Tag Archives: love
The lawyer said.
Filed under health, humor, legal writing, notes, recommended reblogs
Suffering Jets, Bowling Litionists, and Peace Knicks, a fable
Suffering Jets, Bowling Litionists, and Peace Knicks, a fable
My mom’s always trying to teach me History. She says it’s important for us kids to know all the bad stuff that happened in the olden days so we won’t be as stupid as all those olden people were. My mom seems really mad at those olden people. She says human beings could have lived in a “paradise-on-earth” if it wasn’t for a whole bunch of bad ideas they thought up and then were stupid enough to get stuck on. Just as if they were GOOD ideas! My mom thinks good ideas are real important. I’m not so sure because I can’t always tell the difference between one of her “good” ideas and one of the olden people’s “bad” ideas, but I’d never tell her that because if I did I think she’d go nutsy-futsy just like Nadine Houck’s dad did, and then I’d be pretty much alone except for that mean bunch of kids living on that hill up from the lake. They’re not mean so much as they are just pissed because nobody’s really around to care for them and make them read their schoolbooks every morning.
Anyway, my mom’s always trying to teach me History, and so I try to learn it. Like today, she got started on the “god-damned East-West mutual suicide pact.” She says that back when there were lots of olden people, (she says there were BILLIONS, but that nutso-futso and I don’t believe her), everybody actually KNEW what would happen if there was “an all-scale nuclear confrontation.” Like, they made TV shows and movies about it, and people wrote all kinds of books and stuff, and they had big “world conferences” and all, and lots of people even made stuff for people to buy so that when the “all-scale nuclear confrontation” came, they’d have water to drink and canned peas and tuna fish and EVERYTHING.
And like people even built bomb shelters in their yards and stuff. My mom says this is “evidence of the world-group insanity” of the early twenty-hundreds and that I should mark it WELL in my soul. So anyways, all the olden people actually KNEW what could happen and all. Which is real hard for me to believe sometimes. Like if my Mom and me actually KNEW that the roof of our house was going to fall in, and so we bought big steel umbrellas and helmets and stuff, and kept living right in the SAME actual house but all the time acting real worried about the roof caving in and talking like MAD about how to prevent it and all, but really not doing anything to brace the ceiling. And EVEN having some guy show us pictures of what our blood would look like spread all over the floor. But then we’d just buy bigger steel umbrellas and harder helmets but we STILL wouldn’t leave the house. Damn, isn’t it hard to believe that those dumb olden people could actually ACT like that?
So anyway, the whole of Earth really, really KNEW that they were in a big pile of trouble. But people did ALL sorts of stuff to “distract their lunatic sensibilities,” my mom says, and they’d do stuff like jump out of big airplanes to feel what it was like while all the time they just kept stocking up on the god-damned steel umbrellas and helmets.
My mom said that one time in the middle of the twentieth century and towards the 70’s some olden people actually and truly came to their senses and try to yell loud at all the “sleeping fools,” my mom says. She says that she read all about them in college and always wondered why they quit yelling. She says that groups of good people would get together all down in history, but that as soon as they had “achieved their one objective goal,” they would trickle down and eventually dry up. She talks about the Suffering Jets and the Bowling Litionists and the New York Peace Knicks and that they all lost their momentum in the end.
Anyway, my mom says that HER theory of what in HELL happened to people is they had plenty of guilt, but no feeling of responsibility to go along with it. Like they felt bad about their “sins of omission” and all, and they hung their heads about it, but what it REALLY was, was just “crocodile tears.” Like they would say, “Gee, I feel SO guilty, but gee, if I felt guilty about every bad thing in the world I wouldn’t be able to SLEEP at night and my face would break out and I wouldn’t be having FUN and stuff.” Like they had a mental maturity age “of about three,” my mom says.
Filed under for children, humor, mysterious, notes, prose poetry, science, short stories
the divided self, a poem
The Divided Self
That lonely man and that sad woman
are dead now, but I still can’t
get away from their lawful claims.
They possess my hands, my feet,
my face. I have only been loaned
these things: possessions assembled
for me out of unseen molecules
I believe in by faith, with thanksgiving.
Blind, jerking passion such as this
nurtures the kind of organized madness
I learned to live with a long time ago.
Short and sweet, to the point:
I hate them bringing me into the world!
What on earth were they thinking,
warm lust pressed against the cold metal
of a postwar kitchen table?
Or did they simply writhe on the linoleum?
Alone, I existed weightless, unknowing, free.
I never approved the intrusion of his
sperm, wriggling madly for oblivion;
tiny kamikaze. No wonder men feel
like clumsy, oafish gods half the time.
As for Mother, she arched dizzily beneath him
half-clothed: strapless formal, silk stockings,
shiny pumps with spike heels,
and though she opened her flesh,
how she longed to kill him with her shoe.
Such war made me. Secret wishes
do a body in. I am that frail universe
mindlessly created, allowed to run wild.
Filed under legal writing, mysterious, poetry
Rose, Honey, or Strawberry Moon
Rose, Honey, or Strawberry Moon (June)
Roses
We dug up the bushes, moving gifts from my mother’s friends, transported them to our tiny backyard, planted them in rows, a fine garden. Suddenly they took over, bursting into frenzied blooms, the metal tags dangling, all hybrids, expensive, my mother’s friends were rich, we weren’t. Tropicana, Peace, Mister Lincoln — but over the next few years they all gave up the ghost, dwindled away to one or two sticks bearing black-spotted leaves, an occasional bud. My mother & stepfather forgot the roses, neglected them the way they neglected their and my mental health. Cases of beer and gallons of wine were lugged home instead. We sold the house when my mother & stepfather divorced, the new owners didn’t care for roses, I haven’t seen the backyard in decades. I used to swing there, under a Florida holly, on a splintery board, watching the roses in their sweet decline. Remnants of a more splendid time, not mine. My dog and cat were buried in that yard, my girlhood surrendered to a more ominous time, a time of sneaking out the bedroom window. I had a purple and blue room, painted furniture, a globe of the world, matching curtains & bedspread. I lost the room when I lost my cobbled-together family. But the absence of family was no great loss, not the same as losing the roses. It wasn’t my family anyway, though people were always telling me how much I looked like my “dad.” We hardly ever had the heart to tell them we weren’t related. For a while, he liked me, but not when I started showing signs of womanhood. Then he despised me, the way he despised my mother.
I was an ugly, awkward girl. My glasses hid my eyes, my hair hid my face, the only things revealed were arms & legs like jointed sticks, bare feet with black soles, a pair of bright yellow & white plaid shorts & a white cotton shirt. My hair bleached at the ends, stiff like straw from the sun & pool water. My smile was alarming, my sullen face more of a comfort. I met my “real” father that year. He was frightening, a reminder of myself yet a complete stranger. I suffered from vertigo in his presence, the room grew long and thin, the sounds bounced off the walls like rubber, and I was covered with cold sweat. I didn’t want to touch him. After he left, I went to swing next to the roses. That rope and board swing saved my mind over & over. I could carry on after that soothing motion.
Honey
The neighbor across the street decided to keep bees. The two hives were square wooden boxes, painted white, and he kept them in the side yard, past the driveway, against the chain link fence. They buzzed in and out all day, and I was always afraid of being stung. His orange blossom honey was sweet & bright & bland. I was desperately in love with his oldest son, and the man himself hated me. The mother was slightly less hostile. His son was tall & long-limbed & had chestnut hair & dark hazel eyes. His hands were beautifully shaped, the hands of a pianist, but he was not a musician, he was not an artist, not an intellectual. He should have been, he looked the part. Instead he was an athlete, always running or riding or throwing or hitting. I played basketball with him in the driveway, always humiliated, always losing, but it was the only way to be with him. I humbled myself, and years later when I became beautiful, he loved me back, but it was too late. He wouldn’t speak, and I couldn’t stand the silence. I foresaw years of painful silence broken only by my own shouting. I gave him up, my first love. And lived to regret it. I wonder if the silence would have endured. His nervous, awkward kisses were sweeter than his father’s honey. We lay together on my bed and necked for hours. He was so shy. I was willing to let him be that way. The first time we had real sex wasn’t as good as all the times spent in preparation. We were both too young to know what we had. Everything seems possible in June. Everything seems as though it will last forever. I still have a jar with a petrified sugar-crust, remnants of his daddy’s honey.
Strawberries
One year, my grandfather planted a field of strawberries behind his house, my little brother and I wandered up and down the rows, picking the ripe ones and eating them on the spot. We didn’t care that they weren’t washed. They were so warm & sweet & soft & our lips turned red, my brother’s face smeared pinkish, like a lover’s blush. I was madly in love with everyone that summer. I just wanted to be held. Men were foreign to me, I couldn’t understand them at all. My brother and I ate as many as we wanted, then picked buckets full for later. Washed & cut up, they weren’t the same, still good, but the wildness was off them. My grandfather’s hands as he cut them up were beautiful & careful & solid, I wanted to look at his hands forever. They were not delicate, but not rough — a man’s good hands, they looked loving & trustworthy, and even though he never really touched me, I could tell they could transmit all varieties of tenderness & passion. I loved my grandfather for being that kind of man — I wished I could have been a stranger, so that he could have loved me too. All summer long, I ate sweet strawberries & dreamed of love, a man to love me like a piece of perfect, ripe fruit. I was only 14, still gangly & shy, and no one came along for several years, yet still the dream carried me along like a fast ship, driven by a cool wind.
Filed under mysterious, notes, poetry, prose poetry
billy charles cantrell, may 5, 1998
May 5, 1998
Billy Charles Cantrell died on April 28th. I hardly knew him, but I had known of him for a long time. He had a waxed handlebar moustache & worked at the downtown post office. I trusted him with many, many packages & important letters & documents over the years. He stood out in a crowd. He made customers feel safe, you knew something you put into Mr. Cantrell’s hands was definitely going to arrive at its’ destination.
Someone I hardly knew died the other day, but I sat & stared at his obituary for a long time. I had always wondered about him, I had always wondered what he was like during his off hours. He worked at the downtown post office in Gainesville, where I have lived since 1981. He worked for the post office for 40 years. I hadn’t known he was retired. I think he died of cancer. He was 69 years old. He had college degrees in anthropology & archaeology, which I never knew. He’d been in the Army, he’d lived in Gainesville 44 years. He must have retired pretty recently. They’ve remodeled the lobby of the downtown post office now, so when I walk in there’s no trace of the old feeling, the old feeling that Mr. Cantrell gave us, the postal customers. He was handsome, and had sharp, penetrating eyes, but a good-natured smile & manner. He was unfailingly polite, unfailingly efficient. You could tell he was smart. I wish I’d known him better, I wish I’d met him for coffee or something. He had no children.
I wonder how long he’d been sick. Maybe he retired at 65? Should I call his widow? Tell her what he meant to me? His picture was in the obituary, otherwise I’d never have known who it was. I’m so glad she included his picture. So very glad. I’ll bet Shelley knew him, or at least knew who he was. Oh, I hope he didn’t die of a brain tumor.
Dear Mr. Cantrell, we hardly knew ye. But thanks anyway, thanks for working 40 years in that post office, thanks for taking the envelopes and boxes so very gently and firmly and wonderfully. Thanks for your sensitive looking hands and your brisk manner, your occasional smile, that glint in your eye of humor. You were always thinking a lot of things, that was clear. You were very much alive from the neck up.
Filed under Uncategorized
Honey Upon My Tongue, a poem
Honey Upon My Tongue, a poem
Purple silk, soft against my skin, phone pressed to my ear like a shell,
I’m listening for the sounds of you, the sounds of the sea in your veins,
I want to hear your voice, sweet, low, soft as the silk against my skin.
I imagine you in your bed, stretched out, as comfortable against the mattress
as you would be against my body… you’re talking, and I’m listening like
it’s the first time… oh, but it is the first time. After you, nothing will be
the same, nothing will ever taste or smell or sound the way it used to.
There was the world before you, and now it feels flat and dead and dull,
as if I can hardly see how I moved through all the endless days, waiting…
waiting to hear this, your good voice, your sweet words, the sound of your
breath, the shape of your mouth… and your lips call to me like a wolf
howls at the moon, pulling my soul out of my body, stopping the clock,
making my whole self nothing but this overwhelming hunger. It is dark,
the middle of the night, the hour when the blackness turns to velvet,
when the stars shine like diamond chips in the dark blanket of the sky.
You are far away, but your voice is gentle in my bed with me. The image
of your body glows in my head, everything is in my head, everything is
possible, I may live forever. I want to please you. By pleasing you, I please
myself. Your joy is mine, I am greedy for it. And oh, the hunger. Inside me
is a magnet, collapsing the space between us. I am sucking you through wires…
and if I were there – do you wish I were there? I’d press my own shaking electric
fingers, my palms, upon your skin, first this place, then that place, searching,
reaching, touching each square inch of you, tracing your limbs with my
tongue’s thoughtless purpose; touching, rubbing, pushing, pulling, mouth open,
warm, mouth wet, soft, lips fiery, trembling, my head intoxicated with charting
and caressing the unknown territory of your sweet flesh. First, your wise,
funny mouth; your strong, stubborn teeth; your mischievous, wanton tongue.
I draw the good scent of your skin into my body for nourishment, breathing
you again and again, my chest rising, then falling, over and over, air drawn fast,
then faster; for you; because of you; simply to delight you. Then comes
the time of your neck, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers; my face an open
flower kissing you all over; my arms anchoring your warm, solid body;
my hair touching your chest, trailing slowly down your torso, your waist,
your hips, your loins, covering you like a loosely woven silk curtain.
For you; because of you; simply to delight you. All the while I caress you
with my lips, my tongue, my fingers, I tug your body closer to mine.
We feel each other’s weight, heat, firmness. As I move over you, your back
arches like a drawn bow; my lips are sweet arrows stinging; I caress your thighs,
your belly, your ass; I am greedy; I am hungry; I want this, simply to delight you.
I will say honey upon my tongue is like ashes after tasting you;
I will say I have lost myself and do not ever want to find my way home;
will say I have well-pleased the gods who created me, for this moment
and forever. I have a fire deep inside my body and will burn through
everything between us, mountains, walls, tables, chairs, clothes; just
to reach you; simply to delight you. Someday, I would like your bedroom
to be ringed with heaps of fragrant white flowers — frangipani, gardenia,
honeysuckle, hyacinth, jasmine, lily of the valley, magnolia, narcissus, rose.
The thick, sweet scent will make you relaxed, sleepy, and perhaps then
you will know how easy it is to surrender….
Filed under health, mysterious, poetry
Possessing My Daughter, section one of a short story
Possessing My Daughter, section one of a short story
I think the human race somehow needs to evolve beyond children. Beyond parenthood. I certainly didn’t want to be a mama. I resented it and I still do. Even from the land of the dead, I still begrudge her all my time and effort. She took so much, so much from me. She was never grateful, never. That’s why I’m making her write this now.
I almost had an abortion, but her father talked me out of it. He could talk a dog off a meat wagon. He carried me off across the desert to Las Vegas to get married. My own father was so angry when he found out. There I was, suddenly, on my own at 19, out of my father’s house. My new husband and I took a small apartment in Venice Beach.
David had this asinine idea of being an artist. He had this notion that my father should pay the bills indefinitely. I had dropped out of college halfway through sophomore year. I was seeing a psychiatrist. It was 1959 – need I say more? Freud was God. My doctor said I hadn’t resolved my Electra complex. That, he said, was what was making me so tired. I slept more than 12 hours a day. When I wasn’t sleeping, I shopped and went to parties. The only bad part was knowing that eventually I’d have to make a decision and do something with the rest of my life. It appeared that being deb of the year in my hometown wasn’t going to cut it much longer.
The first boy I loved broke my heart. I vowed that it would never happen again. So I did nothing to repair that broken heart. I let it stay broken. It was the only way I could think of to protect myself. It’s been so long….
Since I’m already dead, I suppose you’re wondering what the point of all this is. The point is this: I don’t want anyone else to suffer what I suffered while I was alive, and especially not what I’m suffering now that I’m dead. Passing from life to death was supposed to bring me some sort of enlightenment, wasn’t that the fairytale? I was supposed to experience an end to all my worldly cares – joy, peace, rest, or just plain oblivion. Well, I didn’t get any of those things. I’m not surprised: why should my death be any different from my life? I got the exact opposite of oblivion. I got awareness and clarity of vision, a vision so merciless and sharp it would make my head hurt, if I still had a head. Yes, I see everything clearly, for the first time, and let me tell you, I’d settle for oblivion any day of the week. All I want to do with my death is shake all of you by the scruff of the nectk until you get clarity of vision, too. Then maybe, since you people are still lucky enough to be alive, you’ll do something with that vision while you still can. Maybe you won’t end up like me.
My poor daughter, even after I died I wouldn’t let her alone. I visited her over and over again in her dreams until she couldn’t stop thinking about me. I took control of her heart and her mind – actually, now I see I did that the day she was born – and I never let go. Now I can see how I really wanted her to tell my story all along – that’s why I raised her the way I did, to give her the necessary skills. It was like heating iron in a forge and pounding it into a useful shape. She’s writing it all down, every last bit. I won’t let her stop until she’s done, and I’m satisfied.
Oh, she’s so much like her father. What a mistake I made. I’ve told so many lies since then that I’m not really sure what happened between us. I think he could sniff out the complications I carried and wanted nothing to do with them. He didn’t want to hear about how I’d suffered during my parents’ divorce and their custody battle over me. He didn’t want to hear how I’d stopped eating after the judge sent me to live with my father. He didn’t want to hear how much I’d hated boarding school. But I do remember wanting to have sex with him and him turning me down. He was too fastidious to have sex with a girl he thought would make for a Problem Breakup. That would only make the problems more problematic. The excuse he used was that he still had a lot of schooling to get through – a year or two of college, then law school – and he couldn’t afford to get serious with anyone. Not, he said, that I wasn’t beautiful and desirable. The issue was I was too beautiful, too desirable, and getting serious with me was apt to derail his train, headed for success. He’d lose sight of his goal, and so we had to stop seeing each other.
Filed under mysterious, short stories
A Collection of Matchbooks, a short story
A Collection of Matchbooks, a short story
1952, the Wayland Manor Hotel, Providence, Rhode Island.
The day is warm and humid, the yellow roses in the park across the street are in full bloom. Eva tugs at the sleeves of her powder-blue silk suit. She’s meeting Neal, the young lawyer she met at a Republican fundraiser last week. Though Eva’s handsome, prep-schooled husband played tennis for Yale and still buys her wonderful presents, she’s lost her passion for him after five children. Neal doesn’t have a dime, but he has smoldering dark eyes and soft, manicured hands. He’s a good talker, very charming, the way he lights her cigarette seems so Continental. Ever since the night Eva ran that girl over with her car after too many glasses of White Star, she’s been looking for a way out. She knows her husband will never let her take the children, that’s what bothers her most.
1953, the Ambassador Hotel, Chicago.
Eva sits in the lobby waiting for Neal. On the train back East from Los Angeles, Neal didn’t sleep more than two hours a night. He’s frantic to make this business deal. Eva’s money can only go so far, and though her mother contributes what she can, Neal’s ego is suffering. Maybe if he didn’t spend so much time playing gin at the Club, he’d do better. His wife really stung him in the divorce, he paid her a lump sum he could ill afford, but he felt so guilty. He was only the second person in his family to divorce, the first was his older sister Nina. She married the guy because her father told her to, so when he started getting weird in the head, she bolted. Has her own dressmaking business back in Providence. She dates the young boarder she took in.
1955, the Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans.
Neal and Eva are stopping over for the night on their way to Savannah. This trip was Eva’s idea, she wanted to revisit her childhood home, show him the house that survived the ’26 hurricane. Her mother grew up there, raised by an aunt. Eva remembers the switchings her nurse gave her for crossing the road by herself. Lilly Mae had a gold tooth in front and wore the most outrageous wigs, red, blonde, honey chestnut. Her bosom was soft, like feather pillows. Eva is disappointed when the hotel can’t give them the Honeymoon Suite. Neal shakes his head, smiles at Eva, pinches her fanny in the elevator on the way up to their room.
1956, annual convention of the California Polled Hereford Association, Berkeley, California.
Neal dances with his daughter, and Eva snipes at how clumsy the girl is. Truth is, she’s gorgeous, and Eva’s feeling old. They got both of Neal’s kids to live with them, Neal’s idea, Eva only wanted sweet little Patrick, not this sullen teenaged girl. She misses her own children dreadfully. Her ex-husband lets them visit in the summer. Still, Eva manages to be kind to Neal’s daughter, she pays for Liza’s boarding school, the very best in the state. Neal had this idea to raise prize Herefords, Eva’s mother thought it was a great idea, so they bought the ranch in Ojai. The cattle women all look the same — brown cheeks, pale orange lipstick. Eva doesn’t fit in, but she doesn’t care. She orders another chilled vodka, downs it in three swallows. Her throat burns, it feels cleansed.
1956, Diamond Jim Moran’s, New Orleans.
Liza’s in the ladies’ room, helping Eva to vomit. Liza wipes Eva’s forehead with a damp towel. The attendant turns away, afraid she’ll start laughing. Eva’s hair flops over her forehead and Liza takes the comb and smoothes it back into her thick French twist. Eva and Neal are on their way home after taking Liza and Patrick to visit their mother in Jacksonville. It was the least Neal could do, considering his ex-wife’s frame of mind. When the children left her, she lost 40 pounds in a month. Liza misses her mother, but doesn’t want to move home. Next summer, she’ll be a debutante.
1959, the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.
Liza’s on break from Mills College, meeting a boy, Ted, for drinks in the lobby. She wanted to go to UCLA, but her father wanted her at a girls’ school. It won’t help. She’ll be pregnant within the year. Ted, the baby’s father, fancies himself a Beatnik. He grew a tiny goatee, sparse but bright red. Liza is getting tired of the same old thing. She sees a woman without legs being pushed in a wheelchair across the lobby. Ted’s right behind, and Liza knows they’ll have sex in the car later. She wonders what it would be like to have no legs to get in the way.
1959, the Luau, Beverly Hills.
Neal’s throwing a reception for Liza after she eloped to Las Vegas. He put a good face on it, announced the wedding in the local paper, but he tried to talk her into an abortion. Liza refused, and Neal thought about having her committed, but Ted talked him out of it. Ted swears he’ll do the right thing, but Neal has a sick feeling. The kid has dollar signs in his eyes, just like Neal at that age. Neal should have listened to his heart, not Ted. He envisions his daughter in a roach-infested apartment on Venice Beach, wearing nothing but black leotards, her enormous belly heaving as she dances to jazz records. He wants to kill someone.
1960, Arnaud’s Restaurant, New Orleans.
Eva and her mother are on their way back out West after a shopping trip to New York. Her mother bought a hat covered with white peacock feathers, and Eva hates it. She wants to strangle her mother, wants her to hurry up and die so Eva can inherit the family money. Eva’s ancestors made their money in shipping, sailing goods up and down the Eastern seaboard, and she is absolutely certain none of them owned slaves. Eva’s mother is a spiritual nut, always falling for some Asian philosophy or another. Next, she’ll run off with the little Mexican gardener, and Eva will have to concoct a suitable cover story. They’ve never been close, not since her mother left for Mexico when Eva was two.
1961, the Redwood Room, Clift Hotel, San Francisco.
Ted and Liza are filing for divorce. Neal is listening to his daughter sob. She thinks Ted needs her, but Neal knows there’s nothing wrong with the kid that a good bank account won’t cure. He had that illness himself. Ted’s refused to work, has taken only art classes instead of working for his MBA like Neal wanted. The baby lives on fried chicken and Pepsi. Still, the little thing is cute — ten months and she walks, no, runs, already. She’s got more of Neal in her than anyone else. Ted’s parents pleaded with Neal not to interfere, but he can’t stand by and watch his daughter worry where her next meal is coming from.
1963, the Seven Seas Restaurant, Miami.
Neal sent the baby to live with his ex-wife, and sent Liza back to school. Liza chose secretarial training, and works in a bank by day, looks for men at night. Liza gets jealous sometimes at how happy her mother is with the baby, but Liza’s not very maternal to begin with. This man she’s involved with is a sailor. She’s never dated someone who didn’t go to college. Even his hands are different.
Filed under mysterious, short stories
a critical review of equatorial rhythms, “written” by rak, former coast guard seaman
a critical review of equatorial rhythms, “written” by rak, former coast guard seaman
Equatorial Rhythms, “typed” by RAK, is the pathetic, badly written “story” of a young coast guard seaman (who enlisted in the United States Coast Guard because he knew his lack of basic survival skills, and in fact, life skills in general, wouldn’t enable him to survive being drafted to Vietnam for even one full day, nay, not even one full hour during the Vietnam War), crossing the equator south for the first time. This self-absorbed, narcissistic young man’s self-pitying past and dismal present intersect with the foreknowledge of his bleak, frightening, and boring future, which he will spend lying on his wife’s couch, letting her pay the bills for ten years, then suddenly dumping her after she survives devastating brain surgery, because suddenly she isn’t content to pay all the bills and be a quiet, crocheting robot anymore. This dull, depressing “story” examines life aboard a coast guard ship, with all its gray-tinted, salty, and decaying “friendships,” petty complaints about stuff that should be barely worth mention by normal humans, the author’s unique, sadly unfunny, bathetic humor and what the narrator incorrectly terms “violence,” a couch-potato-wannabe life, clumsily contrasted with the power of the impossibly vast, eternally wild open sea: a power and majesty the narrator will never, ever, ever understand, or even appreciate with the respect it, the open sea, is due.
Filed under health, humor, legal writing, notes, science, short stories
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 