Throwback Thursday

In honor of Throwback Thursday, here is an excerpt from the fall semester of my first year in grad school.  That was around September/October 2006.


Every time he went to Club Oz, he was terrified that the bouncer would see right past his fake ID and all the way to what his sister called his 18-year-old kid face. He didn’t think he looked that young, but the moment he stepped in line with the others waiting, and saw the beards and tattoos and muscles (and these were just the women), he began to feel like a shit. There was no way he was going to stand in a queue that stretched way the fuck down to High Street, all the way across town, in the pouring rain, only to be turned away at the door. But there was nowhere else he could go that didn’t remind him of something he wanted to forget. And it wasn’t raining that bad. And if there was one club where they really didn’t care if you were ninety or two, it was Club Oz. Sure, they pretended to care, but they didn’t really. Take the bouncer, for instance. He didn’t look much older than twenty himself; he was a real speccy loser and not exactly the kind of guy you would expect to find trolling the entrance of a club. He just kinda glanced at Julian’s joke of a license and nodded. “You’re all set, kid.” As if he knew Julian was a fraud but it didn’t matter.

Inside, the place was an inferno. The lights were throbbing blue and red, pulsing along with every heart in the room, in rhythm with the bodies and the music, an awkward mix of eighties and nineties in the air. “Faux” eighties and nineties, Leila would say. The kind of stuff folks played when they wanted to seem hip and retro, yet didn’t actually want to have to resort to music real people listened to. His sister was a hilarious girl, particularly when she was high on drugs. Thinking - after snorting away in a bathroom somewhere alongside a couple of drugged out whores who followed her around as if she were Jesus Christ Himself- must have been, to his sister, like trying to drive with a busted headlight on a foggy night, yet the things she came up with. “I hate it when people claim to love eighties music,” she’d often say. “That’s like saying, ‘I love all French people.’ Bullshit. You may like some, but who in their right mind can even tolerate Gerard Depardieu.” And her friends would all laugh and talk about how brilliant she was because she knew the name of some hack French actor who, after whoring himself to Americans for the past decade was about as obscure as sliced bread. Oh Leila, I’d hate to play a game of Trivial Pursuit with you. I wish I was that intelligent and charming and witty and beautiful…And here he was, thinking too much, distracted from the night’s plan. The night’s plan was to forget about his sister, forget about his life, forget about Rory waiting at home, put it all behind him for just a few nothing hours. Tonight was an exorcism of sorts. And if he was lucky, maybe he could manage to pull it off again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, because this was his life.

He didn’t leave the apartment with the intention of meeting anyone. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was unsatisfied with his girlfriend and so he went out hunting each night for someone new and interesting to fool around with. He wanted to get away for a few hours; he knew all he had to do was spend some time alone in order to appreciate how much he loved Rory and how ridiculous he was being, but at the moment he couldn’t think of anything beyond their argument. He didn’t want to think about it, and as a result it just happened that his eyes fell on the girl.

He got his first glimpse of the girl as he brushed past her; his elbow caught hers. He smiled. One eye locked with his before she spun away, not in time for him to miss the small smile that rippled along her mouth.

He made his way to the bar, tossing his jacket onto a swivel stool. He turned back to watch her dance. She had hair the color of peeled corn and it swung into her eyes; she would pull it away every two seconds, pull it back into a ponytail, then let go. She was with another girl but he didn’t much care for that one. The second girl reminded him too much of some bitch he hated in elementary school who used to steal his dessert from his lunch tray and laugh at him. As opposed to the blond one, who also looked familiar, he just didn’t know why.

When the song ended, she left her friend and threw herself down three seats away from his.

Julian slid onto the stool beside her. “Hi.” He stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and started to light it with his Bic. He placed the lighter onto the counter. She turned her head his way, her eyes scanning over the length of him and he felt the way he always did in the presence of women---like a turkey in November. “You come here often?” he asked.

She took slow sips from her drink.

“You look like someone I know.” Right away, he regretted saying that. He didn’t even know why he had.

She looked over again and smiled. It was just a faint twitch of her lips. “Huh.” She held out her hand for a cigarette. He gave her one without thinking. If he had thought about it, he probably would have been pissed at her presumptuousness. “Well, it must be someone else you’re thinking of because you don’t look familiar and I’ve never been here before.”

“No,” he said. “It is someone else…” He played with his lighter for a bit, offered it to her and she took it without a “Gee thanks”. Her hair swung as she turned away from him, brushing against his face, they were so close. He asked, “So…what’s your name?”

“Ellie,” she replied, but she didn’t look at him when she said it.

“Ellie,” he said. “I’m Julian. That’s your friend over there with that guy, right?”

She looked over her shoulder. “What guy?”

“That Latin freak. Julio.”

She blew a spiral of smoke into his face, stinging his nose. He coughed. She didn’t apologize. She laughed softly. “His name’s not Julio.”

“You know him?”

She laughed some more. “No. But his name’s not Julio.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you said that was his name.” She winked. “Which means it’s really something different.”

He wasn’t up for any shit tonight. “Look,” he said. “Do you want to dance with me or what?” Usually it would take a couple of beers to get him to the point where he could just come out and say that to a girl, but he was pissed at the moment, and he was in no mood for games.

She shrugged. “All right. Let’s go.”

“I hate her,” Ellie said when he asked about her friend. Delilah. Julian had never heard that name used in real life before.

It had been Delilah’s idea to come here; Ellie would have much rather gone to a movie or something. “I suppose it’s my fault for always letting her get her way.”

“She sounds evil,” Julian said under his breath. He was still thinking of Jennie from second grade. Jennie who stole his dessert. Jennie who would laugh every time her playground husband, for some unknown reason, called him Karen.

“No she’s not evil.” Ellie gave him the evil eye. She sighed. “Well, I suppose I sometimes act like she is, but we’re practically sisters. Do you have any brothers?”

He shook his head. He was going to speak up and say he had a sister though, so he understood the whole sibling rivalry thing, even if it was different when you were dealing with the opposite sex. “I don’t have any brothers, or sisters,” he said. “Thank God.”

“Well you’d have to have a brother, I guess, to understand. You know, she’s the older one. By only a month, but still, you’d think that month was the most important thing in her life. “

Julian knew. It was as if in that one short month, she not only took a fantastic ride down the birth canal, she was also elected president of the United States, saved a whole endangered species from extinction, prevented the destruction of the rainforest, found a cure for AIDS, ran for president again and was re-elected. That was Leila. That was Leila all over. Only replace one month with three years. The point was, his sister was barely past the pant-shitting stage when he was born and yet she had the nerve to get cocky with him. When he turned twenty-one, it would all change. It had to change. Really, once you turned twenty-one, what did it matter anymore who was three years older or younger? You never heard anyone say, “Oh, well I‘m twenty-six and you’re only twenty-three.” You hardly ever heard crap like that.

“And she’s the one everyone loves,” Ellie said. She was still talking about her stuck-up friend. “I mean, she is very beautiful, don’t you think?” Julian didn’t want to answer so Ellie added, “She certainly thinks she is.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “If I had a sister, I wouldn’t let her get away with that.”

“But you’d love her still. That’s kinda what it’s like.”

The song ended and Ellie looked around her, as if she were disoriented and was just figuring out where she was. “I don’t get it. I don’t get this place. I mean, what’s so nice about it. It’s just so…constricted.”

He knew what she meant, but he supposed it was different for him. He’d been to places like this before. To her, it was just a building, a very unpleasant one. To him, it was not so much a collection of bricks as it was a collection of past moments that would wash over him the moment he stepped through the door. Kind of like how his sister wasn’t really a person to him, but an amalgam; every memory stored away in his mind, even the ones forgotten, all dissolved into one another, creating something new that breathed and took up space and at the same time was representative of his life experiences. Rory was like that for him as well. He looked at Ellie and saw white light. Maybe it was just a sudden flash of strobe, but he felt alive. He felt as if the future was unraveling before him, and not just replaying itself over and over as if he were watching himself act in some esoteric foreign flick, the kind he had to keep rewinding in order to understand, and after the fiftieth time he’d done this, maybe he still wouldn’t have figured it out.

“You want to go somewhere else?” he asked. “I don’t want to be here either.”

He drove, not out of any chauvinistic desire to, but because it was part of a deal; they went to her place, he did the driving. It was better that way, what with his girlfriend at home and Ellie’s roommate still at the club. And besides, Ellie didn’t have a car. Apparently, Delilah was also the one with the car.

But Ellie didn‘t seem to mind the role of hostess. She didn’t even bother with the perfunctory “My place is such a mess” act, and he was grateful for that. He didn’t lie and say, “My own is infested with rats, otherwise I’d invite you there.”

It probably wouldn’t have made any difference to her.

When she opened the door to her apartment, he was greeted with a sight out of an OCD awareness video on hording. It was really bad. Cans all over the counter, but at least they seemed to be in some semblance of order: corn, corn, corn, corn, peas, peas, etc. The floor was covered with stack after stack of newspapers, most likely every Portland Press Herald that had come out since the early eighties. Boxes of junk, a refrigerator so crowded with magnets he couldn’t see white, and it went on. She didn’t apologize for being a nut. And normally he wouldn’t have cared. But suddenly it was all he could think about as he kissed this girl he’d just met. Ellie. Ellie who smelled like Red Delicious. But didn’t taste like it. He stared into her eyes, tried to keep his own from straying.

So they didn’t have anything in common. Nothing in common at any other moment in their lives but this one.

Was this what his life had become? Standing in a kitchen with a girl he didn’t even know, trying to look her in the eyes and seeing only a mountain of crap behind her; cans and newspapers haunting a home like old lovers and one night stands you only wish you could discard.

He pulled away. He said he was sorry. So sorry. He didn’t know when he’d gotten to the point where any little thing bothered him.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. He left without further explanation, without looking back.

He left Ellie’s apartment around midnight. He didn’t know where the night had gone. He’d gotten his last image of Rory around seven o’clock. He couldn’t believe he’d spent the past five hours doing nothing. He had nothing to show for it. And there was the realization that hit him upon walking out the front door. It was tomorrow. Tomorrow had come as he was descending the stairs. I have to go home, he thought.


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And here is an excerpt from a story I started in 2008.  You'll notice it seems a little familiar:

"We're going to Oz," Holly informed me when she called at 6:00. "Unless you want to go to Denny’s instead. That’d be fun, I guess. We could play the claw machine game until we run out of quarters."

"Hell no," I said.

I didn't bother to mention that we were only eighteen and you needed to be over 21 to get into most clubs. Trust my friend to have it all figured out.

"Here's the deal," she said. "You're 24 years old, and your name's Brian McDuff. I'm Brandy. Let's practice. I say, 'Hey Brian.' You say, "What's up, Brandy.'"

I didn't say respond.

"Brian?"

"Yep. Whatever."

It didn't matter anyway. If there was one place where they didn’t care if you were twelve or ninety-two, it was Oz. Oh sure, they pretended to care and all. But they didn’t really. There was the bouncer, for instance. He didn’t look much older than twenty himself; he was a real skinny loser with glasses and freckles and not exactly the kind of guy you would expect to find standing guard at the entrance to a club. I'm sure he had better things to be doing on a Saturday night. Levels of Dungeons and Dragons that needed defeating. He just looked at my joke of a license and nodded. "You’re all set, McDuff." It was as if he knew I was full of shit, but it didn’t matter.

What the hell was I doing here? We hadn’t even been in the Old Port for five minutes, and already I wanted to get the hell out of this godforsaken place.

The minute we stepped through the door, a smoking hot Alyssa Milano clone made her way toward me and I decided that maybe the Old Port wasn‘t such a bad idea after all. I smiled at her. She glared at me as if she wanted to bite the heads off babies.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d just been dissed, and by some chick I didn’t even know.

Yeah, well screw you, Miss Who’s the Bitch. Guess you won’t be getting any of this tonight. Your loss.

"Thanks for finally calling," I said to Holly as we made our way through the crowd. I had to practically scream over the techno crap blaring from the speakers. "When it took you forever, I thought I was never going to get out of the house."

"Is Leila still acting like your wife?"

I made a face. "What the hell are you talking about, Jones?"

"You told me she’s always nagging you---asking you where you’re going, when you’ll be back."

I’d forgotten I’d told her that. It sounded really bad coming from her. "No, it’s not that. You know how my dad is moving in two weeks? Well, if I have to listen to my grandmother talk about that precious cherry wood table one more time, I think I might just end up breaking it myself. Then she wouldn't have to worry about carrying the friggin’ thing out the door."

"She still talking about selling the rocker for seventy-five dollars?" Holly asked.

"Yeah. My dad tries to reason with her but she’s just nuts. It's too bad. We can’t take it with us to the new house. And we’ll probably end up tossing it at the dump because who’s going to pay that kind of money at a garage sale?"

"I don’t know. Let’s not talk about that," she said.

She’d made it clear when she’d called me up that this was going to be the night she got me a girl once and for all. This was her last chance to "save" me before she left for New York, and for some inexplicable reason that eluded even me, I decided to play along. I found her intentions utterly suspect. She appeared to be under the misguided impression that if she went out to clubs with me and got me shit-faced drunk, something would happen between us. She was on a mission, much like Lewis and Clark, only instead of trying to exploit the Pacific Coast for commercial gain, she was trying to end my virginity.

Holly shouted something but I couldn’t hear her over the noise.

"What?" I moved toward her but she just shook her head and motioned that I follow. She disappeared into the crowd.

A girl grabbed my arm as I made my way toward Holly. I froze and looked down at the ringed fingers gripping the inside of my elbow, then let my eyes travel up to her face. I knew I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t think of her name. She looked me over good before saying, "Sorry. Thought you were someone else."

Her friend tugged at her wrist. "What's going on?"

The girl locked eyes with me again. A small smile rippled over her mouth. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"

I shook my head and made my way toward the bar where Holly had already ordered two shots. She slid one of them my way.

"What’s this?" I asked.

"Roofie Delight."

I pushed the shot glass back toward her.

"Go on," she said, leaning close so that I could feel her breath on my neck. "Try it."

I shrugged and glanced over my shoulder.

The girl was now dancing with her friend. She had hair the color of corn fuzz, and it swung in her eyes as she moved; she would pull it away every two seconds, pull it back into a ponytail, then let go. 

"You know, that blonde girl looks awfully familiar," Holly said. "That one over there? In the tacky orange get-up?"

"It's Jess," I said. "Jess Carroll."

She just stared at me.

"Ben's girlfriend. 7th grade."

Her eyes widened. "How the hell do you remember that?"

"It took me a moment," I admitted. "But she looks the same."

I had met Jess at our first middle school dance. Most of us had gone solo. Of course Ben Lucas had to be the one asshole who showed up with a date. Ben had introduced his girlfriend as some West Side chick. Those Portland chicks were a real pain in my ass. If you weren't careful, these girls would befriend your entire school when you weren't looking. Before you knew it, they were going on shopping sprees with your female friends or galactic bowling with your buddies. You'd hear about that time they tore up the Maine Mall, and you'd wonder what the hell you'd missed. But the Portland chicks knew all about it. If there was a time to be had, they were there. Who the hell went galactic bowling anyway?

Ben and Jess had dated off and on for a year and I'd seen her occasionally at parties. She hadn't changed much in five years.

"She looks like an evil troll," Holly said.

I had to admit the resemblance was uncanny. And yet, after the second shot, I was feeling a little bit more charitable. "Maybe I should go over there and say hello."

__________

I slid onto the stool beside her. "Hi."

Jess took a slow sip from her drink. "Hi."

My fingers shook as I stuck a cigarette in the corner of my mouth and then lit it. I used to never smoke. But lately, I'd been doing it a lot more. It was more of a nervous tic than anything else. My sister Leila knew but my father didn’t. It was one of those many secrets Leila promised to keep because I had been generous enough to listen to all of her problems without judgment.

I felt the girl’s hand on my arm, and I jerked at the touch. "Do you mind?" she asked.

I looked over at her. "What?" I gave her a confused smile.

"Do you mind?" she repeated, tapping the pack of cigarettes in front of me with her index finger. "I left mine at home."

"Oh. Sorry." I offered her the pack, though, secretly, I was a bit annoyed at her presumptuousness. It was the one thing I hated about smokers. They were always bumming off of their neighbors. I played with my lighter for a bit, offered it to her, and she took it without a "Gee thanks". I said, "So…your name’s Jess, right?"

Her eyes locked on mine, and I felt the way I always did in the presence of beautiful women---like a turkey in November. "Jessica," she said, slowly. "How did you know?"

"You dated my friend Ben in 7^{th grade."}

"Ben?" She gave me a thoughtful look. "Oh. Ben Lucas. Yeah, I remember you now. You’re---"

"Julian," I said, when she hesitated for a second, wanting to spare us both the embarrassment.

"That’s right." She smiled. "How are you doing, Julian?"

"OK. How about you?"

She shrugged and took a drag. "About as well as one could expect, considering the fact that I hate this place." Her eyes searched mine. "Does that sound weird?"

"No. Not really." I wondered why she was there then. She’d seemed to be having fun just minutes earlier.

"My roommate dragged me here," she explained. "She says it’s the best club ever, but I think she’s just saying that because it’s where she’s been coming since she was thirteen or so. Good times, I guess."

I looked over at her friend who was now dancing with some Latino guy. "Yeah.

I‘ll bet."

"What?" She followed my gaze. "Oh." She laughed. "Figures. You know, I leave her alone for a second…" She flicked ash onto a napkin. "So, who are you here with?" She nodded toward Holly. "Is she your girlfriend?"

"What? No. We’re just friends. We’ve been friends since middle school."

"I think I've met her before, but I can’t remember her name."

"Holly."

"Oh, yeah. Holly. I remember now."

"I don’t know if I've ever met your friend before," I said. "Did you know her when we were twelve?"

And that was all it took to launch her into a five minute story about how the two of them had been desk mates in 2nd grade, neighbors in middle school and best friends for practically their whole lives. She got into all the little insignificant details, the petty rivalries, as if all of that had anything to do with their latest fight. And maybe it did. Maybe their relationship was just an accumulation of past slights, all linking together in this intricate pattern of hateful dependence.

If I’d known the simple answer I was looking for would lead to such a complex explanation, I might not have asked. But I had to admit that it was nice to hear someone talk and not have to contribute anything to the conversation. She never asked me for my opinion on anything. I would say "uh-huh" or "oh" every seven seconds or so and she would go on, even speeding up as if that was all I had to say to make her come alive.

"You know, I complain about her and all, but we're like sisters. Do you have any brothers?"

I shook my head.

"Well you’d have to have a brother, I guess, to understand. You know, she’s the older one. By only a month, but still, you’d think that month was the most important month in the world."

I knew. It was as if in that one short month, she not only took a ride down the birth canal, she was also elected president of the United States, saved a whole endangered species from extinction, prevented the destruction of the rainforest, found a cure for AIDS, ran for president again and was re-elected. That was Leila. That was Leila all over. Only replace one month with three years.

"Your friend sounds like my sister," I said.

"You love your sister?"

I thought it was a weird question at first. And a bit personal. I didn't know if I felt comfortable answering such a personal question when we weren't even on an official date yet.

Then I realized her point. I supposed she and her roommate really were like sisters. For a while, I was wondering why the hell Jess would put up with someone who was probably just a cocky bitch.

"But you know what?" Jess said. "If Emily’s just gonna dump me for some American Idol reject the first chance she gets, screw her, right? I should go over there and tell her she can meet me outside when she’s done. That's the great thing about the Old Port. There's always something to do."

I’d never really thought of it like that before. I usually thought, Shit, I’m in the Old Port. It brought back horrible memories of shopping with my grandmother and sister. Leila and I would sit out on the sidewalk and cry while our grandmother took hours sifting through things she really didn’t have any intention of buying in the first place.

"Come on." She stood. "Let's get out of here."

I turned to where Holly was sitting. Her eyes were locked on me. She looked pissed as hell.

"Are you OK?"

I turned back to Jess. "What?"

"You look a bit nervous about something."

"It's nothing." I stood up as well. "Let's go."

___________________

We walked about a block before I told Jess that I wanted to stop and call my friend. "I just want to let her know where I am and make sure she’s OK. Do you mind?"

"No, of course not."

We walked in silence for a few more seconds. "So, what do you want to do? Did you want to go somewhere in particular?"

"We’ll see. I don’t really have any place in mind. Like I said, there’s so much to do around here."

As we passed the window of an art store, she peered inside. "I kinda want to go in here for a second. Go on, go call your friend. I’ll only be about two minutes."

I stepped off of the sidewalk into the opening of an alley and dialed Holly’s number. She answered after the first ring.

"Hey." I thought I heard a smile in her voice, but it was a tight one. "Where the hell are you?"

Even though she couldn't see me, I lowered my head. "At some frigging art store. I just wanted to let you know that Jess and I are walking around the Old Port for a bit. Do you need money for a cab?"

"No. No, I‘m fine. I’m just going to stay here for another half an hour or something. Don’t worry about me."

"Are you sure?" 

"Yeah, I’m sure." She was silent for a moment. "Be safe, Jules. I love you."

I hung up and looked around. Jess was not in sight.

Ten minutes after we’d parted ways, I was standing with my back against the wall, the sign for Condom Sense flashing across the street from me. I looked through the window of the art store. She was all the way at the back, talking with some girl she must have known from somewhere. The two of them walked from one painting to the next, pointing and laughing.

Five more minutes passed, and I began to wonder if maybe I’d spoken prematurely when I’d had that talk with Holly. I figured I could go in there and remind Jess that I was waiting. But the more time I had to think about it, the more ridiculous this all seemed.

It slowly began to sink in.

Ben Lucas was a patsy. Only a patsy would put up with this shit for a whole year.

I dialed Holly’s number and headed back toward the club.








　

　

　

　

A Night At Club Oz

So after a second submission to an online magazine, "A Night At Club Oz" remains unpublished.  After four years of working on this story, I feel that, in some ways, it's as done as it will ever be.  But there are always going to be things I want to tweak.  I still am not one hundred percent satisfied with the ending.  So it's for the best that it wasn't published.  Publishing something you aren't totally satisfied with is like having sex with someone you don't care about (well, in my opinion, at least.  There are probably going to be people thinking, You're crazy, sex with someone you don't really care about is still pretty awesome, and publishing complete shit is the only way to go).  One day it's going to be right.

I just need to work on the ending a bit more.  And come up with a better plot.  I like the dialogue, though.  I think I'll keep the dialogue.

Anyway, I decided to copyright the story last night, and here are the first two pages.  I don't like the ending much, but I think the beginning is OK.

        "You know what two things I hate the most?" I said.  I was sitting at the kitchen table in my khaki shorts, drinking a diet coke as Leila carried a box of video equipment to the garage.
        My sister frowned at me.
        "Moving shit around," I said.  "And arguing with old ladies about their fucking presidential rockers."
       "I guess that makes this your unlucky day then," she said.
       "It would seem that way,” I agreed and downed the rest of the coke.
         “You done cleaning out your room?” she asked.
         “Don’t worry.”  I leaned back in my chair.  “I’m all set.”
         She continued on to the garage.
         The truth was, I hadn’t even started the onerous task of cleaning out my room yet.  For the past month, it had remained untouched.  And we had to be out of the house in twenty days.
         But I wasn’t going to worry about that right now.  I still had twenty days.
         Over the past two months, we’d been in and out of the house, loading up the truck with boxes and taking them over to the new place in Gorham.  We’d settled into a pattern of behavior that was starting to feel like it might become a new sort of normal.
         My grandmother would nag my father about how he was doing everything wrong ---from the way he priced the items that were being sold in the yard sale to the way he placed the boxes in the truck before driving them to the new place.  If there was one thing my grandmother felt very strongly about, it was that big boxes should be placed in a truck first, followed by the smaller ones.  My sister and I would stand back and watch, trying hard not to draw attention to ourselves.  Occasionally, I’d feel a stab of pity and intervene on my father’s behalf.
         “Aren’t you a sweetheart,” my grandmother told me one day as I finished wiping down the truck bed with a Red Sox t-shirt.  Had to make sure it was dust-free.  “You’re gonna make some girl very happy one day.”
         “No problem,” I’d said, my eyes darting toward my father before I ducked out of sight.
         “That boy’s queerer than a three dollar bill,” she’d muttered once she thought I was out of earshot.
          Meanwhile, I was coming up with a list in my head of all the ways there were to take the bitch out.
          I would post cryptic messages on Facebook, and throughout the day, my friends would check in, just to make sure that everyone was still alive and to ask if there were any dead bodies that needed to be moved.  My uncle has a secluded farm out in rural Maine, this one stalker named Anna told me.  Great for if you want to make a body disappear. Anna was my number one fan.  She was always showing up as one of my top 6 friends no matter how many times you refreshed the page. We'd dated for a couple of weeks in high school, and she'd been obsessed with me ever since.  I saw right through her clever ruse.  I thanked her, but if I wanted to make someone disappear, I could make it happen on my own.
           Every once in a while, my friend Holly would send me a text.  Sounds like someone needs to get laid…           
          Leila would watch me as I responded to the messages.  And when I’d slip out the front door later on in the evening, she’d ask me when I would be back.
         I always managed to remain as vague as possible.  And each time I came in at one or two in the morning, I’d find her waiting up for me in the kitchen. 
         “You didn’t miss anything,” she’d say, her voice restrained, as if there was more she wanted to say to me but never would.  “Just Dad and Grammy arguing about the presidential rocker, as usual.” 
           When my grandmother had heard we were moving, she’d decided to help out as much as she could.  What this meant was that she was over the house everyday, telling us what to do with our own stuff.  She’d been arguing with my father about that rocker all summer.   He wanted to sell it at the yard sale for fifteen dollars, and she said an antique like that should not be sold for anything less than seventy-five. I knew each side of the argument by heart.  And I knew that my father was wasting his time because my grandmother would never back down.  I didn’t want to think about it.  Everything would work out in the end.  Or maybe it wouldn't.  But either way, it was out of my hands. 
          “Sorry I wasn’t there for that,” I’d say.  And I would feel Leila’s eyes on me as I left the room. 

The Life of a Video Store Employee

Here is another Julian story.  I originally wrote this story about two years ago, but here is an updated version.  It was originally meant to be a continuation of "The One" but it ended up being about a completely different chick in Julian's life. This is the first story I ever copyrighted, so it's special.


The Life of a Video Store Employee

The first time she came into the video store, it was to rent some chick movie.

Ben Lucas watched as Julian Blood typed "Find General Spanky" into the computer system. Julian insisted that General Spanky was the title of an actual movie. Ben said he had to see it to believe it.

Neither of them heard the girl approach.

She cleared her throat.

Julian sighed. "May I help you?"

Her hair was yellow fire, yet it was her black puffy coat that seemed to engulf her. She placed a hand on the counter and he noticed that her nails were painted an enraged red. He knew immediately that he was in for an exercise in entitlement. He encountered women like her at least ten times a night. It was one of the downsides of working with the general public.

"When Harry Met Sally," she said.

He stared at her blankly.

"When Harry Met Sally," she repeated, agitated now. "Is it rented out? Or are you one of the only video stores in the state that doesn't carry the classics."

He turned to Ben. "Do you know what she's talking about?"

His friend shrugged. "Never heard of it."

"You've gotta be kidding me." She looked from one to the other.

"Is it an adult film?" Julian asked. "This is a family store."

"Can you just look up the movie for me, please? I really don't have time for this shit."

"Sure," Julian said. "Let me do that for you." He typed the words "Kiss my ass, Biyatch" into the system while Ben, to his credit, kept a straight face. "Sorry. Looks like we don't carry that title anymore."

"Unbelievable," she said. She turned and headed for the comedy section at the back right-hand corner of the store.

The minute she was out of earshot, Ben was on his case. "Did you see the way she was looking at you? She was checking you out."

Julian looked up. The girl was standing near the wall-length window, watching him. He turned away. "Shut up. Shouldn't you be out back performing top secret managerial duties?"

"I thought I'd hang out front with you. You know, make sure you're not giving the custies a hard time."

"Hey, if she wants to watch a fucking Meg Ryan movie, that's her business." Julian clicked on General Spanky (1936) to see if there were any copies in the store. "But don't make me an accomplice."

Ben stared at him for a moment. "You just love saying no to people, don't you?"

"To overly confident assholes like that girl?" Julian thought about it for a moment. "I suppose I do." He pointed to the screen. "Here we go. Look at this."

Ben barely glanced at the computer. "By the way, guess who called last night?" He paused, and when Julian didn't respond, he said, "I'll give you one hint. Her name begins with 'H' and ends with 'olly'."

Julian rolled his eyes.

"She's been calling a lot lately. I asked her why the two of you broke up, but she wouldn't tell me anything."

This was, of course, a lie. Keeping her mouth shut was hardly one of Holly's virtues.

The girl approached them again. She slapped a DVD down on the counter and sighed. Julian backed up so that Ben could take his place behind the cash register.

"You'll have to excuse my friend," Ben said. "His mother and father were brother and sister, and so he's his own cousin. It's the sickest thing I've ever heard."

She looked at her nails. "Right."

Ben picked up the movie she'd selected. "Airplane! The Sequel. Good one."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't my first choice."

He ran the scanner over the DVD's barcode. "Did you know that for three dollars more you can get a second movie, a popcorn, a soda and a box of candy?"

"Do they pay you extra to say that?" the girl asked. She caught Julian's eye. He went back to alphabetizing the returns. "I'm not interested."



She began to show up at the video store on a regular basis, and over time, she stopped coming up with excuses for being there. Julian would be out on the floor, putting away the movies, and he would catch Ben and the girl talking at the front of the store. He would briefly wonder if she was asking about him, and then he would be disgusted with himself for even caring.

"I told her you were single," Ben said one night after she'd left. He hovered over Julian's shoulder as he checked in the returns. "You don't mind. You're always bitching about how much your life sucks. So I told her the four of us-Jane and me and the two of you-could meet up for pizza sometime."

The computer double-beeped. A message popped up on screen stating that the movie Julian had just scanned in was seven hours late and the customer would be charged the full price of a rental. "Nice," he said.

Ben must have thought he was responding to him because he went on. "And listen to this. She says she's not looking for anything serious. She just went through a nasty break-up with her boyfriend of six years, and she says she's in no hurry to go through that again. You and Amber should get along great."

Julian made a face. "Amber?"

"That's her name. Why? Do you have a problem with the name Amber?"

He shook his head. "Whatever."

He would go out with this girl, this "Amber," if that would make his friend happy. Girls like Amber were easy. You asked them about life, about college, about the subjects they had majored in. If they told a joke, you laughed. If they told you about their dead cat, you empathized. And then, when you were done doing all of that, you offered to drive them home. The last time Julian had let Ben set him up on a date, he'd dropped the girl off at her place at 9:00, told her it was nice knowing her but that he had this raging case of herpes that wasn't quite under control yet so he didn't think it was a good idea to kiss her good night. "My doctor says there's still hope for me, though. Maybe next time."

The expression on the girl's face said it all. There would be no second date.

Instead of going straight home, he'd stopped by his sister's place and spent the night on her couch. He'd blown into the apartment he shared with Ben and Ben's fiancee at 7:00 the next morning, grabbed a donut from the plate on the table and asked if Jane had gotten around to cooking a real breakfast yet. He still remembered the way his friend had looked at him - as though he were a god among men.

Of course the truth never came out. Most girls didn't bother with a guy who had a venereal disease or who had had his sexual organs shot off while defending his country. The list of reasons why chicks didn't wanna fuck you was actually quite endless. Other guys didn't seem to have any problem making themselves as unattractive to women as possible. So all he had to do was to pretend to be every guy but himself.

"Are you worried about what Holly will think?" Ben asked.

Julian shook his head and went back to checking in movies. The mistake he'd made with Holly was that he'd been honest with her. He swore to himself he'd never make that mistake again. "She's not my girlfriend anymore."

"She still calls sometimes when you're not at home. The last time she did, I told her you couldn't speak to her because you were locked in your room, questioning your sexuality."

Julian's smile was tight. There was no way he could turn down the date now, and they both knew it. He remembered the days, back in high school, when Ben would have been more passive aggressive with his attacks: maybe saving his gay jokes for those times when he could be sure his friend was within earshot, or else making a point to add extra emphasis to the question when asking Julian about the new girl in town or the hot substitute teacher. It was easy enough to answer such questions in the way that was expected of him. He never failed to say the right things. It was doing the right things that had him at a loss.

"So." Ben hesitated for a moment, before asking, "Do you want me to tell Amber you're not interested, or will you go?"

"Yeah." He put down the scanner. "I'll go. On one date. A chick's a chick, right?"

"Knowing you," Ben said, "one night is all you'll need with this one."

Ben's fiancée, Jane, though, had a different take on the matter. "Do you even know who this girl is, or do you just assume she's not an asshole because she's cute?"

"She's got a point," Julian said. He was drinking a coke at the kitchen table, and Jane gave him a dirty look. Julian had been living in the apartment with them for almost five months. It was the awkward living arrangement of all awkward living arrangements, and sometimes Jane would make some passive aggressive remark designed to drive home the point that he'd overstayed his welcome the moment he'd walked through the front door. Usually, he would take the hint and leave the room. That night, he went into the living room and turned on the television. He kept the volume down low so that he could hear them arguing in the kitchen.

"You need to stop," Jane said.

Ben slammed the refrigerator door. "It's just pizza."

"Yeah, well, it's weird. You and I are going to be marrying in less than two months, and yet you spend more time obsessing over his sex life than focusing on ours."

"It's just pizza," Ben said again. "This girl is cool. I talked with her. She just moved here from Florida. She's staying with her grandmother, and she's trying to make some new friends. That's all."



Ben let Julian tell Amber about the sordid history of Lucifer's Oven while they sat around a booth in the back left-hand corner and consumed a large pepperoni with the world's greasiest crust. Amber barely touched it. Julian was already on his third slice.

Lucifer's Oven had once been called Luigi's Pizzeria. It had been previously owned by a tiny Italian who bore a comical resemblance to Stalin and his doughy brother who looked more like Fat Chef. When the brothers had died, the restaurant had passed into the hands of a family of Pagans. The red and green booths had been too "Christmasy" for their liking, and so they'd redecorated, using an orange and black motif instead. Rumor had it they slaughtered animals out back and served them up on a pizza twenty minutes later.

Amber looked around, and then turned to Julian. "So, do you come here often?"

He gave her a half-smile over his glass. "Not exactly." Ben made a face at him, and he took the hint. "So, Amber, you said you're from Florida?"

"Yeah. I moved here permanently right after graduating from Bowdoin."

"You went to Bowdoin?"

She seemed pleased with herself. "Yeah."

"Wow," he said. "That's impressive." An awkward silence followed.

"You know, Amber," Ben said. "Jane and I met at Lucifer's."

"Really?" She leaned forward, resting her arms on the table.

"Julian and I were going to the same university at the time," he began.

"We've known each other since middle school," Julian said. "What are you talking about?"

"True. But you and I didn't start hanging out until years later. In middle school, you and your girlfriend were tied to the fucking hip."

Julian gave him a confused look.

"You know who I'm talking about."

"Uh, no."

Ben turned to Amber. "When we were kids, he had this friend named Shelly..."

Julian wiped the grease off of his fingers and stood up.

"Most guys would have tapped that in a heartbeat," Ben was saying. "Fourteen years old, and she was all for it. But Julian..."

He turned a corner, walked past the cheerful teenager behind the register and pushed through the double doors.

"Hey," Amber called out behind him.

He turned as the doors slammed shut behind her. "Hi." He dug his cell phone out of his pocket. "Call. One second please." He rifled through his texts, but was only greeted by missed messages from Holly. He deleted them one by one without reading them.

The two of them stood where they were for several seconds without talking. Amber shifted from foot to foot, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her jeans. "Is this about Shelly?" she finally asked.

"Who?"

"If you don't want to be here, you can admit it," she said. "You don't have to be an asshole about it."

"Nah. I want to be here." He went on deleting the texts. "I'm really interested in hearing more about Bowdoin." He turned off his phone and put it back in his pocket.  "Were the classes good?"

"Well, it was college." She shrugged. "You want to go get Jane and Ben? I'm ready to go."




He dropped Ben and Jane off at the apartment first. His friend leaned into the lowered driver's side window.
"Well. I guess I'll see you later," Julian said before Ben could say anything. He rolled up the window as he backed out of the driveway.

Amber lived about two miles away from him. Her grandmother's house was dark, aside from the glow of a TV set in the far left-hand window.

"She's probably waiting up for me," Amber said. "I'd invite you in, but she's a little nervous around strangers."

Julian nodded. A familiar silence fell upon the car. When several seconds passed without him saying anything, she finally reached for the door handle. "Bye."

"Amber."

She looked over at him.

"I just got out of a bad relationship." It was the first time he had spoken about Holly in months to anyone other than Ben. And suddenly, there was so much more he wanted to say to this girl who already knew more about his current relationship status than his own Facebook friends did. He wanted to tell her that the reason that he'd broken up with Holly was because of something he did. Or rather, because of something he couldn't do. He wanted to tell Amber that he was damaged. She couldn't save him. No girl could. And it was all right. He wasn't looking to be saved.

"I know," she said. "Ben told me. We're just hanging out. No pressure."

He didn't know why, but he had a feeling she'd be hanging around for awhile, and he figured he should warn her ahead of time that she had a better chance of achieving world peace than she did of having any kind of relationship with him. He figured it would save them both a lot of trouble if he just let her know up front.
"Amber?" She turned to him, and he hesitated. Maybe it would be easier if he approached the subject in a different way. "Are you a pacifist?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

He rolled his eyes. "Never mind."

"You know, I just got out of a bad relationship myself," she said, as she opened her door. He didn't know how to respond to that. Was he supposed to empathize with her? Pretend that they had something in common? He said nothing.



His sister didn't seem all that surprised to see him on the other side of her door at 8:00 at night. "Hey," she said. She opened the door further to let him in. "I'll make up the couch for you."

Leila got extra blankets and pillows from her closet, and he carried them over to the sofa. "I don't know why you bother living with Ben and that girl if you're going to end up spending every other night at my place," she said from the doorway of her room.

He paused in the middle of taking off his sneakers. "It's personal, L. I don't want to talk about it."

At first, she said nothing. And he held his breath, wondering if she would come to him, hoping that she wouldn't.

"I'm tired," she finally said. "I'll see you in the morning."

He watched until the door closed behind her, and then he turned toward the television set. He shrugged and picked up the remote.



He and Amber didn't speak for another week. He made no effort to send her a message on Facebook or call her. He didn't even have her phone number. Ben may have given it to him at one point, but he'd probably just thrown it out without realizing.

They'd agreed to be just friends, so he didn't think there was any obligation there, but he wasn't sure. Not that he was too worried about Amber or her expectations. She hadn't tried to reach him either. She was probably too busy fucking around with the local boys to bother. He wished her the best with that.

But then, not long after they'd gone out for pizza, he received an email from Holly.

For the past two months, he'd received emails from his ex-girlfriend almost daily; they all said the same basic thing. How dare you ignore me? How dare you treat me this way when all I ever did was give you the most precious gift I have to offer - my body.

This message was different. In this message, she made it clear she'd been talking to Ben.

So I hear you have a new Facebook friend. She's really pretty. You clearly have good taste…

His ex-girlfriend was a big fan of the ellipses. He didn't know why. It wasn't like she was one to hold back. Restraint, thy name was not Holly. Maybe she had meant to keep her message to him more calm and reserved than usual. Maybe she'd intended to show him that she could be a mature adult when it suited her. Maybe she'd tried and failed. She'd ended the email with:

I hope your slut makes you very happy.

He deleted the message.




Julian understood the appeal of the opposite sex. Ever since he was a kid, there was nothing that turned him on more than a girl who desired him and was willing. It was one thing to think about it. What he didn't get was how people could actually do these things.

First of all, sex was messy. And not just psychologically. It was literally messy. Practical things like that made a difference to him.

Of course he was also a big fan of a little thing called "dignity" and another little thing called "self-respect." His father hadn't taught him much about what it meant to hold oneself in high regard, but he had certainly taught him well what it didn't mean the first time he'd lured his young son into the basement with the intention of performing lewd and lascivious acts on his person. So Julian was starting at the bottom and working his way up. He didn't know what it was that he wanted, but he'd always had a very keen sense of what it was that he didn't, and that was as good a place as any to begin.

He'd only been with Holly once. It had happened unexpectedly one Saturday night the week before she'd left for college. He was half drunk, and she was ruthless in her pursuit of him. He was sure there must have been some curiosity on his part as well, but the funny thing was that he couldn't remember much of the encounter at all. It was like he went completely crazy the minute he saw naked flesh.

She'd tried to get him to do it again during Thanksgiving break and again at Christmas time. He told her where she could go.

But it wasn't like he was a complete dick about it. So he didn't wanna fuck her. There had to be other things they could do together that didn't involve him violating her body for their own demented amusement. He figured they could spend their nights watching movies and eating out. Hell, he'd even blow his life savings to take her to see those chick flicks that kept coming out each month at the local theaters. On their second date, he proved his devotion the only way he knew how-by sitting through a Patrick Dempsey movie without once going all Mystery Science Theater on that loser's ass. What other guy would do that for her, and not expect at least a hand job after the fact? If that wasn't commitment, he didn't know what was.
After the movie was over, she'd turned to him and said, "Is it me, or is it getting a little hot in here?"

"It's you," he assured her.

There was no third date until almost six months later.

When they did finally meet up again the following summer, it was as if she had gone through some kind of weird metamorphosis. Gone was the aggressive temptress she'd once been, and in her place was a compassionate young woman who's primary concern was her boyfriend's happiness and well-being.

For his 20th birthday, she'd bought him a book called "Survivors of Incest."

"What the hell's this?" he'd asked her.

"Don't be mad at your sister," she said.

"I didn't know I needed to be."

She made this floundering gesture with her hand before saying, "I kinda forced her to tell me. I was worried about you. But it's good that I know, right? Now we can have an open and honest relationship."

"Open and honest?" He didn't know if he'd ever had an open and honest relationship in his life. He collapsed on the couch and lowered his face in his hands.

Holly sat down next to him. "It wasn't your fault, you know. You did nothing wrong."

Well, that was a relief. For a while there, he'd thought he'd actually asked to be anally raped by a 40 year old man purporting to be his father.

"It wasn't even about sex," she reassured him. "It was about power. Read the book. It talks all about that."

"Hey." He glared at her. "You don't have to tell me what it was or wasn't about. I'm not stupid. I've seen Deliverance."

Her hand slid along the inside of his thigh and he felt conflicted. "We don't have to rush into anything if you don't want to." He wanted to, but why did she have to be such a whore about it? "Just because I've already been with you doesn't mean we can't start over and take it slow."

He hoped she didn't seriously plan on becoming a therapist because he never contemplated suicide more times than those few years they were "together."

His family talked about how wonderful it was that he had found love with a childhood friend. And all the while, he prayed to God that he would be killed in a car crash on the way to work. Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd be immediately sent to Hell. Only then could he be free of this thing called "love" once and for all.

She tried for years to turn him into a man he was not. And then, on the night of her college graduation, as they sat on her basement couch with a huge gap between them that was growing wider with each passing day, she told him that enough was enough. As far as she was concerned, he could go fuck himself.

It wasn't a bad suggestion. It would have actually been a lot less humiliating than fucking her.



"Did you tell Holly about Amber?" Julian asked Ben at work the next day. Some new hire was handling the registers for them while they sat on boxes in the back office and pretended to be working on the cycle counts.

He'd been wanting to ask the question all day, but he'd kept putting it off. It shouldn't have been a big deal. He didn't know why it bothered him so much, other than the obvious fact that he didn't want Holly knowing about every little thing he did.

"I thought it was a good thing," Ben said, crumbling up a sandwich wrapper and tossing it across the room into the trash can. "Now she knows you're not interested."

"She can know I'm not interested without knowing my entire fucking life story. Did you tell her I spent the night at Amber's place?"

Ben shrugged. "I figured since you and Amber are Facebook friends now that she'd find out eventually. Why did you add her anyway?"

"She added me. I didn't want to be rude." He couldn't help it. Ben laughed, and he found himself smiling. "Shut up. I was trying to show good character."

"Right."

Julian unscrewed the cap of his soda. "Don't talk to my ex-girlfriend about me, OK? Just stay out of it."

"She called the other day looking for you. All I said was that you didn't want to see her anymore and that you wanted to see other girls. I don't know what the problem is."

"No problem. I didn't say there was a problem. At least not anymore." He stood, hoping Ben would take the hint that he'd said all he wanted to say on the matter and that the conversation was over.



"Hey!"

Julian hesitated in the middle of stamping a ridiculous $9.99 sticker on Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Just before the voice had snapped him back into the living world, he'd been wondering who in their right mind would pay $10 to see Lindsay Lohan play herself. Why wasn't this shit in the $5 or less bin already? There had been more to that train of thought, but he supposed it was lost forever now. He looked up and forced a smile. "Hi."

Amber dropped her wallet onto the counter and shuffled through the movies she'd picked out. "Which one of these are any good?"

He held out his hand. "Let me see."

He felt her eyes on him as he scanned the titles. You've Got Mail. P.S. I Love You. Don't Say a Word. God, she had shitty taste in movies. "What are you doing after work?" she asked.

He shrugged.

"I was thinking maybe we could go across the street to Tim Horton's. For coffee."
He cleared his throat and handed the movies back to her. "If I were you, I wouldn't bother with any of them." She gave him a blank stare. He nodded toward the DVDs. "You asked my opinion."

She bit her lip. "Right." They were silent for a few moments. "I should be going," she said.

"See ya." He went back to pricing.

"Wait." She turned and slapped the counter with the palm of her hand. He looked up, startled. "I know I said we'd just be friends and all. And that's cool. I just want to know where exactly that leaves us. Do we talk when we see each other? Say hi and that's it? Maybe hang out? I can even do casual if that's all you're looking for."

He smiled, but didn't say anything.

"You're still not over the girl, are you?"

Now she was starting to piss him off. "Excuse me?"

"The girl. The one who broke your heart. She did break your heart, didn't she?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he said.




Ben liked to tell their friends that Julian was the Ted Bundy of serial
daters - meaning he could only fuck strangers he didn't care about. It was true. Aside from the fucking part, which was not literally true.

Ben thought that his recent break-up with Holly was the root of his problem with women. As if his life was a movie and the incident with Holly was some kind of flashback meant to explain everything. As if Holly was his girl with long, dark hair.

Holly didn't even fucking have brown hair.



Before moving in with Ben and Jane, he had lived with his sister in her one bedroom apartment and slept on her pull-out couch. It was the perfect set-up at first. He wasn't looking for a relationship, and there weren't a whole lot of guys who could put up with his sister's neurotic shit.

But he didn't mind her so much. They split the rent, and occasionally he even got dinner out of her. She'd learned everything she knew about cooking from their father, which meant she was a master at boiling water. If he was in the mood for pasta, she had it covered. If he wanted a hamburger, some fucking protein, he could go haul his ass to the Wendy's across the street.

There were many nights when they'd stayed up late watching movies in the living room. He introduced her to the classics such as The Godfather, to the genius of Kevin Smith, to Friday the 13th Parts 1-8. She laughed when the girls in the short-shorts got an ax in the back and cheered on the demise of Kevin Bacon. "Bacon's death scene in Part 1 is symbolic of his career," she said, and they toasted to that. She drank orange gatorade and he drank Samuel Adams. She took one look at his beer bottle and said, "Gay."

He loved their heart to heart talks on subjects such as whether or not being a slut made one worthy of death. He told his sister that if someone ever decided to make a horror movie about her life, her character's virginity would make her virtually unassailable. She told him that if someone made a movie about his life, it would be banned in most American states for homosexual content.

They took great pleasure in finding new and improved ways of sexually humiliating each other, and maybe it went a little too far at times. At the end of the day, though, it was when she began to call him "honey" that he decided they had most definitely crossed the line.

And so he'd moved in with Ben. He went along with his friend's hook-up schemes, even giving his approval of the hot girls who lived on the first floor, making suggestive comments when none were called for, and as far as Ben was concerned, suggestive comments about hot girls were always called for. He'd talk about the things he wanted to do to them, and when that wasn't enough to satisfy his friend, he'd make up fake chicks to text on his phone. Chicks with names like Shawana Blomy and Ivana Fokker (who was Dutch and scored him extra points with Ben for that alone). And all the while he was texting messages to Leila about how he wasn't really up to much and that he'd stop by after work if she wanted to see him.

"I don't want to be your fucking sister," Holly had texted him shortly before he'd broken up with her.
He could just imagine her firing off the message with the intensity of a person who knows that there's no longer any hope for her but can't restrain herself from getting in one final to hell with you.



He didn't kid himself that he was doing important work. His job was just a job. He rented out movies to people who had nothing better to do on a Friday or Saturday night than stay at home and stare at the TV. He put up with people's shit, and he realized that, when they yelled at him for not having any copies left of the latest new release, it wasn't anything personal. They were just angry people. Angry at the world. And they had to let off their steam somehow.

Occasionally, though, there were moments that got to him.

He remembered a specific incident from three years before, when they'd finally made the full transition from VHS to DVDs. A woman came into the store with her husband. She must have been about sixty years old. She wanted to rent some classic. But she didn't have a DVD player.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "We don't carry VHS anymore."

She walked over to her husband. They talked in hushed voices. There were tears streaming down her cheeks.

This was the memory that stayed with him. He knew this would be the one moment he would remember even when he, himself, was sixty years old.

He wondered why people couldn't just be granted what little peace they could get. He wondered why it always seemed to have to be on someone else's fucking terms.

Watching the Girl *Spring 2006*

         On the seventh day, he decided there was no sense to any of what he saw.
         On Monday, he caught a glimpse of the girl, standing on the sidewalk outside his window, while just across the street a few people still streamed out of stores and waited for buses.  She was not waiting for the bus.  When it arrived, she did not get on it. 
          She’d moved into the apartment below his just a few days before.  Her name began with a P.  Peggy or Penny or Petra or Perry.  He didn’t know her last name.  He didn’t know how old she was, probably in college.  She didn’t live with anyone.  She appeared to be waiting for someone.  After ten minutes, close to that, she rounded a corner and didn’t appear again for the rest of the night.
           On Tuesday, she was out there again, only this time, in the rain.  She stood across the street in what seemed to be a small pocket of the storm, no umbrella, but wearing an open black rain coat that came down to her knees.  Several feet above her head, a neon sign blinked La dromat. The raindrops struck his window pane, and he tried to decipher a rhythm, letting the sound shift between two tones as time passed, a pattern developing.  Now he began to think he could hear a melody, very soft, and he wasn’t sure if it was in his mind or if it was really out there.  It could have been the woman who lived on the very bottom floor.  Sometimes he could hear her playing her piano, pounding the keys, her feet stomping the pedals, working herself into a frenzy until it was all he heard.  This was the same woman whose apartment always reeked of dead fish and something else.  The odors would seep underneath the door and out into the hall, like exorcised spirits.  If it weren’t for the music every evening, he’d think these smells could have been coming from her rotting corpse, that’s how little he saw of her.  Not like Peggy or Penny or Petra or Perry who stood outside his window every single night but not for any particular reason, as far as he could tell.
           He lied.  It was not every night.  On Wednesday, the girl was nowhere to be seen.
           But on Thursday she was back, this time with a group of kids.  They sat on the black metal bench across the street from him, the one with green vines snaking along its edges. He realized he’d come to expect her presence and here she was, back again. He still didn’t understand why.  He was waiting for her to show him something.  He wanted to know who or what she was waiting for.
         Then came Friday.  He watched as a red convertible raced through the neighborhood, barely stopping to let her in the passenger side.  A man with dark hair like hers sat in the driver’s seat.  The vehicle sat there by the side of the road for hours.  He went to go to the bathroom, got a glass of water, turned on the TV, watched two programs before going back to the window.  The car was still there. 
           Finally, about four hours later, the car pulled out and drove away. 
 Saturday it rained again but this time she wasn‘t there. Like on Wednesday, he waited up all night, but she didn’t show.
         He had little hope for Sunday by this point.  If a person isn’t there when you’ve come to expect them to be, just once, you can accept that.  If it starts to happen more than once, you begin to lose your faith in them. 
        Sometimes he wondered what she would think if she observed him every night the way he observed her.  Maybe she could catch his yellow outline in the bright light of his window.  Maybe she knew he was there.

A story I saved under the file name "Tiger Apartment Cousins"

          Here's a version of my novel from 2006.  I was testing out different beginnings. 


                                                         Michael

 There was a dispute over who the apartment complex belonged to, who had the higher claim.  The truth was, it was owned and maintained by two old geezers who hadn’t set foot on the property in twenty years.   They rented the place out to their  grandchildren---the oldest, Michael, got the top apartment,  his cousin Jaclyn got the bottom and her younger brother Julian shared the middle floor with his best friend from high school. 

 The building sat back from the Portland Bay; on inviting days Michael could look out his window and watch a variety of different people coming and going, doing a variety of different things---walking the boulevard, sailing boats, selling lemonade, having picnics, or just driving by.  During the winter, kids would trudge across the sidewalks with sleds, slide down the sloping hills toward the water, never quite reaching it, only making it to the edge of the bushes which descended into a jungle-like tangle of trees and branches that led down toward the abandoned train tracks; just beyond that was the bay.  The location was an experience in and of itself.  And then there were his neighbors. 

 Michael was twenty-six, liked to think himself mature, liked to think he’d moved beyond the childishness of adolescence. He’d graduated from college four years ago with an English major and the desire to be a published writer before he hit thirty.  He wanted to make a difference in the world, he wanted people to read what he had to say and be better for it. The only thing he really needed was peace and quiet in the evenings so that he could spend that time at his computer. 

  His cousins had a different idea of what life was all about.  They were the spawn of his permissive aunt and uncle, they’d been raised among wild children like themselves in a city where everything you could possibly want was right there in front of you---you just had to grab for it.  Seize and attack.  They grew up thinking that the only way to end a week was to throw a huge party, get drunk, nail down everything that moved. Julian would join his sister on the first floor, and he’d bring his roommate Nick, along with half the city or more.  They’d turn up the music so that Michael couldn’t hear the shouting, grunting and crashing so much, but Busta Rhymes or whomever the hell they listened to still blared through the thin boards of his floor, interrupting his train of thought, making him momentarily think the characters in his book were sex-crazed gangsters in the ghetto.  It would seep into his writing and would result in pages of wasted time.  If he happened to be writing long-hand, it would be wasted trees.
So the weekends when they sought their entertainment elsewhere----out in the forests of Portland----should have been a blessing. 

 When they were gone, and the building was empty, and there was nothing but the sound of clicking computer keys, if that, Michael would realize that it wasn’t noise that was the problem.  It did distract him, and got him writing pages in the wrong direction, but at least writing the wrong stuff was still writing something.  When his writer’s block snuck up on him in the quiet of his home, he would push himself away from the computer screen, and say to himself that it was time for a break.  Many times he found himself hunting down his cousins, looking for some action and a little inspiration.  After all, he couldn’t very well expect to write stuff that spoke to people if he didn’t get out and at least try to live a little.  He’d pay a visit to various dives he recalled them mentioning to his face or within earshot. But his luck was bad.  They almost always managed to allude him--not being at the places where he searched for them, or if they were there, they blended in well with the surroundings. 

 And then one night he found them in the dark tavern of Lucifer’s Oven, a pizza parlor in town.  They were hiding out in the attached game room.  Julian and Nick looked up from their air hockey match, surprised to see him there, but more than willing to take on a challenge.  He could play a good game too.



 Julian and Nick were eyeing each other across the air hockey table with the looks of two killers.  Jaclyn sat at a table off to the side, focusing on her soda and what was left of a large pizza.  This room was far less crowded than the main dining area and most of the noise came from a television suspended from the ceiling, set back in a distant corner. It was tuned to a sports channel. The restaurant had an orange and black motif---orange and black walls, orange and black booths.  The owners apparently took offense with the traditional red and green décor that was the trademark of Italian eateries.  They were Pagans, Michael had heard, and rumor had it they slaughtered animals out back and served them up on a pizza twenty minutes later.

 “You’re up next,” Julian called to Michael.  He sneered at his opponent.  “Winner takes him on.”

 Watching Julian and Nick right then reminded him of being younger and watching the way Julian and Jaclyn would play together as children, and the way they’d fight, and tell jokes he didn’t understand, leave him out, dooming him to a life of always observing, wondering what it would have been like if he’d had brothers and sisters himself.

 Michael joined Jaclyn at her booth.  Together they watched the two boys battling it out several feet away.  Jaclyn had never been real friendly to him, but she didn’t turn Michael away and she was certainly a lot nicer to him at that moment than he had any right to expect.  She should have been hostile and defensive. Lately he hadn’t treated her very well at all. But maybe it was just a good cover.  She presented him with a calm air. She smiled at him.  Behind his back, she’d probably sink her teeth in deep, tear him limb from limb for the benefit of the others. He reminded himself that her mood could change.  He felt a tension between them like a wild animal ready to attack.

 “Hey Jack,” her brother shouted across the room.
 She turned to look at him.
 “Come over here,” he said.
 “I’m talking to someone,” she told him, her voice abrupt and hard like the sound of balls and hockey pucks knocking against each other.  She realized they hadn’t been talking, that she had essentially lied to the kid, so she asked Michael about his novel.  “How’s it going?”
 “Horrible.”  Michael rested his elbow on the table, lowered his face in his hand.  “Just horrible.  I don’t want to talk about it.”
 She didn’t say anything more, just watched him from across the table.  She began to knock at the formica with her knuckles.  He looked down at her hands, noticed the glinting bracelet she wore around her left wrist.  Tiger Tiger, it read. 
 “Nice,” he said, reaching over to touch it. 
 She met his eyes.  “Thanks.”
 He let go and turned away.
 “This guy gave it to me,” she went on, “long time ago.  His name was Jude.”
 Julian started to shout, gloating over his alleged victory.  “Mike,” he called out.  “Get over here.”
 Nick was sullen, a defeated look on his face and in his voice.  “Come on, Jules, let’s go.  You’ve proven yourself enough for one night.”
 “Hell no.”  At any moment, Julian could lunge forward, attack.
 “You go on home,” Michael said to Nick.  “They can get a ride with me.”
 Nick just looked at him for a moment.  He shrugged.  “Fine.”  He clapped Julian on the back.  Jaclyn stood up as Nick headed out.  “Bye Angel face,” he called out to her.  “Take care of your brother for
me.”
 “I always do,” she said. She watched him go, then snuck up on Julian, seized hold of his arms, pulling him to her.  “Congratulations.”  She kissed his cheek.   He gave Michael an uncomfortable half-smile, as if to say, Can you believe this? “Thanks,” he said. She whispered something that made him laugh.  He met Michael’s eyes.  “Get out of the way, Jack,” he said to her, “you’re breathing on me.”
 She let go of him.  “Sorry. I’m going.  I’ll be outside if you need me.”
 “I didn’t say you had to leave.”
 “No, it’s all right. I was going to have a smoke anyway.”  She reached into the pocket of her brown leather coat and pulled out a pack of menthols.  “Have fun, boys.”
 Julian gripped the edge of the air hockey table where he stood across from Michael.  He leaned forward, his head down.  Jaclyn touched his shoulder one last time but he didn’t acknowledge her.   She left them alone, with a handful of customers milling about the room.
 ”Little angry at your sister for missing your big victory?” Michael spoke up the minute she was gone.
 “What?”  Julian looked up.  “No,  I don’t care about that.”  They started to hit back and forth, a steady motion.  “It’s not me she was avoiding, it was him.” He scored a goal, smiled up at Michael.
 “Him?  You mean Nick?”
 “Yeah.  They don’t get along.” 
 The kid had convinced himself but he hadn’t convinced Michael, who wanted to point out to Julian that it wasn‘t Nick she was avoiding now.  And it wasn’t because she disliked her brother.  Julian was being a real pain. “Nick seemed to get along with her fine.” 
 “Subtext, friend,” the boy said, though they were not friends, never would be friends if things kept up the way they were going and if Julian’s ironic tone had any say in the matter.  Julian was also irritated. He wanted to stick with air hockey. Michael had no interest in the game in front of them, only in the twenty questions his little cousin was trying so hard to dodge.
 “I don’t get it, why’d she come here with you guys in the first place?”
 Julian stopped what he was doing. Michael already had.  “A little curious tonight, aren’t we?  I asked her to come, all right?  Besides, she likes to keep her eye on us.  Just to make sure Nick doesn’t corrupt me, I guess.  Now let’s play the game.”



 Jaclyn was waiting outside for them, her back to the front of the brick restaurant, puffing on smoke or cold air, Michael wasn’t sure. Her head tilted to the left;  she leaned over and glanced into the window beside her, watched the people in the dining room for a moment, then turned to face forward.  “Hey.  You guys ready to go?”
 “Yeah,” Julian said.  “Unless you want to go back inside and take me on yourself.  I kicked his ass. I kicked both their asses.  I’ll kick yours.”
 She pushed herself away from the building, dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk and crushed it with the heel of her black boot.  “You know, I’m getting sick of your little attitude, Jules.”
 They walked to Michael’s car, the silence between the brother and sister having reached its height. 

None of them spoke until Michael was seated in the driver’s seat and the other two had climbed in back. 

Michael glanced up and caught their eyes in the rearview mirror. 
 Julian turned his attention to his seat belt.  His sister nudged him with her elbow.  He forced a smile.
 “All set?” Michael asked.  He looked away, his eyes darting to the floor.
 He pulled away from the curb and they started down the dark bending road,  the silvery waterfront glistening off to their right, two voices drifting from the back;  it wasn’t long before he tuned them out all together and focused on the path home.
 Jaclyn’s words broke his concentration several minutes later as he approached the Promenade.  “You know, Mike, you don’t have to go right back up to your own apartment.  Why don’t you have a drink with us before you go on to bed.”
 She was making fun of him. It was only nine o’clock.  He usually stayed up till midnight writing, or not writing. He could do either quite well, it seemed.  Sometimes he watched the eleven o’clock news, but he never went to bed before twelve.  She was watching him as he caught her eye in the mirror, just a quick look on his part but enough to understand what she was thinking.  “Sure,” he said. 
 He parked in the empty driveway of the complex; the locks clicked as he shut off the engine.  Jaclyn and Julian had already cleared the back seat, both sliding out the same door, the brother pushing at his sister as he followed behind. Now they stood in place, waiting, staring at each other, their hands shoved into their pockets. Michael almost slammed into them as he emerged from the vehicle.  “Come on,” he said.  “Let’s go.”  He walked on ahead, they remained a few steps back. He heard Julian ask his sister if she had any beer left over in the refrigerator from the last party.  She told him that he and his pig friend had swilled down the last of it, he’d have to settle for soda.  He told her he was sick of soda, that he knew she had the real stuff hiding in back behind the heads of lettuce and expired milk, that she just was treating him like a child;  he reminded her that he was nineteen, only two years away from twenty-one anyway.  She said she’d check for him, just to be sure, but she really didn’t think she had anything. 

Then she agreed to let him look for himself, when they got inside. 
 Michael unlocked the front door and waited for them to catch up. 



 Jaclyn‘s apartment was classy, despite what happened there once or twice a week.  It looked like a small house.  When she opened the door at the top of the first indoor staircase, he stepped right into the living room.  There was a plasma screen TV in the front corner of the large room, to the left of a fireplace and at an angle.  There was also a white leather couch and a glass coffee table that managed, from day to day, to remain in one piece, much to his amazement.  He was always shocked by the cleanliness of the place whenever he visited, except on those occasions when he showed up in the middle of a party to complain about the noise.  On those nights, everything was in disarray, which made the contrast between those evenings and this one so much more striking.
 Jaclyn walked on ahead, through the living room, through the doorway to the right of the fireplace, and into the kitchen. A long porcelain counter protruded from the wall next to the kitchen entrance halfway to the other side of the room, with two stools in front of it. He could see one side of her body over the counter top as she opened the refrigerator.  The most distant room, just beyond the kitchen, was hers. 
Her bedroom light was off, the door partway shut.

 “What do you know?”  Jaclyn brought over a can of Budweiser and set it on the counter in front of her brother.

 Michael reached to place a hand on Julian’s.  “Don‘t go crazy.”
 Julian cracked open his beer, made a face.  “So long as you don’t tell anyone about this, I‘m not worried.”
 Michael shrugged.
 Julian hesitated.  When his sister left to get something in the living room, he leaned close to his cousin, whispered,  “If by some strange occurrence I actually happen to get drunk and pass out on the floor…you’ll make sure I get up to my apartment.  Right?”
 Michael turned, looked him over.  “Why?”
 “No big deal,” Julian insisted.  “I just don’t want to wake up with a hangover and Jack nagging me about it.”
 Michael tapped the counter with his knuckles.  “Yeah.  Sure kid.  Whatever.”

The One

***Here is a story I initially wrote in 2004. In 2009, I changed the names so that it would fit in with my creative thesis. The original version of the story ended with Julian's friend walking in on him in the bathroom, and it kind of just fizzled out. I knew that more needed to happen and that Julian needed to be more active rather than passive. So in 2009 I changed the ending as well. The final confrontation between Julian and his friend is very similar, but at least Julian tries to take a stand, even if he fails miserably.  The very ending is new.***


                                                          The One

           Julian didn't notice his ex-girlfriend Holly standing by the entrance to the reception hall until they'd already started eating.
          At first, he attempted to ignore her. He turned to Diana who'd been talking non-stop over the course of an hour. She was telling Jane and his friend Ben about the last wedding she'd been to; it had been for her sister, and she quickly added that it was nowhere near as nice as this one. Jane smiled politely and pushed away her dish, making some exaggerated comment about how full she was when she'd barely touched a thing on her plate. That was one thing he'd never understood about Ben, how the guy could be so attracted to girls with apparent eating disorders---like the last one, stick thin Corinne. Calling them skeletons was an insult to skeletons. They resembled more the paper decorations Julian's father used to buy for Halloween at party shops, as if that's where his friend shopped for dates. The only thing that made Jane stand out from the rest was her blonde hair. He'd never seen a skeleton with blonde hair before. Julian forced a smile and leaned over to kiss Diana on the cheek. She attempted to kiss him on the mouth, but he turned, and her lips brushed his chin.
          "Dance with me," she said, as the band played the opening chords of "YMCA".
           He glanced over at the dance floor behind him where a few of the guests were making fools of themselves. At the center of it all was Jane's three-year-old niece. The little girl was shaking her head, her dark braids flying, and then, she began to twirl, the hem of her dress doing the same until she slipped and fell, only to get back up again. "I'll be right back," he said.
          His girlfriend nodded, but she looked upset. "All right."
         He stood and came around the table. He watched as Ben turned to his new wife and said something that Julian couldn't make out.

          By the time Julian had reached the entrance to the hall, Holly was gone. There weren't many people out in the lobby, just a few parents and their disruptive children. One little boy was running back and forth with his arms stretched out as if he were a plane, making noises too, while those around him just laughed. Yeah, it was real funny now that they were out here and no longer bothering the other wedding guests. The boy plowed into a little girl who was minding her own business by the couch, knocking her over backwards. She began to cry. The hotel receptionist looked up from her desk and frowned because all of this was taking place in her hotel, on the day when she had to work and not on somebody else's watch.
           Julian escaped to the bathroom. There was nowhere else to go. The kids had besieged the rest of the hotel, and though he'd yet to admit it to himself, he started to get the suspicion that he hadn't really left his friends behind so that he could chase after an old love from his past. He'd wanted to get away from them, and specifically from Diana, who'd begun to wear on him over the last few weeks. He dreaded the moment the two of them left the wedding, the moment they were alone.
Recently, she'd begun pushing him to take their relationship to the next level. He couldn't tell her the truth, that the thought of having sex with her made him physically ill. He cared about her and all. Just not enough apparently.
           He wondered if it was normal to be so unattracted to the girl you were dating.
           He was still thinking about this when the door opened. He watched Holly in the mirror as she came up behind him and paused.
           Neither of them spoke at first.
           "What the hell are you doing in here?" he said.
           "I was going to ask you the same thing."
           He continued to stare at her. "I'm not the girl in the guy's bathroom."
           "I was out there waiting for you." She sighed, as if this were about to turn into a story, the kind only women told, where you started the day you were born, and, if the listener was lucky, managed to get to the point while you were still alive. He was beginning to remember why he and Holly had not lasted very long. "And those bratty kids just kept looking at me, but making so much noise, you know?" By that point, he'd forgotten what they'd been talking about. He wondered, also, if maybe he'd tuned out half of her speech. He'd always had a tendency of doing that with her. It was coming back to him now. "They'll scream and yell and shove each other around and still be looking at you the whole time. And I'm waiting for you," she said, "to come out of the bathroom so I can talk to you. But you never come out. So I decided, fuck it, and just came in here myself. What were you doing in here that whole time? Hiding out in the men's bathroom is so incredibly gay."
            "Shit," was all he could think of to say. A lot was going through his head right then. He figured he'd stumbled across some major insight regarding what separated the male mind from the female one, how Holly could have an experience and find a way to stretch it into an autobiography and all that could come out of his mouth was an expletive.
           Off to his right, the bathroom door opened again, and a kid with wide eyes almost obscured by thick glasses came in. He looked at them for a moment without saying anything before rushing to a stall and shutting himself in.
         "Come on," Julian said. He turned and grabbed her arm. "Let's get out of here."
         "Hell no," she said. She yanked away from him. "I'm not going out into a mob scene. We can talk in here."
         "Um, it's not exactly the best place---"
          "You're such a coward, Julian. I saw you with that girl at the table. She put up with your shit like I used to? I feel sorry for her. It's times like this when it becomes so clear to me why I dumped you. You know, I should have known when I accepted the invitation that you'd be here. In high school, you never even bothered with Ben. But I guess now that I can't stand the damned sight of you and just want to be able to celebrate a happy occasion with an old friend without any kind of scene, the two of you are conveniently glued to the hip. Is there any place you're not going to pop up? Are you trying to force me into seclusion, like Emily Freaking Dickinson or something?"
           He shrugged. He didn't really get the connection. He didn't know much about Emily Dickinson other than the fact that she was some reclusive poet who probably didn't make a habit of following young men into the bathroom just so that she could berate them and make them feel bad about themselves. She probably had more class than that.
          "I don't know why I even care," Holly said. "You're either the biggest asshole there ever was, or else you really are gay, and I knew it all along. Hell, if it weren't for me, you'd probably still be a virgin. And this is the thanks I get."
          He sighed. "Are you done?"
          "Hell yeah, I am."
          She was halfway out the door when he caught a glimpse of Diana. She was standing in the lobby, wide-eyed as she stared right back at him. He didn't have time to think. He just reacted. It was as if his body knew what he had to do, even though his brain hadn't caught up with it yet. "Wait." He followed Holly, and came to halt a few feet away from Diana's glowering presence. "It's not what you think," he said.
           But his girlfriend's attention was not on him. "Who the hell are you?" she asked Holly.
          Julian shrugged. "We screwed around a bit last summer. It was nothing."
           Diana continued to glare at Holly. "Were you harassing my boyfriend?"
           "I don't want anything to do with your gay boyfriend." Holly brushed past her. "You can have him."
           Diana turned and watched her head back to the reception hall. "I can't believe it," she said when Holly was out of sight. She finally turned her attention to Julian. "Are you all right? Was she bothering you?"
           He shook his head and headed for the front entrance. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

          "What are you doing out here?"
          Julian looked up at his friend.
          "Diana asked me to talk to you. She thinks you're mad at her."
          Julian slid over on the bench. "It's nothing personal." He really didn't feel like explaining it. And yet he knew that, regardless of how much he didn't want to do it, he would have to tell Diana the truth. It wasn't as if he disliked her as a human being or anything. It was just beneath his dignity to fuck her. Maybe it would be a good idea to tell her the news over the phone. He could text her the message. "Ben, can I ask you something?"
          His friend sat down next to him.
          "What made you decide to marry Jane?"
          Ben shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I just knew she was the one."
         Right, Julian thought.  Everyone always dreamed about the one.  He dreamed about the one too.  The one girl who wasn't a complete idiot.  He'd probably have to wait awhile, but he wasn't holding his breath. 
          Then again, looking over at his friend and seeing a married man he didn't recognize, he realized that maybe love made idiots out of everyone.
        Suddenly he wished he hadn't come. He'd always hated weddings.