My summer vacation: Part 1
T.M. Shine packs his bags and heads out for a week on a pier. by T.M. Shine

Nothing ails me. This is just the way I am.
— Danny Deck, in the novel All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers

9:54 a.m.: Need to get out of town before I kill somebody.
10:49 a.m.: Get stopped for speeding. But the sign says 80, I tell the officer.
10:49:17 a.m.: “This is State Road 80, son.”
10:50 a.m.: I don’t get away much.
11:14 a.m.: Pull over at an eatery called Donna and Flo’s — not because I’m hungry but because the big sign outside reads: “You Can Live on Pie Alone.”
11:16 a.m.: “We’re out of pie, but we have carrot cake,” the waitress tells me.
11:16:12 a.m.: Let me think about that for a minute, I say.
11:19 a.m.: I don’t know what town this is, but I quickly learn there is only one question here that needs to be answered, and there are only two possible answers. Two gentlemen come in, and the server shouts across the dining room to one of them, “Ricky, what’s it going to be today?”
11:19:04 a.m.: Long pause.
11:19:41 a.m.: “Unsweetened,” Ricky says.
11:19:43 a.m.: “How ’bout you, Mark?”
11:19:45 a.m.: Long pause.
11:20:25 a.m.: “Unsweetened.”
11:21 a.m.: I’ve always wanted to live in a town where the only decision to make is whether you want sweetened or unsweetened iced tea, and the decision is not taken lightly.
11:23 a.m.: A fidgety guy in a gray suit comes in and goes straight to the back counter. “Can I get a whole carrot cake?” he asks. “I don’t think we have a whole one, but I’ll check,” she replies.
11:24 a.m.: The guy looks really tense, as if he just stepped out of a zoning board meeting. Or maybe he’s tweaking. Maybe this is one of those small towns where everybody is a slave to the meth — and carrot cake.
11:25 a.m.: “I only have three pieces left,” the counter lady reports upon returning. “I’ll take it. Hopefully it will hold me over,” the tweaker says.
11:26 a.m.: There goes the last of the carrot cake.
11:28 a.m.: “Hon, you decide yet?” the server asks me.
11:28:34 a.m.: Unsweetened.
11:46 a.m.: Get back on the road.
12:20 p.m.: I think about trips other people I know have taken this summer. One went to San Francisco and visited a fortune cookie factory. “I watched this old woman folding thousands of fortunes,” she said. Another went to Poland and told me the mannequins there are the most beautiful in the world.
12:22 p.m.: I’m going to the west coast of Florida to sit on the end of a pier.
12:25 p.m.: And finish reading three books. They are all good. One is about all your friends becoming strangers, another is about invisible monsters, and the third is a biography of an artist who spends his final days drinking vodka and tuna oil.
1:50 p.m.: Reach my destination, which is a small motel built on top of a pier. I reserved the room at the far end, so I’ll see nothing but water in every direction.
1:53 p.m.: “Oh, they’re biting today,” the check-in lady says. “You’re going to be glad you came.” What’s biting? I ask. “Oh, they’re jumping. Don’t even need a hook; could probably just sit in your room and wait for the fish to jump into bed with you. You need bait?”
1:57 p.m.: I didn’t really come to fish, I explain. “Well, what’d you come for?”
1:58 p.m.: To finish three books.
1:59 p.m.: She doesn’t seem pleased with me, so I buy some bait.
2:01 p.m.: Because the room isn’t ready yet, I walk across the street to a seafood market and ask what the special is today. The clerk rattles off a bunch of stuff, but nothing registers until I hear the words crawfish pie.
2:02 p.m.: I hear a person can live on pie alone, I tell him. “I couldn’t argue with that,” he says, so we don’t argue about it.
2:10 p.m.: I order some and head back to the motel.
2:11 p.m.: As I’m waiting to cross the street, a tall, bearded guy hands me a flier for a band that’s playing at a bar at 6 tonight. “Only two doors down from the motel,” he says, pointing across the street. The band’s name is Donna and the Walking Tragedy, and it advertises “screaming guitars.”
2:17 p.m.: Everybody is fishing. I can barely get to my room past all the rods and tackle boxes. There’s a spot where one family is fishing from its windows, and I have to fight through a tangle of lines that stretch across the walkway like a spider’s web.
2:18 p.m.: Get in room and quickly lock the door behind me so the fish can’t jump into my bed.
2:19 p.m.: I look up at a wall of glass, and the view is like an IMAX screen full of water. It’s startling.
2:20 p.m.: Because the room is humongous, I decide I will pick out a different spot to finish reading each book. But first, I’m going to walk into town for chewing gum.
2:39 p.m.: The entire town is wearing Crocs. I’ve never seen anything like it — men, women and children wearing Crocs in every color of the rainbow. I ask a lady if this is the town where they make Crocs or something. Is this the home of the Croc? “No, why would you ask that?” she asks.
2:54 p.m.: Head back to the room and immediately fall asleep.
6:12 p.m.: It’s after six, and all I can think about is screaming guitars, so I head over to the bar down the road.
6:31 p.m.: “I love your Crocs,” a woman at the bar says to me.
6:31:14 p.m.: They’re melon, I explain.
6:32 p.m.: “No, I don’t think that’s melon,” she insists. “I don’t think they come in melon.”
6:32:12 p.m.: Are you accusing me of wearing Croc knockoffs? I demand.
6:33 p.m.: “I’m not accusing you of anything,” she says, walking away.
6:33:03 p.m.: I’m defensive about very few things, but my Crocs are suddenly one of them.
6:35 p.m.: This guy in a tank top with a treasure chest on the front walks up and asks, ”You interested in some opium?” I can’t even respond. I mean, opium? No, I finally say. Meth and carrot cake, yeah, but I got no use for opium.
6:40 p.m.: Donna is playing an acoustic guitar. Nothing’s worse than when someone promises you screaming guitars but doesn’t deliver, so I head back to the motel.
6:47 p.m.: Hear a crack of thunder, and a horrific lightning storm erupts on my walk back. A couple in a boat fishing right outside my windows looks terrified.
6:50 p.m.: The storm starts raging, so I invite them to come in. They immediately jump off the boat and start shaking off like wet Irish setters. Listen, I say. I’ve got to take a shower, but make yourselves at home. There’s crawfish pie in the fridge.
6:51 p.m.: I’m in the shower just getting that scrunchy thing lathered up when suddenly the door flies open. “Don’t worry. I’m not peeking,” the woman says. “I just wanted to let you know we’re out here making ourselves at home.”
6:52 p.m.: Oh, shit. What have I gotten myself into? I want to be anywhere but here. I want go where old women are folding fortunes. I want to hold hands with the most beautiful mannequins in the world. Where did I go wrong in life?
6:54 p.m.: I should have said sweetened.

Next week: Part 2 of “My summer vacation.”

Contact T.M. Shine at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com.

Rerun from 8/23/06
T.M. Shine spent a week vacationing on a pier … and all he brought us was this lousy story.
by T.M. Shine

One day, I came to a fork in the road
Folks, I just couldn’t go where I was told
Now, they’ll hunt me down and hang me for my crimes
If I tell about my dirty life and times.
— Warren Zevon

7:17 p.m.: Forgot I’d put the bait in the shower.
7:18 p.m.: But I didn’t forget about the fishing couple who are waiting out the storm in my motel room. “Is it OK if we play some music?” the woman yells into the bathroom. “We’ve got Toys in the Attic.”
7:30 p.m.: When the lightning started and they were fishing from their boat right outside my room, I didn’t hesitate to invite the couple in.
7:34 p.m.: But the thunder is still cracking, and now, I’m hesitating as I dry off to head back out to deal with them.
7:36 p.m.: They both hug me. There goes the shower.
7:40 p.m.: There’s an old Newsweek on the coffee table with the headline “Weight of the World” next to a photo of Bush. “You mind?” the guy asks, picking it up.
7:40:14 p.m.: No, help yourself, I say. Take it out to sea with you and dump it somewhere. I can’t stand the sight of that guy.
7:41 p.m.: “I hear ya,” the man says. “You want to play some Uno?”
7:42 p.m.: Yeah, I guess I do.
7:43 p.m.: The guy pulls an Uno deck out of his back pocket as if he never goes anywhere without it. And why should he?
8:22 p.m.: I’ve forgotten how much fun it is to play Uno during a storm, especially if it’s with two strangers who are very content to talk only to each other so I don’t have to say anything.
8:34 p.m.: “You’re all right,” the guy says to me. “You’re seaworthy. That’s a compliment. That’s what I tell people who I think are all right. I call them seaworthy.”
8:34:32 p.m.: “Isn’t that right, Janet?” he asks his wife.
8:34:41 p.m.: “That’s right, Steve,” she responds.
8:35 p.m.: At least I know their names now.
8:40 p.m.: “I’d at least like to trip the president,” Janet says.
8:44 p.m.: Steve brings in his cooler from the boat, and we drink Yuengling until the skies clear. Then, the Uno cards are neatly tucked into the back pocket of his jeans.
10:38 p.m.: I go out on the dock with them to say goodbye. The moon has taken over the sky, and it’s extremely tranquil as they drift away … at least until I hear Janet say, “Put on the running lights, you ass.”
10:40 p.m.: Do a quick assessment of the motel room to see if they took my iPod or sunglasses or anything.
10:50 p.m.: Decide I will never again stay in a hotel, only motels. I wouldn’t even mind if that becomes the only thing I’m remembered for. “He was the type of person who only stayed in motels.”
11:04 p.m.: Get back to my main purpose for this trip — to finish reading three books I’ve forever been in the middle of.
11:05 p.m.: Step into the first one on page 221 and am moved by the love of a man for a prostitute who doesn’t need his love one bit.
12:10 a.m.: Feel a weird sort of heartache with no real focal point. No woman I am longing for. No home I am deeply missing. No cat I forgot to feed.
12:12 a.m.: Switch to another book but drop right into a scene where the protagonist is being retaught to talk after having her face shot off. The doctor is telling her to try and be like a ventriloquist: “Try to throw your voice.”
12:13 a.m.: How do you do that? I can give entire speeches without moving my lips, but I’ve never understood the throwing-your-voice part of ventriloquism.
12:14 a.m.: Try throwing voice across the room.
12:20 a.m.: This is why I can never finish a book.
12:21 a.m.: Take a break from reading to write letters to a handful of people who still care about me.
12:44 a.m.: Go back to trying to throw my voice across the room.
1:03 a.m.: Fall asleep with my voice teetering somewhere between the refrigerator and a small dinette set.
8:08 a.m.: When I wake up, I notice, on a second reading, that the letters I wrote could also work as suicide notes. They’re just subtle enough to straddle that line between the recipients’ thinking, “Hey, this is funny: Terry’s obsessed with Crocs” and “Oh, this is why he killed himself.”
8:13 a.m.: Step out onto the dock. “You missed the sunrise,” a woman fishing around the corner from my room says. That’s OK, lots of things happen without me, I explain.
8:16 a.m.: “Have you noticed this whole town is in the shade?” she asks. “I didn’t expect that. Not sure how they’re pulling it off. It’s not as though there’s one big, giant willow tree looming over the place.”
8:19 a.m.: I sit down in a pink Adirondack chair. “I came here to get some release,” she says. “I’ve been abstaining. And not just from sex — from everything. I haven’t even been eating. I’ve lost, like, 23 pounds. My ass is completely gone.”
8:20 a.m.: You’re making me hungry, I say.
8:33 a.m.: Walk down the street to a small diner. Every table features a handwritten sign that says, “No Nextel!” That is so perfect. On a daily basis, I see so many signs that say, “No cell phones” or “Please turn your cell phones off.” But this town gets right to the heart of it. Cell phones are really benign at this point. We don’t even pay attention to them. It’s those fucking Nextels that drive you crazy.
8:34 a.m.: The back and forth, that fucking voice on the other end. “The inspector says the A/C units aren’t supposed to be on the north roof” … cusssshhhh … “Well, that’s what the blueprints said” … cusshhhhhhh … “I’m going to tell him if he doesn’t like it he can take it up with the city”… cussshhhh … Fuck you! Go fucking tell him, then.
8:35 a.m.: Vacations are not good for me.
8:37 a.m.: I think about The Ditty Bops, a band on a cross-country bicycle tour. It probably started out as a good idea, but now, their thighs are burning and their asses are killing them and their ankle tattoos are covered in grease stains from rubbing against the chains. I know they just want to go home.
8:44 a.m.: Ask waitress if they have a Sonic burger place in this area. “I think there’s one back on Highway 80,” she says. Damn! I must have missed it on the drive in. It pisses me off every time I’m watching something on The WB and they come on advertising Sonic when there’s not one within a hundred miles of where I live. They’re messing with me big-time, especially when they advertise those mini sundaes.
8:53 a.m.: Just get some juice and decide to backtrack in hopes of finding a Sonic.
9:01 a.m.: It’s hard to drive wearing Crocs.
9:12 a.m.: Keeping one eye out for danger and one eye out for Sonic burgers.
9:17 a.m.: I feel extremely seaworthy.

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The best way to do anything is to just let the water slide spit you out somewhere.
— Feist

10:10 a.m.: Several employees are talking about their upcoming summer vacations. “I just booked a wine tour of South Africa,” new guy brags.
10:10:32 a.m.: “I’m off to Greece,” music guy says. “I’m going to be staying in the village where they filmed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”
10:11 a.m.: Art guy says a friend of a friend of a friend’s sister’s chef has invited him to stay in Nas’ guest house in St. Croix. “Nas isn’t going to be there, but I’m going to be able to use his scooter to go to town for guava berries, chilled mauby, triggerfish and fresh conch.”
10:12 a.m.: Jesus, I mumble to tech girl. Where do people get the money for these trips? I’m lucky if I can … “Oh, I’m off to Northern Italy in two weeks,” she says. “I can’t wait. I just picked up an Italian dictionary so I can learn one sentence: ‘Antonio, come with me now, and you will not be disappointed.’ ”
10:14 a.m.: How do these people do it? I’ve been trying to calculate if I even have enough saved up to go to Austin, Texas, to watch the urban bat colony under the Congress Avenue Bridge rise into the sky at sunset. And then, I want to travel a little further south to that town where all they do is make black-velvet paintings. I’ve heard it’s like Hershey, Pa., only instead of street lanterns shaped like Kisses and Hershey-bar park benches, everything is black velvet.
10:15 a.m.: Black-velvet parking meters. Black-velvet lampposts. Black-velvet pizza.
10:16 a.m.: I hear you can roam through the town at 3 a.m. and visit with old women on their porches as they work on portraits into the night. I envision holding a frail señorita’s easel steady as she puts the finishing touches on a Day-Glo Freddie Mercury mustache.
10:17 a.m.: “Yeah, sounds real quirky,” new guy snickers. “Have fun. I have to go get my cash changed into Krugerrands.”
11:02 a.m.: Marketing guy has all the ladies giggling on the far side of the office. He’s all animated and full of hand gestures, and then, there’s a huge uproar of laughter. “OK, I’m late for an appointment,” he says, throwing his hands up and heading toward the door.
11:03 a.m.: He gives me a sly look because he told me the other day how he’s able to leave every encounter on a high note. “I set it up, slay ’em and get out fast,” he explained. “If I linger, the ladies get bored with me, so it’s all fast and furious. I always disappear on a high note.”
11:06 a.m.: Get phone call from marketing guy. “T, you gotta do me a big favor,” he says. “In the left-hand corner of my desk there’s a fax that I need the number from.”
11:07 a.m.: Oh no, I say. You don’t leave on your high note and then start giving me chores. “Come on, you heard that laughter,” he says. “I had no choice. I had to bolt. The ladies love a guy with a great sense of humor.”
11:07:51 a.m.: No, they don’t. That’s only in magazine surveys, I retort. In real life, women love Brad Pitt and guys who can fix shit.
11:08 a.m.: “Come on,” he says. “It’ll only take you a second.” Forget it, I say. You’re not going to live a life full of consecutive high notes while I scramble around like your errand boy. “Can you just bring the whole stack of papers out front to my car then?” he asks. You’re still in the parking lot? “I don’t really have any place to go,” he answers.
11:09 a.m.: Here’s a high note for you, I say, slamming the phone down.
12:12 p.m.: Get a call from a friend I haven’t heard from in ages, and he’s all excited about a catalog that sells original artifacts that belonged to Jesus. That can’t be, I say. “It be,” he says. “They have currency that he exchanged for sundries and such: Jesus cash.”
12:13 p.m.: I don’t even know if they had currency back then, I say. “They have some tools he used, too,” he adds, “and a couple of hats.”
12:13:28 p.m.: I don’t think Jesus wore hats, I say. I’ve never seen a picture of him in a hat. “You know so little,” he snaps.
12:27 p.m.: Go to lunch alone.
12:44 p.m.: While assembling my tuna kit, I try to imagine all my co-workers’ vacations. I can’t really picture the music guy diving for sponges in the Mediterranean or the art guy going to market on Nas’ scooter. There is only one thing I know for sure.
12:45 p.m.: Antonio will not be disappointed.
1:09 p.m.: In the parking lot, red carpet girl is sitting in the front seat of her car, eating a ham-and-cheese Dunkin’ Donuts sandwich. “Hey,” she says, “you know how I always tell you my boyfriend has, like, a blogger’s body? No more. He’s totally buff and lost about 17 pounds since he got that gamey thingamajig.”
1:10 p.m.: What gamey thing? “The Wii. He was playing tennis for, like, 11 hours straight one day last week. And he has, like, Popeye arms from the deep-sea fishing. I had been bugging him to get a personal trainer, but now … ”
1:11 p.m.: Wii is his personal trainer?
1:11:11 p.m.: “You got it.”
2:23 p.m.: My older brother calls and says, “The reason I’m not doing much with my life is because everything has been done. I want to leave my mark on this world, but there’s really nothing left to do.”
2:24 p.m.: There must be something left, I reply. “That’s what I thought. That’s why I got up early today,” he says. “I thought there were two things left that hadn’t been done, but I went to the library to double-check, and guess what?”
2:24:12 p.m.: They’ve been done.
2:24:31 p.m.: “Yep.”
2:26 p.m.: Decide to leave on a low note.
2:47 p.m.: On the ride home, I marvel about how, by nature, the days are as disjointed as my thoughts.
2:50 p.m.: Stop marveling.
3:01 p.m.: Suddenly everything is bothering me — why can’t I fix shit? — and my mind starts to wander between exits on the interstate. To lift my spirits, I start to envision my own vacation. With bats streaking overhead, I see myself cutting across town in a black-velvet taxi, sipping from a Styrofoam cup full of dirty tequila and then standing in the center of the street, arguing with a scarlet-haired woman over the last Lenny Kravitz portrait in town.
3:04 p.m.: My cell phone rings, and when I pick it up, the first words are, “Hold on, asshole.” OK, I say automatically. “Just a second. She’s coming. I found her on the fifth floor. She makes crepes for a living now, but she has a degree in theology and went to seminary or some shit,” the voice says. “Hold on. Here she is. Here’s your motherfuckin’ proof.”
3:05 p.m.: Hear a small gurgle and then a faint, quivering voice.
3:05:07 p.m.: “Jesus wore hats.”

#22995

I’ve been sitting here in our living room for the last 45 minutes staring at the same page in this Columbia House catalog, my eyes currently lost in Bloodhound Gang’s One Fierce Beer Coaster, #445678. Anna says we’re obligated to make four more selections, but I just realized by the time they come in the mail, I won’t be here.
Our 7-year-old daughter, Emily, is circling the sofa, chasing an almond-colored puppy. She has just said to her mother, “Daddy should name the puppy. Daddy comes up with the best names.” I don’t know what she’s basing it on. I named our last dog Havana and the only other pet we have is a gerbil named Turk.
“You have to name him tonight, Daddy,” she says. But I can’t do that. I don’t want that to be the last thing I do before I walk out — name a puppy.
#379875 Tone-Loc — Loc’ed After Dark
My parents will hate me. They love Anna and it certainly will complicate their relationship with Emily, but I … I don’t care for some reason. It can’t be about that, I keep telling myself. I was going to broach it tonight, bring up this silent plot in my head that’s been fermenting for months. But it’s Friday and I really don’t want the weekend to be hell for any of us, especially me. It can wait till Monday … Tuesday.
A guy at Publix once gave me his theory on how someone my age makes a decision like this because it’s the only thing in his life he can change. There’s no getting out of the job — you’re in too deep. There’s no getting out of the bills — they’re way too high. There’s no part of the day that can be used to create more time for yourself. But these people, to whom you made a solemn oath, suddenly seem dispensable. It’s strange how my marriage has become the easiest thing in my life to change.
#392217 Travis — The Man Who
I don’t want to hurt anybody. There’s a guy at work who told his wife he “never loved her.” After 17 years, he says, “I never loved you.” Even if you meant it, how could you say something like that? Why? To make that person feel they have never been loved? I assumed he must have just blurted it out in the heat of distress, that she wouldn’t accept every other reason he offered up so he just reached for the only thing left to say — “I never loved you.” I won’t make that mistake. I have to be more calculated and methodical, even if it makes me appear cold. I can imagine Anna calling her sister and telling her that I was stainless-steel and zombielike, but I know I have to save my softness for Emily.
#1614226 Trainspotting — Soundtrack
Anna is going to start by claiming that there must be somebody else. “I know you,” I can hear her saying. “Unless something or somebody dropped out of the sky right on top of you, you’d never even think of changing anything about your life. Who the hell is it? I know you.”
She doesn’t know me. But I’ve even made a mental note not to dare say that or she’d sarcastically rip me up. “Oh, no, nobody knows you. You’re such a mysterious and complicated man. Give me a fucking break.”
Anna’s always in motion. Each time I get distracted enough to look up from this catalog, she’s somewhere else — in the kitchen, rummaging through the hall closet, wrestling on the ground with Emily and the puppy. Now, she’s curled up on the couch reading something by somebody named Dean Koontz. “Honey, I want to pick some, too,” she says, glancing at me. “Don’t use up all our selections.”
#322891 The Crystal Method — Tweekend
I already know where I’m going to stay — an apartment down by the boatyard, near where the drift-fishing charters head out, just went up for rent. During the season, I won’t be able to afford it, but for the time being, it’ll be perfect. A friend once told me that if you’re miserable, it helps to have plenty of boats around. And I do believe he’s right, because each time I stopped by to check on the place, there were lots of people sitting alone, eating corn chips and staring at the boats coming and going. Lots of miserable people.
Emily loves boats that are large enough to force the bridge to go up and down. I imagine us sitting together on the balcony every other weekend, watching the yachts idling in the distance and then trolling through on the half hour. I can see us setting our watches by them and Emily jumping up, “Daddy, it’s time. It’s time.”
#334508 The Cure — Greatest Hits
It’s time for Emily to go to bed. Anna and I always take turns putting her in but for the past three nights, I’ve been doing it without provocation, as if the act would somehow make up for the abandonment. “Oh, at least he put his daughter to bed those last few days before he moved to that scummy shipyard.” You know, I’ve heard people talk about the secret life we have in our heads, but I really just view this as the planning stage.
As I look at Anna now, I’m trying to come up with a good reason for this escape — and not just for her, but for me, too. I really can’t point at any one thing she has done. I can’t say she has changed any more than I can say I’ve changed. She is as beautiful and energetic as ever. The only thing about her that has really been starting to grate on me is how she takes ownership of things that should actually remain in the public domain. Like when she says, “I have to watch my Will & Grace at 8:30” or “I have to have my Starbucks Royal Blue mocha.” But that’s certainly no reason for what I’m about to do to us.
Anna has just jumped up off the couch and is insisting that we give the puppy a bath. “But I was just going to put Emily to bed,” I say.
“No, tomorrow he will be too big for the tub. It’s now or never,” she sings, scooping the puppy up.
Emily is giggling and the sight of them both holding this upside-down puppy is so endearing that they quickly pull me into this circle of joy and I can immediately foresee the suds and the splashing and the laughter that could stretch through a lifetime.
It’s a good thing that I decided over five weeks ago not to let spontaneous joy get in the way of all this. Once I set my mind to it, I realized I have an uncanny ability to ignore the happiest days of my life. It may sound sad but, to be honest, I’ve never had anything I couldn’t let go of. And, for some reason, I don’t seem to care how that affects the people around me.
# 406744 Social Distortion — Social Distortion

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“Indiana wants me. Lord, I can’t go back there.”
- R. Dean Taylor
-
9:38 a.m.: Stop at the barbershop to drop off my new CD. “I like the cover art,” Raymond says.
9:39 a.m.: It’s by Biva from Pompano, I tell him. She does lots of sneaker art.
9:40 a.m.: “I can’t even put it on until after 11,” Raymond says. “You know the rule.” It’s the only rule I know and the only one I’m willing to abide by, I say. I just wanted to leave it on my way to work.
9:43 a.m.: “What’s your recipe? I forgot,” Robert says coming out of the back with a coffee pot. I don’t have a recipe and don’t even drink coffee but I love the fact that Robert always asks me that - and in that way - so I make one up.
9:43:28 a.m.: Black, with two parts cream and four parts sugar, I say. And don’t stir it. I like everything to settle on the bottom so I have a big treat waiting for me. You know, like the juicy bottom of an Italian ice. “You a caricature,” Robert says shaking his head.
9:44 a.m.: He always says that to me. I think he means I’m a “character” but I like the idea of being a caricature better – all big ears with a forever forehead and chunky cinder block teeth jumping out of my mouth.
9:46 a.m.: Robert hands me a cup of coffee and I thank him profusely because he is the nicest man in the world. And I’m not just saying that. He has plaques and citations to prove it. In fact, the owner doesn’t’ even let him cut hair here anymore ‘cause he’s too old. They just keep him around because he’s so nice. “Which is no small thing,” Raymond told me one afternoon. “You remember that.”
9:47 a.m.: “You can take it with you. It’s our to-go cup,” Robert nods to me. No it’s not. It’s clunky and ceramic and is covered with a portrait of a bright moon and a raven-haired woman. “Yes, it goes, it comes back. It’s our to-go cup,” he insists. OK, thanks, I say.
10:09 a.m.: On drive to work a voice on the radio is singing, "I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks…And I'd like to check you for ticks." That's so sexy.
10:18 a.m.: At a stoplight a UPS truck pulls up beside me with the driver side wide open. Check out driver’s legs.
10:19 a.m.: Nice calf muscles.
10:20 a.m.: Think about how I always wanted to be a UPS or Fed-Ex guy but never thought I could make the grade. The drivers all seem too energetic, healthy and incapable of getting lost. But now I’m thinking maybe I could be a DHL guy. They seem a little rough around the edges, like maybe they drink orange soda for breakfast, dodge paying child support and are indifferent about whether their girlfriends ever bother taking their tops off during sex. And get lost…a lot.
10:33 a.m.: Red carpet girl is standing outside our building looking at the sun. “Getting some natural color,” she says. “It’s the latest thing but it’s a pain in the ass. You have to be outside.”
10:34 a.m.: How you doing? I ask her. I heard you fainted or something at the Muvico over the weekend. “Yeah, and I get the one uncute paramedic in the universe. Ain’t that the fucking way, baby.”
10:34:14 a.m.: That is so the fucking way, baby.
10:48 a.m.: Tiara confides in me that the boss has destroyed every bit of creativity she ever had. Hey, I say, if creativity were grapes that man would have crushed enough of yours by now to keep a small country in cheap wine until the end of time.
11:12 a.m.: Wonder if Raymond is listening to my CD about now.
12:04 p.m.: Get heartbreaking card in the mail. There is a picture of a bird outside a cage looking in and the words detail how the person was moved by something I did. The sentiment makes me cry a little…for myself.
12:05 p.m.: And you, my love.
12:07 p.m.: “Hey, what’s with the face?” new guy asks. I moved somebody, I say. “Where to?” No, emotionally. I moved somebody. “Give me a break,” he says.
12:19 p.m.: Go to lunch alone.
12:33 p.m.: Eat six grape leaves.
12:41 p.m.: I spot this lady climbing on the playground set and I keep looking for a kid. I figure some toddler must be up in one of the tunnels or something.
12:44 p.m.: There is no kid. She’s on her own. She’s a tiny woman but she’s wearing high heels and it’s a very awkward sight as she tries to cross the drawbridge to the slides on the other side of the castle.
12:48 p.m.: She drops to her knees at one point and then gets a heel stuck between the planks of the bridge. I almost *leap up to help her but then I’m like, help her with what?(italics) What the hell is she doing? She’s not climbing in a fun, goofy way. She’s nimbly creeping along in a very disturbed manner. In this one act she has completely ruined the word “playground” for generations to come. I think that’s enough reason not to help her.
12:50 p.m.: Plus I’ve got slimy grape leave hands.
1:14 p.m.: On way back to office I come across the strangest scene. The area behind our building is filled with over 100 cop cars. The vehicles are all brand new and still have the factory stickers on them. Options include Kevlar trunk packs. This must just be some kind of holding area because the cruisers are branded with all different cities and counties.
1:17 p.m.: If you’re out late one night you should really stop by and key all the ones from Miramar or Polk County just for fun. Call me and I’ll go with you.
1:18 p.m.: Suddenly get the urge to lie face down in the middle of the parking lot while surrounded by the cop cars. Just for practice.
1:21 p.m.: As I’m heading back into the office HR lady stops me and plucks a piece of gravel off my chin. Thanks, I say. I was just surrounded by cops and they forced me to lay face down in the parking lot with my hands behind my back.
1:39 p.m.: The company is holding an advancement seminar this afternoon and everyone was invited but me so the office is empty.
1:45 p.m.: No use working when no one can see you working so I decide to call it a day.
2:12 p.m.: On the drive I look down at the to-go cup that is still full of morning coffee made by the nicest man in the world. I can’t wait to bring the to-go cup back.
2:13 p.m.: And I can’t wait to get home. My cinder-block teeth are protruding out through a haphazard grin in anticipation. I am getting to the bottom of my life and I’ve got a big treat waiting for me.
2:13:09 p.m.: She’s moving out tonight.

*I have never leaped in my life. I am so full of shit.

Love Match

We were at the in-between stage, where you’ve taken your shower for a big occasion too early and you don’t want to put on your dress clothes until the water on your body dries and the sweat is about to begin.
I was already sweating when Sal suggested we play pingpong. We went out to the patio. Dripping, I took the arms of my robe and knotted them around my waist. Sal was not one to play games with. He was the strutter in your high school who kicked off, quarterbacked and played safety. He called his own plays.
He had the arm and the eye. I was no competition, but I always challenged him to petty games. I had claimed I’d beaten him at darts once, but he’d been drinking, and it was a lie. He had beat me drunk.
Picking up the ball for the initial serve, he stammered, “I’m not gonna do it.”
“Do what? Serve.”
“I’m not gonna get married.”
This read spontaneous, and my first reaction was panic. We had become so tight, and for some reason, I immediately thought I’d have to be the one to tell the bride. Then, I realized we were playing a game and if there was some way to use this to my advantage, I could beat him. I could really beat him.
He leaned forward and smacked the ball.
“Why should I?” he said. “Why should I marry her?”
“Love,” I returned.
“I’ve loved other girls and didn’t marry them.”
“Yeah, but you’re ready now.”
“But that doesn’t mean I should marry this girl.”
I stepped back and slid one past him.
He was beginning to scare me with his over-the-net philosophy. This was the guy who previously spoke to me only in a language we had called HUT UN UT TU. But I always knew what he meant.
“I loved Paula more than anyone,” he confessed.
“That was years ago. You don’t go back to your high-school sweetheart.”
“Why not? Why not?!”
“She’s probably blown up.”
“She hasn’t. I checked.”
I cupped the ball and put my weight on the table. This wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, follow-the-bouncing-ball talk. The son of a bitch had been planning this. He’d done research, talked to friends and figured he had half a chance to go back to the beginning of time.
He tensed. “I miss her.”
I was winning the game.
“Whenever I used to tease her, she’d smoke and say, “Don’t bust my ovaries.’ Oh, she was a heck of a guy,” he reminisced.
“And a cheerleader,” I added. “Is that it — you want to have a live-in cheerleader? Those days are gone, even the negatives are lost.”
I reminded him that the end to their relationship had been ugly and adolescent. Something about a knife, a butter knife, but he was using it as a weapon nonetheless. “I could have poked somebody pretty bad that night,” he’d told me. She had forgiven him, but in her father’s wisdom, a knife was a knife.
“And she’s up there, and you’re down here.” I flung my arms north and south.
“I’m a truck driver,” he admitted in a flat tone.
“What about Chandra?”
“She’s Asian; she’ll understand. She’s got heritage.”
“She’s got what?”
“All I can think about is Paula,” he said.
He’d made up his mind, but it was too soon for me. Without another word, I sensed the final decision. His concentration had returned to the game at hand, and I was beginning to lose, badly. He proceeded to bury me.
Now, my mind wandered. It was obvious that the woman you marry could easily be someone else. Someone better. A cheerleader, for instance. We pluck from selections as numbered and contained as a jukebox’s. But is it obvious that any selection amounts to more than L-24? Sal was calling for a replay, and he was betting far more than a quarter on it.
In a couple of hours, he was packed up and heading north. He’d left behind a brand new Yankee jacket, which I assumed wasn’t negligence. I put it on over my robe, which created the illusion I was arriving for spring training, a bit overwhelmed, with a midi-skirt on. But I was on the couch, my bench, and I wondered how in the hell he’d figured this one out. HUT UN UT TU.
Six months later, he’d married Paula and was doing local truck runs on Long Island. He had five different softball uniforms hanging in his closet, three of them bar teams paying him to play. “Everything is BU-TEE-FU,” he’d holler over the phone.
Beautiful.
But was Sal going back for a cheerleader, or is there really such a thing as true love? After all, what is a cheerleader in the forever you promise? One day she’ll be lying there naked, her breasts looking like balloons found in a closet two weeks after the party: Too many children, too many trips down the stairs with the wash.
But she’s there for a reason, locked in. And when she shrivels up altogether, you pin a gaudy, diamond-studded brooch onto a dress, the delicate cloth of which has somehow become heavy and thick. And as your hands fidget, you feel the bony structure beneath, the shell that had been hidden by healthy fat for years. You realize it wasn’t the Cool Water she put on her thighs while exercising in your living room decades ago that imprisoned you. It wasn’t the hat she tilted above dark eyes. It was the fragile frame far beneath the wedding dress, the structure that doesn’t change, the sanctified place where you have come to place your weakness like an offering before an altar.
I weighed the unknown. The predictable failure. You can lie atop a jukebox worth of bodies and never find one to lie beside. You just pick anyone and say, “This is the woman.” But that’s gutless. It’s a Yankee jacket without a real player in it. You can deny your own weakness. You can deny the need for someone who can take you apart, put their hands inside you, one by one.
Or you can get in your semi and ride out to where the air is thin, the moon is a sliver and its sharpest edges point toward Venus. Toward Love — the diamond brooch at the end of rainbows and cheerleaders.
Rah! Rah!

e-mail me at tshine@citylinkmagazine.com

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