrs Andrea Rockwood, my brother and I were standing shoulder to shoulder waiting for the part of the ceremony where we were needed. We couldn’t hear very much, between the noise of shopping on either side of us along with the fact that my stepdad is a very quiet man, but then we heard our names. We stepped forward as the priest-man held out two silver rings for us to wear. We put the rings on ourselves, as instructed— and on our ring fingers. This was an awfully confusing concept for me, even now, but especially as a thirteen year old. These rings were supposed to mean we were a family— that we were all in this together, etc. But the ring never did much to give this feeling, instead it just sort of got in the way. You know, kids would ask why I had a ring on my ring finger, and I got tired of explaining this family unity thing because they knew as well as I did that it was a load of bullshit, so I just started telling people that I was engaged to a girl named Abby. The ring even got stuck too, after a while, so that we had to go down to the jeweler’s and get it cut off with a saw. There I saw my family unity ring resting on the glass counter in two distinct halves, and I thought “How appropriate.”

So the wedding ended and the vacation came to a sudden close and the rest of my childhood was written out in ink. I gave up trying to figure out whether or not Mom and Derrick actually loved each other: It was none of my business. Derrick built my room. This is the one thing my father never gave me, and that was my very own room. The room where I now hide from everyone and everything, the room where the rest of the world does not exist except for me and my music, because Derrick installed surround sound. And it could be eight o’clock or it could be four in the morning and it would not matter, my lamps burn steady as always in here, and I can write until dawn or pace maniacally as much as I want! And this is exactly what I’ve done for years now.

I was in this very room when just a couple of weeks ago I had gotten a call from someone who I will always answer. Miss Rebecca Hurd was calling me, and before I had even picked up the phone I knew exactly what it was about. There are approximately two things in this world that I am good at: Writing, and rewriting. I’m certainly not the absolute best but I know my way around a sentence and all the stupid rules that govern our strange and wonderful language, so when Rebecca gives me a call I can usually be pretty sure what it’s about. I thought “Ah. She must be writing a college paper.”

And right I was. She just needed help with something, and while I could have easily done it in my room, I knew that was boring and there was a good chance I would have ended up playing Bloodline Champions for hours, unable to stop thinking about how I should be helping my friend because I had nothing better to do. So I grabbed the keys and drove down that familiar 35W, beloved 35W, to her house and set up shop to begin shaping up that Carnegie Mellon supplemental she was working on. And it’s uncertain whose fault exactly this is, but something that should take thirty minutes or an hour always seems to end up taking upwards of FIVE hours with Rebecca. It could be me, since on a Sunday I’ve no doubt spent all weekend holed up, and being somewhere that wasn’t so familiar to me always filled me with a sense of nervous exhilaration; I was like a spider thrown from the web, left to dangle on whatever webs I could conjure in the moment. But it could have just as easily been her fault, since when Rebecca laughs the whole world seems to laugh, and "fuck trying to figure out how to rephrase this sentence, I have an amazing story to tell," and so on it goes until the sun fades altogether from the sun porch and I have possibly overstayed my welcome.

But then Rebecca’s mother came in. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“Absolutely I would, if it’s not too much trouble.”

There would be no real dinner at home. I would have instead had a can of coke and two bags, no more or less, of buttery popcorn. So after a little bit more of tongue chewing over “What do you want to say?” and “What do they want to hear?”, it was dinner time,

And DINNER TIME IT WAS! You should have seen it, there was FOOD on the table! Rebecca was choking on the overpowering smell of yams! And there were four plates, each a different color: green,yellow, red and blue (forgive me, Rebecca, if that’s wrong)! And there were four forks and four knives and four napkins, too, and in fact it looked so perfect I was unsure if I was even supposed to be there, if I was supposed to be in some corner or another! And the food, there was barbecued chicken, and asparagus, and sweet potatoes that looked like miniature footballs! Green is my favorite color so I sat down at that one, and it was just Rebecca, her parents, and myself. Her mother asked if I wanted a big sweet potato, I said “No, thank you” because I hadn’t eaten them all that much, and there she went and dropped the biggest one right on my plate. But why would I complain, I was hungrier than I ever thought I was, so I didn’t leave the table until I had eaten absolutely everything on my plate.

And we talked about all sorts of things, which was an odd experience because talking at my house was most usually reserved for arguing over something trivial, like my brother going for track instead of lacrosse. And it wasn’t important talk, not talk that’ll change the world, but it was talk and that even more than the food made me happy inside. Eventually I was asked how many siblings I had. I could have said two, but the technical answer at that point was three, though the third was about a month old and still living inside my mother. I decided to tell them, and a flurry of excitement kicked up:

“Oh, how exciting!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty exciting news.”

And Rebecca pouts a little to herself, nothing serious, “I want a baby.”

“Are you absolutely thrilled about it?”

“Well, it won’t affect me all that much, I’ll have moved a couple months after she’s born.”

I have the feeling that the baby will be another girl. But of course I was excited, and I let them know this so they didn’t think I was completely detached from the whole ordeal.

“Well, Rebecca and I were just talking about this the other day, but when this baby is 18, I’ll be 36.”

And that is as every bit incredible as it is frightening. 36. My mother is 36. I’m not supposed to tell a woman’s age but what I’m saying is that when I am THAT age I will have children of my own, possibly children that are as old as I am right now. And we were discussing these very ideas at the dinner table on Sunday night: how if my mother had waited just a couple of years to have this baby, and if I had gotten married when my father did and had a baby that incredibly fast, my mother’s grandchild would be older than her child! How amazing would that be? So I said I’d get right on that.

And her mother, jumping in on the joke, "Well, Rebecca wants a baby, you should just step up and have hers!”

Just keep eating sweet potatoes. Just keep eating sweet potatoes. Don’t look at her dad. Let the moment pass. This was one of my first family dinners, the kind that truly felt like a family was eating here; two parents that loved another, a daughter who laughed like her mother. I sat at the table and ate every last bite of my wonderful meal.

Dinner with my father has been no less interesting.

My father lives on the side of a mountain outside of a small town in Southern Oregon, across a field where llamas graze on the yellow grass every morning. He moved out there nine months after they divorced and I was young, though I never remember how old I was. And whenever I go out there, he ends up having to work most of the day cleaning gymnasiums and bowling alleys, so I lie around the house all day watching movies from his extensive DVD collection, wondering WHEN WILL DAD GET HOME?

And one night, I waited an extra long time for him to come back home. I had watched Jackass, Jackass 2, and even Jackass 2.5 wondering when he would pull into the driveway and walk through the door. It was just me and his seven cats, who prowled the house, not as if they owned it but because they owned it. And around eleven o’clock at night, just when I was thinking of curling up on the couch like my feline friends, headlights shone through the kitchen window and out came Dad, in full stride, who immediately went to the grill and fired it up. “We’re having steaks, son!”

Behind him was an old man with white hair I had never seen before. He was obviously very drunk, and my father had taken him back with him because he couldn’t drive. Kim, my father’s girlfriend slash wife slash business partner, pulled up with them too. So while Dad cooked those steaks outside, Kim and I stood in the kitchen stifling giggles at the man who looked like Einstein, nodding off in his seat, completely oblivious to where he was. “Who brought me here?” He would ask.

“Jesus.”

We fucked with Einstein for a good while until dad brought the steaks in. So standing in the kitchen just thirty minutes before midnight, I had my steak and potatoes while everyone had a roaring time; music was blasting in the living room, and I was getting a kick out of ol’ Einstein. I hadn’t even realized that Dad was drunk. It wasn’t the drunk I remembered. It wasn’t the drunk that threw things through my window thinking it was my mother’s. He was silent the whole time. When his meal was consumed, he fell asleep at the table. I, like everything else that my father did, would be soon to follow.

Just a few days after, we were getting ready to drive up North to pick up my brother. You see, Mom doesn’t trust my brother to transfer planes like I had to in order to fly directly into Medford, so he typically had to fly into either San Francisco or Seattle to get to the West Coast, and this summer it happened to be Seattle, my absolute favorite city in the world, though I wouldn’t know it yet.

So in Regular Dad Fashion, we left the house just before midnight, armed with a dozen CDs and a cooler full of Cokes and spine-rattling energy drinks alike. And we hit that road going north in the dark Oregon night, driving past Portland around 2 in the morning, and man does Portland look astounding after midnight, with the water reflecting the soft city lights off it so very gently. And it was our plan that THAT night we were going to make it into Washington, into Washington and then into a hotel. We had a map of course, which had all kinds of little dots and stars and every state had a few medium-sized dots, which we took to meaning decently sized towns that would have a hotel that we could get a few hours of sleep at. So just an hour or so into Washington there was one of these dots called Longview, and that was the destination of the night.

Longview felt like the dark future that you often see in post-apocalyptic science-fiction movies. Driving down what was presumably main street, there were factories looming over either side of us. Factory on the left, factory on the right, smoke billowing out of giant tubes! It was damn spooky all right, like we had just walked right into Mordor (One doesn’t just walk into Mordor but they sure as hell can drive!). And we just kept asking, “Where the hell are all the people?” and the first signs came, the Wal-Mart and the McDonalds and RadioShack and Rainbow, just a full stretch of corporate chains to get all your living needs from, and just after that, a suburban valley full of houses that all looked the same. So that’s where the people are. The whole medium-sized dot town was like a Russian doll, the kind that you keep opening and finding something else inside. But no matter how many damn dolls we opened, there was no hotel. People lived there to work there and to shop there. No need for anybody else in Longview.

So we carried on westward. Seattle was North, but we had a special mission to loop around and visit Kurt Cobain’s hometown before picking up my brother. This was something I was overwhelmingly excited about, mind you. But at the time it was just five am and we were tired, most especially my father who had driven the whole damn night, crazy man, and on a winding backroad headed for the ocean there was not a single hotel. We couldn’t even downgrade to motel. There were none of those either.

We had nearly arrived at the ocean. Disgusted with ourselves and the morning, we decided that heading South towards another medium-sized dot was the best course of action. There’s a dot in the very north-western tip of Oregon, literally right on the ocean, and though it seemed stupid that we were headed in the direction that we had came from, there was something romantic about returning to Oregon just for the night. So we drove.

And there it was. A giant bridge connected Washington and Oregon leading into Astoria, oh shining Astoria, complete with hotels and ocean sounds. And just as were crossing it, the sun began to overtake the ocean horizon, and I smiled wide like I never thought I could smile, I smiled like I meant it! So there we were; behind us was the state of Washington, and to our right was the vast, forgiving ocean, and in front of us was beautiful Astoria, perched on the rock like a Northwest Minas Tirith. I wanted to tell my dad how incredible this moment was, how the greatest moments of our lives didn’t necessarily have to be the happiest ones, and I wanted to say all of this and more. I turned to him and opened my mouth to speak.

And all I got was his answering machine.

I Am In Love With A Spell Called Reciprocity

There is nothing so humiliating as discovering that you're playing on the seesaw,

all by yourself.

Sure, it might feel liberating at first, to be able to make your own decisions as when to ascend and when you feel like coming down. But that is an illusion. Trust me, after a little while it gets pretty old having to do all the work by yourself

and why do you look so damn sad all the time anyways?

Because, fuckwad, you might add with a twinge of annoyance, playing on the seesaw

by yourself

is like becoming a famous writer but then never being able to write again.

The costs outweigh the benefits.

I see, I see, they say and take a sip from their mochaccinos.

But unfortunately they don't as you waste your time trying to explain exactly the way that it is:

How you sit there while the snow slowly seeps into your lacerated shoes, and you sit there for days at a time, forgetting that there is NOBODY else there to propel you into the frigid air.

How, when you eventually manage to plant both your feet on the ground and push up, and up, and so high above the frozen dirt beneath you, it lasts only a moment before you realize- there is NOBODY there to keep you up that high!

So you come crashing down and make a demented snow angel, hideous with dirt and spit.

And crawl over the matted brush, dragging yourself through fields of white,

lips drier than the heart-moat, whispering over and over again your one true love,

Reciprocity. Reciprocity. Come back to me.

But you are certain by now that Reciprocity has had enough of your jealousy.

Ice Aligned

They say that Minnesota friendships are the strongest ones, because at some point or another we must all endure a blizzard just to be there for each other, and last night was My Moment, if I ever was born to have one.

I have to believe that I was. If I am a true supporter of equality—of liberty and justice and all those meaningless words—then I have to believe I was as born with as many Moments available to me as anybody else. We all get them; the rare Moments where we keep our mouth shut and do we what we know we must do, lest suffer the silent consequences of either disappointment or death, and maybe find ourselves rewarded and our deepest wishes fulfilled.

Three hundred and forty one cars crashed in the Twin Cities last night and I was not among them.

I would have maybe never forgiven myself if I had been, for you were there, in the vulnerable passenger’s seat, on the phone, revisiting middle school and other such places where my nosy head isn’t allowed to peek into. Stare ahead, watch the road. See the ice sparkle in splotches on Lyndale avenue. My hands were shaking furiously until they were firm around the wheel; then they fused with the rubber and felt no need to jerk or twist. “Try the brakes,” very helpful that was, “Shit, shit, fuck, stop.”

That car isn’t braking,
Your hand, it’s shaking,
Oh, that.

And it was the scariest ride of my life, oh it was, and I was in charge of it; I just hoped you felt safe, that was the most important thing that you and anybody else I came into contact with on the squealing, sparkly streets could feel. Did we all feel safe? Can anyone feel safe without salt, or without someone else there, someone to hear you say “Fuck, fuck” and look at you worried when the car becomes a little loose and out of control and slipping to the curb and Fuck, fuck, this could be it but it’s never really IT is it?

Was that The Moment. I wonder, or could it have come after the most thrilling theater experience of my entire damn lifetime (complete with all the inside jokes turned inside out that James&I have shared since my birthday of this year, from the chocolate symbols of love to financial tips from Claudette! Eat the apple, sit on the floor, life is complicated & I am fed up with this world! The fat man sitting behind us with the grandest laugh I ever heard, and the football tossers standing around, doing their thing… Yes, I could hear the sex scene from the bathroom where I pissed for the whole song… And you were there to lean into and whisper the best lines no one else would quote to. It was everything I had imagined it to be for six months and more, and I can’t help but wonder if it would have been the same if you were somewhere else, where I expected you to be, instead of just one seat ahead, screaming SPOONS and MEANWHILE, BACK IN SAN FRANCISCO along with the rest of us…)

MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE THE UPTOWN THEATER, there were two ambulances and four police cars gliding on Lake Street trying to take control of the situation, the McDonalds across the street packed with those escaping from the sidewalk and running out of their skidded cars. It was three hours after midnight, though, and considering our state it made more sense to bring you (and your sister) home straightaway. And so maybe My Moment came then, as you both sat in the humming silver chariot as I danced around it, extending my arm to ferociously scrape the thick ice off the windshield, the windows, wave hi, bite down on my rotting teeth and skid back around to the windshield again. So that, too, could have been My Moment, embracing cold to bring you just the opposite, because like all Minnesotans I knew what had to be done on a freezing Saturday night.

But ah, that was nothing, nothing ever happens between us, does it? We’re safer in our beds than we are linking arms, and safer on the sidewalk than on poor wheels, spinning furiously to make it up all sorts of hills. The streetlights stretch for four miles, it seems, and the ice, oh god, the ice—Use Caution—somehow knew that tonight of all nights should have been My Moment, and the ice it outdid even the stars tonight in aligning itself for me to bring a Moment, even a small one, and somehow, despite gritting my teeth and bringing everybody home safe and even curling up on your basement couch to retreat from the cold until the morning melted all opportunity, I ruined the Moment, oh I did, I let it pass by me without touching its face or, well, anything…

I may not know exactly when My Moment came, but whenever or wherever it did, you missed it, staring out the fogged window or with weary eyes watching Nicollet stretch long and gleaming ahead of us, for approximately four miles that seemed to take forever to travel. And I do not know whose fault it was. But I did let it pass by, and though I wanted to rest my trembling hand on yours as we rolled over the reflective bridge, suspended over ice and quite out of control, I never let my hands go from the wheel.

I'd Go Fictional For Hermione Granger

For Hermione Granger.

When we first met nine years ago, I recall having hair on my head and being particularly thrilled about seeing wizards and magic and allthat — simply sprinkles on top of a rich, chocolate cake now — and I sank into my seat at the theater with wild ideas of what I would see and hear, none of which involved you. Back then we were either amazed, or we were afraid. My mouth was fixed open, until I threw my arms around my best friend sitting to my left, unbelievably afraid of He-Who-Would-Often-Be-Named; I thought I was going to piss myself and maybe I did. Now we can't help but be amazed and afraid at the same time, because who are we kidding, life is heightened by now. I jumped, and I do mean jumped, into my seat because I fucking hate snakes and never bothered to check the time because of how lost I was in your world. But it would probably be far more accurate for me to say that I didn't care how late it was because of how lost I was in you.

Let it be known, right now, that this monologue is in no way addressed to Emma Watson. She is your vessel, your illustrious face and smile, but she is not you. I know nothing about Emma Watson. I have never seen Emma Watson walk across a room before. I don't know what we would talk about. Maybe acting, but I wouldn't care and she would dismiss me immediately anyhow. There's also the very obvious problem that she exists, but I'll get back to that.

I remember how I felt walking out of the second movie. My pants were dry. I was a yappity dog; my heart felt like it was lodged in my stomach and I could tell, somehow I could tell, that this would happen to me multiple times. That I would go into the movie expecting to be amazed, and come out feeling in love. And all the things that go with that: jealousy, confusion, resentment. The story repeated itself every year or so: Watch movie, Walk out breathless, and over the next month forget the experience completely. Yet though every time it has felt like a genuine crush, there was always something that felt... intangible. Very odd. Simply unsettling. But you slipped away from me before I could ever figure it all out. But I think somewhere along the dark road, shouting over the winter winds at four in the morning, I understood a little more clearly.

It's the way you don't play on the fringes. It's the way you sit with your knees so close to your chest. It's the metamorphosis effect. It's the fact that holy shit you're smarter than me. It's always the tone of surprise. It's realizations that come rapidly and sharp. It's being radiant even when charred and beaten.

In the dim light of my room about one year ago, a friend told me

"It's her judgment"

and I either didn't understand or agree, because we were talking about someone who existed, here, but now I'm GETTING it: It's your judgment.

But above all, and this burns with me the most, it's the "Mudblood" engraved in your arm.

Your vulnerability. The prejudices held against you by the noble and wicked.

I want to save you Hermione I want to be the one who saves you.

I have chosen to throw aside even coveted sleep to bring this ethereal ramble to you, even as I sit here fully aware that you do not exist. Logic dictates that this was a waste of energy, a waste of paper, of carbon lead, of finger cramps and of course a waste of TIME because if only I could tell you how much there is to write. I know you won't hear me. But the people I normally write for never hear me, either, so anything is worth a shot, you see...

...but if only you WERE real! My cramped fingers would find relief in your hair! You would be free from the darkness of where you came from. We would dance cheek-to-cheek, and I'd feel yours, real and warm and right there, right there. I would tell you to close your eyes; you would thank me for such a wonderful surprise. And there in my arms, no one would ever, ever call you Mudblood again.

But as long as I'm wishing for things, I would rather I leave behind all this wondering, all this shouting and longing, and fade into your non-existent world, where we could non-exist together, fornever and eternity.

You Before

Nearly a year ago now, I had just picked myself up from a terrible fall when I was invited to a party by one of my semi-close friends Ocelot. I considered everyone semi-close to me back then, because I was too afraid to let them get any much closer and too afraid to let them fly from my orbit completely. It was an ideal system until I started getting screwed over on a pretty regular basis; then it’s hard to always be calling a semi-close friend to talk about yourself for a couple hours or more.

I had never really been invited to a party before. Birthday parties in middle school don’t count, though there weren’t too many of those, either. All types of invitations had either come in the mail or as an obnoxious “Request” on the right-hand side of my Facebook page. Either way, the gesture felt so impersonal and far removed from the actual host of the event that I always assumed I wasn’t actually wanted there, and if I did show up, I would forever be known as the idiot who thought he mattered. I had worked for many years not to become that idiot by ignoring virtually every invite I had gotten up to that point.

So when Ocelot came up behind me as we stood hip-bent coming down the escalator, I was nothing near the word prepared.

“Hey man, I’m having a little get-together at my dad’s apartment this weekend, we’ll watch a movie and stuff and I was really hoping you could come.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun, actually—what night is it?”

“Friday night, just come over whenever.”

“Who’s gonna be there?”

“Well uh, you, me, Aladdin, Jasmine, Miss Safari…”

His voice floated off into the autumn air. I would find out just a couple of nights later whoever else would be there, but I had already heard the anchor that sunk me right down to the wood-paneled floor of Ocelot’s father’s apartment.

When I walked through the only door without an ornamental wreath on it that night, I noticed immediately that there were seven of us. Seven is supposedly a righteous number; deemed to be important by the esteemed gods of the universe. Seven wonders of the world. Seven deadly sins. Seven long, groaning days of the week. But I noticed that magical seven because that meant, and only meant, that one of us would be sleeping alone that night.

There isn’t much in my numb resolve
That I fail to think of; who I fail to see
Through the yellow still walls of
Wall Street, Floor Four.

Fortunately there were no unfamiliar faces. In fact, if I had thought any more of myself I would have been suspicious that this secretive gathering was arranged solely for my benefit; that everyone was there for me, the whole of my semi-close friends, gathered around to celebrate my birthday that wouldn’t come for another six months. I silently wondered if it was my half-birthday.

But I knew what we were really there for. Not only was Ocelot’s old man out of town—and in the brightest days of our youth we knew better not to let free reign go to waste—but just three days before Aladdin had written a song for Jasmine, and sang it to her as they sat on the marble of the Rice Park fountain. It was a long and gentle song, and everyone watched while waiting for the bus as Jasmine’s smile grew bigger the longer the song went on. When he finally finished, they kissed. For a long time. I doubt they’ve ever kissed that long again. And so my semi-close friends became lovers, and not much between them has changed since then.

The gathering was for them, really. Even more so for Aladdin, who had never held a beautiful girl in his arms before. Well, except for his mother, but we’re not really allowed to think that way. I know I don’t.

Besides those two pigeons, and Ocelot, who I could already tell was far gone, there was

Aconcagua,

with her long brown hair, sitting on the couch with her chin up on her knees;

there was Coffee Girl,

who in all fairness should be recognized as Coffee Woman, for her strength that night would come to be nothing short of Olympian; and the lovely, inescapable girl-next-door that I would later come to know as

Miss Safari.

The high-ceiling room reeked of wine, but my lips didn’t touch a drop of the stuff all night. I ended up hauling a 12-pack of Coke up those four floors just so I had a good enough excuse, in case anyone were to question my sobriety, which they didn’t and never have. I wasn’t alone of course: Aladdin never even considered the notion. We always had each other. In the early hours of the night, we played chess while the girls watched with feigned interest.

“I’m always white.”

“It doesn’t really matter so much to me.”

“It will.”

Clack.

The hollow sound of a piece settling up new territory on the gridded battlefield.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

“You always move those first?”

“Usually. Why?”

“Just seems strange that you’d let me take the middle so easily.”

Clack.

Clack.

“I just like letting my rooks breathe.”

“Your rooks will taste the floor before they breathe.”

Clack.

Clack.

“Damn, this is intense.”

Clack.

“I play with my dad a lot.”

“Well, aren’t you a lucky son of a bitch.”

Clack.

The girls stopped playing with each other’s hands.

“Who’s winning?”

“No one’s winning.”

We answered them at the same time.

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

Ridiculous silence.

“You know, it’s your turn.”

“Oh god, I thought it was yours.”

Clack.

Ocelot, Aconcagua and Coffee Girl had gone out some time ago to get Thai food while the four of us stayed back. Soon I would be picking at rice and watching friends make out through the reflection of the window but for now all I could think of was my personal ivory army; how I was going to trounce Aladdin in front of not only Jasmine, but more importantly Miss Safari, because surely my chess skills would win her over. My plan was crystal—flawless.

Clack.

Clack.

After a while he started looking towards Jasmine—you know, that sort of thing that happens in the first week where you can’t keep your eyes off each other. Or your hands. It really was harmless, except that it cost him in the long run; I never took my eyes off the board. And fortunately for me, my good man was able to keep his hands off his girlfriend long enough to accidentally move his queen directly into the path of my lying bishop.

Clack.

I let the silence suspend until he had realized what he had done.

“Oh, fudge. Oh, great.”

“You were really focused there, I could tell.”

“Well, just do it already.”

“Well, c’mon, you can take it back if you want.”

I knew that for his pride’s sake he wouldn’t ever take it back; his father had taught him the rules well.

“It’s fine, just… do it.”

Clack.

“And the Queen is mine.”

Not long after, the rest of the crew came stumbling through the door carrying thirty dollars worth of take-out, of which I ate two dollars worth and washed it down with an ice-cold Coke. I’ve always felt strange eating copious amounts of foreign food, because after a while it feels like it doesn’t belong to me, and that there’s a starving family wherever it came from that would appreciate it more than I ever could.

We were never all of us in the same room again. The girls sat in the bathroom, trading make-up and enjoying acting like they were more tipsy than they actually were. Ocelot must’ve been in his room, maybe making a phone call, or someone might’ve been with him. It was a nervous habit for me to try and keep tabs on where everyone was, in case I needed them rightaway, but I started to feel like a

(hand-motion for square)

so I made myself comfortable with the kitchen. It would have been a cramped little room if it hadn’t shared the whole space with the spacious living room, long dining table and enormous pool table which artificially split the two rooms. There was a sizeable island complete with bar stools, which had grown heavy with the weight of rice and noodles, and the fridge was packed solid with my little red cans. I sat on the counter, which was empty except for the necessary appliances: silver toaster, oak breadbox, and a jet black coffee maker which would be put to excellent use the following morning.

That was where I was for the next couple of hours, listening to Blood On The Tracks and pointing out significant lyrical moments to Aladdin and Jasmine, who I could tell wanted to be left alone but I didn’t care. A huge jar of pretzel sticks sat on the counter, so I started treating them like cigars as I walked back and forth playing chess with myself.

“This line, this one right here.”

We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view.

Big smiles from both of them.

The chess games quickly became boring, I knew after all what my opponent was thinking, or at least sort of, and I smoked so many pretzels that I eroded the inside of my bottom lip. The longer I stood there listening to Dylan’s pain, the more tangled up I felt inside, the more I began to ask questions I didn’t have any answers to.

“So, you guys,”

Their faces quickly snapped toward me.

“Want to hear a secret?”

It seems so unlikely now that I had only thought about her for a week at that point. It had been two years since I had a crush on anyone, I was in love far too long to remember the fluttery feeling of uncertainty. So when I woke up one day in late October, unable to get Miss Safari out of my mind, I got busy being born. Their responses were only what I had hoped for.

“This is so great, I can’t believe this. Are you going to tell her?”

“Wow, man, just wow.”

Thump-a-thump.

“I think so, yeah, maybe.”

“Eeeeeee!”

Thump-a-thump.

“Oh, fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”

Thump-a-thump.

“Well what the hell am I gonna say?”

“How do you feel about her?”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“You know, I think I’m pretty crazy about her.”

“Well, then tell her that.”

“No, he can’t scare her off. Just be straight about it. Tell her that you like her and find out if she feels the same way.”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“I haven’t done this since middle school.”

“And?”

“And it never ended well.”

“Then don’t think about it.”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“Ho-kay.”

“So what are you going to say to her?”

“That… I really like her…”

Thump-a-thump.

“And that if she doesn’t like me…”

Thump-a-thump.

“Then that’s cool, I just thought she should know…”

Thump-a-thump.

“But then again if she does like me,”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“Well then who knows what’ll happen.”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“There you go.”

“You guys, I think I’m going to have a fucking heart attack. Feel my heartbeat.”

“Oh god, you better get in there and just do it.”

“Yeah, before you explode.”

“Thanks, guys. Helpful. Here I go.”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump.

It was a short walk to the room where I could hear everyone else talking. I fumbled with the door handle but opened it smoother than soy milk. I didn’t waste any time, I walked right up to her and stuck my nose in her flowery hair.

Thump-a-thump.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure.”

And we walked a few more steps into the next room, which was no doubt Ocelot’s bedroom. There were clothes and knickknacks everywhere, that even if we wanted to sit on the floor it was made impossible. So we opted for his bed, where we sat in silence while I tried to collect my nerve and form these little traps I call sentences.

This is tonight,
Where in silence you shine
Brighter than the world who has
Softened dimmer than
The yellow aging light.

“So here’s the thing,”

Oh, she looked at me, she did.

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“For the past week, I think I’ve started to, um.. really like you.”

It sounded so lame.

“And I’m not sure how I feel about it, because, you know, it’s you,

Thump-a-thump-a-thump.

but I thought that maybe for once I would tell the girl before she found out herself. I mean, every time before this I wouldn’t try to keep it a secret but I wouldn’t say anything either, you know? ‘Cause I can’t keep a secret, in fact you probably already kind of knew…”

She smiled a bit and nodded.

Thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“So, there you go, now I’ve said it and anything that you say will be completely fine with me, because it’s just a crush and I know it is, but I just thought I’d let you know that for the past week I’ve woken up every morning thinking about you and I can’t get you out of my head for the rest of the day.”

“Okay.”

“You saying more things would help.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right…”

“I’ll just uh, sit here feeling embarrassed.”

“Kaleb.”

Thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump.

“Yeah?”

“I really value our friendship…”

I nodded partially because I agreed and partially because there is nothing you can say in response to that. Everyone knows that friendship trumps romance. No one will ever be able to logically explain why friends ever get together, but it’s happened to me. It’s happened to Jasmine, it’s happened to Aladdin. But tonight it won’t be happening again. I knew that instantly.

“Of course.”

“Thank you, for telling me.”

“Of course…”

“I think it’s usually a lot better this way, instead of things getting awkward we can just be ourselves and I’ll try not to make anything too weird for you…”

Then she laughed that laugh I could never replicate.

“What’s so funny?

“I’m not wearing my contacts. You’re just a big fuzzy blob. I can barely see you.”

“I can see you."

And I did.

How dark to not see you

From the darkest window, tonight,

Nor in the patterns of where we sat before.

“So, do you think—”

Then Ocelot knocked on his own door and entered only a second after.

“Sorry guys, I kinda need my room.”

“Oh, no problem man.”

And we got off his bed and walked out the door and never talked about it again.

I never got a yes or no answer.

It’s 11 months later and I still haven’t gotten a yes or no answer.

The rest of the night was drawing poison from the wound. I went back to the illuminated kitchen to smoke a few dozen more cigars, pacing slowly to keep my cool. The love pigeons were in a much happier room. Aconcagua had fallen asleep on the couch, Miss Safari being soon to follow. I wandered over to my overnight bag and pulled out the one secret I had left at that point—Samuel.

Samuel was a gift from someone who couldn’t make me happy anymore. We were cleaning out her room, finding letters, notes, random pictures that proved that a history existed between us, no matter how deep we buried the hole on the beach. When it was time for me to go, I spotted a little stuffed dog sitting in the corner of her room. He was black with white and orange streaking his face and down his neck, and for reasons unknown, I picked him up and began to play with him. I didn’t leave the room without him. And when nights became hard, he was there when Konstantine wasn’t. Now I didn’t need Konstantine anymore but I was still stuck with the horrible habit of sleeping with a stuffed dog.

But I pulled him out not for myself. I wordlessly handed him to Miss Safari, gentle eyelids closed and cold hands buried beneath a pillow. I remember thinking as she took him in her arms,

“Well, if I can’t be with her tonight, at least Samuel can.”

Then Ocelot came in, half-asleep, and woke up Aconcagua, pulling lightly on her arm. Not anymore dreaming and still not seeing, she rose to meet his offer and followed him back to the room where I am unsure of everything.

So with Miss Safari laying across the couch with her feet thrown up in the air, Coffee Girl and I sat on the kitchen counter, sometimes in complete silence but mostly just whispering. About everything that happened to bug us, that didn’t feel right, about all the places we imagined ourselves to be but never ended up happening that way. I explained why 9/11 is too big of an event to be properly targeted as a conspiracy. I explained why Kurt Cobain never really killed himself. She did her absolute best to understand, which was all that I asked for, anyways.

“You know,”

“Yeah?”

“Nights like these, you just feel really alone.”

“Uh-huh. How then, shall we presume?”

It was 4am and I found myself quoting T.S Eliot. That was the night I realized that The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock was my favorite poem. We sat there, fixing ourselves cup after cup of steaming Chai until the November sunlight crept over the St. Paul lofts.

“I just can’t sleep now. Not knowing I’ll be that one sleeping alone.”

“That makes sense.”

“I think I just won’t sleep, ever again.”

“Come on now, kitty. Just rest your head.”

“Not unless you do.”

“I have work in an hour and a half.”

I had never been more impressed.

“You’re a fucking goddess. Well then I’ll stay up with you.”

But even as the words came out of my mouth, I found myself lowering down to the wooden floor, curling up beside one of the sturdy legs of the majestic pool table. I was a pathetic little boy, possibly, but only Coffee Girl was there to see me and really, anyone could be pathetic in her shadow so I made myself comfortable.

But she wouldn’t have any of me lying on the hard ground. She walked right up next to me.

“Way to be completely in my way.”

I grunted.

“Seriously, you… need to move. Just scooch over, kitty.”

She started gently pushing me towards the carpet, so I haphazardly rolled to the very closest edge of the carpet and thought my efforts satisfactory. Coffee Girl, however, had an agenda to make my smile as wide as humanly possible before allowing me to drift into a dreamless sleep.

“Seriously, still in my way. Move the fuck over.”

So without fighting the system, I rolled even farther away from the familiar kitchen and towards the couch where Miss Safari and Samuel were keeping each other warm. I rolled until I was so close to her that she could have rolled off the couch and found herself a luckier woman, but gravity wasn’t on my side that night. I was content anyways, to find myself at last so near to her, because it’s real tough to get close to Miss Safari, you know.

“Thanks for ruining my goddamn night, Molly Margaret.”

“You’re welcome.”

When I woke up she had gone to work at Caribou Coffee, and Aladdin had flown back home on his magic carpet, and Miss Safari must have woken and slipped into bed with Jasmine, so I really was the one who ended up sleeping alone that night.

I at least had Samuel in my arms.

—————————————

Seven months later, I found myself sitting on that bed once again, at the same undying hour, and had no choice but to write a poem for you, Miss Safari, April’s Angel, Princess of May Day: all those things we never knew you would become.

Yet when God finally wakes me,
I’ll stir from where we play all the more—
In the glorious folds of you before.

The Birth of Barefoot In The Skies.

Welcome to Barefoot In The Skies.

Long explanation:
I write poetry for a reason. It’s short, powerful, and (at least with my certain brand) sweet. Poetry actually exists as a filter that all my thoughts go through: before they become what you and I recognize as coherent sentences, they briefly appear as words, borrowed and sometimes inexplicable. I prefer language in that form. It retains its fizz long after its born in my mind. With anything else, the original “coolness” of what I had come up with is gone by the time it gets to the page.

I hate writing papers, I hate writing for school, for anything that essentially requires me to stick my elastic finger down my throat to bring up a dark-brown sludge of incoherent words. That process is worse than pulling teeth, it’s splintering them, slowly. And yet, in some cases (certainly not most, because sleep has a way of cutting short potential), the whoring process of writing for letters becomes a fruitful game. An unlocking of the brain. Exercising sentence length and varying conjunction uses, seeing where I can slip in a splice without being at all punished for it. One day I’ll make it a stylistic choice not to use any commas and maybe get away with it too.

This blog is dedicated to the shiny side of that process. To the part of my brain that I’m scared to use because it so often produces dribble and worthless rephrasing of the exact same ideas. To writing longhand and being able to copy it word-for-word. To saying long, healthy goodbyes. To telling stories without skipping the good stuff. To bringing you somewhere, everywhere, to the skies.

Also, to making stuff up, because I’m tired of invading my own privacy.

Short explanation:
This time, I plan on writing much more than I ever have before.