A Good Life

Scraped Knuckles

He sat quietly, robed in white, amongst his classmates dressed the same. One by one they were called to the center of the room and offered up a one-inch thick piece of wood to break either with their fists or with a well-placed kick. He was the youngest student by at least a year and he was nervous. His instructor had started this portion of the test by announcing to the audience of parents and relatives that he had been unable to procure three-quarter inch boards and the test would therefore demand much more from each of the students. By merit of his last name, he was one of the final students to be called to the center. He bowed, he got into proper stance, and he struck. His fist met the board and bounced back stinging and swollen. His instructor raised the board up and said, "Try again." He brought down his fist again and was again unable to break the board.

"Try a kick this time." 

He took a new stance and, lifting his leg up, his knee almost to his chest, kicked his foot straight out into the center of the board. The force of the kick went into the board and was dealt back to him sending him toppling over onto the linoleum. His instructor extended a hand and said, "That's alright, next time." And he returned to his plastic chair, humiliated.

Months later, as he sat in the passenger seat of his mother's truck he saw the building where the test had taken place being lifted off of the ground and set on the backs of immense trailers. He was at first awestruck and then immediately dejected. The building uprooted; there would be no next time.

Sidewalks

And with apprehension he thrust himself out the door and into the city night. It was approaching two in the morning and the streets were crowded with the drunk, the drugged, and the delirious headed from one door closing towards another soon to open. Those women still sober enough to manage perched high atop shoes too impractical for the sidewalks strewn with trash, glass, beer, urine, and vomit. Others splashed through the filth, their feet bare, shoes already forgotten in the basement of some frat or clutched dangling from one hand. The men listed from one side of the walk to the other; all confrontational and at one moment sincere and defensive, at the next leering, aggresive, and sarcastic; all drunk. He walked quickly, his eyes fixed on the space immediately before his feet. He judged them all as they passed, eyes sort of perpetually, mentally rolling as each group walked by.

It was convenient for his walk towards the campus to take him through these throngs of the stupid, indulgent, and drunk. It distracted him from what, upon even momentary reflection, he would consider a lapse into indulgence and weakness that was disturbing and inexcusable. He walked among these sinners en route to a girl who he hardly knew and liked less. A girl he would fuck noiselessly over the headboard of her dorm bed as her room-mate lay passed out mere feet away in an inebriated coma. Whom, after he had finished would stand up and say, "Alright, get the fuck out." And he would head back out into the night, the streets now emptied, and make his way home.

The young man kneels naked on the tile, head bowed  low. She stands over him at his back, scissors held in one hand, a toroiseshell patterned comb in the other. She laughs nervously into his ear as she makes deliberate, slow cuts. A cut quicker than the rest is followed by, "uh... oooh. Oh."

He glances up into the mirror, trying not to seem alarmed. Reflected back he sees only the top of his head and her behind, calm, confident. From her fingers drops a sheaf of fresh-cut hair.

He is transformed, for better or for worse.

"If I were given a match that could burn it all, I would strike it without a second thought."

Darkness and Friendship

Every window a frame, the world outside a picture. In Texas, strip malls and water towers sprung up from the earth like weeds on a patio. Simon and Garfunkel came on the radio and for a minute, just one minute, he was back in his dorm in 2005 with the lights of sirens flashing across the walls.

Sunday

"And it's all so much bullshit, Thomas, I really believe that," Warren said, smiling.
Thomas stared, unblinking, out the window and across the parking lot through steam rising hot off the tarmac at two girls entering the Rite-Aid. Both wore black hooded sweatshirts despite the heat and humidity that had settled over the town earlier that week. He could feel his forehead slicked with sweat. As he reached up his arm to wipe the sweat away, he could feel his skin sticking to the cheap vinyl upholstery of Warren's sedan.
"Jesus Warren, can't you turn the A/C on? It's 90 fucking degrees, man."
Warren tilted his head out the window and spit with a cautious, methodical movement of his lips that Thomas could not help but interpret as condescension before replying slowly, "Shit Tom, it's a beautiful fucking day."
And as he looked down the length of the bench seat at Thomas, his eyes earnest and honest, the sky darkened suddenly and rain began to fall, gradually at first and then with increasing intensity. Warren smiled as he pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and stuck it ceremoniously in his mouth.
Thomas rolled his eyes, sighed, and looked back out the window to see the two girls standing in the middle of the lot, their hooded figures partially obscured by rainfall, with arms outstretched and faces pointed skyward; praying for rain.

White Noise

Down along the open expanse of soft skin across which lay hair unwashed he traced a single finger. The skin pulled and shrank then expanded once more, a pinkish wake cut by a cuticled prow. These idle moments of inaction brought them close. In silence they sit, cold televised glow tinting skin blue; the walls iridescent.

"'id you say somethin'?"

"Nothing."

And their eyes close together. And they are in love.

Straw

Early that morning they sat cross-legged on the cracked floor looking upwards at the window and the world outside. 

Somewhere beyond the window a bird called out as the city sank a little farther down into the soft ground on which it stood.

The Collossus

Last night I lay asleep and dreaming. I dreamt of a cliff overlooking the ocean on a clear day; a brilliant blue sky with white clouds scattered sparsely to the horizon. Green grass grew right to the edge of the cliff. A few paces from the edge stood a few white walls. A small crowd had taken shelter behind these walls and I stood with them. I remember people in the crowd being familiar and friendly to me. But we cowered behind the walls. I did not understand their fear until I looked around the corner. I saw a giant striding through the ocean, hundreds of feet tall. He was naked. He had the features of a young, attractive man. He seemed drunk. We were all terrified and tried not to be seen.

As the giant drew near to us, a young woman broke from our ranks and strode out to the cliff's edge, disrobing as she went. When she reached the cliff, she stood with her arms outsretched and the wind blew her hair gently. The giant took notice of her and reached down. We held our collective breath in terror. 

He grasped her in his hands and, bringing her up to the middle of his chest, tore her effortlessly limb from limb. The pieces of her body fell down to the ocean below. 

My heart sank with them. The giant turned and strode off, his hands stained red with blood.

This Hurts

"What do you do about a sadness as deep and relentless as this?" she asked, voice wavering; a tremolo. 

And you calmly told her that things weren't so bad after all and that life is worth living and that she hurt today but she might not hurt tomorrow and that she really had it pretty good after all if only she could stop for a second and just realize it and if only she could see herself like you saw her she'd understand how great she really was and she'd be happy to be herself after all.

And the words kept coming for nearly two hours and you thought you had made quite an impression and that maybe she felt just a little better about herself.

And she gave you a little smile before rolling over and closing her eyes when you finally ended by looking at her plaintively and asked, "I mean... you know?"

But the next day, sitting in the heat alone and sweating you realized that she was probably just as sad as she had been before you opened your mouth. What do you do?

Memories

I have forgotten already so much of my life; memories like wax figures in the sun begin to lose their shape and coherence before disappearing completely. I grasp at them, sometimes desperately; details drift away into the aether. Despite this, I am perpetually nostalgic. The details, I have discovered, are secondary in importance to the feelings those memories can call back up from the depths of my chest, though they are not necessarily happy ones. I remember the first date that I went on with my girlfriend of four years. I remember the last words I said to my grandmother as she lay on her deathbed, slowly starving. I remember the feeling of the sun on my face. I remember birthday cakes decorated with toy trucks. I remember the texture of thick carpet between my toes. I remember the smell of the halls in my elementary school. I remember a darkened basement and pedaling in circles and children laughing.

I remember the humility and astonishment I felt while standing at the very edge of oblivion; beneath a night sky so vast and containing so many points of light that I was unable to blink, unable to move for fear of disappearing into it completely. I am born of Ohio but was, for the most part, raised in the countryside of New Jersey. Even amongst the rural landscapes of my childhood, the light of nearby New York City drenched the horizon in a perpetual orange glow that washed out all but the most stubborn stars. The window of the room in which I live today stands opposite a street lamp whose incandescent light buzzes persistently through the cracks of cheap venetian blinds left always down. And yet, I can still remember lying on a blue tarp stretched across desert sand; surrounded on all sides by the bodies of my sleeping companions. We had rolled into the campground (or was it a ghost town? Or a theme park?) in the middle of the night. We were unshowered and immensely tired. We had spent hours in cramped vans traversing the great wasteland of the American Southwest. There were twenty of us, united for a month of outdoor adventuring. We decided, out of an eagerness to get to sleep as quickly as possible and because the night air was so warm, to forgo tents and sleep on our mats alone, without shelter. This memory has a feeling attached to it; a feeling of contentedness and wonderment and sleep falling over me. I slept under nothing but a blanket of stars that night, the desert air still and silent. In my mind, my eyes never close, and I lie beneath as much universe as I have ever seen for a night that lasts forever.

I remember another night. I remember driving aimlessly around in the rain in Jacob's Mustang, my face misted with rain blown through the window cracked by Dane, smoking. I remember Jacob at the wheel and Dane shotgun. But who was beside me in the back? The details are, again, elusive. But the smell of the car mingling with that of cigarettes, teenage boys, and rain-soaked countryside is unmistakable. The car was a 1968 Ford Mustang with a 286 cubic inch V8 engine. It rumbled and shook at idle. It smelled of unburned gasoline, lead additives, and leather decades old. The rain came down in sheets against the windshield and we rumbled on. I remember discussing sex and love and death; those important things that are really deserving of conversation. And I remember not discussing anything at all; bathed in the pale green light from the dashboard lost in our own thoughts, our own memories. In the years since, we have all gone on to other places, other nights, and other cars. I doubt that the Mustang even runs anymore. But, in my mind, the ride never ends, the rain never stops, and we never go home again.  

I remember another ride, too. This one taken years before. My family and I headed south on I-71 one night on our way home, the radio off, not a word spoken between any of us. We had been in Mansfield for another Christmas Eve with the grandparents and the cousins. My father, as was his custom when around his family, had consumed a good deal of scotch and had gotten very drunk. Gifts had been exchanged and it had been a happy occasion, at least for me and my brothers. I remember my father flexing his bad leg against the windshield of the Suburban and the creak of the strained glass. I remember my mother commanding him to get his foot off of it for fear that it would break. I remember him explaining the pain he was in. I remember shouting. I remember the cracks spreading across the windshield slowly, until it gave way in a spectacular crash. I learned that automotive glass does not shatter; it retains its shape even under enormous strain. I remember my mother screaming, my father yelling, my brothers crying. Blows were exchanged between mother and father; a domestic dispute at 75 miles per hour. I remember sitting in the back of the truck, my head pressed deep into the upholstery of the rear seat, wishing that I were somewhere else. In the years since, we have all gone off to other places. We all got away; New Jersey for some of us, sobriety for others. But I think we are all still in that car on Christmas Eve. The glass is still breaking. And I wish more than anything that I were somewhere else.

All Wet

He paced back and forth across the length of the house, passing through each room, stopping at each window, looking at nothing in particular outside. There was no wind and the rain fell exactly perpendicular to the ground. A chair stood in the middle of the backyard. When he came to the window that faced it, he stood staring at the chair for a moment. 

He had put it there the day before. He regretted that. It had been raining for hours and the upholstery was soaked through. The chair had been set in one of the contours of the yard, a low point apparently, and water had been steadily collecting there, rising up the elegantly carved legs at a surprising rate.

He pressed his forehead against the glass and exhaled, his breath blooming across the pane instantly. The chair was gone, lost behind a cloud of condensation on glass and rain beyond.

"He believed that he was eating entire cities and vomited from the taste of concrete in his mouth."

Drape-stained orange light thrown against the far wall illuminates cracks in the spackle.

My eyes close, head lost in sheets uncomfortably soft against my skin.

A chord is strummed, it is in tune; harmonious.

I feel sorry that you are leaving.

Childhood

A dull pain at the back of the neck drew his focus away from the task at hand. Lines carefully rehearsed began to degenerate into slurred and stuttered incoherence; they lurched and careened out of his mouth and onto the table where they lay flailing, occupying time for longer than they ought, exposed and in the open, scrutinized. She smelled of lilac. He remembered the tree in the front yard, petals drifting towards the asphalt, a splinter between two fingers.  Days without obligation. And then the pain.

He began to sweat. Fear gripped him. Her lips had pulled back in a cruel smile and exposed rows of pristine teeth. The pain grew.

Friendship

This had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he wasn't so sure. The streetlight threw his shadow out across the intersection at an acute angle, its head reaching nearly home. He stood awkwardly in front of the house, his body listing slightly to one side. He could hear laughter come through the windows cracked slightly in the warmth of the pre-spring night. He lifted his foot, then placed it down again. Turning away, he wiped the snot from his nose onto the sleeve of his sweater and, disgusted with himself, walked back down the street to his home. 

Later, after he had jerked off into a sock, he fell asleep still clothed. He dreamt that his teeth were falling out. In the dream, he tried to hold the teeth in his hands, but there were too many, and they slipped through his fingers one by one.