Short stories

July 2019

Juliette

Juliette is older than I; she has many stories to tell.

She came to me by accident: When I released Juliette from the bubble wrap that protected her during shipment, the mistake was obvious.

I sat in my easy chair gently turning Juliette around in my hands to explore all her hidden features and secrets.

“Watchyá-got-there, big boy?” my ever-present wing mate Angel asked, always sticking her nose into my private affairs.

“I don’t know yet,” I replied, truthfully. "She is not what I ordered.”

“Well, send her packing,” Angel snipped. "You're a writer, not an over-aged paparazzi."

I shrugged my shoulders. For a folding camera, Juliette was surprisingly small and light, ahead of her time, a true pocket camera. I began to feel that Juliette and I were destined to fall in love and was immediately smitten as soon as I saw her name embossed into the finely grained leather covering wrapped around most of her body. The leather was in perfect condition for an old gal.

They say men fall hard, immediately, when they see what they like. Being all guy, I too fell hard, the first time I uttered her name, Juliette.  

I was concerned she would be fragile; on closer examination I found she was finely made, from simple robust materials, made to last, not like some of the cheap imports of today.

“Why do you call her Juliette?” Angel muttered.

“Look, see here, that is her name, on the back of the camera just above the Balda company logo; Juliette,” I retorted to Angel, trying to get one up on her.

Angel was given to me by the Universe when I was very young to help me cope with what turned out to be a very difficult childhood. I barely recovered from the trauma from the beginning of my life, and now I am in the permanent possession of Angel. Go figure!

“Let me see. Ha! not Juliette, Jubilette!” Angel retorted, pointing her petite Angel finger at the back of the camera.

Angel was right.

“Well I don’t care, I’m calling her Juliette," I replied, doing my very best to act offended in the manner of a five-year-old child, who I am - occasionally. Additionally, along with all the other baggage of my childhood, it seems I am slightly dyslexic. I read from the middle of the word out both sides. The same with sentences, I compose them with the ending first and the lead in last; keeps my editor gainfully employed. 

In 1938, Juliette was manufactured near Dresden, Germany. Other than her serial number I couldn’t find other information about her; I was curious about how she survived the fire-bombing of Dresden during the second World War.

I decided to keep Juliette and contacted the seller through eBay to inform him of the mistake. This time I made a twist in my plans. Rather than send Juliette back, I would offer to buy her and the Balda Baldessamat I originally ordered.

The seller was happy to accommodate my request and offered free shipment of the second camera and a ten-dollar reduction in price as a gesture of goodwill for botching my original order.

Juliette went with me on some of my outings. At first, I didn’t put film in her so that I could learn to use her as an everyday camera. Having her accessible, safely stuffed into my jacket pocket, afforded me many enjoyable moments.

A completely mechanical camera with a viewfinder mounted on top of her body, the lens folds out for use; shutter speeds, lens openings, and distance focus have to be set before taking any photos. The film is advanced by turning a knob on the top of the camera to select the next frame. No batteries, no automatic anything, just concentration needed to successfully make an exposure.

Juliette uses 35-millimeter film. Color, and black and white film, are plentiful even in this age of digital cameras and pictures made on cell phones. Not wanting to waste film, I needed to be sure I could load the film, shoot the roll and rewind it back into the cassette without difficulty.

On a recent spring day, full of bright sunshine and dark blue skies, I loaded Juliette with twenty-four exposures of a medium speed black and white film. I choose that film because it would approximate the film of her era, she was designed with a film of that type in mind.

I shot half a roll of similar subjects from her era: dark red barns, majestic oak trees, a newborn goat. The other half roll I saved for an upcoming special occasion.

My mind wandered to my fascination with Juliette: Would I be disappointed after my infatuation with her wore off, or would we work out our difficulties over time, as many couples do in a committed long-term relationship? We'll see.

But what I did fully comprehend is the startling revelation that the images Juliette had recorded, with or without film, became part of the knowledge of the Universe. And - I was the lucky recipient of this knowledge. You see, I believe the Universe is the repository of all knowledge and my job as a writer is to understand how to access this knowledge; Juliette would show me the way.

What did Juliette see in all those years exposing the changing world? Since her birth coincided with WWII, did she see the brutality of war, of people dying and running for their lives from the falling bombs? Was her original owner in Europe, or was Juliette lucky enough to be purchased by someone away from the ever-widening conflict?

Did Juliette see the bucolic countryside, the copses and the rolling hills; the lives of wild animals or couples wildly in love;  marriages, reunions, births and deaths? Did Juliette take selfies before there were any?

I don’t know, but I will find out.

 

June 2019

Secrets

Scene one

Dakota

Dakota walked down the hallway between the rows of office cubicles. Stopping at my office door, she tensed up, prepared to confront the man who might be her natural father.

“Are you keeping a secret?” Dakota asked, standing in the doorway of my cubical, arms crossed in front of her chest, gripping her elbows with fierce determination. I was not familiar with that pose or her tone of voice.

“Not deliberately,” The best move I ever made was to be truthful with myself. I put aside the ever-present self-doubts and answered, “What do you want to know?”

“About my mother?”

I had two reactions when Dakota said those words, a recollection of that afternoon with Julia in my arms - the afternoon when I got her pregnant - and the sudden realization Dakota may have stumbled on to the fact that I was her father.

I was formulating my reply before Dakota could finish her question. Truth is always the best policy, so I was prepared to answer all her questions candidly.

In any case, me being me, sometimes the best way to buy time is to answer the question with a question. “How is your mom?” I replied.

That bought me time to scan my memories of the young girl who sat one row ahead of me and two seats to the right in high school. I had a thing for Julia alright. She became an obsession. I dreamt about her night and day for over a year. I made every effort to be around her at school. Julia was very popular. I didn’t stand a chance. I wasn’t exciting enough. I didn’t play sports or wasn’t involved in extracurricular activities.

Julia went on without me - on to marry the football quarterback. I moved on myself. Years later I happened to meet her by chance. She was the first to introduce herself. “Hi, I’m Julia, we went to high school together, remember me?”

As they say, “first comes the talk, then the bed.” So it was with Julia and me. The very last time we were able to see each other, she was pregnant with our twins.

I tried to recall her time line.

It took four years for her first marriage to fall apart. That seems to be the average time that love lasts. She divorced the quarterback. He was self-absorbed and ran around on her after their marriage. Then she went on to marry the dentist. Julia needed the security and status her dentist husband brought her. The dentist was a control freak. House on a corner lot, lawn service, pool service, housekeeping service, doggy day care, dinner out on Friday night, sex on Saturday night. Julia was ready for an affair. Our final parting was incredibly emotional for both of us.

I have my ways which enabled me to keep track of Julia. I stayed reasonably well-informed about our children, the twins, Dakota and Dalton. I thought it was an extraordinary coincidence that I should end up working for them at the Cause. The Cause, a non-profit staffed by dedicated volunteers and a small paid staff. 

So, here I sit in front of my daughter Dakota, and I hate to say it, but I am hoping the fact that I am her natural father won’t compromise the Cause’s plan -- to find and save children and adults caught up in the net of trafficking.

“About my mother?” Dakota repeated, seeing I was a little slow in answering. “My mom is going to the high school reunion this fall. Do you have plans to go?”

I could tell by the tone of her voice and the position of her body that hadn’t changed one iota - Dakota was definitely on to something. The jig was up.

“I am your natural father,” I said quietly. “I was hoping you would never have to hear that. It seems the Universe had a plan for me from the very beginning. The plan to save the children is not for me to control. The Cause, you and Dalton have been part of that plan from the time I arrived on earth.”

Angel stood behind me, I could hear her fake crying. “Oh, merciful god of flat-footed fools,” she proclaimed loudly in my ear. “Sniff, what a story.”

You see, the Universe also arranged for me to be protected by an Angel during my stay here on earth.

I ignored my hidden wing-mate who must be suffering from OCD - obsessive chatter disorder. Smiling my best imitation of Al Bundy, the greatest father ever(!), I said, “You will have to talk to Dalton and decide if this revelation compromises the cause. You really don’t know me, and I am sure you haven’t considered me to be the man you would wish to have as a father. Good at what I do, yes, save the trafficked children, yes, but I was so preoccupied by my work I never took time to master loving relationships.

….

Scene two                                                                                                                                           

Lydia

“Who’s Dakota? She’s the other women isn’t she, the one who’s is stealing your attention, isn’t she? You are just like all the other guys. You have been stringing me along. You have another woman while I am at work. I hate you!”

These were the words tossed at me this morning from the one woman who decided she could handle my dedication to my work, and my difficulties handling intimate relationships.

Divulging the secret, that I was Dakota’s father was bad enough, but I could not afford to lose this woman.

“Looks like I have two women who hate me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dakota hates me, Dakota is my daughter.”

“Oh god, a big secret. What else?”

“I have a son, Dalton. Dakota and Dalton are twins. Dakota hates me because she just found out I am her natural father. She told Dalton - I expect to hear from him soon.”

“She is really angry, she confronted her mother, it didn’t go well. It has been a life of lies for them, I understand her anger.”

“What do you mean a life of lies for them. Haven’t you been living a life of lies along with them?”

“I didn’t know they were my children until recently.”

“What!” Lydia exclaimed. “You never intended to tell me?”

“I had an affair with their mom, Julia. She ended our relationship suddenly. It didn’t seem right, I thought she loved me. I had a crush on Julia in high school, she flirted with me. I wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted a bigger fish. She wanted more, the big house, the pool, fancy cars, domestic help, the whole nine yards of materialism. I couldn’t offer that. I was too poor, from the wrong part of town.”

“Were you so naive as to think you wouldn’t knock her up?”

“She told me she was on the pill.”

“Your story better be good.” Lydia said, the very hurt expression couldn’t mask the tears welling up in her eyes.

“After graduation Julia married the high school quarterback. Their marriage didn’t last. Too many young women wanted him. To top it off, he was gay. Their marriage couldn’t survive. In those days being gay wasn’t acceptable. I guess he wanted to be accepted so badly that marriage was his ticket to a respectable life, maybe he thought being in a straight relationship could change his persuasion. Then he met just the right guy, they left for California where they could fit in.

“Julia quickly found another man. He was a catch, from a wealthy family, a professional. The only hitch was they couldn’t produce children. Julia needed that to live her dream, big house on the big lot, two kids, you know.” 

“When did you get together with her?” Lydia said, this time with softness in her voice.

“Forty-two years ago.”

“That’s a long time ago. They didn’t know, you didn’t know? Do you see Julia now? Were you seeing Julia while sleeping with me?”

“Whoa, that’s a lot of questions. Let me take it from the beginning for you.”

“I found a job working at a marina on the lake. Julia’s parents had a place up there. Julia would come up in the summer and stay there. Her second husband would join her on the weekends. They belonged to the yacht club, very prestigious, exclusive, expensive. One day she appeared at the marina to get gas in her runabout. I was pumping gas then. I was twenty-four. She began to come around more often. She asked me where I was staying, so I told her, in a cabin on a secluded cove on the other side of the lake. She knew where it was. One day she showed up. She must have found out when I would be off, she just showed up.”

“That’s when you started an affair with her? You knew she was married right. Why did you do that?”

“Actually, I didn’t know much about her after I left high school.  I never went to the class reunions, I only saw her in town from time to time, I just didn’t follow her life. I knew she was married to the quarterback. I didn’t know about the divorce and her new husband till a few years after. By then they were always in the papers.

“So, she shows up and you just tumble into bed with her, is that it.”

“Yes. That’s the way it was. I knew initially she was in it for the sex, I still had the hots for her I thought I could turn it into love.”

“When she broke it off, did she give you any reason?”

“She leveled with me. Some of her other friends were having affairs and she wanted to be like them. She figured I was safe enough, not in the mainstream of her social status. I was devastated to hear that. I thought for once in my life I might be good enough.”

“You expect me to believe she just dumped you and went back to her husband? You expect me to believe you just forgot about her for forty-two years?”

“Oh, I never forgot her. Most men don’t. I followed her alright, from a distance of course”.

“She told me she was the one that couldn’t make kids. She said she was getting off the pill and going on fertility drugs. She was leaving me because the fertility process required sex at just the right time. She had to be around, so she could call him at the right time for his services. She wanted kids with him not me. I was just a toy, a diversion. I didn’t know she had already acted on her fertility plan - I was the plan. It was the dentist who wasn’t fertile, she dreamed up a way of convincing him it was her problem.”

“She told me to stay away. So, I did. I followed the news about them, about them having twins, it made the society page.”

“I saw the children excel in all their activities, sport, studies, awards and scholarships. I had secretly wished they were mine, I wanted to have children like them. I know now, for many their lives are not what they seem on the surface. The two of them excelled alright, that came at a cost. Neither one of them married or had children. I never saw anything in the papers indicating they had any relationships, other than their passion for saving abused children. My childhood was bad, I admired them for what they were doing. I wished someone could have helped me when I was a child. I followed them in the papers because of my own interest in missing children.”

“You mean you have been involved with missing children for years. It wasn’t just the recent girl you talked about, it’s been going on for some time. Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

“I have been involved tracking lost children for years since I got out of high school.”

“One of our classmates went missing, she turned up a few months later when she could escape her captor, it made the news. She tried to get her life back, it wasn’t working. She went after the man who used her, first legally, then to get revenge. The system wasn’t kind to her. I took her in, kind of a foster home, she was screwed up. I didn’t have an intimate relationship with her, she couldn’t, and I couldn’t, I just offered her a place to stay and some money until she could recover from her trauma, (I stopped here to catch my breath, worn out on the topic) the rest of the story is she killed her abuser, and then committed suicide. Her suicide changed me.”

Lydia stared at me intently. Using a very measured tone of voice, Lydia began a series of questions.

“Is this the reason for your aloofness, your chip-on-your-shoulder attitude, the reason you keep your distance from me? The reason you have so many secrets? It’s about your guilt of not being able to save her?”

Lydia continued on. “If this isn’t enough, the police are looking for you, what have you gotten yourself into?”

“What, the police! Did they come to your home?”

“No, to the ER. The security men and the head of the department were with them. They showed me a picture of you. Only it wasn’t you. I told them I didn’t know the man in the picture. They asked me if I knew you, I couldn’t lie, I told them I did, but the man in the picture wasn’t you. They thanked me and left. I don’t know you, do I? Who are you? God, why do I love someone I don’t even know?”

"You love me?"

"Stay on the subject. What trouble are you in?"

“I got tangled up in the murder, you know, they tried to prosecute me as an accomplice. The young woman testified that I wasn’t involved, and I knew nothing of the plans. The problem was the man that abducted that young woman was a cop. Even now the police are trying to deflect attention from some of the sex crimes that officers are involved in.”

“The local police may know my name, but nothing else about me. It doesn’t surprise me they had the wrong photograph, after all these years they are looking to blame someone else.”

“I should never have allowed us to get this involved. I’m truly sorry that I have caused this distress for you.” I said.

I could feel the emotion boiling up inside me. All my past seemed to be arriving at once. I couldn’t breathe. I remembered the exercises I practice when my emotions get out of control. Plant feet firmly on the ground, take measured deep breaths, breathe in from your nose and exhale from your mouth slowly.

Lydia shrugged her shoulders and let out a big sigh. “I should just walk away from you, I should forget I ever met you, I should forget we ever slept together, I just can’t get you out of my mind, I can’t stop loving you, now I am the one who is sick.”

“You saw the news in the paper today, the news of the missing young woman. They killed her you know, they killed her in a very brutal way.”

“What do you mean they killed her?” Lydia said. “Is that what is caused your nightmare? Who was she, who are they, why are you involved?”                  

“I didn’t know her. She was just like the other girls and women who get trafficked. They meet people on line, bad people, bad men and women who make friends with them. The young girls like the attention and the lure of adventure, the older women need the money. They are told stories that they want to hear. They meet up with the traffickers, Things go well at first, a few photos of the girls a few well-paying escort jobs for the women. Then the drugs start, the threats to the girls that their families will be told, the threats to the women that they will be beaten if they try to get out or go to the authorities. The girls are abducted, the women get hooked on the drugs, it is a vicious circle of abuse.”

“And then there are the boys, there is a big market for the photos and services of young boys. The boys are recruited the same way, they are told they like it and they want it. Eventually some of them try to escape that world. The lucky ones find my friend the PI. He arranges a new identity for them. Sometimes he’s paid a bounty by the parents or the loved ones of the trafficked, sometimes he does out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Isn’t this a matter for the police or the FBI? How did you get involved?”  

“I have a gift, or a better explanation, a curse. I read about the accounts of abducted children and follow the investigations while the authorities try to find them. Somehow my intuition allows me to put the pieces together and often I come up with who abducted them and where they are. I stake out the place the kids may be at. The abductors make mistakes, just enough for me to give anonymous tips to the police. The parents of the missing children have rewards for their recovery, that’s how I make my living. Sometimes I do it for free.

“You want me to believe you are in touch with these missing children? That’s crazy. Are you suffering from a delusion, a mental illness? Should I be afraid of you?”

“I imagined you would think like that when we first met. That is why I wanted our relationship to be a platonic. I got a hard-on for you and it changed everything, we went away for that weekend, I took the chance it could be different between us. I stayed away from the news, then I heard the voices calling again. I had another nightmare. You saw that when we were sleeping together. Then I knew it was too good to be true, eventually you would find out. I thought I could just ignore the screams of the children, I can’t.”

“I fell hard for you, too hard. I violated one of my rules. The rule that I would never get intimate with another woman after Julia. So now I have created a terrible thing for you. You should leave me now, let me be, to be what I have become. Let me play out this role. There is not going to be a good ending for me. The best I will be able to do is change my identity and disappear. I thought everything was done, completed and I would regain a normal life. No one, not even you, would know. Then the little girl was murdered before I could save her.

I was abused when I was very little. The abuse went on for years. I don’t remember much of the part when I was very young, I remember much more of it after age five. My initial memories are blocked to protect me from my past. It was then that I began to hear the children’s voices in my mind crying for help.”

“I talked with a social worker I know, she said it wasn’t unusual for the abused to have a sense of things that happen to others in the past, and premonitions of events about to occur in the future.”

“Now I have to face my children and face you and hope that you and they will accept me for the man I am and love me and let me continue my work.”

….

Scene three

Dakota and Dalton

“We’ve been talking.” Dakota said, her voice was beginning to crack.

“We had an idea something was wrong concerning our natural father.” Dalton said trying to deflect the pain.

“We had our DNA analyzed; something doesn’t match up.” Dakota squeaked out. “I realized my initial reaction accused you unfairly. It would be a relief to both of us if we could understand who our natural father really is. Would you be willing to give a DNA sample? It would make us both feel better to gain some certainty.”

….

Scene Four

Me

“That went well!” Angel said smugly. “I thought you did pretty well, owning up to your secrets Big Boy. One of these days you’ll get the hang of it.”

What!” I stammered back. “You don’t think revealing secrets of that magnitude is a big deal.”

“Yeah well, you aren’t the only one with big secrets you know.” Angel retorted, in her all too knowing tone of voice.

It is painful dealing with my Angel sometimes. She is right, everyone has secrets.

The Cause went on to a big win in court. It seems my research had uncovered a child trafficking ring of major proportion. A raid by the authorities in several states resulted in the finding and the release of hundreds of trafficked individuals. For the law that made for an ending, for the survivors of trafficking their rescue and recovery was only beginning.

And for me, well, I was relieved my life of living the big `Secret` was over.

Lydia and I were married, Dakota and Dalton came to the ceremony to support us.

We danced all night.

The end

 

 

 

 

May 2019

The Last Speaker

The last speaker of the morning walked gracefully, with conviction to the podium. His topic was abuse of young children. He was the keynote speaker of the day.

I glanced at the man sitting next to me. I knew him from my twelve-step program, a nice man, quiet, very troubled. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as the presenter spoke the awful truth about the sexual abuse of the very young. I saw the man was trying hard to hold his emotions back. His face was flushed, his chest heaved, he was visibly shaking.

Although I didn’t know him well, I decided to do something to reduce his distress. Reaching into my handbag, I found a pack of facial tissues. Taking his hand, I pulled it toward me while offering the tissues. He held my hand firmly and whispered to me, “please don’t let go of me.”

It was then I realized a powerful energy emanated from his body. The energy passed into my hand. I never experienced anything like that before. I was immediately aroused. It was unsettling. 

Mercifully for him, the talk came to an end. I sat there holding his hand, the applause died, the house lights came up.

“Can we wait a moment before we get up?” He said, still clutching my hand and tissues.

After a moment I could see him blot his eyes and face. I turned towards him and with my free arm pulled his arm closer to me.

“Do you want to sit here for a while longer?” I whispered.

“No, let’s go out into the lobby, I need to see the daylight. Will you sit at the luncheon with me, I would appreciate your company?”

The symposium tickets included a prepaid box lunch in the university cafeteria. We made our way out of the building into the bright sunlight. I saw others talking about the presentation, some of them also in various degrees of distress. I never realized child sexual abuse extended to the very young. It was a revelation to me. 

As I walked quietly beside him, he regained his composure. He talked in halting words, trying to make small talk for my benefit.

“You don’t need to talk if you don’t want to.” I said, I took his hand and we walked in silence to the cafeteria.

His mood improved as we found a place at the table with others from our group. The conversation turned too lighter subjects. The luncheon came to an end, many of the participants walked back to the auditorium.

“Thank you for your concern.” He said. “I am not going to stay for the afternoon breakout sessions. I’ll go home, look in on the cats, then take a nap.”

The month before, at the same hall in the University, I attended a workshop on suicide prevention. My training kicked in. Taking out my pen, I ripped off a piece of my lunch bag and wrote my cellphone number on it.

“Please call me later today and tell me that you are okay. I want to hear from you. I won’t take no for an answer.”

It was a bold move. I know men don’t talk, but he was distressed, I needed him to know I understood and wanted to support him. If he had suicidal thoughts, I had to do the best I could to keep his attention on living.

“Thank you. I promise I’ll call.”

I was uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon. I keep a list of our twelve step program members’ names and numbers on a paper in my wallet. When we got to the first afternoon break, I looked at my sheet. The names are listed only by the first name and occasionally the last initial. I found him right away, it is a small group, only thirty or so, mostly women. I had seen him at the meetings and was curious enough about him to take a note of his name.

I didn’t want to play my card too hard. I had given him the opportunity to call me.

Oh, hell, I thought, I can’t take any chances with him.

I loaded his number in my phone and selected the TXT option. Typing out a brief TXT reminding him I wanted to hear from him, I sent it off with a click of the button. The TXT was delivered. I was relieved his number was a cellphone.

After a longish Q and A session, the seminar finally came to an end. All I could think of was getting out of the building to turn my cellphone on.

While hurrying to my car, I retrieved my cellphone. It took a while to establish a connection and load the fresh emails and text messages, none of which seemed important anymore. The only thing important to me was him. I sat in the car and scrolled through the list of missed calls. His number didn’t show up. 

I was getting upset. Maybe I had been to forward, maybe I should give him more time, maybe he won’t call me, maybe he took his life. I added up what that possibility could be. The last thought sprung me into action.

He was troubled, that’s why he is in the program. He seemed quiet and distant at the meetings, preferring to leave right after the closing and not spend time with the others in conversation. He seemed depressed, visibly upset at some of the others `sharing’s`. He was very emotional over the topic of child abuse earlier this morning. He decided to leave before the program ended. All those thoughts convinced me I needed to err on the side of caution. Besides that, his touch drove me into a fit of passion I hadn’t experienced in years.

I hit the recall tab, his phone number came up, I hit send. Maybe he was married? Maybe he was gay? Maybe I was overthinking all this, all I knew was I wanted him, just once, or for as much time I could get with him.

“Hi!” He answered.

I was so relieved I became momentarily speechless.

“I am sorry to put you through all this trouble.” He said in a quiet voice.

That rang the alarm bell again. Those who take their own lives feel they are causing trouble and inconvenience to those around them. They feel their lives are worthless and they would be better off dead than causing trouble for others.

I had to find a way to see him again, to touch him, and to have him touch me. I wanted more of the force that triggered my passion originally. I became instantly addicted, addicted to his energy that awakened my sexuality.

Instant addiction, the way heroin users become addicted, instantly. God help me, I am just like the other people trying to recover from theirs, or other people’s addictions. 

I took the chance and started talking. “The meeting is tomorrow night, why don’t we go out for a snack after the meeting? We could just have some conversation. I don’t know much about you, perhaps you might want to talk.”

I acted as a `sponsor` through all the years attending the meetings. I didn’t want to sponsor him. I didn’t want the responsibility of sponsorship to get in the way of starting a loving relationship with him. I had to get his attention.

“I don’t know if I’ll make the meeting.” He answered. That was not the answer I was looking for.

“Would you like to meet somewhere tonight? We can have a snack and talk,” I asked, wanting to move as quickly as possible before he had time to back away from any conversation. I sensed the walls were going up and the door closing. To protect themselves, many who suffered abuse wall themselves up. Walls to keep others out, and walls as a way of keeping themselves in.

I instantly recalled the saying. “If I let you in, please don’t break anything.” What was he afraid of, how could I get him to open the door and tear the walls down?

“Yes, I would like that. Can you meet me at Perkins here in town?” He sounded relieved about the prospect of talking.

“I’ll go home and feed my cat,” I said, trying to establish a rapport between us.  “We could meet early and have a sandwich, my treat. How about 5:30?”

“Okay, that’s good, it will give us some time to talk and it won’t be a late night, I’m a little low on sleep.”

We closed our call. I hurried home to feed the cat and change into casual clothes.

He was waiting in the lobby when I drove in and parked. He seemed less distressed than at the seminar. The hostess led us to our table.  We ordered and made small talk. I decided to get to the point and get him to talk on what mattered. I didn’t have to ask. He started talking about his childhood, then stopped and abruptly changed the topic to the meeting.

Uh-oh, walls going up; don’t push him. If there is anything, I learned from the years going to the meeting, life is going to be what it is going to be. I have no control over anything, least of all myself.

“I don’t think the program is for me, or maybe I am not right for the program. I lived with my dysfunctional alcoholic parents alright, but that is only part of my problem. Deep down inside I know there is more to my childhood than I am willing to remember, or that I can remember. I have reoccurring nightmares and flashbacks about things that shouldn’t have happened, but I know they did happen. I got some professional help briefly, enough, to make me realize the extent of the unwanted sexual experiences I had when I was very young. The seminar triggered those images again.”

Maybe that was all he was going to volunteer. I sat quietly and allowed him to talk at his own pace.

“I appreciate you going to the trouble to listen me. My past is something I am not willing to talk about when we are `sharing` at the meeting. I need someone to listen. I’m not sure how much I want to disclose. Perhaps we can meet again, just to talk, to talk about anything.”

Those were the words I was looking for. Our food arrived, we discussed the meeting and its purpose. Then we made general conversation.

Reaching into my handbag, I produced a wallet-sized booklet.

“I brought you a resource card. It has contact numbers for emergencies and health services. If you have had any thoughts of self-harm you could call someone who would listen twenty-four hours a day. I put my cell number on the front in the event you wish to talk to me.”

I felt I had stated my case without pushing him into an uncomfortable position. I was hoping to find a way of touching him or holding his hand - I wanted to have that energy again. The time for it wasn’t right. It would have to wait.

As the meal came to a close, the plates were cleared, and the bill was placed on the table. He reached for it right away.

“Oh, no.” I said. “This one is on me, remember, I invited you.” With that I got to the bill first.

“Okay, then. The next dinner is on me.”

We walked to the parking lot together. “Do you think I will see you at the meeting tomorrow night?” I asked, hoping to see him as frequently as I could.

“I’ll see how tomorrow goes. I don’t know yet. I’ll call you and let you know. I see your concern and I appreciate it. When I get upset it takes days to recover. I need time to think it all out.”

He stood just far enough away that it would be obvious if I had to reach out for him to give him a hug - which, for all the life in me, is what I wanted to do.

“Okay, till then.” I gave him a wave and we separated and went to our respective cars.

I awoke with a start as if I anticipated something was wrong. The clock on the night stand on the left side of my bed, registered 1:43 am. Not unusual for me. This time was different, I had been dreaming of him on and off during the night. I wanted his kisses on my face and his body on mine.

Just at that very moment a chime from my cell phone announced an incoming TXT message. I retrieved the phone from its resting place on the opposite bed side table. The TXT was from him. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Holding my breath, I touched the envelope image on the screen. The envelope opened and displayed a message. "Hi! I will be at the meeting tonight - can we go out after for ice-cream?" The message was followed by a little happy face emoji, a red heart, and a colorful rainbow. 

That was five years ago.

 

December 2018

Football

I have dreams. I’m on a football field. It’s empty, I have three hundred yards to go to the goal. 

Suddenly I’m holding the football. I start running toward the other end of the field. The lights come on, the field is ablaze in the light of one thousand lamps. There is a tremendous noise from the stands surrounding the field. Fans are jumping up and down and waving flags. Cheerleaders line my side of the field waving and calling my name.

I concentrate on the field ahead. The opposition is coming at me, they are trying to stop me. My teammates run interference taking them down one by one. I dodge and weave through a small opening about mid field. 

Then, a gust of wind catches my back and I am flying, no, hurtling forward toward the touchdown zone.

No one is behind me, I run straight and true into the end zone. 

Touchdown, the fans scream. Touchdown, we win! 

The tears fill my eyes, they run down my cheeks. I should be happy. I feel nothing.

October 2018

Hannah is Coming

She has been up most of the night. She can’t sleep, too much pain.

She leaves our bed and goes upstairs to her easy chair. I hear her moving around.  After an hour or so she is quiet; her breathing slow and labored. About one a.m., I fall asleep.

I’m not getting much sleep now.

It doesn’t matter. Hannah is coming. In the morning, Hannah will come over to help me feed and water the animals. I am looking forward to her company.

After, Hannah will talk with her.

“Stop me if you have heard this one," she says.

Hannah replies, “Yes, you told me.” It doesn’t make any difference, she tells the story again anyway.

I sit and listen, listen to the same story, over and over.

June 2018

Sunflowers

Their heads had turned down. The seeds were dropping, my seeds were dropping.

He caught me at an off time; I knew this one would be a girl. I knew she would not be right.

We were blessed with two beautiful boys. They came with full heads of blond, almost white curly hair, a year-and-a-half apart. Two healthy rambunctious, playful, happy boys, a gift from the Universe. We were blessed, but I feared, not this time.

He had become less attentive, preoccupied, the way men become when they find a lover.

I didn’t confront him. Two years of bad crops and dwindling finances were a heavy weight for both of us, particularly for him. He had trouble believing in the future, a holdover from his past.

I knew of the woman, it wouldn’t last.

I collected the sunflower seeds and saved them over the winter.

When the soil was warm, I prepared the earth, hand planting each seed, holding back half for a second planting four weeks later. The sunflowers would be in full bloom when she arrived. All happy little faces, all at once, in the warm summer sunshine.

I watered and tended the garden faithfully, and I attended her and my body with the same care.

The doctors offered us an out. It was apparent she would not be well. We wished to bring her to full term and to honor the Universe's will.

He became attentive to me again. Always around now, and helpful. He no longer spent time away from the farm. He labored with the animals and chores, as I labored with the growing seed inside me.

When the time came he was with me. They placed her at my breast. It was to no avail.

We laid her poor small body in the family plot; she would be with her ancestors.

All the sunflower heads bowed down, the seeds fell, many seeds, apace with our tears.   

July 2018

 Sweet Cheeks and Ice Cream Kisses

I lie naked on his body, on the little bed, on the sleeping porch, on a hot sultry summer afternoon.

He finds the spot just above my bottom, the little soft place with the peach fuzz, which he gently teases with his finger. Slowly, round and round that spot, then with both hands he holds my bottom firmly and pushes his fingers between my thighs.

We fly in ecstasy to a place I have never gone before. I don’t want it to stop.

He whispers to me, calling me his 'Little Sweet Cheeks.'

Later, as the sun goes down, we take the truck and drive to get soft ice cream.

He parks in the back away from the lights; I take his hand and push it up under my little summer dress.

We sit in silence and finish our ice cream. I lean towards him and kiss his face with ice cream lips. He calls them, ice cream kisses. I am his 'Little Sweet Cheeks' with the 'Ice Cream Kisses.'

That was sixty years ago; he’s gone now.

I walk to our truck, hold open the driver’s door and ask my dog, “Sweet Cheeks, want to go for a ride and have Ice Cream Kisses?”

We go lonely into the night.

June 2018

It Happened

I was curious about him. I saw him around town. He belonged to the same businessman’s group as my boss.

His picture often appeared in the business section of the local newspaper.

He wasn't particularly handsome. He had a friendly smile and captivating eyes, the kind of eyes that could see into your soul. Bedroom eyes, yes that was it, bedroom eyes, or maybe I was falling hard.

I began to desire him. We talked. First the talk, then the bed, they say.

I wanted It to happen.

From time to time, he would come by to see my boss. Some of the women talked about him, they were smitten with his manners and friendly disposition.

"Do you think we could do it just once?" I inquired of him.

"I don't think so, if we got started I wouldn't be able to stop, I would become addicted to you."

"I have saved up some money; I could get a room for us, someplace nice, a big hotel in town."

I backed up to the conference room wall. In one quick gesture I pulled up my skirt and dropped my panties.

I held out my hand and drew him close.

She Liked to Stand in the Window

“They move around," she said.

Her head nestled on my shoulder; I smell the fragrance of her hair. I smell the fragrance of all of them, all my lovers. I will always smell them. Those smells are the reasons for my creativity.

“You’re getting hard. I want to stand in the window, I want to be on display, I want you to take me from behind.”

The honey bees are busy flitting from flower to flower, collecting the nectar. They are compelled to do it, unthinking, compelled to do their work. Endless work every year, when the earth smells of the same sweetness as her hair.

I write these words as I sit near the flower garden. I have a table and an easy chair in a shaded spot.

A casual observer would see a man reclining in front of his typewriter, his fingers moving gracefully across the keys. They would never suspect his manhood moved randomly between his thighs, or that he was thinking of her, the woman in the window.

I cannot write or create my little pieces of art without being aware of her. The awareness is the power keeping me moving to create. It is this desire to claim something that I will never possess that is at the heart of my art.

I am troubled that I keep producing little bits-and-pieces. I don’t get down to completing the big job. The big job of the big novel, satisfying my Grand Plan, getting that illusive thing, possessing completely the woman in the window.

A bee moves from flower to flower, like me, collecting little bits and pieces. The bee is unaware of a Grand Plan. It doesn’t care or need to know, it is compelled to collect the nectar as I am compelled to create the little-bits-and-pieces.

Eventually the nectar collected by the solitary bee, the little-bits-and-pieces, joins to feed the hive. Just as all my little-bits-and-pieces combine to make my life.

Art School

I met him in evening school. A life drawing class.

He was older. Nice, quiet, out-of-place, a very good artist.

I fell in love with him as I watched him draw the nude models. He moved his pencil, as if he were caressing the model. I wanted him to caress me.

After class, I asked him out. We talked. I was smitten. I wanted him; I wanted his hands on my body.

I touched him, he drew back. I wondered - why?

Perhaps he was just shy or being older and not accustomed to a young woman’s touch.

His drawings were very detailed, very suggestive, the edge of a raw humanity.

I thought he must have something turbulent going on in his mind, a big secret. I was determined to find out, if need be, relieve him of his burden.

He expressed his desires through his art.

His past was full of demons. Demons that would not give him peace.

I took him to my bed. I discovered the cuts between his legs. 

In this world of art, we know about the cutting.

It was that time in my bed, that time I knew I was flying with an angel.

 

April 2018

 

Night Flight

Deciding to make an overhead approach I crossed above the airport from the upwind side. The sky was clear and dark. Flames from smudge pots outlined the runway, headlights from two cars illuminated the landing area.

I made a steep, continuous, descending turn down to the runway. Rolling onto the final approach I left myself a safety factor of some altitude above the landing end of runway.

There was a strong gusty crosswind on the final. Extending the wing flaps, I approached the runway in a sideslip. I would kick the airplane into alignment with the runway at the last possible moment. The aircraft landing lights illuminated the runway touchdown zone.

I made a final check of the landing gear, three-in-the-green.

Trees lined the opposite end of the runway, the runway was short, several hills would need to be cleared if I screwed up the approach. I rehearsed the go-around in my mind.

Reciting my abbreviated checklist, gas, undercarriage, mixture, prop. I was ready to commit to the landing. If I was going to go-around, it would have to be now, otherwise I was landing.

The flash of the red collision light reflected from the ground as I passed over the landing threshold.

With a deft flick of my wrist and a dance on the rudder petals I kicked the airplane out of the side slip to level flight. The main wheels rolled onto the gravel. Letting the nose wheel down and applying the brakes, I came to a stop with hundreds of feet to spare.

The cars speeding along behind me, passed me and pulled ahead, then made a sweeping turn around in front my airplane to guide me to the parking area.

I retracted the flaps, made a slow turn back down the runway, and followed the cars stopping next to a row of wooden “T” hangers. A light shown out from an office window illuminating an impressive Sikorsky helicopter tied down on the ramp.

I recognized the company name emblazoned on the side of the helicopter fuselage and realized the Sikorsky must be the reason for the part I have onboard.

A man with a flashlight directed me to the center of the parking ramp. I set the parking brake and shut down the engine. Completing the checklist, I turned off the battery switch. I sat in the dark cockpit listening to the gyros spin down. It wasn’t too difficult of a flight. I found the airport on the first pass and the landing went well.

Flood lights from the roof of the tee hanger illuminating the men assembled outside my plane. I recognized one of the men, the helicopter pilot.

Putting aside my fear of meeting new people, I unlatched the cabin door and stepped out onto the wing, then to the ground. A chilly wind was blowing, I zipped up my flight jacket and stepped around the wing to meet the greeting committee.

They weren’t all men. One of greeters was a handsome woman, a woman of striking beauty, older than me by ten years.

It started the moment our eyes met.

****

What's Your Name?

Blackie introduced me to the greeting committee. “This here is Cody, Travis, and Victoria." The three of them nodded affirmations. “The pilot here is Kidd, one of the sharpest pilots I know and real young too.”

I thought I saw a glimmer of interest in Victoria’s eyes and managed to squeak out a faint hello.

Victoria looked directly at me, her gaze was so intense I had to divert my attention to the wing of the plane least I walk into it.

Victoria spoke first. “Come in to the office, it's warm inside and we have hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies. The men will unload the part, is it in the baggage area?”

“Yes, I have it tied down, I’ll open the latch.”

I turned around and walked back to the baggage door and unlocked it. The heavy box was still tied to the floor of the baggage area where I had secured it myself. I never wanted to have parts coming lose in turbulence and flying about the cabin on my flights.

“Give me a hand with this Cody," Blackie said. "Travis can bring the pickup truck around and we'll drive it to the helicopter, it’s not real heavy just bulky that’s all. We will meet the two of you inside. Go in with her Kidd, we can handle the part.”

I did as instructed, and turned to follow Victoria into the office. Usually, I never had the nerve to stare at a woman’s bottom as she walked in front of me, I did this time. I know that women walk with a gait designed to capture men’s full attention, and Victoria had mine.

She was tall and well-proportioned, her bottom tastefully draped in designer slacks. She wore a man’s Woolrich plaid shirt under an expensive looking custom fit aviator jacket.

She stopped at a table in the corner of the poorly lit makeshift office. Turning to face me, Victoria released the last of the zipper on her flight jacket, which fell open to divulge her ample breasts exposed so slightly due to the top buttons of her shirt undone. I imagine, she wasn’t wearing a bra. 

“Help yourself to hot chocolate, the cups are on the windowsill, they are all clean. Here let me get you some cookies.”

Victoria lifted a napkin from the table and presented the plate of still warm cookies to me.

“Why do they call you Kidd, what’s your given name?”

“David," I answered. "I've been hanging around the local airport doing odd jobs for money in order to fly. Here Kidd, do this, take this, fuel that plane out front. Kidd just stuck I guess.”

“You a commercial pilot? You seem very young.”

“I got my commercial license when I turned eighteen. I flew with the other pilots on trips like this many times before that, so even if my license is fresh, I know how to fly and what I’m doing.”

“I don’t doubt that, not many pilots would be able to get here on a night like this. Nice landing in that gusty wind, I was watching from outside when I heard you call in. Do you teach flying Kidd; can you teach me how to fly through tempestuous skies?”

 

 

 

March 2018

The Puzzle

“It will come to you. Don’t get discouraged," the voice on the other end of the line stated. “Such a beautiful puzzle, two thousand pieces. It is a work of art; just like you, a work of art.”

At that moment I didn’t feel like a work of art, not anything close. My drinking was getting to my health. My marriage had fallen apart; I was estranged from my children. I was terribly depressed; thoughts of taking my own life accompanied me everywhere.

“But, but, all I want is a puzzle to take my mind off my life,” I stammered. 

“Yep, how it's designed," the voice on the other end of the phone proclaimed. "You’ll catch the hang of it.”

“There is no picture, just a plain, grey paper box, not even instructions,” I said in an irritated voice.

“Give it a chance. Take the first step, open-the-box,” came the reply. “But I have to ride the sound waves now, another troubled man is on the other line.”

“Who are you?” I asked sharply into the handset.

“I’m God. Gotta go.” The line went silent.

I sat there with the dead phone in my ear.

You see, I am very troubled, I am very ill. The prognosis for my recovery is poor. I see why they take their lives, I thought to myself. If I keep going like this I will end up dead, just like the other men, the other survivors of child abuse.

However, the answer to my recovery came to me in a dream. A lovely carefree dream. A dream of flying with angels. I was to buy a puzzle and assemble it. Not any puzzle mind you. A specific puzzle, from a specific source.

In the dream I saw myself reading the newspaper where a small ad in the classified section stated: 'Free puzzle specifically designed to release your cares. Completing this puzzle will change your life for the better. Guaranteed!'

For me, the `guaranteed` part cinched the deal.

The next morning, I stepped outside and recovered the newspaper from the bushes where the cruel paper boy threw it. The disheveled newspaper had fallen open to a page of advertisements and there prominently displayed in the middle was the ad from my dream.

Try this puzzle free. You can pay me later.

Staring at the ad in disbelief I uttered, “Oh hell, maybe there is something to my puzzle-dream.”

After the morning chores I made out an envelope and sent away for the puzzle. I put it out of my mind and entered back into my old pre-dream space - nightmares, alcohol, and depression.

A week later the delivery service delivered a package to me. The puzzle.

Ripping off the packaging, I opened the box. Two thousand pieces were enclosed in a clear plastic bag. I cut the bag open with the scissors I kept in my desk drawer and laid out the Masonite board I used for assembling puzzles and poured the pieces onto the center of the board.

I am confronted with the disconcerting fact that all the pieces are blank - on both sides. I reached for the phone and called God. A recorded message from the phone company indicated: 'The number you have dialed is not in service.'

There has to be a way.

Sifting through the pile I withdrew all the pieces that had a straight edge. Four of the two thousand pieces looked like corners; I laid them out on the board in a manner that marked a large rectangle about the same shape as the unmarked box.

Some of the straight-edged pieces seemed to fit together. I attempted assembling the puzzle sides. Progress was slow. I saw the puzzle was cut by a machine where the characteristics of cutting them left the pieces with a top-side and a bottom-side. I flipped all the pieces over until all of them were arranged on the board top-side up.

Becoming discouraged with the enormity of the task, I pushed back my chair, and paced the floor. Sinking again into a fit of depression I reached for the gin bottle, which was secretly stored in the back of a kitchen cabinet. For once in my life I thought the better of it; instead I went outside and took a walk.

I had been on the walk for an hour and it was becoming dark; I turned and walked back to my cabin and went to bed.

In the dead of the night an angel appeared by my bed. I was frightened, but she was beautiful; her countenance disarmed me and I forgot my fear.

“I see you got the puzzle God told you about. Good going, I am proud of you, you are on the way to a better life.”

The angel spoke in a tender, lilting voice, almost musical, sheer poetry and very comforting. I will never forget her voice.

I really need a better life, I thought to myself. I sure screwed this one up.

“Agreed," the angel said. “You have some big problems, they are not insurmountable, the puzzle will show you the way.”

“Who are you? Who sent you? Why are you here in my dreams?”

“I am your Guardian Angel, I have been sent to you by the Universe as a messenger, I supply your intuition. I give comfort to the abused.”

“What do you know about my abuse?”

“I know everything about your abuse; I have been with you from the beginning. You do not really know about your abuse, which is why you are so troubled. Once you understand what happened, you will be able to move on and fulfill your destiny, a destiny of love.”

“Why didn’t you come to me before? What took you so long, can’t you see I’m suffering?” I asked plaintively.

“I came to you many times; you were so troubled you didn’t hear me. I heard your cries for help. I persisted. Many never hear me, they become lost. You may be different. I don’t know. You're worth a try. This is your time, you finally hear me, we are talking. Now, complete the puzzle or be lost forever - your choice.”

My dream ended.

Upon awakening, I poked my right forearm and found to my surprise I was among the living. I got up, dressed, had a coffee, and walked over to the desk. I stared blankly at the puzzle board.

At least I have the four corners and some of the parts of the sides assembled. What did the angel mean when she said that it’s time for me to complete the puzzle?

The phone rang and startled me out of my funk.

“Hello,” I answered, not really engaged in the call.

“Hi there, this is God. I see you met Angel and started the puzzle. Wow, she is a hottie and whew, doesn’t wear any clothes. Way over the top. If you survive your past you may not survive her!”

“God, it’s you again. The phone company said your line was disconnected.”

“Yeah, I had a big response to the puzzle ad and had to shut down that operation. You got some of the pieces together I see and figured out which sides of the pieces represent the top surface. Wow, Way To Go, you are on your way to assembling the biggest puzzle of your lifetime. It is going to change your life for the good. That is, if sleeping with that Angel doesn’t kill you first.” God guffawed.

“I didn’t know humans slept with angels,” I frowned.

“Of course, they do. Happens all the time, including some of the biggest mistakes in history,” God snickered.

“This puzzle is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible, it requires a little work on your part, that’s all.”

“Can’t you see, I’m working hard?” The words just came out of my mouth; immediately, I regretted saying them. For years, I'd spoken in the exact manner when I confronted my ex: spiteful, hateful, self-centered, angry words. No wonder she left me. No wonder my children drifted away. I was in such pain, I could only consider myself. “I am so pathetic. My predicament chases away the very people who care for me.”

“And I am not uncaring," God countered. "All survivors say that. All alcoholics deny they have a problem. You're different, you can learn to care and love others. You are worth saving. First you must learn to love yourself, with a little direction from Angel of course. Gotta go!”

God seemed a little more talkative this time, I thought to myself.

“He’s pretty good with humans, especially the troubled ones.” The words came out of nowhere.

“Angel is that you?”

A shaft of light came through the window and illumined two of the puzzle pieces. I separated them from the pile and saw a pattern where they would fit. My hand trembled as I hooked them onto their potential partners.

As they came together, an impulse of energy rippled through my hand and arm. At that exact moment, I had a brief vision, a vision of a small child crying. I was overcome with grief and the emotions of guilt and shame.

The image-board dimmed; light from the window passed into shadow. An imperceptible change came over me. I felt - relieved - relieved that I had made some progress on the puzzle. A picture resolved itself onto the pieces depicting a memory of my past, a snapshot of me when I was very young. The image made me feel very uncomfortable.

Sitting quietly, I called for Angel. She didn’t answer. Still, I felt calm, somehow knowing this would be the beginning of a long relationship with her.

It was time for the morning chores. My mood brightened, I did the chores in a relaxed and unhurried manner.

Then I took out my checkbook to see how much money was left. The balance was very low, I was going to have to tap my 401K again. Soon, I would be out of money. I needed to find a job, if I could hold a job long enough to get some money together I might be able to publish a story I was working on. Previously, I was never able to make any real money writing, but it could be different this time.

The morning flew by. Deciding to do something with my new-found peacefulness, I took out my laptop and opened the Word file for my story. I scrolled to the part near the ending.

New words came to me. My fingers flew across the keys. Years of pent up and repressed memories appeared on the screen before me. That’s when I realized knowing all about my past was within my grasp. For once I could be free of the terrible memories; they would be gone from me, recorded forever, permanently in print for others to read, who in turn, would discover their own 'demons.' Perhaps this is the story I needed to tell. A story of meeting an Angel, a story of faith overcoming all obstacles, a story of how giving my troubles to God set me free to make a better life for myself.

An hour flew by. I decided to take a walk and let the story gel in my head. On the way back, I stopped for the mail. It was the usual mid-week mail - bills, flyers, appeals for money, and, wait what’s this, a business letter from the magazine where I had made a submission.

Oh well, probably just another rejection letter. I stood there with the mail shaking in my hands.

“Better get it over with,” I said out loud, to no one in particular.

“Hurry and open it!” Angel's voice came out of nowhere.

“It’s you Angel. You took me by surprise again. I saw what you did with that shaft of sunlight on those puzzle pieces, neat trick.”

“Open that envelope; show me, show me, show me.”

I thought about the envelope, and then my mind went back to the puzzle pieces. I had a vision of my sisters. They were much older than I; I came along late in my family’s life. I remember being at the lake with them, those were the happier moments of my life.

The envelope fell from my hand; not all the moments were happy, some moments were very violent. I was getting sick, sick over the past.

“Breathe," Angel said. “Exhale, you’re going to hyper-ventilate. Breathe at a normal rate, slowly, in, out, in, out," she chanted.

I stood there and did what she told me. Soon my breathing returned to normal, the world stopped going around, my pulse rate dropped.

I picked up the envelope, opened one end and removed the letter. Within the folded letter there was a check made out to me in the amount of one-thousand-five-hundred and twenty-eight dollars. The letter said it was in payment for my last submission. The story would appear in the August edition. The editor would like to see more of my work, they may consider advances if the stories meet their guidelines.

“See, see what you have done, you’re published, you made moolah.” Angel seemed genuinely happy for me.

“Did you arrange this? Did God?” I asked in disbelief.

“No. You did. You are responsible for everything that happens to you. You have a choice, you can feel bad about your past and continue to suffer, or you can move on. Looks like you just moved on.” Angel started singing the theme song to The Jeffersons, Well, we're movin' on up. To the east side. To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

I laughed and continued down the lane to my cabin. Once inside I carefully put the check in my checkbook to be deposited when the bank opened. I placed the letter in my file of letters from the publishers.

This time, instead of caffeine, I took a cup of water and heated it in the microwave. With the steaming hot cup in my hand I sat at the puzzle board. I fiddled with some of the puzzle pieces. A few of them left me with the feeling they might fit together, I put them down on the board and as I pushed them along to the other pieces, a picture formed on them. A picture of a house on a steep hillside.

I went to the cabinet and brought down the box containing the family photos. I had carefully saved those photos in a beautiful presentation box. The collection of photos came from various family members, all of them gone.

I laid a stack of photos on the puzzle board. I thumbed through the stack until I found a picture of the house that was identical to the picture on the puzzle pieces. I recognized the house, one of the first homes I could remember. A pang of fear rippled through my body. The inner sides of my thighs began to burn.

“I see you found a couple of memories,” God said, his voice came out of nowhere.

“You startled me,” I blurted out, "must you always?”

“My apologies, I keep forgetting you are not a God-fearing man. Maybe you will think of me more often, my presence is in everything you do. I should not be a surprise to you, but at any rate, I see you are making progress assembling the puzzle. This time the pieces just came to you on their own.”

“How?” I asked God.

“Seek and you shall find. Ask and it will be given unto you. That’s how it works you know. Can you see how it works now?”

“Do you mean all I have to do is envision what I want, and it will come to me? How can that be?”

“It’s called the `Law of Attraction,' concentrate on your true desires and everything you need will be placed in front of you. All you have to do is take what you want and discard the rest back to the universe.”

“You know I have plenty of wants, how come it hasn’t worked until this moment?”

“Oh, you want things alright. You want stuff, you want money, you want fame, you want notoriety, but you don’t want to work for it. You want it to appear without putting anything up.”

God’s words stung. “Isn’t wanting what I want, enough? How come I can’t attract it by just wanting it?”

“The Law of Attraction doesn’t mean you will get what you want. The Law works by enabling you to find a way of getting what you want. First you desire something. When you concentrate on that desire, the Law will place the pathway in front of you. If you are alert, you will find the proper way. It may not be easy, but it will come.”

“Everyone wants something, how come they complain they aren’t getting what they want?”

“They were like you. They want something. When shown the way, they don’t want to work. You are different now. You asked me, I showed you the way. The Universe is taking a chance on you. The Universe sees you might be genuine. The Universe gave you Grace and an Angel.”

“How are you, Angel, and the Universe connected?”

“The Universe is the home of all life. You are born of the stuff of the Universe. The Universe wants you to live and create more life, to move life along, to spread life. You are the Universe. You created me. You called me your God. My job is to place the path in your way.

“You have created Angel, who is made from the stuff of the Universe that resides in your heart. When you listen to your heart, you are listening to life itself. But when your mind gets in the way, it is all caught up in the way you think you should be. Angel straightens that out for you.”

“Do you mean, I am the Universe, God, and Angel, all in one? I have the power to be and get what I want because I am life itself?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Gotta go.”

“Wait, wait, don’t leave me with a trifecta bombshell; I can never fulfill that role.”

My heart was racing, I stopped breathing again. What did Angel say? 'Breathe, breathe, just breathe!'

It was time to sit down and write, I switched my chair to be at the laptop. Sitting in front of the empty screen, I decided to write about the house on the hillside, the house where it all began. The house of my nightmares.

I walk down a sidewalk to a small home and step onto the porch. I open the screen door towards me, as I grasp for the main door latch, the door opens on its own, I step inside to a long hallway. A few steps more and I see a parlor on the right and a dining room on the left.

The memories from the past came back. A chill descended on me. A creepy feeling raced up my arms. Working my way through the emotions, I concentrated on getting the words onto the screen.

The hallway is dimly lit by a small bare bulb protruding from a ceiling light. The parlor and the dining room are tastefully furnished in a style from the 30’s. All good quality furniture. The parlor has several overstuffed chairs with doilies on the arms, the kind that are woven from a thick string, woven into knots that circle around and around and join in the center. Standing on the end tables are simple, upright shaded lamps, alit with dim incandescing bulbs. The walls are covered with very flowery faded wallpaper. A thick Oriental carpet, worn in spots, fills the center of the floor, the outskirts, well worn, but expensive wood.

The dining room is not lit. Like the parlor, the window shades are pulled down blocking the outside natural light from ever coming in. It does not matter now because it is nighttime; middle of the nighttime.

As I moved along, I was writing the text in rhythm to my imaginary progress through the house. I could smell the dampness and decay of the aging building.

Walking down the hallway deeper into the house, the lights from the parlor and hallway fade behind me. It is darker now. Closed doors to other rooms line the hall. I have no idea what is behind those doors. My skin begins to crawl. I can hear faint conversation from the end of the hall where a stairway leads up to a second story. There is a closed door at the top of the stairs. I climb the stairs, careful not to make a sound. There are many voices quarreling with each other, sometimes laughing in a grotesque way. Demons; they know of my arrival. The door suddenly opens - the demons drag me into that room - and tear me to pieces.

I sat, barely able to move. Powerful memories of my childhood occupied my mind.

To distract myself from the force of the emotions, I moved back to the puzzle board. A stream of sunlight appeared as it had days prior. Pieces of the puzzle illuminated. I gathered them together and pushed them over into the side of the puzzle. They settled on the upper right-hand corner.

A picture of a middle-aged woman appeared, it was my mother. She was much younger than my recent memories of her. She was very beautiful and full of life and was picnicking with me and my sisters. My father was not to be found, perhaps he was the one taking the picture.

I started in earnest to find other puzzle pieces that would complement the ones I had already assembled. The job went very quickly now. Eventually I had completed the entire four sides and a great deal of the middle of the puzzle except for a round area that occupied the very center.

I was exhausted. Looking at the time I realized I needed to get to the bank before it closed to deposit the check from the publisher. After the bank I stopped for gas, then on to the supermarket to buy a microwavable dinner. After I returned home, I put the dinner in the freezer, then sat at the puzzle board.

“I see you deposited the check.” It was Angel. I could feel her presence.

“Can I see you? I want to know what you look like. God said you are a `stunner,` well, those were not his exact words, he said you were a `hottie!'"

“That God, he is a naughty old man, but you see me all the time. You see me in your dreams, you see me when you walk along the streets in town. You see me when you watch porn. You even possessed me when you were married. Too bad you lost her, she was a good woman.”

Cringing, I decided to whiz by the porn comment. “When will I actually see you? You are the one I want to see.”

“I’ll tell you what. Finish the novel you're working on and you will see me in that way; I will become very clear to you. I will be your muse, I will become your sexual fantasy. Once the novel is finished you will know me and have me completely, forever; but not before.”

Angel was right, I didn’t want to rush my relationship with her, it was too good. I didn’t want to be in a hurry. I decided to seduce her and make love to her in her way, in my novel.

I left the puzzle board and went for a walk. The novel began to take shape in my mind; the plot would be about a man who falls in love with an angel.

I spent the entire summer and much of the fall completing the manuscript. During that time, I sent off query letters to several agents about the concept of the novel. A number of my short stories found a home in publications, the checks were coming in, I had a track record.

One of the agents developed an interest in my work. Her name was Amanda and she wanted to see the manuscript, providing I could give her an exclusive for a period of time. I reluctantly agreed, I told her I wanted literary control over the content.

Amazingly, a publisher offered me an advance. They wanted some changes, Amanda the agent told me.

“They want some changes.” I spoke out loud hoping Angel would hear me.

“I know,” Angel said, "that is the way the industry works. The publisher is taking a chance, they need to be certain they will sell enough copies of the book to recover their investment, they have already indicated their good faith in giving you the advance. Give up your ego and make the changes, your readers need your story.”

Angel is right of course, after all, I know her well, and she knows me intimately.

“I see you are sleeping with Angel.” God's voice came to me out of the blue. “I told you she was hot, and she is good for you. Have you finished your puzzle?”  

“No, I still have the center hole to fill. I am afraid to look at it. My life is within the pictures, little vignettes from my past; the little pictures comprising a timeline from when I was very young until I married. I can’t find any pictures after that. Where did that time go?”

“You were so wrapped up in yourself you couldn’t think about others. You hardly even thought about your new wife and the babies the two of you created. It was all about you. Gimme, gimme, let me get more, which is why the memories are not there. It is just as well. Would you really have wanted to see yourself fall into your addiction? Your wife and children lost respect for you when you lost respect for yourself.”

God was right. I hated myself up until the time I started the puzzle.

“Pictures of everyone from my past life are in the puzzle; everyone that is, except my father. Where is he? Is his picture the missing part in the center of the puzzle?”

“Yes, your father is the missing part. Why don’t you stop what you are doing and complete the puzzle? Don’t you see you are slipping back into the same trap, wanting, forever wanting? Completing the puzzle will give you a new perspective. Completing the puzzle will bring you calm.”

God left me with those words. It was my original intent to find some peace, the novel and the constant attention to making the writing a business was indeed pushing me backward into the old life. At least I wasn’t drinking, that is up until now. I was constantly praying to Angel to keep me from falling back. The best she could do was to remind me that it was up to me to help myself.

I put aside the mail, and the files, I turned off the computer. I sat at the puzzle board and methodically moved piece by piece of the puzzle into alignment to the center of the puzzle.

A portrait of a man appeared before me.

The puzzle was complete, my life was all there, there except...

“God. God?” I cried out. “That man is not my father!”

“It’s me, Angel. He is your father.” I was so preoccupied with the puzzle I didn’t realize Angel was with me while I assembled the last of the pieces.

“It can’t be, I have his picture right here, puzzle-man does not look at all like my father.”

“You see, what goes on between men and women, sometimes, is secret.”

I was devastated.

“You mean my father was not my father?”

“You must figure that out for yourself. It will take some time, besides what difference does it make now? You are still you, nothing has changed.”

“We have to talk,” I replied pathetically. “I know I have you, you are an energy, not a human. I want human company, I want female human company,” I blurted out. “The fact I may have never known my biological father has tipped me over. I want a woman to hold me and comfort me in my grief.”

“What you mean is, you need to get laid.”

“Yes, that too.”

“Please see that your recent choices brought you to this point on your journey. You have followed the path that you, God, and I have put before you. If you desire a woman to accompany you on your journey, that opportunity will be given to you.”

I felt better getting my needs out into the open.   

Months went by; I lost myself in the tasks of launching the book. Angel was right, whatever my past was, did not change the fact that I am here now. I found out about my past and have moved on. Moved on to a better life.

It was time to market my book.

I approached the first signing event with trepidation. Not being particularly outgoing, I was concerned about speaking in public. The novel had become an instantaneous hit, but I was unprepared for having to go on a book tour. I decided the best I could do was to talk at my local book store and do a small signing. If that went well I might, might, do another one someplace close by.

My agent was adamant about me promoting my own work. She told me the readers love to connect with the authors. She was also in the process of arranging appearances on local talk shows.

“Why don’t you just go with the flow,” Angel told me one night when we were talking after making imaginary love. “You are making plenty of money, the book is a hit, you will most likely get a movie commitment - why don’t I arrange it - I will be the Oscar-winning lead.”

“No, no, don’t get me involved in something I can’t handle,” I stammered.

“You can handle it.” God's booming voice came through loud and clear. “Look what you have done. You stopped drinking, you are able to focus now, you are making a living doing something you love, you are in contact with your children. Even your ex has become a little more civil towards you.”

“What is this, a tag team?" I blurted out. "Here in the bedroom, is there no privacy?"

Angel and God fell silent.

After a semi-sleepless night, I developed a bad case of angst over the signing scheduled for this afternoon. I got dressed and went out to Dunkin' Doughnuts for coffee and a blueberry muffin. Rather than taking my treats home, I decided to eat there, slowly enjoying my food. The local TV news station was announcing the happenings going on in the area. The picture on the screen showed my books on display at the bookstore, while the commentator announced I was going to be at the store in person to sign copies for the buyers.

The butterflies erupted again, I became sick with fear.

“You can do this,” were Angel's comforting words.

She was right of course. Angel was right about everything. She was right about the puzzle and my past. She was right about my father not being my father. She was right about letting the words flow onto the paper directly from my heart.

“What do I do?” I asked her.

“Slow down and eat, go home and finish your daily chores. You have a few phone calls to return. Take a shower, get dressed and go to the bookstore.”

“That simple huh?”

“Yes, that simple.”

I finished the muffin and coffee and drove home. Looking through the mail, I found a card from my daughter. It was a note card. A nice one, expensive, a very modern design from Papyrus, just beautiful. Her inscription said: 'Good luck at the book signing.' That simple, it reduced me to tears. I became a sobbing mess.

Angel appeared. “Cry it out for a while, and then get on with it.”

The morning went by quickly, I hadn’t realized how much work had piled up. I had thirty minutes to shower and dress, which I did without thinking. I had some decent casual clothes I bought thinking they would enhance my writers image. I had no clue as to what that was. I opted instead to just dress the way I do when I write. Jeans, loose fitting outdoor shirt, jogging shoes and white athletic socks.

Can’t beat that style, I said to myself when I looked in the mirror before leaving the house. As I approached the bookstore I saw the line came out of the front door and continued around the block. As I drove by I got cold feet. I picked up my cell phone and called my agent.

“Why are there so many people outside the bookstore, do they have a water leak or something?”

“Where are you?” she asked. “We are here waiting for you. There is no problem, all those people are here to listen to you talk about writing the story, they want you to sign the books they buy. I sent a runner to another store to get more books, we are going to run out if he doesn’t get here soon. Park where you can, I will meet you at the door.” She hung up.

I drove around to a side street and parked, then jogged to the store. Amanda from the agency was waiting for me and hurried me inside. A podium had been set up at the rear of the store. The staff was busily unfolding chairs they had procured from the church down the street.

Somebody took up the microphone at the podium and announced, “Please find a seat or a comfortable place to stand. Your author is here, his talk will begin in three minutes.”

Amanda rushed me up to the podium, introduced me, and shoved the mic into my hands. I stood petrified, frozen by fear.

“Don’t be concerned sweetums, the Universe, God and I are here. Just talk, it will be perfect.”

The words came automatically as Angel said they would. I simply spoke, I spoke for twenty minutes. A nice lady presented me with 3 x 5 cards with questions on them. The cards were picked randomly so the audience had some sort of a chance to ask about the book and how I wrote it.

We broke from the podium to go to the table where I was to sign. The applause continued as I made my way to my chair. I had my favorite felt tipped pens in my pocket. Smiling people came up to me and presented their books to be signed. I politely asked their name, folks talked to me as I signed. I have no recall of any of it or any of the faces of the people who stood before me.

Except for one!

“Hi!" I said. Our eyes met and locked on to each other. She was very beautiful, just right for me, the spitting image of the heroine in my story. I could hardly hold my marker. “Who do you want me to make this out to?” I questioned, barely able to say the words.

“Angel," she answered, "my name is Angel."

August 2017

The Door at the top of the Stairs

There is a short sidewalk to a narrow 2-story house with a gabled roof and 2 dormers; the house is shuttered, gloomy, sad. I find myself on the front porch. Reaching out to grasp the door latch, the door opens on its own; I step inside to a long hallway.

The hallway is dimly lit by a 40-watt bulb protruding from a ceiling light. I see a parlor on the right and a dining room on the left. Both rooms are tastefully furnished in a style from the 1930’s. All good quality furniture.

The parlor has several overstuffed chairs with aged white doilies, the kind that are crocheted from a thick string-like cotton thread, beginning in the center and woven into knots that circle around and around. Standing on the end tables are simple, upright shaded lamps, alit with dim incandescent bulbs. The walls are covered with flowery, softly faded wallpaper; a thick well-worn oriental carpet, fills the center of the Douglas Fir planked floor.

Darkness fills the dining room. Like the parlor, the window shades are pulled down blocking the natural light from coming in. Not that it matters - in my dream it is nighttime - middle of the nighttime.

I walk down the hallway deeper into the house. The light from the parlor and hallway fades behind me. It is darker now. Closed doors to other rooms line the hall. I have no idea what is behind those doors. My skin begins to crawl. I can hear faint conversation from the end of the hall where a stairway leads up to a second story. There is a closed door at the top of the stairs. I climb the stairs, careful not to make a sound. There are many voices quarreling with each other, sometimes laughing in a grotesque way. Suddenly, the old, marked door opens. Demons, so many demons, drag me into that room and tear me to pieces.

 

The Owl at Twilight

Aubrey was laying uncomfortably in his normal position on the bed. His breathing labored, his chest ached from the constant struggle to get his breath. The hospice nurse set up a morphine drip, which would soon relieve the discomfort. He asked to have the oxygen cannula removed, it dried out his nose.

He was aware of those around him, especially Dana, whose every motion and word was imprinted on his mind through all the years of their marriage. He was also trying to recall all the wonderful experiences of the last fifty-five years they were together. A thickening fog enveloped his mind; a frustrating resistance to what he termed 'end of life wool-gathering.'

The sun rose, moving the room slowly from dark night to a comfortable lightness, there was no need to break the spell by having someone turn on the lights. The pain gave way to the power of morphine, he drifted off to sleep.

Dana sat comfortably in a chair next to his bed. Sunlight streamed through the three large windows. The trees bordering the west and north of the property were in bud, glowing purple-red in the intense sunlight.

Eventually, Aubrey heard Dana’s voice reading to him.   

When they were younger she read to him as they drove many miles on trips to faraway places. He loved the sound of her voice as she read; the longer driving days passed by quickly. She read anything they had brought along including newspaper articles, magazine stories, even catalogs. Most of all, he loved hearing her books and stories; having an 'author-wife' as he called her, had intrigued him from the beginning of their romance. 

Now, in a soft voice, Dana read him his favorite children's story, the one about Hardback Hawk and Maurice the Mouse, the one he had encouraged her to write. He felt her hand touch his.

The house was quiet; the cats had taken up permanent residence on the bed. The sun made its disappearance behind the tree line, and the color in the room changed to a yellow pink, then mauve to purple. The room became cooler, the baseboard heaters ticked as the heat came on. Dana felt a slight pressure as his fingers curled tighter around her hand; she smiled.

Dana glanced outside. Starlings made their nightly flight in a huge swarm of changing colors, geese flew in a loose pattern overhead, deer grazed in the upper meadow, chickens began to roost and a lonely owl sang a forlorn song to the coming night. Aubrey gave a shudder, fighting one last time to resist mother nature's irresistible intentions. His gentle grip fell from her hand; he was gone.

The end.

Sitting at her makeshift desk, a small rickety round table, Carolyn was exhausted, drained of any feeling. The end of all her previous novels had been greeted with a sense of thrill and elation; this one left her uncomfortable, the story was not complete.

Carolyn moved the mouse and highlighted the save icon. The dialogue box displayed: Save (Ctrl+S). The icon taunted her to make the decision. She pushed the operator key, a little circle appeared over the icon, the arrow went around and around, echoing her feeling of ambivalence about this story. In a blink the page disappeared, the empty desktop displayed an empty screen.

She decided to delay emailing her last chapter to the publisher. They had all the chapters up to now. If it wasn’t going to fly they would have told her, instead there were a steady stream of emails encouraging her to keep going.

Carolyn nudged a one inch square of cardboard underneath the table leg. The Lakehouse Inn allowed her a private nook in the back and after 25 years of annual visits, she knew how to gerry rig every weather-beaten piece of furniture. Now the Inn was quiet, the rhythmic ticking of an ancient grandfather clock the only noise. A painful feeling of the past welled up. The fact that she was alone moved her to the edge of tears. Within her manuscript, she had fallen irrevocably in love with Aubrey, and now he too was gone.

Her friend and vacation roommate Judy nudged her, elbow to elbow. Setting down a thermos of hot tea, 2 mugs and spoons, a tiny pot of honey and a wicked looking slice of pecan pie, Judy said, "Self-imposed solitude deserves an equally self-imposed indulgence."

Carolyn laughed and pointed to her laptop. "Almost finished," she said, her tone turning serious. "My character and I are disagreeing about who lives, who dies and who just lives in limbo."

Judy was a friend familiar with Carolyn's uncomfortable divorce from the man she had loved so intensely. Pausing a moment to allow each other to take deep, cleansing breaths, Judy half-smiled and asked, "A talk, a walk or a secret diversion?"

Carolyn laughed again. At first she was tempted to say no to all three but that would be giving in to the pity party she was holding for herself. Judy was right, months of concentrating on her story had made an old woman out of her. A change of pace might offer a new perspective. "Alright, I pick 'door number 3' but only if allowed full disclosure."

"I know, I know. Your characters are the only one's allowed to surprise you." Judy filled her in on the party later at the community center. "And, it's a Full-Moon party, the perfect diversion."

Taking a last sip of tea to hide her expression, Judy wasn't the only character to sneak in a hidden agenda. An hour ago, she recognized another annual Lakehouse Inn visitor who was a recent widower. Judy lost no time inviting him to the party. Clearing the table, she left with only a maybe from Carolyn.

Remembering the deleted last page of her story, Carolyn thought about the song of the lonely owl and how her character Aubrey would have felt, dying, and alone.

Opening a new document on her laptop, she typed, 'To hell with the future - never, ever worked out as I expected anyway.' Save. Power off.

Carolyn decided to throw out her inhibitions and go with the moment, a pleasant change from her normal reaction. Suddenly life seemed too short to be cautious; a thought that ignited a tiny spark of desire within her heart.

Alcohol

Alcohol is my problem, more specifically art, women and alcohol. Somehow the themes exist together. I can’t remember a day going by when one or the other hasn’t asserted itself. I can’t tell which one came first. Perhaps I started drinking because of the women.

I am afraid of giving up alcohol for fear it will kill off my creativity. Creativity nurtured by women and sex, alcohol to drown the whole sorry mess.

It amazes me that I can get anything done, my mind is in such turmoil. I am empowered to work hard, drown my negative thoughts in alcohol, divert my attention from my ruinous lifestyle with women.

Deep down I know that I can never find happiness until break the cycle of my deadly conduct. It is the fear, the fear of losing my creativity which prevents me from making a change.   

A short Love story

It is eight pm; I lie on my bed and hike up my nightgown. I look at my knees. I am not prepared for what I see, knees swollen, the left one more so, flushed and warm to the touch, the scar discolored, obvious. I stretch out my legs and stare down at them, the legs that have carried me so far, covered many miles, running, jumping, climbing, and supporting my lovers, now distorted and throbbing painfully.

I had a wonderful thought of you as I do when I am in pain. Your gentle and caring touch as you changed the dressing on my knee, your slender fingers realigning the gauze and applying the ointment, chasing away the pain. You put lotion on my bottom and remark that I have nice legs. I wonder how it will be, will you see my legs in the future, will you still think they will look okay.

It is twilight, my most difficult time of day. A pink glow begins to paint the sky, I know I cannot lie here and miss the world as it turns descending into the lavender of the gentle evening.

I have been a mess since returning from the trip, on the verge of tears most of the time. How could you know how painful my past was? I know you try, you gave me guidance not to go there anymore. I can’t avoid everything, it is better to feel the past and move on.

I get up; make my way outside, camera in hand, determined not to allow my discomfort to hold me back. I don’t want to lose the opportunity of capturing a beautiful photograph for you.      

This trip brought an end to an era, alcohol, indiscriminate sex, violence, confusion, secrets, the lack of love. It all ended as I sped away from the memories of my past; back to the possibility of you and a new life.

Blood

 

 

The steaming shower flowed over me. It was a relief to feel the dirt being washed away. Closing my eyes, I soaped up; I know every inch of my body by heart.

A sudden weakness came over me, as if I was in the presence of the demons. To preserve my balance, I opened my eyes. Blood was dripping from me to the shower floor. To find the source, I reached behind me. Blood was pouring out of me, between my legs, down the side of my thighs, turning around the soft underbelly of my knees, winding around my calves, over and under my feet, erupting in crimson spurts between my toes. The twin rivulets, bright red and purple, converged at the shower drain.

Fighting to catch my breath I opened my mouth only to disgorge a great spray of congealed blood onto the shower walls. Blood flowed from my nose, my eyes, my ears and my penis; I was bleeding out.

If I fell, I knew the noise would startle her, she would find me before I died. I wanted to go, I couldn’t go on living, the demons are too much for me anymore.

Angel appeared next to me, holding me up.

“This is not your time, you are not going now, close your eyes to this, I will save you.”

Her loving words restored my sanity. I stood quietly listening to the running water and the rhythmic tempo of the exhaust fan.

The feeling passed, I opened my eyes; there was no blood, just the same stream of shower water washing away the dirt.

It is like this many times when I shower. I turn off the water and stand there looking out through the translucent shower curtain trying to determine if demons are on the other side. Gathering my resolve, I fling open the curtain. The bathroom is empty as it has been for the last sixty-five years.

The after effects of unwanted sexual experiences have stayed with me all my life.

Slowly they are dissipating. I am getting better now.  

The Shooting      March 2016

Aubrey held the revolver in both hands. It was much heavier than he anticipated, he had difficulty holding the weapon away from his body. Placing both thumbs on the hammer spur, he cocked the revolver with all the strength he could muster. A fresh round latched firmly into the place where the hammer would eventually fall. He held his aim in the middle of the Preacher's chest.

Aubrey cried out, "don’t come any closer, put the ax down or I will shoot you." Tears were welling up in Aubrey’s eyes blurring his vision. It was no longer possible for him to align the sights; the barrel weaved around circumscribing a larger and larger circle.

The preacher saw that Aubrey was losing his resolve. He made the tragic mistake of assuming Aubrey wouldn’t shoot. Holding the ax high over his head he made a lunge at Aubrey screaming; “You little bastard, I am going kill you and your whore of a mother."

A strange calm came over Aubrey. Relieved of making a choice he squeezed the trigger. The discharge was far more violent than Aubrey expected, his adrenalin-fueled-grip kept the gun from flying out of his hands. The barrel flipped up to the left. Aubrey realigned the gun back to his intended target, but before he could cock the hammer he saw a change come over the man he had just shot.

The preacher’s expression went from wild rage, to disbelief, to acceptance. The rage and violence he had inflicted on others was turned on him by the boy he never could have been. Slowly the preacher lowered the ax. He released his grip on the handle. The ax fell onto the blade and stuck in the floor. The preacher’s knees buckled, he squatted down and fell over. With an inaudible moan he was dead.      

The Tight Wire

There was less than a thousand feet to go. The wire was heating up, the grease working itself out between the fine strands. During all the years he had spent learning, he found the wire had a life of its own, telling him everything, telegraphing it's feelings through the buffalo hide soles of his slippers. But now, the wire was telling him it was dying.

Over the last several years, he had made other daring walks; this was the most ambitious. He told very few about his plans until the last months. He visited the site often, studying the weather and practicing the walk over and over in his mind. He studied the tables calculating the strain on the wire; it was exposed, he was vulnerable, but the walk was possible.

Prepared in France, the wire was the finest of its kind, very strong, attention had been paid when it was woven. As always, he had supervised the rigging for this walk, spending hours going from side to side checking the tension and the security of the anchors. This change in temperature was unexpected. He had waited for three days for overcast, cool weather, with no wind. Halfway through, the sun broke through the clouds and warmed the wire. Had the gods parted the clouds to peer down at his walk? The tightwire began to slacken from the heat; a fresh breeze made balance difficult. He must have offended the gods, one cannot walk wire without the consent of the gods.

He knew what he told them during the interviews - concentration, training, balance, and an athletes grace was the secret of walking tight - yet in his heart he knew the real secret. Walking was the province of the gods. You must always be in grace with the gods because only they prevented your fall.

Wallenda fell in South America, they said he didn't supervise the rigging. He had offended the gods by calling it "The Last Great Walk."

Concentrate. The wire was steeper than it should have been, quivering, unraveling beneath his toes. He could tell the direction where it was failing. With his pole he signaled the riggers on the approach side. He could see them frantically checking the rigging, never mind, the wire would fail someplace they would never reach.

He had been afraid before. At first he felt paralyzed, his legs turned to lead, he stopped and balanced. The braided wire dropped one inch, the ends of his pole deflected up one inch. He began to walk and then run across the tightwire, the weight of 38 years of life left his body. He was light; he flew across a wire that was no longer pressed against the callused, godless soles of his feet.                 

                                                                                          ALONE

She drives home from town. The car has rust everywhere, around the fenders and the bottom of the doors. The steps up to the apartment shake as they have for the last seven years. What was she to expect from an outside staircase? At least the landlord painted it two years ago, but now the red stain was fading and becoming powdery. Damp patches show on the steps shaded by the trees.

After showering, she checks the drain for hair and being satisfied of it's cleanliness, she goes through the ritual of preparing herself for her date.

He's new, she met him at work. she supposes he will be like all the rest. The endless stream of men; all of them wanting, all of them lacking. She takes them to bed and uses their bodies to satisfy a hungry that she can't identify. Now she checks the room, it is freshly made up and everything is in order.

The car door closes outside, and she is filled with fear. Weakly she greets him at the door. It's off to a bad start. They drive, it is a new car, clean, like him. They talk about who they both know and other small things.

In the morning she tries to duplicate the position they were in the night before. She draws her knees up to her breasts and spreads her legs to the empty room. She touches herself and then the empty bed; dissatisfied, she covers herself and rolls towards the wall and sleeps until mid-afternoon.

She returns from Joan's wedding to an empty apartment. What a scene it was, people pretending to be happy and to be "OH SO GLAD" for Joan. Rob! where did she find that jerk anyway. Gary calls and she tells him she feels ill, he says he will call back.

                                                                                                    ***

"Who found her?"

"One of her boyfriends went over when she didn't show up for work." "She was dead in the bath, she must have done it Sunday night." "How do they get that many pills?"

"This one's pretty."

"Yeah, Lois upstairs said she fucked every man she met." "Must have been real lonely."

 

The Gift of Happiness

Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very unhappy. He asked his mom how to be happy again. She told him the Angel of Happiness will visit him in his sleep and give him the Gift of Happiness.

"What does the Angel of Happiness look like?" the little boy asked.

"No one has ever seen the Angel of Happiness, the Angel is so beautiful there are no words to describe her." his mother replied.

"How does the gift work?"

"You must think of someone who wants to be happy. Then when the Angel gives you the Gift of Happiness, you must give it away to that person."

That night when the little boy was fast asleep, the Angel of Happiness came to him and placed the Gift of Happiness in his arms. When the little boy awoke, he was holding a small box wrapped in beautiful paper.

The boy told his mother about the gift. She told him to take the gift to school with him and when he finds the friend who is in need of happiness, he must give that friend the gift.

One of the little boy's friends was very unhappy, his mother was very ill. The little boy took the finely wrapped Gift of Happiness and gave it to his friend. "Give this gift to your mother and the happiness will make your mother well."

The next day at school his friend told him he had given the Gift of Happiness to his mom and that she became very happy and healthy.

That night when the little boy fell asleep, the Angel of Happiness appeared and placed another Gift of Happiness in his arms.

Now the young boy understood that in order to be happy, you must give happiness away. Once you do, you will never be unhappy again.

Angel

December 8, 2014

 

My First Attempts at Flying

You should not be worried about my abilities as a pilot. My first attempts at flying did not involve a real airplane. They came about because I spent hours daydreaming about becoming a pilot. Yes, when I was a little kid, daydreaming occupied most of my waking hours; and yes, I did crash during one of those flights, which explains my current unusual state of mind.

You see, as a five-year-old I was able to fly, as a matter of fact, I was a very accomplished pilot. My admission that I crashed may have caught your attention, and since many of you have flown with me, this begs an explanation. Had there been headlines in the Philly papers, they would have read, "Five-year-old's Flight ends in Crash."

At the tender age of five, boys fly in the following manner: Extend arms out from body, palms facing down. Make sounds like jet planes starting. Lower head and sweep back arms into a streamlined confiquration for flight. Increase jet engine sounds until they reach afterburner intensity - then run like hell.

During the time I was involved in these flights, I was also attending elementry school.The school was a one-story brick building in the shape of a long rectangle. The brick patterns on the outside walls made a convenient way to heighten my visual sensation of speed. I would run as close to the wall, as fast as I could, the patterns in the bricks would fly by, which simulated what pilots must see when they fly close to the ground. In military terms, flying: `map-of-the earth.` The brick patterns racing by my vision became hypnotic and I became deeply engrossed in my quest for speed.

At the time I was brick-flying, shall we say, I was unaware that a hose bib was inconveniently installed higher up on one of the school's outside walls. `The devil is in the details` - I had skipped one of the important steps in flight planning - be familiar with the route you would attempt to fly.

I was en route at high speed alongside one of the walls, head down, arms swept back, jet engine sounds in full afterburner, lunch pail and school project carefully secured under my right wing - BLAM! - the cockpit went black and everything became very quiet.

But alas, I was the first person to arrive at the scene of my accident and what a horrible mess, arms and legs akimbo, my marmalade sandwich half out of the wax paper laying there next to the open lunch pail. My highly polished apple was still spinning around on the ground next to the open ten-pack of Crayola crayons.

Rushing to the scene of the tragedy, a bystander exclaimed, "What happened?"

"I crashed."

If you have ever wondered how I grew up into an unusual man, well, now you have the smashing answer.

My Angel Uses Lipstick

Sometimes I worry over my Angel; she must be into some kinky stuff with the others in her life, because when we spend time together, she makes unusual `requests.`

The other afternoon I was minding my own business working at my easel, drawing, when poof, she appears. My Angel is so beautiful that she never needs clothes or makeup - nothing can improve on her heavenly looks - her beauty is such that non-believers would turn dumb if they could cast their vision on her.

Just because she doesn't wear makeup and clothes, doesn't mean she isn't interested in makeup and clothes. She gets her fashion kicks by taking them out on me.

Our last encounter transpired as follows:

Angel: "Take off your clothes."

Me: "Why?"

Angel: "Because I want to play dress up."

Me: "Can't you dress up yourself?"

Angel: "You know that's not possible, so get undressed. Here I'll help!"

No point in arguing with my Angel, so I complied with her request. "Stop helping, that tickles." No matter, she continued to rudely remove my jeans and tidy whities as I removed my shirt.

There I was nude, standing next to my easel, the opposite, of course, on how art is usually done.

"Come with me." We proceeded to the bedroom where she made me sit at her dressing table. My Angel began to apply the foundation to my face with her makeup brush, occasionally deftly using the brush on my other parts to see if she could get a rise; she was very successful in that endeavor. Then she skillfully applied the blush, eyeliner, highlights and lipstick. I entered a calming trance as she attended to me, plus I could see the satisfying results appear in the mirror.

"Go get one of your favorite shirts from the closet and put it on me," she commanded. I dutifully did as instructed placing my favorite black dress shirt on her. I buttoned the shirt, leaving the top two buttons, and the last lower button, undone. There she was, standing in front of me in a shirt too large for her, which just the same, barely managed to cover her modesty.

"Now kiss me, over my face and body as slowly and softly as you dare; don't stop even if I protest."

We were standing by the mirror; I could see her outline in my shirt, wonderfully curvaceous with a bump out the back where my shirt enclosed her wings. I began to kiss her gently, first on each cheek, then on across her forehead and behind her ear. My Angel is invisible to all except to me. I could see the lipstick on her, but in the mirror all that was seen was a black shirt with lipstick kisses and an invisible form swaying in front of me.

I continued as directed, stopping only so she could silently refresh the lipstick on my lips. Unbuttoning the black shirt, I applied the lipstick kisses on her breasts, navel, hips, and the wondrous bush between her thighs. All the while she sang me a wondrous, hauntingly beautiful, song that only Angels can sing.

Things where moving very quickly for me, I was getting in my own way, and her song was becoming more audible and increasing in tempo. Just at the very moment that things were getting out of hand, so to speak, the doorbell rang.

"Oh crackers!" she exclaimed. "Were you expecting anyone?"

"Just an art supply delivery," I said. "I'll go and settle this, then get the mood back."

"Right behind you Lich-tenstein."

We went to the front door together and upon opening, confronted the UPS man. He didn't seem surprised at the spectacle before him: a nude man sporting full make-up with smeared lipstick on his chin, cheeks and neck, and behind him a floating black shirt with lipstick kisses hovering above, throughout and below.

I signed for the package, and as he turned to leave, the UPS guy said. "Have a nice day ma'am."

My Angel Comes to Me Only When I am Able to Accept Her

Occasionally I lose contact with my Angel. I know she's there, how can this be? My Angel is always ready to give me comfort when I need it. Why does she abandon me?

I must be in the correct frame of mind to be able to receive my Angels comfort. If I am closed off, and have selfish thoughts, if my mind is full of envy, if I am angry and resentful, these thoughts block my Angel's ability to arrive and comfort me.

If I am open to her possibility, if I am capable of understanding that there are many things I do not know, if my mind is empty of corrosive thoughts, if I am ready to enter her world of unlimited possibilities, and endless creativity; then my Angel will surround me with her love, and infuse me with her strength.

My Angel Shops at Giant

"I need to go to Giant."

"What for?"

"Cat food."

"Can I come?"

"I really wish you wouldn't."

"Why can't I come?"

"Because you constantly whisper remarks that are full of sexual innuendo."

"No one can hear them; they're all in your mind."

"It throws me off, I can't concentrate on what I am shopping for, and that's how I forgot the cat food in the first place."

"I'll be good, I promise, besides my job is to be there for you, and heaven knows you really need that, it is why I am here in the first place."

"Okay, only if you keep to your promise and let me do this on my own."

"My it's hot; it must be 95F out here."

"Yeah; and it's crowded. I shouldn't have waited until 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon to do this."

"Look at those women, they hardly have anything on!"

"See, there you go again, already making sexy remarks."

"I'm only stating the obvious. There goes the amazon you saw last week, that body doesn't quit."

"Maybe she'll burst out of that top!"

"I'll get a small cart in case we need some other stuff."

"Okay we'll start here in produce."

"I think you should get some cucumbers, bananas, cumquats; whoa, look at those melons!"

"Get some oysters, you need them."

"See, I told you this would degenerate into sexual innunendo."

"I want some cherries and whipped cream so we can do it on the floor in the kitchen, just like last week."

"Stop, for Pete's sake you're distracting me."

"Hey wait, there is that fox you bumped into in the cereal aisle last week; what a show stopper."

"I'm kind of partial to the redhead over by the yogurt."

"Let's go, I'm getting horny."

"It's about time."

"What do you mean; we just did it in the shower before coming here."

"That was then, this is now."

"Get in this line, its moving pretty fast."

"It's got too many women."

"What's up with that?"

"I'll get an erection and get embarrassed."

"Yeah, you only wish."

"They'll see the bulge and it'll throw me off and I won't be able to count change."

"Deal with it and let's get going, I want to go to CVS and look for condoms."

"You don't need condoms; angels don't get preggers; do they?"

"I like the kind with the little warts all over them; it makes for a special feel."

"Get in the car and let's go home."

"I can't wait to do it in the kitchen again, besides whipped cream and cherries are one of the major food groups."

"Whew, finally in the safety of our own home." "Uh, oh!"

"What's the matter now?"

"I forgot the cat food!"

Behind the Hay Bales

"Remember that evening last summer behind the hay bales?"

"Oh wow, how could I forget?"

"It was so special, with the full moon coming up just at dusk." "It was warm and dry, so inviting, we were having such a good time fooling around out in that field."

"You were awesome!"

"Yes, I know; many have told me that!"

"You were so patient, and gentle, taking your time, getting everything just right."

"I enjoy taking my time with something that important."

"Most of the others I know go at it too quickly." "You know how to touch in all the right places; you know how to get my motor running!"

"How did you get that special touch, and your tool; so big and you use it so creatively?"

"I got the touch from working on my motorcycle, and the tool came from Tractor Supply."

"Sure glad we got the car running, otherwise we would have been out there all night without anything to do."

"We would have thought of something."

The Corn Field

"My; winter is sure holding us back from doing it outdoors, and I miss that."

"Me too; remember last August when we did it in the corn field."

"How could I forget?"

"What is so good about doing it outdoors anyway?"

"It makes me feel naughty, it's exciting, and I like the adventure of it; all that adds to its pleasure."

"What's the matter; isn't it as much fun for you?"

"You're an Angel, I'm a human; there's a difference you know."

"What difference?"

"No one can see you, they only can see me. If others saw me they may find that strange. Then of course there's the fact that we are not really alone in the corn field."

"What! who else is out there?"

"There was that flock of turkeys we scared up. Then the herd of deer, the snake, geese, mice, the guy from the Agriculture Department, and the 4H club, for starters."

"I think someone saw us."

"Why is that?"

"Well, remember that article in the Intell, "Albino Water Buffalo, sighted in Upper Bucks cornfield."

"You have to admit maybe there is a shade of truth in that. Why don't you get one of those Chuck Norris workout benches and shave a few pounds off?"

"There are some other issues."

"Yeah, like what?"

"When you get it on, you start flapping your wings real hard and that stirs up all the pollen; and I end up with an Asthma attack."

"Use your inhaler!"

"Then there was that swarm of mosquitos."

"That had an upside."

"What was that?"

"They got you in that place and it made it bigger!"

"Well, I'm still scratching."

"I've noticed."

"Then I stepped in the deer poop and it got between my toes."

"Stop complaining, it cured your athletes foot."

"Lastly I haven't been able to get the mud stains out of my undershorts."

"Oh; is that what that's from."

"Anyway; was it as good for you as it was for me?"

 

Lovers

He opened the patio door. The smell of the early summer arrived with the heat of the afternoon. A wind stirred along the tree line, bending the golden grass in the adjacent field; a hot wind, dryer than the day before. He had little clothing on. He lingered in the open doorway letting the air wash the moisture from his body. It was this way more than a year ago when they spent the summer together.

The same hot dry air rode into the room and washed over her body as she lay naked on his bed. He could see the soft curls of her hair move with the breeze, she stirred gently; he stared at her intently, trying to absorb the completeness that was her body. He was so much in love with her. She had been crying; the stain of her tears still on her cheeks, the wetness of their love on her thighs.

He sighed, moved from the doorway and finished dressing, the warm wind washed across the empty bed.

 

The Convertible

When they first met, she thought he was stuck up. As the winter passed, she realized, it was only his reserved manner.

Now, with the top down, they drove the low road, the cool dampness of the night, a change from the dry heat of the day. The slight chill made her press against him. She held his arm with both hands, small red nails lightly touching the crispness of his shirt.

He drove at a comfortable speed, making smooth turns and accelerating slightly on the long straight-a-ways. The engine made a satisfying whine; low vibrations from the powerful exhaust beat the misty air. He put a lot of care into keeping the convertible just right. The warm glow of the instrument panel complemented the sweet smell of tender blossoms spilling over the windshield. From the mud along the river bank, frogs sang a night song.

He slowed and turned off to a dirt road under the maple trees, tires crunching the cinders from a long ago abandoned railroad line along the canal.

She removed her shorts and bikini briefs, lying back and twisting around to meet him.  He leaned across the seat and gently pushed his hand between her legs and with the other, cupped the small of her neck and pulled her warm face, with her scented fine hair, to his cheek.

The smell of her hair had been with him for the last few weeks; it was more than a year since she left him.

Swimming Lessons

I have always wondered what possessed my mother to sign me up for swimming lessons. She had her reasons: perhaps in her day, more than sixty years ago, being well-rounded meant a child should be able to swim. Perhaps she wanted me to be able to keep up with my Canadian cousins, all of them very able swimmers. Perhaps it was the “thing” to do. Or, perhaps she just wanted to do her best for her only son.

My mother was fifty-one-years-old and I was just eight. I had come along very late in her life, a great surprise and inconvenience to her I am sure. Unpredictable events always arose at our house. We had recently moved and I was enrolled into a new elementary school, which offered outside activities for the students including lessons. This was also the third elementary school in three years.

The first two elementary schools were in Philadelphia, I was never comfortable in school, but those two schools were friendly places and I knew some of the kids. We all walked to school, the classrooms had a place in the back for our yellow slickers and rain boots. There were no lockers, the facilities were old and warm, in a homey sort of way.  Adults looked out for us on our way walking back and forth to school. The walk itself was fun, I had a purpose, something to do each day, and when I was alone, I got to fly my make believe jet plane along the endless brick walls.

The new school in Pottstown was different, it was structured. I took a bus each way, it was miles from home. Taking a bus was a disappointment to me for I enjoyed walking to school. I stoically waited for everything, for all the coming and going and the lines to the hallways and classrooms. The school had individual lockers; everything was regulated by the ringing of a bell. I had to have a pass to be in the hall. The bathroom was called a lavatory, which I initially misconstrued as laboratory. Because of my confusion over that name, it took me half of my first day at that school to ask to go to the bathroom.

You see, at that stage in my life I was painfully shy - not just shy - abnormally shy. My daily plan was to take the bus to school, attract as little attention as possible, then go home and play with my trains. In class, I sat in the back, seat assignments were alphabetical by last name. Once home, I was free for a while before the pain started all over the next morning. My mother, with her good intentions, had thrown a wrench into the works with these swimming lessons.

I had very little to say in the process of setting up the lessons. In those days, children at school acted as couriers, important documents between the parents and the school were delivered by hand by the child and signed off on and executed without evidence, complaint or knowledge by the child. In this way, my mother was able to set up and execute her plan.             

For me, the plan was fatally flawed. One of the flaws was I would have to change my carefully crafted daily plan. Once a week, I was to wait after school for a special bus, which would take us to swimming lessons, and after the lessons, drop us off at our regular bus stop. The second flaw was that the swimming lessons were to be at the YMCA, a place I had never heard of and didn’t want to find out about. By far the biggest flaw in the plan was I didn’t have a bathing suit. Bathing suits were optional for little boys, whatever that meant. Many families, including mine, didn’t have the money to buy unnecessary clothing which would be worn infrequently. Did it mean I would be nude? Was I to wear my ratty underwear? What were GYM shorts anyway? What was GYM? What was an athletic supporter, how did you put them on, were they uncomfortable, could they do double duty as a slingshot? I spent hours trying to understand how this might go down. The plan was in place and I wasn’t going to do anything about it.

A month before the plan was to be executed, I began to worry. We had driven by the YMCA to check out the route and satisfy my mother’s curiosity. It was an imposing gray stone building which occupied the lion’s share of a city block. Probably it was built in the thirties; it was old, ornate, and uninviting. The town was an industrial town in decline. The general decay of the town put me in a down mood. As time moved closer to the first lesson I became anxious, the days were painted gray like those gray stone walls on the YMCA.

On the appointed day, I got up in an anxious mood after a fitful sleep. Worn out before the day had begun, I went through the motions of the accustomed routine to get ready for school. I had my bowl of Cheerios, and dressed in the clothes I had worn the day before, only to take the special precaution of making sure yesterday’s underwear was in acceptable condition.

Mom had my lunch pail in hand at the door, and to my relief, a brown paper shopping bag with a brand new pair of blue bathing trunks, and a well-worn but familiar gray bath towel, which matched the color of my present mood.

I trudged out the door and waited reluctantly for the school bus to deliver me to school and perhaps my last day on earth.

I began to worry, I was good at worrying, I could blow up the smallest thing into a catastrophe. If there was nothing to worry about my creative mind would think something up. As I look back at my school years, it was a wonder I received an education, I would lurch from one worry to the next completely preoccupied by their circumstances. This worry was a big one. Things went through my mind: what would happen if I couldn’t find the right bus, what would happen if I missed the bus? Would I drown? Did the YMCA have windows open to the street? Would strangers be able to see me, or worse, would they see I was naked! Yes, I was building a powerful case.     

Then all of a sudden the days had gone by and it was the day I was to take the first lesson. On that day my legs turned to jelly, I had loose bowels, the pint of milk I had at lunch was piled up on the baloney sandwich half way down to my stomach. I was losing control of my thought process; I went on auto pilot, moving through the school day as if in a dream.

When the three-thirty bell sounded, I gathered my stuff and like the prisoners in the movie “The Green Mile,” I walked slowly out to the curb and to the bus.

The sight of the bus gave me fresh hope that the day was not going to end badly. You see it was not a regular yellow school bus; no this was a real bus, a bus people went places in. It was streamlined with fluted stainless steel accents on the sides. The rear windows were inverted, the back end was rounded and those windows gave the back a face like that of the mask of Batman. The front was slightly rounded and a visor came out from the roof to shade the windshield from the sun. The bus was running, it had a powerful low throb which belied the power of the engine tucked away from sight in the back. The front door was open, the clean steps invited entry. A thick nickel steel bar connected the driver to the door so it could be secured from the inside. Teachers and pleasant looking adults stood outside guiding us into the bus. I had my empty lunch pail, my pencils, sharpener, notebook and a shopping bag with my bathing suit and towel in it. This might work out okay if I could stay out of view and not call any attention to myself.

Had I known the bus driver today, I would tell you he was a nice man. He probably had a wife and children, perhaps grandchildren. He had a happy demeanor; he stood up in front of us and gave us instructions. Stay in our seats, do not stand on the seats, do not place our shoes against the back of the seat in front of us, and if we caused trouble he would pull over and put us off. This was his bus and those were his rules. After charging us with his remarks, he swung into the driver’s seat, deftly pulled on the nickel steel rod, the door went satisfyingly closed and we were off.

I had never been in a bus like this; up until that moment, bus travels had been restricted to the yellow school bus. The school did not have enough yellow buses to complete a regular school day and still have buses for extracurricular activities. Whatever the reason, I was enjoying my ride, which helped to ease the burden of the thoughts of the impending swimming lessons.

After a short comfortable ride, we swung up to the curb at the YMCA and one of the adults got out to guide us into the building and block traffic while we unloaded. I went into the main doors with the others and up a short wide flight of steps, a left turn put us at more doors and then into the room that contained the pool and locker rooms. I could smell the chlorine from outside the first set of doors. The large pool room was well-lighted, every sound echoed, a low hum of the pumps that circulated the pool water was hardly audible over the sounds of the boys from the first class making loud noises in order to hear their echoes.

The pool was very large; the surface was still in motion from the last occupants who had just finished their lessons, the tile floor wet from the exit of the last swimmers. I didn’t see any bodies floating in the pool so I imagined everyone had made it out with their lives. However, this may not be my luck.       

The thought of having to undress in front of other people in a locker room was weighing heavily on my mind. The thought of others being able to see my skinny body, with my private parts being covered only by a blue pair of swim trunks that may fall to my knees unexpectedly at any time was dominating my entire thought process.

We were directed to an open doorway leading to the locker room, only a painted block wall barricaded the view of those inside from prying eyes, I felt very uncomfortable as if all in the world were able to see me. I made a beeline to a locker at the very end of the room and well out of the line of sight of the open doorway. The locker was unlocked, I put the paper bag containing my bathing suit and towel on the long wooden seat, which lined the wall of lockers and swung the locker door open.

Carefully hiding as much of my body that I could, I began to undress and hang my clothing on the hooks inside the locker. Others stood blatantly out from the lockers and removed all their clothing and revealed themselves stick, stark naked to everyone who cared to look. Occasionally, I stole a glance at the other nude boys in order to determine if somehow my body was different. Being satisfied that we were all mostly the same, I removed all my clothing except my underpants. At that point, I was tempted to pull my bathing suit on over my underpants, but I reasoned out that I would then have to put my clothes on over a wet pair of under drawers after the lesson. I had procrastinated for so long that most all the boys had slipped into their bathing suits and left the locker room. I heard one of the adult men call “is anyone still in here,” and with that I made a lunge out of my underpants and in one well-rehearsed slick move donned my swimming trunks and yelled back, “I’m ready, will be right out.”  

Walking from the locker room I saw that the other boys had lined up at the edge of the pool. I found a place at the edge and lined up with them. A serious looking adult man proceeded to give us instructions about the first lesson. We were to stand at the edge of the pool and hold our arms outstretched over our heads, and with one hand hold the wrist of the other arm. When commanded, we were to take a deep breath and simply lean forward and fall face forward in an arc into the water, arms first.

I did as instructed and on the command fell into the pool, not arms first, but more completely flat onto my belly. When I hit the water, I took the deep breath and inhaled an entire boatload of pool water into my lungs.

I was going down. I heard the words from the submarine movies, “Take her down, dive, dive!" As I descended, I knew I was drowning and made the decision not to resist my inglorious fate and just go with the program my god had laid out for me.

Resting on the bottom of the pool in a bathing suit two sizes too big for me, I took a moment to assess my plight. All of a sudden, nature's plan for my survival took hold of me, and rejected any thoughts I had of resting on the bottom; in one powerful move my little legs sprang my body upward to the surface. I paddled as hard as I could and when I was almost to the surface, a powerful arm plunged down through the water and grabbed me and pulled me forcefully from the pool. I lay at the pools edge coughing out the water and struggling to get air into my lungs.

I lay coughing and crying in a puddle of pool water, when the owner of the arm sat me upright next to her warm chlorine and suntan lotion smelling body and with her life-saving arm, wrapped a towel around my shivering little body and held me close. She became my Mother Goose, and I was the ugly duckling cowering beneath her wing. 

Time, as they say, heals all wounds and when I stopped shivering and crying, my guardian angel-savior asked me if I thought I may want to try diving into the pool again. Since I was still living, and the other boys seemed to be having such a good time, the fear left me and I stood beside her and with arms stretched high above my head, I took a big breath in, folded over and in a graceful arc, entered the water perfectly.

And that my friend, is how I completed my first swimming lesson.