Minus 30 and Counting

Breaking The 4th Wall

2005-07-28T00:37:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

First of, I'm sorry about completely not posting for like months. Things have been good and bad of recent. Life has many ups and downs and sometimes those take you away from some of the things you enjoy most - this private life I have with all of you being one of them. Other times it draws you closer as is the case with my other life away from Nobody.

I have joined a writing group locally near where I live. It's a group of people that all wish to do the same thing I do, guilt each other into writing. Which, so far has worked well for me. These people are a solid cast of writers and have help me craft a story to a level I never thought I could reach. It's really pushing me to do a lot more than I was before. That being said, it's made even thinking about blogging a distant memory.

The upside is that I've managed to tie many of the pieces I've written here into a much larger story. Joe Nobody has always been a brain dumb for me. A structured rambling seen through the eyes of a man just past 30 and well past hope. It's a voice I have learned to build through these posts and I doubt it will go away easily.

That being said don't give up on me. I will still be here posting. It might be somewhat of a different format for a time, but I don't plan on going anywhere. Perhaps I could post portions of the story I've been working out so that you all have a chance to see what you've helped me craft.

For that I thank you all. This is not goodbye. If anything, it's a reminder that I have others out there that enjoy what I write. I should never forget that. None of us should.

Again, thank you. Please check back and feel free to send me an email. In fact, two of my more loyal readers are responsibly for me writing this piece here. Who knows what they could talk me into if they put their minds to it.

Your man behind the apple,
Joe Nobody

Techno-fool

2005-04-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

The hardest thing about being smarter than everyone else is being smarter than everyone else. While you’re trying to explain to them how simple something is, how relatively easy it is to understand, how if they would simply listen and think, they would understand. The looks they give you. The distant glaze that goes over their eyes as they try to act like they understand, but fail to even comprehend. The conversation always goes the same way for Non-Descript.

“Can you do this?” he’s asked in some serious manner with a tone that is meant to imply understanding, yet states the opposite.

“Yes. I can do this. It’s simple really. It’ll just take some time,” Non-Descript tries to assure him – tries to make him feel comfortable but not too comfortable. Too comfortable implies he’s being lazy and should be working harder. Instead, he goes for just comfortable enough to think it can get done, but only by him and only after a certain amount of time. Non-Descript tries for this, but rarely succeeds.

“Explain this to me,” the Techno-fool asks. He always asks. Why does he always have to ask? Why can’t he just not ask?

“I don’t really understand all of this,” it almost sounds harmless coming out of Techno-fool’s ignorant mouth. A mouth that has never had to strip cat-5 with its teeth. A mouth that has never had to hold a Sharper Image pen light in its grip as he followed the caution-orange fiber-optic cable through the roofing. A mouth that has never wetted the tip of a brush just before it dipped its curled hair into the paint and then brushed the perfect finger in a single stroke.

Non-Descript explains. Techno-fool turns off his brain, removes it, checks for scratches, buffs out any of the spots with the cuff of his shirt and then puts it back in his head forgetting to turn it on. Non-Descript explain in the simplest of terms, usually through more common, mundane examples. He always keeps it simple.

“Think of it like the difference between Fed-Ex and the US Postal Service. Both show up to the same address, but the first gets there faster with better security. The second shows up with everything else, junk included,” the mail example usually works. Non-Descript has found that if you can find a real world example no matter how loosely connected to the high level technical concept you’re trying to explain, you’re usually in the clear. The problem is that sometimes people take the example too far. Techno-fool is not the exception that proves the rule.

“I don’t think we should be sending this information outside of the office. I don’t care how secure it is. This all needs to stay internal,” the Techno-fool states.

“It all stays inside the office. Nothing leaves,” Non-Descript tries to explain.

“But you just said it was like Fed-Ex,” the techno-fool retorts, proudly.

“Yes, but it never leaves the building,” Non-Descript knows he’s written a check his metaphor can’t cash.

“So, it’s like Fed-Ex, but only in this building?” this is asked in such a way as not to understand, but to trap Non-Descript in some sort of elaborate lie he must be telling to swindle this poor luddite out of thousands of dollars of computer equipment.

“Kind of.”

“I don’t know,” Techno-fool proclaims. “It sounds to me like you don’t really have a full grasp on this. I think we’re going to have to wait on the upgrade until you can get me some actual numbers. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Vanishing Line

2005-04-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

Non-Descript Indian Guy searched his vanishing line, but forever was not there. Trailing the horizon with a finger and a feather, he watched clouds unravel behind his touch. The burning amber sun seared across his eyes like cataracts. He could feel the warmth of its touch upon his face. It seemed to burn his fingers as he reached out and formed its light.

Below the clouds, Non-Descript Indian Guy found his forever. Resting exhausted from the hunt, fresh blood still drying on her long, tan arms, she stared up at him. Surprised by his presence, she eyed him with the hunger of a predator. From the blood that trailed from her cheek, he could see she had had her fill. Yet, those eyes told him of a thirst that would never diminish. She saw him, visible, naked – a fawn before her, begging for slaughter. He could see forever in those eyes and it consumed him.

Fighting Age

2005-04-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

I don't remember much about my father. What I do remember doesn't often go well. Raised a momma's boy, never really worried me much. There were enough of us on the playground. We'd stick together, watch our each others back and learn when to run. It was the one thing we had in common. Well, I'm sure there were other things, but back then how mom raised us was what tied us all together. Mom had taught us how to live and dad was never around to tell her it was just going to make us weak.

I firmly believe that I will go my whole life without ever throwing a punch. I never would have believed it if someone had told me when I was a kid that I'd never be in a fight. I would have laughed. Kids fight. Period. That's just the way things work. However, here I am. Well beyond any acceptable age for dukin’ it out. If I throw a punch now, there's a lot more behind it than just a pissed of little kid. There's a lot more at stake. If I was hesitant to through a punch back then, I'll likely never even raise my fist now.

Yet, somehow I feel more firm in who I am and what I believe. I have less problem telling a person that they're full of shit if I think they are. I worry less about my ass getting kicked and more about being wrong. If I know I'm right, which doesn't mean I am, just that I think I am, I'm fine with confronting most situations. However, I not stupid. I stay out of anything that's going to get me shot, stabbed or labeled a racist.

I got really sick this morning. Not the throwing up sort of sick, though. My head was pounding. The light from the curtains felt like fire burning in my eyes. I couldn't even really stand up without losing my balance. My nose was dry and my lungs were tight. My head was hot, but my body was cold. My muscles felt torn and my bones rubbed against each other in way that hurts just to think about. Getting up to take aspirin was a debate that I had for a good fifteen minutes. The pain of getting up was not worth the possibility of the pain going away in an hour or so. Still, I got up, drank some rust flavored water, took some aspirin and then went back to bed. Three hours later, I was fine. A little under the weather, but nothing out of the ordinary. I realized later, I just had a case of the Old. My Grandmother has it all the time. It sucks. She tells me it sucks. I believe her. Looking at her you couldn't help not believe her. Shit.

Server Beast

2005-04-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

Non-Descript Indian guy moves through the building with purpose and poise. Eyes ahead, neck straight and with the slightest shuffle in his walk, he appears to be heading somewhere important. In one motion he pulls the plastic card attached to his belt by an extendable metal cord, swipes the card in a well displayed card reader mounted on the wall next to a door, turns the handle of the door, opening it and releases the card from his fingers like a magician. The card disappears with a recoiled snap, appearing instantly next to his belt.

Inside the server room, the noise coats him. Countless tiny fans wurring away their days bring the noise level to a dull roar. The room is white, except for the tall black server cases that line the middle of the room. Walking down the row of servers, Non-Descript Indian Guy sees the tiny green lights blinking at him. Thankful for his presence, they tell him of their busy days and how well everything is going.

However, just towards the end of the row, one server is not so talkative. Two red eyes look back at him, angry. Opening the case, Non-Descript tries to soothe the savage beast, but finds the task much harder than he at first suspected.

Suddenly, there's a pounding on the door to the server room. The pounding says that a person wants his attention and that they've tried knocking and it failed to be heard. He walks to the door, and opens it, only slightly, fearing someone might see the nakedness of this room.

"E-mail’s not working," some employee tells Non-Descript Indian Guy. Non-Descript never bothered to learn his name. All he knows is that the man's body is too out of shape and his face to round to be of any real use to an artist.

"Yes," Non-Descript Indian Guy tells this man. "I know. I'm working on it now."

"You should tell everyone," the man says. "They're kind of freaking out."

"What would you suggest I do?" Non-Descript asks. "Send out and email?"

With that, Non-Descript lets the heavy metal door close, secure in the knowledge that this random employee could never enter this sanctum. Not to mention that next time, this man would be less likely to pound on the server room door when there was a problem.

Looking back and the glowing red eyes, Non-Descript Indian Guy saw an image form in his head. A giant robot, built from quantum strings and dark matter. The hero, a dark skinned man wielding a long curved knife, looks up at the Techno-Demon in mild amusement. The flowing silks fall around the man like a maiden's hair. His chest, exposed, reveals powerful muscles underneath the exotic fabric. Yet, what draws your eyes is not the build of the man or even the gigantic robot he faces. What pulls you in is the look in the man's eye - joy.

With that thought safely locked away, Non-Descript Indian Guy sits down to slay this more mundane beast before anyone else can come pounding on his world.

Story of Your Life

2005-04-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

When writing the story of your life, how do you end it?

Conclusions are best left at the endings of things. Rarely, do they fit in the middle. Waking every morning. Showering. Drying yourself off with that same towel another day too long. Forever, looking in the mirror disgusted at the mass of flesh you turned into. Driving to work uninspired in your destination. Sitting through the day, turned off. Hiding. Not even trying to escape, because you already vacant. Regretting the drive home. The hours of TV. Then lying in bed as she sleeps next to you. Waiting for your life to have a conclusion.

Not to end. This is not a suicide plea. Though, just as with divorce, at least in suicide someone does something. I’m simply looking for a conclusion. Something to signify an arc, a story. A story of my life. What has happened? Why has it happened? What have I become because of it?

With conclusion comes meaning, but more importantly catharsis. That deep breath you let go of at the end of the movie. The one you didn't know you were holding. The one that takes all the emotions you were feeling and lets them wash over you. That moment that lets you feel. Catharsis.

With no conclusion, I can have no catharsis. I'm left, holding my breathe, waiting to feel.

When writing the story of your life, how do you end it?

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gansta

2005-03-31T20:13:00.000-08:00

Six years ago, I went for an interview I never thought I deserved to even have. The perfect job. The dream job.

Sitting in my car waiting for the interview to start, I listened to this song. Over and Over again. I needed to find my center. I needed to find a place where I could be someone I wasn't. Someone who wasn't afraid. Someone who could smile without throwing up. Someone who could impress.

Well, I got the job and from there started a whirlwind carrier that took me to London and Japan. Movies were made, songs written and sport celebrities gave me "props". It was unbelievable. Making money, seeing the world and effortlessly doing a job.

But in that six year, things changed. At the height of my career, everything began to slip apart. The bosses left the company, leaving the employees to fend for themselves. Half the staff was laid off and those few who were left felt empty.

We tried to rebuild, to pick up the pieces. We still are, but it's not working. We're "bleeding" staff as they leave to other companies. Other companies ran by ex-employees. People you counted as friends turn their backs and show their loyalties. Yet, somehow we feel like the bad guys. Those few left standing -- survivor's guilt.

We fight amongst ourselves, wild kids lost on an island. No adults. No order. We devour our spirits within this office park. Nothing feels good anymore. Nothing seems to work. There is no center to find, no matter how many times I replay this song.

Good Day

2005-03-05T22:57:00.000-08:00

Tummy full, feet still a little cold and dogs parking outside. This Saturday was well placed in the week - a week of build up to Friday that culminated in a presentation that climaxed in pretty display of pictures and talking heads. It was Friday, not it's Saturday.

The wife watched Sex in the City season on in the living room, preparing for a trip to New York that we shouldn't be taking but will anyway. Dinner was good. It's amazing how much Boston Market tastes like Thanksgiving.

It's nice when she in a good mood. When Joe can walk through the house and not feel he's about to be tossed a live bomb that's going to explode even before he tries to catch it. It's nice to just be able to sit and read and type and not worry about what she's thinking. About what he should be doing. About second guessing his words, his actions, his life.

Sometimes, his head will clear and he'll see what's happening. His heart gives up and his brain takes over. He can't spend his days trying to make her happy. He can't run after her everything she gets frustrated about the dogs or the refrigerator or the computer or the crap she left in the hallway or the laundry that still hasn't been done or the dishes that never get clean or any of the millions of other things that make her not happy. He can't spend his days trying to fix these things. They are just not going to go away.

So, instead, he sits in his office and types to nobody. When she's not in a "nice" way she thinks he's being a cold dick. Granted, she's never told him this with words. Again, Joe reads the mind of his wife and tries to act accordingly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes she looks at him like he's crazy when he explains to her his choices and why he made them. Sometimes he thinks she's right.

Now is good though. Now he can write to nobody, even though he thought he really didn't have anything to say. He can work things out in his head and then go back to her happy and ready for anything.

Today was a good day.

No Good Deed...

2005-02-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

The room smells of mildew. The tangy smell of old water saturating the carpet. Instantly Joe thought of old bread and bad fruit. Though the carpet glowed with cleanness, the smell revealed an unseen contamination festering underneath his bare feet. The damp carpet had ruined his socks, but as long as he didn’t stand in one place for too long, his feet would not get soaked.

Only after opening every window and turning the fan on did the air begin to thin and breathing returned to a secondary thought. The cold air filled the house and found it’s way into every room clogging the halls with the smell of rain.

The rain had not stopped in two months. Sometimes it would slow down to only a dull mist, something you might not even notice. Other times, like now, it would fill the air with such density you could swim up to the clouds themselves.

There would be times when he would be watching TV as the lights dimmed and flickered and a car would drive by in front of the house. The car’s tires across the soaked blacktop sounded just like what Joe imagined a tidal wave would sound like as it destroyed the houses a block over. He could imagine the shattering of homes as the water ripped fences and cars and trees up off the ground and began throwing them back down on top of the houses.

The silence of the empty house unnerved Joe. Ever since he came to this place, he always felt like he was being watched. Joe wondered if the old man from the other night was out there, watching him in this rain. Was he standing on the back porch looking through the glass? He could imagine the man’s face, twisted and distorted through the thick moisture of condensation on the glass. The old man always seemed to be around at just the wrong times. Joe knew what the man wanted. He knew the man wanted to be with his wife. He knew it from the first moment he looked into the old man’s eyes. But for some reason, he didn’t kill Joe. Lord knows he had plenty of chances. Come to think of it, he didn’t even have to kill Joe. He could have just turned him into the police, or worse reveal Joe’s secrets buried in the backyard – at least the ones that were his. That would have been enough.

Somehow, as Joe sat on his damp carpet, he had remained alive. He knew of no good reason why he was allowed to remain with her or why the old man hadn’t dragged him out to the dead rose garden to make another mound. But here he was just the same and he wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of it.

When Joe’s wife had come home from a horrible night of work, Joe made her dinner. It wasn’t much, but it was more than normal and she thanked him for it. As she complained about her job and the people she had to work with, Joe hoped that he was buying his right to life one good deed at a time.

The Man With Three Backpacks

2005-02-22T00:34:00.000-08:00

A Monday spent on the couch as the rain pours down and the dogs bark in the backyard and the life slips slowly through the pours of Joe's body. A day spent where he is always about to start something, but never does. Thinking through the many tasks, burdens and responsibilities of his life hoping that one will inspire to move him from his lethargy.

Five hours of 24, four episodes of Enterprise, the two-part I-Robot episodes on American Chopper and a poorly acted 15 minutes of the Ashley Simpson show made up his day. As always, he worships heavily at the throne of Tivo. Only twice did he rise off the couch. Once was to surf for porn in some vain hope it would somehow mobilize him - get his juices flowing and back to work on his life. But as is always the case with vices, they only serve themselves and never those who are slaves to them.

The second time Joe rose from the couch was to investigate the strange man who had come to the door. The man was wearing three backpacks. His pants were a shaggy green with shirt to match. Hair seemed the sort of disheveled homeless chic he was used to back when he lived in the city. The man walked like his foot had fallen asleep and he had one hand locked against his body, holding something.

He rang the doorbell. He didn't push the button, like most people do. Instead, he rang the little brass bell by the door. The one only kids ring because they think it's fun. Joe could see all this from the couch. The blinds looking out the front window where barely opened. The man could likely not see in at all, but Joe had a good shot of all of this. He lied there motionless as the man bounced back and fourth on his asleep and not asleep feet.

In a very short amount of time, the man turned and walked away. Joe got up and peeked out of the blinds, but he was gone. He ran softly to the kitchen and through the door into the garage. Peering through the slits in the garage door, he looked for the disheveled man, but could no longer see him. He stood there for sometime in the cold garage, looking out through the cracks. Finally, he gave up, went back to the couch.

Now, it's almost one in the morning and Joe knows he should go to bed. His wife is already there and he does have to work tomorrow. He knows he should do these things. But he also knows he won't. What he is going to do has still to be decided by his imagination.

Laughing At The Gods

2005-02-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

The darkening spots on the concrete are the only way you would know it was beginning to rain. Joe feels a light touch on his shoulder that he thought was a brush of hair, but was in fact a drop or water. He scratches an itch on his cheek only to discover a bead of rain on it. Looking up, as everyone does, as if they would see the rain falling from the sky, Joe wonders if it will be enough.

The rain pulls him in. It makes him unable to see too far ahead, focusing his attention on the slippery ground and the chilly air. The ground around him is covered in rose petals. Thousands of them stuck to the city sidewalk.

Instantly he remembers...

It was their second Valentine's Day together, or maybe their third. She had wanted to take him out somewhere nice in the city. The restaurant was classy, near the water and surprisingly still had food Joe wanted to eat. They spent the evening talking about work, school and friends. Their relationship had gone beyond comfort. They were friends first, lovers second.

Stuffed and buzzed, they leave the loud restaurant only to be overwhelmed by the soft tapping of rain all around them. It was the light easy rain that almost begs to be walked through.

"Do you want to get a cab," she asked without really asking.

"No, let's walk," he turned to her and smiled.

"It's kind of far to BART," she said.

"If we get tired, we can always take a cab then," he argued.

"That's true," she smiled and gave him a soft kiss.

The wet streets of San Francisco move at odd angles when you're not looking. They turn and twist like lovers caught in the sheets. The rain hides the grime and cloaks the tall boring buildings in a grey haze. By the lights of the restaurants, book stores and pubs they walked together.

At every block the rain came down harder. They found themselves jumping over the gutter to get to the sidewalk. Funny thing, thinking back, Joe doesn't remember if they had an umbrella. It wouldn't have mattered if they did. The water threw itself down on top of them and they held each other close - laughing back at the gods.

Then, like some kind of movie, she pulled him into a dark stairwell. Suddenly, pulled out of the rain, the water on his body felt heavy and alive. It moved through his clothes and ran down his arms and legs touching every part of him. That's when she kissed him. Pulling him close to her as she leaned against the mailboxes and she punched him with a kiss. He kissed her back lost in the moment, lost in her. They rain had become a roar around them. It could wash away the city, but they would still be there.

"This is the best Valentine Day ever," she said as she pulled away from him.

"Yeah, I think you're right about that," he said.

They stood there in the stairwell for some time and watched the river run down Columbus. Kissing, laughing and holding each other close they were young and clean and more alive than ever.

Give Them Pause

2005-02-12T00:24:00.000-08:00

As is so often the case with people who betray your trust, you forgive them. The betrayal rarely seems to outweigh the years of what you believed to be loyalty, commitment and honesty. Though the betrayal is extreme and you can't believe the looks on the faces of the people you discuss this with, you find some way to sleep that night. You find a place for that unbelievably toxic act. And in the morning, you've grown a little bit more used to it. It's settled a little in your stomach, no longer gripping so tightly to your heart.

Years may pass until such an act cuts you so deep again. But, what's funny is how easily the old wounds bleed. The first cut is indeed the deepest, but the second is the deadliest. Because when that betrayal strikes again, when the lies fly through the air as thick as thieves - the anger of old is replaced by understanding. Finally, you're aware of who you're dealing with. You had hoped you were mistaken, but now you know.

Regretfully, you can't simply write this person off. They are too tied to your life and on some levels your happiness or at least the happiness of those you care about. You can have all the talks with them you want. You can throw all the lies back at them. You can explain to them in your most deadly tone, but none of it will stick. Because come the holidays, you're all at the same table. Come the parties, birthdays or other get togethers, you're standing in the same room.

This might lead you to plot and plan their downfall in a more devious manner. Slashing tires, egging their house, these were the way things were handled when you were a teenager. It was nice because it set up a good check and balance system. They understood what you were capable off and you got a little revenge. Now though, you're over thirty. The stakes are raised. The actions are that much harsher. As you lie in bed, unable to sleep, what could you do to make it better? What could you do that would give them pause the next time they try and lie to you?

How far are you willing to go this time, Joe?

The Trio

2005-02-02T23:36:00.000-08:00

After such a long break, where does one begin?

While getting gas, Joe leaned against the pump and looked at the suburbia that was his life. The distant mountains were the only sign that he was standing out a living thing and not a strip mall.

In front of him, on the sidewalk, a child clumsily pedaled her tricycle. She pushed with all her might to get the awkward three-wheeled vehicle to move.

Behind her, her Grandfather pushed a large blue stroller. In the stroller was a boy, not much younger than the girl on the tricycle. The boy was deeply engrossed in drawing something in his book. As his Grandfather's wispy white hair blew about in the breeze, the boy seemed to be solving complex algebraic equations with his crayons.

The Grandfather seemed to be thinking of people he no longer knew and places he was no longer able to go. As the lives of his grandkids expanded, through self-expression and tricycles, his was shrinking. From the world, to the country, to the city and now to the single block he could barely muster up the strength to take the kids around.

The nozzle thumbed off and Joe returned it to the pump. By the time he had agreed to the carwash and gotten his receipt, the trio were gone.

Dirty Thump

2005-01-26T01:45:00.000-08:00

Waking with a mouth full of dirt and a head for of needles is not what Joe expected. He expected to be dead. He remembered the struggle in the bathroom. He remembered the darkness creeping in around his visions and the sudden sense that he was helpless.

The worse thing about being buried alive is not know which way is up. A part of Joe's brain might have been telling him to remain calm. But that part was the ignored. Like a child, Joe flailed. Like a victim, Joe kicked.

When his hand pushed through the earth to air, he felt like he was falling. His orientation was completely backwards and he felt like he had punched through the earth and was going to fall out the bottom. The rabid spin of reality ripped him the rest of the way out of his grave.

Surrounded by rose bushes, Joe sat waist high in his own demise. Air pushed down his lungs like it was filling a vacuum. In front of him were other mounds similar to his own. He should have realized there would have been others. He wasn't alone in his desire. He should have known.

Emerging from the darkness a man walks up to Joe. His face is old and wrinkled, yet even in the shadows of the moon he looks familiar. When the man talks he sounds odd, like listening to your own voice on a tape.

"You should have stayed dead," he says. The man casually picks up the shovel left leaning against the fence.

Absently, Joe says, "I should have known there would be more”. Oblivious to the man's movements, Joe looks towards the house.

"They never do," the man says.

From the house, the sound of the shovel hitting Joe's face is nothing more than a dirty thump.

Sounded Like A Thought

2005-01-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

Last night Joe heard a scream. Two actually.

The first sounded more like a thought then a noise. But it was enough to stir him from his useless slumber. The second hit him like a fist. Ringing, stinging thoughtless sound.

Suddenly, Joe was up out of bed and standing at the window. Listening. The glass was wet with condensation. The only part he could see through was the very center and that was steadily getting fogged over by his breath.

There was not a third scream. Only the loud breathing of the dogs. He listened, feeling his ears open more than his eyes. He reached out through the window with sound. Nothing.

Joe walked to the bedroom door. He had this sensation when he gripped the doorknob and focused on the door jam. It was like a dream. That hyper awareness of your thoughts and your environment -- like deja vu for the first time.

The house was dark and instantly fear swept over him as he worried that he was not alone in the hallway. Then, he did what he always did. Joe ignored it. At the living room window, he searched the street for any sign of anything. He leaned close to the window listening for new sounds, yet heard none.

Back in the bedroom the only light came from the clock telling him it was 3:30am. He crawled back into bed, neck muscles tight and eyes forced open with adrenaline. Joe knew he would crash soon. His body wouldn't be able to keep itself this alert for long and he'd pass out.

Joe watched the window for movement, lights from an ambulance, a shadow across the wet glass, anything that would confirm the sounds he heard. Nothing. As his body forced him back down to sleep, he closed his eyes and listened for as long as he could. For any noise, but he was so tired.

Finally, just at that point when sleep over takes waking, Joe heard his backyard gate click shut. The sound was clear and distinct in his head. Heard a thousand times on a thousand different gates in a thousand different yards. Click.

But at that point, Joe was already asleep and it sounded more like a thought then a noise.

57

2005-01-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

Stumbling past the caged men, Benny worked his way to the end of his broken path. Only mildly did he remember the real world, more a passing hangover than an actual experience.

Regretfully, his body had lived and would soon die in a world he never really felt a part of. What he would not give for one more liver and onions. One more smile from the girl with the golden hair. How he missed those days.

But he didn't feel too bad. He had made it big. Through the storm that was his mind, he had remembered that. Seeing him self on the big screen. He had made an impression. He had left his mark. And to him, that was enough.

The Mind of a Writer

2005-01-11T00:27:00.000-08:00

Locked in a room. Reading the same paragraphs over and over and over again. Making the slightest change. Crafting the words and the lines and the meaning so that it hits as hard as it could. Hours of work for minutes of pay off.

Where does the comma go when you're using quotes? Don't forget to use that when referring to things and who when referring to people. Check your yours for missing "r"s. Go over you tense. You have horrible tense. Keep as much of it as you can in the now. The past is for wimps. Lose all be verbs. Starting the sentence with a verb pushes the reader down the line. Talk of things in threes.

Remember as you loose yourself in the commas of life not to forget the meaning of it all. What's the point? Answer that, but don't over answer it. Don't come straight out and say, "This is my point." Show me what the point is. Make me believe that this was actually my point all along, you just happened to write it down.

Read it aloud. Read it backwards. Out of order. Read it like you’re an asshole trying to make it sound bad. Read it like you're a kid. Read it like your British. Read it. Read it. Read it until you know it in your sleep. Say it with your eyes closed. You know you’re close when it feels like a song. Like something you could never have written. You’re close.

Change it when it doesn't work. When there's the slightest fear that it might be off. It is. Cut. Cut. and remember. CUT. The less people have to read, the more they'll actually remember. The great die young. Why? Because there was less of them to hate.

Write. Review. Revise. Repeat

Sex In A Miniskirt

2005-01-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

When the music started and she began to sing
A dozen flashlights shined across her
Each seeking the spot they most wished to see

Like sex in a miniskirt she knew how to strut
A body that moved as music and passion
Hair made up to the point of make believe
Lips and eyes, all from a world of fantasy
Legs, smooth and nubile, wrapped in net
Shoes wove around feet and ankle
Like fingers of a boyfriend

In that crowded backyard
Hidden among the hills of San Francisco
Like a high school crush
She hit Joe
Mesmerizing

And for the length of a song
Joe could almost ignore her shoulders
A little too broad
And her hands
A little too big

“I’m a fighter”
She screamed in song

“You won’t stop me”
She promised

Joe wouldn’t dream of trying.

The Virgin Sacrifice

2005-01-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

At 65 mph, no one can see you move. You appear to be stopped on the freeway, an object neither at rest nor in motion. The other cars roll past you indignantly touting their clean ticket records, flagrantly abusing their right to traffic school. Defined by committee, to be safe for the masses, only the old, the scared and the dumb move at these speeds.

Oftentimes, Joe believes himself to be all three.

Looking to his left he sees a black Honda Civic fly past him. In that instant he sees her beautiful, thin, too pale, likely a vegan and long straight hair that hangs just past her poor posturing shoulders. She wears an old baseball t-shirt that looks more like it's meant to be worn to bed than to work.

A large melted candle has formed onto her dashboard like lava as the Sponge Bob air fresher hangs above the candle. The virgin sacrifice. Dido moans through the glass at Joe seducing him to Let Go, like he was some captain of a ship and she were a siren. As her car moves past he sees her bumper sticker, "there are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't."

It's not until later at work, well after lunch and as casually as possible, that Joe asks the programmers he's chosen for friends what it means.

Cookie Infested Mouth

2005-01-05T00:39:00.000-08:00

The sudden jerk of motion makes Joe look up from the passenger seat. There’s a child standing on the hood of the car. The boy must have jumped from an overhanging tree. He landed like a superhero, Joe thinks.

Joe looks at the boy. The boy leers back. Perhaps more a super villain, Joe thinks. Screaming at Joe in his best HULK SMASH voice, the small boy yells, "It's time for you to leave now!"

Joe notices the boy is holding pinwheels; one in each hand as drool hangs from his dirty cookie infested mouth. He has those little kid shoes that only little kids can get, the ones with the bottoms that flash when you walk. They’re doing a laser light show.

The boy jumps off the car in one mighty leap and runs down the street, spit flying as he makes the "PPPPPPHHHHH" sound that pinwheels make when they spin.

So that's what it was like to be young and on sugar, Joe thinks to himself. I'd almost forgotten.

The Good Wife

2004-12-31T02:30:00.000-08:00

She smelled the sex before she felt it, awakening with him on top of her.

Earlier, she was pissed that he had spent the night alone watching TV in his private room. She was angry because she knew he was watching women do things to men that she wanted to do to him. She had gone to bed frustrated and unsatisfied.

Now, here he was on her -- in her, taking care of business. So be it, she thought. With the slightest moves of her hips and the softest touch of her hands, she finished the job for him.

Then as he pushed up on his arms to look down upon her -- satisfied, she slapped him. Head ringing, brain buzzing, he fell to his side of the bed. His confusion and pain stifled any questioning as her anger bled across the bed like an open wound.

Lying there, stunned and embarrassed by his brazen actions, the man did nothing.

Then he heard her moan. He could not see her in the dark, but he could feel the blankets move and her weight shift under them. He heard her breathing deepen and could smell her sex like perfume on the first date. Her breathing quickened, her moaning grew in volume and the bed began to rock back and forth, slowly as if on water.

As his wife brought herself to climax, he lied next to her, silent. Fully aroused, but completely emasculated.

And like the slow exhale of love, she drifted off to sleep.

Fire Right; Ice Left

2004-12-28T01:12:00.000-08:00

The right side of Joe's body does not move. He tries to lift his arm, but all he feels is the twisting fire that seems to rip all the way up to his neck. His muscles feel shredded, tendons pulled apart like cheese from hamburger. His right hand shakes and sends trimmers throughout his ever tightening chest. His whole body shutters as if anticipating a loud noise. He moves his neck and feels the flesh tear from whatever lay underneath his skin. Air rushes in and burns away the first layer of virgin fat. His body is breaking down. It's defying him. He is at war with himself and he is losing.

This is how Joe wakes up. His first thought is that someone has set the right side of his body on fire, while covering the left in ice. He shivers from the cold and spasms from the heat. He sees nothing. If his eyes are opened, they see only darkness. Does he even have eyes anymore; a deep instinctual voice rises up to his brain and screams. Fire on the right. Ice on the left. Blind.

This is how Joe passes out. He tries to let himself slip away. He forces his body to shutdown. He knows that it should give up, at some point. People black out, go into shock or loss of consciousness. He looks for this – he hunts for it. The numbness he seeks becomes his cave to hide in. He rips through the forest of his pain searching for the entrance. When it comes it is too late. He has felt too much. He can feel the scars tear across his soul marking him forever. A body gives up only when there is nothing more to give.

Somewhere on an island across the Sound from Seattle, Joe lies in a puddle of his own making. He is hidden deep in a forest shrouded in snow, rain and filth. This is what Joe knows when his eyes decide to work, when his body is no longer a tempest of the elements. There is a sky, trees, mud and what is left of his clothes all around him. The forest screams at him like an alarm clock; it abhors him like the waste from an engine.

As he makes his way down the hill, he finds his path back to civilization easy to follow. Some of the blood is even his. He comes out of the forest and finds himself standing at the backyard of his new home. There are few fences this far out and fewer people. Fewer people everyday, Joe thinks.

He washes up with the hose outside. The water freezes before it fully runs off the concrete. He can see his own body turning blue even on the fleshy pinkness of his cuts, but the numbness that he so longed for gives him none of these sensations.

Inside, he finds the bathroom and turns on the bath. He crawls into the warm water and begins to shake so much that water splashes out of the tub. Stars shoot across his field of vision and his last thought is that he hopes he doesn't drown.

The flushing of the toilet wakes him up and he sees his wife standing in the bathroom washing her hands. She looks back at him and smiles a sympathetic smile.

"Your neck still bugging you," she asks.

"Yeah."

"You should take some of my Aleve. It'll help your muscles relax," she tells him as she pulls some from the medicine cabinet and sets in on the edge of the tub.

She kisses him on the forehead and then leaves the bathroom. Joe takes the bottle and eats four of the tablets. He's beginning to shake again and fumbles at putting the cap back on the bottle. His left hand is starting to go numb and his right shoulder has begun to burn.

Roy G. Biv Goes Shopping

2004-12-24T20:17:00.000-08:00

Being driven around in the back seat of a Hybrid, eating Cheesy Poofs and secretly listening to music through his headphones, Joe feels like he's a teenager again. The dark parking lots of this island are empty of car or stray shopping cart. Only the high overhead light poles and focus group tested company logos shine in the night. This place is not a city, it is a shopping center. This place does not have streets or roads, it has lanes and lots. Weaving through the speed bumps and around the vacant parking spaces, it becomes more and more obvious that nothing is opened on Christmas Eve.

Joe's mother-in-law mumbles something under her breath. A desperate statement that even she can't believe she's saying.

"No," her daughter says. "We're not going there."

Joe can make out most of the conversation through his head phones -- enough to give the impression that he's listening while not listening. Quietly, he pulls a single Cheesy Poof out of the bag and places it on the center of his tongue. He sucks on it and feels it collapse under the pressure inside his mouth. Rolling the Poof around on the roof of his mouth he tastes the artificial flavor of something he was told was cheese.

After a half an hour or so, Joe's wife concedes. "Fine, let's see if Wal-Mart is open." However, just as she says this her mother cuts across two lanes of empty parking lot and pulls into a Walgreens -- its lights ablaze and its spaces full of vehicles.

Inside, the elves that try and pass for tall humans who are pissed they have to work, mill around the store more like customers than employees. Joe looses himself in the small aisles and countless things he doesn't need but has likely bought at one point or another. Joe walks amid the blurring rows of merchandise. He's turned off. His mind and thoughts are as blank as the stares of the employees.

His wife finds him in the three foot section for school supplies. He's looking at the binders and the pens. She comes upon him as he's organizing the folders by color.

"Joe?"

Joe doesn't look up at her. He's almost through with the folders.

"What are you doing?"

"What's that guy’s name, the color of the rainbow guy?" Joe asks.

"Roy G. Biv," she answers without even thinking about it.

Joe pulls all the red folders from the middle of the stack and places them on the far left. His wife stands there, watching him. She knows that he has to do this. He's been off since they've gotten here. She waits, patiently.

"There," Joe says looking at the nicely organized row of folders. "You wanna go," he asks her sounding somewhat refreshed.

"Yeah, I'll go get in line." Joe's wife walks off and Joe stands there looking back down at the folders. He feels the moment of clarity slip out of him. It was there for a moment, that certain peace he gets when the kitchen is clean or when he wakes up when he wants to. He felt that here.

Reaching up to the stack of folders, Joe pulls a single red folder out of the stack and places it right in the middle of the four purple folders on the end.

Back in the car, back in the back seat, back to listening to his music through hidden headphones, Joe is returned home.

Like Clockwork

2004-12-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

Snow lies in large squares that blanket the hills and mountains around the Sound. It's not a thick, keep you warm at night, comforter blanket, but more a loosely knit afghan slowly falling apart from age type of blanket. It's weird how it rests on the ground in only squares.

As the plane lands and the tires try hungrily to grab onto the icy tarmac, Joe imagines the plane sliding sideways down the landing stripe and coming to a perfect stop at the disembarkation point. If only we had a stunt pilot, he thinks to himself and he smiles.

Like clockwork, if a clock where made of people and taxis and ferries and built over a great distance, Joe finds his way through the cold streets, across the icy water and onto the remote island he'll call home. Odd how those people who aren't your family can make you feel more at home than those who are actually blood.

After passing a small Library with wild green moss growing on the shingled rooftop, Joe enters a water worn, nameless bar. The special is a burger, fries and a beer for $5.25 and by the decor inside he can tell they think that's over priced. He orders the special and is unsurprised when the options for beer remind him more of his Bakersfield roots than his SanFran address - Bud, Bud Lite, Coors and for those "high class" types MGD.

It's not until he's halfway through eating his burger sitting among clean but tired tables, in a bar where the fooz-ball table and electronic dart board collect dust, where the floor has been worn to the point of no longer being a color, unless that color was "floor", where the locals read the newspaper at the bar, smoke and exchange a muscle t-shirt and the first season of American Choppers on DVD for Christmas gifts, that he sees the blight.

Across from him, shiny, new, fake metal covering, 7 inch Active Matrix LCD display, card swipe attachment, faux retro-neon glow sides and sleek visually ergonomically designed "music listening station" hangs on the wall like some sort of high tech hunting trophy. The screen flashes "Ashanti" and "50 Cent" and "Listen to Kelly's new Sweat and Suit" and "140,000 Songs to pick from" and "credit cards accepted." Joe knows that the jukebox, if you would call this thing that fell off the back of a landspeeder on its way to the latest Star Trek convention a jukebox, has an wireless Ethernet and can download the new top 40 songs without ever bothering the mullet, thick-neck, brings you an extra beer because it's Christmas, waitress. He knows that he could listen to anything from Elvis to Elvis, from CCR to NWA and all of it would cost him nothing more than the ones and zeroes he calls a bank account.

On this island, this home, this sanctuary such a thing should not exist. The future and for that matter the present, has no place here. It’s out of time and he can feel the past slipping through him like Marty McFly’s family picture.

However, exist it does and like all things shiny and new and made of tech, Joe stares at it like a god.

Three Out of Four

2004-12-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight Joe lies next to his wife as she falls asleep. He talks to her like a memory or an echo.

"Not that you would," she says to him "but don't look in the spare bedroom closet. That's where I'm keeping your gift until we get back."

"Okay, well then don't look in the computer room closet," Joe says to her. "Because that's where I'm keeping your pony."

"He doesn't make very much noise for a pony," she informs in a childlike voice.

"He's a dwarf pony," Joe comments. "They're very quite."

"Does the pony know I don't want a pony?" she asks him.

"No," Joe whispers. "Don't tell him though. You'll break his little heart. I don't think I could take him looking up at me with those big deer eyes of his."

She laughs at Joe. It’s a casual and sleepy laugh like an old tired friend.

Joe stares up at the ceiling and sees the vent for the A/C. The vent has four screw holes, but only three screws. There’s an empty hole where there should be a screw. He remembers trying to put a fourth screw in that last hole. Nothing would stick. The drywall was completely destroyed in there. It wouldn't hold a screw. So he left it. The vent stayed up with only three screws; it was fine. Besides, he didn’t know how and didn’t care to fix it.

Now he looks at it and realizes that he's going to be seeing that last hole for a long time. Every night he goes to bed and reads until he can’t keep his eyes open, the last thing he’ll see is that hole. When he wakes up to the kids in the morning running around the house and trying noisily to be very quiet, his eyes will focus on that hole. When the parents of some teenager who is dating one of his teenagers shows up in the middle of the night asking question no parent wants to hear and no parent wants to ask, he’ll see that vent and wonder how much longer until it falls. When he wakes up, eyes blurry with cataracts and a tightening pain in his chest like Time himself is driving his hand deep into Joe’s armpit and grabbing every vein and twisting them in its icy fist, he will see that screw hole missing its screw. And as Time leans in for his final kiss, Joe will laugh because he remembers this moment, lying on the bed with his young wife talking about a dwarf pony with big deer eyes. He’ll laugh and Time will leave him be for another day.

Almost to her self, Joe's wife mumbles more to Sleep then to him.

"I'd take a baby moose. They’re very cute."

Joe kisses her goodnight on the forehead and goes back to his work.

Who Can It Be Now?

2004-12-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

The voices swim around me like jelly from a knife. Too much. Too many. Only the cold quite room hidden away from the family and close friends gives me anytime of peace. Outside, those few who can smoke do. Inside, those that want to catch up speak too loud over the new music that has been dusted off for this time of year.

Once I'm found, I'll be mocked. I'll be pulled back out into the mass. I'll be feed more food than I can eat. I'll be asked more questions than I can answer.

Every foot step towards the door strikes fear in my heart. How much more can I write before they come for me.

Please, now this. I want to hide in these words and lose myself in between the lines I type. I want nothing more than to be here, with you, where ever you are.

I hear them. They're at the door. They've come for me. I'm done for...

Merry Christmas.

Melancholy Masturbation

2004-12-16T03:42:00.000-08:00

As the days turn to years and the years to a life not lived a part of me thinks I should wake up. Yet another TV show as I sit by my life, grinding teeth and chipping fillings. Nights spent looking for something. My life feels like that guy standing in the open door of his house patting down his pockets.

Nothing ever changes -- everything changes. This year is unlike any other in its sameness.

Why can I not clean the kitchen and do the laundry? Why must I live in filth that I'm embarrassed to even think about.

With every cigarette I hate her a little more. How many until I can't stand it? How many until I soak them in urine? How many until I explode?

Perhaps I'll finally give up at quitting and join her again.

Nothing ever changes.

Now we have a mortgage. We used to have rent. Now we have sex. It used to be making love. Once we were in friends in love. Now we're friends who sometimes get drunk and don't care anymore about what we let the other one do to us. We still can't afford the life we try and live. We're still trying to win the respect of those that we shouldn't while taking for granted the those we shouldn't.

Unlike the other women in my life, you are not a fiction. I can not idealize you in prose as you sleep next to me smacking your gums or as you continue to live your life in a constant state of Tivo.

Really when it all comes down to it, it's not you. It's me. I would rather sit and complain then stand up and go somewhere. It's my nature, it always has been. I'm a horrible sport. I decide the outcome before I even interact with others. I assume the worse and let the worse happen. I don't fight. I don't know how to fight even when I might try. It just comes out as repetitive whining. I have no skill set to improve this.

I get lost in music. These little worlds catch me in their lyrical orbit and spin my head around like a comet. I can see the music in my head. The people. The stories. The emotion. I see the honesty of it. It speaks to the soul. It speaks from the soul.

A house like any other sits on a street decorated modestly in Christmas lights. Along the roof, a single twelve foot strand hangs absent of light. In its darkness, this strand stands out more than the hundreds of other lights. This is my life.

I should start a blog where I talk about comic books or video games or gadgets I can't afford or music or porn sites. I could start a blog entirely on "how to" do something. How to get married. How to buy a house you can't afford. How to live with a wife that continues to smoke as you continue to not. How to waste your life watching other peoples fake lives. How to find the little things in your life that allow you to ignore the big things. Ignorance through Obsession.

Joe hasn't slept in three days. Not really slept. He tried to sleep at work last night but all he got was a short nap and then his brain was awake again bouncing around his head like a child with too much crystal meth.

He's changing into something else. He's slowly come to terms with this. It's not alien or anything cool and sci-fi like that. He's not evolving into the next step of human evolution or adapting to an environment that was once foreign to him. He simply is becoming a person who doesn't sleep. By the end of the year Joe would likely not really sleep at all.

Already he crawls into bed right before dawn and gives the illusion to his wife that he's been there the whole time. But once she is up and gone, his eyes open and he just lies there. His body lies there, not really thinking but not really resting. A waking sleep.

If your life were a drink it would at first glance appear ugly, pungent and dark like the thickest ale. As you drink it though you would find it at first refreshing, but there would be a taste in the back of your throat that would almost make you gag. You could feel your stomach shift, but your tongue would what just a little bit more. All too soon you'd realize you'd nearly finished the glass and all you have is found memory of it's taste as you look back down into the sludge that collects at the bottom of the glass that holds you life.

I should start a blog where I simply masturbate melancholically to any poor fool whose reading.

Oh wait...

Freezing Burning Twisting

2004-12-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

Joe doesn't remember falling asleep. He only remembers waking up in the pitch of night. He's on his side, turned away from his wife. His leg hangs off the edge of the bed. His foot and lower leg have gone numb from the cold. His body is curled up in an almost fetal position as one hand is tucked underneath his pillow and the other holds the corner. He can feel his shoulder grow a little sore from sleeping on his side. He can feel his wife's butt pressed up against his butt.

He can feel a burning cold hand grab his exposed leg like a clamp. Joe's eyes shoot open and see a man's face, so close to his own, he thinks he's looking in a mirror. He can feel the man's breathe on his face. The humidly of his air smells like wet roses. This man is squatting down on the floor and looking Joe directly in the eyes. Eyes that poke just over the pillow-topped mattress and gaze out of the darkness at Joe. He can't see anything but the shine from the wets of this man's eyes.

The man grips the top of Joe's head, pulling it back. The man tightens his fist around Joe's leg. Joe lets out the softest of cries.

"Shhhh," the man whispers. "You don't want to wake her, do you? Then you'd have to explain this to her and you don't want to do that, do you?"

The man's voice sounds like a recording of your own voice played back for you. It sounds like how you would sound if you left a message on someone's old answering machine.

"What do you want," Joe asks.

"I'm watching you now," the man whispers. "I'm watching you and she deserves better than you."

With that, the man pulls back into the darkness. The shine of his eyes disappears into the black of the bedroom. His hand releases from Joe's hair but still he holds tightly to his leg. Joe can feel him squeezing and twisting the muscle and skin of his calf back and forth.

Joe lies there in bed softly crying into his pillow over the pain the man brings him. Tears soak through the cotton pillowcase. Too afraid to call out to his loving wife lying next to him in bed, Joe endures the freezing burning twisting this man awards him.

Finally, he can't take it anymore. He pulls his leg back under the covers, fully expecting the man to pull it back out. That’s when he realizes that the man was not holding his leg anymore. The man had not been holding his leg for some time. It was simply the cold and Joe's own thoughts that tormented him. Like a leg you’re too afraid to move because it fell asleep, Joe just lied there. Even as his muscles complain of the pain, Joe questions the reality of it all. Another bad dream in a lifetime of bad dreams.

It isn't until morning that he sees the newly forming bruise around his lower shin that he knows it was all real.

What She Doesn't Know

2004-12-10T01:23:00.000-08:00

Without thought, Joe reaches over to the high fence and grabs the shovel – fresh soil still clinging to the metal plate. Finding a spot next to the other four, Joe digs. He digs for what seems like hours. The ground is soft and easy to move through.

Joe stops digging when he's up to his waist in earth. Rolling the man into the grave, the towel slips off of his face. The eyes still seem alive. They look up at him glassy in the faint moonlight judging him, damning him -- jealous of him and the life Joe has. The life this man does not. Joe takes the towel out of the grave. No reason for his wife to wonder where the other towel went. A simple wash and the burgundy will hide the rest.

Joe goes over to the large Rubbermaid storage bin next to the fence. He opens it, looks around and pulls out a large bag that says Rose Food on the side, but somehow Joe knows that it's cat litter. Pouring the whole fifty-pound bag on top of the dead man, Joe covers his body and hopefully most of the smell. Then he goes about the process of filling back in the whole.

By the time he's done, the fifth mound looks only slightly bigger than the other four. Setting the shovel right back where he left it, Joe goes back inside the house. The bathroom, the towel and his clothes are all easy enough to clean up. No one will be looking for this man and no one, except his wife, would suspect anything.

But honestly, why would she suspect him, her husband? The man that loves her more than he loves himself. He would do anything for her and she knows this. He would kill for her and she doesn't know this.

With a smile he hasn't felt in some time, Joe curls up next to his wife in bed. He had almost forgotten how her body would give off so much heat that he would sweat. She pushes back into him -- her naked body up against his. She's asleep, but somehow she knows he's there and he is at peace.

Thermador

2004-12-09T01:07:00.000-08:00

The old Thermador is the only light in the bathroom. It's twin orange coils burn with dull warmth. Tin and cobwebs guard against the heat that burns within the tiled bathroom walls. Everything in the room is lit as if a candle was shining through a pumpkin.

The pile of his wife's laundry piles in the corner by the door. The burgundy bathmat is now a deep brown, almost the color of dirt. The faded and cracked blue tile gleams to a marred white. Everything looks as if you were seeing it through a pumpkin.

Even the blood pushing it's way across the tile floor is darkened so deep it looks like oil. The blood leaks out of the man lying on the floor of the bathroom. His head is crammed against the bathtub and the corner of the wall. The man lies on the floor the way a puppet would lay on the floor if his strings were cut.

Joe stands in the bathroom looking down at the man. This is not the first man he has killed.

Propping the head up, Joe takes the matching burgundy towel off the towel rack and wraps it tight around the man's frozen features. He takes off the man's pajama top and ties it around the man's arms so they won't flail about when he moves the body.

Joe decides to carry the dead man out to the backyard instead of dragging him by his ankles. By the ankles would be easier, but the flash of bloody carpet fills his mind. He knows that even his wife's deep sleep would end if he had to get out the Hoover to clean things up.

Opening the bathroom door, the door to the office, the door to the backyard and finally unlocking the large security screen door, Joe checks to see if the coast is clear. He listens to the silent sounds of the backyard. He listens until he hears the bats moving around in the pear tree and the squirrels trying to sleep in the large elm on the other side of the yard. He listens until he hears a distant car alarm and somewhere an old woman has fallen asleep and her TV is too loud.

Picking up the dead man, Joe manages with great effort to balance his weight on one shoulder. With what fills like muscle ripping effort he manages to carry him outside to the far yard, beyond the backyard. The ground is dark and full of hidden spots for him to trip and twist an ankle.

Dropping the man in the far corner of the lot by his wife's dying rose bushes, Joe catches his breath. Leaning over, grabbing his knees he sucks in the air that doesn't want anything to do with him. As he begins to look around for a shovel, he sees rolling out in front of him, four large rectangular mounds. The rows are perfectly lined up with one another. They are all the exact same length.

This is not the first man he has killed.

Pregnant Pause - VII

2004-12-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

Joe sits closer to a woman he does not know than he ever has before. His arm is wrapped around her and she cries out on to his chest all the pain of her life. As all the love that she had spills out of her like the saline of her tears, Joe rubs her back and slowly rocks her in his arms. She is a child. A fragile, twenty something, child who has lost who she was and found this other woman's life to live. This broken, disjointed existence. This jumbled image of a person that can not exist in the now because it feels too much like the past, moves through life only in tomorrows. Only in what can be -- not what is and never in what was.

Joe rocks her slowly, trying to tell her it'll be okay, but somehow he knows that she isn't listening to him. Instead she's listening to a ghost. His voice is played over and over again in her stereo. His voice speaks through the magnetic band wound so tightly within the hundreds of audio tapes. All of the tapes when she plays them have his voice, but none of them, no matter how many times she listen them, have answers.

Joe holds her for what seems like forever in his arms. He can feel her breathing slow and her sobs subside. He hair smells like oranges after they've been washed and placed on the counter top to dry.

When she falls asleep, Joe lays her back in her couch and wipes the tears off of her cheek. She looks like a different person. Sleeping, he can not tell anything about. Her face is soft and unwrinkled. Her facial features betray nothing of what she has gone through or what she is still going through. Instead, she looks like any woman quietly sleeping.

Standing up, Joe finds his coat and looks around one last time. Suddenly, he feels like he doesn't belong here. If someone were to come in or walk out from one of the back bedrooms, he would feel like he was a burglar who has broken into this place -- this life.

One the toes of thieves, Joe leaves Star’s life and fumbles through the cold and fog for his own. The streets wash over him and he is numb to the cold. Finding the side door to the garage open, he sneaks back into his house and undresses in the bathroom. The house feels fifteen degrees colder than outside. As he walks through it trying to find the bedroom in the dark he feels his skin pulled tight against his body and his hands clenched tightly against the freezing house. The door slides open with a rub of carpet and closes behind him with a loud click. Listening, he hears his wife's ever present breathing -- unbroken by any noise he makes. Pulling the covers back he slips into bed as sideways as possible and is over come by the mattress and sheets that sting like slaps two slabs of ice pressed against him. His wife does not even roll over.

Staring up into the nothing, Joe tries desperately to fall asleep before the sun comes up.

Pregnant Pause - VI

2004-12-03T03:59:00.000-08:00

Star sits in an uncomfortable chair in the waiting room of the hospital with a box of cassette tapes of bands she hates on her lap. It doesn't make any sense. Her brain stares down at the tapes and can't read a single band name, but she knows she hates them all. She's always hated his crappy rock music.

She is vaguely aware of a doctor or at least an old guy in a lab coat and bad shoes, who is explaining something about how this happened or why this happened or when this happened or anything, anything but "who this happened to" -- she knows who. David.

Her brain, no her whole body is a sludge. She feels herself listening to the doctor and then suddenly, a woman, David's mother, begins crying. This woman has been sitting next to her. Softly at first the woman cries and then it flows over her small hands and worn tissue and spills out into the waiting room for all to see to hear.

On the other side of the room, Star sees a child, no more than two playing with a book like it's an axe. He's stabbing the table which has many more weapons like the one he's wielding.

She looks back at the box. Confused. "Where did this come from?"

His car, someone says.

"Why is it here?"

They brought it. The police.

"But where's the rest of it?"

The rest of what?

"The car? Where's David?"

David is dead.

The doctor is through talking. Now, they're moving Star and Joyce into another room -- a private room. The doctor makes a big scene about trying to keep everything private and quiet and some other crap that Star could care less about. Joyce cries, lost in the loss of her child. Star sits in another uncomfortable chair and looks around the new room seeing nothing.

She begins to stack the tapes in the box. She gets frustrated because they don't fit well. Where'd this box come from?

A police woman walks in. She's black and very skinny, but her hair is very long and braided. Star sees a small wedding ring on her finger. The woman begins talking to one of them, Joyce or Star, neither answers. Joyce continues to cry and Star just stacks the tapes trying to make them fit.

As the woman talks to the two people in the room who don't seem to be listening, Star stops what she's doing and looks up.

"What did you say?" Star asks.

The room grows silent, even Joyce stops crying and looks up at Star. Faintly, a nurse in soft white shoes walks buy. Star sees her shadow as she passes in front of the door.

"He was in his car, out past Panama Avenue, on the freeway," the cop says slowly.

"No," Star says. "After that."

The cop looks down at her notes, confused and then looks back up.

"He was going south on the freeway. There were no other cars in the accident and no witnesses saw it happen. By the time someone had driven by --"

"Why was he going south?" Star says getting up. The box of tapes falls to the ground with a disorganized crash.

"That's what I came in here to ask you. It looks like he was leaving town and doing it fast," the cop says in her best cop voice.

"Tell me where was he going?" Star feels her voice raise like someone turned up the volume on the stereo.

"I don't know," the cop says. "Does he have any friends out of town? Maybe in LA?"

"He was supposed to be coming over to my place," Star says moving closer to the woman. "We were supposed to go see a movie. I was waiting for him. Where was he going? There's nothing out there. Nothing!"

"That's what I'm--"

"WHERE WAS HE GOING!" Star screams at the cop.

"TELL ME WHERE HE WAS GOING!" Star screams. "WHY CAN'T YOU TELL ME WHERE HE WAS GOING?" She screams at her and screams at her. Why doesn't this woman answer?

And suddenly Star feels it. Star feels it all. She feels the horrible, lonely crash of his car in her heart. She feels it tumble and spin and rip through her lungs. She feels it tear a hole the size of his car through her back. She feels his life spill out of her like thickest oil on filthiest road. And still she screams at everyone in that room -- at cop -- at the mom -- at those damn tapes -- at that fucking car -- at the road -- and finally, at David. She screams at him to come back. She screams at him to make it make sense -- to give it all reason and purpose and to wrap it up in a song -- one of his crappy little songs.

"Where were you going?" she asks him, but David does not answer.

David is dead.

Pregnant Pause - V

2004-11-30T01:57:00.000-08:00

It’s 1999 and KRAB radio seems to play "Last Kiss" by Pearl Jam over and over again as Star waits for her boyfriend, David.

"Where, oh where, can my baby be? The lord took her away from me."

Star and David have been going out for six years now - a lifetime for anyone in their twenties. At least, that's what everyone always tells her when they find out how long they've been seeing each other. She's gotten very good at handling the same three questions. "Why aren't you guys married yet?" "How long until you get married?" "When are you having kids?"

Oddly enough, Star never really worries about the marriage question until others ask. She's happy with David and that's enough for her. At some point, they'll get married, but that some point isn't here yet. And besides, she's still in school and she barely has enough money to pay rent. He needs marriage right now?

"She’s gone to heaven, so I’ve got to be good. So I can see my baby when I leave this world."

As the music continues on, relentlessly, she remembers back to the first time she made love to David. He had come over to her house. His mom was out with her new boyfriend and wouldn't be back until early the next morning. Her parents slept like the dead, upstairs and in the back of the house. Star's room was in the front on the ground floor. David rode his bike over in the dark, taking care to not be seen by any passing car. Coasting into her driveway, David hide his bike on the side of the house.

Star never heard David ride up; instead she heard the soft tap of him knocking on the glass of her side window. She had feared this moment since she had brought it up to him over a month ago. Star knew that David would never ask to have sex with her. He was too nice of a guy. He'd never force himself on her or even suggest that he wasn't satisfied with their relationship sexually. He acted, and likely was, always happy with whatever she gave him.

It was because of this, and not because she loved him, that she decided to loose her virginity to him. She had dated other guys and had plenty of opportunities to have sex, but every guy before was not right. She couldn't trust them with her body like she could David. Star knew David respected her and would be careful with her while they made love and still care for her after it was all over.

The thought of him inside her made her cringe with fear. What if it hurts too much? She thought to herself. He'll be devastated.

Fighting back the nervous shakes, Star got up from her bed and moved to the window. The nightgown that she had bought slide over her skin bringing every hair too attention. As she opened the window, the cold air of winter rushed in and seemed to freeze her skin tight against her body. She could feel her nipples harden and push against the new bra.

"Hey, Love," David said as he carefully crawled into the window. "Any sound from the parents?"

Star closed the window and then turned back to David. She kissed him hard making sure to press her body against his. She said nothing to him, but kissed him and kissed him like he was her air. She hoped David would soon understand. They were safe and she was ready. They had talked enough about this night. There was no need to talk anymore.

David kissed Star back and in doing so he picked her up into his arms and carried her over to her bed. She tried comically to remove his clothes. The shirt was caught under his pants, which were protected by his belt, which was blocked by her legs.

She could feel him growing hard against her. He set her down on the bed and she slid a hand down to the bulge in his pants and pressed firmly against it. She heard him inhale.

She felt him smile against her cheek. Kissing her ear and moving down her neck, David was patient with Star. Star however, was not. Starting with the belt, she began to remove his clothing and in a matter of moments, he was more naked than she was. Deciding to leave him with only his boxers, Star felt that they could still play before actually having sex.

David took his nakedness as an excuse to remove her clothing. Lying on the bed, he leaned over and begin unbuttoning her nightgown. However, she softly pushed him back with a kiss and climbed on top of him. Straddling David's body, Star gave him a final kiss and then sat up, pushing her crotch into his erection. With slow forward motions she rocked her hips back and forth over his groin, growing more and more aroused in the process.

David's head rolled back and she could see that his mind had completely disconnected from anything that was not his penis. She continued this rocking motion as she ran her hands over his chest and arms. Brining her hands down to the waistband of his boxers, she played with the head of his erection and could feel the tip of it moistening the cotton fabric.

Star waited until David looked up at her to pull off the nightgown. Reaching behind her, she undid her bra and let it fall across her arms. David's eyes no longer saw Star, only the breasts that were attached to her. Caressing, kneading, pushing them against her she was lost in his touch.

They felt each for what seemed like hours before she finally rolled off of him and onto her back. She again said nothing, but gave him a fearful look that told David, "I'm ready, but be careful."

All of the things Star was afraid of, the pain, the mess, the noise, all of it, fell away as David slowly slipped inside of her. She felt like she was falling, like she couldn't catch her breath, like the air had been sucked from the room, like someone had scared her and her body was still in shock. It wasn't pain as much as overwhelming sensation all over her. It was too much all at once for her both physically and emotionally. She had to push back on David's stomach, to make him stop for a second. She needed to catch her breath. He looked at her as if he'd done something wrong, but she assured him that she was fine. Deep breath. Slide in. Deep breath. Slide in more.

She heard David's breath quicken above her and hoped that he wasn't close to being done. But as he pulled back out of her and then pushed slowly back in, she forgot all about David. She no longer felt his weight above her or his breath across her neck. She only felt the electricity that spread over her body like a warm static charge. Slowly guiding David's body with her hand, she helped him find her rhythm. With every push she felt like she was both floating and falling in bed. Together the two of them moved in what started as a slow rocking and what quickly ended in rapid silent thrusts.

Afterwards, the two of them didn't talk. David held her against him, trying not to fall asleep. Star felt warm and comfortable wrapped in David's arms. She wished she could stay this way forever.

"Oh where, oh where, can my baby be? The lord took her away from me."

The music plays on as Star is suddenly pulled out of her thoughts by the ringing of the phone. Hurriedly she runs over and answers it.

"Hello," Star asks.

"Hello, Star. It's Joyce, David's mom,” the voice says distantly on the other end of the line. "There's been an accident. I think you should come over."

"She’s gone to heaven, so I’ve got to be good. So I can see my baby when I leave this world."

Pregnant Pause - IV

2004-11-24T01:59:00.000-08:00

Cluttered would have been the closest word to clean Joe could use to describe Star’s small apartment. The walls were an old off-white and there was a dark brown and orange shag carpet that tried but failed to fully covering the floor. He sat more in than on a couch that was the only endearing part of the apartment.

However, there was a shrine to technology in the corner that leaned like a drunken boyfriend against the wall. A small TV sat on one of the shelves and next to it was a very large stereo. Lying on the floor in front of the stereo, as if the machine had gotten sick and thrown up, were dozens of cassette tapes. They piled up around the entertainment center like children’s toys.

Joe sat across from Star on the couch. He had been watching and listening to her for the past half an hour. When they first got to her place she went and changed and when she came out she was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a green t-shirt. Her hair was up and she had glasses on. She looked completely normal, Joe thought. Which was funny to him because, how else would he expect her to look? She got him a beer and then they sat on the couch and she began talking.

He was starting to realize that he wasn’t the only one nervous. Her talking was a sure sign that she was afraid of the silence between the two of them.

In silence, anything can happen.

This felt odd for Joe. He realized that he was in the position of power, not her. This whole night had seemed to just happen to him. He hadn’t purposefully set out to do any of this, or so he told himself. But now he sat here with this woman that wanted him and was too afraid to shut up to do anything about it. Leaving it up to him to decide when he was ready to take the next step.

Joe, not really enjoying the moment, but not wanting to move things along, did nothing and simply watched her talk. He thought about her as she spoke to the room. He had realized that there was a woman he had created in his head that was not the same one he sat next to. The red coat, the orange purse, the crazy shoes and the ritualistic car all created this image of her that he filled with substance. All of it pointed him towards this wild woman that would fuck his brains out and kick him to the curb the moment she had her seventh orgasm. However, that was not the girl he was sitting next to.

Getting up, Joe walked over to the cassette tapes and began to rifle through them. He was surprised to see that most of them were well over five years old. Star must have noticed that he had moved from the couch and was looking at her tapes because she changed the subject to recent concerts that she’d seen.

“I saw the White Stripes play at the Fillmore last month. They were awesome. The Eels opened for them. I love that band,” she explained to him. “I love the Fillmore. The last concert I saw there was Fantomas. There weren’t really that good, but Mt. Banana opened up for them and they were like totally cool. I’m really starting to get into those Japanese noise bands. They just have so much energy when they’re on stage.”

“I’m more of a Soul Coughing fan myself,” Joe says absent mindedly as he looks for any of the bands she’s been talking about for the past five minutes. He finds none. “Do you have any CDs in your room, because I don’t see anything new here?”

Star pauses for a second and looks back at her room. Joe thinks he can see her paint a picture of her room in her head. Her eyes move around her bedroom looking for music. Finally, she turns to him and shakes her head.

“No, I don’t have any music back there,” Star tells him.

“Then what’s all this music,” Joe asks somewhat confused by the mismatch of her collection and what appears to be her very passionate taste.

“Oh, that stuffs not mine,” Star says with a weight to her words that makes Joe stop his questioning and simply give in to what appears to be another quirk.

Reaching up, he hits play on the tape deck. He hears Star inhale suddenly. Then she shouts at him.

“Turn it off!”

Joe hits the stop on the tape deck hard. He didn’t even have time to really hear what it was. Now, the room is filled with a silence. The silence seems to lean over him covering him in a great cloak. Joe turns and looks back at Star. He notices a glistening shine to her eyes as she tries very hard not to look at him. Star is sitting on the couch with her legs crossed and she’s staring intently at the label of her beer.

Slowly she picks at with her nail, trying to scrape the surface clean.

Pregnant Pause - III

2004-11-22T01:09:00.000-08:00

"Do you live around here," Star asks Joe as he tries to eat his last potato skin.

"No," Joe lies. "I live up in the city. How about you?"

In that instant, Joe couldn't lie to himself anymore about what he was doing in this strange place sitting here with a friendly yet “off” waitress. He wasn't just going for a walk or having a little snack before he went home to his wife. Joe wasn't just flirting with this girl because she was flirting back. He knew he wanted something. That’s why he left his house in the cold of night in the first place.

What he didn’t know is how this woman, this Star, fit into all of it, but he wanted to see how far this could go. This fake life he choose to lead tonight, was taking him somewhere he’d rather be than lying in bed staring up at the nothing.

He had told himself, somewhere in his mind, that he would stop when he had to. He was still Joe. He still knew what was right and what was wrong. He still loved all there is to love about the life he led so quietly. He would stop. He told himself this.

But for now, he would see how far this would go.

Star was once in advertising, she told him. She had been working for a start-up company that was building some sort of device that lawyers could use to do something lawyers might want a device to do. Only, as it turns out, after much over-spending, lawyers really didn't want a device to do whatever it was this one did. So, they lost their funding and their jobs. After six months of looking for new work and finding none, she decided any work was better than the street. Now, she works here waiting tables.

As she spoke, Joe could tell that there was a huge hole in the center of what she said. There was a chunk of her life that she deliberately avoided talking about. It was so obvious that even the cook, cooking for no one in back, could see it swirling around her trying to pull her in. He thought for a moment about asking her to explain this vacancy in her life, but then he realized that it was the same vacancy he too was ignoring in himself.

Around 4:00am, Star tells Joe she's off of work. There is the briefest of pregnant pauses... then she asks Joe if he would like to come over. For a beer or something, she says. "Is this where you stop, Joe," he thinks to himself.

"No," he answers to himself while saying the exact opposite to Star. He picks up his jacket and pays her for the food. He's careful to leave exactly 20% tip so as not to seem too cheap, but also not to seem as if he's paying for something he's planning to get later. She takes the money and if she shares any of his thoughts, he can’t see it across her tired face. She tells him to wait outside and she’ll be out once she gets her stuff.

Her large red velvety coat is the first thing about Star that is actually her. Her work clothes and attitude were of someone dead with a pulse. But when she walked out of the back room with her bright orange leather purse and proud red coat, he finally knows her. To say she was “off” before or that she sought sanity from the other direction was incomplete. She instead defined her reality simply by moving through it. She was who she wanted to be at any given moment, even if who she is and who she was were in drastic conflict.

In that moment, Joe wanted her like a cigarette. He wanted to inhale her inside of him and to feel the dizziness that she would bring. He want to suck her in and let her tingle his limbs from lack of oxygen. Then to slowly exhale her enjoying the vacuum she would leave.

As they walked to her faded gray Dodge Dart, Star opened the passenger door for him. Standing there like some psychedelic doorman, she held the door open and with a wide sweep of her arm, motioned for him to get in.

"Thanks," he said a little confused by the role reversal.

"The locks broke," she said with a smile. "I need you to open her up from the inside." Reaching over, Joe undid the lock and felt the cold leather seats through his thin layer of jeans. He found himself shivering.

She closed his door as he looked around the car. The floor was covered in cassette tapes. There were no CDs at all -- only cassette tapes. There was also a large pair of black leather shoes on the seat. They had a heart stitched on the top of one and a knife on the other. The words “Love” and “Hate” were also sewn in below these images. Flames shot up from the soles of the shoes in a mix of orange and red leather. Reaching back for the seat belt, he found none. He fumbled between the large cushions that made up the bench seat for a belt, but found none there as well. Instead, he pulled up a handful of lighters and a tampon.

Getting into the car, Star put the key in the ignition and turned it a single click. The stereo lit up in front of him. The lights coming more from the hole where the tape deck was rather than any planned location. The whole dash was a wash in a dirty white glow that added false warmth to the freezing car. Faintly, Pink Floyd was singing “Wish You Were Here” through the single mono speaker on top of the cracked dash.

Star kicked the gas five times, counting each one. Then she turned the key fast in the ignition, still counting. “Six”. With two more kicks on the gas, “Seven, Eight,” she forced the ignition again “Nine”. The engine barked back at her, painfully being awoken from hibernation. On “Ten” she both kicked the gas pedal and turned the key at the same time.

Suddenly, the car roared to life. Slowly she throttled the engine, almost as if petting a very large bear. It growled back in resignationed compliance.

With the tone of recent accomplishment still in her voice, Star turns to Joe and asks, "So, to my place?"

"To your place," somebody who was once Joe agrees.

Pregnant Pause - II

2004-11-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

Entering a Denny's that some how found its way in front of his purposeful yet senseless path, Joe thinks about getting some deep fried goodness. He wants a coffee and fries and something else deep-fried, but he's not exactly sure what just yet. The dented, glossy menu will have to help him decide.

He stands in between the toy machine and the ugly hosts podium of the diner waiting for someone to help him. The place is empty. There doesn’t even seem to be anyone working let alone eating. He looks around trying to make himself noticed and wondering if there was a murder. Perhaps he would stumble upon the body and have to call the police. Then he’d be questioned and have to explain to people he doesn’t want to explain things to, what he was doing at a Denny’s at 3:00am.

A short, bald Mexican looks through the window that looks into the kitchen. He then turns and calls out to someone in Spansih that Joe can’t see. A few seconds later, a woman wearing a Denny’s uniform comes walking out from kitchen. The scent of cigarettes flies around her like the hair of a muse. She is pretty even through her "I work at Denny's attitude" and her "I really don't like working at Denny's" clothes.

As she grabs a menu and shows him where he can sit, Joe sees that her nametag says Star. She gets him coffee and takes his order. All of this done in a very “I don’t want to be working here any more than you want to be eating this food” sort of way.

In short order, French fries, fried zucchini and potato skins appear in front of Joe. He’s amused by the half a dozen small plates that sit on his table. As he eats, he watches the waitress move around the diner. She appears to be doing busy work. Adding salt, wiping down tables, going over receipts and generally doing everything she can to look busy while getting nothing actually done. The one thing she does do, is continue to keep Joe’s coffee filled. On the second refill, Joe strikes up a conversation with her.

"Do you like working graveyard," he asks her, somehow knowing that she's asked this question a lot.

"It's alright," she says as if practiced. "The tips aren't very good, but there's not that many customers. We do get some strange ones in here every now and then though." With that she leaves again to go do as little as possible.

In a few minutes, with the smell of cigarettes even stronger then before, Star comes up to Joe and begins talking. Surprisingly, he finds her more than willing to talk. She stands at his table for a while telling about some of the crazy people they get in at this hour. She’s holding the coffee pot awkwardly away from herself as she’s explaining about a homeless lady that always comes by and orders a piece of apple pie with ice cream every night. Finally, after fifteen or twenty minutes of her going on like this, she puts the coffee pot down on the crappy Denny's table.

Joe continues to ask her questions about here job. He never thought the graveyard shift at a diner could be so interesting. Or perhaps it has more to do with the person whose telling the stories. Joe notices as she talks, that she does have a certain way about her. At first it’s very hard for him to place her “way”, or more specifically, what type of person she is. That’s when he realizes that she is unlike any woman Joe would talk to, or at least have the nerve to talk to. She seems to be coming at sanity from the other end – just a little off, but not enough to notice at first. She makes references to things that he can’t know and talks about events with a perspective that is a couple leaps over from where his brain usually starts. Her eyes are either locked on his or dancing around the room like the reflections from mirrors.

By the fourth cup of coffee, Joe asks Star if she'd like to sit.

Pregnant Pause - I

2004-11-20T02:34:00.000-08:00

Even though Joe’s wife is a heavy sleeper, he still uses the side door from the garage to sneak out of the house. She sleeps soundly, which is more than he can say for himself. Every night is the same wakefulness lying in bed, staring at nothing. Feeling her sleep so peacefully right next to him, feeling the world sleep so peacefully, is all too much. So, tonight, he decides to see this sleeping world. To look it in the eyes and see it for what it really is – a lie.

At first, he tells himself that he's going for a walk. It's 2:3oam, he can't sleep and the naked girls on the computer aren't helping. A part of him hopes that if he can get out and burn off some energy. Then he’ll be okay. He’s always got so much energy at night. His days move past him like traffic, but his nights are full of a passionate intensity he never ever actualizes. Well, tonight may be different, he tells himself.

Walking down the sidewalk he feels exposed. The cold seems to highlight him as this shape moving through the white of the world. Passing cars can easily see him and may wonder what a man is doing walking the streets of this quite little neighborhood at this hour. Where is he going? What is he doing? He imagines them opening up their cell phones and calling the police. He hears them giving the cops a brief yet actuate description of himself. It’s only a matter of time until a cop car pulls up behind him. They’ll stop him and ask him pointed questions about something he hasn't done yet.

But, no one drives past him. No cop pulls up and give him the once over. He is alone on the icy streets.

Joe walks around his block twice and soon becomes bored with it. The dark houses of his neighborhood with their occasional glowing porch lights give him nothing to hold his interest. He finds it even difficult to imagine the lives these people live -- quietly tucked away in their homes. He’s positive that their life is no different then his own.

This bores him even more. So, turns away from his house and begins to walk to somewhere else, he knows not where. A few cars do pass him but they ignore him, too lost in their own perverse actions at this hour or too tired to even notice a quite man walking slowly on the sidewalk. They can’t see what’s on the inside of him. They don’t know that he’s searching for something, something that even he isn’t even fully aware of. All they see is a short man, likely a bum, walking down the street minding his own business.

It's cold but his mind is clear. Joe thinks. Even though he knows at some point he’s going to have to go back to the life he has, at some point he’s going to have to crawl into bed and wrestle the beast of slumber down, but for now he’s free. He feels like he did on that one day he ditched high school -- like he's breaking rules and living a life not his own. The single day he ditched was boring. He spent it with a few friends hanging out at a Del Taco sharing a single cup of Dr. Pepper and freaking out about whether or not the guy behind the counter was going to call the school. But the idea of the moment, of breaking away from the routine and the rules, that was where the passion lived. It made him define himself on some level that he never had before. This defining changed who he was. It changed him into someone other than the boy who didn’t ditch school – made him someone new. And that, in the subdued, suburban, white bread, blandness of his existence, was a sign of life.

As his breath swells around him, Joe wonders what a man not himself would do. What would he do on a night like this, with a passion like this, with thoughts like these? What would he do?

The Smoke That Clouds

2004-11-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

Blinds down, lights low, Joe finds work less painful than sludging through the burning light of the outside world. However, what he does, day in and day out, even he begins to question. His first thought of what his job is comes out quickly and wrong to him.

"Check boxes," he thinks as he looks over the lists and lists of To Do items on his desk.

"I check off check boxes," he says to only the action figures and the resin statues of super heroes that glare at him from the walls and bookshelves of his office.

He does something other than check boxes, he knows this, but cares little to think on it more. Instead, standing from his desk, he turns the long plastic pole that goes up to the hidden parts of the mini blind that make it open and close with the tiniest of effort.

The sun pours in like water through the windows of his office. His eyes twitch and pull back into his head, yet he forces them to see what is out there. To find something that will help him through this day.

Two coworkers he does not know exit the building, likely taking an early lunch. They chat in a friendly yet distant manner. Joe watches them, quietly hidden in his mirrored office.

Walking beside Wendy, Mike tries hard not to look at the girl's body because he likes her. He really likes her, but he knows that it's not going to happen, not ever, ever, ever. So instead he looks at other things with an intensity that seems almost worse to Wendy than just staring at her tits or ass.

As Mike looks at the newly painted red curb in front of the office building, thinking randomly of how often they would paint such a thing, Wendy wants him to look her in the eye. That's all she wants. That will be enough for her. If he can look her in the eye once when she's talking to him, she'll let him in. Yet Mike has now taken to looking at the tires on her car. Again random thoughts of the tread, the size, and the actual tire pressure flood his mind when he knows another part of his body and brain are having a conversation with Wendy. But for the life of him, he couldn't tell you what they were talking about.

"Mike," Wendy finally asks.

"You should really get your pressure checked on your tires. They look at little low," Mike says without thinking.

"Mike," Wendy asks again in the same measured tone.

Mike looks up at her. For the briefest instant he sees her face, her hair, all of her and is reminded of why he prefers to look at the tires and the curb and the random pine cone in the parking lot. When he looks at her, he feels naked -- completely and totally open with now hope of hiding anything. He hates it. He tries daily to not be that guy, that guy that looks, that guy that thinks about doing more than looking, that guy that the girls talk about on their bathroom breaks who "can't stop staring". But when he looks at her that's all he can do.

"You okay," Wendy asks hoping for something.

For an instant, Wendy gets what she wants. Mike looks up at her and his body locks, unmoving. The soft wrinkles around his eyes pull her into the deep deep green of their center. She sees for only a moment the quite features of his face - the proud not-shaved-in-a-day-or-two stubble outlines his otherwise pale face. He is a beauty hidden, she thinks.

"I have to go," Mike says and turns towards his car, keys in hand, door already open. That instant Wendy waited for is gone.

As Mike drives away Wendy turns to her own car. She fumbles in her purse thinking she's going for her own keys, but knowing she's not. She looks back again at Mike. He does the wave from the car and is gone. Still fumbling in her purse, trying to convince herself that she's trying to find her keys, she pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

Joe watches from his window and sees the old blue Toyota Corolla pull out of the parking lot. A beautiful woman, Joe doesn't know pulls a cigarette out of her purse and leans against her car. The smoke surrounds in a thick cloud, almost obscuring her image. She pulls her cell phone out and tries to make a call, but either changes her mind or doesn't get an answer and drops back into her purse.

As the smoke swirls around her, making it hard to see, Joe watches this woman wiping away the inevitable tears.

Sleep Takes Him Like a Drug

2004-11-15T01:52:00.000-08:00

There is a chill that covers Joe's bones like a useless blanket. Turning his muscles into the temperature of packaged meat, this cold comes from everywhere.

It was late Sunday afternoon when Joe finally woke up in bed. The sheet and blankets had been pulled off the end of the bed, just like are every night. The fitted sheet had come off the mattress and wrapped itself around his hand and arm.

The dream off fighting and losing and being pulled off a tower became clear.

The Sun had found that tiny crack in between the curtain and the wall. There was a line across his forehead, eye and cheek that burned. It was the only place that was hot. He moved away from it, turning over in bed.

He managed a look at the clock and saw that it was almost 2:00pm. It was late, really late even for him. But he was still tired. Still sore. Still unable to gather the strength to face the world, the house and the life he'd asked for.

Sleep rolled over next to him in bed. She was warm and forgetful, but she teased him with a comfort he could find nowhere else. She licked his ears with her cool tongue and casually dragged her fingers across his chest and stomach. Slowly, she massaged his crotch through his boxers while she brushed his hair out from his eyes.

"Come back to me," she begged. "It's Sunday. You don't have anything to do today. I've missed you so much. We never get to spend any time together during the week.

"I can't," he tries to say. "I've got shit to do. My wife’s in the other room anyways. She's likely pissed I'm still in here with you."

"What does she care," Sleep mutters into his ear. "She can't make you feel like I do."

Joe feels himself falling back into the bed, being pulled back like a slow warm blanket is covering him. The cold is leaving his body as Sleep takes him like a drug. Climbing on top of Joe as he willingly slips back into her, she yet again claims him.

Joe dreams again of towers and kings and things that can't be spoken or read. He dreams of beauty and pain and of all the things he never knew he wanted. He dreams in height and in sound and if full motion color. Only when she begins to leave him, does Joe dream once again of Sleep.

I am Joe's Useless Post

2004-11-13T03:49:00.001-08:00

Joe's fingers twist and contort as his brain stalls. Nothing moves across the page quite like a dying sentence. Stuttering to a start it manages an opening, but then never...

On drives home, the words and the thoughts hit Joe like the asshole behind him that doesn't understand the term "minum safe distance". However, here in this house that's too cold and too full of love and comfy chairs, he gets nothing.

There'll be times when he'll see a man walking down the street or watch a woman as she talks on the phone or simiply stares at his own life spilling out around him, and he'll understand the purpose of his words. What that purpose is, right now, he couldn't tell you. He couldn't even tell you if he was saying anything of meaning or just trying to fake like he is.

RatBoySucks2

2004-11-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

Joe's work computer won't let him in. The dual monitors sit there shining their soft XP blue at him asking him to login in. It's all a tease. The moment he tries he is denied.

Why is this happening to him? Suddenly, the hours of porn surfing on a work machine come flooding back to him. Has he been caught? Have the grimy little IT rats been sniffing around inside his box? What should he do?

He tries again -- nothing.

He sits and thinks, already seeing the movie of the next ten minutes play out in his head. Him walking into the rat hole office of the IT manager, explaining to him that he can't log in. Ratboy turning away from his three machines playing Everquest because you don't have to bathe in a video game. He can see Ratboy Alt Tabbing to a preset screen that shows the hours spent surfing for porn. At the top of the big red bar graph, is Joe's user account name. He'll feels, rather than sees, Ratboy's smirk as he explains he had to delete his account because Joe was "compromising the integrity of the network".

From here Joe's movie goes one of two ways. In one, he simply asks what he needs to do to log back in. As if on cue, Ratboy clicks some check boxes and tells Joe that he should be able to log in again. In the other version, he takes Ratboy by the back of his greasy hair and drags him along the long table/desk. Knocking over countless Lipton Ice Tea cans, numerous unused yet sloth incrusted keyboards and mice and whatever food came in the generic white foam containers from at least a month ago.

Joe, sitting at his desk, tries again to login.

Suddenly, his computer informs him that he needs to change his password. After half an hour of trying to think of some other stupid CAPS with numbers password that he's going to have to remember he decides on RatBoySucks2. The computer allows him to pass, giving him access to his desktop and his Outlook on life.

A single email sits in his inbox, telling him that the whole company has had to change passwords because it's "that time of year" again. Joe wonders if there really is a time of year to change one's password.

As the thoughts fade, Joe opens him his browser and uses the internet for what it was made for.

"I'm still here."

2004-11-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

Quiet and still the world sits outside Joe's window. No one moves in or out of the building. Cars remain trapped and motionless between faded white lines. Even the gardeners enjoy their shade and the cervezas at the far end of the lot. Nothing is being done. Every thing is holding its breathe.

The flu has swept through the office like a Thanksgiving day case of small pox. As Joe walks around from office to office looking for someone to waste an hour with, he is left alone. The silence is nice. It reminds him of the days when his wife has to work on a weekend and he can sit on the couch and just let the world move around him.

It has stopped raining but still he thinks of that girl with the umbrella and the mittens. Still he thinks of her kiss.

Last night he went to bed late, even for him. The curtain in the bedroom had been pulled back just a little. He could feel the cool air pushing through the thin glass of the old house. Outside the window he saw the leaves leaning in close to the window, trying to cover up the perfect sky. The moon was around, but not visible to Joe, but the sky was filled with light. The back yard was filled with a mix of shadow and starlight.

In that instant, he realized that his wife wasn't breathing like she normally does when she's asleep. Her breathing was quiet. The quiet breathes people have when they're awake and can hear the sound they make when they do something as simple as breathing. Usually, when she's asleep, he can hear ever inhale, every exhale, all of it. He can hear the dogs breathing too, normally. Their loud mismatched breathing with the occasional muted yelp has all become the white noise that surrounds him as he tries to sleep. However, now it was gone. She was awake.

He did not talk to her. Instead, he continued to stare out the little sliver of window. He continued to look away from her, ignoring what his senses told him was a waking person inches away from him.

Finally, reaching out with his hand, he tried to feel for his wife, but found none.

The bed was empty.

Getting out of bed his feet hit the carpet with a squish. Joe's first thought was that one of the dogs had peed on the floor. But when he looked down, the smell wasn't of the all too familiar ammonia, but of copper and what he saw was too dark to be urine.

Dozens of splotches of blood covered his dark bedroom like used land mines. As he looked around the empty room he again felt the cold of the window on his back. The window was closed, he knew this, but he always had to check. It was always so cold next to the window even when it was closed.

As he turned back to the window he saw what at first the thought to be a shadow then to be chair and finally to be a man. Standing at the window looking in a man gazed. The breath left Joe's lungs and was replaced with the icy cold air of the room.

- "I'm still here," the gazing man said to Joe.

- "What? What are you..."

- "And you and I both know I can do worse than this."

Joe blinked instead of running. He shook instead of running. He did everything except run.

He watched the man turn from the window and walk to the back of the back yard. To the place where the trees create shadows that even his eyes can't see into. He watched the man walk into that space and disappear.

Slowly, Joe managed to move, to look and to begin to put the pieces together of what happened. He walked to through the house looking for his wife and two dogs, but found none. He saw the trail of bloody foot prints he left behind him as he wandered through the three bedrooms, two bathroom home that he once felt safe in. He sat on the edge of the bathtub, rising his feet out and then drying them. All of this done in some sort of shock.

Finally, he went to the couch in the living room. Grabbing every blanket he could find that wasn't in his bedroom, he curled up into a little ball on that couch and stayed there until sleep reluctantly claimed him.

In the morning he awoke to his wife's pissy tone. She was late and he was still asleep. Those two things never made a connection for him, but for her, it was always a reason to be upset. She gave him a list of orders to act out before he himself had to be at work and then kissed him on the forehead and was gone.

He heard the dogs barked playfully in the backyard and as he got up to shower, he saw no blood stains on the carpet. The bedroom was filthy, but not bloody.

Yet, the curtain was still pulled back and even though the sun was shinning and the warmth filled the house, when he stood next to the window he could feel the cold and hear his voice.

- "You and I both know I can do worse than this."

Late Lunch

2004-11-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

Joe's stomach grumbles, waiting for the lunch he'll never have. Instead he stares out the window of his office.

Lou, exiting his new sleek black Mercedes, feels the need to stand around his car for a while. He walks over to the passenger door, getting some nothing or another out of the car. Putting on his prescription sunglasses and making the stock "call from the car to the office door", he closes his car door and shuffles to the building. The black leather coat he stole from his son helps hide his never going away gut and man boobs. However, not even the laptop bag, the platinum watch and the frosted highlights in his thinning hair would hide his true age.

Len leaves late for lunch. It's almost one and he still hasn't gotten anything to eat. Sometimes his work and his music will pull him into a place where he forgets about everything else. Not that there's much he would want to forget about. Just last weekend he went to SLO, did some rock climbing then found a roaming DJ rave party where he got to spin some of his records. It was a drugged hazed weekend that climaxed with him in a tent with some surfer twink from Santa Maria.

Mitch pulls into the partying lot and just sits in his car. The cigarette smoke fills his car like a gas chamber and only after he's pulled his mind out of whatever place he keeps it, does he lower the window a crack. Lunch was yet again spent alone. However, Mitch never sees things that way. For him, it's not about who he goes or doesn't go to lunch with. At all times, he's thinking about something else. Something that he lost.

Jenny sneaks from the office just after one. She's already had lunch. She ate her cut vegetables and dry chicken sandwich quietly after her eleven o' clock meeting. Now, with keys in hand and new purse slung over her shoulder, she goes off to cheat on her husband. The man she's having sex with works at the gas station at the top of the hill. The poor humor of the situation always makes her somewhat sick. She met him when she took her car in to get her oil changed three years ago. They've been having sex for the past three months. Always in his office. Always quietly so that no one will know. Afterwards, he talks about work that might need to be done on her car and she agrees and says that she'll bring it in next week for him to look at, knowing that they will have sex then as well.

Outside the wind wraps through the trees like braided hair. It twists the branches, shaking the leaves. It will rain soon or so the sky taunts.

Like Hope and Sex All Rolled Into One

2004-11-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

Reaching out like Wi-Fi, Joe's brain ponders the life he has landed in.

What ever happened to that one he loved? The one that he never ended up with? The one that he never talked to like he should have? Where is she now?

He can still remember her. Long brown hair. Soft smile like hope and sex all rolled into one. She had a way about her that was quirky, yet innocent. Often times she would do things, little things that would throw him off, reminding him of who he was sitting next to.

One time, she made a little frog out of paper and it would hop around on the desk. Then next thing he knew, she had dozens of them, quietly looking at each other.

There was this time when it was raining and he went for a walk with her. It was her idea, he would have rather made out with her, but he knew that was wrong and one had to be careful in picking the times one could make out with a girl or else she'd get sick of you and find some one else to occasionally make out with.

During the walk, she made him stop and not move at all. They stood there. He thinking that she wanted to make out and her listening to the rain. She told him to listen and to think about what he was hearing.

Quickly, he shut his eyes because he knew you could really only listen to something if your eyes were closed. Kind of like when you're driving and you're looking for that address and you can only really find it if you turn the radio down.

Eyes closed, he began to go through the sounds. Water falling, well it was raining. There was a sewer drain nearby. Water was going down the drain. A pool or sump or some other large body of water was close by because he could hear the subtle crashing of thousands of raindrops on the water. There was this bass that it gave off that was unlike the treble of the drops hitting the black top streets and concrete sidewalks. There was this wind that would creep up and shake the water from the trees that surrounded him. It was like a giant windshield wiper across the leaves and the branches. There was a spilling hum of tires across the street as the water spun from the rubber. And still there was the water drain deep and never ending.

In that moment, she leaned forward and kissed Joe. Her lips felt new and unknown, like the kiss of a first date. They were cold and dry and unprepared for anything romantic. He imagined, eyes still closed, that he could feel the creases of her lips, the vertical lines that form on them and give them depth. He felt the soft warmth of her breath across his cheek.

When he opened his eyes, she stood in front of him holding the umbrella and wearing her matching mittens, scarf and funny hat combo. Her checks were red and her eyes glassy like she was about the cry. When she spoke he could not hear a single word she said because the rain surrounded him like giant waterfall.

Killing Sunday

2004-11-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

Clicking through the lives of others makes one feel closer to the world than one actually is. I feel whole lives move around me that I never even see. As I walk through my own life, I'm often thinking of those I do not know.

At times, I wish to tell others about the world I've found out here with you, but I don't. It's my secret. My public secret that no one knows. I'll be sitting there talking to a real person and then I find myself thinking about her and her father and if she's going to be okay. Or I'll wonder if he's still stationed out on the ice and when he'll be coming back. I think of photos in my head of a girl who is young surrounded by friends and a world that will only try, but never succeed, in stopping her. I'll bring up little stories about my hometown. Stories that I don't actually know about, but I know she does because she tells them to me almost daily.

These people that are you, I thank you for your words and your openness.

Currently, I'm trying to work my way through a Sunday. I've watched enough TV to make my neck soar. I even cleaned for a bit, but that only made the rest of the house look dirtier. I moved some stuff around in my office and organized some of my comics. I even thought about taking on the mice that have moved in to my attic, but thought better of it.

Tomorrow is work. Back to ignoring the house and thereby the life I live in it when I'm not at work. It's nice. I show up, sit behind a desk, perform some sort of task and then drive home. It's the home thing I'm not to keen on.

Everything is so messy. The backyard, the clothes -- we live like bachelors. It's a wonder we ever made it this far without killing each other. We have dogs that are filthy, always filthy. And we have a carpet that really should not be off white and is usually more of a "hey look, paw prints" sort of color.

Everything is not finished. The molding of the bookshelves. A coat of paint. The entertainment center. My stories. They all sit around and just get more not done. It's amazing entropy at work. I often find myself sitting in the middle of it just hoping "there's another mind numbing, spirit crushing, game show on TV".

Some day the words will add up to sentences that will add up to paragraphs that will add up to pages that will add up to chapters that will add up to something more than I ever thought I had standing here, surrounded by filth and mess and dogs and TV.

One can only hope.

Rear View

2004-11-06T04:27:00.000-08:00

Joe never gets speeding tickets.

He does speed, but only at the acceptable 70 to 75 mph range. He has reached 80 before but only on a clear night when there was no traffic anywhere. However, speeding is never something he speeds his time doing while on the road. Instead, he coasts by in the second lane, listening to music or talk radio or nothing at all.

There are times when Joe feels like he looks more in his rearview then he does out his windwhield. Looking for cops or seeing other cars that are going to pass him by. They're always in such a hurry to get whereever they're going. Looking back, Joe sees all he people trying to push past him. Looking forward Joe see all the places he'll eventually be.

In the second lane he floats - stopped in time. Others pass him by, yet he still floats by watching for cops. You never know when one might sneak up behind you and catch you when you're not looking. He could pass one, hidden on the side of the road and if Joe wasn't paying attention to his mirror, he'd miss him. Until it was too late. Then, the cop would be right behind him telling him he did something wrong and he was going to have to pay for it.

Catching himself staring at the mirror, Joe focuses on what's in front of him. A couple cars, a long strecth of highway and not much else. The radio station is giving a traffic report. He turns it up. His path to work will remain uneventful.

Joe's eyes drift back to what's behind him. He never does gets speeding tickets.

Keen!

2004-11-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

The number of children allowed to walk around on the streets at night to accept candy from strangers is readily decreasing. No longer does a parent allow their child to wander the streets with a small group of kids their own age. The days of being home before 10:00pm dragging bags of candy are long gone.

Joe can count on one hand the amount of actual kids he had show up to his house this year. However, the slow recovery from the previous nights party made the excess of couch potatoing a plus. Joe realized he was getting old when it was his sore legs he thought of when he awoke on the 31st of October before the mild hangover. A whole night of standing up, hosting the no longer college friends but not yet willing to give up on beer, fun and the occasional passing out in the bathroom parties.

Thankfully, little that he remembered about last nights party gave him fear. Upon occasion, he would look back into the drunken haze that was his life and regret. Either something was said, done or some combination of the two that he would wish he had a sounder mind for. This wasn't that case about the Halloween party.

Slowly walking to the bathroom, Joe sees half a dozen bright blue action figures lined up along the floor. All are representations of "The Tick". One figure has the Big Blue Tick wearing a T-Shirt that says "I Love Wheat." Another says "I Love Dinosaur Neil." One has a action chop and another is super possible Tick. In the middle of this bizarre shrine stands the foot tall Tick, gleaming up at him.

"Keen," Joe says as he walks into the bathroom and closes the door to the painful world outside.

Where were you in 1967?

2004-10-13T01:34:00.000-07:00

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth 1967
Pink Floyd - Money 1967
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze 1967

Joe hides in the bathroom of his comfortably sized home. He hopes that the people outside will cease "enjoying themselves" as they are so found of saying when they come to his house, and leave. It matters not how much he's drunk. Their space has not decreased only his desire to sleep and to smoke.

When they do leave, though. His ears will ring with a powerful night of personal encounters. So many people so close for so long creates this high unlike anything he's found in a medicine cabinet or behind the Safeway down the street.

He counts the tiles on the wall, sixteen across nine high and stops at the math of multiplication. Instead, he builds the perfect Hard Rock mix in his head.

AFI - The Great Disappointment
Dwarves - Salt Lake City
Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards - Skins, Punx & Drunx
Pennywise - My Own Country
The Hives - See Through Head
Kid Dynamite - Rise Above
The Soviettes - #1 is number two
The Misfits - Horror Business
Ministry - No W
Sister Machine Gun - Gas Chamber
Slipknot - Pulse of the Maggots
Distillers - Die on a Rope
Living End - Carry Me Home
Bad Religion - Sinister Rouge

His mind loses its train of thought when trying to decide which songs to pull from the Witchblade soundtrack, the good one, he thinks. There's a knock at the door.

"Joe, did you fall in?"

"Yes."

He stands, washes his face and feels the crisp bite of reality cut through his drunken haze. Back to smiles and stories, he tells himself.

Opening the door of the bathroom, he returns to the host he has become so good at faking.

The Hoover Agility Steam Vac

2004-10-10T03:08:00.000-07:00

The Hoover Agility Steam Vac has proven to be most proficient in removing blood from the off-white carpet of Joe’s bedroom. The numerous pints that were so carelessly spilled throughout the room would have reminded Joe or grape juice, but instead of the sweet sugary smell grape juice brings, his nostrils were full of a coppery penny tang that made him swallow an extra few times.

Bought only last week, the Hoover Agility Steam Vac was meant to clean up a few trouble spots that the dogs keep leaving. However, now almost prophetically, the Hoover Agility Steam Vac was being used for a much more important purpose. What soaked into Joe's carpet was not a urine stain or even a "#2" dropping from his lovable but poorly trained animals. Instead, it was the slowly drying, ever darkening smears, patches, and pools of blood.

The carpet was not alone. The bed, the walls, the window seal, the dresser, all four walls, the small bedside lamp with the pull chain that would always tap against the metal pole, and even the TV tray that was acting as a table for the two alarm clocks and phone charger were all speckled, stained or spotted with blood.

Slowly, Joe began at the entrance to the room. The almost perfectly white carpet of the hallway stood out like a saint, laughing under his feet. "You'll never get it this clean again, Joe" it would say to him as he looked from it to the Cool-Aid floor of the bedroom.

There were two or three really bad parts. The first was right at the entrance to the bedroom or to the hallway, depending on which side of the bedroom door you happened to be stuck behind. Another bad patch was by the window, in between it and the queen-sized bed that sat in the middle of the room - now slightly askew. There was a final spot, on the other side of the bed as well that was not going to be easy to hide.

Filling the single tank with cool water - warm water would make the blood set, Joe begins. He decided to put only a quarter of the cleaning solution needed into the tank more out of curiosity then conservation. As the Hoover Agility Steam Vac powered up, the deafening sound of the motor filled the room, the hallway, and likely poured out of the house as well. It was late, almost nine o’clock at night. The neighbors might notice such a sound, especially for the extend period of time it would take, but no matter. Nothing could be done about that now. There was a mess and it had to be cleaned.

As Joe pushed the Hoover forward, he pulled the trigger that sprayed the cool water and cleaning solution out onto the carpet. The front of the Hoover Agility Steam Vac was built in such a way that you could see what you were pulling up out of your carpet. That way, you would know if it was working or not. Already, the vacuum was pulling up blood in liquid strings. After he had reached arms length, Joe released the trigger on the handle and slowly, almost motionlessly, pulled the Hoover back towards him. Joe saw the front of the machine go red and heard it slightly gag as the secondary tank begin to feel with what look like a cherry flavored fruit drink.

Again, Joe pushed the Hoover forward, squeezing the trigger. When his arm reached all the way out, he again pulled the machine back to him and watched as the blood was pulled from the carpet and into the tank. The instructions on the Hoover Agility Steam Vac explain not to "over soak" your carpet. Warning that the excessive water could cause damage to the padding and floor boards underneath. They recommend only using the spray twice on any given section of carpet. On the third push forward as Joe squeezed the trigger, he thought briefly of this fact. However, after looking over the room again, he worried little of the lasting effect of cold water on the carpet and floorboards.

And so it continued. Joe pushed forward, squeezing the trigger and then slowly pulled the machine back to him. With every stroke, more blood left the carpet and filled the tank. The only break for Joe was the emptying of the dirty tank into his sink and the refilling of the solution tank. Every time he would do this, he would turn the Hoover off. The silence of the house was almost louder then the vacuum. He took to using very little solution, discovering that cold water and a lot of elbow grease did as good a job as the full amount of solution and the same amount of time.

The most amazing part for Joe was the fact that it worked. With in half an hour of working on the first space by the bedroom door, there was a noticeable difference. The blood was still visible to the naked eye, but it had gone from the look of smashed grapes to spilled pink lemonade. After just under two hours, not even Joe could see where the stains where, at least in that part of the room.

All in all, it too Joe nine hours to clean the carpet and the bed of blood. The bed was less successful because the fabric of the mattress was not willing to give back the blood it had so happily sucked up. However, with some new sheets, the old ones would be thrown out, they were too far gone to be saved, the bed would look like new. The walls were much easier to clean. Some 409 and a sponge took care of most of it. The rough spots would simply be painted over.

The window seal was trickier by far. All the angles and the broken glass made this very difficult and dangerous to work around. As Joe leaned out through the broken window, broken shards of glass hung above his head still attached to the window frame. Blood spray covered the pale gray outside walls. A pile of red glass and metal collected between the wall and the AC unit for the house. All this would have to be cleaned up, Joe thought. And none of it was getting easier.

Joe stopped long enough to have a cigarette, a habit he decided he should once again renew. So many other things in his life were fleeting, why should he let smoking go so easily. For some reason when he looked at his spotty pink hand holding his first cigarette in nine months and the way his fingers stained the crisp white tube of tobacco, he thought he was in a movie.

When Joe finally went to sleep, after all the room had been scrubbed and the outside walls cleaned and that pile of broken bloodied glass had been cleaned up and everything thrown away in the dumpster of some office complex by the twenty four hour Home Depot where he got the new glass, putty and chisel to replace the window, the sun was telling the rest of the city it was time for breakfast. Joe slept in the spare bedroom. He had to let the other room dry and with the window opened it would be too cold and the smell of cleaning solution gives him nightmares.

In the morning, his muscles already beginning to tighten, the first thing Joe does before he even goes to the bathroom is walk into the master bedroom. The floor is so clean it shines. The window in unnoticeable, just as it should be. The marks on the walls and the paint all invisible. The bed, freshly made with brand new sheets, is tempting Joe to crawl into it.

The only sign that anything happened in this room is the Hoover Agility Steam Vac sitting quietly in the corner. Its Teletubby purple tanks on either side of it and its "space age" design make it look more like a flying car than a vacuum.

Joe goes to the bathroom, showers, shaves, and begins to think ahead on the day’s tasks. Over breakfast a plan is formed and shortly after that he sets out for errands. The room is all but forgotten.

Tonight, as Joe sleeps in his new sheets above his clean carpet. He does not know what he will find in the morning. When the sun comes pushing through the new curtains and his alarm clock chirps him to wakefulness, he will get out of bed. However, His feet will not touch dry clean carpet. Instead, he will step fully into a moist puddle of blood. When he looks down he will see countless splotches, almost like acne, rising slowly up out of the pristine carpet.

They will be pink and instantly remind him of his wife’s cheeks.

The King of the Bingo Game

2004-10-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

Is thirty when you give up? Is that when you just stop trying to be something other than what you are?

Or is it more a time when you realize you're forced to abandon your childhood? To no longer dwell on the dreams you had as child and instead focus on the realities of what’s around you? The lives and the dreams you once had - the countless things you once thought that you'd grow up to be - they are no more.

You are you - nothing more.

No longer will you become the fireman who rock climbs on weekends and gets to be a hero.

No longer will you move to that small town in the Midwest and meet the woman next door that is more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen, fall in love and have a baker's dozen kids.

Your dream of leaving one day to tour America in all its dusty beauty will never happen.

You will not be a celebrity, a surfer, an explorer, or a man who loves women like the movies taught you they should be loved.

You have made choices. These choices have made you who you are. These small steps you've taken towards an unforeseen future have brought you screaming to a halt in your inescapable but ever shortening present.

Do you regret the life not lived? Is the path you have chosen one you wish you were not on?

-No.

You have chosen well - for the most part. Looking back over the past ten years of your life - trying to remember what it was like when you were twenty and full of a passionate intensity - was there ever anything you wish you would have done differently?

-No.

You have made choices and these choices have restricted other choices which have restricted even more choices and on an on and on - until... well, we both know how it ends don't we? For all the points of a compass, there is only one direction and time is its only measure.

At thirty, you admit who you are, not who you want to be. Married, out of shape, working, homeowner, soon to be parent - these are the things that define you. They tie you down as the gravity of your existence - you can't escape it.

Are you unhappy?

-Yes...

Why?

-I don't know. I feel like I've lost something. I feel like I've lost a life I never had. That there were all these things I could been – could have done and instead, this is what I am. I love my wife. My job is great. I have good friends. I live in a nice house with nice people around me. I make enough money to not have to worry.

But you are still unhappy.

-Yes, I am. I look around and think, "So, this is me? This is it? I'm a nobody. A kind, caring, sometimes funny nobody. I picked a path - multiple paths actually and they all led me to here. It didn’t matter what paths I picked along the way, I still would’ve been here.

The things you hoped your life would turn into are never going to happen. And most of the things you want your life to be, will also never happen. College is over. Your career is going strong. Your married with pets. You're not ever going to be able to drop everything and move to another country. You’re never going to loss weight and look great naked. You're never going to live in a place long enough to sound like you belong there. You are you - here - now - until it ends.

-I could change that. I could start exercising – eat better. Read more watch less. Get out more. Travel. I could quit my job. I could move to Ireland or London or Australia. I could become a tour guide or teach English abroad. I could do anything of these things at any time.

Then why haven’t you? Would your wife move with you? Would you ask her to quit her job because you’re having an early midlife crisis? What about your family? What would you do when you got there? Aren’t you trying to chase something that you're never going to have? Who would take care of your dogs? Are you really that unhappy with your life?

-I don't know. No. Yes. I have everything I want.

Then what's the problem?

-Maybe I should've wanted different things.

You're whining. You have more than most and few have more than you.

-I know. I know. I love what I have. I do. There’s a planned peacefulness to it. It’s like I’m working from some script prewritten by me decades ago before I realized that you get one read through and there’s no such thing as a first draft.

-I’m on a train I chartered and now I find myself spending all day looking out the window wondering where the other trains are going.

-I'm not saying that I'm dying next week. I'm not saying that I don't think my life will still be filled with infinite possibility. I still have at least another thirty years left in me, but that's doesn't matter. I still feel as if the life I had is the life of a nobody. Just one of billions not even remembered enough to be forgotten.

There's this story that I've never read, but I've thought of often. It's called, "The King of the Bingo Game" by Ralph Ellison. In this story, there's this guy who wins at Bingo. He walks up to the stage to collect his prize. To get his prize he has to press a button. The button spins a big wheel that has all kinds of prizes on it. As soon as he lets go of the button the wheel begins to slow and once it stops, a prize is chosen. So, this guy gets up there, presses the button and watches all the possibilities spin in front of him. He sees everything open to him. Every prize - every choice is his for the taking. All he needs to do is choose. But the wheel keeps spinning and when the person running the Bingo game looks at the man pressing the button, he sees him crying. The man is standing there pressing the button, crying.

That's how I feel. When I got married. When I bought my house and my car. When I got my “Thanks for a good five years” at my job. When I passed the young attractive girl in the mall or chatted with the woman at the bookstore. When I look at the kid next door playing. When I get up in the morning and take the millionth shower and watch the drain back up for the millionth time, this is how I feel. Like I’m pressing a button and my choices spin around me.

What doesn't make sense about how I feel, is that in the story, he never choose. He just stood there - watching possibility spin in front of him like a future he'll never have. I chose. I made decisions that gave me these great things that I have surrounded myself with. Why do I feel suffocated by them? Suffocated, but at the same time protected?

Sleep Mocks Him Like A Lover

2004-09-17T02:04:00.001-07:00

In the slow quite of the night, one waits for death to sit upon their bed like an attentive mother. In every creak of the floor, tap of the glass, or exhale of a lover, there explodes a salivating Pavlovian meaning. The heart quickens as the eyes twist and turn the shadows, begging for meaning. Pulling all light towards them like twin black holes the eyes claw at the darkness. When nothing is given, but the lies of the mind, sleep once again swallows you.

In morning, the thoughts of the past are not even memories. They belong instead to a wholly separate person that remains asleep until once again, the night returns. This duality exists for both the morning and the night soul. Reason and logic stop when the sun is down. The world seems asleep. The monsters of the world search the streets for your unlocked window. Only then is the peace the daylight brought frozen in your heart like iron...

...Joe lies in bed, staring at the too familiar ceiling. His wife sleeps beside him without concern.

He hears something -- the creak of a floorboard, perhaps -- or a footstep.

His mind races. He is not at peace.

Sleep mocks him like a lover.

Growing Army of Little Green Men

2004-09-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

Cars roll to a stop in front of Joe's house. They sit, waiting for the light to turn and in the process inundate him with music he cares little to hear, no matter what the volume. License plates and loose hub cabs rattle with anger as the every increasing deafness of musically challenged thugs collect in front of the house.

The revolution will be broadcast on radio waves.

Instead, Joe watches grass grow. Closely he peers down and the soft dark green grass that has some how managed to find the surface of this world and not reach down into the dark depths below us all. These little tiny seeds have, over the span of weeks, grown into a soft stubble of grass throughout the yard. It looks like an evasion of tiny green men standing in tight formation in front of Joe’s house. He, stares at the fragile grass and wonders how he ever managed to walk on anything this beautiful before.

The light changes and the cars move on. Joe is once again left to the silence of the street and the soft gossip in his head. He looks around at the other houses. Trying to compare his own house, or more so the upkeep on his house, to those around him. He looks over his house. Then, turns to the others. His lawn is better than most. His trees are overgrown. He's showing too much earth on the yard. Joe understands little about landscaping and less about the desires of his fellow homeowners, but if there's one thing Joe does understand, it's earth. You can't show earth in your yard. It's like walking around the grocery store without your shirt on. Joe's got too much earth. Hopefully, his growing army of little green men in his front yard will help hide the unsightly earth from his neighbors supposedly prying eyes.

Just as Joe's about to walk into the garage he hears Michael Jackson’s "Beat it" blasting from the street. He turns and sees an old 80's T-top Corvette, candy apple red, with huge black tires parked alone at the stoplight. The car shines in the hot sun as Michael warns the listeners not to attempt to do right by the man who you wronged, but instead to leave town.

The light changes and the Corvette's tires spin like smoking turntables. The car disappears back into the past.

Joe smiles and forgets the earth for a while.

The Soft Spray of Crimson

2004-09-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

The roller goes up. The roller goes down. Joe feels the soft spray of burgundy across his face. The wheel of the paint roller sounds like a humming bird buzzing back and forth from one part of the wall to another. The roller lumbers through the molasses of the tray, trying to soak up as much as possible before returning to the wall. The almost Velcro like sound of the roller across the plastic paint try reminds Joe of two people kissing.

Outside the sprinklers turn on. The broken one, shooting water six feet into the air, appears to be having more fun than the other, more orderly sprinkler heads. As the, now fountain sprinkler, splashes across the sidewalk, Joe finds himself looking outside. Beyond his lawn and sidewalk out past the curb and well into the street sits a car. The car waits patiently at a light that should really be green due to the lack of traffic in any other direction. The car shines a metallic blue.

Inside the car, sits Anna, one of the women who works in his office. He's never met or even talked to Anna. In fact, he doubts that her name is actually Anna at all. It was a name he gave her to himself, and it made it easier for him to remember her. Now she sits in her car, waiting for the light to change in front of his house. He's overwhelmed by the deja vu of it all as he once again, watches her from his window. Only this time, the window is not at work and it's not mirrored.

As he walks up to the window to look at her, he notices that she is looking back at him. With the lights blazing inside his room he stands out like a performer in a spotlight of the night. She sees him and he sees her seeing him. The awkward moment for Joe, lasts only a second, but in that time he runs through what he should do. Turn away, wave, hide, act like you're looking at the window, stare for a moment at something else not her, stand there like a fool holding a paint roller.

A green light washes over Anna's face and car. This pulls her out of her own voyeurism and she turns back to look down the street. Putting the car in gear, she drives away, the man in the window already fading from her mind.

Joe turns back to the roller and the plastic tray and the bleeding paint. He re-dips and then goes back to pressing the paint against the wall.

The roller goes up. The roller goes down. Joe feels the soft spray of crimson across his face.

300 Pound Gorilla of Fate

2004-09-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

The weekends are spent either catching up or falling behind.

This goes beyond chores or housework. Only during the weekends are you more aware of your own existence. The path you have chosen in life can easily be covered by the weeks work. Yet, for those two days out of the week when you're not allowed to go to work, your forced to reflect, to relax, and to realize what you have done with your life.

If you're lucky, you'll be able to bury yourself in the household chores you purposely put off until the weekend. You might go out to a movie, sleep in or do anything that will keep you from turning and facing the 300 pound gorilla of fate that's been watching the Real World marathon with you since 10:00 am this morning.

Try this. Go out to the park just after sunrise. Take a big lunch, some water, a folding chair and a sweatshirt. Find the highest point in the park, preferably with some shade. Open up the chair and sit there. Don't bring a book, iPod, or cell phone. Just sit there. Watch the morning turn into the afternoon and the afternoon turn into the evening. Watch the people enjoying the day or the people hurrying to get done some important weekend task. Watch the birds and the cats and the insects. When it begins to get dark, put on the sweatshirt. Watch the moon rise and watch the moon fall. Count the stars and the streetlights. Listen the world around you. Feel the world around you. Take all of it in.

When the sun rises the next day, you will be a different person. You will be the person you've been hiding behind all those clothes and books and cds and movies and TV shows and chores you didn't need. You will be grounded, centered, attuned, and whatever else the body is supposed to be. But most importantly, you will be you for the first time since you were a kid.

Good Luck.

The Sound Proof Glass of His Mind

2004-09-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

The space between 11:00 am and 12:00 reminds Joe daily of High School. How much can I not do before lunch, he thinks. There's an antsy-ness that makes it impossible to think about anything other than not working. He doesn't even have plans for lunch. He just wants to be able to not feel guilty about not working.

Non-descript Indian guy walks by Joe's office, smoking. Like the loss of a pet, Joe feels his heart tear out of his chest and slam against the window, wishing it could join the man outside for a smoke. Joe's life is seemingly forever tied to this addiction. So subtle and hidden it sneaks around him. On the side of buildings, under a tree in the park, just after a concert, in front of the 7-11, and anywhere else he turns he can see it -- worse yet, smell the smoke that makes his heart beat like a lover's touch.

Quitting smoking is like living in a straight jacket. He can't move, but he wants to run. Instead he's forced to flail and bounce around the padded cell of his body as his screams fall mute through the soundproof glass of his mind. The metallic taste of the clasps on the jacket pools in his mouth as he thinks about the inhale of smoke. The slow exhale brings the tightening of the straps around his body. For a few brief moments, as he fantasies about smoking, Joe is at peace with his life. If only it was for a few moments more.

"Check out my Batman," Skulder says, completely breaking Joe's addiction laden train of thought, as he walks into his office. He hands Joe a Batman action figure like he's passing over plutonium. "Hold it by the belt. I haven't coated it yet," Skulder says as he hands over his newest prized possession.

The Batman action figure is crafted by hand from the parts of various other, no where near as cool action figures. There is skill and art in Skulder’s work. He went for the classic grey and black costume on the paint job. A good choice seeing as how the grey and blue often looks too cartoony and reminds anyone whose paid attention to Batman’s history of the horrible Justice League cartoons.

The joints on the figure are barely noticeable, a sign of precision crafting. Whenever a "custom" is done there’s always a mix of different parts that don't really go together. The art comes from molding all of these different elements with clay, a dremel, and fine painting. The best customs are better than even your above average action figures. They look like small dynamic sculptures.

"I can't wait to put the cape on him," Skulder adds as Joe looks over the figure.

"I love the boats," Joe says, "Very Dark Knight Returns."

“Yeah, I got those off of a crappy Cable action figure,” he admits.

Handing the figure back, Skulder takes it and head out of the office to show his masterpiece to anyone else he comes across in the office.

Joe looks back up at the clock, 11:45.

Almost lunch, he thinks as he looks through yesterday’s emails for the "Interesting Flash Game" someone sent out.

The Space Between Ceilings

2004-09-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Joe leaves his car, kisses his wife goodbye and begins the deja vu of his day. The mirrored walk up to the front door reveals the same underwhelming form he's growing to loath with every passing glance. He's named his look to himself. It’s called "a little too." He's a little too short and a little too over weight and his hair is a little too long and he looks a little too tired. Just before his image disappears for the day he feels the loathing rise up in him silently like bile before a cough.

The quite of the office is both peaceful and depressing. The emptiness washes over Joe like a time-lapse film about rotting bananas and he can see everything falling away as easily as he pressed his fob to the door, letting himself in. The early hour of arrival and the smell of freshly turning A/C fans fills him just slightly with a sense of hope.

Perhaps today something amazing will happen.

Moving through the building he looks, yet never finds, anyone else. As he enters his office, the faint hum of his computer and the soft almost polite clicking of his clock greet him. Tossing his keys, sunglasses, over-stuffed wallet and watch into the drawer of his desk, he sits awkwardly on his ergonomically uncomfortable chair.

The email icon shines on his taskbar, begging him for attention. He wonders how he could have waited this long not to have checked. Perhaps something will happen.

No, instead it's an email entitled "Interesting Flash Game," that was sent out to the entire company. Joe clicks on the email, but doesn't bother opening the link. The email icon goes away and he is once again left to stare at his beautiful yet generic wilderness background of his dual monitor desktop. The calendar on his computer informs him that the days slip away like those rubbery children toys filled with water.

Joe has long believed that there is some sort of intelligent creature living in the space between the drop down ceiling and the actual ceiling above his office. He knows this space is called the plenum, but he also know that no else besides him and a handful of I.T. guys have ever used that word in a sentence.

His only evidence of there being a small intelligent creature living in the space between the two ceilings is a tapping sound that comes from the A/C vent. This tapping is code like, almost military. The creature is sending out some sort or "creature-language" morse code that Joe can't understand and therefore must simply ignore until hopefully, other small intelligent creatures hear the distress call and answer it. As he listens closer to the sound, trying in vain to decipher it, the sound suddenly stops, as if knowing the wrong ears were listening.

Coffee, Joe thinks. The day won't really begin until coffee.

Wrestling with Sea Serpents

2004-09-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

With shovel and pick axe, with wheel-barrel and clippers, these men craft the landscape around the office. They work as one, silently pushing the dirt and pulling the plants. Their soft brown skin and short black hair does little to individualize them. This orange vest brigade each wearing a faded red hat and shirt and soon to be washed blue jeans, wish for nothing more than a break from it all.

One dreams of last night -- remembering the dancing and the shooting and the wrestling with the giant sea serpents. Only after he had brought the heart of the Kraken to the King was he allowed to marry the golden beauty who sat beside the crowned god-man of the jungles.

Now, as he gardens with his co-workers he remains silent. Wishing to tell them of his other life as a hero to fantastic people, he forces himself instead to talk of the radio, their supervisor and the pale women who walk by them with unseeing eyes.

Swigging down a 12 oz. can of Coke like it was his second to last beer of last call, another landscaper laughs to himself. He's filled with an overwhelming sense of purpose for the first time in years. This job has given him a reason to get up in the morning, but more so, a reason to come home. He can hold his head up amongst his mother, his wife and his too numerous to count children. The work is simple but honest -- and after the last six months of his life, that's exactly what he wants, what he needs.

Before this job, he sold stereos, tires, steering wheels, batteries, seats and anything else he could steal out of a car. The money was good and the work was easier than he thought, but there was always the fear of being caught. While for some this was the reason they did such a job, that or drugs. For him, it was the opposite. It began to weigh on his thoughts and cause him to panic. At home his wife knew something was wrong, but again, the money was good and needed, so she remained silent.

Finishing off his Coke he laughs to himself -- appreciating for the few times in his life the road he has taken and the road he has not. As the women arrive to the office and forget to lock their doors or leave the windows down or simply park under a shaded tree, he smiles and goes back to digging.

Pussy. That's all their supposed supervisor can talk about. He's called the supervisor simply because he makes more money than the rest of them -- a $1.25 more. He's not any better at the job and he doesn't know half of what he's doing. The others have decided that all you really get for your extra $1.25 is the right to be fired first if the shit ever hits the fan. And while that doesn’t seem like much, any of them would jump at the chance to take it.

But while he's collecting the extra money every hour that they aren't, he tells them of the woman he has slept with that they haven’t. The other men laugh and joke with him, but they are pulled in two directions every time he tells one of his stories -- either loathing or disbelief. Regretfully for them, he never lies about his stories. He doesn't even exaggerate. He's one of those guys that have always landed on his feet a little bit better off than everyone else. And while all the men don't want to believe him, in their hearts they know it is true because only a man who can get laid whenever he walks into a bar could make a $1.25 more then them for half the work and with half the brains.

Finally, in the back, by himself and forgoing any of the numerous smoke breaks these men take, works a killer. With ever throw of his pick he thinks of a woman’s head under it. With every rip of vine he imagines a man’s arm. He works daily with such frenzy, the others believe him to be off balanced and therefore let him work.

This has been a good week for him. He likes coming down here to this office building. He is close to his five bodies buried in the ravine. They’re still there; he checked during lunch yesterday -- his first five. He can almost taste them from here.

He likes working down here. He can’t really explain why, but if he every heard the word nostalgia and understood what it meant, he would think back to this moment and smile.

By 9:00 am their work is almost over, but for the people of the office it hasn't even begun.

Cinnamon Red Truth

2004-08-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

Anna arrived late today. Just past 9:00 am she stepped out of her nondescript four door and headed into the office building. As always, her small body moved with purpose as her eyes tried desperately to ignore her reflection in the glass. Perhaps her quick walks are less about her determination to start her day off strong and more about her reluctance to gaze upon her self in the mirror.

Tony slumps out of his wife's car just before 10:00am. He's tired with coffee in one hand and a Safeway plastic bag full of his please-let-me-loose-weight lunch in the other hand. As he steps onto the sidewalk towards the office doors, he can see all the troubles and overwhelming responsibilities of his job push down on him like gravity's fat sister.

Fanny Pack Dan rolls into work as always with his belt purse secured squarely under his ever growing Quake belly. His Neo sunglasses cast a faux cool across his chinless face while he steadily examines himself in his full length mirror the rest of the world would call the front of the building. Today, his hair has finally fought through the mid-life crisis going on in Fanny Pack Dan's head and has reached a normal color. Last week the I'm-really-not-over-30-blue had started to fade and the Don't-I-still-look-sexy-green was out of stock at the local Rite Aid, so he was forced to let his unexciting not quite blonde, but definitely not brown hair stand on it's own.

Mitch exits the building in a blossoming flower of smoke. At barely seven after ten he's managed to fight off dulling the pain for nearly an hour. The head down, slow methodical walk around the parking lot makes him look like a man searching for something he's lost. He disappears into what passes for wilderness on the far side of the lot, appearing more at home amongst the trees, shrubs and various non-fatal wildlife.

Len and Mark arrive together in Len's Tonka truck. The two, an odd couple together, commute in from the city. The half an hour drive south to the office building is filed with early morning protolinguistic communication. On their more lucid days, the two will discuss music, money, and politics. Three subjects Mark is an expert in and Len doesn't care enough about to argue.

With arms overloaded, Chuck, never one for grand entrances, walks towards the side door. Coffee, sweatshirt, the day's cds, random papers, and the ever necessary key fob that allows only the select few into the building, crowd his arms like attention starved children. If only he had some weed in his pocket. Maybe then the day would go smoother.

Finally, Non-descript Indian Guy casually enters the building. The best dressed of all the employees he walks up the steps with a button up, slacks, belt, and shoes that shine like leather. In one hand he carries a laptop case and the other his coat. At first look, one would believe he was an engineer and that's exactly what the Non-descript Indian Guy wants everyone to believe. Engineering is his job, but that is not who he is. As he enters the building, and only for a split second as he's reaching for the brushed steel door handle, a spot of cinnamon red paint appears just above the platinum band of his watch and the truth is revealed. His small city apartment is not neatly organized with books about getting better throughput from your switch or the correct uses of the z-buffer. Instead canvas after canvas fills his place with artwork - his artwork. Books on Frazetta, Vallejo, Brom and Ross litter his room like comic books. Paints hide like Easter eggs. What little furniture he has is utilitarian. A chair, a bed, and an improperly used bookshelf perform in unison only one task, to stay out of the way of the shrine like easels.

But as the door behind him closes and he enters the office building, so to does the sleeve of his shirt fall back over his platinum watch and hide the spot of cinnamon red truth on his arm.

So, let the day begin.