Alan spoke to me in between beer sips and when the beer was gone our swinging headlights passed over headstone after headstone as we drove out. Alan would lose his own love at the end of the summer and we’d switch supporting roles. I’d sober him up like he’d get me drunk. Steph would go off to Texas A&M for botany and I’d leave for the Northwest to study art. Alan and I remained friends, and while we haven’t always been on the best terms, I can say he’s one of the few men I’ve ever loved like a brother. Driving to work together the day after my would-be break-up (that wasn’t for another month), I still had words to say. Alan wisely smiled and gazed out over the stretch of highway, beams of morning on the brim of his trucker hat, glinting off the rim of his glasses. Like a true Texan sage he then said something I would never forget, that summed it all up though I couldn’t understand him at the time.
“Have you ever been to Big Lots?”
I paused, young, frustrated.
“Screw you, Dude.”
SHOESTRING
My first pet was a beige-colored domesticated rat named Shoestring. At the local pet store, all the albinos rubbed me the wrong way as I peered into their aquariums with its woodchip bedding. I had my eye on the small black-eyed ones, with features I thought stood out in little mannerisms, the way they washed their faces, clamored up the stiff cardboard huts or sniffed the air near the wire top I was putting my face close by. I was going to be responsible, along with my little brother and sister as well, but since I was the oldest I would make sure the two rats we came home with were taken care of properly—water and bedding changed regularly, food bowls full and the entire aquarium cage changed every week.
We returned home with Shoestring and ChiChi, my sister’s pick of a white-furred and black-spotted fancy rat. The pet owner assured us they were both male, but a few months down the road we were surprised to find a dozen or so offspring at dawn, pink, blind and squeaking low. I suppose I was more than a little proud of Shoestring’s “instincts.” I would often let him loose in the house, much to my mother’s disapproval. He was a great climber too, and boy could he eat! There’s quite a memorable photo of him and I, lovingly holding him up, big enough to fill my size 5 shoebox. I wanted to bring him everywhere in the house, and he wanted to make food nests beneath the couch’s lining. When Shoestring got full-size, he became a lot harder to handle. He’d about fall off of my back when walking from arm-to-arm, scratching my neck as I’d quick catch him before he fell to the carpet. I guess I kept his food bowl a little too full!
Sometimes I’d carry Shoestring around in a laundry basket or pillowcase, like a prize. He had the coat of Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web and was big just like Zuckerman’s famous pig! My small hands weren’t big enough to hold him, and that was kind of how I lost him on a weekend night I stayed up late. My younger brother and I shared a bedroom, his bed across from mine. While everyone else was downstairs watching TV, I made a makeshift blanket bridge and had Shoestring go from one side to the other. But he was heavy, overfed, slow. I took him in my pillowcase and ferried him over like on a gondola. Then for some reason I got rough with him, belligerent. His weight felt different, or, I was indifferent to it, only to prove my strength against it. My brother and I were often split up wrestling into a frenzy—he’d slam me down on the bed, boom! I’d get my leg around his, twisting his torso over and then, crash! And then, and then—it happened. All the weight in my pillowcase began jumping up and down on the mattress. I opened it up and took Shoestring out in my hands.
His body twitched and writhed, his neck broken by my swinging. He flopped out of my hands and onto the carpeting. I must have screamed so loud it scared my family, because everyone soon flooded into the bedroom. My father picked up Shoestring from the ground, his mouth agape, caught between life and death. Soon his breathing ceased and I saw what death was like—still, lonesome and sudden. We buried him the next day over my tears in the very shoebox that gave him his name. A little later we picked up a Shoestring Jr., after much pleading and bargaining with my parents that the same thing wouldn’t happen. Most domesticated rats last only 2-3 years, soon succumbing to hereditary tumors. I didn’t know how to feel after ending the life of that small but significant pet instead of watching him die a slower death. I think the things we love often leave suddenly to impress upon us the suddenness of the sway from joy to sorrow. I still feel his weight in my hands after all these years, and there is a lightness that returns to them in telling the true story of Shoestring—which I have never shared with my family.
THE THREE MEETINGS
You remember our three meetings. The first was at that house party on the “other side” of Mt. Tabor. My heart was open to possibility and had no expectation as I locked my bike up across the street. I had come to see my friend Asa play his set and to enjoy the company surrounding houses like this one in Southeast Portland every summer. Music began to issue from the Christmas light haze of the basement. I met all with a smile, faces old or new, and fell into a copacetic mood. I went back upstairs and into the cool backyard, brimming with voices and without hesitancy or thought I was drawn toward your direction.
Your face was timeless, or with a character that resisted all dimensions of time. I casually asked how your night was going, introducing myself to you and your friends, wanting to know how you found yourselves there—I must have sounded like an undercover cop! You looked out of your eyes at me and I back at you. Direct, attentive gazes. Muscles both tense and relaxed. Freckles, small beauty marks and light sunburn. It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before we said goodbye and I sauntered off towards the basement again. A month went past before we’d meet a second time.
Another day of summer found me peaceful and plodding around the corners of downtown. Once more I was out to see friends perform, a great big band of them on an above ground, outdoor stage. The asphalt open air lot was surrounded by remnant walls of a former warehouse. Green ivy and moss crept down them and at their feet began the crowds’ shoes. I walked from the back towards the front. Past the middle your profile was unmistakable, sunglasses above your soft and pronounced cheeks. I had no thought but the action my body took and I sidled up to you on your left side. This was your good side (learning later that you’re hard of hearing in the right ear) but on the other was someone you had come to the concert with—someone surly, tall and male.
I had no idea in what context or with what concern I could place him, nor did I care. It was enough to see you again, and hear you say “Oh hey, you’re that cool guy!” Me? A cool guy? It made me shy but glad to be remembered. Even with the dude there we talked between songs, asking how the 4th was as you dropped the sunglasses. We witnessed a dragonfly floating above the crowd for a full 15 minutes, smiling and taking in the delight of its graceful hovering. I nervously hesitated to get your number. You were the one to return my forwardness of our first encounter and asked for mine instead.
How fitting it was to see you free of any ulterior attention, waiting for me outside of the Bagdad on Hawthorne for our third meeting. You had a white summer dress on with a print of dragonfly wings covering the light fabric. It was a bright August day for our picnic in Sewallcrest Park. The hand-sewn, patchwork quilt crafted by the matriarchs of my family was lain down on neat grass. Our small but rich food stuffs were nibbled on lightly before we stretched out, our backs against the blanket, looking up at the blue. Our fingers moved by millimeters, their hands who had held cell phones to our ears for the last month. These same hands soon clasped and made the pair that even now we carefully reach out and close. All my life raised up to a pinnacle on that day, an axis-shifting event when a bundle of feelings could be strung along each second thereafter, uncontrived. I leaned over and kissed you on that picnic, though later you told me you just thought we might be friends! How friendship too has grown since then is the sign of love’s blessing over our three meetings.
LATE NIGHT CAFÉ
“Oh yeah? I haven’t read that, maybe I’ll check it out.�
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“It’s really something, changed my whole point of view on life. It’s as if I needed to read that exact book at the time; or during the crisis, the book came to me.”
“I’ve experienced that a number of times. I’m a few decades older than you, as you can tell, so I’ve been through more ups and downs and cycles within cycles—a near mental breakdown kept me in bed for almost two weeks. A total loss of time. An influential book helped me arise.”
“Whoa. Yeah, that’s fortunate. You know, I think I’m in a bit of a depression myself. I haven’t really been able to say that aloud to anyone. It’s the reason why I come here late at night. Tyler keeps my coffee warm and I can write my poems until sleep finally comes to me. Thanks, Tyler.”
“I’ll take some more too. Thank you. Well, I took notice of you coming in here because you sit at that same table, take out the same small notebook and mechanical pencil. I’m a bit of a connoisseur of writing instruments, hard not to notice. It’s getting harder to find folk not coming in here to just type, you know, instead of writing. Can I borrow that?”
“Certainly—it’s a pretty basic Pentel, just a harder to find design these days, except maybe at older stores that don’t rotate their stock much.”
“I know what you’re talking about, and those stores are closing more and more! Worth every minute I get to shoot photos in them before they lock their doors for good. Oh, no thanks I’ve got some paper here. Nice glide, just slim enough where the fingers meet. I prefer the way to advance your lead on the side of the pencil like this, instead of clicking the eraser head.”
“Yeah, me too! You can keep your flow of writing going.”
“Well hey, about that book you mentioned, I’m currently reading this one in my jacket pocket on chakras, clearing out the energy blockages at each point along the body so it can not only function at a higher degree of efficiency, but your development of your own consciousness becomes more receptive to finer energies, which help along that very process.”
“That’s interesting, interesting. I’ve been reading a lot of Eastern texts to try and understand just what consciousness is, how it might even be objectively defined and ‘experienced’ by centering oneself with chanting. One chant in particular from my book I mentioned earlier goes AUM MANI PADME HUM. It’s supposed to open your ‘heart chamber’.”
“Mantras can be useful. An old girlfriend of mine was part of a Soka Gakkai group who chant NAM MYOHO RENGI KYO which is roughly translated to mean “Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra.”
“Did you ever chant that too?”
“Well, no. She chanted it in order to attract what she wanted in life. Then, and even now, I’m so unsure about what I want that I see no favor in chanting for ‘nothing in particular’.”
“I got ya, that makes sense. I’m not sure what to do with life now that I don’t have the person I loved and wanted to share life with—then again, she showed me more than anyone that I needed to have a bit of self-love before being able to love another. I guess that’s why she cheated on me.”
“Ouch, that’s a harsh lesson! Tell you what, we keep talking about ‘theories of consciousness’ and I’ll have you over for a beer sometime soon to share some writing and books.”
“Deal. But uh, what’s your name? We’ve been talking for so long and haven’t even introduced ourselves!”
“I’m Henry, and you sir?”
“Paul—nice to meet you, friend.”
THE LIGHTHOUSE
“You’re so comfy. I love you…Would you tell me a story, before we doze off in here?”
“I love you too. Huh, um, yeah let me collect my thoughts for a second. Okay, let’s see…”
I didn’t know how to start. I neither knew what I’d say tomorrow when I got down on one knee. A certain voice in me at least knew what shape the story would take. It was like a light shone forth into the dark, searching for something unseen but knowing it had to be out there. In our tent on the campground, embers snuffed, smoke rising incognito into the night, as I spoke in a slow and steady tone about a young woman and a lighthouse…
“She lived there all her life, looking after each pane of glass like they were living things. Her father had to supplement their annual income with seasonal fishing trips in the choppy, winter waters. After months he’d return safely to her and her mother. Many nights she waited on the railing until the very first pale of morning began to show between the stars and it made all the cold her numb extremities bore worth the pain to see his mast again. It was around her seventeenth birthday that her mother passed from pneumonia. Being an intrepid child both mentally and physically, she passed into an early adulthood with the responsibility of maintaining their home and its electric fire. Under mourning her father went to sea again shortly after the trees that weren’t old pines around them shed hoary and dry leaves upon the soil, rock and sand.
“Two seasons later, a storm unlike any other that had shown itself in the last century pushed its way up the coast and over a large extent of the fishing waters. The waves rose high, throwing their icy fingers up to the lighthouse windows. The young woman held out but feared for her father and the crew that remained at sea in hopes of changing winds and a bigger pay—but he didn’t return that season. All of the coast guard’s resources were racked by the brutality of the storm, making searches delayed and difficult. She carried on with cold resolve the guardianship of the light that might bring him home. Alone, she withdrew from any warmth offered by the few neighbors around and mostly sat in the chair her father occupied while at home, still faintly smelling of his brand of pipe tobacco, and yes—fish.
“About that time of year a young man, who was not so young anymore, became the nearby cape town’s newest postman. The first day on the job he dropped off the mail to her by hand, after knocking many times. He was determined to learn the faces and lives of his route but had no idea she would be behind the lighthouse door. Maybe it was her frail beauty that sad hope’s wear had worked over her face, but again and again he returned with not only mail but offers of repair work, as much of the property had been damaged by the storm or seen too many years of salt in the air. They became a source of strength for each other. He needed to take root in the town and she needed to turn the beacon of her own heart away from the rolling ocean to the steadier surface of the earth. He waited with her on the railing sometimes, callused palms against the cold ironwork, watching the sun set over the shining horizon. He promised to himself if he ever caught sight of that rare green flash leaping up as our planet turned away from its closest star, he’d break their stoic silence and ask to spend the rest of their lives together.”
I watched her in the dark, breathing silently as the night air around us. Had she fallen asleep before my last line? I was absolutely still. I lay down my head, shut my eyes too and touched the velvet box in my pants pocket nearby, holding a shape of its own.
BERENICE AND CLARA
Berenice and Clara both had husbands well into their sixties. When Berenice’s Charles died of a heart attack on his insurance office desk at lunch hour and Clara’s Dean passed of a stroke while straining himself on the toilet bowl, they both found themselves mourning a large but troubled part of their lives. Both men had increasingly kept to themselves and what intimacy might have maintained with sweet words and considerate listening as the physical side of the marriage waned, was shown with less frequency and kindness; holding open doors and sharing food plates at buffets was the bare minimum.
Both the wake for Dean and for Charles were held on the same day in Euclid, Ohio. It was here that Berenice and Clara met one another, both disaffected and filled with an odd sense of mourning—missing and not missing their spouses. Both of their attendant parties had adored the charisma and outward social respectabilities of the departed—not that much of it was shown by Dean or Charles to their wives, but those characters and manners merited the eulogies delivered on opposite ends of the very same large but enclosed funeral home.
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br /> After accepting the sympathies of co-workers, friends-of-the-family, or favorite cousins of the deceased, both women excused themselves politely. It was in the ladies room that they recognized each other’s faces in the long mirror above the sinks. Not that they had ever met before, but because both had the same look of what could only be described as a loss of gravity: their axes were gone, both were set loose. This unspoken affinity felt between them graced their stiffened lips with small smiles, the first real ones that week, maybe even longer.
“What do we do in here but stare at ourselves a little while? Can’t put any blush on, that’d look too lively!” Berenice cracked. Clara stifled a laugh and drew up her handkerchief to her face. “Well, I’m not reaching for more Kleenex, but I do notice how dry I am. Maybe splash a little water on my cheeks?” She turned the silver handle and lightly drew up some cold water to her cheekbones. “Fresh water and saltwater don’t really look the same on a face, do they?” Observed Clara. “No, it really don’t,” Berenice sighed.
“He always promised me Cambodia,” she said quickly after a pause.
“Excuse me?”
“Cambodia—Charles had a vacation fund he kept for us, promising a trip to southeast Asia. I always wanted to go, see the ruins, relax on the beach. We never made plans, though now the money’s left to me.” Berenice’s gaze turned down as she began to wash her hands. “Well, why don’t you go now?” At this the strength Berenice showed with her initial joke faded from her. She dejectedly shut off the faucet. Clara could see the lack of effort, of direction, of hope—she knew it too. Clara felt empathy and felt herself formulating a proposal—“As soon as we’re done here, don’t go home. Meet me at the IHOP in the neighborhood, no, further away, in Shaker Heights, at the booth farthest from the front door.”
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