First, a short intro of those involved.
Chief: He was the guy at our school that always found a way to get every person sitting in the stands at the football/basketball games pumped up for the matchup with some crazy idea he concocted. Usually, it involved him running onto the field or the court dressed in Native American attire.
Norm: He was the big guy of the group. And seeing how the kid could drink a case of beer by himself on any given night, besides Sundays, we named him after George Wendt’s character on Cheers.
Rodeo: His real name stared with an R, and since he actually rode in rodeo’s, the rest of the guys just picked an easy name for him.
Cowboy: Like Rodeo, he too rode in rodeos. But since his name started with a C, we gave him the name Cowboy. *On a side note, the two of ‘em were good. They both made it out to Wyoming for the National High School Cowboy Rodeo Association finals in ‘95 and ‘96.
Cookie: Cookie was, obviously, the guy who cooked our meals over the camp fire on every trip. He was also the guy who always played it off like he was getting laid every day. Which we all knew was a lie.
And there were ten more of us, but this is how I remember the story.
When we were younger, my buddies and I did all the regular country boy things: Campin’...fishin'...huntin'...fightin’...farmers daughters...Church on Sundays...never swore around Mom...stuck up for each other...protected our sisters from guys just like us and drank ridiculous amounts of ice cold Busch Light. From the can of course.
Those nights we’d spend campin’ on the back 40 of Chief’s farm were always good times. Fifteen buddies drinkin’, singin’ and tellin’ lies. And it always seemed that sometime after the moon had peaked and all those tiny balls of gas lit up the countryside, somebody would get serious. It was usually Chief.
One night in particular, as we passed the bottle of shine from the 55-gallon drum that Norm's Uncle Willie Bubba brought up with him from Texas, Chief asked us how we’d like to die. None of us said a single word. We hadn't even thought about how we’d like to die. We were 17-year-old kids, we were nowhere close to dyin'.
And then Chief fired off his future death plan.
“I want to die savin' somebody. If it’s a kid in a burnin' house...a woman that's bein' robbed by some guy with a gun...crashin’ my car chasin' the guy who just robbed my house...whatever, I just wanna go out like that. Tryin' to set things straight.”
No words were said.
“Well", murmured Cowboy through a mouth full of Copenhagen, "I guess I’d want to die ridin’. Some big bitch of a bull, never been rode, and I get ‘em. Then he gets me. That’s how I wanna go.”
“I’m gonna say in a blaze of glory too. I’d wanna to save somebody, somethin’ or take the place of the woman I love.” Rodeo told us.
A shot at trying to break the seriousness of the moment shared between us, Cookie added, “I wanna die fuckin’. Me, the whole volleyball team and Miss Anderson. That’s how I wanna go.”
Norm summed up his way to go with one, simple word, “Quick,” which we all understood to be somewhat of a joke, but not really. Norm raced cars ya see, and by him saying "quick", we all understood he meant on the track.
And the rest of us all said that we didn’t know how we wanted it to end. And for many years after, I still didn’t know how I wanted to leave. Who really thinks about shit like that? But now, a few weeks after my 32nd birthday, I'm pretty I wanna go out like this:
Quietly, in a log cabin, in the hills of Colorado...as the mornin' sun begins to peak its face from behind the trees...with the echo’s of lost love...that fresh smell of an early mornin' rain on the fallen pine cones...the soft ramblin' of a creek tricklin' over stone...with the cry of an Eagle above...alone, tearless, expectant and ready...with my fingers on the keyboard, a cup of hot coffee at my side and the slow lingerin' smoke of a Marlboro Light in my eye...knowin'...
that I’m goin' home.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Kinda tired...somewhat horny...a little hungry
This is something that I wrote a while ago. Felt like sharing.
Today, this great day of May 17, 2007....as I'm sitting at my computer, with my fat cat trying to take all attention away from my fingers pushing on the keyboard to dictate this story to you, I'm fucked up.
I've been drinking since yesterday. Started before I went and graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Journalism. Continued while eating some grub at Bar Louie with the family and then drinking WAY TOO MUCH with my buddies and meeting a very sweet, drop dead gorgeous young lady at Nick's Uptown Lounge.
Why does this day seem so un-fulfilling?
I almost died seven years ago. I quit school ten years ago (Illinois State). I forgot who I was eight years ago. I let the woman that I would have spent the rest of my days with split on me nine years ago. What and the fuck do I have to look forward to?
Perhaps going back to school for my MFA? Or even the cute little blonde girl that I met tonight? Or maybe, just maybe, writing the movie about my friend that was murdered a few years back to let all know that she was a divine princess that we would love to still have around?
I just wanna fucking write! I don't care if it is about you or me. Them or we. He or she. I just wanna put the ink to the paper and let all who read it know the true story. The story that nobody else wanted to tell. The story that other people were afraid to put into words because they thought it might raise too many eyebrows.
I want you to know. I want all to know.
What you wanna hear?
I've been drinking since yesterday. Started before I went and graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Journalism. Continued while eating some grub at Bar Louie with the family and then drinking WAY TOO MUCH with my buddies and meeting a very sweet, drop dead gorgeous young lady at Nick's Uptown Lounge.
Why does this day seem so un-fulfilling?
I almost died seven years ago. I quit school ten years ago (Illinois State). I forgot who I was eight years ago. I let the woman that I would have spent the rest of my days with split on me nine years ago. What and the fuck do I have to look forward to?
Perhaps going back to school for my MFA? Or even the cute little blonde girl that I met tonight? Or maybe, just maybe, writing the movie about my friend that was murdered a few years back to let all know that she was a divine princess that we would love to still have around?
I just wanna fucking write! I don't care if it is about you or me. Them or we. He or she. I just wanna put the ink to the paper and let all who read it know the true story. The story that nobody else wanted to tell. The story that other people were afraid to put into words because they thought it might raise too many eyebrows.
I want you to know. I want all to know.
What you wanna hear?
Needed to be Gone
As I opened my eyes that summer morning and heard the rooster calling to the sun, I knew that the life I had been wanting to live was just about to begin and that I needed to Wake Up and get away from where I was. The life that I had been living, until that morning, had been in motion for close to thirty years, but I knew that I needed to change it if I wanted to make it out of here alive.
After I scarfed down moms' eggs and hash and washed away the taste with a half pint of the creamy white juice from our beloved cow Bessy, I was set to go.
I told mom that I loved her and that I'd write. I'm not sure she heard me because she didn't respond or act like I was leaving. But then again, maybe she didn't want to acknowledge the fact that her oldest boy was setting off on a trip that could very possibly lead him to no return.
I turned On the Road from the old gravel drive to our farm and watched the sun peak up from beyond the trees on the back forty as I slowly crept up the small hill that had kept me home for far too long. As I passed the pasture and the Weeping Willow's to the East of the road, I saw my father operating his tractor in the field.
I was too afraid to say goodbye to him. He wouldn't have supported me or my decision and instead, demanded me to stay home to work the land and slaughter the cattle. He would have told me that the hippos (that's what he called everything he didn't understand or didn't want to comprehend) would never allow me to write anything.
My father was the Big Sur of the county that we lived in. Everybody that needed something done would come to him for his help. If he had the time, and the motivation to lend a hand, my father was on it like white on rice. He always wanted me to grow to be like him. And for awhile, I too, wanted that. But after he realized that I was a lost cause, he gave up on me long before that day in July when I left.
On the back of that old blue Ford tractor, sat my fathers best friend. In all the years that I lived on that farm, I never did see the two not together. His name was Cody, a brilliant looking Golden Labrador Retriever that stood four feet high when on all fours and close to six when on just his back two. Cody was a magnificent dog. As fast as lightning and the ears of an owl. The only dog that I've ever heard of to scare of a black bear by barking and not giving up his ground to protect his master. I can still remember that day.....
I had just finished the two mile hike back from the market with the weeks grocery's for mom and could hear Cody's sneering growl from behind the barn. As I walked back to see what was going on, I noticed my father lying on the ground, with Cody between him and a horrendous looking black bear. The bear stood close to ten feet tall, with fangs for teeth and daggers for claws, screaming its growls at Cody to move from his path so that he could retrieve the meal (my father) on the ground behind him. Cody knew what the bear was saying, and he knew that he wasn't about to move.
And I did nothing. I stayed bent down behind the tractor tire so that the bear didn't see me and I watched Cody battle for my father. Cody finally wore the bears patience and the beast trotted off into the woods behind the barn. I will always have these Visions of Cody, and I'll always wonder if I would have been big enough of a man to scare the bear off like my father's dog did. And because of that day with Cody and my father, and a hundrend just like it, to this day, I still have Visions of Cody.
As I neared the edge of my family's property, I slowed my old Chevy to a crawl and looked out to my father one last time. If he saw me or not, I'll never know, but I will always have the feeling that he knew I was there.
After I got the old Chevy scooting down the gravel road once again, and noticed the Wind Blown World that I was leaving behind, I began to second guess my theories of life and wondered if the actions I had taken earlier that morning, by leaving my family, were the right things for me to do. And I started talking to myself, out loud. And answering my own questions in the third person.
I couldn't keep second guessing my choices, I told my self. You want to write, go and write. Find whatever it is that you're looking for and write the best fucking story ever written about it. There's no turning back now. If you do that, you're a coward, a bum, one of The Dharma Bums.
The Dharma Bums were the people who lived down by the river on the South side of my town. They lived in little shacks, made from old and rotted wood with plastic bags filling holes in the roofs. Being called a Dharma Bum, if you really weren't one, was the most insulting thing a person could say to another from our town. I didn't want to be considered a Dharma Bum, so I kept traveling. Looking for my story.
By the end of the third day of my journey, I was completely out of my element. I had no idea on where I was at, nor where I was going. But then again, I didn't know where I was going when I left either. When I finally had the vision of humanity in my sights and not just the light from the moon above, I was about thirty miles between The Town and the City.
The town that I stopped in, well, what used to be a town I guessed, was completely empty. Locked doors and windows covered with sheets of wood on every building. The only sign of life that I came across when I stopped to piss in the ditch was the glowing embers from a fire behind the old post office. Because I was naive, and because I was still looking for this great and magical story to write, I walked right over to stick my nose in somebody's business.
As I slowly stepped toward that burning pile of cedar, or maybe it was pine, I could hear the soft playing of a guitar and the beautiful voices of what seemed like, angels. When they noticed me, all things stopped. They all stood and turned to confront me.
"Lonesome Traveler, this is no place for you", the guitar playing old man said.
"He's right, these are The Subterraneans, nobody who is anything comes out here", said one of the women who was singing.
"Please, I am a traveling man, with no place to lay my weary head, for an evenings rest, I would owe so much," I spoke in a soft voice to try and sell my story.
At that point, the group all gathered around the fire, talking and discussing my intrusion on their get together. For close to ten minutes I stood and awaited their final verdict. And when they gave it to me, I was completely grateful.
"Hello stranger, I'm Maggie Cassidy, and it would be our pleasure to have you bunk out here with us tonight," said the outrageously attractive woman.
"Him there is Old Angel Midnight. Plays a hell of a guitar. Ask him to play ya' a song, and he'll play it better than the artist who wrote it. What you doing out here in these parts" Maggie asked?
"Well, to tell ya the truth Miss Cassidy, I ain't so certain yet myself. All I know is I'm looking for something to write about," I told her.
"Well, why don't you just bunk up here with us for a couple days and maybe we'll give ya something to write about," Maggie told me.
And since I didn't have a plan, or anywhere else to go for that matter, that's what I did. For the next seven weeks, I lived in that old, tired town, listening to Old Angel Midnight picking his guitar and singing his songs about Departed Angels and the woman that he loved who was Safe In Heaven Dead.
Old Angel Midnight, before winding up at The Subterraneans, worked as a railmen for the train through Texas. And when his wife died, he fell apart and couldn't continue there any more. He quit the job, packed his car full of clothes, food and his guitar and drove until he found himself here, out of gas, all alone. And it didn't bother him to be alone either, he actually liked it. He'd just sit around a fire, playing with the strings on his worn out guitar, waiting for his Desolation Angels to come and find him.
About a week after Old Angel Midnight stumbled upon the wasteland town in the hills, his Angels showed up. Maggie Cassidy was one of them. She was, in my opinion, the most beautiful Angel of the group. Long, flowing blonde hair. Radiant, glowing green eyes. The closest thing that I had ever seen to perfection, with a body and personality to match. I wanted Maggie Cassidy to be my Angel, and in a way, she was.
Maggie was up in the wasteland town because she was trying to escape from her brutish husband. She spoke of him only once while I was there, and just hearing the words she used to describe the way he treated her, and remembering the thoughts I had as I heard her soft voice tell her story, I was thankful that she had finally eluded him.
Maggie Cassidy told us of the times that he would beat her with his leather belt. And the times that he would throw the hot wax from the candle at her while she was drying his dishes over the sink. And the times he would make her sleep on the floor of the apartment because he didn't want a "dirty-slut-whore of a wife" sharing the same bed as him.
Maggie Cassidy was the exact opposite of a dirty-slut-whore of a wife. She was my angel. She was Old Angel Midnight's, angel. And she was an Angel to the rest of the girls, Carolyn and Teressa, that were up there with us.
After those seven weeks of living off of each other, and helping each other deal with the things in our lives, I thought that I was ready to try and make my return home to my father on the farm. I didn't want to know the pain I would feel if I woke Maggie and told her I was to leave, so I wrote a note, left it on the pillow of Carolyn and made my way back to my Chevy.
I could only imagine the way it played out when Teressa woke in the morning to the crow of a rooster calling to the sun. And I am certain she gave the letter to Maggie after she told Old Angel Midnight goodbye for me. I hope that Maggie didn't feel betrayed again when she read that letter I left for her. I was hers, and she was mine. She helped me cope with my father telling me that I'd never be good enough. And I helped her mend from the brutality of the coward she was married to before she came to The Subterraneans. This was my letter:
Dear Carolyn:
Please, my dear, express to all, my undying gratefulness for their love and support. Thank everybody for accepting me for who and what I was and for who and what I have become. Thank you all for making me a better, bigger man. Tell Maggie, that I never will forget her and if we should meet again, I will not leave without her. She is my Angel. Without her, I could have never grown into what I always wanted to be. Tell her I will find her, somewhere, and when I do, if she will have me, I will hold her in my arms for the rest of our lives. Until we cross paths again my friend, in some other place, at some other time, I love you all.
It was about sundown when I finally pulled back onto the drive of the farm, three days after I left the love of my life, Old Angel Midnight and Carolyn all up in those hills. As the headlights of my old Chevy peeked through the windows of my family's house, I could see my father standing at it, looking to see who it was.
As I shut the old Chevy down, and opened the door to step out, I heard his voice.
"I knew that you'd be back boy. We've missed you. I had Ma keep the Door Wide Open. Did you find whatever it was that you were looking for son," my father asked?
I answered with a nod.
"What about the hippos? Did you lose the hippos," he questioned again?
"Father, it is good to be home, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks."
*the words in bold are all names of books, stories, poems by Jack Kerouac. Also characters from them.
After I scarfed down moms' eggs and hash and washed away the taste with a half pint of the creamy white juice from our beloved cow Bessy, I was set to go.
I told mom that I loved her and that I'd write. I'm not sure she heard me because she didn't respond or act like I was leaving. But then again, maybe she didn't want to acknowledge the fact that her oldest boy was setting off on a trip that could very possibly lead him to no return.
I turned On the Road from the old gravel drive to our farm and watched the sun peak up from beyond the trees on the back forty as I slowly crept up the small hill that had kept me home for far too long. As I passed the pasture and the Weeping Willow's to the East of the road, I saw my father operating his tractor in the field.
I was too afraid to say goodbye to him. He wouldn't have supported me or my decision and instead, demanded me to stay home to work the land and slaughter the cattle. He would have told me that the hippos (that's what he called everything he didn't understand or didn't want to comprehend) would never allow me to write anything.
My father was the Big Sur of the county that we lived in. Everybody that needed something done would come to him for his help. If he had the time, and the motivation to lend a hand, my father was on it like white on rice. He always wanted me to grow to be like him. And for awhile, I too, wanted that. But after he realized that I was a lost cause, he gave up on me long before that day in July when I left.
On the back of that old blue Ford tractor, sat my fathers best friend. In all the years that I lived on that farm, I never did see the two not together. His name was Cody, a brilliant looking Golden Labrador Retriever that stood four feet high when on all fours and close to six when on just his back two. Cody was a magnificent dog. As fast as lightning and the ears of an owl. The only dog that I've ever heard of to scare of a black bear by barking and not giving up his ground to protect his master. I can still remember that day.....
I had just finished the two mile hike back from the market with the weeks grocery's for mom and could hear Cody's sneering growl from behind the barn. As I walked back to see what was going on, I noticed my father lying on the ground, with Cody between him and a horrendous looking black bear. The bear stood close to ten feet tall, with fangs for teeth and daggers for claws, screaming its growls at Cody to move from his path so that he could retrieve the meal (my father) on the ground behind him. Cody knew what the bear was saying, and he knew that he wasn't about to move.
And I did nothing. I stayed bent down behind the tractor tire so that the bear didn't see me and I watched Cody battle for my father. Cody finally wore the bears patience and the beast trotted off into the woods behind the barn. I will always have these Visions of Cody, and I'll always wonder if I would have been big enough of a man to scare the bear off like my father's dog did. And because of that day with Cody and my father, and a hundrend just like it, to this day, I still have Visions of Cody.
As I neared the edge of my family's property, I slowed my old Chevy to a crawl and looked out to my father one last time. If he saw me or not, I'll never know, but I will always have the feeling that he knew I was there.
After I got the old Chevy scooting down the gravel road once again, and noticed the Wind Blown World that I was leaving behind, I began to second guess my theories of life and wondered if the actions I had taken earlier that morning, by leaving my family, were the right things for me to do. And I started talking to myself, out loud. And answering my own questions in the third person.
I couldn't keep second guessing my choices, I told my self. You want to write, go and write. Find whatever it is that you're looking for and write the best fucking story ever written about it. There's no turning back now. If you do that, you're a coward, a bum, one of The Dharma Bums.
The Dharma Bums were the people who lived down by the river on the South side of my town. They lived in little shacks, made from old and rotted wood with plastic bags filling holes in the roofs. Being called a Dharma Bum, if you really weren't one, was the most insulting thing a person could say to another from our town. I didn't want to be considered a Dharma Bum, so I kept traveling. Looking for my story.
By the end of the third day of my journey, I was completely out of my element. I had no idea on where I was at, nor where I was going. But then again, I didn't know where I was going when I left either. When I finally had the vision of humanity in my sights and not just the light from the moon above, I was about thirty miles between The Town and the City.
The town that I stopped in, well, what used to be a town I guessed, was completely empty. Locked doors and windows covered with sheets of wood on every building. The only sign of life that I came across when I stopped to piss in the ditch was the glowing embers from a fire behind the old post office. Because I was naive, and because I was still looking for this great and magical story to write, I walked right over to stick my nose in somebody's business.
As I slowly stepped toward that burning pile of cedar, or maybe it was pine, I could hear the soft playing of a guitar and the beautiful voices of what seemed like, angels. When they noticed me, all things stopped. They all stood and turned to confront me.
"Lonesome Traveler, this is no place for you", the guitar playing old man said.
"He's right, these are The Subterraneans, nobody who is anything comes out here", said one of the women who was singing.
"Please, I am a traveling man, with no place to lay my weary head, for an evenings rest, I would owe so much," I spoke in a soft voice to try and sell my story.
At that point, the group all gathered around the fire, talking and discussing my intrusion on their get together. For close to ten minutes I stood and awaited their final verdict. And when they gave it to me, I was completely grateful.
"Hello stranger, I'm Maggie Cassidy, and it would be our pleasure to have you bunk out here with us tonight," said the outrageously attractive woman.
"Him there is Old Angel Midnight. Plays a hell of a guitar. Ask him to play ya' a song, and he'll play it better than the artist who wrote it. What you doing out here in these parts" Maggie asked?
"Well, to tell ya the truth Miss Cassidy, I ain't so certain yet myself. All I know is I'm looking for something to write about," I told her.
"Well, why don't you just bunk up here with us for a couple days and maybe we'll give ya something to write about," Maggie told me.
And since I didn't have a plan, or anywhere else to go for that matter, that's what I did. For the next seven weeks, I lived in that old, tired town, listening to Old Angel Midnight picking his guitar and singing his songs about Departed Angels and the woman that he loved who was Safe In Heaven Dead.
Old Angel Midnight, before winding up at The Subterraneans, worked as a railmen for the train through Texas. And when his wife died, he fell apart and couldn't continue there any more. He quit the job, packed his car full of clothes, food and his guitar and drove until he found himself here, out of gas, all alone. And it didn't bother him to be alone either, he actually liked it. He'd just sit around a fire, playing with the strings on his worn out guitar, waiting for his Desolation Angels to come and find him.
About a week after Old Angel Midnight stumbled upon the wasteland town in the hills, his Angels showed up. Maggie Cassidy was one of them. She was, in my opinion, the most beautiful Angel of the group. Long, flowing blonde hair. Radiant, glowing green eyes. The closest thing that I had ever seen to perfection, with a body and personality to match. I wanted Maggie Cassidy to be my Angel, and in a way, she was.
Maggie was up in the wasteland town because she was trying to escape from her brutish husband. She spoke of him only once while I was there, and just hearing the words she used to describe the way he treated her, and remembering the thoughts I had as I heard her soft voice tell her story, I was thankful that she had finally eluded him.
Maggie Cassidy told us of the times that he would beat her with his leather belt. And the times that he would throw the hot wax from the candle at her while she was drying his dishes over the sink. And the times he would make her sleep on the floor of the apartment because he didn't want a "dirty-slut-whore of a wife" sharing the same bed as him.
Maggie Cassidy was the exact opposite of a dirty-slut-whore of a wife. She was my angel. She was Old Angel Midnight's, angel. And she was an Angel to the rest of the girls, Carolyn and Teressa, that were up there with us.
After those seven weeks of living off of each other, and helping each other deal with the things in our lives, I thought that I was ready to try and make my return home to my father on the farm. I didn't want to know the pain I would feel if I woke Maggie and told her I was to leave, so I wrote a note, left it on the pillow of Carolyn and made my way back to my Chevy.
I could only imagine the way it played out when Teressa woke in the morning to the crow of a rooster calling to the sun. And I am certain she gave the letter to Maggie after she told Old Angel Midnight goodbye for me. I hope that Maggie didn't feel betrayed again when she read that letter I left for her. I was hers, and she was mine. She helped me cope with my father telling me that I'd never be good enough. And I helped her mend from the brutality of the coward she was married to before she came to The Subterraneans. This was my letter:
Dear Carolyn:
Please, my dear, express to all, my undying gratefulness for their love and support. Thank everybody for accepting me for who and what I was and for who and what I have become. Thank you all for making me a better, bigger man. Tell Maggie, that I never will forget her and if we should meet again, I will not leave without her. She is my Angel. Without her, I could have never grown into what I always wanted to be. Tell her I will find her, somewhere, and when I do, if she will have me, I will hold her in my arms for the rest of our lives. Until we cross paths again my friend, in some other place, at some other time, I love you all.
It was about sundown when I finally pulled back onto the drive of the farm, three days after I left the love of my life, Old Angel Midnight and Carolyn all up in those hills. As the headlights of my old Chevy peeked through the windows of my family's house, I could see my father standing at it, looking to see who it was.
As I shut the old Chevy down, and opened the door to step out, I heard his voice.
"I knew that you'd be back boy. We've missed you. I had Ma keep the Door Wide Open. Did you find whatever it was that you were looking for son," my father asked?
I answered with a nod.
"What about the hippos? Did you lose the hippos," he questioned again?
"Father, it is good to be home, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks."
*the words in bold are all names of books, stories, poems by Jack Kerouac. Also characters from them.
Little Sessions
Lying on bed of the fold out couch in the lower level of her family's tri-level home was something, actually it was the only thing, the two of us could depend on every Friday night.
It never mattered if we wanted to be someplace else, or with someone else, Friday nights were reserved for our "little sessions," as we jokingly named them.
She used to say lying her head on my chest helped her to think. That somehow, hearing my heart beat helped her to navigate through the thoughts and ideas which were crashing about her mind, to build a better realization of her own being.
I'd tell her having her beautiful bronze Puerto Rican cheek resting on my chest, her toned left arm draped over my stomach with her left leg resting atop my left, helped me to visualize the songs I was trying to write back then.
She and I met our freshman year in college. She was twenty, I, twenty-four. We both started our stints at college late, and both for the same reason: we knew if we started at 18, we would have partied too hard and failed out.
We began our Friday sessions a month after meeting. They continued until the week after our graduation ceremony.
Those Friday nights, though I wouldn't change any of 'em for the world, were extremely hard for me. I had the sexiest girl I had ever met lying next to me, with an extremely intoxicating aroma of whatever perfume it was she used to wear. So many times I wanted to grab her and kiss her and profess my love. But, I never did. Nor will I ever get the chance.
She moved to New York City the week following graduation to take a job at a magazine. We had one last Friday together after we walked the aisle and grabbed our diplomas. She used to joke and call them, "the $100,000 pieces of paper to tell people we can tell a story."
That last Friday in her parents house was so different than all the rest.
Usually as we cuddled together, we'd have conversations that covered everything from the war, the Cubs, story and song ideas, family, our sex lives (not with each other) and whatever else might have came to mind.
But that Friday, that one, last, magnificent Friday, the entire time we cuddled, neither she, or I, spoke more than three words. I believe we didn't because we both knew our time together was ending and neither wanted the goodbye to be more depressing than it was already going to be.
So we cuddled up next to each other in the basement of her parent's big-empty house on Gracie Grove Street, listening to the beautiful music being played by the rain bouncing off the slab of concrete out the back door and the rolling thunder above.
While I watched her eyes begin to shove tears down her face, I too, began to cry as I kissed her forehead. She pulled her head off of my chest and looked into my eyes with a smile as she got off from our comfortable cushion and walked back into her bedroom.
Minutes later, I heard the acoustic guitar coming from the speakers of her stereo and could hear her little bare feet dancing across the wooden floor behind me.
As I raised my head to see what she was doing, I fell. She stood before me, in the light from a few candles, and from time to time, the lightning that burst through the windows, with nothing on beside her black panties and her straight black hair covering her beautiful breasts. She stood motionless, one hand down toward her left hip, the other, touching her toned stomach. She looked so smooth, so sexy, so confident in what she was doing.
I stood to walk to her and ask what she was doing, before a single word escaped my mouth, she placed her middle and index fingers against my lips and she shook her head, ever so slowly, from left to right.
(What was going on? Was the woman that I wanted for the last four years, the woman that I've never tried to do anything with for fear of losing the best friendship I've ever had with a female, trying to tell me she wanted me the way I wanted her? Was this to be the ending chapter of us? To go out with a bang?)
As I stood in front of my angel, she lowered her fingers from my lips and pulled my shirt over my head, throwing it to the floor. She placed her tiny, delicate hands on my chest and slowly pushed me back down onto the couch bed.
She looked directly into my eyes, a half smile forming with her gorgeous set of pouty kissers and began to unfasten my belt. Her fingers undid the button and unzipped my faded blue Levi’s. She slowly pulled them down, licking my stomach as she played with the top of the denim. She rested back on her knees and pulled my pants down past my thighs, my ankles, and let them fall onto the floor.
I had no idea she wanted to do what it seemed we were about to do. I lie naked, with an absolute beauty before me. She slowly crept up our cushioned pad, stopping at my waist. She lowered her head and put me into her mouth.
Slowly, up and down, faster, in and out. She licked the head. She wrapped her hand around me, stroking up and down in unison with her lips. A little twist here, another there. Her long black hair tickled my stomach as it landed on my skin. With her other hand, she cupped the twins below as she put her lips against my torso and me fully into her.
She took me out of her mouth and crawled up towards me. She placed a knee on the sides of my head and lowered ther shaved area down to my face.
My tongue licked her up, and then back down...in circles...zig-zags...faster...slower...plunging it into her...out of her. She leaned back and I could see her pulling her right nipple. Her stomach began to pulsate. I could feel the moisture increase and warm. She was getting close.
Before she got there, she scooted back down my body and put me into her. She squatted over me and slid up and down, ever so slowly. Her left hand on my chest, her right tickling herself. She moved up and down at the same tempo of the music on the stereo. Timed perfectly.
She took me out of her and turned around on me. She raised her beautiful bum and put me back into the pleasantly plumb spot I desired.
Up, down, slow, fast, an almost rolling motion that I'd never experienced before and still, to this day, haven’t yet again. Her hands were on my shins and I could see the beautiful tattoo of angel wings across her back. Her black hair draped over her shoulders, onto her 36B chest. Her back was arcing, she was getting so close.
She pulled away from me and backed into my face again. She put me into her mouth as I licked her. With my tongue tickling, I put a finger inside of her...then another. I could hear her moaning as she bobbed up and down. Her muzzled moans sounded sexier than anything I had ever heard before.
She pulled away from my face again and crawled onto her knees. I just stayed lying there. She looked back at me with a smile, and curled her finger up to me, telling me to come to her. I rose up from lying down and went to her. I put my hands on her body and plunged into her. She gasped for air as she reached back grabbing the backs of my thighs, pulling me deeper and harder into her. Her face went down into a pillow.
She let out the loudest of her moans then. I could feel her pulsating much harder. I knew she was cumming. And I too, was just about to. I felt it coming on and began to slip out of her.
“Cum in me.”
Those were the only words either of us said to that point. And though I knew better to cum in any of my partners, I couldn’t help myself. Just hearing her sexy voice say those three words, made me cum so much harder.
We stayed lying and cuddling for the rest of the night, without clothes and without words.
There were much prettier noises then our words would have made being played by the rain on the concrete slab out her back door anyway.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Ten Years.
It honestly seems like yesterday that I was lying in that hospital bed at R.I.C. waiting for a therapist to come in and ask me to try to walk, or tie my shoes or to say my name. No lie.
A decade since the night that changed me forever. Some say for the better. Some worry for the worse. Am I glad it happened? Not entirely, but there is a part of me that does think that it happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason, right? Whatever that reason was/is I can't be too certain about, but I think I've got a pretty good idea.
If it never happened, imagine all the things I would've missed. I would have never moved to Chicago to experience all the things, both good and bad, that I have. I wouldn't have met the people that I have. Wouldn't have fallen in love with her, and even though neither of us hold the love we shared for each other any longer, she made me realize what love actually was. I thank her for that.
A little less than a third of my life has passed since that night, and I feel I have grown from it. Matured from it I guess. Some that only know me after that night might disagree, but they didn't know me before, so they really shouldn't pass judgement.
Am I grateful for the reminders I have of that night? Not one bit. But each time I see them looking back at me in the mirror, I'm reminded just how lucky I am. And that each morning is the start of a new day. And each new day is the first day of the rest of my life. A reminder that each morning I wake up I should be grateful that I did. To know that I'm one of the lucky ones that gets to do that.
(if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to the homepage and scroll down to the post entitled: IIXXII)
A decade since the night that changed me forever. Some say for the better. Some worry for the worse. Am I glad it happened? Not entirely, but there is a part of me that does think that it happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason, right? Whatever that reason was/is I can't be too certain about, but I think I've got a pretty good idea.
If it never happened, imagine all the things I would've missed. I would have never moved to Chicago to experience all the things, both good and bad, that I have. I wouldn't have met the people that I have. Wouldn't have fallen in love with her, and even though neither of us hold the love we shared for each other any longer, she made me realize what love actually was. I thank her for that.
A little less than a third of my life has passed since that night, and I feel I have grown from it. Matured from it I guess. Some that only know me after that night might disagree, but they didn't know me before, so they really shouldn't pass judgement.
Am I grateful for the reminders I have of that night? Not one bit. But each time I see them looking back at me in the mirror, I'm reminded just how lucky I am. And that each morning is the start of a new day. And each new day is the first day of the rest of my life. A reminder that each morning I wake up I should be grateful that I did. To know that I'm one of the lucky ones that gets to do that.
(if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to the homepage and scroll down to the post entitled: IIXXII)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
IIXXII
I was 22-years old, knew everything about nothin' and working a construction job that I loved. I loved it for the wrong reasons though. I didn’t love it because of the work, I loved it for the money that I was making...just under two grand a week.
My demanding foreman, Lenzie, asked if I could stay late that night and load a semi with materials that were needed at a job site at five in the morning the next day. Being the good employee that I was, and seeing a great opportunity to get paid double my hourly wage, I took the challenge and told Lenzie to split, that I’d get it done.
I drove the old yellow Mitsubishi fork truck for close to three hours, coming awfully close to never slowing down. I was on a mission that evening, and I wanted the job done right. I picked and placed the 25 foot long 4X4 planks, the 10 bales of 650 pound #8 rebarb and a countless, seemingly endless number of concrete forms onto the semi’s flat bed trailer. After securing the load with several nylon straps and steel chains, I left soon after. At the same time that I was enjoying the marvelous job that I had just completed, knowing that it would have taken any of the other guys that worked in the yard with me another three hours to compete, in a small, country town ten miles up the road, a sad excuse of a man had just walked into another bar.
When the bartender noticed that the guy in a dirty pair of holey Levi’s and a torn up t-shirt, she quickly realized that he was already over-served. When he yelled down the bar to her that he wanted a Jack and Coke, she acted quickly and diverted his eyes as she filled his glass with just Coke. At the time, because he was so jacked, he didn’t know the difference. After a while of drinking the Coke’s, the rotten drunk began to yell at the bartender for not serving him any alcohol. And as he did such, the four other guys that were sitting in the bar, and quickly becoming fed up with his drunk cohorts, escorted him through the door. After he found the way into his pick-up truck, and started it up, he drove into the five other cars that were in the lot before he got on to Interstate 55.
About the time that he got on to I-55, heading North, I was close to 10 miles from my exit. According to police reports, he flew up the interstate at speeds close to those of NASCAR drivers at Bristol Motor Speedway, 100 miles an hour. But as he drove like a bandit, he did it without use of headlights.
He struck my GMC Z-71 in the left rear corner and sent my Black Beauty sideways into the drainage ditch that separated the highway and the frontage road. After he hit me, he veered left into the median and into oncoming traffic.
That is when the mortality began. The first car that he hit head on was driven by a man that was driving his son home. The father was killed instantly and the son was severely injured. The driver of the second car that he hit in oncoming traffic was driven by a man who was working overtime. He too, was killed at the scene. And after striking a third car in on coming traffic, the drunk finally put his onslaught of destruction to rest.
According to the semi driver that was following behind me on I-55, when my truck reached the top of the drainage ditch, it went airborne, flew over the frontage road completely and bounced, twisted, broke and bent into a giant lump of black steel in the field that it landed in. He said that he stopped his rig as fast as he could to get to me, to see if he could help. He also said that as he approached, he began to make assumptions that I wouldn’t need any help at all because I would be dead. But as he neared my beautiful black clump of tangled steel, he noticed me pulling myself out through the back window before falling into the tall, wheat grass that lined the two roads.
When I awoke from my comma 13 days later, and my parents told me what had happened, I didn’t believe them. I was certain that I had crashed my plane again. Funny thing about that was I didn’t have a plane. I hadn’t even been on an plane at that time. And still, for another four months, I was certain that I had crashed my plane.
After spending close to six months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and working diligently with the countless number of therapists that I worked with, they released me back into the world. And know, ten years later, I still think about that event most every night.
I wonder if it happened because I was being so greedy and wanted to earn double time pay? And I wonder if it happened as a result of me getting a DUI three months prior to that night? And I wonder if the reason that it happened has even presented itself to me yet? People often ask me if I remember the accident. And every time, I lie to them and say that I don’t.
I mean, I'm reminded everyday when I find myself missing the life that I lived when I was 22. Or the money that I was making when I was 22. Or even the way that I lived when I was 22.
It’s kind of hard not to remember a night like that, especially when I am sleeping or when I am in the shower.
I watch the accident close to every night in my dreams. I can see the drunk coming and I can see him hit my truck bed. I see the truck flipping in the field and finally coming to rest against a tree, that oddly enough, has two wooden crosses pounded into the ground at its base. And I am reminded every shower that I take by any of the marks on my body.
I’ve got a nine inch scar on my right pelvis where they connected titanium plates and pins to my hip to hold it together. And 62 little circle scars from the staples that were used to keep the incisions closed after the surgery.
I’ve got a penny sized scar next to my “twins” where the doctors inserted a Greenfield Vena Cava filter to stop blood clots from reaching my heart. I ain’t figured that one out yet myself, I mean, the filter is permanently positioned in the center of my sternum, why they put it into my body down there, I have no clue.
I now have two belly buttons, the one that I was born with and the one that I got from the feeding tube that was put to use while I was sleeping for all those days. I’ve got a six inch scar, three inches below my original belly button from where they operated to fix my ripped bladder tubes.
And a scar the size of a quarter in the middle of my throat from the tube that helped me breathe while my lung was collapsed that is surrounded with four little dot scars from the attachment devise for the tube so not to lose it in the middle of the night.
And then there are the two on my hips, one on the left and one on the right, that are from the eight inch steel rods that were drilled into the bone and connected to each other by a piece of steel rod so my hips would stay even with each other at all times.
And finally, there is the smooth, tan colored circle on the back of my head that was used for insertion of a tube to drain fluids and blood from my head so not to cause remarkable brain damage, or permanent memory loss. Though I have never seen it, I still know that it's there.
And the guy that caused this catastrophe of an auto accident fractured his femur. I guess when you are as drunk as he was, he had a blood alcohol level of .341, over four times the legal limit in Illinois, you get super powers and can avoid pain and death. But he did get sentenced to prison for a fourteen year stint. And because he had no drivers license, or insurance, and had been arrested five times for driving drunk prior to that night, he was charged with murder, not vehicular manslaughter.
And, if I am doing the math correctly, he still has four more years to serve. I honesty hope that I'm doing the math correctly because I can’t wait for the day that he gets out of the pen. Because on that day, I'll be there to introduce myself to him as the guy that he almost killed. But more importantly, I'll be there to get revenge by finally venting my unrestful anger for the people who lost their lives, the people who were injured and the families of all involved. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.
People often ask me if I remember my accident? What the fuck do you think?
My demanding foreman, Lenzie, asked if I could stay late that night and load a semi with materials that were needed at a job site at five in the morning the next day. Being the good employee that I was, and seeing a great opportunity to get paid double my hourly wage, I took the challenge and told Lenzie to split, that I’d get it done.
I drove the old yellow Mitsubishi fork truck for close to three hours, coming awfully close to never slowing down. I was on a mission that evening, and I wanted the job done right. I picked and placed the 25 foot long 4X4 planks, the 10 bales of 650 pound #8 rebarb and a countless, seemingly endless number of concrete forms onto the semi’s flat bed trailer. After securing the load with several nylon straps and steel chains, I left soon after. At the same time that I was enjoying the marvelous job that I had just completed, knowing that it would have taken any of the other guys that worked in the yard with me another three hours to compete, in a small, country town ten miles up the road, a sad excuse of a man had just walked into another bar.
When the bartender noticed that the guy in a dirty pair of holey Levi’s and a torn up t-shirt, she quickly realized that he was already over-served. When he yelled down the bar to her that he wanted a Jack and Coke, she acted quickly and diverted his eyes as she filled his glass with just Coke. At the time, because he was so jacked, he didn’t know the difference. After a while of drinking the Coke’s, the rotten drunk began to yell at the bartender for not serving him any alcohol. And as he did such, the four other guys that were sitting in the bar, and quickly becoming fed up with his drunk cohorts, escorted him through the door. After he found the way into his pick-up truck, and started it up, he drove into the five other cars that were in the lot before he got on to Interstate 55.
About the time that he got on to I-55, heading North, I was close to 10 miles from my exit. According to police reports, he flew up the interstate at speeds close to those of NASCAR drivers at Bristol Motor Speedway, 100 miles an hour. But as he drove like a bandit, he did it without use of headlights.
He struck my GMC Z-71 in the left rear corner and sent my Black Beauty sideways into the drainage ditch that separated the highway and the frontage road. After he hit me, he veered left into the median and into oncoming traffic.
That is when the mortality began. The first car that he hit head on was driven by a man that was driving his son home. The father was killed instantly and the son was severely injured. The driver of the second car that he hit in oncoming traffic was driven by a man who was working overtime. He too, was killed at the scene. And after striking a third car in on coming traffic, the drunk finally put his onslaught of destruction to rest.
According to the semi driver that was following behind me on I-55, when my truck reached the top of the drainage ditch, it went airborne, flew over the frontage road completely and bounced, twisted, broke and bent into a giant lump of black steel in the field that it landed in. He said that he stopped his rig as fast as he could to get to me, to see if he could help. He also said that as he approached, he began to make assumptions that I wouldn’t need any help at all because I would be dead. But as he neared my beautiful black clump of tangled steel, he noticed me pulling myself out through the back window before falling into the tall, wheat grass that lined the two roads.
When I awoke from my comma 13 days later, and my parents told me what had happened, I didn’t believe them. I was certain that I had crashed my plane again. Funny thing about that was I didn’t have a plane. I hadn’t even been on an plane at that time. And still, for another four months, I was certain that I had crashed my plane.
After spending close to six months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and working diligently with the countless number of therapists that I worked with, they released me back into the world. And know, ten years later, I still think about that event most every night.
I wonder if it happened because I was being so greedy and wanted to earn double time pay? And I wonder if it happened as a result of me getting a DUI three months prior to that night? And I wonder if the reason that it happened has even presented itself to me yet? People often ask me if I remember the accident. And every time, I lie to them and say that I don’t.
I mean, I'm reminded everyday when I find myself missing the life that I lived when I was 22. Or the money that I was making when I was 22. Or even the way that I lived when I was 22.
It’s kind of hard not to remember a night like that, especially when I am sleeping or when I am in the shower.
I watch the accident close to every night in my dreams. I can see the drunk coming and I can see him hit my truck bed. I see the truck flipping in the field and finally coming to rest against a tree, that oddly enough, has two wooden crosses pounded into the ground at its base. And I am reminded every shower that I take by any of the marks on my body.
I’ve got a nine inch scar on my right pelvis where they connected titanium plates and pins to my hip to hold it together. And 62 little circle scars from the staples that were used to keep the incisions closed after the surgery.
I’ve got a penny sized scar next to my “twins” where the doctors inserted a Greenfield Vena Cava filter to stop blood clots from reaching my heart. I ain’t figured that one out yet myself, I mean, the filter is permanently positioned in the center of my sternum, why they put it into my body down there, I have no clue.
I now have two belly buttons, the one that I was born with and the one that I got from the feeding tube that was put to use while I was sleeping for all those days. I’ve got a six inch scar, three inches below my original belly button from where they operated to fix my ripped bladder tubes.
And a scar the size of a quarter in the middle of my throat from the tube that helped me breathe while my lung was collapsed that is surrounded with four little dot scars from the attachment devise for the tube so not to lose it in the middle of the night.
And then there are the two on my hips, one on the left and one on the right, that are from the eight inch steel rods that were drilled into the bone and connected to each other by a piece of steel rod so my hips would stay even with each other at all times.
And finally, there is the smooth, tan colored circle on the back of my head that was used for insertion of a tube to drain fluids and blood from my head so not to cause remarkable brain damage, or permanent memory loss. Though I have never seen it, I still know that it's there.
And the guy that caused this catastrophe of an auto accident fractured his femur. I guess when you are as drunk as he was, he had a blood alcohol level of .341, over four times the legal limit in Illinois, you get super powers and can avoid pain and death. But he did get sentenced to prison for a fourteen year stint. And because he had no drivers license, or insurance, and had been arrested five times for driving drunk prior to that night, he was charged with murder, not vehicular manslaughter.
And, if I am doing the math correctly, he still has four more years to serve. I honesty hope that I'm doing the math correctly because I can’t wait for the day that he gets out of the pen. Because on that day, I'll be there to introduce myself to him as the guy that he almost killed. But more importantly, I'll be there to get revenge by finally venting my unrestful anger for the people who lost their lives, the people who were injured and the families of all involved. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.
People often ask me if I remember my accident? What the fuck do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)