Belize

          I’m not a travel writer, but I’m a writer who just traveled so I should probably let logic take the tiller and write about my travels… I just swam with fucking sharks in Belize. For real. Our boat stopped out in the reef and we moored to a cemented anchor. I’d like to say that the ocean smelled fresh just to paint the perfect picture, but it didn’t. It never does; it depends on which way the wind is blowing. Sometimes the breeze is a clean thing, telling your nose about new life and a refreshing swim. Sometimes the breeze is dirty and pungent, and it talks about the death and decay down below. The ocean is half life, half death. Our reef was huge—the world’s second largest—and we were surrounded by the sea; two fathoms of water that stretched on and on. Greens and blues you only see in the tropics. Life swam beneath our boat. Sharks and rays and barracudas and all kinds of creepy shit that bites and stings. The man said to jump in, so I jumped in. I landed somewhere in the middle of the food chain.

          I’m a decent snorkeler, but irrational fear controlled my lungs. In out in out, quick and quicker. The man noticed and suggested a lifejacket when I got back to the boat. I could just lie on it if I needed and relax. It’d put Styrofoam between me and the teeth. Hell yes. I swam back out floating on top of my orange security blanket. I calmed down. There was a small nursery shark that just moments before was doing an awesome impression of Jaws. There was a peaceful ray flapping her wings in the sand (I assume she did it to look majestic). There were two barracudas lurking in my peripheral, holding still and playing the cat in cat-and-mouse; I showed them my lifejacket. The man swam down before my eyes and coaxed an eel out of his den; he breathed with his huge gills and proffered translucent teeth. Holy shit it was wonderful; it was like snorkeling in the movies. The man was our docent through house-sized outcroppings of coral. Explorers in an underwater canyon, we swam left and right through schools of curious fish and other tourists, pale on bottom and burnt red on top. My fish of a daughter would swim under me and then away, a fearless eight-years-old beast on a mission, and then she’d swim back all the while trying to tell me something through her snorkel. I’d just nod, smile, wave.

          Our reef was a barrier reef, one that protects all of Belize from the predatory ocean, but the barrier had a channel in it: a submerged portcullis in the reef wall. We swam across it and I felt the tug of the ocean pulling me out like the ensnaring song of a deadly mermaid, but we made it across easily. Life and wonderment lived everywhere and we swam through it for close to an hour. We got back to the boat and the man said it was time to go to “shark ray alley.” That’s where they all are he said: the big ones. It was a short boat ride and as soon as we moored off, they came slithering in. Dark shadows, wraiths of the seas, swam everywhere. The white noise of the engine pulled them close. Guides who don’t follow the rules bait the sharks with handfuls of fish food and the beasts know that one way or another, when they hear an engine’s purr, food is getting in the water.

          Look. I know that my fear of sharks is ridiculous, but I don’t care. They grow teeth like I grow hair, they’re cold and stoic like serial killers, they’re hungry and carnivorous, and they do that creepy sideways swimming thing. Sharks are bullshit. Saying you’ll face your fear is a shit-ton easier than actually doing it, so I’d been trying to get out of our snorkeling trip for days: “Terra, you’re allergic to shrimp, so maybe you’re allergic to the ocean. Terra, I promise that I’ll freak out and ruin everybody’s day. Terra, this is dumb, so let’s just stay in our rented condo and lock the doors.” Granted, these were nursery sharks, but a ten-foot nursery shark doesn’t look anything like an animal that belongs in a nursery. And the man said that he’d seen the occasional reef shark. Um, that’s the type of shark that attacked James Bond in Thunderball. Fuck that. But when the man said jump in, I jumped in… There was a big asshole right underneath our boat, growing teeth and swimming side to side right at me. I tried to show him my lifejacket but then I realized I jumped in without it. Shit. On he came. Luckily, he turned away when he was about ten inches* away from my face (yards*). I was scared shitless, but that youngest daughter of mine wasn’t. She kept complaining about how the man had told her not to let go of the life ring that was tethered to the boat. Who the hell complains about that? Who the hell thinks that holding onto a “life” ring while floating above a murderous school of monsters is a bad thing? My daughter. She wanted to swim off on her own so she could name and tame the sharks; she’d cuddle them into submission.

          I was nervous. Everyone was nervous. Even the man didn’t like this part of the trip. He stood safely out of the water and kept yelling “stay by the boat, stay by the boat!” But about halfway through the experience, my fear vanished. I don’t know if something broke in my brain or if confronting my fear diluted it down into extinction, but either way, I simply wasn’t afraid of the sharks around me. We eventually got back in, all extremities accounted for, and I started making small talk with the man. So, has anyone ever been bitten? He laughed, and then he told me the “after the tourists get back in the boat story.” He pointed down to his leg to show off his puckered foot-long scar. He’d taken out a group of Polish tourists a few months prior. They brought with them a translator. They were snorkeling along shark ray alley when the nursery sharks rose from the depths en-masse and formed a feeding frenzy, stoked by the man’s outboard motor and its diner chime. The translator, ever the center of attention, dove down below the frenzy and then swam back up right in the middle of it. That Pollock would’ve made my daughter proud. Can you imagine what it’d look like to do such a thing? I can. I see this roiling bait ball of death centered perfectly in the salty openness. When you dive down, you see the ocean darkening beneath you in gradients of blue. The sandy white floor shimmers below like a mirage. As you swim back up, you watch the swirling ball of beasts get bigger and bigger as you pick up speed, pulled towards death by your buoyancy. Then you come up in the middle, surrounded by rasping grey skin and bloodied teeth. Terrifying.

          In a feeding frenzy, sharks lid their eyes to protect their vision—they just bite blind and randomly in the churned confusion. The translator in the middle was taking hits, bleeding in the water. And that’s when the man jumped in (and incidentally, that’s why I call him “the man”). He grabbed the translator and pulled him out of the melee. He kicked the sharks away (in my mind, I picture Chuck Norris kicks just destroying shark faces), but one shark was a bit to wily. He bit the man right in the calf. The man knew that if he tried to pull his leg free, the shark would thrash and he’d lose a chunk of muscle, so he just waited patiently for the shark to let go. That’s the part that blows my mind: the man was swimming away from a shark feeding frenzy, he was pulling with him a bleeding Pollock, and when a shark tried to eat his leg, he just waited patiently until the ancient predator decided to let go. He got the translator back to the boat and then took everyone to shore. He got some stitches and then he healed and then he went right back into the water. There’s an aphorism in there somewhere.

          The man finished his story just as my once-dead fear of sharks started to breathe again. He took us back to shore and I tipped him with the colorful money that seems to be everywhere else in the world except our country, and we went back to our condo. The rest of our trip followed suit. We drank bottomless mimosas by a saltwater crocodile lagoon; we gorged ourselves on soursop ice cream and conch ceviche; we parasailed over a flock of manta rays. I’m sure the proper group noun for manta rays is something like “school” or “pod” or some other nautical nonsense, but it shouldn’t be; things that fly do so in flocks, and we could see those creatures flapping their wings underwater even though we were soaring high above with a parachute. And when we landed, a sting ray, the manta ray’s nimbler kin, jumped out of the water and flapped his wet, leathery wings until he splashed back down. Our guide that day was a bona fide Rastafarian and he looked exactly like he looks in your mind right now. He yelled out “Ay man! You saw that ray mon? Ya mon!” His dreads bounced around his head like pasta as he did his Rasta dance. As he was unhooking my harness, he leaned in close and made a joke about why the sting rays jump out of the water: “because they be getting excited mon.” “The be getting BJs from the other fish mon.” “Ya mon!”

          We finished the parasailing day by eating at a truck-stop that’d be hard to stop at with a truck. It was out of town a bit: twenty minutes in our sputtering golf cart along a muddy single-track. The food was fresh and local. Five converted shipping containers encircled a few park benches and tables. We ordered spicy noodles and chicken wings and then sat below an umbrella until the rain pushed us to the bar. It was a sign. We drank beers and plotted our retirement. Now, before I continue, I’d like to type out a little disclaimer: I don’t eavesdrop intentionally, but I do it nonetheless and I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. I was born without the brain part that lets most humans filter out background noise. It’s a handicap. Chewing noises, too-loud laughs, obnoxious conversations happening anywhere around me: I hear them all. I’m forced to listen to every conversation I hear like some unwilling voyeur. My mind categorizes all the conversations and then files them away for moments like this one: There were two other couples sitting at the bar. Couple number one said “we just moved here” and then couple number two said “why?” and then couple number one said “Trump.” Holy shit! Here they were. Here were two Americans who’d said that they’d move if he won—he won, they moved. Two disenfranchised Americans, two patriots without a nation. My wife cheered. And she cheered rightfully because couple number one had the collective balls to move out of middle ‘merica and into Central America just to honor their convictions. It doesn’t matter which side you’re on. Objectively speaking, couple number one won. They stayed true to their word and they got paradise while the rest of us liberals are stuck here at home with nothing more than the “I-told-you-sos” that we’re about to dish out.

          Our last day came and we flew back to Texas to sleep for a night before making the connection to Durango. I had mosquito bites and a new cold. I won’t lie: I thought about malaria and the Zika virus more than once. I imagined being “patient zero” and about how horrible it would be in Durango once my exotic disease decimated the town’s population. But that hasn’t happened yet and I promise to keep covering my mouth when I cough. Our lives have gone back to normal, but the first three days back in my home felt special. True, they were hard—we were stressed after so much time so close to one another, and we came back to a Colorado winter—but those days reminded me how ridiculously good we have it here in the States. The conch ceviche in Colorado is outrageously expensive, but we have doctors and teachers and infrastructure (all three have debatable efficacy, but that’s irrelevant). We have freedom (sort of), we have rights (most of us), and we have opportunity (if we’re lucky). It’s not perfect here at home but it’s a lot better than it is in Belize. So, even though I too have an urge to pack it all up and head for foreign latitudes, maybe I (and all of us) should just suck it up. And that’s good advice no matter which side you’re on because the present day winners will be someday losers and it’ll just go back and forth forever. We Americans are fond of fighting back and forth on a constrained field, a ceaseless game of inches (just think about our favorite sports). So maybe we should just jump into our nightmarish political cesspool, into our regressing culture, and face it straight on like a sideways-swimming shark. Or maybe moderation is where it’s at: leave sometimes, travel, get prospective. But come back. Come back to fix what’s broken instead of moving someplace like Belize where there’s lots of sand to stick your head in. Running away to paradise is still running away. And that’s where I’m at right now. I want to fly away on a special airplane equipped with windows you can roll down just so I can stick out my hand and flip off everything behind me, all the uncertainty, but I’m just going to write instead. I’m just going to be a travel writer when I travel and a writer-writer when I’m stuck here in this small office and I’m going to face life and fear with my craft, because unlike my lifejacket, writing isn’t something I can leave behind when I jump in.

Genies and Queens

          I met a genie when I was sixteen. Seriously. The thing came out of a lamp I found right behind a Baskin Robins with a wisp of smoke just like in the cartoons. The guy was a trope. He had the sash and the long eyebrows and the archetypical accent. It was hard to take him seriously, reinforcing stereotypes like he was, but the dude seamed legit—glowing eyes, eerie music, aforementioned wispy smoke stuff. But I was only given one wish. Something inside me, something instinctual and basal, told me that my soul would be forfeit if I pulled that whole “wish for more wishes” gag, so I didn’t even try.

          I thought and thought, and eventually wished “for a life surrounded by women.” It seemed such a simple paradise at the time. The genie just nodded once with an arched eyebrow, and I felt it. There was a dry pop in my chest, like something opened up, and I felt the wish take hold. The genie disappeared, accompanied by Middle-Eastern pomp and circumstance, and then I was alone, standing behind a Baskin Robbins, fated to be surrounded by women for all of eternity. But then a niggling doubt came to life. Saturnine thoughts blossomed in the background of my consciousness, dark and brooding: distrust. What was up with that arched eyebrow? His expression reminded me of one of an old-timey villain who’d just tied to the railroad tracks his black-and-white damsel. Distressing. Genies are always the good guys in western cartoons. Poor souls, doomed to serve their masters’ whims, but always the good guys, always on the right side of morality. But the old-school tales talk about the not-so-Sunday-school genies. You know, the dark ones who trick and murder their way out of enslavement, the shiesty ones who feed off unfortunate lamp rubbers. Genies weren’t the good guys; they were just another culture’s version of the malicious leprechaun, the two legged el chupacabra, the lamp based version of a skin walker.

          A random story from my childhood popped into my mind. A man caught a leprechaun. He made the leprechaun take him to his pot of gold, buried by a tree in a forest. But the man didn’t have a shovel. He told the leprechaun to tie a red scarf around the tree marking the treasure: don’t touch the scarf he said, wait here until I return with a shovel he said. The leprechaun was true to his word. He didn’t touch the scarf. But when the man returned, he found a red scarf tied around every tree, tied around every sapling and bush and up-right stone. The leprechaun stood with a smile while he watched the man dig for a life span, dig until he died in the forest for his lust of gold. The leprechaun, the dark creature, got the soul he wanted, because that’s obviously what such creatures eat. So, where did that leave me? Would the women destined to surround me also find me repulsive? Would they be near me only because of the genie’s power, thereby making me feel inadequate? Would I always wonder if any woman truly loved me because every relationship would be tainted by the curse that came from behind Baskin Robbins?

          I’m in my thirties now. I have a wife. Two daughters. They all three have loads of friends. Young ones with their incessant questions. Teenaged ones with their bulletproof self-absorption. Older ones who remind me of my inferiority on the regular. They swarm around me like a hive of only queens, directing my life, shaping it, changing it. My women, the three in my home, give me a ration of shit that’d bring mutiny to a captain’s mind, they test me with their felinity to the breaking point, but guess what: I love it. These creatures are so powerful, so ridiculously masterful of their domain that every day of my life is a lesson learned about wonderment, about women. I got what I wanted. I might be a masochist, but I got my wish. And the victory is mine. I know that genie, that dumbass Aladdin-look-alike genie, did not get what he wanted. He did not get his tormented soul. And he’s squandering in that lamp right now, shaking his stupid, bejeweled genie fist, because I won. He is lost, trapped until there are no more hands to rub lamps. I am free, surrounded by women.

A Letter

Dear Mr. Paul Ryan,

 

We’re fucked, but you already knew that. So, let’s move on.

 

Do you know what’s strange? A few years ago, people like you scared the shit out of me. You all looked like fanatical zealots who loved ignorance and stagnation. You all looked like weird, antiquated versions of American stereotypes. You all looked like people who represented fallacious values that weren’t in line with my own, so I went out of my way to avoid voting for Republicans. Most of us did. Thus, your party was dying. But then you went rogue. You let the tea party out of your basement—in retrospect, it’s obvious that they should’ve stayed chained down there like the gimps that they are, but whatever. It is what it is. They did their damage and created a few more red seats in congress, but then entropy set in, and the tea party started to fade. Short attention spans bring with them no real change. And then, Hillary appeared on the horizon. Now, desperation… You gave Donald Trump a microphone.

 

Why did you do that? As I was saying earlier, Republicans like you used to scare me, but now, I miss having your relative normalcy as one of the possible presidential outcomes. And my “why did you do that” question wasn’t rhetorical; I want an answer. I heard that you weren’t willing to run for the presidency because you wanted to spend more time with your family, with your children. Is that true? Did you have to have the same sad talk with your daughter about Trump that I did? Do you realize that you set women back by about a century by letting that man lead your party? Do you realize that in an attempt to strengthen your family, you actually screwed it along with millions of other families for quite some time? Do you realize that you’re a public servant by choice, but when it really mattered, you chose to not serve the public? Jesus man; if Trump beat Hillary, you could’ve too. Your party would’ve had power and dominance and all the avarice you could eat, but instead, you gave a fuck-tard nuclear codes.

 

But you know what? There are plenty of platitudes we could choose from: Monday morning quarterbacks never miss, hindsight is 20/20, so on and so forth. I’m not writing this letter to give you shit for your mistakes. I’m not just going to tell you things you already know without showing you a path out of your mire. Think about this: Trump was a grenade that the people threw at you because congress sucks. It’s plain and simple. But you have a way out: stop sucking. Come together as a congress that works in unison and represents the people. Stop pushing only your conservative agenda and try some actual give and take. Think about us, not lobbyists. Think about right and wrong, not left or right, because believe it or not, these terms don’t always line up the way that you think they do. We were taught about checks and balances in elementary school, and now, I’m a grownup who’s hoping with fingers crossed that “checks and balances” wasn’t just bullshit that was fed to me right along with those greasy, square pizzas. So please start checking and balancing.

 

In the end, you know what’s going to happen. Trump isn’t going to appoint a special prosecutor to imprison Hillary because that’s not in the president’s power, nor will she ever go to jail. Trump isn’t going to build that wall because it isn’t economically feasible. Trump isn’t going to ban Muslims from entering our country because it’d be unconstitutional (remember when Republicans understood the constitution?). Trump isn’t going to deport all those immigrants because his business buddies rely on them for cheap labor. Trump isn’t going to do any of the things that he said he was going to do, and eventually, his supporters are going to figure it out (it’ll take them a while for obvious reasons, but it’ll dawn on them eventually). Economically and politically, the next four years are going to suck, and now, there’s nobody left to blame because Republicans control all government branches. So what’s going to happen in four years when “republican” is synonymous with “disgrace”? What’s going to happen when you’re up for reelection?

 

I guess what I’m saying is that I need you republicans to start actually being Republicans. See what I did there with the capitalization? Get away from all your social bullshit and get back to your roots: less government. And don’t tell me that’s what you’re about currently because it’s not. Think about it. Blocking gay marriage equals more government. Keeping weed illegal equals more government. All your asinine, social regulations equal more government, and that’s why we centrists have fallen out of love with your party. You say one thing and do another, and nobody likes hypocritical rulers; the dichotomy negates the supposition that you’re qualified to govern. So, it’s time to choose. You can recast your party in the mold that Lincoln used to create it: mother fucking freedom. Freedom from slavery. Freedom from prohibition. Freedom from gender oppression (wasn’t it just hilarious when all those Trump supporters wanted to take away women’s voting rights? LOL?). Freedom from all the things that we’ve been telling you that we want to be free from. Or, after reality sets in a few years from now, when the tide turns blue, I’ll write you another missive that simply says “I told you so.”

 

Actually, I’m pretty sure that you’ll never read this, and even if you do, I’m pretty sure that your party is going to put its social agenda above your lip-service “less government” paradigm as per usual, so… never mind; I’m making my plea to someone else:

 

Dear Alien Overlords,

 

I’m sure that you’re reading this because aliens are famously voyeuristic, and I’m sure that you have mandates that are similar to our own when it comes to interfering with another species, but I beg you to reconsider. Do you know what I mean? When our National Geographic photographers see a suicide of lemmings running towards a cliff, the lemmings are allowed to die because stopping them would be “interfering with nature” (and it would refute their rad “suicide” group-noun). I hope you think that this notion is ridiculous just as I do—I hope you see that lemmings are to us what we are to you, and we need some help right now because the cliff is neigh.

 

After all, when I see one of my children doing something stupid like running with a blade, I have to take it away for their own safety. That’s kind of where we’re at right now, we humans and you super-advanced space-aliens, so I’m gunna need you to come step in and help us with this whole “we elected a dangerous narcissist to rule us with his anachronistic values because we were afraid of a president with boobs” thing. We’re about to fail as a species, but we’re too busy taking selfies to notice. Ergo, I’m gunna need you to come conquer us and take away our blade because we’re stumbling and the cut is going to be deep and global. The cut is going to be permanent. Please.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jesse

Weight a minute bro

          I’m a steroid shot in the ass away from becoming a complete hypocrite. You see, I used to work out in a small barn that I’d converted into a home gym because I hated the idea of working out in a public gym with a flock of jocks; that whole “meathead mentality” wasn’t for me. I’d open the overhead door and let the alfalfa flavored air dry my sweat as I grunted in private. I’d have to check my weights for black widows and mice would eat my towels if I forgot to bring them in for the night, but I loved it. The wife, however, did not. We lived on an irrigated five acre parcel that was a solid thirty-five minute commute from downtown Durango, and civilization was too far away. Social interaction is the fecund ground in which children grow best, and without it, we feared that our daughters would end up in a cult or something, so we moved into town.

          It’s expensive to live in Durango. Six-hundred square foot condos rent for thirteen hundred dollars a month, and since we need three times that much space, a home gym would’ve been just as realistic as a landing pad for my luxury helicopter or an indoor pool filled with Champaign, so I sucked it up and joined the local gym at the Durango Rec Center. I don’t know what the opposite of a bucket list is, but I’ve got one. It’s an embarrassingly long litany of things that I’ll never do, and “join a gym” has always been right at the top of it; it’s directly above “take square dance lessons” and “swim with sharks.” But now? Well now, I love my gym. I walk in without my pass and the affable red-shirted people at the front desk wave their hands in forgiveness. “Oh that’s just Jesse,” they’ll say if someone new is working. “He never has his card.” It feels good. I’m a buff version of Norm walking into my very own Cheers. Everyone likes to be a regular. We all like it when that familiar waitress or barista asks if it’ll “be the usual” because it makes us feel welcome. It makes us feel like we’re a part of something, a valued member of the herd, and for our social species, that’s what life is all about. And now, I’ve pulled my myopic head out of my ass via a gym membership and I’m a recognized member of the hoi polloi.

          The gym is like a fraternity. Sure, women go there, but for the most part, we don’t talk to them and they don’t talk to us—we like to think that’s because we’re all ripped and intimidating, but really, it’s just because we’re gross and annoying, and women don’t seem to like conversing when they’re wrapped in spandex and covered in sweat. Anyway, like all fraternities, the gym has its rules. You put your weights back when you’re done. You don’t leave your sweat on the equipment (unless you’re tattooed and scary, and then you can get away with it). You don’t scream like you’re giving birth to a man-baby unless you’re lifting a ridiculous amount of weight. You stay home if you’re sick because there’s no quicker way to piss off the athletic type than to infect them with something catching. You bump fists instead of shaking hands (because sweaty palms are disgusting), you never steal someone else’s equipment, and if someone has their earbuds in, you leave them alone. Other than that, it’s pretty straight forward and we all get along marvelously, but the gym has its quirks.

          The parking lot is big, but it’s always congested. People like to drive around in circles in order to find the spot that’s closest to the front door. It makes sense. They don’t want to walk too far before getting to their treadmills where they run in place. But when they’re forced to walk, they do so in slow motion; the men swing their shoulders and the women gyrate their hips in time with the secretive theme music that lives in their earbuds. It’s hard to admit, but we’re really nothing more than animals, and at the gym, we all strut like puffed-up peacocks. Secondly, they gym smells weird. A few of us even started hunting for some long-dead animal that was trapped behind the drywall before our resident genius, Chase, discovered that the malodorous insult was coming from the weights themselves; I almost brought it to management’s attention, but the gym would’ve lost some character if the smell disappeared. My tertiary problem with the gym here in Durango is the music; they play soft jazz and elevator music. It’s like a soporific field of poppies that’s trying to sap my will to be active. Lastly, believe it or not, some people don’t know the aforementioned rules that I brought to your attention. Every once in a while, a sick, sweat-bucket of a fool will come along and steal your equipment after trying to start a conversation despite your earbuds—it’s annoying, but hey, it’s a public place and everybody is welcome.

          The Rec Center itself grows out of the verdant parks that sprawl along the banks of the Animas River as it wends its way north of downtown. The front desk is inescapable when you walk in through the automatic doors; it’s big and it’s filled with friendly locals. There are conference rooms to the right that are booked for karate classes and strange singing church meetings. The locker rooms and aquatic center are on the left. There’s a climbing wall directly behind the desk. Further back, there’s a basketball court that’s usually filled with old people playing pickle ball: it’s a weird wedding between wiffle ball and tennis. There’s a daycare. There are racquetball courts and running tracks and multipurpose rooms. But none of those places interest me. Right behind the front desk, there’s a wide, tiled staircase that doubles back on itself as it leads up. Standing at the bottom, you can hear the rhythmic thumping of treadmills, the metallic clattering of weights, the too-loud bravado of comradery. It smells like detergent and bodies and feelings of inadequacy.

          I walk up those stairs quickly because nobody likes to live in limbo. I make my rounds when I get to the top, bumping fists with all my bros because it’s apropos, and I settle in on a bench. I look around and do a bit of people watching as I stretch. You’d think that a gym is just one place, but it’s not: there are three territories inhabited by three very different tribes. There’s the cardio tribe. These are an energetic people. They wear special shoes that clip into their fancy stationary bikes. Or they wear shoes that’re made for rubber on rubber—treadmill running that takes you nowhere while you watch a TV that’s mounted on the wall like a carrot on a stick. Next, there’s the yoga tribe. These are an earthy people, subdued and smiling in their tight pants while they sit crisscross-applesauce on their foamy mats. They have candles and breathy music and their own room that keeps them safe from the simian group to which I belong: the third tribe, the lifters. These are an intense people. We’re the large ones, the disproportionate walking triangles. We pick things up and then put them down, over and over again, wishing that we could pick up bigger things and put them down harder. We mark our bodies with chalk. We spot each other and give high-fives as if it was 1985, and we love it. I love it. This is something I never would’ve figured out had I not “sucked it up” and paid for a gym membership. But when I think about it, it isn’t just the gym that deserves my gratitude even though I swear that place is a living, breathing character. It’s the welcoming brethren within who deserve thanks. Those men let me act like an idiot in their midst and now I call them friends—they deserve a written shout-out, so here it is.

          Chase is the smart one, but I already said that. Jimmy is the big one; I spotted that man while he benched four-hundred and fifty-five pounds, and that’s just ludicrous. Ed is the gregarious one; he’s our spirit animal who’s always quick to talk and give advice. Matt is the pro; he looks like a baby made by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean Claude Van Dame. Patrick is an amateur personal trainer and a professional shit-talker. Ricky disappears occasionally, but like a spawning salmon, he always returns. Josh is the playboy. Jaccinda is one of the only women who can hold her ground, and she puts most of us to shame. Shane can’t rock a moustache but he does so anyway; he’s a badass, and he grows muscle like the rest of us grow hair. Dylan and Bryan are the gentlemen, Tyler has better shoes than you do, Ben’s arms are bigger than my legs, and Vito is going to be a fireman when he grows up. Aaron is just cool as hell, as are Jason and his daughter. John, Brian, Mike, Dave; good people all. These people have made me realize that the gym is a good place to be, and once upon a time, I was narrower minded than I am now.

          The only thing I hate more than hypocrisy is my own hypocrisy. I hate saying that I’ll never do a thing because I’m better than the people who do that thing just to find out that those people are just different versions of myself. I hate admitting that I was wrong. The gym, for me, has been the hollow into which Luke walked to face Vader for that first time. There, for twenty-five bucks a month, I’ve found myself, even though it sounds like a trite cliché. I’ve realized that “never say never” isn’t just a tired platitude. Granted, I’m not going to square dance around in a plaid suit or swim with a great white, but I am going try and grow up a bit. I’m going to forgive my hypocrisy, or at least, I’m going to try to not be so hypocritical. I’m going to wake up and look at the rest of my anti-bucket list (ha! That’s what it’s called!), and I’m going to decide if the things on said list really suck, or if they’re just incarnations of my parochial decision to only participate in certain facets of life. Because, as it turns out, there’s nothing wrong with a flock of jocks; I was once just a flockless jock.

Emordnilap

I can’t watch The Big Bang Theory without my wife remarking on the similarities I share with Sheldon Cooper, so today, I’m going to embrace it and give you a little food for thought. Without further ado, here is:

Jesse Anderson presents, Fun With Words.

It’s always bothered be that the word “palindrome” isn’t in and of itself a palindrome. I’m sure you know what a palindrome is: it’s a word, or a set of words, that mirrors itself when spelled backwards—taco cat spelled backwards is “taco cat,” and that’s just awesome. So in my mind, the proverbial “they” should’ve used “palinilap” instead of “palindrome” because that way, the word itself would’ve reflected its meaning via function. But hey, unfortunately, I’m not one of “them.”

However, there’s a wonderful epiphany buried in this frustration. “Palindrome” spelled backwards is “emordnilap,” and believe it or not, it’s an actual word. The only dictionary that supports this claim is the Urban Dictionary, but for me, that’s good enough. Granted, the Urban Dictionary also defines “Cosby Sweater” in a manner that I’d like to forget (don’t look it up), but that’s irrelevant. An emordnilap is a word that creates a completely different word when it’s spelled backwards. “Emordnilap” is hard to say, so such words are also called “Janis words” or “mirror words” or my favorite, “back words” (it’s my favorite because it sounds like “backwards” and puns just make me giggle). So here we go…

Have you ever met a gateman who wasn’t wearing a nametag? Did you notice that gateman spelled backwards is nametag? Do you get stressed when you’re eating your desserts because it’ll make you fat, or because stressed spelled backwards is in fact desserts? When you feed a baby, you’re repaid by a dirty diaper which isn’t as shitty as it sounds because the backwards back-word for diaper is repaid. Your reward for opening a drawer is noticing the mirrored relationship between “reward” and “drawer.” Now you can’t stop reading because you’re stuck in the worst part of my trap. I could go on forever… my daughter is an avid diva. A dirty musician is a drab bard. A belt is made out of strap parts. Vampire bats stab with their teeth. Orange peels don’t sleep. You have to dial to get laid. Well-trained pets stay in step. You can bonk someone with a knob. A lager is a regal beer. Denim isn’t mined. Don’t snub my buns. The evil live but the devil never lived. I think I’m done because I won now…

I love patterns, and I love words, so it’s no surprise that patterns made out of words make me smile like a possum eating sweet potatoes. When I find the patterns, or make my own, my smug smile shows my gums, and when it hits me that the emordnilap for gums is “smug,” my mind explodes and I laugh to myself like a word-addled literary fool.

Anyway, this post was pretty pointless, and I just wrote it for the sake of writing. My summer semester starts on Monday, and you probably won’t hear from me for at least a month. I honestly want to thank all of you for your continued patience and interest—almost fourteen-thousand of you have read my writing almost twenty thousand times, and that’s pretty humbling. But I have to take another break. Over the weekend, I need to get ready for class, and right now, I have to do the dishes… I guess you could say that I have to stop to clean my pots… I’m so, so sorry.

Hell NO DGO

          It’s a breach of bathroom etiquette to piss right next to someone else. Everybody knows that. If someone’s using a urinal, you leave an empty one between you and him. If it’s impossible to do so, you still don’t piss right next to him—you use the stall. If all the stalls are full, and you’re forced to use a urinal right next to a stranger, you do so without saying a damn thing. You stare straight ahead at the wall with laser focus like a pissing robot and you do your business. That’s how bathrooms work; I didn’t write these laws, but I follow them. And really, if you think about it, bathroom etiquette is like a parable for the rest of life. It’s a cultural miniature for the rest of our social interaction: you give people their space through propriety and respect.

          The Telegraph has been around forever. I’ve read their paper for a few years’ worth of Thursdays. Their articles are real and organic and homespun. That paper grows out of our streets like a poplar and they’re an authentic representation of Durango. They’ve published my work and mailed me checks with handwritten thankyous. Their format is perfect, and from a capitalist point of view, I guess that’s why it was stolen by the Ballantine Cartel. DGO has fancier blue boxes, lacquered and shining in the spring rain, but other than that, they’re an ersatz carbon-copy of the real deal. Seriously though, why would they do that? Why would they decide to copy The Telegraph so blatantly and then even choose the same day for their free publication run? Was it an overt attempt to snuff out local media? God damn it DGO, Thursday was The Telegraph’s urinal. You should choose another. And stop pandering so goddamn much. We get it. You like bicycles and pot and you’re one of us, earthy and artsy in your “Durango Rocks” T shirt, and we should trust you for your trendiness.

          You know that guy who shows up to dinner parties with a bottle of wine just so he can spout off ad-nauseam about the tannins and whatnot? He annoys me. Don’t get me wrong, I love good wine and I love hearing about it from people like Allen over at Put a Cork in It, but every once in a while, I want to remind everyone that it’s just alcoholic grape juice. It’s no big deal. And pot is the same way. I don’t need to read weekly articles about obscure designer strains; that shit is just otiose nonsense because when you get right down to it, pot is just a weed that grows out of the ground. You light it on fire and breathe in the smoke and then smile about it. It’s no big deal. And it’s definitely not something big enough to build a publication upon. And let’s not forget that The Herald, Ballantine’s flagship, was vehemently opposed to legalized marijuana, but now that it’s legal, they’ve jumped on the pro-pot bandwagon as if we readers have no memory. So write about something else DGO (after you choose a different urinal).

          This is where I switch it up and talk about my own hypocrisy. I thought DGO was an independent startup the first time I noticed one of their blue boxes. I sent them one of my articles because I love seeing these words of mine in black print on grey paper. I never received a response, and if I’m being honest, I’ve been nurturing a petulant resentment ever since. And now, since I’ve discovered that DGO is a subsidiary of an out-of-town interest, I have the moral luxury of saying that “I’m glad they didn’t publish my stuff,” but it’s a lie. Hell, if they ever offered me a writing job, I’d disavow this entire article like a repenting born-again zealot and sign up without my soul if necessary. That’s how desperate I am to be a professional writer. But as a reader? As a local who’s allergic to the counterfeit? Well in this role, I choose to read The Telegraph. I choose to watch their racks go empty day after day while stacks and stacks of dated DGOs end up in the magazine graveyard in front of the treadmills at the Rec Center. I choose to sit here on my manufactured moral high-ground and support the only true local paper, The Durango Telegraph.

          But I’m a realist. I’m sure that the DGO team knew exactly what they were doing. I’m sure they knew that they were going against bathroom rules. In the real world, principal is pointless and money comes first. So DGO sauntered up right next to The Telegraph’s urinal and whipped it out and started pissing. They didn’t even look at the wall; they turned their head slowly and made uncomfortable eye contact. They looked down into The Telegraph’s urinal and cocked a derisive eyebrow—DGO’s money was bigger. It sucked. And why shouldn’t they? Their repetitive pot segments attract all sorts of advertising dollars from our one hundred and one local dispensaries, and there’s still something novel about legal pot. This is especially true for tourists. If they walk through our town and see one of those shiny blue boxes, they’re going to open it and smile when they see a free newspaper covered with green crosses and pot leaves. They’re going to read it, thinking that it’s part of us, and they’re going to validate a poser from out of town. It pisses me off.

          Eventually, money wins. Always. When 92.9 The Point first came on the air, they promised us to be “no talk and all music” forever. It was beautiful but too good to be true. People are more receptive to oblique advertising that’s masked as a conversation, and the temptation was too great. The Point introduced a seemingly innocent morning show, “the breakfast club,” that’s chock full of not-so-subtle marijuana advertising and a shit-ton of talking. Son of a bitch. What did I expect? Did I think that The Point’s puppet master, American General Media, would be any more benevolent than the Ballentine Cartel? Did I really think that they’d just give me music and no talk just because they were nice people? Hell no. They did what they did to make as much money as possible, and eventually, they’ll grow up to be a normal radio station just like all of the other all-talk-no-music stations in this town. They’ve since changed their motto to “the most music in Durango,” but soon, I’m sure it’ll be “92.9 The Point. We’re just like everybody else.” Jesus, hasn’t anyone learned about the life and death of great media from MTV’s horrible demise? Hasn’t anyone figured out that honest originality and an adherence to principal can also be profitable in more ways than one? Knock it off. It’s been a couple decades, but I still want my MTV. Give me my music. Give me my independent newspaper that’s free on Thursday. Give me less greed and less imitation and give The Durango Telegraph space in the bathroom. Thanks.

Bailey’s Friends

          Bailey’s eyes are a mess. They’re barely blue, like deep bathwater, and they reflect back at her in the bathroom mirror like two vitreous pools of contempt. She imagines the bloodshot creeping through the sclera in each. Red veins grow from her irises and reach out towards her trembling eyelids. Her lacrimal sacs bulge like ripening fruit before tears erupt. Mascara runs.

          “Ugh!”

          She wipes her palms on her cheeks with a sniffle and backs up to assess the damage. Her makeup is ruined and her eyes are puffy, but it’ll be easy to pass off as a touch of angst. The huge bathroom is empty, fifteen vacant stalls lit brightly by buzzing fluorescents. It smells like detergent. Bailey talks to herself.

          “Make it through this class. Go back to the dorm and lock your door. Put on your headphones and wait for tomorrow.”

          Bailey breaths in. She breaths out. She gathers her lanky black hair into a messy bun and walks out. The opening door sounds like an explosion in the quiet. Condon hall is a brick-built masterpiece that grows out of the verdant University of Oregon campus. It looks and smells like history. It’s the type of place that makes you want to know more than you already do. The wide halls and vaulted ceilings feel too empty as Bailey makes her way back to class with her books clutched to her chest like a bulletproof vest, but places that are built to hold crowds always feel a bit alien when they’re vacant. She finds her lecture hall. She opens the door and walks in. She presses her back to the wall and wills herself to be perfectly still, perfectly invisible. It doesn’t work. A handful of the hundred students in attendance turn to look, but then they turn back to the lecturing professor.

          “As you know from last week, Hinduism is the oldest religion of man that’s still practiced,” the professor, doing his best to look like a cleaned up version of Indiana Jones, turns to let his intelligence wash over the crowd.

          Bailey whispers, “Is there any other religion besides a religion of man?”

          “But that doesn’t mean that it’s the oldest on record. For that, we’d have to look to the Egyptians. I’ve studied their religious writings extensively, as you will this semester, and we’re going to take a comparative look at their beliefs. We’re going to start with Horus.”

          The professor turns his back on the class and pushes a button on his handheld remote. A picture of a falcon-headed man appears on the projection screen. It’s a cartoonish representation, and sure enough, he’s walking like an Egyptian.

          “Horus and Jesus actually had quite a bit in common. They both benefited from a virgin birth. They both walked on water. They both had twelve disciples, they were both crucified, and they both arose from the dead,” the professor pauses and turns to look back over his shoulder with an arched eyebrow, “I’ve always thought that the ‘H’ in ‘Jesus H. Christ’ stood for ‘Horus’.”

          The supplicants in the front row chuckle in ersatz appreciation. Bailey makes a sound of disgust. It’s too loud, and her invisibility dissolves. The professor raises his handheld remote and points it at Bailey. He pushes a button. A green laser shoots out and does it’s best to bore through Bailey’s bulletproof vest.

          “You in the back. There are a few seats here up front. Come take one.”

          Bailey’s breath turns to liquid and freezes in her throat. Her heart does a drum solo. Her flesh prickles and sweat floods out of her skin like a malicious tide.

          “Fuck this.”

          Bailey turns to flee. The door doesn’t cooperate. She has to push, not pull, and muffled laughter urges her out as she gets it right. The halls blur by. There’s something about a hallway’s closeness that makes you feel like you’re running superhero fast even though you’re not. She makes it outside and down the stairs. Her shoulders go up and down as she cries. They go back and forth as she runs with her books still clutched to her chest. It’s a mess in motion.

          Anxiety is a lead blanket, just like the ones in the dentist’s office, and it slows her down. She finds a shaded bench and sits. The afternoon passes by. Bailey watches it. It’s a time lapse video that excludes her. Students stop and go stop and go stop and go, always in small groups. The sun moves through the striated sky. The tree behind Bailey’s bench that gives her shade becomes a gnomon. It casts a moving umbra on the ground in front of her that Bailey tracks with her numb eyes.

          Bailey’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out to read the text. The world goes back into real time as she swipes her thumb across the glass.

          “Hi honey, it’s me, mom. How’s it going?”

          “Dear god mom, you don’t have to tell me that it’s you. This thing knows whose texting me. It’s a smart phone.”

          “Laugh out loud!”

          “Your killing me mom.”

          “It’s spelled ‘you’re’ honey. Now that you’re in college, maybe you could start acting like it. Anyway, how’s it going?”

          “Your right. College is great. I don’t know anybody. Everyone here is either a smelly hippy or a stuck up white girl. I love it.”

          “YOU’RE going to be just fine. Have you pledged yet? Have you found the Delta Delta Delta house?”

          “I’m not going to join your cult mom.”

          “It’s not a cult! I’ve already called the house. Just go over and ask for Stephanie. Please!”

          Bailey holds down the power button on her phone. She slides to power off. She puts her phone back in her pocket. She leans over to one side and fishes around in her back pocket. She pulls out her can of chew and opens it. The pungent tobacco smell, made riper by the heat in her back pocket, invades her mind with memories of her father. He sits in his pickup, a burly lumberjack smiling over at his princess, and spits into his empty beer bottle. New tears fall. Bailey wonders how often one has to cry before dehydration sets in. She pinches out a chew and puts it in her bottom lip. She focuses on the familiar sting to fight back the nausea. Maybe the chew will do her the same favor that it did for her father. There’d be no more tears.

          “Hello there! My name is Melissa, and I was wondering if you’d like to come to an Alpha Chi Omega mixer!”

          Bailey looks up. There’s a blonde in front of her. She must’ve just appeared like a bubbly apparition. Maybe spontaneous generation really does happen, and maybe sorority girls just crop up out of the grass from time to time in Oregon. They make eye contact. Melissa’s smile melts. Bailey pictures herself, tear covered with a bulging lower lip, and knows why. Melissa takes a step back.

          “Um… ew. Gross. Never mind.”

          Anger is a firebrand. Bailey throws off her lead jacket. She’s on her feet now, but her rejoinder is stillborn; Melissa runs away before Bailey’s thoughts can turn into words. Bailey screams her frustration. Brown spittle flies out of her mouth. Melissa shrinks in the distance as she scurries back toward whatever white girl copy machine made her. Bailey starts the trek back to her dorm room. The trip is a blur.

          Bailey calms down and finds herself in front of her computer. Her mouth is empty, which is weird because she has no recollection of losing her chew. I hope I didn’t eat it. Her dorm room is dark, but the glow from Bailey’s monitor is bright enough to reach her door. It’s locked. She must’ve done it already. Weird. Microsoft Word is open to a blank page. I wish Melissa would’ve stuck around to hear this. She centers the first line. “The Beginning.” She starts to type.

          “I don’t have a father. I never did. My mom woke up pregnant after a dream that I’ll tell you about later. I was born knowing everything that I know right now. You see, in the beginning, there was nothing, but nothing is something. This dichotomy caused a schism. It made a force. This force is God, and she is our mother. She never corrects me, and she loves me like she loves us all. Now listen to my words!”

          Bailey types on and on. The words come from someplace else, like a touch from above. They feel true and right and hallowed. Bailey makes her own rules, her own commandments. Thou shall not be a smelly hippy. Thou shall not be a Starbucks drinking white girl. Thou shall only wear loose sweaters. Thou shall not call Bailey gross because she is the one, the Alpha, the Omega, but not the Delta Delta Delta.

          Bailey finishes and clicks “save as.” Her work is stored on her desktop under “Manifesto.” It’s eight pages long, double spaced with one inch borders. She prints out as many copies as she can. She only has one ream of paper. That comes out to sixty-two copies, but it’ll have to do. She looks over at her locked door. Light comes in underneath from the hall outside. It’s darkened occasionally by moving shadows. The real world is out there. They’re out there, the people who make her cry, and trepidation wells up in Bailey’s soul like a tangible thing. But then she thinks about Melissa’s “ew” and makes a decision. Apprehension is replaced by acrimonious rage that demands action.

          Bailey takes her manifestos in hand and leaves her dorm room. Walking down the hall, she passes door after door. She hears people living and loving behind those doors. It’s like she’s walking past boxes full of life. She hurries down the stairs into the common room. It’s wide open and walled by windows on two sides. There’s wood furniture and worn brown carpet; the room smells exactly like it looks. There’s a table against one wall with a large corkboard above it. There’s a bucket of rape whistles on the table, and the board is covered with a smattering of announcements. Bailey steals a thumb tack and pins a copy of her manifesto over a “Feel the Bern” poster. She takes a rape whistle and leaves.

          The cool air outside smells like rotting vegetation and marijuana. It’s autumn in Eugene. Bailey swims through it and goes from dorm to dorm blowing her rape whistle like a boy crying wolf. Her manifestos find places everywhere she goes. Now the people who live in Caswell and Wilcox and all the others will know the truth. When the corkboards are full, Bailey leaves her work on park benches or on the ground or simply throws it at passersby. They look at her with open-mouthed astonishment. She runs out of paper and walks back to her dorm with a smile on her face. It feels like she’s wearing a stranger.

          Each door she passes in her hall has a small dry-erase board hanging at head height. They’re all written on in red or blue or green or black. There are hearts and smiley faces. Bailey comes to her door and stops; there’s a dry erase board here, too, which her mom hung on that embarrassing first day when Bailey moved in. It says “good luck!” in her mother’s hand. There’s nothing else. Bailey doesn’t have a dorm mate. She wipes away the good luck and writes “I shall arise in the morning.” Bailey walks into her room, locks the door, pops an Ambien, and then falls into bed.

***

          Morning feels like a backhanded pimp slap. Bailey wakes suddenly. Her eyes hurt. Her head is throbbing. She’s still dressed and she smells like yesterday’s frustration. There’s a pain on her chest just above her boobs. Her whistle is still hanging around her neck; she must’ve slept on it. Oh well.

          She grabs her robe and her shower basket and her flip-flops. She opens the door and freezes. The hallway outside her door is packed with girls. They’re all sitting crisscross-applesauce on the floor and looking up at her expectantly with beatific smiles. A collective sigh of bliss washes out from the crowd as Bailey leavens their smiles with her own. They’re all wearing loose knitted shirts of some sort. It looks like an ugly sweater party gone wrong. Bailey breaths in. She breaths out. She addresses her children.

          “Hello. Thank you all for coming. I’m not sure how you found me, but from now on, you’ll all be known as Bailey’s friends.”

Like a Bat

          My mother used to flick me in the forehead whenever I pissed her off. She’d cock back her middle finger and make this weird pursed frown before flicking me right between the eyes with an exaggerated flip of her wrist. I’m sure it looked more painful than it really was, but it still hurt. I always wanted revenge for those flicks and I’d always do something new to piss her off as a result. She kept flicking and I kept pissing her off. Frankly, I’m not sure which came first, the flick or the affront, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that one day, not too long ago, I took a bullet in the head. It struck my forehead and it felt exactly like my mother flicking me. The frustrating thing is that they—Detroit’s finest—don’t know where the bullet came from. There were no witnesses and no reports; hell, I don’t even remember hearing a gunshot. I simply remember the pain, just like a flick, and then a blinding darkness that fell over my mind like a suffocating drop-cloth. A short time has passed, but not much has changed. I’m sitting in a bed that goes up and down at the push of a button; it can fold me like a taco. I never let go of the control, because if I did, it’d be lost forever. My mattress is suitably soft and my sheets smell like pungent detergent. I can’t tell you what anything looks like, but the floor has got to be freakishly shiny because the shoes never stop squeaking as nurses come and go. This is a hospital.

          I’ve been here for weeks. People come and offer condolences occasionally. I assume that they’re sincere, but I couldn’t tell you because expressions are hidden from me. The police have come and gone, and they’ve done all that they will until they have more to go on. It’s a paradox. My parents both came, at separate times of course, and my mother wasn’t pleased when I told her what the gunshot felt like. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Her silence sounded pissed off, but I was safe from her flicks; I was protected by adulthood and by my gauzy headband. How nice it was.

          But now I’m alone. My door is shut. I can feel it because there’s more pressure in my room when I’m cut off from the rest of the hospital. And the cacophony coming from all of the caring people in the corridor outside is muted to a tolerable point. It’s not that I don’t enjoy all of the attention that comes from those caring people, but the nurses I’ve seen, or I guess that I’ve “met,” always seem to get a bit too mawkish when it comes to blind, gunshot invalids. Maybe they like me better than everybody else who’s here because it’s not my fault that I’m abed. It’s not my fault that they have to spend part of their twelve-hour shifts changing my catheter. That’s the worst part of everyone’s day, but at least it’s not my fault. It’s not like I ate donuts like a true American until my blood turned into pudding; these are the people you hear the nurses complain about—people who’re here because of a choice. But I’m one of the poor, unfortunate souls. I get checked on more than the others, or at least I hear my door open and shut more often than some of the others. Maybe the nurses are battling back bad luck by giving me attention; maybe if they care for me more, they’ll be spared a similar karmic fate. Maybe I’m just a cynical ass.

          I pass the time by playing peekaboo with the light that I know has got to be everywhere around me. I cover my open eyes with my hands and then take them away suddenly. I hope the shock will wake up my retinas or something. But every time I move my hands, quick and dramatic, it’s just dark. Dark before, dark after, just dark dark and more dark. I’ve come to hate that word. It’s just like any other word that you hear or think repetitively. It starts to sound like a word that isn’t even a word at all, just a random noise, and I should know, because sound is all I’ve got.

          Someone knocks three times and then opens my door before I answer.

          “Hello! My name is Jack, and I’m your sight coach. How’s it going?” I picture a tanned man with a moustache because this guy sounds exactly like Tom Selleck.

          “Good. What’s a sight coach?”

          “Well, once upon a time, I’d teach you how to use a folding blind cane, once you were up and about, but we’re just going to jump into the next level stuff.” I hear a muffled sound. It’s moving cloth. A hand in a pocket? I feel Jack press something into my hand. It’s a smooth rectangle of plastic, about the size of a Bic lighter, and it’s warm. I smile, because it was definitely the sound of a hand in a pocket. Why else would this thing warm? I hear Jack stepping away and I hear my door shut.

          “Instead of the cane, we’re gunna start with the clicker. Do you feel the button? Press it.”

          My thumb finds it for me. There’s a small circular depression on one side of the clicker. I press it. It clicks. I let go. It clicks again, but the tone is slightly lower. It reminds me of those safety caps on Snapple bottles. I used to click those things incessantly, or at least until my mother cocked back her middle finger.

          “Look, it’s like this. The doctors tell me that the bullet damaged a nerve, but they said your visual cortex is fine. Hell, your whole brain is fine. You might not agree, but you got lucky because that bullet didn’t go deep. Now the brain is a crazy thing. It adapts. If you try hard enough, you can rewire it. You can turn your visual cortex back on with sound. It’s pretty simple, but it takes time. You just click your clicker, and you listen. The sound will bounce around the room, and eventually, you’ll start to see things in your mind. You’ll see with your ears.”

          “Like a bat?”

          “Yes! Exactly like a bat! If you think about it, you’ll be able to see in the dark, kind of like a super hero!” I assume Jack is making some pretty crazy gesticulations because his clothing is sounding all sorts of exclamations. “Got any questions for me?”

          “What color is it?” I feel my head tilt to the side. Do I always do that now? Since I can’t see the people I’m talking to, have I started pointing my ears at them? Shit. Do I look like a confused puppy during conversations?

          “Um, it’s an off-white. Kind of like coffee cream maybe.”

          “Cool.”

          “Alright, I’ll leave you to it. The more you practice, the more you see.” I hear him get up and leave. My door opens and shuts solidly. I guess people don’t shake hands with the blind. I don’t blame them. Awkward.

          I start clicking. Click and listen click and listen click and listen. A nurse comes in to remove my catheter. We don’t speak much. At least I don’t have to make eye contact. She says I’m to start using the bathroom. Jack’s orders. She says the door is on the wall opposite from my bed. She sounds like one of those large women you see in southern church choirs. I smile and name her Aretha in my head as she walks out and shuts the door behind her. 

          The days and nights start to blur together like some sort of weird time soup. I can only tell the difference between the two by the level of activity I hear outside of my door. Jack comes and goes. He starts calling me Batman in his Magnum P.I. voice. And I practice. Walk click listen, walk click listen. Over and over. But now, the black in my mind starts to melt. It’s oil diluted by the thinning agent of sound. The walls and the obstacles and even the moving people around me start to take shape. They pulse in my mind’s eye with each one of my clicks. At first, it’s all greys and muted blacks. But then my brain starts to fill in the blanks. It paints by number. I start to see flesh tones on the moving people and the walls become eggshell white. Running water is a lipid blue, and when I go outside with Jack, the trees turn green under my click and through the wind’s susurration. It’s beautiful. The world starts to open and I feel my eyelids close reflexively because the light is too bright in my cloistered mind. How wonderful they are, these colors and these shapes and these tangible textures that I can feel with a click. How wonderful it is to see.

An Open Letter to the C.I.A.

It’s an odd thing to decide on paper the fate of one’s body. I did so about a decade ago. We sat there in our lawyer’s office, the wife and I, and we stared down at our last testaments. They stared back, blank and bone white, like moribund reminders of the fact that we’d leave behind flesh after death. There were four boxes from which we could choose: burial, cremation, educational use, or government study. The first two are pretty self-explanatory: six feet down or burnt to a crisp. I’d imagine that if I checked the third, I’d end up on one of those burnished stainless-steel examination tables, covered partially by a white sheet, while some medical student stood above with trembling hands and a false mask of indifference glued onto her face. But the fourth? Government study? What the hell does that entail? I didn’t know, so of course I filled in the box with my indelible ink. I’m sure they’ll use my body for something mundane like a ballistics test, but I had grander aspirations. Maybe they have me on some sort of clandestine list and maybe they’re watching me right now. Maybe, when I die, they’ll swoop in and harvest my brain. And then, obviously, they’ll implant it into a superhuman body that’s been engineered in a lab; it’s been waiting for me, floating in a huge tube of pinkish fluid, far underground in an Antarctic bunker that we’ll never know about. They’ll plug me into a supercomputer and I’ll be taught Kung Fu and automatic weapons mastery via a fiber optic cable. And then I’ll be unleashed after minimal pomp and circumstance to fight crime across the globe like an ultra badass. I’ll see my family from time to time, but I won’t be allowed to make contact or else a small bomb slash tracking device that’s implanted in my head will detonate. It’ll be rough, but it’ll be better than the permanence of a dark and endless death. I’m just too damn rational to be anything other than an agnostic, so unfortunately, this is my only hope for an afterlife.

But why wait? This body of mine doesn’t have any cool upgrades like carbon fiber bones or x-ray eyeballs, but I workout and I’m only thirty-six. I’m just as arrogant as anybody, so I’d like to think that the C.I.A. will end up reading this. These few paragraphs could serve as my job application. So here it goes…

 

Dear the C.I.A.,

I’d like a job as one of your sexy and mysterious spies and/or assassins. All I’d really need is a nice suit and a better haircut. You could direct deposit into my checking a monthly stipend and I could drive around Durango, Colorado in a rugged Jeep Wrangler to keep up my disguise. I’d carry on me at all times my encrypted government cell phone, and when you finally called, I’d answer it with a disaffected expression and a hushed monotone voice so “they” couldn’t find out what you were telling me to do. I’d kiss the wife and kids goodbye, and then I’d board a private jet enroot to a yacht that’d take me to an exotic locale. I’d shoot a couple bad guys, save the day with a cheeky remark for punctuation, and then come back home to complain about a boring business trip.

Don’t you see? It’s perfect. You wouldn’t even have to engineer an elaborate cover story for my identity because I’ve got it covered thanks to the thirty-six years of pedestrian life that I already have under my belt. They bad guys would never be able to unearth my real identity as a super-spy because my alias as a “boring middle aged man who works in the oilfield but dreams of being a writer” is just so depressingly airtight that it’d withstand any amount of scrutiny. Of course, this little letter might give us away, but I’ll delete any evidence that I ever wrote it if you hire me.

Anyway, judging by the amount of time that I’ve been spending on Netflix lately, I’d say that I can start immediately. I’m sure that you already have my phone number and email address, so just give me a shout whenever.

Cheers,

J.J. Anderson (but my code name would obviously be Dirk McNinja)

 

This is where I’ve been lately. I’ve been hoping for something more. The oilfield is imploding, and while I’m still milking out a paycheck, it’s impossible to avoid reading the writing on the wall. It’s in broken English (because it was written by a redneck), but I know what it means. The obvious effect of fossil fuels on this planet is leading this industry into extinction. Isn’t the irony hilarious? So I’m looking elsewhere. Maybe I’ll just be a fulltime student when the axe finally falls. Hell, school starts tomorrow, and I could always add a few more credits and try to get it over with sooner rather than later. Or it might be better if I became a real estate agent. I love looking at houses, but I don’t like people all that much so this route is dicey at best. And the way I see it, even though the open letter you read is absurd at best, who knows? Maybe you’ll see me downtown next week driving around in an old Jeep with a new phone plastered to my ear. Either way, I’ve had this pervading feeling of “something has got to give” lately even though I know this paradigm is fallacious. Nothing ever has to give unless you make it give. Nothing is ever going to change unless I facilitate change despite my sanguine optimism.

So here I sit, going over the options. That’s not to say that I’m going to choose one today because I’m not. I just wanted to check in with you. I just wanted to give you one more little piece of nonsense to read before I start school on the morrow because alas, you won’t hear from me until the summer. But if you’re a bad guy, and you see me in your rear-view sporting a dashing new haircut and wearing a dapper new suit, it’s best that you start running from Dirk McNinja.

Homeless, Colorado

A man with a teardrop tattoo reached into my truck. I was at a gas station. It’s weird because there was a disparity between his words and his actions. He called me “sir.” He was asking for a handout, but he was trying to take. I slammed my door quickly. He pulled his hand out just in time to avoid a few broken bones. He leaned in to check his face in my side-view mirror. Maybe he wanted to see why he’d repulsed me so vehemently. Maybe he was just checking to make sure his artificial teardrop was in place. And then he walked away as if nothing untoward had happened.

What was I supposed to do? All I had were twenties. Should I have given him one? Should I have used my money to contribute to the track marks on his arm as opposed to feeding my family? Should I have gotten out and confronted him? Should I have destroyed his face with my fist? His teardrop tattoo screamed “I share needles” so best case scenario, I’d be going to the clinic after a fight. I would have won that physical contest, easily, but what would it have done to me in the long run? I drove away and started thinking about the homeless problem here in Durango, Colorado. It was raining. The fat raindrops exploded on my windshield like turgid little water balloons.

The homeless are rampant in our home town. If you look closely at the picture I’ve attached to this post, you’ll be able to count nine homeless people who are mid-siesta. I took that picture in the park behind the Vitamin Cottage; it’s surrounded by million dollar houses. Bums are everywhere, and they’re allowed to be. The ACLU wrote a letter and sent it to our city. In it, they said that it was an infringement on a constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech to disallow panhandling; when the homeless beg, they’re speaking freely through their actions. I’m a left leaning independent like most of us in this town, but even to me, that seems like a stretch. Our constitution is an elastic document, but when it comes to “free speech,” I doubt that its framers were thinking about handouts and cardboard signs. But it’s not like we can ask them, so we have to let our lawyers battle it out semantically in court.

I know you’ve had your own experiences. You’ve probably dealt with that pandering career panhandler who stands at the intersection of 550 North and 160. He dresses from head to toe in Denver Broncos gear to leach a bit of local sympathy. I once gave him five dollars. While my window was down, he told me that I needed to “pray” for him to find a ride south to New Mexico. There were too many liberals here and it was getting cold. He must’ve mistaken me for a conservative sympathizer thanks to my company truck and white skin. I was insulted. I told him that New Mexico was just a five hour walk south, and that if he started immediately, he’d be there in time for dinner. He told me that he had too much luggage back at the hotel and that the walk would be difficult because he had a Siamese cat to worry about. What the fuck? My words deserted me. The light turned green and I drove away regretting my five dollar loss.

And then there’s Walmart. The parking lot is a veritable carnival for the homeless. A sad looking teenage girl with a puppy and a religious cardboard sign almost earned a few alms as I drove by, but I was still shell-shocked from my experience with the cat loving Broncos fan. So I watched her for a bit. Her shift ended, and she walked back to a large motor home attached to a Dodge pick-up that was nicer than the truck from which I performed my stakeout. There was a box of puppies and a stack of signs by the motor home. There was a herd of “homeless” children with two adults, a man and a woman, acting as shepherds. My disgust was palpable. I almost fed into their ruse. Stories like this are ubiquitous. A man and a woman asked my wife for money as she walked out of Subway. She said no, and they countered with “we take sandwiches too.” I took my family to dinner on Main Street a few weeks back, and as we walked out armed with naught but Styrofoam boxes, a herd of homeless men in their twenties asked for our leftovers. My seven year old daughter gave them death stares (she’s rather protective of her left overs), I declined politely saying that the food was for my children, and we walked away with that feeling of despair in our guts.

So what do we do? Labeling panhandling as illegal won’t work because it’d supposedly be a civil rights infraction (despite the fact that our rights are being violated by aggressive panhandling), so do we just live and let live? Let’s face it, there are a few homeless people who actually need our charity, like that benevolent and heavy set woman with special needs who hangs out by the frozen yogurt place. She needs our help, and always gets it from me, because she doesn’t have boot straps with which to pull herself up. But in most cases, “homeless” is a choice in our town. Plenty of people gripe about the situation but solutions seem to be just as scarce as vagrant-free street corners. This problem isn’t going away on its own. There’s an illegal homeless camp that’s hunkered down in the woods just north of the Manna Soup Kitchen. It’s grown to the point wherein the wildlife is coming in attracted to the trash in the makeshift midden heaps. A bear decided to chew on one of the homeless residents a few weeks ago and yet they camp there still. If the visceral fear of being eaten alive isn’t going to dissuade the homeless, our spiteful sneers and exclusionary rhetoric isn’t going to do a damn thing either. We have two options: let it be, or fix it through realism.

Where would option number one lead us? Well, Durango hasn’t really been a nationally known destination spot for that long. So to tell the future, we should look at a few well established destination towns that are comparable. Because if you think about it, the homeless want to be here for the same reason that we do: Durango is fucking awesome. The weather is nice for most of the year and it’s beautiful (and let’s face it, pot is legal). So let’s look at someplace else that’s just as awesome: Key West, Florida. Key West has been a destination spot ever since pirates sailed the seas under their skull and crossbones standards. It’s always warm, there are plenty of tourists, and the island is connected to the mainland by a road. It’s a perfect place to be homeless. The wife and I spent some time there this spring and I got the chance to observe firsthand a highly evolved homeless population. You see, there’s competition between panhandlers just like there is in every other facet of life. They’re constantly trying to outdo their compatriots. At first, they battle through their signs. Their words, written in black sharpie, become more and more desperate touching on all of the bases (I have kids, I’m hungry, anything helps, god bless). And then they try honesty and humor (I need beer, I bet you can’t hit me with a quarter, ninjas killed my family and I need money for Kung Fu lessons). After the signs run their course, they’re abandoned for performance art. In Key West, you rarely see homeless people holding signs. They’ve evolved into bums dressed as Darth Vader playing the banjo. They’ve discovered that more money can be made through novelty. Mark my words. In a year or so, if we don’t find a solution, you’ll see Spiderman standing on Main Street with a bucket for tips instead of that crazy dude with a waste length beard. Once our homeless population evolves like the one in Key West, would it really be that bad? Hell, I think it’d add a bit of flavor to this already flavorful town, but if it’s still something that you think needs to be rectified, there’s only one way to do it: outreach.

You can’t make an undesirable thing illegal and expect it to disappear. We’ve learned that time and time again through prohibition and the war on drugs and gun control and teenage pregnancy. We need to help the homeless. We need to fight fire with water, not more fire. We need an army of volunteers. We need our churches to earn their keep. We need to send out amongst the homeless population people who can help them choose something better, something healthier. These liaisons can wear uniforms and arm themselves with strong stomachs and rehearsed speeches. “Excuse me sir, are you okay? Will you please follow me to the community center where I can feed you and show you a way out of this hole? I’ll walk with you. I’ll be seen with you and I’ll treat you like a human, because I know that we share the same DNA. If you and I were switched at birth, I’d probably end up just where you are. I know you don’t really want to live like this. Share with me your story. I’ll listen. I’ll give you help that goes beyond a few dollars for your next meal, your next fix, your next mistake. I’ll help you to find work, I’ll lead you to a new place, a place that allows you to help others like yourself. Wouldn’t that be incredible? Wouldn’t you love that? Wouldn’t you chose that over this street corner? Take my hand.” Or maybe I should go out and try this approach. Maybe I should practice what I preach. And maybe, instead of sneering at a bum or handing them a few dollars, you should do the same (unless you’re looking forward to a busking Darth Vader), because Durango is our home, and when something is amiss in your home, you fix it.