On Turning 30 (10-16-2007)

It seems so long ago. Wandering into my grandmother's kitchen, years before she got sick and passed away, to smell the Cuban food on the stove top. I must have been eight or nine. My G.I. Joe's lying on the beige tile in the family room. She was at the counter slicing peppers. She didn't hear me over the crackling of oil in the pan. Bare feet on yellow and white linoleum make very little noise. I wasn't sneaking up on her. I loved her very much. Years later when she was sick i was filled with regret because I barely visited her when she was spending her final days in the care home, lying on a bed, her body recovering from hip surgery in spite of her mind. I was nineteen and the innocent victim of my parent's messy divorce and I was scared, I think. Cowardly. She asked about me I was told. I don't know why I didn't go earlier, but when I finally did she died a few days later. I hadn't spoken to my father for six months. He cried on my shoulder as I hugged him in my arms at her funeral.

I remember being even younger. Four or five and crying like a spoiled child because I wanted my mother to buy me a spider-man toy back when Macy's was Burdines, and Burdines sold toys. She looked at me and for some reason understood that my tears were sincere. I think she knew the answer but she had to ask if I really wanted that toy. I nodded and she bought it for me, and I went from despair to joy because at that age you don't truly understand sacrifice. I think she spent less money on clothes for herself in those modest days when I was spoiled and the table in the dining room at the house had no chairs.

I remember playing underneath my uncle's pool table, I must have been three or four, listening for the smack and thump and rumble of the balls as they landed in the pockets overhead and rolled down into the ball return. I remember the smell of liquid hand soap on my hands after I'd washed them in his game room bathroom. He had an old and broken train set built on a table of wooden 2x4's collecting dust in the dark and cluttered garage. It was huge to me, but probably smaller than I remember. But I won't ever forget the little plastic trees. The fake grassy hills and the tiny black plastic benches. The switches that I turned and turned hoping to squeeze just a little more life out of that broken train set to make it work.

I remember playing Space Invaders with my father on a handed down atari game system on a television that had dials and no buttons. The television actually had a remote control. It made clacking noises and it took my little hands a considerable amount of effort to push it's ivory white oval buttons. In those days I followed my dad around the house feeling important and carrying his tools while he wired light switches. I remember sitting on the floor of my living room on Christmas day, under the tree, playing with him, my feet wrapped in the booties of my polyester pajama pants, white rubber soles gray and dirty from running around the house. Happiness. It took the death of my grandmother about ten years ago for me to start to forgive my father for my parent's divorce. It took ten years after that for me to realize that he hadn't really done anything but live his life. I spoke with him just yesterday and if I could follow him around the house and carry his tools for the rest of my life I would. He makes me feel important.

I wish I could be stronger. For my mother. Because I'm thirty years old and she still wants to be sure I drive safe. She tells me not to drink too much and to call her when I get home after visiting her. When she introduces me to people I feel like I should apologize to them. They have to listen to her talk about me all the time.

I remember the first time I fell in love. It happened when I was seventeen. Awkward and fumbling. Her white skin was smooth and unblemished and I was almost scared to fully explore it. She wrote me little notes and we talked on the phone for hours and I snuck into her house to spend the night and we had sex during her lunch period when I would pick her up from school and drive her to my house. One time, she was wearing a blue and white plaid dress, she sat up on my bed, pulled the dress up and produced a condom. She just held it up for discovery. I took her to my senior prom. Then I graduated from the all boys prepatory high school I attended and started college, where I felt the need to break up.

I fell in love again at nineteen. Different to be sure. Nothing in common but for the fact that we were just children in adult bodies with adult urges. We played video games. Went to Disney World. We met standing outside our chemistry class and hit it off. She was my lab partner.

When I was 21 I really fell in love. She was so sweet and kind and smart. Five years older than I was, but it might as well have been fifteen. She was an adult, making $70,000 a year and I wasn't out of school yet. I barely knew what I really wanted to do with my life. She pushed me and made me stronger and better and I never really, truly, thanked her for it. It wasn't easy. I fought for her. I cried and pleaded for her. We were together for two years and then I broke it off. She must have been confused. I was too young. I ran into her a couple of years ago. I was on a date. She told us about her two beautiful children and then before she left she lightly brushed the side of my cheek and looked into my face. She half smiled before she told the girl I was with what a great guy I was.

When I was 24 I was so completely infatuated with a woman two years my senior that I was compelled to do things I never done before. Some things I'm too ashamed of to repeat here. I wrote songs about her. I worried about where she was and who she was with. I actually thought about proposing just so I could keep her close. I sat in bed, on mornings she slept over, and stroked her hair while she slept lamenting that I had to leave her side to go about my day. I showed up late to work a lot. I took her to Puerto Rico with me and we had a great time. But on the last night I think I knew. Deep down I think I knew it was the beginning of the end. There was no way i could contain her spirit. After five months she left me. It took me a year to fully get over it.

There have been others since. Each of them offering me something so perfect that I could look past all the other imperfections. There was one who gave me ravenous passion. Every kiss and every fight was the beginning and the end at once. But fire so bright and hot burns itself out. Then I met another girl. This one gave me true affection and caring. We could sit around and watch television or talk or just hang out and I could look into her eyes while inside her and feel like there was more than just a physical union happening. I still don't know why I ended that relationship.

I remember being a child and writing stories. Typing out chapters of cliche adventures that I mimicked from those I read about or saw on TV. When I was ten I asked my parents for a Casio keyboard, even though I couldn't play. I used to sit on the floor of my grandparents house and draw all day. When I was 19 I started playing the guitar. By the time I'd reached 24 I'd written and recorded a lot of songs most people will never hear. When I was 28 I made a short film entitled Take Four. Now I'm thirty and I realize that no matter how much things change, they invariably stay the same.

After thirty years I've learned that regret is terrible. That love is fleeting but worth every effort to nurture. That life takes so many unexpected turns that it's a miracle how any us make it through. I suppose some of us don't. I've learned that I love my parents so much that it hurts me. That nothing worth doing is easy and that nothing done alone is really worth doing. Happiness is temporary and needs to be appreciated in moments and not days or weeks. It can be as small and insignificant as a hug or kiss or as meaningful as getting a new job or buying a new car, but it never lasts. We have to keep searching for it though. Every day of our lives.

Spirit (5-8-2009)

I know you're out there

Looking down on me.

Somewhere out there

I can feel you haunting me.

I want to know if I can track you down.

I want to know if I can chase you out.

I want to know if I can run you down

And exorcise your spirit.

I know you're out there

Looking down on me.

Fuck you for thinking

I want your sympathy.

I hear you out there

Calling out to me.

Your scent, it carries in the air

Choking me.

I want to know if I can track you down.

I want to know if I can chase you out.

I want to know if I can run you down

And exorcise your spirit.

Your body is dead to me.

Your mind is dead to me.

Your heart is dead to me.

You're fucking dead to me.

"The Nature of Inviting" -Chris Corner

I surrender to the power,
Next we're born again,
And with fixation on every sign,
I cannot explain.

I worship intoxication,
I took all the pain,
It's an appetite that you find that you throw away.
Survive the golden dreams you try to escape from,
But you surrender to the power,
To the only way.

I love you, I hate you,
I love you, I hate you.
I love you, I hate you,
I love you, I hate you.
But that's the nature of inviting.

To your wrecklessness and pleasure,
I purely commit,
Cause everything that you are,
Is everything that is.
Survive the golden dreams you try to escape from,
But you surrender to the power,
To the only way.

I love you, I hate you,
I love you, I hate you.
I love you, I hate you,
I love you, I hate you.
It's the nature of inviting. 

"Corrupt" -by M. L. Gore

I could corrupt you

in a heart beat.
You think your so special.
You think your so sweet.

What are you trying?

Don't even tempt me.
Soon you'll be crying,

wishing you dreamt me.

You'll be calling out my name,
when you need someone to blame.

I can corrupt you.
It would be easy.
Watching you suffer,
girl, it would please me.

I wanna touch you 

with my little finger.
I know it will crush you.

My memory would linger.

You'll be crying out in pain,
begging me to play my games.

I can corrupt you.
It will be ugly.
They could sedate you,

But what good would drugs be?

I wanna touch you 

with my hands on your hips.
It would be too much to
place my lips on your lips.

You'll be calling out my name,
begging me to play my games.

Anywhere but in your mind.

Where does it end? Everyone’s completely out of their mind. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe you’re the only one who sees it.

A pair of fingers picks up the blue pill.

Where does it start?

A red light bulb. Shadows moving on the wall.

Maybe the first time the two of you had sex. That moment where the warmth enveloped you and you felt connected. Not in that cliché romantic-comedy bullshit way.

A mini-dv tape. Labeless. Lying on tile.

Maybe it’s when you smashed the tape into a thousand pieces. Splintering the only record of the warmth and connection that existed outside of your mind and her's. The proof is gone. Maybe it never happened.

A set of plumbers pliers comes crashing onto the tape. A FLASH of writhing bodies. Bathed in red light. You are jerked into a new position. Black shards splinter upwards and the magnetic innards sprawl out from the crushed tape.

Maybe it was years earlier and you didn’t quite understand. And you started taking a little blue pill to make the pain go away. And you’re so stupid. To think this pain exists anywhere but in your mind.

A twitching eyelid. Your mouth. Opening and closing. Muscles pulling underneath. Clenched jaw.

There's a clicking in your jaw. You wake up in the middle of the night teeth clenched because you had some fucked up dream. You stopped taking the pill.

E. B. 03-01-2008

I am alive...

I am alive.

As much as I try to deny or convince myself that I feel nothing.

I am alive.

When the electricity passes between your skin and mine.

I am alive.

When you stare through me. Into me. And are not fazed.

I am alive.

When I yearn to be with you again.

Then I want to die.

The Dinner Party

I'm sitting at the table with all my old friends. I know we've all had too much to drink because there are corks on the floor, under my foot, that have long since rolled off the surface of the table and dark stains bleed into the white table cloth where my glass spilled when somebody knocked it over earlier.

I look at the laughing faces of those sitting around me. Rejection laughs the hardest. Cackling and slapping the table loudly. He wasn't invited, but he always seems to show up anyway. Next to him, laughing almost as hard, sits Disappointment. She lets the glass in her hand down. In between cackles he turns to her and they kiss. It's almost obscene what a good couple they make.

Faith juts a glass in my direction. She wants a refill. I pick up the nearest green bottle but its empty. I hold it up to the light to peer through it. Just to make sure. A quick glance around the table and I notice all the bottles are empty save for the one in the hands of Temptation. She dangles it in front of me, before smirking and pouring the last of the wine into her glass. Faith is not happy. I look for the nearest waiter but I can't make eye contact and none of them sees me raise my hand. Faith gets up from the table. Sighs. Drops her napkin on her chair. I think about following her as she walks off. Reason looks at me and shakes his head. Like he knows what I'm thinking.

My vision falls on the two in front of me. Hope runs a finger along the rim of her glass. The glass tips up on the edge of its base. Precariously balanced by her delicate touch. Love plays with strands of her own hair and the air catches her scent and I can smell her sweet fragrance from here. They share a glance that implies some illicit affair will take place after we're all gone. I imagine Hope running her delicate fingers over the nape of Love's neck. Drawing them down to her perfect breast. Balancing a fingertip on her nipple to tease her. I must be staring because they both glare at me. I chuckle. No one can make me feel more like a voyeur than these two. There might as well be a pane of glass between them and me.

I glance around the restaurant. At the front door. Towards the restrooms. I think about looking for Faith. Sadness lights a cigarette, and takes a deep drag. She's not suppose to smoke in here. I shoot her a look and she exhales in my general direction and the veil of smoke comes over me. Choking me. I swipe at the air in front of my face. I wish she would just disappear. I feel like ripping the cigarette from her hand. Temperance, a late arrival, as usual, pats me on the back and says hello. He sits far away from me. I'm not about to start screaming across the table. I wish Passion had shown up. I'm so thirsty all of a sudden. Where the fuck is the waiter?

The guest of honor, at the head of the table, gestures for us to quiet down. We do. She begins, "I just want to say thanks for coming out tonight. It means a lot to me. I'm sorry if I haven't been around as much as you'd all like these last few days, but if things go well I'll be around quite a bit more in the future." The waiter suddenly appears as if culled from the ether. He fills all our glasses from one last bottle. Before anyone's taken a sip I quickly stand up. I raise my glass towards the head of the table. I smile. "To Happiness." The chorus echoes my sentiment and I sit down again. Momentarily satisfied to be in her presence. Even if she's got an early appointment in the morning and won't be staying long. It was good to see her.

"It Doesn't Matter Two" -by M. L. Gore

"As I lay here with you
The shame lies with us
We talk of love and trust
That doesn't matter

Though we may be the last in the world
We feel like pioneers
Telling hopes and fears
To one another

And oh what a feeling
Inside of me
It might last for an hour
Wounds are healing
Inside of me
Though it feels good now
I know it's only for now

The feeling is intense
You grip me with your eyes
And then I realise
It doesn't matter"

- Martin .L. Gore

A. Z. 06-27-2007

02-28-2008

Jealous or Guilty or Neither or Both (2001)

An extraordinarily beautiful woman got on the elevator today. She lives on my floor. I tried not to look at her. I thought about my girlfriend. I thought there must be times when my girlfriend finds other men attractive, and I felt hurt. I think I probably looked like I couldn't breathe because the extraordinarily beautiful woman asked if I was okay.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks." I said and she flashed an extraordinarily beautiful smile and I didn't know how I should feel. I didn't know if I should feel jealous or guilty or neither or both. 

11-30-2008

Letter to an Ex-Lover (01/31/06)

Do you remember when you danced for me in the living room of my apartment, naked but for four inch heels, swaying back and forth in the flicker of a strobe light? I lay on the ground looking up at you, remember?

Do you remember when you posed in the influence of my red bed-side lamp, so that I could take pictures of you with a borrowed digital camera? Do you remember that you watched as I deleted those pictures--or did I?

Do you remember that lazy day of having sex on your mother's bed when she was away? Spending all day naked and under the covers, curtains pulled taut?

Do you remember when you went down on me in the shower of my father's house, water dripping down your face?

Do you remember reaching to rearrange the angle of my video camera? Do you remember watching me destroy the video tape with a set of plumber's pliers because we were so angry and sure that it was over that neither of us could keep the evidence?
Do you remember regretting this after?

Do you remember being drunk and horny, and wanting to find another woman to sleep with us? Do you remember the times I held you by the throat while we had sex? Do you remember when I covered your face with a pillow? With a pillow case? The dirty things we whispered in each other's ears?

Do you remember when we fucked on the floor of my empty apartment, after I'd moved all of my things out, the carpet burning our skin? It was the last time I had sex in that apartment.

Do you remember smoking weed and fucking and eating ice cream and fucking and laughing and fucking again?
Do you remember the last time we had sex, because I don't?
Do you remember our first kiss? The dim lit upstairs lounge? My hand traveling down your back to your ass?
Do you remember, before all of this, standing on the staircase in that black and white striped dress, looking up at me and asking, "You're leaving?"

Do you remember the first time we met? That you smirked disdainfully at my joke because you didn't think it was very funny?
I remember.

I remember even if for a short time I forgot. I remember eventhough I know of the tendancy to view the past with rose-tinted fondness. I remember even when I'm in the arms of another and I don't want to.

Although I may never again touch you or taste you or feel you from within, such was the fire between us that I will always remember; I will always think of you not as an ex, but as a lover...

Natalie (12/11/05)

In the 28th year of my life I met a sweet and conflicted young graduate student with a luminous smile named Natalie. She had a subtle grace and elegance to her movement that was belied only by the not-so-subtle, if endearing, shrug of her shoulders every time I made her laugh. They would bounce up and down with the tender and soft rise and fall of her laugh, and I likened it to one of the most beautiful sights and sounds I'd ever seen or heard. I grew very fond of Natalie in a very short time, and drew from her all the laughing and breathing and sighs that I could consume. But, I also drew pain.

We'd met in a club/lounge, a tiny lobby in a converted art deco hotel, rearranged to accommodate singles crowds. I was there to meet someone else, but because this second girl was late, or because I was just instantly and unavoidably attracted to Natalie, my original plans became discarded ones. After a series of casual glances turned deliberate I approached Natalie. She was standing at the bar smiling, laughing, bare shoulders bobbing out from underneath a beige shawl. "Hi, I'm Natalie," she said without giving me a chance to say a word and it was as if I was wrapped up in her shawl and shoulders and smell and smile before I could say, "Nice to meet you." Lord, was I in trouble.

How is it that you can describe the exquisite taste of someone else's flesh? Yes, flesh is salty with sweat, and sweet with the lingering of fragrance and perfume and lotion, but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about that sensation of placing your open lips and tongue on the base of another's neck, in that intimate space just above the shoulder, and feeling like you could subsist just from that. Even as I write this now I swear that I still have that exquisite and sweet and bittersweet taste lingering in my mouth.

You see, Natalie was conflicted and pained and, at that time, incapable, perhaps, of any kind of profound emotional investment. She was just out of a relationship that had left a deep and sizable wound, open and festering, in her psyche. You know whenever you meet a person like this--for they have a sense of self esteem far beneath and below what others regard they should have. Perhaps, because of this, Natalie could not, or chose not, to see my affections as anything but motivated by seduction and physical pleasure. And maybe every word that was said to refute this she only saw as proof of my 'imagined' devious intentions.

I grew up writing stories, painting pictures and singing songs. And forgive me if it sounds self-aware and conceited; but words have always come easy to me. It is not out of arrogance to say that I express myself well. In fact, I also suspect that I feel more than others do. That I have a deeper reservoir for emotion--and therefore am more capable of understanding and explaining it. Maybe, it's these two factors that truly encapsulate the irony of knowing Natalie. For I grew very fond of her in a very short time, and anytime I told her I how I felt, she only saw a ruse made in conquest. Because she knew how easy the words came they had become less meaningful. But I know that in those moments of subsistence, as I drew smiles and passionate breaths and bobs from her shoulders--in those lazy days between our first meeting and 'our talk'--I felt those very things that she was incapable of.

We had a heart to heart, Natalie and I, lying on my bed, our legs entwined, our feet close to the headboard and our heads at the foot of the bed. And she tried to tell me about how difficult dealing with her break up had been. She tried to tell me about how hard she was taking this rearrangement of her life and I could tell it was true. I could see the corners of her eyes moisten, and I wanted nothing more that to take away her pain--even if it meant my own. I had heard somewhere, that the difference between a good lover and a great one, is that the latter has only one thought, and that it's not of himself. So I smiled and she kissed me and said, "I feel much better after our talk," and it was never clearer to me how things would go. No, I didn't know how any of this would end--only that I would suffer until it did.