The Emerson Street Tavern

I Miss Larry Brown

2011-03-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

I wonder what it would have been like to have a beer with Larry Brown. You know good and Goddamn well that Joe-writin’ sonofabitch was more real than you or I either one could hope to be. You know he was.

I wonder. Driving around in that pickup. Fishing cold beers from the floor cooler. Or sitting on barstools at the Paradise Inn or wherever. Him looking like any other wiry Southern boy you ever saw. Only he could bring a man to crocodile tears with a couple sentences about an old man rocking a baby on a porch.

I met him once. I did. He was kind and elusive and uncomfortable in his coat and tie. Didn’t make much eye contact when he signed my copy of his book. And hell, I wanted to cry right there on the spot just knowing the words he had bottled up in him.

That’s about the highest compliment I can pay a man.

Spring (in Three Parts)

2011-03-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

I.
Fucking Spring, Man. In one fell swoop, you—only—eclipse a season-long funk. Oh, I’m still slow rising from Winter’s coma. But already my lungs expand with visions of open-mouth kisses and sundresses. Women of all ages bloom on every tree, drift suggestively down streams of subconscious, light upon my shoulders, chest, and back in drizzled sweet showers. From my forehead I push back long and damp thinning hair with palms singing of potential potential. Yet no one sings, laughs, cries to me as do you.

And your ladies. Ever your ladies. From this porch lovingly lined with bourbon, books, and cigar smoke, I see rippled puddles from whence they’ve stepped. And, Sweet, I’ve no doubt inside lie dainty wet footsteps having been padded gentle to ease for once and all last season’s coma.

To rise.

II.
It’s like when Ol’ Townes built that houseboat in Heaven. I dare you to command a better image. Be you drunkard or no. You can’t do it. And I can’t do it.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll quit trying.

Goddamnit

III.
And now (all thankful and shit) the weather is conducive to my vices. Whiskey and cigars on the front porch.

I feel, suddenly, as if I’ve returned home.

09.30.10

2010-10-08T12:49:00.001-07:00

Pleasant is underrated. Take this night. Just shy of the witching hour it is not sublime. Not breath-catching or particularly jarring. But. The breeze is strong and audible. Fall is moving in piecemeal—patient and courteous. The leaves, it seems, know in their veins, their souls, that their change is less than 48 hours coming. Their dance upon bending branches is a thing to behold. They hold to the bend. They immerse themselves, rubbing against one another in a celebration of a season well spent. It is pleasant. I feel nearly guilty bearing witness to what seems a private moment. I am a voyeur on my own shrine of porch. They share, I tell myself, bittersweet farewells. And like reverse butterflies they are destined to a death of brilliance. Of blood reds and heaven hues. The colors of fall. They know that in the stead of flight, they one by one will drift and feather to light upon a brittling ground. And their blanket will awe. The dance is not a resignation but a revelation. The acquiescence is noble and proud. It is beautiful in a way things nearly never are. A better man, perhaps, would avert his eyes. But we take our pleasures and magic wherever we can find them. And the hours before true fall are indeed magical.

I am too selfish to not watch.

09.30.10

2010-10-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

“No offense,” I said to the three foot Praying Mantis who’d taken over my section of the porch. “But you guys creep me the fuck out. Please leave now.” And from there I urged the arrogant little alien on her way.

Yeah, those things just get to my quick. Like tomatoes or Rosie O’Donell. I think maybe it’s because they appear so self-assured and seem smarter than me. Just look at one of those fuckers close and if you doubt for a moment they are plotting to overthrow the world then you are dumb as a bag of hair. I suppose it could be they’re just looking for their next dinner date—wondering all pouty why they are so often lonely. But I think there’s more to it. Like maybe they are on the secret scout team; telepathing our comings and goings to Xbox or Ramadan, or whoever the fuck is in charge out there. I mean they look like every alien autopsy photo I’ve ever seen. Could be more sinister even than that.

Granted, they’ve never done wrong by me (other than looking like they do). But I’ll be Goddamned if they’d share my lunch counter. I don’t mean to sound all bigoty. I don’t. It’s just they make my skin feel all inside out. And, really, they shouldn’t be eating their men. That doesn’t do much to curb my attitude, you know. I’ve known regular women that do that and I know to stay clear. Like I do with tomatoes and Rosie O’Donnell.

Street Parking

2010-09-09T06:26:00.000-07:00

I have a neighbor who parks his truck on the street in front of my house. The neighbor and his teenage son, I can't tell whether they are rude or just aloof. They likely do not know either. What they must know, however, is that, like me, they also have street in front of their house. That area seems to me a much more natural home for the truck. It's not so much the truck sitting in front of my house that frustrates me as it is the neighbor who thinks the thing to do is park it there. It is a common courtesy thing--or, rather, a lack thereof. It simply would not occur to me to park my Jeep in front someone else's house. I would not have to consider whether it was rude, inappropriate, or bothersome. Because I would not do it. This is not to suggest I am not an asshole. Of course I am. Just not the type of asshole to park my vehicle in front of someone else's house. I'm more the type who sits around and bitches about the asshole who is.

Todd

2010-09-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm willing to bet Todd Snider is the coolest and most laid back of the people I admire. I bet he's the same guy offstage as on. In spite of the occasional crazy eyes he has a kind vibe about him. I suspect he may be one of the few who truly is a to each his own kind of guy. I bet we've got that in common. And fuck, he lives just over the river. It'd be easy enough to meet him. But I got to respect that Nashville thing we've got going on. It's part of what makes it so great here. But it's tempting because I know he's righteous.

In my mind it goes like this:

Todd, let's go rob a bank. I'm serious.

Well, see, I don't know if that's the best idea, but if you want to go rob a bank, I could meet up with you later. Grab some food. Some wine. (Pause) Good luck, Brother.

And I know he's like that. Just laid back and cool and decent.

And that's kind of why I'd like to rob a bank with him.

Lunch With Tom

2010-09-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Tom Waits would be scary. Like over lunch or somesuch say.

"Mr. Waits, wou...."
"Call me Tom, please," his voice gargled gravel.
"Tom, would you pass the salt please?"
He'd look through your soul then. Burn your eyes with his. And nonplussed and curt he'd say, "You don't need salt. Use pepper if you have to."
One of you would say, "Yes, Mr. Waits. I mean Tom." But the other you would either say, "Just pass the fucking salt, Tom!" or reach across him and pick it up yourself.

That'd be two ways to earn Tom Waits' respect. Even if he was scary. Say over lunch or somesuch.

Duck Ponds and Silver Rings

2010-09-01T07:28:00.001-07:00

On the stone wall of the duck pond we sat. My friend with her slender feet and toes treading air just above the suspect water. She has good feet my friend. Each toe slight and aching for a slim silver ring to be placed upon it. Ducks here and there gave way to hooligan Canadian Geese, arrogant and hungover. Some with downy and superior punk bills clearly from biting some other unsuspecting water fowl on the ass. Some simply looked disheveled as though having just rolled out of bed. Schools, pods, gaggles of them approached us, strutting more so than swimming. We fed them chewed gum and cigarette butts which, true to their parasitic nature, they took. Some floated watching us. Some turned, shat in the water, and ebbed away. We gave them names and conversed for them. All slow geese in the special ed sense. Some cursed and smoked and drank. Others unable to do more than drift. My friend waved her toes at a particularly blank-eyed fucker, called, "Here Kitty, Kitty!" Brave and stupid, he made a play for a toe, meaning to have it. Laughter and retreat. Then another wave and call of "Here Kitty, Kitty!".... Time passed as time always will and soon we walked with friendly space between us past pretty college people and car after car ebbing everywhere and nowhere. It was a good walk. During lulls in conversation I imagined the sound of slim silver rings on slim young toes rubbing lightly together with each deliberate step we took.

So Close at The Open House

2010-08-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

Next to you at the Open House is a woman. Though seated you can tell she is tall. Taller than you like. Her hair is curly and soft brown while you prefer long, straight, and raven. Her eyes are large almonds both in shape and color. Perfect only if they were blue or green or pure brown. Her chest wears a late summer tan showing above a simple white blouse, the hint of cleavage tasteful. You do not notice this, of course, as this is third grade Open House and the parents of your child's friends might see you do so. You do notice, however, the woman's nose and cheekbones as she speaks to the other parents in a confident voice about the PTO. They are magnificent and anchor what you now see is a face so beautiful you might rethink every preference you've ever had. The nose is small, perfectly sculpted, dimpled just above the tip and on both sides. A symmetrical masterpiece. Her cheekbones, the skin a little flushed from public speaking, are high as heaven and nearly make you forget the tanned cleavage you did not notice. Suddenly you want this woman like you've never wanted another. Need her like you need water. Air. Something to believe in. You think how you could love this woman, this vision with almond eyes and cheekbones on high. How you could finish raising your children together. Make love beneath the sound of an Islamorada sunset. Travel to Greece in your middle age. Take walks together when you both grow old. You trace these thoughts down the length of a tan, toned arm, pause on the delicate pivot of her wrist, continue to long delicate fingers on one of which rests a simple band of gold and a blinding rock the size of Rhode Island. You move a little in your seat, smooth your little boy cargo shorts, shift your ample belly, and think in your nonplussed manner, "Ah Fuck, I almost had her."

Lucinda

2010-08-12T19:48:00.001-07:00

I like it when you sing all mournful and full of hurt. Not because it pains you to do so but because I know that same hurt and grief and longing--only I can't give it voice. Not like you. You have a way, a scary way, of opening your entire bruise of a soul and inviting me to poke at it with my own hurt.

Train

2010-08-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

The train in the distance. Her whistle rebounding off trees, black sky, wet summer air--everything that makes up the night. There is no moon but there is and it watches and awaits the train's approach and pass.

Just as do I.

Captures (My Son at The Falls)

2010-08-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

My son on the hiking trail. The Falls, high on his dominant side, share a canopy of mist seeming just for him. His hair, long with a full summer's growth, is everywhere beneath his Red Sox cap. His Gulf-blue eyes, alive, threaten to dwarf the sun, pure bursts of soul. He alone gives me hope. They day is a spectacular thing all for his being. His every move--on trails, in streams, on rock walls, measuring the edge of the falls--is deliberate, confident.

He pauses at the water's edge, hands on hips. Surveys the masterpiece of it all. It is so quiet you can hear the sun shine. As I have done more times than there are numbers, I look at him. And once again my breath catches in my throat at how he complements everything around him.

Jesus Christ, he is beautiful.

Absence

2010-08-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

And though it is only a few times a year, the absence of his feet padding down the hall each morning is devastating.

How Much Alone

2010-08-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the ever silence echoes. Startles you in as much as you allow anything to startle you. While you thrive in solitude the realist in you wonders, on occasion, how much alone is too much. You think, most likely, no amount. The opposite of alone is unfathomable. For true. You are too selfish to give it up. But in the spirit of a quiet moment, you must admit that on that rarest occasion it might be advisable to share that aloneness. You won't, though, perhaps out of fear she will take too much of it. For really there is not too much of it. Only just enough. There is just enough for you. The selfish you. It seems that is all that sates you. You require it. It sustains you. Only it. Why would a reasonable man risk losing that? Why, indeed. It seems a thing worthy of discussion. And so you roll it around. Think on it. And you have your one-sided discussion. And you polish what you do not learn and think on it some more. Utterly convinced it is not always selfish to be selfish. Not always.

How much alone.

How much alone.

Women

2010-08-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

They seem, all, to belong to someone else. Different someones, of course. You don't want them for your own, necessarily. Just a loaner of sorts. For a weekend say or three days. These beautiful, infuriating women. Everywhere you turn or don't they are there. At the table or at the bar next to you it seems. Always rapt in conversation. Always talking or listening. Always animated. The way they tilt their heads back in a laugh showing the lines of their necks, nuances of pale and tan throats. Afterward, they nearly always fashion loose strands of perfect hair behind a right ear. Sometimes they finger, absently, the earring there. If it is there. All cheekbones on high and lovely. The quick furrowed brow when a conversation takes a turn for the serious. And then a calming smile before retreating again to more pedestrian talk. And often the neckline of whatever they wear is low and hints of cleavage even if there is none. Or a blouse bunches at the second or third button and the glance of lingerie or breast is dizzying. The briefest glimpse of white, fabric or skin. A suggestion only of what lies there. And you are foolish with lust. It is your nature. You try to be respectful. To not look at the women and their young eyes and jawlines. To not imagine their collar bones, their warm breath meeting yours. Their rhythm.

They seem, all, to belong to someone else. And while you do not want them to be yours, you think a long weekend, three days perhaps, would be nice. Maybe just to hold or breathe in or touch their cheekbones barely with the backs of your fingers.

Summer in The South

2010-07-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

What a good thing is a porch, too many cigars, and conversation. In the near perfect southern heat you can forget, briefly, that the money is running out, that some shadow of action is ultimately required, that cruel requests have been extended, that your Boy will soon be gone for a week and the silence will deafen, that options are less than scarce, that health cannot be taken for granted, that your dear old cat is dying...

You can focus on the simple and soothing. Brutal beautiful football; beautiful, affirming fall; the routine of your Boy's school days and nights. Things like that. But mostly, the blue grey nightfall and its embrace. You wonder if, besides your son, nightfall may be the only thing you've ever loved.

And you think on it and shrug. And you hold a wooden match to another cigar. Send a cloud of blue smoke into the thick night of it.

And you are content.

Neighborhood, Tuesday Afternoon

2010-07-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

The kids they play war today. All serious smiles and missions to complete. They have front and back porch bunkers; Bradford Pear and Maple tree bases. Well-armed, Emerson and Sam are an elite force tasked with taking out the more experienced older neighborhood kids. They are merciless beyond what they show to one another. What they lack in experience, they make up for in bravado and risk-taking. They do not so much protect and serve as destroy and eliminate.

It is a lengthy and succesfful mission ending with sweaty, dirt-streaked faces. Their tired grins return to camp seeking juice packs and are rife with tales of heroism.

The boys live to battle another day.

Wisps

2010-07-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, especially if I am fucked up, the wisps of my cigar smoke turn into claws and reach for my face. I see them peripherally and jump like a madman at the nothing of it all. Sometimes I feel foolish but mostly I don't feel at all and just draw once again on my good cigar and then settle, comfortable, back into my familiar gloom.

From The Porch

2010-07-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

A light rain falls. From the porch it is calm friendship dancing on sunburnt grass and aching asphalt beyond. Night lightning plays slow across the black sky. Thunder bellows reassuring.

My sullen boy sits inside pouting over the drudgeries of being eight. He will awaken happy and ready for day.

For now, I bask in calm friendship falling from blackness lit now and again by night lightning.

It is all around me. And comforting.

The Void

2010-07-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

Half-filled with drink and a burning stomach you are. Your boy lies awake in the guest bed you share waiting on you even though it is 1:30 a.m. He is stubborn as a fucking rock; and you are impatient as an old lady waiting in line. And that's a rough mix, boy. You sit over drink in the uncooled house with your too big unemployed belly and too long stringy hair wondering what to do. Too tired to go to bed you are. You sit in the hum of the refrigerator and the fluorescent bulb that hangs over the sink in your momma's kitchen. Your mind like a moth flitting here and then there. Wondering maybe will you hear more gunfire like you did last night. Your boy asking and you telling him, "9mm best I can tell." And all his wide-eyed questions, "...but who, why, where, how" and "who again?"

All you can say is, "Boy! It's Augusta. If you are here you will hear gunshots!" "Goddamn!" you add. And then further, "Best to be in here and hear them than out there in it."

"That makes sense, Daddy" he says. "I can see that."

And a water bug the size of a Wing Tip shoe clomps around the kitchen. His big old Delta wings and post apocalyptic arrogance. Your momma would be appalled. "Martha Stewart," you would tell her, "couldn't keep those nasty motherfuckers out. Why you think she don't live in Georgia?" That water bug scoots away, dodges what would be your momma's flailing. You watch all this. What else would you do? You take off your hat and run your hand through thinning hair--'cause you mostly don't ever know what to do with your hands. You fit your cap back. Your right hand traces at the frost of your drink glass. Your left hand wanders like an indigent here and there. You wonder should you go take a pill but it's late you know. That refrigerator hum, it's like it lives in your head after awhile. It's constant like the ringing in your ears from either too much or not enough caffeine. (You've never not known that ringing). Your momma's orchid to your right, lists forward, but is staked true and safe from fall.

The burning deep in your gut nearly finishing you. Boring a cavern through to your back. You look at the white liquor drink you have in place of your trusted bourbon. Thinking to give that belly sunspot a break tonight. But burn is burn.

Appliance hum, you think, is no company for man. Not even better than none.

You hit that drink and shoulder the burn. In the mid-brain you hear the multiple footfalls of the water bug guest searching the perfect crevice. You rise. Through the side door you exit, sure of foot. You pause beneath the triggered motion light and draw a palm through your hair and replace your cap. With purpose you lumber into the dark Georgia night, in the general direction of gunfire that once in awhile cracks open the void.

You need to see for yourself.

The Gloam

2010-07-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Evening sun, fire and sage, fades like a tired child beyond those trees, that distant hill. An applause of cicadas and a full heart rises to greet the gloam as it spills toward you on a slender breeze. You are happy and sated as a lover might be. Blue cigar smoke whispers above your clear head. Street lamps pause with effort that you might sit still a moment more.

...just one moment more.

That Band Down There

2010-06-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

M. and I go see the girls play whenever we get the chance. We call them the girls even though F. and his battered Martin stand front and center when they play their magic. But those girls, man. Up there in all that young and pretty and pick-your-jaw-off-the-floor-Mister talent. LM has more young than the rest. She was only 15 when M. first found them playing for tips down there. Carried herself real mature and professional though and even then you'd have sworn she was every bit of 20 at least. The kind of girl that'd make you sympathetic to the ways of Appalachia. Ol' M. looked crestfallen and snake bit when he learned her real age. I laughed at him. We all did. LM is a fiddle player is what she is. Me, I fell hard as a diamond for S., the dark-haired beauty on mandolin. Ethereal is what she was and is. She carries that mandolin slung low below her waist and wears it all out effortless like she was Keith Richards or somebody. AD over there on the right's on fiddle too and she's as good as LM and probably better. She's crazy as bat shit too and the kind of fun you wish you could be even once in your life. Sometimes her short hair is blue or pink but usually California blonde. She's got a real high voice that should be annoying but isn't. It'll make you smile if you are given to smiles. And F. He's a little guy. Wild all over hair and bears more than a pass at a young Charles Manson. The boy can play. He looks three quarters fucked up up there, grinning crazy or lost behind heavy-lidded eyes or white sunglasses. But he won't pass by you during break that he won't smile or stop and talk if he must. He's got some shy to him but he steps around it, always, for the band and fans. And he's Kind, like you wish folks could be. So kind it makes you want to do better yourself. Did I tell you the boy can play? Yes. M. and I don't talk much when we go down there. But about 33 times a night we'll turn and grin like simpletons at each other over a special lick or note or jam or whatever. It doesn't seem possible, even years later, that a band could be so tight and right--family or no. So we drink bottle beer and listen and grin and move our feet to the music. Wishing it would never stop.

The New Bartender

2010-06-28T12:30:00.001-07:00

The new bartender with the raven hair, unfortunate make-up, and heavenly large backside can cradle six beer bottles in the crook of one arm and pop the tops in machine gun fashion with the other. It is a fine show and makes you want to order six beers just to see it again.

You don't fawn over her as the other patrons do. But you appreciate her and reflect it in her tip. She doesn't give a good pour like your regular bartender but that's o.k. She just doesn't know you yet.

Still, you'd like a long pour. But that's o.k.

Poison Ivy

2010-06-27T22:36:00.001-07:00

You scourge. You stealthy fuck with your scarring eyes and hurt finding me each summer. No matter how defensive, how proactive I am, you find me. Snaking your whispered tongue up and down my arms, my ankles and knees. Sometimes you kiss even my cheek you foul uninvited lover. You scar and scale and swell my flesh. The wonderful agony you inflict. My forearms you make grotesque, textured now like turtle skin and red with rage. To not react is agony. To scratch is orgasmic and then agony. Ugly new armor weeping and sticky as my nails scrape furiously over what you've wrought. And shower water near scalding makes me cry out near ecstasy as it slaps at the caked leather of my arms. I look and feel like a burn victim. Goddamn you, you hateful bitch. Goddamn you. I am powerless and so scratch and scratch, making worse what is almost unbearable.

And when finally you have run your cruel course, inflicted all the hurt you can, I will miss you. Under the sweet and perverse cover of night, I will miss you.

June Bugs

2010-06-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Those little beige or brown bastards drunk on late spring night air dive-bombing you on the porch when you try to read or write and smoke and drink. Slow and dumb and drunk like maybe little insect cows coming around to fuck with you while not even really being aware of you. All haphazard and zagging drawn by the porch light you call your friend and hitting your cheek or head with a thump. And when you slap them out of the middling space with a notebook or open hand, they lay still as dead where they fall but sometimes stagger down the front steps. And then more come to party at the light, cutting the air in side to side or up and down crossings to assault your person and impatience. Sometimes they sound like incoming choppers and remind you of old MASH episodes. And other times you read your book or magazine piece and catch a close-up sideways glance at one of those little fuckers perched on your shoulder like a pirate's parrot or some goddamned thing. And you cuss and holler and flail at yourself like maybe you've been too long away from drink. And even though you aren't the self-conscious type, you hope the neighbors aren't watching through the slats of their blinds.

And sometimes when you visit the porch in daylight to pick up your books or papers or empties you see leftover willow-wisp wings on the mottled ground where those goddamned June bugs last lay when you slapped them out of the crowded space between you and solitude. You sweep with the thrust of an old broom those willow-wisps and wonder why are there only wings and not the whole stupid drunk dead beetle cousins. Did maybe a bird or cat or some other thing take the rest of them away during those quick hours before sunrise? Did maybe the ugly drunk flying things walk away from the waning pulse of their wings? Wander into the yard?

And who cares really where their stilled corpses lit? Bastards. Dive-bombing you. Making you look and feel like a fool alone on your porch at night. The neighbors probably watching and laughing at the silent cursing man, his arms in a seizure of pretend calm, defenseless against the night terrors he knows too intimate.

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (sixth in a series of 10)

2007-05-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

I. Piano Player

You play piano like a madman savant. Jerry Lee Lewis wishes he were you. Your features are awash in the sweat of performance. You pound the keys. You hang from the rafters and play with your feet. You are an enigma. Controlled as Dean Martin. Insane as Jim Morrison. Hair hanging in your face.

I see you walking in the mall, arm in arm with a beauty and her two children. You leave a trail of Cool like lava. It is remarkable that you do not seem out of place, foreign, in your shin-length shorts, baggy shirt, and embarrassing lime green shoes. But no. You glide like the 1950s. Like a Cadillac on the strip.

Everything you pass is spent. Window displays. Manufactured greenery. Skylights. The walls, having bookended your passing, shake and slide to the floor which having been consumed by your lava trail fade to nothing behind you.

And you do not mind because forward is the only direction you know.

And the piano is your lover.

II. Trash Day

Trash Day tomorrow.

From the porch he watches the green container he wheeled to the curb earlier. It stands patient by the mailbox.

From the porch it looks like two strangers waiting for a bus.

He wonders absently what secrets they will share once he obliges them, rises, and finally retires for the night.

III. My Mother’s Living Room

I do not know if the memory is real or imagined but it resides within and has lent itself to several retellings. The memory is that of several musicians in my mother’s living room playing the finest bluegrass music ever played. In truth it was probably a guy or two with guitars noodling and messing around. In memory it was a full tilt bluegrass event complete with picking and stomping and dancing. Either way it has remained pleasant in my head for over 30 years.

Forget that my mother’s small living room likely could not accommodate the folks from my memory—nor barely their audience. Forget that.

It is true that my memory has never been among my stronger attributes. But usually there is simply a void, a blank slate where the memory should be. It is uncommon for me to have a sustained recollection at all. Much less so for me to embellish it. But this bluegrass thing is different. It is clear. Clear in the sense that it occurred. But also it is typical for me in that it is like looking at a thing through gauze. All hints and shadows.

Oh the wonder of a mother’s living room and the clarity of hints and shadows.

May 13, 2007

2007-05-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

I wish you could see the sky right now. It is a blue that is neither royal, nor bruise, nor cobalt. It is like something manufactured for a movie. A shade of blueberry no one but me has ever seen. It is there beyond the trees, beyond the horizon, beyond the beyond. It is magnificent and fleeting. If I go inside to pee and mix a drink it will be gone. Forever.

It tastes like adventure. Adventure and pain medication. Oh, what a wonderful cocktail it makes. I think that color may be the reason vision was created.

It does not make me feel insignificant as it does necessary.

Necessary and co-dependent.

Clear as a Lightning Strike

2007-05-12T02:01:00.000-07:00

The Tennessee night is still and nearly cool. The leftover rain drips from trees, sounds lonely on the heels of such a well-received storm. The nightsounds are there but hesitant, not quite sure what to do with themselves. (Los Lobos plays somewhere inside the house). Spiders and slugs sneak from the wet onto my porch. It is as if they know my small reserve of loathing is held for them and they feel the need to challenge it. I can see my grass grow in the faint light of the street lamp across the way. It slow dances in the shadows. Seems to stretch taller by fractions. (Van Morrison plays from somewhere in the house).

A guy I knew from high school was killed in a military helicopter accident this week. We graduated together. We were friendly but not friends. Oddly, we had connected well at our ten-year reunion. His death unsettles me. He was forty years old. He’ll never be forty-one. The day he died I had thought about him and members of our class building our homecoming float in front of his parents’ house. Clear as a lightning strike I saw him standing on his front porch with a beer in his hand. We were all forever seventeen. I hadn’t thought of the guy in twelve years and there he was. Two days later, on Thursday, my mother e-mailed me the news. For no discernable reason, I wonder if he ever saw a Tennessee thunderstorm. The way the sky turns blue and black and still; is itself brilliant over brilliant green hills. I wonder if he ever saw that. (From somewhere in the house Johnny Cash plays).

It is late. Fog that would inspire Sandburg rolls in. Through it my neighbors’ porch lights look like tiny lighthouses. Close enough to touch and never. Always slow on the uptake, it occurs to me that I love Tennessee. After eight years it is becoming a thing like home. You never relinquish that from which you came. But eventually a man needs to re-hang his hat. It is a big step hanging one’s hat. What is left of the romantic in me yearns for the coast—Gulf or West. I doubt though that my whiskey, my cigars would taste better there than they do here. So for now, my hat sits firmly on my restless head or on my dresser. (From somewhere in my house Jack Johnson plays).

In a few short hours, when my body is near ready to let me sleep, my perfect Boy will rise ready for the day. This is the only home he has known. And it suits him. But he too likes to travel. Has a need to see things. He talks lately of going to see Grandma in Augusta. I sense, like me, he also is antsy. Wants that road trip. If for nothing else the comfort he feels upon returning home afterward. He begins school in a few months. About to enter that first real place of retained memory. At some point I will go inside and look at him. It is difficult not to. His night breathing is often so shallow that my own catches in my throat as I wait for him to exhale. Sometimes I am terrified that he won’t. But he always does. It is a wonderful and curious thing being a father. Being. He has two games scheduled for tomorrow. The forecast calls for scattered thundershowers. So we will have either baseball or rain. It’s a no-lose situation.

And such is springtime in Tennessee. It just feels right.

For now.

Bar Talk II

2007-05-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

Me: [Drinking draught beer. Looking at sports on several television sets. Silent]

Him: What was that?

Me: I’m sorry?

Him: Damn right you sorry.

Me: [The smirk creeps to my face during the pause] Is there a problem?

Him: They’s about to be if you look at me again.

Me: [Long pause. Bigger smirk] Ok, Brother. I’ll try to stop doin’ that.

Him: Goddamn right you will.

Me: [Smiling at TV] Alright. I’ll see what I can do.

Him: [Turning on barstool toward me] You fuckin’ with me?

Me: [Turning my head, locking eyes] Not yet.

[We hold the staredown for a moment]

Bartender: [Setting a fresh draught in front of me] Anything wrong, Boys?

Me: [Maintaining stare] No. I think we’re good. [Pause] But give this gentleman a beer on my tab if you would.

Him: [Turning away] Pussy.

Me: [Turning back to face TV] Yeah. I like it too.

Him: [Picks up his new beer, stands, and walks away]

Bartender: Don’t worry ‘bout him, Sugar. Kyle just likes to do that.

Me: [Smiling big]
[I drink two more beers, cash out, and leave. Watching my back all the way to the Jeep]

The Comfort of a Mess

2007-05-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

My new occasional watering hole is a mess. For material it cannot be beat. The patrons make it pathetic and fascinating—not an uncommon combination. The sense of dysfunctional family is undeniable. I seem to be warmly accepted by the two main bartenders. Patiently tolerated as a novelty of sorts by the regulars. As a whole, the customer base is unappealing at best. An utterly useless lot at worst. Although I am looking for nothing—save a place to rest my tired ass and bathe in a cold beer—I feel as though I am doing research. Aging/maturing has blessed me with an “I simply don’t give a fuck” attitude that allows me to be comfortable most anywhere. Leave me to mine; I’ll leave you to yours. As such, things most always work out fine. Eventually you’ll get that guy who is just incapable of leaving you to yours. Thankfully, we’ve not crossed paths yet. But it is bound to happen. My uncontrollable smirk (as innocent as it may be) will eventually get me into trouble. If history is still on my unique side though, I will deftly talk my way out of it and successfully save face. If, on the other hand, history has taken leave of me, well then it may not be pretty. For my pugilistic skills are more Barbie than Barbarian.

Such concerns are silly, I believe, for I’ve had no issues yet. I’ll keep going I’m sure.

There are too many stories there for me to stop.

Bluegreen

2007-05-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

I needed a watering hole for some time. So I imposed myself upon a hidden cliquish spot in Bellevue. Having long ago shed myself of a number of nagging insecurities, I was fairly certain the awkward vibe was true and not some imagined bullshit of my own making. But I stuck it out. Staked a spot at the bar. Ordered a cold draught.

Shit, give me a barstool with a hint of elbow room and a cold beer and I’ll draw my own comfort with crayons if need be. And so I did. And this hole is like so many others—it is what you make it. And as in most situations, we do make our own comfort. In no time at all it was “Another beer, Ryan?” and “You doin’ ok, Sug?” The bartender, a bit older, lovely, lovely figure, cheekbones to write home about, looked out for me. I did not go thirsty for a moment. Her voice was and is Elizabeth Ashley’s with a fraction only of the rasp or whiskey tone. Just nice. What is it about a woman in a tee shirt and jeans and the occasional ball cap that trumps ten-fold one in a cocktail dress and heels? Perhaps it is relatability that defines sexy for me. I’ve never known really. Haven’t given it much thought. My tastes consistently shift like the wind. But on a still night, I’ll take casual every time.

In the end, a good bar is a good bar and is often essential to good mental health. This one is no different. I go there now from time to time. I keep to myself mostly—as has long been my habit. I drink beer. I glance at women in the bar mirror and appreciate the way they move or carry themselves or flaunt or don’t. I’ve always appreciated. I have no interest in talking them up. I think about writing. Occasionally I relax and allow the meanness of the day to slip from my skin, my bones. I imagine independent wealth and daydream of a house in Naples, Florida where the water is so bluegreen you are tempted to dip from it and drink. I watch baseball, the play-by-play muted, replaced by the din of bar noise. I watch professional drunks with their slack, sad features. I watch the casual drunks who would sell their lonely souls for an ear to bend. I watch the non-drunks, there out of a need to be somewhere, anywhere. I ignore how my knees and back hurt when I rise to find the restroom. I resist the urge to take a woman home. Not because of any lapse into morality; but more of an implied fret that she would not leave soon enough to suit me. I imagine I have earned my multitude of quirks and flaws; and then convince myself I am working to correct the most unappealing ones. This last is most likely untrue. Sometimes I miss camaraderie but then recognize that I really do get enough to sustain me.

Later, I consider what an odd figure I must make sitting alone in a bar, smiling or smirking to myself at the movie playing in my head, complete with soundtrack and brilliantly placed jump cuts. And in those late moments, on my failing porch, I confide to my tumbler of whiskey and slow-burning cigar: I don’t have it half-bad. Not half-bad at all.

From the Bleachers

2007-04-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Emerson stands on third waiting for B. to drive him home for the second time in as many games. His voice reaches me in the bleachers above the crowd noise. "Hey Daddy! Look where I am!” He knows he is going to score. Having once felt the sweet slap of cleated foot on home plate, he is ready to repeat it. B. hits a soft grounder toward second. Em takes off like volleyball serve. My dear enthusiastic Boy runs as if he is underwater. But he scores. He finds me in the stands and smiles his million dollar smile.

B.’s father and I are very different men but there is a like there. We are overbearing fathers in different ways. And we obviously love our sons in similar ones. We joke that we are the only parents tracking statistics—if only mentally—of a team of five-year-olds. “Two-for-two with an RBI and two runs scored,” we grin. But our joke is ringed with pride—deadly sin be damned.

There is a thing about seeing one’s son standing at home plate—either with bat in hand or having just plodded across to score—that helps outline the indefinable.

Watching him, it occurs to me that wherever Emerson is he will always be home.

Or well on his way.

Late Night Random

2007-04-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

Like John Bender from The Breakfast Club, I have a slow loping gait of which I have tried for years to rid myself. In much the same way some Southerners who are oddly ashamed of their accents try to shed them.

I have Carpenter ants in my house the size of field mice.

The rain falls.

I think I have monkeys in my attic. Whatever is up there is bigger than are squirrels. More agile than are possum. More deliberate even than raccoons. That leaves monkeys. Or homeless people. I am hoping for monkeys. With the exception of their fondness for throwing their own shit at people, I find them fascinating. Sometimes I think they know what I am thinking. Monkeys in general, not my attic monkeys. That would be weird.

I think I am in love with being alone. It is comfortable. And the rarity of comfort is not to be dismissed or unappreciated.

I wear my hair long these days. Certainly too long for my age. But it makes me feel at home with myself. (Again with the welcome commodity of comfort). It does not look particularly good. But neither am I cultivating overt ridiculousness. It simply feels right for now. I think I’ll keep it a while more.

On Monday, I saw The Killers at the Ryman. I saw a little girl on her father’s shoulders. I saw a ten-year old boy asleep in a pew. I saw more beautiful breasts than an old guy’s heart could digest. And I saw the best rock show I’ve seen in 15 years. I returned home happy, buzzed, and sated.

I rode in the backseat of a 2007 BMW 328i on Monday evening. I became one part excitement. One part appreciation. Two parts nostalgia for past aspirations(s). I eventually ran out of what it is that makes up parts. I do so adore the finer things in life. I have reached a point in life where I no longer experience envy (possible?)—but where I am comfortable admitting a dull yearning for material things. I sometimes, however, still regret the inherent apathy that prevents my ability to achieve.

It is late. The rain still falls like applause. It is all I can do to not wake my Boy and bring him to our porch. And remind him—again—that I love him even more than I love the rain. But he is sleeping more sound than I ever will. And, for now, it would be selfish of me to tell him that which he already knows.

Dirt

2007-04-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

And my Boy kneeling at third, fucking around in the dirt as would any boy or man given the opportunity. He stands. Still looking down and unaware the hit ball bounces sharply toward him. Until he looks up suddenly and it is there. Stops the ball with a combination of hands, cheek, and collar bone. Grabs the ball and turns immediately toward the practice parents, spots me on the periphery at once and bellows with his unique brand of exaggeration, “I’m All right!!!” He makes a good strong throw to his coach. Hears the reassurances of Good Stop, Way to Stick with it, and Good Job, Emerson! His smile is forced. He has been more startled than hurt. His face maybe wants to cry a little. But the camaraderie and reassurances win. He returns to an infielder’s stance. Looks briefly down and then up. I know he wants to draw stories in the dirt. Who wouldn’t? His face doesn’t want to cry anymore. Mostly not.

Sometimes his courage breaks my heart.

Bar Talk

2007-03-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

“I think Scarlett Johansson wants me.”

“Dude! Aren’t you like 40 years older than her?”

“Aren’t you 40 years too old to be calling me ‘Dude’ and using ‘like’ to preface your nonpoint?”

“Fuck you. You’re old.”

“Fuck you. You’re stupid.”

“I’m just sayin’…”

“What? You’re just saying what? That you’re jealous that Scarlett Johansson wants me? That Chelsea Handler thinks I’m funny and interesting? That Ashley Judd thinks I’m smart? That Keira Knightley wants to swashbuckle me? That Reese Witherspoon wants me to trace the outline of her jaw with my tongue? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, Dog. That’s what I’m sayin’. You got me.”

“I’m sorry, you insipid sack of shit. But did you just call me ‘Dog?’”

"That’s right.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You are.”

“You’re Mom is.”

“My Mom thinks you’re a dick.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“I’m serious. Scarlett Johansson wants me.”

“And Chelsea Handler thinks you’re funny?”

“That’s right.”

“Does Chelsea know you make less than a school teacher and that you couldn’t even afford tickets to her show this weekend? Does she know that?”

“Maybe she does.”

“Maybe she does?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“You’re mom’s pathetic.”

“Would you just shut up?”

“Would you?”

[Pause]

“You wanna another beer?”

“Say ‘Scarlett Johansson wants me.’”

“Scarlett Johansson wants you.”

[Pause]

“Yeah. I could drink another beer.”

[Pause]

“Bartender!”

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (fifth in a series of 10)

2007-03-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

I. Bark

Sometimes in the deep subtlety of night, Ray sat on his porch, whiskey by his side, cigar in hand and barked. It was a good, throaty bark and it resonated through the limbs and leaves, rose over the hum of street lamps. It was good enough to fool all the neighborhood dogs whether or not they themselves were barkers. It was not uncommon for Ray’s barks to set off a multitude of responses. The sounds seemed conversant and not at all combative. This gave Ray pleasure.

And in between sips of whiskey and draws of his cigar, he smiled at the simple absurdity of his barking aloneness.

II. If Night Were a Letter

If this night were a letter it would be a Z. Zagging itself to a self-fulfillment of morning. A horizontal patch of blue-black slanting southeast to a horizontal thing void of any color at all. Its fleeting lifespan static beyond all other things—providing only cover to 300 million interpretations and possibilities. One of them being a solitary man awash in cigar smoke, adrift in whiskey hunched over a notebook comparing his night to one bookend of a finite alphabet.

III. But a Name

Ray thought if he ever had another child he would name it Finn. Be it boy or girl, Finn would be its name. Though it was a dead heat between his two favorite literary characters, he did not think Atticus a fitting name for a child—but he’d toyed with Finch for a baby’s breath moment of time. Decided no and that Finn worked just fine. And though Atticus—or better, Scout’s rendering of Atticus—made him weep each visit, he thought the man’s perfection too heavy a burden to place upon any one person. But in Finn resided the admirable soup of mischief, wonder, sadness, humor, and nobility. While this too presented a burden of sorts, Ray felt it was at least conquerable. Imperfect perfection, if you will.

Ultimately, Ray laughed off such thoughts. For one who knew so little, he knew he would have no more children.

Of this he was certain. And he was not sad because of it.

An Emerson Moment

2007-03-27T00:35:00.000-07:00

Me: Emerson!

Em: What? [Smiles]

Me: I have a surprise for you.

Em: [Smiling big] What is it?

Me: [Producing four boxes] These.

Em: [Grinning now] What are they?

Me: [Loud] Girl Scout Cookies!

Em: Oh, Daddy! Thank you! I love Squirrel Cap cookies!

Me: [Grinning as well] You're welcome, Boy.

First Practice

2007-03-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

He bats left-handed. His back is to me. I am far off to the side with the other parents. I am aware not of them but of the Boy only. His stance is perfect. Legs even and evenly spaced. Shoulders squared. Elbows up and bat held just so. The afternoon sun plays off the shine of his navy blue helmet as it might play off of the sea. When the coach pitches, the Boy swings through the ball. Misses. It is a lovely miss, the product of concentration and execution. Undeterred, he brings the bat back where it belongs above his shoulders, steadies his feet, and awaits the next pitch. His swing is strong and pure. Misses the ball twice more. He knows it has been a good effort. He glances over his right shoulder and finds my eyes. He smiles. I smile too and nod. I couldn’t be more proud if he’d hit the ball such that it travels still.

I sense he will be a fine ballplayer.

The World and All Its Pearls

2007-03-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

There is a living parade—and then a circus—in my son’s head. There is an actor, a comedian, a humanitarian lurking behind an Emerson suit of what makes the boy the heartbeat of his father.

In Emerson’s parade, the floats are alive and alternate between making silly faces and sarcastic remarks. The bands march, run, wiggle, and glide to beats unique to each member. Their all-out epileptic gestures seem to indicate that synchronicity is for the unimaginative, the dull. The Emerson Street Tavern Princess, the pageant winner, wears blue jeans and a white tee shirt—is crowned in a worn baseball cap. She flashes the townsfolk and giggles like a little girl. She is loved and special and deserving and silly. And she has been handpicked by the parade’s namesake and daily Grand Marshal. Instead of sparklers, the children are handed roman candles that shoot candy—mostly Lemonheads and Smarties and Pez.

The music is a dizzying mix of Gap Band, North Mississippi All Stars, and Mother’s Finest. The Boy loves nostalgia and newness. Loves how what is old becomes new again. Loves that a cliché does not apply to someone who has not heard it before.

In short, the Boy loves. And is loved.

It is from this procession of love that he enters the mindset of the Big Top. From his front row seat he grins at the trick dogs doing their trick dog flips. There is a monkey on a bicycle listening to an iPod. There is a bear in a tuxedo taking drink orders from the silent clowns who’ve just arrived in a Honda Element. There is an elephant dealing cards to a pair of lion tamers, the strong man, and the bearded lady. This is Emerson’s circus and the elephant needs no thumbs—just a keen eye as the bearded lady likes to cheat the strong man. It is entertaining and alive and different. It is unlike your circus or mine.

Emerson does not have to tell you about his parade or circus. They are evident in his smile and in the gulf of his eyes. They are as real as anything you saw as a child or have seen as an adult.

But if he does tell you about them you should listen. And watch. His tales are fraught with the honesty and vision of a child, the clarity and detail of an old soul, the enthusiasm and excitement of one who understands that the world and all its pearls are his for a fortnight only.

An Emerson Moment

2007-03-07T23:29:00.000-08:00

Setting: Living Room. Having pizza and watching Cartoon Network. Father has prodded five-year-old Emerson several times to finish his slice or have the television turned off as it is nearing bath time.

Emerson: [Pensive] What’s “instinct?”

Father: [Not entirely confident] Well, it’s something inside you that kinda guides you. It tells you what you should or shouldn’t do. And then you follow it and decide what to do.

Emerson: Oh.

Thirty seconds later.

Father: [Slightly agitated] Boy! You gonna eat your pizza?

Emerson: [Entirely confident] My instinct says not to. [Smiles]

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (fourth in a series of 10)

2007-02-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

I. Storm over Barbados

Audrey Hepburn (from Roman Holiday) called me the other day and royally requested that I join her in Barbados for the weekend. I did. I arrived Friday evening and we dined on oysters flown in from the East Coast. I brought Veuve Clicquot and Woodford Reserve. We listened to Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch. We were halfway through Willie Nelson’s Teatro when the battery-powered CD player went lame. I added to the mix by humming Somewhere Over the Rainbow until tears formed in her big dark eyes. I watched in anticipation as a single one candle-waxed over the lip of her bottom left lid, slipped like a memory down a perfect cheek, and perched on the horizon of her chin. When the storm I’d ordered finally rolled in, she blanketed me and suddenly really was seventeen. But hers was a thirty-five year old seventeen and the world was fine. Those waves crashing to shore; lightning dancing in the distance; our lips close enough to PhotoShop a kiss; paparazzi masturbating in the bushes. Who knew the night would end? Not me. Not me. And now, I clamor the beaches of Barbados in my dreams. Some nights, during the ever-brief moments between REM and wake, I find her porcelain-fragile hand. As we walk to the low rumble of thunder, I gently rub the knuckle of her left ring finger with my thumb. She lets out the most old-fashioned and heartbreaking sigh. I open my mouth to tell her it is one of the things I like about her most. But each time the alarm sounds and displaces Barbados and Audrey and storms.

Those are wrenching mornings for me.

II. The Vagrancy of Soul

When we kiss she is Audrey Hepburn. But then she is Grace Kelly. And in a fleeting moment of Post Modernism, she is Scarlett Johansson bathed in neon and sadness. I feel like whispering something to her then but I don’t have anything to say really. I’m all about the kiss and that moment leading up to it when you get to say everything you ever thought only instead of speech it is wrapped in the mystery of eye contact. In those moments you get to be the wisest bastard on the planet—provided you’ve timed the operation correctly. Your Audrey, Grace, Scarlett, Reese, Natalie, or Ashley never have to know there is no substance behind those blues. You do it right and your secret is safe with yourself. You’re the boy who says everything a girl needs to hear with the mere hold of the eye and then the lingering softness and contradiction of mouth on mouth for as long as the clock allows. And yours is not game; your intent could never be ill. Yours is sincere love of woman. And recognition that distance is your best and most loyal friend. You want everything and nothing at once. And you don’t want to have to explain it because you cannot. You define yourself as quirky and then denounce definitions. You simply want to be alone. And then on your selfish terms you want to kiss the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Scarlett Johansson and tell them every secret you ever took to bed with you. You want to spoon with each of them and unleash the vagrancy of your soul upon them. And then you want them to forget all you shared and go away.

And you will never understand this nor really make much effort to.

III. Miles on the Kitchen Island

Audrey Hepburn (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s) called me the other night and playfully told me she had my drink waiting and that it would be divine and advisable if I came right over to avoid the dullness of my typical evening. She said she knew I took my whiskey neat and so not to worry myself about melting ice and other such unpleasant things. “I’m bored, Ray” she pouted. “Come over here right now and entertain me.” I heard her inhale and then she hung up. I waited two hours but did as I was told. Armed with Miles Davis I took the stairs to her door, tapped three times with the knuckle of my middle finger, and let myself in. Wearing a white tee shirt and black sweatpants, she sat in the center of the sofa, arms extended along the tops of the cushions. A full champagne glass in one hand, an unlit cigarette in the other, the reclining Christ pose weakened my knees. Her smile was slight and perfect. Her eyes were the inspiration for the word sadness. “I knew you’d come, Ray. I did.” We looked at one another for a moment or several. She freed her champagne hand and sipped from her glass. “Your drink is on the counter, Ray” she said. “And please, Darling, bring in the champagne bucket. I’d like some more.” I put Miles on the kitchen island, gathered my drink and the bucket, and returned to her. I put the glass and bucket on the floor. We treaded water in each other’s eyes for several seconds before I knelt in front of her. I felt her fingers playing in my hair, light and nonchalant. “You are such a good Ray” she said. “You are.”

She sighed briefly. But if she relaxed at all, I wasn’t able to tell.

James Plays Augusta

2007-01-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

And in the dream I awake from a dream to find myself in a thirty-three person gallery at Augusta National. Bruce Springsteen croons The River over a PA system hidden amongst the Georgia pines. A sunburned Northerner sways next to me sipping Mad Dog 20/20 from a blue Solo cup. I inhale the moment. A CAO Double Corona in one hand. A fresh Makers Mark in another hand. A third hand holds a leash to which is tethered a white Persian cat with porcelain blue eyes. The cat purrs in time to The River, a low percussion of sorts. The song fades to white noise and Bruce begins to rasp. “Ladies and Gentlemen—please welcome… The Hardest Working Man in Heaven, Mr. James Brown!”

A fog descends and lifts. With lowered head there stands James, black as beautiful midnight against a backdrop of perfection. You could hear a pine needle drop. And to the rhythm of thirty-three heartbeats, James slowly cuts a rug there on the 13th green at Augusta. The silent rub of his footwork as poignant as any song ever crafted.

In the slight distance, Sam Cooke pushes Aretha Franklin in a tire swing. Aretha, svelte and young, eases effortless over Rae’s Creek and back again.

On the periphery of 13, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye stand like brothers holding hands.

And in a blink the Vienna Boys’ Choir joins the Josey High School Marching Band. White children and black teens side by side in unison, clapping in metered synch, swaying to a roll of inspiration, marking history and legacy and hate and love and indifference and gratitude as it has rarely been marked.

And though I drink, the Makers replenishes itself. The air is still. The clouds dance in place above the pines. The white cat morphs to grey, unleashes himself and stands on two legs.

James continues to dance. He slides to and fro as though sock-footed on marble. Someone in the gallery whispers the words to Psalm 23.

Aretha glides again over the creek and back, begins to hum the tune to Georgia.

I awake three days later, my head heavy with drink. My heartache more pronounced. My distance from home further now by one more removed link.

My soul aching with the phantom pain of something missing.

Behind my eyes Sam Cooke winks at me in the deepest secret of night. Knowing what I will never know.

Nor should.

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (third in a series of 10)

2006-12-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

I. Mandolin Player

It is a wide, open-mouth, and heartbreaking smile. Its owner plays mandolin and may be the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She is a baby really. But only in the sense that you are an old man. Exaggerations, both. That smile is a thing that if ever it were aimed at you, you would burn or build bridges, rob a convenience store, try to harness a star and skate the Milky Way—any goddamned thing it asked.

And you know she’s about to be famous. So you try to hold that moment of everything prior as if it were actually yours. As if in that moment you discovered the smile and poise and passion and vulnerability and self-assuredness.

And deep in the crevice of night, you see that soul-aching smile reflected in a million lenses and think to yourself, I saw her in a smoky bar on lower Broadway with nine other people once.

And in the middle of a song that could teach you to love and mourn, she smiled at me.

Just at me.

II. Been

Because he hadn’t discovered his niche (old as he was) he could play to most anything. He had the look, see. He was nobody and the most important motherfucker in the room at once. Being nondescript created intrigue in this town. He could have been an insurance company lackey or President of Next Big Thing Records. But he never professed to be either. He was affable and amicable and quiet and reserved and boisterous at all the right times—without trying to affect anything at all. Drinks appeared before him and strangers stopped to shake hands and say hello.

He had always been this way. In small towns it was received as quirky. In Nashville it was mysterious.

Because he liked to write he occasionally took notes during a band’s set, noting a particular guitarist’s style or singer’s inflection or bass player’s muted enthusiasm.

He owned the lucky curse of resembling someone else and often received the benefits assumed due the other man. It was empowering and curious.

Each night he began and ended alone.

And embracing himself in the wee hours, he almost always reveled in having been.

III. People Things

Soundtracks played in Ray’s head most of the time. Flatt & Scruggs. John Prine. Dan Reeder. Paganini. Sometimes he voiced over passages from Shakespeare or Bukowski—depending upon his mood.

He randomly checked the time of night using his cell phone. He knew this looked as if he were checking incoming calls. It was a habit.

Often he would retreat to the 24th floor to see the all of Nashville. The cacophony of light and people doing people things.

An unlit perfect cigar in his left hand. A swirl of whiskey in his right, brown and gold.

And always the music dancing with purpose in his busy head.

And often he was happy.

Watching those people doing their people things.

And Then You Were Five

2006-11-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

And when I roust you in the morning you are like a teenager determined not to budge. But then I talk to you in a silly voice and tickle your back and ribs. That smile that defines you sneaks in beneath your closed eyes; and your face is alight with love and mischief. And then my face is reinforced with the same. And I know that our morning will be brief while it tries in vain to hold onto itself. A brief morning before the day’s obligations intercede.

I think at once of our time beneath the Bradford Pear tree in the front yard. You grabbing your first leaf. And then your second. Marveling at something new. And then the canopy of all the world’s leaves at once. You had no talk then and I interpreted all of your questions as only a father could. And I spoke to you, answering each question as if I too were experiencing a canopy of leaves for the first time. And, in truth, I was.

And then on the porch we sat for your first rain storm. The wind-pushed rain christened our faces. You were surprised and happy. And when that first slow rumble of thunder rolled over us, you clapped your perfect hands in appreciation. And I melted a little more wondering if it were possible to never let you go.

And, of course, that is not possible.

And when I saw you walk on the beach in Naples, I knew the sensation of flight. And of being newly grounded. I held you tight while hundreds of stingrays danced at our feet and dolphins splashed nearly within our reach.

And then you found talk and your questions flowed like spring. Each answer rooting itself within you, a newly found thing becoming the bigger part of you. Your need for knowledge and patient pursuit of it were inspiring. I’d never met someone with such a need to know. And I respect that still.

You showed early on that your sensitivity knows no bounds; that you feel things on a level different from most folks. It is refreshing and bold and wonderful. And it keeps me up nights worrying about you. How do I balance the need to protect you with the knowledge that such protection would be devastating? You are keenly aware that you define your own terms of feeling. You need no protection. Even though I often need you to. But then you’ve always been able to turn on a dime, moving from the big issues of a sometimes mean world to the things that make you and your audience happy. This is a unique talent that few possess. Own this ability and the world will follow your lead.

And the things we discuss amaze me. We talk of God and death. But most often dinosaurs and every animal imaginable. You explain things about them to me in a way that a Daddy can understand. We talk of families and the moon, planets and neighborhoods, foods we like and weather. We talk about the kids at your school and the way friends can impact one’s day. For better or worse.

And you seem to have mastered in a short while the ability to be utterly comfortable in a group or on your own. You are without pretense or anything ulterior. You are fully comfortable in your own skin. Some people spend a lifetime trying to establish such a comfort. I suspect you will grow to require moments of solitude in order to maintain the commercial values you have. It is a good balance to own. Your grip appears, thus far, solid.

There comes a point when a man realizes he is unable to quantify the love he has for his child. This is, of course, as it should be. There’s no need to chart the infinite. No need at all. I feel like you know this. For when our eyes meet, the look you return is my own. And there are no words for that.

And something that pleases me more than you could know, is your wiser than wise sense of humor. You recognize that few things are as fulfilling as making someone laugh. You waver precariously between class clown and concerned observer; but you seem to manage it well enough. And as important as making others laugh is the unique ability to make yourself laugh. Always be able to laugh at yourself. I’ve long said that I am my own best audience. That isn’t likely to change. You and I seem to share bizarre senses of humor and I think they are among our better qualities. I will tell you there is an extremely short list of people who truly make me laugh. You, son, are on that list. How I hope you will remember us lying in bed making each other laugh until we couldn’t talk. Me with tears on my face. You with the brightest grin and giggle in the universe. These are memories that have fashioned lives of their own.

And then you were here. You did all the things you were expected to do and then some. You came equipped with the things it regularly takes a lifetime to acquire or build. And being unselfish to degrees that baffle me, you shared these things with me.
Replete with rock solid senses of self, of place, of decency, and of what is right and wrong in the world you gave me reason to have more faith in the things around me.

And then on Tuesday of this week, while pondering what a lucky man I am and how my baby boy might just be the most complete person I’ve ever known, I blinked. I blinked and looked up.

And then you were five.

Late October

2006-10-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

And so I sit in the cold. Listening to the soft, slow approach of rain on leaf-covered lawn. It is forever and never packaged in a moment of sleeplessness.

My mind races.

For a Long Time Now

2006-10-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

For a long time now no words come. The pen is poised, the anxieties momentarily pocketed, cigar and drink at the ready and.... Nothing. The melancholy and fear of death and non-stop running of rabbits are all still there multiplied ad infinitum. But nothing. My insomnia and scatteredness have attached themselves like siblings and have won whatever it was they waged upon me. I simply cannot get comfortable.

My skin is too tight and it pinches when I turn to see what is behind me.

2006-10-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

Smile

2006-10-12T00:38:00.000-07:00

Gassin' Up at Kroger Rocks!

2006-10-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

Ascent!

2006-10-12T00:31:00.000-07:00

Found Chalk at Dragon Park

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (second in a series of 10)

2006-09-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

I. Impact

It is not so much the impact you feel as it is the slow motion slideshow you experience a millisecond before. You feel the impossibly long slow drown of grief of family and friends and people you’ve met in passing. Folks you never knew. A grocery clerk. An unmet neighbor. You feel the pain of love and of having loved. The excruciating pain of incompletion. It is surpassed only (and at once) by the welcome end of things.

By the euphoria of nothingness.

II. Appointment

“Well,” I start after a long silence, “there was the summer I went a little crazy, I guess.”

She appears to write something in the notebook that I’ve long suspected is actually just a prop.

“Is this the time about the girl?” she asks, still writing. She does not look up.

“That’s right.” My smartass smirk sticks to my face like graffiti. I cannot will it away. “She had interesting nipples and we used to rob convenience stores together. Her father wanted me to join the family business. But I was only 17 and I told him, ‘No, Rich. I’m gonna be a dancer. I’ve got the footwork and the drive. So, a dancer. Or a Presbyterian, maybe. Sometimes I feel the Lord behind my knees when I walk.’”

She writes some more. Casually.

“I thought you were an atheist,” she monotones finally.

“Agnostic,” I correct.

“Atheist. Agnostic,” she says. “They’re both empty attempts to stave off belief in something greater than yourself.”

“Says you,” I grin.

“Yep. Says me.” She appears to be drawing.

“So what do you believe?” I ask, not really caring.

She looks at me. Expressionless. Finally, she says, “I believe you’re trying to use sarcasm to avoid the issues that haunt you. I believe that your pain resides so deep that, for now, you are incapable of embracing it or using it. I believe your entire carriage is an unsuccessful defense mechanism.”

“Are you saying I never wanted to be a dancer?” I ask.

“That’s right, Ray.”

Pause.

“Have a drink with me,” I say. “You can bring your notebook.”

“I don’t drink with Presbyterians,” she says.

“Actually, I’m Catholic. Never did convert.” Pause. “C’mon, Doc. Let’s go find the Virgin Mary in a glass of bourbon.”

“I’ll have to pass, Ray.” She writes some more.

We sit in silence. It is quiet as a womb. I start to say this just for the reaction but do not. Instead I wait.

III. Spider

It is there. Unmoving. Its body the size of a quarter dollar. Add the legs, it becomes a fifty cent piece. I imagine its many patient eyes sizing me up. Its advance on me is nearly indiscernible. Like a minute hand. I watch it watch me. It has been 33 minutes, eight seconds. I have to pee but dare not get up. It owns me.

The currency of the moment is hyperbole.

Hyperbole and then some.

Fall and Autumn (or Things to Do on Your Summer Vacation)

2006-09-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

With the grandeur of Tennessee fall in the air, it is nice to reflect on what was by most counts a good—albeit fast—summer. Fall (or “jean-jacket weather” as I called it while growing up), has long held a special place in my heart. It has never been the end of something. On the contrary, fall is, for me, as spring is for many others. It has always felt so full of promise. Like the beginning of something special. The first few weeks of a relationship. Adolescent kisses sneaked high in the bleachers.

All that brilliance as leaves run like watercolor. It is birth. The possibility of possibility.

Often a walking contradiction, I find myself in stereo with summer as well. That southern, stifling, wet summer. The one that thieves my breath and mugs my sensibilities. I’m not sure how it is that I appreciate them both as I do. But I’m okay with not being sure.

Emerson asked me last week, “Daddy? Is it Fall yet?”
(I like the way his head works) “Nope,” I said. “Next Saturday. In about nine days.”
“Oh!” he said. “Daddy? You know what my favorite seasons are?”
“No Boy. What are they?”
“Ummm. Fall and autumn and….ummm, what’s the udder one?

The seasons become more special when you have an Emerson. Time in general becomes more special. The passage thereof becomes an ache and you find yourself scrambling so as not to waste any. It is futile you know. But we’re making memories here. Daily.

And scattered as ever, my whiskey-dipped mind is replaying a soundtrack of the satisfying summer. The random play suggests to me it was a good summer. A summer spent largely with my head in and out of the sand, casually looking for who I once was. It was one both busy and sedate. Full of surety and insecurity. Of resilience and new found confidence. It was contemplative and mean; contemplative and sweet. One of looking for and finding my laugh and passion. On a one to ten, I’ll give it a hearty seven and a half.

Regardless of meaningless scores and scoring systems, it occurs to me through wisps of cigar smoke that there are certain things a guy should do during his summer…

1.) If you agree to let your child leave you for ten days to visit Washington, D.C., Baltimore, then South Carolina, and Georgia, be prepared to act like a lottery winner upon his return. Go to dinner together and listen attentively to every minute detail of his journey. When you get home, take off your shoes, cue the stereo, and dance together like motherfuckers to the Gap Band’s Burn Rubber and You Dropped a Bomb on Me. And when you are exhausted and sweaty and grinning so big you fear your faces will break, put on the Violent Femmes’ Jesus Walking on the Water and do it all over again. It’s a wonderful way to spend a night.

2.) Go home. Grab enough shit to get you by for a week and take your Boy home. Deposit your job in a dumpster and drive 400 miles home. Sneak rear view mirror glances at your boy as he sleeps with confidence and again as he awakes and stares out the side window like a poet. It will make your heart sing, I promise. Make sure the drive is a relaxing adventure and not a chore.

Watch a grinning Nigerian gentleman gliding down the sweetest hills of Monteagle burn out the brakes of a brand new Volvo big rig. Try to tie together the humor and sadness of the event and explain the acrid smell that envelops your Jeep for the next 10 miles to your Boy. Recognize that hilarity and misery are such close cousins. Minimizing that for a four-year-old’s consumption is difficult (i.e., laughing at another’s misfortune is rarely advisable but sometimes unavoidable). It is okay to laugh at the absurd and hope that no one gets hurt.

When you get to the driveway of your childhood home, watch your son bound into the arms of his grandmother. Try to measure the mutual love as seen in a single embrace. Realize that it is immeasurable.

Sit up all night with your younger older sister. Dance around subjects you aren’t able to talk about yet—the ones that sit in your throat and taunt your soul. Turn her onto Loudon Wainwright III. Casually pick out a dozen CDs that she will burn for you and send later.

Share Father’s Day with your Dad and your own son and marvel at the idea of three generations at a single table.

Go pick out cigars with your mother and son.

Take your son to the old Lock and Dam. Watch the water that created your hometown all those years ago. Watch turtles take choreographed leaps into the still canal. Point out and avoid the ubiquitous poison ivy. Watch your son and mom find a black and green beetle the size of a silver dollar and make it a trophy.

Appreciate that the summer heat in Augusta is unique. Independent of all summer heat anywhere.

Go see Roger Enevoldsen play his guitar and sing his songs because you have done this for over 20 years and it makes you happy. Drink like a college student and smile as he plays Rocky Raccoon for you just as he did when you were a kid, heartsick and young. Years ago. Stay up until 4 a.m. Be shameless if you can’t be carefree. Notice the bartender. Her slight wrists and waltzing eyes. Her slight figure and mischievous smile. Acknowledge that you’ve not been dead for so long that you cannot recognize flirting. Then acquiesce. Take pleasure in the knowledge that you can still feel like that. That hint of heat that is not summer. Talk to her and pocket her voice that tells you to please come see her when you are back in town.

3.) Hit the live-music jackpot and score tickets to a Tom Waits show. Gloat like a man who has just invented summer. Work a half-Monday and pair up with your buddy who is nearly as damaged as you. Ease into his beautiful old Porsche 944 S2 and road trip it to Louisville, Kentucky. Relax and be giddy. Flirt again with speeds of 100 mph. Curse and avoid the Kentucky cops and their goddamned unmarked black Camaros. Check into a miserably wonderful downtown hotel at midday. Find a bar and drink draught beer. Mingle with the crowd outside the Louisville Palace. People-watch. Fall in love two dozen times. Contemplate enrolling in the University of Louisville. Appreciate the firm breasts and lower back tattoos. Drink cold bottle beer bought from street vendors. And watch.

And when the show starts, have the presence of mind to realize you are seeing God onstage. His voice is gravel and rock salt. His light show is aurora borealis. His gyrations epileptic. His sense of humor, biting and refreshing. His effect on you….life-altering.

Leave the show in reverie. Uncertain of what you’ve just seen. It can’t be processed yet. Re-find your bar and drink more beer. Watch a heart-stopping siren play fully-clothed in the city fountain. Forget that you are old enough to be her father. Just enjoy her. Her youth and drunkenness and happiness and lack of inhibition.

Walk with your buddy back to your room. Walk past a naked man sleeping in front of a nondescript office building as comfortably as if he were on his own couch. Notice the disinterested cops across the street pretend not to see him and then drive away. Sleep agitated sleep and ride hungover straight to work and put in your time. Continue to process what you saw the night before. Listen as Tom Waits growls in your sea-heavy head like a penance.

4.) Go to a local block party in honor of Otha Turner. Drink free beer and marvel again at humanity. Dance again to Bluegrass music with your Boy. Stand in line for dragon face-paint and balloon animals fashioned by hateful clowns. Take in the best and worst of Nashville society and ponder where you might fit. Abandon the exercise and enjoy the music. Avoid Uncle G.’s friends and agree to not consider them at all. Bask in the music and atmosphere and senses of inclusion and exclusion.

5.) Go to Emory in Atlanta to visit your friend from high school. Muster your courage and strive to be strong. Know that although he walked through the disease and the bone marrow transplant, the resulting GVH may be his undoing. Try to be upbeat and encouraging. Do not be shocked that the disease and treatment have robbed him of his weight and hair and energy. Be strong because this one’s not about you. Walk with him as he tries to do “laps” around his ward to build his strength. He managed 10 the day before but will work through 11 in (and because of) your presence. It will be difficult for him and you will be by his side, close enough to catch him if he falls. Pray he won’t. You don’t want him to be embarrassed in front of you. Allow yourself to feel guilty for going to lunch knowing he is not allowed even ice chips because of the disease. And hate the disease and what it has done to your friend. Allow, also, that the selfish part of you will think of your own recent exhaustion and wonder Oh Christ! Do I have it too?

And though you are sad and unsure, leave with a smile because you will make your friend laugh and feel normal and like this might be something he can beat and say Motherfuck you! to. And when you get home, say a prayer. And try not to cry in front of your son when you hug him goodnight.

6.) Make a friend. Accept the kindness and decency of another. Take your Boy to swim in this person’s pool. Study on the sly how he interacts with his own child and take notes. Recognize that no matter how good you are at something, you can always improve upon it. Commiserate. Ponder at length—without obsessing—the similarities of your respective situations, backgrounds, and experiences. Consider confiding. Ultimately learn how to be a friend again.

7.) Celebrate your birthday with the older of your two sisters. Accept her generosity and sincerity. Be dignified. Enjoy her company and substantial efforts most of all. Sit up until 5 a.m. on your porch and watch as secrets and perceptions spill like an elixir. Compare memories. And interpretations. Be siblings! Trade music and more memories. Work through your hangovers and enter downtown Nashville and embark on the Broadway Crawl. Take your sister to Tootsies and Roberts and The Stage and find a spot at Layla’s Bluegrass Inn and settle in for the long haul. Listen to Bluegrass you could find no where else outside of your own living room 30 years prior. Drink beer and spill bourbon. Watch the uniqueness that is Nashville wash into and out of these Honky Tonks. Introduce your sister to your buddy so she knows you aren’t entirely alone. Make her laugh her wonderful loud laugh by telling crude stories. Even though you do not drink it, convince her to order you a Miller Genuine Draught because she is unable to put those particular words together on this night. Stand in the middle of sidewalk traffic on Broadway with your sister and friend laughing like fools while the tourists and locals weave their paths around you.

Although you despise birthdays and are embarrassed by them, smile at how lovely this one is. Receive flowers and Woodford and cigars and Makers and DVDs and company and be made happy by them.

8.) At the close of summer, take your Boy to the Dragon Park. Run him as though you could actually influence his energy. Learn to distance yourself just so. Grant him that sweet hint of independence whereupon he escapes your sight for a nanosecond. Know that it is horrifying and necessary. Kick the soccer ball with him. Annoy him and laugh with him.

When you leave the park, go to the record store down the road. Treat yourself to the new Tom Petty and Old Crow Medicine Show. Play both of them immediately and justify spending money you do not have.

9.) Set up late night shop on your crippled front porch. Drink good whiskey and smoke fine cigars as if you own the last mild days of summer. As if they were placed upon the calendar solely for your enjoyment. Enjoy how the night makes you shiver a little. Makes your toes cold.

And in a couple days it is fall. The green Tennessee hills will soon sing a new poetry of color. From my vantage I will hum back-up. From the backseat of the Jeep, my son, the Romantic, will sing harmony. “Summer is done,” says someone looking for his jean jacket and pocketful of nostalgia.

“And fall and autumn are our two favorite seasons.”

Three Vignettes of No Particular Order (first in a series of 10)

2006-09-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

I. The First First Round

He sat motionless on his front porch, the nightsounds constant and loud as traffic. His thoughts worked the heavy bag to his first professional fight and how the christening straight left jab broke his too large nose. How the blood flowed like water from a tap until the second jab staunched the bleeding and reset the nose. How the taste of his blood made him gag and made him strong. How he drew the journeyman in by dropping his left, weaving right, countering with a body shot. How he felt the old man’s ribs give and give again. And then again. How he was alive and empty at the sight of the man spitting his own blood, unable to answer the bell of the second round.

II. Interrupting Goodbye

It was late. He was drunk. They argued. She was done with him. She had been done before they’d begun. She went for the door. Her confidence was like a third person in the room. He knew he’d lost her. Had never had her. She walked as if underwater. Her hair, long and dirty blonde, was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. It moved just barely when she walked. He watched her cut-offs and the fabric of her white blouse moving away. He loved all the things she wasn’t. He loved those things more than he loved her. And really, he knew, he didn’t love her at all. As she stepped to leave, he spoke his last false words. “If you walk out that door… I won’t be here when you come back,” he said. She paused. She shut the door and returned. After some tears, they made useless love on his mother’s couch.

The clock over the Victorian roll top desk stood forever at 3:30 a.m.

III. Surviving Childhood

A product of that social experiment, busing, Ray’s education away from books and lesson plans began early. ( Should the grounds of an elementary school be enclosed on all sides by a twelve-foot fence crowned with barbed wire?) It was odd but accepted—as is most everything when one is a child. The playground was inviting as a prison yard and as dangerous. A low wall in the lunch room had been smeared with human feces at some point and never was cleaned or painted over. Students lined against the wall prior to being led back to class each day. They nonchalantly avoided leaning flush against the wall. Sometimes a student pushed another so that he brushed up to it. He could then be taunted for the rest of the day. “You touched shit, you touched shit,” they would laugh. Ray was beaten regularly by the black kids. Accused of calling them a word he would never utter even in adulthood. He could feign only so much toughness and was too sensitive to grasp the true horror of his situation. Before his sentence there, he never knew that sixth graders could get pregnant.

He served three years at Ursula Collins Elementary. And he survived. No noticeable scars accompanied him to his later years.

Nothing noticeable anyway.

And then there are the days....

2006-08-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

And then there are the days you are painfully aware of just how shitty a parent you’ve been. Days when every right thing you’ve ever done appears meaningless and voided in the glare of your failure. Your failure of patience. Your failure to sympathize. Your utter lack of empathy. Your failure to stand firm. Your failure to be a good role model. Your failure to hold it together as you fail to correct instead of chastise. Your failure to be the adult. Your failure to treat your child like the gift he is. And again your failure to correct instead of chastise. And when the days run consecutively, your failure to not fail again. And you hate yourself for it. And then you hate yourself for hating yourself. And after you’ve made it right and he finally falls asleep in your crook while saying, “I love you, Daddy,” you hate yourself.

And when you retire to the porch with your drink and your cigar and your exhaustion hanging on you like an appendage, you hate yourself more. Until your self-loathing is the only thing that makes you feel better.

And you listen to the soft rain falling on all sides of you; and you wish it could reduce you to one of the distant rivulets you see washing to the gutter at the end of your street.

And all of this because you love your Boy more than anything there ever was.

And so you finish your drink and your cigar. You go inside. Turn out the lights. You lie down next to him. Put your left hand on his left shoulder blade. You measure time by the sound of his breathing. The faint beat of his heart against your palm.

The rain taps forgiveness at your window. Self-loathing rinses away. Reveals the promise of tomorrow. And a second chance.

Arbitrary Paths

2006-08-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

One day several months ago, Emerson looked me over pretty good and said, “Daddy? You know everything. Right?” “That’s right son,” I answered. “God comes to me for advice.”

With the exception of this Daddy knows stuff misstep, Em is fairly sharp. He smiled and shook his head. He was on to me. “I know a lot of stuff…but I don’t know everything.” I told him this and also that it wouldn’t be any fun knowing everything because then there’d be nothing new to learn. I find the dynamics of these off-the-cuff lessons interesting on a few levels. While making sure I do not fall into the trap of taking myself too seriously, I have to be acutely aware that my words and actions are directly shaping who this boy will become. You would think this awareness or knowledge or potentially crippling responsibility—whatever you choose to call it—would lead toward some sort of blueprint or game plan of sorts. It has not.

I suppose there are hundreds of lessons for a father to impart. Most Of which I have not even considered. In general, I think the wisest thing is to try to lead by example. At the most basic level I guess my message is “Don’t be an asshole.” Also I think one should employ common courtesy as often as possible. Now don’t get me wrong—I can certainly be an asshole. But I’m usually a courteous one.

On this subject of “lessons” (for lack of a better word), I am uncomfortable. Primarily, I think, because I am often so scattered and moody that I rarely take a consistent path to resolve a situation. Unless I am truly frustrated (which is often) or truly angry (which is rare), I am pathetically inconsistent in how I elect to face conflict. My inner Sybil hasn’t caused me any real grief to this point. I usually make reasonable choices—they just are not based on a concrete predetermined philosophy. A positive end result is ultimately what I should be interested in showing my son. I guess. Perhaps how I arrived at something is not as important as I would think. I’ve created this vision of how confusing, if not stunting, it must be to a four-year-old child to witness this nonlinear path. In all likelihood, I am overreacting. I do that from time to time.

A recent example of this self-created non-issue has been playing on a loop inside my crowded head for weeks now. I went to pick up the Boy from daycare. There were a lot of kids still on hand. Em was at a free-standing table with four of five other kids, playing with blocks, Leggos, or somesuch. I observed from several feet away. Across from Em was an older, dull lump of a boy I’d never seen. He was maybe a head taller than Em. While I watched, the bigger boy reached across and snatched a block from Em’s hand and began absently playing with it—further establishing his clear dominance of the moment. It was reminiscent of a miniature prison cafeteria scene whereupon the meanest inmate snatches another con’s cornbread. The other kids kept playing and didn’t appear to notice or care. Just another day in the “yard.” I instinctively cringed but didn’t move. To his credit, Emerson immediately walked around the table and up to the boy and said, “Hey! I was playin’ with that.” The kid didn’t look up but replied, “Nah. It’s mine. I was playin’ with it.”

Emerson inherently knows right from wrong. And he has always been visibly baffled by meanness. Whether he is on the receiving end or a mere spectator, his inability to comprehend or process it is obvious. It is one of the things I love about him most. But standing his ground he said, “No, I was playin’ with it. Now give it back.” The boy, expressionless, replied simply “No” and kept playing. After one more fruitless attempt, Em retreated to a near corner. His face gave a bit as he sank to his knees and started crying softly.

I stepped in and gently prodded him from the corner. We stepped several feet away. I knelt and spoke to my son.

It is here that I either imparted a good, early life lesson to the Boy or did him a disservice. See, the fact of the matter is that it was the end of the day. We were minutes away from going home. In the big scheme of things this was a monumentally minor occurrence. Kids will be kids; and in general I say, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” By most any standard, this was small stuff. Conventional wisdom under the circumstances is Fuck it. Let the kid have the block—we’re out of here anyway. But on this day and in this moment I decided that would be the worst thing I could do to Emerson. In a hushed tone I calmed him down. Peripherally, I noticed the little convict stealing glances at us. I was extremely careful not to project my presence whatsoever. I know full well how intimidating the presence of an adult can be to a child. It is not my place to correct another’s child. And it is absolutely not my place to make a child (regardless of how unpleasant he is) feel uncomfortable in any environment.

So a decision was reached and I explained it to Em. “Son,” I said. “You were playing with that block. That boy had no right to take it away from you without asking you. You need to go over there and get that block back.” He looked at me, his eyes mostly dry. “Daddy,” he asked in a small, sad voice. “Can you just come with me?” And so my heart ached more than a little as I said, “I’m sorry, Baby, but no. You have to do this yourself.” The Boy regained his composure and courage, approached the block snatcher, and politely succeeded in getting the block back. The other kids looked up as Em reclaimed his spot at the table—with his block. I went to Em’s locker and pretended to busy myself with whatever I found. I let a few minutes tick by before I told him it was time to go.

In the hallway we walked a few steps and stopped. I knelt again and put my hands on his shoulders. “Emerson,” I said. “I know that was hard to do. But I am very proud of you and the way you handled the situation.” He smiled a small heartfelt smile and looked me in the eye. “Thanks Daddy,” he said. Then we held hands and walked out of the building.

I am confident I made the right decision to escalate instead of accept. My problem lies in the arbitrariness of the decision. If my mood had been different, I would have gathered Emerson and his stuff and we would have left well enough alone. And it would not have been a terrible thing, I’m sure. But would I then be justifying that decision as the “right” one? I know I just dream up shit to worry about. Always have. I recognize these things are largely situational; and one makes decisions based on the immediate vibe and environment. But is that consistent enough when you’re trying to raise a child to do what’s right, to expect what’s right, and to have respect for what’s right? I don’t know. When is enough ever enough, eh?

In the meantime we’ll just do the best we can. Can’t really ask more than that.

We’ll try to not be assholes. We’ll try to be courteous. We’ll try to not sweat the small stuff.

We’ll try to make reasonable choices, even when taking arbitrary paths. As long as we get where we’re going, you know?

2006-08-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

That Melting Smile

2006-08-14T01:19:00.000-07:00

My Boy Em in August

2006-08-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

August Em2

2006-08-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

August Em

The Waiting and Such

2006-07-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

I wonder, at times, if mine is a destiny of being perpetually unsettled. At no time, it seems, can I relax in the arms of the word’s true definition.

I sit on this porch. It is warm, but pleasant enough. I am in the cradle of the gloam—my absolute favorite time of day. The sky is battleship grey with hints of cobalt and lavender. The nightsounds show themselves early and it is grand—the feel of a hidden lake and rolling hills. There is a distant train whistle. And then it is gone. The music slides beneath my front door, dances to its own delicious beat at the legs of my chair. The house itself is quiet in there. My son is with his mother and the night is my own. I have a strong drink, a nice cigar, a newly-arrived New Yorker, a copy of Buk’s Factotum I am revisiting, a pen, a notebook. I’ve got it all. And yet, my Goddamn shoulders are wrenched up to my Goddamn ears. I am coiled as tight as a pair of size 32 blue jeans. And I feel like the ass that is about to bust those seams.

By most accounts, I am a lucky man. Though not completely devoid of the curse, I am not nearly inclined to sit around and wallow in self-pity as I was in my younger days. I am observant and am thus extremely thankful for what I have.

I spent years running hard—hitting the bars, meeting women, driving all night aimed at no real destination. I was lucky through all of it. And truth be told, I still have a bit of that in my blood, the yearning and the luck. I suppose it is not something of which you ever completely rid yourself. Nor would I wish to. But those days are largely behind me. I am physically settled. Nestled in a city I fell in love with seven years ago. I have the honor of watching her evolve and grow around me. She is an urban miracle, with new structures popping up daily; and still I have deer and fox and raccoons roaming the small lot on which I live. It is a delightful and inexplicable contradiction of nature that I embrace.

But emotionally I am unsettled as the day I graduated high school. And then college. It seems a betrayal to what my years would dictate. And I do not understand.

I’ve been told “your 40’s are when you truly find yourself.” That’s great. Especially, since I rapidly approach them. But if “the 50’s are the new 40’s,” as I have also been told, then Jesus Christ, what next? When do I find my way?

In good time, I suppose. In good time.

In the meantime, I’ll strive to enjoy the night. The sights. The sounds. The freedom. The drinks and gratifying cigars. The music.

The waiting.

And really, it’s all good.

It really is…It really is…It really is…

What the Mind Does in the Heat and Night

2006-07-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

It is a fucking sauna on my front porch. But a cigar, drink, and New Yorker make it enjoyable. It is like Augusta, GA out here. Sometimes the feel of home is like the feel of home.

My thoughts are scattered more so than usual tonight. My hand-crafted soundtrack slides perfectly too loud through the front door—Van Morrison, Jack Johnson, Lyle Lovett, and a double dose of Tom Waits. I will see Tom in Louisville in about two weeks and I am as excited as a schoolgirl.

My mind is back to running rabbits, returning me to my surreal sense of normalcy. I am here, there, and back again… My only nephew was in a horrific car wreck last week and by the Grace of someone’s God, he escaped largely unscathed. I cannot quite process it yet without filling with emotion. The boy (actually a man), is my sister’s Emerson. And because I am close to my sister, I have absorbed some of her horror and made it my own. What if my son had such a close call? My being shuts down at the obscene possibility.

And I am traversing this mapless terrain of thought and find myself thinking about Lost in Translation. And how utterly wonderful that film is. How Tokyo is overload to the senses. How it is neon enlightenment—at once terrifying and calming. How I once paid $9 for a can of Coors there. How I heard Don McLean’s American Pie six times in a row in a bar beneath the city. How one way I will be able to write about my time in Tokyo.

I’m thinking of my friends, K & P. That they will have a new baby boy before July is done. How exciting and scary a new baby is. And how lucky that baby is about to be.

I’m thinking about my ramshackle, neglected house and my limping Jeep.

I’m thinking about the instability of my job.

And I’m thinking of driving to Evansville this weekend. Of swimming and sunning and fishing. Of making sure my sister’s son is really okay.

I marvel at how good I am at being alone. How much I enjoy it. How I prefer it. How liberating it is. And how odd that might seem to the casual observer.

I’m thinking—inexplicably—of Holden Caulfield. His inability to progress. His eerily understandable curse of being tethered to all things static. My unattractive ability to relate.

I smile at having introduced a learned friend to E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. And how Doctorow’s writing is a revelation.

I’m thinking of shooting stars and where they go when they are finished.

I’m thinking of people I may have hurt to this point—and whether I am as innocent in that as I believe myself to be.

I’m thinking about my friend at Emory who has leukemia and a boy the same age as my own.

I’m thinking about the booze and cigar runs I need to make tomorrow and which credit cards are not maxed out.

I’m thinking about the too young girl I saw at work today with bad posture and brown eyes the size of saucers. How her eyes were vacant and all-knowing.

And I’m thinking of Emerson at his mother’s tonight. About whether he will call in tears at 3:30a, homesick and ready to come home as he has done the past two times.

I’m thinking it is troublesome to thrive on (and yearn for) this solitude, this aloneness and yet love women as I do. I want them and I want to be as far from them as possible. And I realize this is hardly new or unique. But the contradiction fascinates me.

I’m thinking I should be on the beach in Naples, Florida and fishing in Islamorada and drinking in Key West.

And I wonder if the pressure in my chest is anxiety or a heart ready to explode. Are the ocular migraines the result of having seen too much or a precursor to stroke? Is hypochondriasis quantifiable?

So much thinking. Too many questions.

And so the drinks are winding down. The second cigar is a memory. And the rabbits are slowing. It’s time to turn off my mind for the night and look for sleep.

If only I could find the fucking remote.

Thematics, Angst, & Non Rhyme

2006-07-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

When I was trying to write poetry, I rarely created or reflected issues of substance. I found myself writing what I liked to read. The vast majority of my poems were mundane snapshots or free verse vignettes. In this respect they were, at best, considered amateurish. A valid criticism, I think. But as I have always appreciated ambiguity, open-endedness, and simplicity, my poetry succeeded in that it accomplished what was intended—which, largely, was nothing in particular. Occasionally, I would toy with internal rhyme or a rhyme scheme noticeable to no one but me. Often the scheme would (unintentionally) end up as a variation of iambic pentameter—it was merely the way the words came out.

I appreciated the themes that occasionally showed themselves in much the way I appreciate Edward Hopper’s work. Fret not, my arrogance does not run deep enough to compare my word to Hopper’s stroke. I speak only of thematic aspirations. See, Hopper conveyed aloneness, loneliness, silent angst, and pensiveness as it had never before been conveyed. My goal (if indeed I had one) was to do something similar, with as few words as possible. Just as he had done with a sparse and simple style.

These words happened a couple weeks ago. Even with the long break, I find I haven’t matured a whit in the ways of verse. But I’m okay with that. It feels good to have even had the urge.

First Poem

The night is neither elegant
nor elegiac.
Perhaps salacious. The moon
purrs light
like whispers in a closet.
My heartbeat is a murmur,
a stutter.
A sigh my only company.
The telephone
does not ring. But if it did,
the silence
on the other end would be
omniscient.

What does it mean? Oh, nothing really. A snapshot of an evening. Maybe something to make me begin again.

It certainly isn’t my Nighthawks. But, truly, what could be?

Mothership BBQ: A Glowing Review

2006-07-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

It’s wonderful to see that hard work, perseverance, and a touch of decency can still occasionally pay off. Jim “Nashville Knucklehead” Reams has busted his ass to bring Nashville the best Goddamn BBQ around. His joint, Mothership BBQ, is ready to take off in the biggest of ways. Kay West of the Nashville Scene seems to agree with what local (and non-local) bloggers have been talking about for over a month now.

Read her glowing review right here. Then stop by Jim’s site and offer a slap on the back. Tell him Ryan sent you.

Best BBQ I’ve ever had. Truthfully.

2006-07-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

Distant X's & O's, Baby!

2006-07-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Do Rag

2006-07-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

Augusta June 2006

One Man's Mundane....

2006-06-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

As an around-the-house-fix-it-guy, I am about as handy as Stephen Hawking. I am okay at changing light bulbs and cleaning up hairballs, but really that is about it. Also, I am carrying an unnecessary extra twenty pounds and get winded going to the mailbox. Living on Diet Coke, cigars, and whiskey may or may not play a role. I haven’t decided. But surely not. And although the extent of my physical workouts consists of dodging Junebugs on my porch at night and carrying a handle of Evan Williams from the Jeep to the kitchen once a week, I like physical activity. I appreciate a good sweat. One of my enjoyable things is cutting the grass—sniff-sniff, I mean tending the lawn. Like a lot of guys, I’ll bitch about it all week leading up to the actual task. But I enjoy it. My lot is roughly one third of an acre. But it is a corner lot with a fair incline and can be taxing. Especially for a guy like me. The job, all-told, takes about an hour and a half. Aside from navigating the steeper parts of the yard, keeping an eye out for spiders and snakes is the only real concern. They like to take refuge in the low-lying limbs of my obnoxious pine trees. Passing beneath those limbs gives me the fucking willies every time. Once about three summers ago, I bent low and made two passes beneath a nasty old Pine on the west side of the house. On my third pass, I stood up a little too early, paused, and noticed that I was eye to eye with a four foot black snake stretched the length of a slender limb. I think my muffled scream went something like, “OhmyJesusmotherfuckingchrist!” I tend to get religion during moments of stress. But no harm, no foul. I went inside, changed my shorts, and finished the job.

But truly, I think part of what I like about cutting the yard is the silly sense of accomplishment that comes with it. It is a small thing really, but for a sedentary guy, it is something. Invariably, the yard looks better once I am done. The physical workout makes me feel alive. My shirt sticking to me, the dust and dirt caked around my ankles and in my nostrils, the sweat running in my eyes and down my back—the all of it—reminds me that I am alive.

It is often the small pleasures in life, eh?

Often, after I’ve replaced the old crippled mower to its holding pattern, I walk down to the street, look up and admire my handy work. With its freshly cut yard, even my ramshackle house looks good. I nod my head in the affirmative. I walk up the driveway, go to the kitchen, open a teeth-achingly cold beer, and drink half of it at once. I stand at the kitchen window looking out on the new yard. The birds have, by now, converged, running and swooping, foraging for an easy-access meal.

It is a sight I appreciate for reasons not entirely understood.

I bet Stephen Hawking would appreciate it too.

Judging The Mothership

2006-06-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

On occasion, I will sit astride my high horse and claim that I do not judge folks. At the time I say it, I believe it because it follows the path of my “to each his own” philosophy (which is quite real); and in general because I could not give a fuck what the other guy is up to. But the ultimate truth is that of course I judge people—it is human nature. And, actually, I am very good at it. I can typically tell who is full of shit and who is not. It isn’t that difficult. In the end, I don’t care. The world needs shitheads—if for nothing else, to keep the rest of us (many of us also shitheads) on our toes. Part of this judging mechanism is in place, I believe, to help us decide with whom we want to form acquaintanceships versus friendships or whom we would like to avoid altogether. Two of the more important things in assessing a person’s character, two things I look for, are sincerity and common decency. These, I find, are the two qualities most often lacking in folks today. So when I do recognize these qualities in people, I tend to pay a little more attention, and then I gain a little more hope for another day. It is a nice thing.

With this in mind, Emerson and I trekked to Berry Hill last Saturday afternoon. In part for a little BBQ and in part to support Nashville Knucklehead, whom we’ve grown fond of via this surreal Blogworld, the periphery of which we inhabit.

Now I know about as much of the restaurant business as I do animal husbandry or neurosurgery. What I do know though is people. With his candid talk of blowjobs, B-list celebrity sightings, personal angst, and devotion to his daughter, Knucklehead intrigued me enough to want to make the effort to drop by. Simply put, he comes across as a decent sort with a hell of a sense of humor. That alone is reason enough to want to support someone.

Many folks have weighed in on the Mothership experience and I’ve yet to see a single negative review. The food is exceptional. Kat Coble, Rex, Sarcastro, Lannae, and Aunt B. have put it better than I ever could. One good visit might be a fluke. At this point, it is apparent that the Mothership ain’t no fluke.

My own visit was rewarding as I had hoped. Em and I wound our way through Berry Hill, parked in back of the MS, and made our way around front. Knucklehead was behind the counter—admirably running his own show. He was sweaty, obviously tired, a little disheveled with a hard-working new business owner’s glint in his eye. Emerson and I introduced ourselves. CeeElcee and the lovely RUAbelle were there. They recognized Em from his pictures here and were simply delightful people. I could tell C. was pleased to meet us (as we were him) and not just saying so. He was a good sort. I started to realize that his and Knucklehead’s friendship spoke well of them both.

Knucklehead personally brought our lunch. Goodbyes were exchanged with C. Em was on his best behavior. And then on this, his first day open for business, Knucklehead took a seat next to us and struck up casual, sincere conversation. The guy had to have had 101 things going on, things which needed tending to. But he chose to sit down and visit. There was no preceding sense of obligation—we are but a couple of guys who scribble words and caught each other’s attention. He sat down because he wanted to. The conversation was easy. Comfortable. He was patient as a father with Em’s occasional interruptions. Interested as a good conversationalist when I spoke. Passionate about his own subjects when he spoke. He could have been the biggest dick on the planet that day—aloof as a professor of Education and I would not have faulted him nor judged him harshly for the day was his; he’d labored for it and earned the right. But no. He took nearly an hour of his day and, not so much shared it, as he gave it to a virtual friend/literal stranger and his son. Take what you know of the general populace today—our self-serving, self-absorbed populace—and be rid of it. Em and I neither deserved nor expected the pure selflessness Knucklehead offered. But we got it. For our very easy journey, we received an exceptional meal, great conversation, a guided tour, and an escort to our Jeep. Knucklehead even took a few minutes to show Em the caboose-sized cooker where he works his magic. Then, as casually as when he sat next to us, he shook hands goodbye and left to prepare for the dinner crowd.

I will return to the Mothership. And I will recommend it to others. Not solely because the Q is likely the best I’ve ever had but because sincerity and common decency are also on the menu. And there is no extra charge.

Nashville Pre-Storm 06.01.06

2006-06-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

It’s really rolling in. Sounds like waves crashing. The trees bowing and bending and coming together. My hand-crafted Hilton Head wind chimes dancing and flailing. The sky alive with light and darkness. A crack of lightning. A peel of thunder. The rain now like applause.

My cigar held. My drink Poised.

I wouldn’t miss this for all the world.

06.01.06, Late p.m.

2006-06-02T01:09:00.000-07:00

I hear low rumbles of distant thunder. The dog’s chain across the street dragging across his driveway. Breeze through maples. The stereo inside peeking random passages from Dylan, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Robert Earl Keen, and Willie Nelson.

I see night lightning above the trees flash-bulbing my navy blue sky. Wisps of cigar smoke. A week’s worth of unread City Papers. A near empty (beckoning) highball glass.

I want financial security. To feel the rain on my face. To be as calm on the inside as I project on the outside. To share a quiet drink and unspoken conversation with my buddy, K. To go to a poetry reading. To resurrect Bukowski for a single fractured evening.

I need to feel the flesh of another for an hour—maybe two. To travel. To drive nowhere with the sunroof open and get lost. To disappear—just for awhile. To see some guy with a guitar in a near empty barroom. To Sleep 24 uninterrupted hours. To stop thinking so much. To touch the Gulf of Mexico again. To go to a baseball game. To need.

Arriving and Arrival

2006-05-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

As a young boy I learned quickly to be self-sufficient and to fend for myself. At 10, I routinely cooked my own meals, did the laundry, sat down at the end of the day with our evening paper—The Augusta Herald. I started driving at 14 and would do the weekly grocery shopping at Harris Teeter which became Food Town which became Food Lion. Whatever its name on a particular day, the store was only a couple miles from the house and I avoided major roads. Aside from one bitter old woman in the neighborhood, no one ever said anything; and hers was but talk behind our backs. I’d never taken those types or their talk seriously anyway so it was of no concern to me.

During the years prior to the grocery runs, I spent my days and early evenings exploring the neighborhood, its woods and creeks, its railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill, its kids—younger and older; good and bad. From mid-morning on, I was away from the house building forts, walking the tracks and trails, throwing rocks at passing trains, skateboarding. My neighborhood was rough but I avoided serious trouble and temptation at most every turn. It was unnatural, really, how well-behaved I was. My mother always knew where I was and she knew she didn’t have to worry about me. Knew that I would manage just fine. And I did. I probably shouldn’t have, but I did. I was (and am) adept at avoiding fights; my run-ins with the Law were minor (either illegal firework offenses or witness to something not good). Although I have never not been around drugs and/or alcohol, I didn’t start drinking until midway through my senior year of high school. And drugs always scared me.

Fast forward many, many years. Granted, I have issues out the ass. I once described myself as having more issues than National Geographic. Now I say more issues than the New Yorker because I think I am clever and to my literary ear, it sounds more sophisticated (I am often wrong). But, truth be told, I turned out relatively okay. Except for a five-month span in 1999, I’ve always held a job. I’ve never been in rehab. I’m as sociable and charitable as the next guy. In short, I get by. I think a lot of that is due to the leniency I was afforded while growing up.

Sometimes I rehash my childhood and marvel that I am not a thief, junkie, or some other blight on the social landscape. See, I was granted a great deal of trust as a kid. Negligence is not to be confused with trust in this case. I believe that. But, I also believe I have been extremely lucky during my life. Luck and common sense can serve a person well. Surround yourself with good people and luck often takes care of itself. But, I admit, falling into “good people” is also in and of itself lucky. So, perhaps it is all luck—fuck, I don’t know. Who does?

All of that to get to this: I now am raising a Boy of my own. He is everything to me. I recognize the unfair burden this places upon him, but (as I’ve stated here before) to deny it would be dishonest. And of my flaws, dishonesty isn’t one of them. Em is a uniquely intelligent and kind Boy; and I think fine things await him. But in an ironic twist, I have become an overbearing, overprotective father to the Boy. He is only four, so much of my behavior is justified. But I worry that I have initiated a trend I won’t be able to alter as the months and years accumulate. It is a vastly different world from when I was a child. Or so it seems. In truth, the dangers are likely the same, but our awareness of them is more pronounced. I cannot fathom letting Emerson go off alone, exploring what he will need to explore in order to mature. This bothers me tremendously. How can he possibly grow into his own person if I am unwilling to let him out of my sight for a millisecond? Perhaps it is a moot point—a needless worry—at this young age as being constantly aware of him and his doings is indeed my job. But I do not foresee me relenting in the future.

Certainly, though, I’ll recognize this as unhealthy and instinctively know when to “give” a little. I have seen hints of it over the past six months. Maybe that bodes well for us. Who’s to say? But even when he is 10 or 12, I have trouble envisioning turning him loose to experience life and make decisions that will help shape who he is to become. I cannot imagine giving him free run of the neighborhood and allowing the natural exploration he will demand and deserve. And this seems damn criminal to me. I am aware of it yet unsure whether I’ll be able to correct it. Isn’t that some shit? A premeditated crime against my own Boy.

And so this is an example of one of the things that take up space in my crowded bean. I’m not a complete buffoon. I realize that at some point I will settle on a happy medium between the ultra-freedom I had as a child and the realistic limits necessary for raising, protecting, encouraging, and trusting a child in today’s uncertain world. These things have a way of working themselves out. It’s just a matter of wanting to do things right the first time—save us all a little heartache, you know? It’s difficult at times to find that middle ground. The correct answer.

It is no different than wanting to gift-wrap the world and hand-deliver the thing in its splendor to my son.

And it is no different than knowing that is the worst possible thing I could ever do for him.

Sentimental Revelations

2006-05-05T16:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a late afternoon appointment that kept me from taking Emerson to soccer practice. So his mother took him for me. Em knows what is expected of him during practice and during games. He does not have to excel, but he does have to try his best, be aware of his environment, and approach the situation with a healthy mix of fun and seriousness.

On occasion the Boy has to be reminded that lying in the grass and dirt, hiking his satin black shorts up to his chin, and annoying the living shit out of his teammates and members of the other team are not numbers one through three on the day’s agenda. That being said, I want him to have as much fun as possible while accepting the seeds of responsibility and dependability that come with being part of a team. In general, he does this very well. But, again, he has to be reminded from time to time. He is four. And he gets to be four for a whole year. But he also gets to have a lesson or three in the things that (hopefully) will help ease him into the next stage of his young life and then the ones after that.

I pulled up to the practice field during the final 10 minutes of the kids’ workout. Walking to the sideline, I saw three boys standing in front of the goal and Em sitting down as comfortable as if he were watching a movie and having popcorn. I spotted his mother across the field and she gave me a half-smile and slight head-shake telling me that Em had likely assed-out during his practice. That could mean anything from lounging in the grass to getting the other boys to play chase with him. I looked back toward the goal and Emerson’s eyes met mine. He stood up immediately, got a serious look on his face, and commenced to make the most of his remaining 10 minutes.

This was moving in ways I do not fully comprehend. Emerson did not get his four-year-old act together because he fears his father—of this I am confident. But there was something nearly tangible about the action that spoke equal parts to a respect for me and a healthy pride in self. A casual observer may have had a different take on the exchange. To me, though, at play that day were elements of a natural desire for a father’s approval; a recognition that there are expectations of behavior—even for children; and (for good or bad) an effort to not disappoint if disappointment is indeed avoidable.

It was an interesting revelation for me that day on the practice field. I allowed myself the suggestion that maybe I am doing some things right. I am all too aware of the things I do not do well. As such, I strive daily to address them, learn from them, and do them better. So it was nice to have this. Emerson and I laugh together every day. He often tells me I am his “best friend.” I tell him, “That’s right, Buddy. But remember, Daddy first. Friend second.” “Yeah,” he says. “Dat’s right.” It is imperative that he know the difference as we travel this road together. So far, I think, we’re both doing some things right.

That revelation followed a similar one of a few weeks ago. I noticed Em staring at me with the most beautiful, peaceful look.

“What are you doing, Boy?” I asked.
“I’m just looking at you, Daddy”
“Why?” I asked, smiling my own smile.
“Because I love you,” he said.

In those crystal blue eyes I saw a love and respect as deep as the seas. A love and respect nearly as deep as that which I have for him. And I was moved as never before. While I am doing the best I can, I do not feel for a moment that I have earned that from him. Not yet. It is nice, however, to see that he thinks I am ahead of schedule. For in much the manner I never fathomed my own capacity to love someone as I do my son, it never occurred to me that I might some day be as loved in return.

It is a grand thing and knows no comparison.

2006-04-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

My Boy!

2006-04-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Stripes and a Smile!

2006-04-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

Noddin' at the Table!

2006-04-30T13:55:00.000-07:00

Hangin' in the Yard!

A Boy and his Car

2006-04-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

At the corner of 29th and 4th in Birmingham, AL is Eurasian Auto Service, Inc. Bill Mitchell, the longtime proprietor (known throughout the area as “Yoda” for his knowledge and expertise), specializes in the upkeep and repair of high-end sports cars—Porsches primarily. The building appears to never have not been there—as if formed naturally prior to Birmingham popping up all round it.

Following two afternoon beers at O.T.’s Sports Grill and a three block walk, we are restless. I alternate between sitting on my heels against the outer east brick wall and meandering to the corner and back, peeking in the windows of Saabs and other pretties. Inside a 26-year-old auto repair savant named Mike does a pre-purchase inspection of the old Porsche 944 S2 my buddy, M. has brought in.

We clear the on-ramp at Alabama pre-dusk and the Porsche flirts with the road at a child’s whisper under 100 mph. It is ready to do more but grudgingly backs down to 85 mph. It is an older machine with something to prove. It is Black Panther black and invites the cover of night. Occasionally men need speed and the power of something else to become boys again.

This evening we are boys again.

M. is a car geek since childhood—an F1 aficionado in a land of NASCAR neophytes. He can rattle off production and cost figures and engine and body style particulars of Ferraris, Aston Martins, BMWs, Mercedes, and the like with little effort and no pretension. He’s a bit like Rain Man in that regard. He knows cars well and takes his research seriously. I, on the other hand, look upon cars as I do art. I know what I like and that’s about it. I like the sleekness and muscle, the purr and roar, the unmatched speed. I fix upon the aesthetic more so than anything else. The remainder is gravy.

At the heart of it, M. and I are but aging adolescents. The description is not to dismiss M.’s car purchase as symptomatic or reactive—far from it. The purchase is thoroughly researched and thoughtfully engineered. But a good portion of our friendship hinges on a juvenile appreciation of dick jokes and all things scatological. Often we are children on a play date, immune to the fact that we are the only ones who find us funny. I think we embrace the prurient and sophomoric to keep ourselves from going finally and utterly mad. I do not presume to speak for my friend, but I can say such about myself with confidence.

The swollen moon hangs on our right, full of possibility, red, yellow, orange, with a blue aura, clipped just enough on the left underbelly to make it not whole. It keeps pace with us for several miles, lighting our way to Nashville. The car hums a constant tear-jerking whine and we feel every beautiful mile of road in our feet and bodies.

The potential purchase of the Porsche is, for M., of monumental importance. I alone, may be aware of the sacredness of this transaction. And M. has invited me to share in it. This selfless act is as high a compliment as I have been paid.

The plan is simple: Meet in Gallatin. Load up the rental. Drive to Birmingham. Meet the owner. Test the Porsche. Buy the Porsche. Drop off the rental. Return to Gallatin. It is a good plan—down to and including the Map Quest-convoluted driving directions, insurance paperwork, and a check cut in full for the price of a Porsche (less than what you might expect but more than you would ever want to lose) tucked safely into a used Fed Ex envelope.

The entire event nearly unraveled once I got to M.’s and put eyes on the rental car. I was greeted by a stark white 2006 Plymouth PT Cruiser. I looked at M. Then I looked at the PT Cruiser. Then I looked back at M. I paused. Then I imagined how two middle-aged guys driving to Alabama in a PT Cruiser might look to the rest of the world. I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again. “M.,” I said finally. “You do realize we are going to be victims of a hate crime before this day is done, don’t you.”

The seller is a wealthy pilot/real estate developer/faith-based Web site something or other who is as detached from the ownership of this fine automobile as he is passionate about his business interests. He is humorless and looks very much like M.A.S.H.’s Frank Burns—complete with the prominent beak and Reba McIntyre upper liplessness. His wife is attractive and fit; and his two Boys from Brazil are handsome and charming. To his credit, he is honest and willingly points out any perceived weaknesses of the car. He is matter-of-fact and focused. The only time he breaks from protocol is to pause, study M. and me for a moment, and ask if we are married. M. opens his mouth to respond, cocks his head funny, closes his mouth, and looks at me with something like concern. My thought, as I try not to laugh, is, Oh, Fuck. Here comes the hate crime. “I’m recently divorced,” I say smiling. I somehow manage to not add, “It’s O.K. We’re not flits. The PT Cruiser is a rental.” I am a pillar of restraint. This once. It occurs to me that Frank is concerned he might be entrusting ownership of this beautiful machine to a gay guy and his scruffy partner. If this wasn’t M.’s moment, I surely would make it mine.

As Mike, the magic mechanic puts the finishing touches on his near two-hour inspection, a mishap occurs that threatens to dwarf the catastrophe of the PT Cruiser. The Fed Ex envelope of possibility, the one with maps and insurance papers, and a substantial check, the one that will enable M. to realize his dream, the one that will seal the deal is gone. Not misplaced. Gone. I made a joke about putting the Porsche on my card as a gift. M. looks at his hands as if seeing them for the first time. They do not contain the Fed Ex envelope. He could not look more surprised if he’d just learned he was pregnant or had accidentally shit his pants. It is the saddest and most hilarious expression I’ve ever seen.

I calmly shift into rare leadership mode and tell M. not to fret. Look around the shop, I say, and I’ll go back to O.T.’s. On my trek, I mentally try to minimize this major setback. M. can call, cancel the check, and request an immediate replacement. We can stay the night in Birmingham if need be. I can be fairly useful during a crisis as long as I don’t own it

I do not expect to find the envelope (and certainly not the check). But I do. And I am glad. As I walk out of O.T’s, envelope clutched, Mike the magic mechanic zips up to an angled stop in the middle of the street. We grin at each other and I get in the Porsche that has been deemed “a very sound car.” We drive off fast, heading toward the shop and the anxious new owner of beauty incarnate.

On a dark stretch of I-65, just past Brentwood, where the speed limit inexplicably drops to 55 mph we find the cop we’ve avoided for 200 miles. He hits his brake lights and flips his rollers. In an unparalleled gift of goodwill or, perhaps laziness, he does not pursue. We cruise below the speed limit, waiting. Nothing. Then M. relaxes, lets the car prove herself. She is speed and power, at one with the road.

And tonight, we are boys again...

The Odd Banter We Share

2006-03-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

I spent what there was of Emerson’s college fund on draught beer and Woodford Reserve this past weekend. Dalton’s ought to name a fucking bar stool after me. I go there because it is a comfortable—albeit strange—little place and it’s the closest thing I’ve found to sincere in this little slice of West Nashville. I like walking in, being greeted with a smile, a cold draught, and hefty shot of Woodford without having to ask for it. It’s the little things. Always the little things.

The weekend started Friday at 4:20 at The Saucer with a small after work gathering on one of the front couches. The waitress was not a day over 11 but had breasts to weep over. They rested on her collarbone like safe houses. Between beers I pondered crimes severe enough to send me to such protective custody. I never arrived at the perfect caper and spent the rest of the evening pretending to be clever and trying to convince myself that her breasts were not simply sublime. I make it a habit to not stare and I did a fairly decent job once I allowed myself that she was at least a year too young for me.

Young Master Emerson was in Aiken, SC playing rich at the annual spring Steeplechase. I’ve yet to find that mechanism that allows me to fully relax when he’s out of my sight. Actually, I’ve yet to find that mechanism that allows me to fully relax, period. And so I merely played the part coming ever so close to winding down—which was a good thing for me. As it turned out, Em had a grand time and even won $12 on two races. Yeah, Baby, the college fund is back to where it began. These things always tend to work themselves out, eh?

I ended the evening alone at Dalton’s, people-watching on the sly and wondering just where the years had gone. Whiskey, draughts, and take-out. (Perhaps a side of self-pity.) It all went down relatively well.

Saturday evening found me back at Daltons on a familiar barstool as a sea of people washed back and forth behind me. An elderly woman sidled up to me and asked if I would mind moving down before I had the chance to offer. I did so gladly and she and her husband took the two seats to my left. They were grateful. She ordered iced tea; the husband was presented with his “usual,” which turned out to be a vodka martini. They were pleasant enough, remarking on the crowd and the evening, planning their menu choices. She, I noticed, did most of the remarking. The husband, I realized, was running on an auto-pilot likely installed decades ago and dutifully nodded his head in the affirmative. I doubt, truly, if his head was capable of going back and forth at all. The woman, in that wonderfully unique and vicious Southern manner that takes one a day or so to realize they’ve just been called an asshole, let E. know that she had not received her iced tea. The place was fucking slammed but at that moment she was the only patron. I began to grasp a vibe. Belatedly, as usual. In such moments I have to force myself to pause, reassess, and return to my own business. Her dance or issues had zero effect on me or mine. But I caught myself making value judgments and beginning a slow wallow in hypocrisy. I don’t abide it in others and so must refuse it for myself. I ignored as best I could her calling the proprietor over to personally go and check on her food order. My infamous smirk, I know though, could not be denied and waltzed across my broad face as I watched the basketball game. When a fresh draught appeared in front of me, the woman sincerely intervened on my behalf, leaned in close, and said, “If you drink that, I’m afraid we’ll have to carry you out of here.” She had witnessed me finish the remnants of my Woodford and one beer. E. overheard her comment. Using his bar towel to mop up an imaginary spill, he said, “He’ll be just fine.” He was not curt, but matter-of-fact. He is aware that I am not one who needs protecting; but I sincerely appreciated his taking exception to this superior woman imposing herself on his clientele. Her point was clearly not to show concern but to exert control. I finished with those days a while back and have little interest in revisiting them. I stood for a trek to the restroom, put my hand lightly on her shoulder, and in my best conspirational voice said, “I really think I’ll be ok. But you might want to keep an eye on me just the same.” She agreed. And did.

I finished the night with a couple more beers and a take-out order identical to the one from the night before.

I made it home safely, ate, crashed restlessly on the sofa.

My dreams were peppered with Em’s return and the odd banter we share. And, of course, hugs and kisses. Soon, he will be too big for such. I turn a blind eye to that for now, even in dreams.

In a whiskey slumber, I thought of Friday’s girl and her grand unnatural figure, my perpetual unease, and an unsettling old woman whose husband would likely have killed for a second martini, but who would never dare scandalize his wife by ordering one.

2006-03-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

A Close Shave!

2006-03-28T23:57:00.000-08:00

Flashin' the Blues!

Dragon Park on a Sunday Afternoon

2006-03-15T19:07:00.000-08:00

At the Dragon Park near Vandy, the sky was a distant, sweet, deep bruise. The taunt of a thunderstorm that never came made everything more perfect. The sun danced on my shoulders, warmed them through my thin tee shirt. The Boy’s head damp with the sweat of young activity. His running, climbing person a thing to behold. Upon arriving, I had failed miserably at parallel parking the Jeep—a task at which I normally excel. I abandoned the effort and parked further up the street. The old me would’ve been embarrassed having put on such a display for the parkgoers casually lounging on blankets and looking at the road. The me of the past few years—the near middle-aged me—couldn’t have cared less. There’s no shame in foolishness—only in being a fool.

The Dragon Park often strikes me of an awkwardly defined Bohemia—its visitors equal parts ugly and pretty. The children perfect and then filthy. The over-attentive parents as nauseating as the ones who appear unaware that they even have children. It is wonderful—truly—and I wonder that we don’t go more often.

On one wall of the concrete tunnel that runs through the center of the rock-climbing hill (an impressive draw of the park), someone had crudely drawn a penis and added some equally brilliant text. On his third pass through the tunnel, the Boy fixed on the image, studied it with curiosity bordering on appreciation. I was irritated at the image. Primarily, because the tunnel caters to the younger boys and girls at the park. Their audience seemed to me unnecessary. As was the image itself. I encouraged the Boy out of the tunnel and helped re-focus his attention.

I wondered briefly if the congregation of young, pale, and shirtless skater kids in a far corner of the park had drawn the dick, laughing to themselves at how cool they’d been. What is adolescence if not the ability to entertain oneself with all things phallic? I likely did the same some 25-30 years ago when I too was a skater punk. I certainly do the same thing now.

It occurred to me then. Who was I to make the stereotypical assumption that these wayward kids were the guilty ones? Why not a Vandy professor with a thing for tunnels? Or a yuppie taking a break from his cell phone and privileged toddler soaking up the day in her Maclaren stroller? And just as I wondered why I cared, I ceased to.

And so Em ran the Good Run, climbed the Good Climb, reveled in being a child on a warm gift of Sunday afternoon. I got to watch. I got to feel the sun on my face. I got to mingle in Bohemia and distance myself at once, wondering just where I fit in.

And the skater kids I’d blamed for the graffiti zipped noisily down the cement paths on wheeled boards, stopped, grouped to the side, and smiled and laughed and enjoyed the all too rare good days of adolescence. They seemed unfazed by the world, its rules, and its assumptions.

And I was glad for them.

Broken Ears and Fallen Fences

2006-03-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

Em is back in the land of “broke-eared boys.” After several months of good hearing health, he’s had infections in November, February, and now March. Depending upon the outcome of this second round of antibiotics, I may have to have him put down. I’ve grown attached to him and would, of course, miss him but I can’t bear to see him suffer or have “Whatcha say, Daddy?” become his catchphrase. It simply won’t do.

Supposing he makes it through the night, he has his second soccer game tomorrow afternoon. His performance in his first game last weekend was just stellar—and for the moment I am free of sarcasm. My little Pele’ scored four goals (two of them for his own team) and mixed it up like a four-year-old pro. I could not have been more proud. Not just because he did well and behaved and tried hard, but because he seemed to truly enjoy himself. It made my heart swell. What a difference a year makes. Last March, he’d strike a Rubenesque pose and lay like a model in the middle of the field while the other kids competed all around him; he kicked the dirt; got his head stuck in the net of his opponents’ goal; sat down at the edge of the woods and counted sticks; pulled his shorts up to his chin. In general, he made me crazier than the norm and caused me to restructure my levels of patience. This year though he is participating. He is trying. And that pleases me. I certainly am not one of those over-the-top sports dads who tries to live vicariously through the freakish superstardom of a young child. I do, however, take tremendous pride in my son doing a thing well. I take particular pride in the fact that he is beginning to recognize the benefits of camaraderie, structure outside of the home, and the self-discipline that can come from having others depend upon him and vice versa. In general, I am not a fan of “organized” anything. But when approached and appreciated properly, I do believe organized sports can bolster lessons I have already initiated. We shall see.

So I will run him like a greyhound tomorrow and then see how adept he is at helping me dismantle what’s left of the rotted fence that blew over during Thursday’s killer storms. If he proves capable, I’ll have him replace the nonexistent roof, the hanging gutters, the equally rotted and listing deck, the ceilings in the computer room and bathroom, rebuild the central air unit, and then maybe mop the floors. Either that or I will ignore each of those daunting and upsetting tasks, and go by the library, swing by the Germ Pit at the mall, contemplate the growing, ignored stack of correspondence, figure out something unhealthy for dinner, and wrestle with the Boy until we are both exhausted.

Either way, it’s win win.

This River Don't Go...

2006-02-27T22:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve been craving poetry of late. William Matthews. Wislawa Szymborska. Raymond Carver. ee cummings. Whitman. Bukowski, the wonderful vile bastard. Some temperate Sandburg (How the hold he has on me? Perhaps for my embrace of simplicity. He doesn’t make me work too hard and I like that. But he certainly worked harder than critics allow). And you, James Dickey. One drunken night we nearly made a pilgrimage to Columbia and knocked upon your door. I was too young to realize your reputation for fact. I doubt you’d have welcomed us, but I pretend that you might have. Is it true your son dropped a $10,000 movie camera in the river during the shoot of Deliverance? One of my professors told that story long ago. Timing and proximity made it believable. We all know this river don’t go to Aintry.

And back to Matthews; long ago I found a blurb of his on the Web, decided I should know more about him, and eventually found Sleek for the Long Flight in a Harvard bookstore one balmy Boston day. Best fucking eight dollars I ever spent. (Discounting a double Makers on a flight to Los Angeles way back when minis were still $4 a pop). How I envy you:

The Music Pool

You have to put your head in.
It’s so much like silence
it takes all your breath
to begin
hearing it. Then you never forget
the sound of being held
completely still by someone you love.
Soon you will undress
but not yet.

I long for the ability to express myself that simply. In person, with many, I am a long-winded, and repetitive sort. I’m not sure why. Emphasis? A narcissistic appreciation of my own voice? A lack of respect for my audience? Both likely and unlikely on all counts. Really, just another quirk of my personality. I don’t fret it that much. Not that much.

Regardless, I need a rush of creativity. My minor successes have come in the form of poetry only; and yet, I have not penned anything of note in several years. That is a bit poetic in and of itself, huh?

[I sense a bit of forced internal rhyme lingering on the horizon of my free verse way of life—like a fence of sorts, struggling to define its purpose. It is there for the citing, I am certain. I am certain].

But what spawns creativity more earnestly than… the envy of creativity? So maybe I am once again on the verge of something. I feel a storm. And I will harness a fucking storm in a millisecond. I can’t tame one, but I’ll claim it and ride it for all I can.

And to a sweet Boy with covers pulled high, I’ll always whisper poetry to you. And I won’t pester you with iambs and such. I will likely tell you just what I mean—no slight of hand here. And while I may try to pretty it up from time to time, I trust you will follow my simple meter for what it is. Just that.

Nothing fancy.

Sometimes I just like to talk poetry to you.

Sleep well, Boy.

Convolution Wrote the Gay Straight Man

2006-02-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been a bit of a strange bird. Strange in that I’ve not really been able to pin myself down in terms of description—nor have I had much inclination to. And I like that. I appreciate that elusive quality about myself, primarily because it is a sincere quirk and not an affectation (as is often the case with folks).

I have definitive opinions on just about everything but rarely share them unless pressed—and even then I have to be in the mood. When I do elect to share, it is not with the intent of winning one over to my side of things. I may not agree with you, but in all honesty I could not care less whether you think as I do. Generally speaking, I am interested in other’s views if for nothing else the opportunity to learn something new. That is a rare and fine thing and I like it. Above all (most) else though, I am a live and let live kind of guy. As long as you don’t fuck with me or mine, it is not likely that I will fuck with you. It is as simple a motto, slogan, caption, mantra, bumper sticker, what have you as I can imagine. I’ve always had a little difficulty grasping that there are not more folks who adhere to a similar belief. Don’t think for a moment that I don’t recognize the sheer arrogance and hint of hypocrisy in that admission, for I do. But while I may have trouble grasping that more people don’t follow similar paths, I would never presume to tell someone that they should. So in that sense, I am comfortable that I am being consistent. My belief system works for me and that, really, is my only concern with it at the moment. It seems to parallel the oft quoted and clichéd Golden Rule that so many others profess to follow but rarely do.

All of that nonsense to get to this: I’ve been troubled lately by a thing that I would ordinarily find hilarious, re-tell to close friends for the sake of story, then rid from my overcrowded bean forever. See, I credit myself with a rare personality glitch that prevents me from insult or offense. Rather, I cannot be insulted or offended. Perhaps it harkens back to an arrogance of which I am unaware; but instead of simply saying it, I truly do not care what people think of me; and I am so inherently vile that (seemingly) nothing offends me. And herein lies the problem. I think I am mostly bothered by the fact that I am bothered. I learned recently that extended family of the Boy’s mother relayed as fact—not opinion—to other extended family members that I am gay and my Boy is being raised in an unhealthy environment. Apparently, it is my homosexuality that broke up my marriage. Yeah, Baby! The closet door has been pried open and Word’s out—I like the dick.

Nine out of ten times I would laugh at this like there was no tomorrow. I am as secure in my masculinity as I need to be; and I am in no way threatened, or bothered by homosexuality. The reason being? Because I live and let live. I simply do not care! So it is certainly not the stigma of homosexuality—implied or otherwise—that hurts me here. And “hurt” is not appropriate for what I feel. For there is another unfortunate quirk of my personality that would permit me to dismiss these particular people from my thoughts altogether. In the big scheme, they are of no significant import to me. I like them, have welcomed them into my home, and have gone far out of my way to ensure their comfort. It has been important to me that they have a role in Emerson’s life. Despite my cynical facade, I respect family and tradition. Many of my efforts thus far reflect that. So I am not hurt that they have dubbed me gay. If this story is true, they have underestimated my personal security and open-mindedness. But having borne witness—albeit peripherally— to my role in Em’s upbringing these past four years, that they would dare suggest the Boy is somehow in harm’s way by being in my custody infuriates me. My reaction is as convoluted as you might expect.

I understand divorce has long-reaching affects. From family to circles of friends to casual acquaintances, folks are affected and reactive. I am no one to fuck with human nature. I get it, I do. But no one has been more hurt by this than my son, his mother, and me. We’ve got our own shit to deal with. So when someone so far removed from the immediate situation reverts to seventh grade name-calling and rumor-spreading, I take exception. And my uncharacteristically itchy trigger finger encourages me to slap the living shit out of two old people. And that pisses me off in ways I cannot voice. Because that is not my nature. I am pissed that during such a difficult time, I have allowed myself to become saddled with this ridiculousness. I am pissed that I have allowed this to occupy anything more than a millisecond of my very limited time. I am pissed that I have circumvented my own freakish need for privacy and shared any of this. I am pissed…

It is a trial to maintain a level head under the best of circumstances, eh?

I know little, but I do know this: I love my Boy more than life and there is nothing I wouldn’t do for him or to ensure his well being. For me, a vastly important part of his well-being is family interaction—paternal and maternal. He is a deeply loved Boy and, in turn, he loves deeply. I have made and endured several compromises to ensure that Em receives and returns this interaction. For now, I will continue. But, for good or for bad, the Boy will take his lead, direction, and instruction from me. I will have done him no favors by granting him an audience with people who denigrate his father. This is where it becomes particularly complicated. I am quite capable of dealing with insults and slurs. Truly, I am not that sensitive. I will certainly manage to give the Boy enough reasons to doubt me on my own as he lumbers into manhood. These missteps will be entirely earned and thus on my conscience. I will have earned them. And I will own them. But should a four-year-old child be subjected to such hatefulness directed at his father? What kind of respect would/should he have for a father who knowingly sanctions such hatefulness? Or is there a grander lesson of turning the other cheek in this?

But rhetorical is rhetorical and life is rarely defined.

Experience tells me that third person accounts of anything are rarely accurate. This one, though, stinks of truth. Soon I will approach the offending parties and graciously give them an “out” or a stage on which they can present their “Ryan likes cock and is a horrible father” PowerPoint. Either way, my response is not likely to be pretty and I already regret that. I hope to be the bigger man here and retain a relationship that gives my son the gift of people with experience and love and goodness. I hope. I hope I am that big.

For the record, my issue here is not with childish name calling. Nor do I have the energy to debate whether homosexual parents are less capable than heterosexual parents. These are non-issues for me. My issues are with betrayal, maliciousness, and overt indecency—and, ultimately, how I choose to deal with them.

2006-02-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

Practicing Letters

2006-02-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

Ol' Blue Eyes!

Travel Notes, Ruminations, and Whatnot #5—02/02/06 12:45 a.m.

2006-02-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

It is 12:40a Portland time. 2:40a Nashville time. I’m not sure what time it is in my head. The rain is making a wonderful soundtrack—as Tom Waits says, “…and the rain sounds like a round of applause.” I stand but do not bow. I sit, return to my umpteenth Evil Williams & splash. And thus begins the extended bender I’ve promised myself for ages. On the heels of a sleepless week I embark. Because embark I must (I love to talk lofty). K & P gracious and graceful as ever indulged my near non-stop blather. Apparently I was in dire need of some adult company as I did not shut up until they went to bed. They are good listeners and good talkers.

Tomorrow is Seattle and a brush with a dear friend from way back. I am anxious to see how the years have treated him. Anxious to visit his city. His friends. A guy likes to have a feel for how his buddies are doing and where they are doing it. In my mind, Seattle suits Phil as Nashville suits me. But I need to see it firsthand, just to be sure. Amtrak will take me three and a half hours north and along The Sound. A lovelier trek is hard to imagine. I’ve made the trip once, nearly ten years ago. K and I went to a Mariners game that we really should have been kicked out of. I saw Alex Rodriguez in his infancy. K explained to me how important A-Rod would be to The Game and how he had grown up down the street from K’s grandmother in Miami. K knows I love shit like that. [I almost certainly have part of that wrong yet it has remained thus in my memory for a decade]. It was a good trip and we returned to Portland hung over as all hell but with stories to tell. Tomorrow will be good.

With the lullaby of rain still feeding me hints, you’d think I would sleep now. I am exhausted beyond words, but am also aware enough to know that sleep will not come.

So I mix a new drink. I glance at The Boy’s picture on my friends’ refrigerator. And I listen to the rain. The wonderful rain. Its advice and secrets and wisdom.

Travel Notes, Ruminations, and Whatnot #4—02/01/06 late a.m.

2006-02-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

My plane approaches Portland. I try to discern Mount Hood from Rainier and St. Helens. It is obvious really.

As obvious as an anxious, aging man sitting alone in Coach, his thumb absently caressing the weightlessness of his ring finger.

Travel Notes, Ruminations, and Whatnot #3—02/01/06 late a.m.

2006-02-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

The timing of this trip could not be better. There is something about K & P and Baby A that’ll cure what ails you. Part of it is that after nearly twenty years we know one another as well as we know ourselves—perhaps better. With them it is o.k. to be familiar, crude, crass, vulnerable, stoic, an ass—in short, myself. Do not misunderstand. Of my many flaws, not being myself is not one of them. Ever. But with K&P it is different. Different in a way that keeps negativity at bay. Different in a way that relegates cynicism to crevasses—not necessarily replacing it but displacing it. And that is a good thing. They are good friends to have.

Perhaps this evening we will drink Veuve Clicquot. Toast the lightening of things. Perhaps we’ll rehash old stories and laugh. Always laughter. And when Baby A turns in, I’ll read her Wet Dog, explain the virtues of Georgia football over Florida football, make disparaging remarks about her father, and kiss her forehead goodnight. And I will miss doing the same with Emerson. But I’ll speak to him the way I always do when I am away from him. And he will hear me. And he will smile as he falls asleep, knowing he is loved and missed.

I think I will then pour another glass of champagne and laugh some more.

Travel Notes, Ruminations, and Whatnot #2—02/01/06 mid a.m.

2006-02-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

I am operating on two hours of sleep and not doing it well. It could be that the three hours I got each of the past two nights were not enough. Maybe? I am notorious for not sleeping, but man…

I am about an hour and a half out of Portland. The flight is not crowded—for which I am thankful. A couple of rambunctious, noisy kids who in the past would have annoyed the living shit out of me. But since having the Boy, I find myself infinitely patient and empathetic in such situations. It is a nice change to have made.

O.k., my eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and 30 plus hours of wearing contacts with only a two-hour break. I am a little hung over in the form of a headache—exaggerated, of course, by lack of sleep. I look bloated, as though I am either about to start or as though I took my last six meals at a saltlick—and followed with several glasses of brine. Just not feeling that great despite the excitement of travel and impending companionship.

But things are now looking up. Quite up. On the second pass by the sky waitresses, I order a double Makers and Coke. Turns out they don’t have Makers. But they do have a little something called Woodford Reserve. I grin, my testicles sigh (and shift just a little), I graciously accept. In a bar, I would’ve said “Neat, please!” On a plane I have to say, “No Coke. No Ice.” Well, actually, I did say “Neat” at first. But the lady looked at me as if she’d just seen a strange man whose testicles had sighed and shifted and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.

You know, if you take two minis (airplane bottles or South Carolina bottles) and dump them into a wide-mouth plastic cup, the result almost looks like a real pour.

Know what else? It drinks just as good too. Foof!!!

Travel Notes, Ruminations, and Whatnot #1—02/01/06 early a.m.

2006-02-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

Random thought to self on random fellow passenger:

Perfect hair. Looking dapper in over-priced denim head to toe. You and your friends, Bahamas bound, are nauseating. Your collective tones are so superior that I have to look around to see just who exactly you are better than. You are nothing to me. Nor am I to you. Why then do I take pleasure in watching your fists clench in fear, your thighs and calves constrict and freeze as we take off and again when we land?

Perhaps you are better than the rest of us. Or at least me and my judgment.

The Band Stopped Playing

2006-01-31T23:22:00.000-08:00

I took off my wedding band today for the first time in nine years. I won’t need it anymore. I don’t suppose I ever had much use for it actually.

After court this morning there was neither a parade nor a hug from a stranger. A simple handshake from my lawyer and a solemn, “Well, Congratulations, I guess.” How is it that something so anti-climactic and mundane can be saddening to the core?

The end of things has always given me pause. I cannot help but draw the death analogy. And those who know me know I do not deal well with death. The concept of something that once was being no longer baffles me to the point of …well, incoherence.

But in a couple hours I board a Delta flight for the Pacific Northwest and embrace a five-day bender with friends I believe were given to me by a higher Being. And I already miss Emerson. I hope I will take this low ache and use it to become a better father. Use it to gather patience.

I look forward to a 7:00 a.m. double Makers and Coke that does not end until I slide into a warm Woodford in Seattle on Thursday. I embrace the mere thought of reconnection, independence, and responsibility.

I look forward to introspection and nothingness. To crassness and conviction. To experience. Fucking Christ, how I have missed experience.

Before I leave, I will slow dance with Em in the quiet of our modest dwelling. I’ll hold him tight. Kiss his eyes and face. I’ll hug him until he pulls away. One day he’ll understand the necessity of this trip. He’ll recognize that some bands don’t bind forever. And that sometimes Daddies have to struggle with that knowledge to be better at what they do.

And I will recapture the slender crescent moon that guards Nashville tonight and make it my own. I will put it in trust and hand it over to Em when he is of age. And because he is my Boy and wise, he will say, “Why thank you, Daddy. Help me let it go, please. It belongs up there with the stars.”

Emerson knows nothing of lawyers and proceedings, of heartache and compromise. For the time being, I am so fucking ok with that.

Let us dance, Son, beneath moons that have dictated our respective destinies.

Sometimes I fear I will crumble when you no longer need me.

I love you more than love.

Always,
Daddy

Childhood Once

2006-01-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

Of all my disturbing childhood memories, the most surreal is the one of Glenn M. chasing his sister Lori down the street one night while smacking her on the back with his dick.

It happened. I was there. I saw it.

Lori had dome something to piss Glenn off and the next thing I know she’s on a dead run, screaming down Evergreen Drive with her brother galloping calmly behind her smacking her with what, I remain convinced, was and is the largest penis to ever reside in the state of Georgia. It was much that of a half-flaccid baguette being nonchalantly wielded by an insane man-child. I don’t recall how long he chased her, but eventually Lori got away and told their Mother. Glenn’s “but she started it” defense didn’t get him as far as he’d hoped and he was forced inside for the rest of the evening. The rest of us were left to our own devices, the mammoth shadow of Glenn’s penis as cast on the asphalt by our new streetlights etched forever in our forming memories.

Glenn was two years older than me but by seventh grade we were in the same class at Ursula Collins Elementary. Glenn never lost that peculiar fondness man has for his dick and would routinely take his out during class and lay it on the community table. There wasn’t much anyone could do; and truly, it deserved a chair of its own. Glenn failed seventh grade again that year but oddly enough wound up joining the rest of us that next September in Junior High. I think the principal at Collins was as scared of him as we kids were. It’s as plausible as anything else I could figure.

I have done a lot. I have seen a lot. And I have spent time around some bad people. It has been nearly 26 years since I’ve seen Glenn, and to be brutally honest, I am scared of him still. And I do not scare easily. I don’t know that I would call him a bad person. He was simply the toughest and meanest person I’ve ever known. And it would be years before I met someone who could lie as convincingly as he could. But the jury is still out on bad.

Toward the end of seventh grade and knowing Glenn’s academic failings, I was under the misguided assumption that I would be some fifteen miles away at Langford Junior High and free of Glenn and his ubiquitous penis. This too had to be the thinking of Chris A. when he decided that the thing to do one cloudy Thursday afternoon was to pick a fight with Glenn. It would be the worst decision of his young life. Glenn was mean but he was not a bully. Chris A. was. And he was pretty good at it. At just under six feet and over 200 pounds, Chris out-talled Glenn by eight inches at least and outweighed him by eighty pounds. On our big horrible, yellow school bus (number 1, I believe), Chris shoved Glenn from the seat behind him. Uncharacteristically reserved, Glenn warned him one time. Chris shoved him again. Glenn calmly stood up in his seat and proceeded to administer the worst ass-whipping I’ve ever seen. Glenn’s hands were like concrete slabs and the sound of them hitting the side of Chris’s head was the sound of melon after melon striking the ground hard and from afar. The memory of that sound weakens my stomach to this day. It was seventh grade justice in that a useless bully got the living shit beat out of him. And at once it was terribly sad because a fat, friendless kid with no future lost the only power he would ever have—the ability to inflict fear and pain on those weaker than him. No one was much scared of Chris after that. Even though Glenn was the only one who could do what had been done. I think Glenn beat the cruelty out of him.

Glenn and his dick quit school not long after following us to Langford. I rarely saw him after that.

He was in the news back home a few years ago I heard. His ex-wife’s live-in boyfriend killed Glenn’s biological child and Glenn was briefly interviewed on the local news. He did not present himself particularly well as I understand it. I don’t suppose many people would under such circumstances.

I have a soft spot in my heart for children and typically have a visceral reaction when I learn of a sad fate befalling a child. But I had no reaction at all when I learned about the death of Glenn’s child. I would wish no such horrific fate on any man, yet I had no reaction whatsoever. And worse, I felt no shame because of it. I’m not sure I understand that at all. Not at all.

Glenn M. is merely the curator of some of my more surreal childhood memories. He of the equine manhood and canine fondness thereof. He is the tough man-child who scared me because of that which he was capable. And while I recognize there is every possibility he moved on with his life, refocused his blankness, and overcame his inherited pathology, I know things did not play out like that. Glenn is still chasing his little sister through the dark streets of Georgia, wielding his baseball bat of a penis. Lori is still running, laugh-screaming to her Mother that Glenn is a monster.

And I am certain they love each other the way brothers and sisters always do.

When the Credits Roll

2006-01-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

I need a mental health break. I need adult conversation. I need a weekend of debauchery. I need a sensory deprivation chamber. I need a home with a wine cellar and walk-in humidor. I need to know that my Mother and Father will live forever. I need to know the same about my cats. I need to know that I won’t succumb to heart attack or stroke. Or drowning. I need to know that I am not ruining my child. My wonderful, intelligent, challenging child. I need a new fence, deck, and roof. I need an outlet. I need to lose 20 pounds. I need to rake the backyard. I need closure. I need that feeling I get between when the screen fades to black and the credits roll. I need to go to the dentist. I need to flirt. I need a cure for passive aggressiveness. I need to learn that recognizing a problem is not the same as addressing it. I need to write out bills. I need to travel outside of the country. I need to not get so angry at people in the grocery store (but honestly, are our fellow grocery shoppers not the rudest cocksuckers on the planet?). I need to shadowbox until my side hurts. I need to figure out who I am. I need to run with the bulls. I need to make this house a home. I need to work with the Boy on his letters. I need to stare at a blue moon. Retrieve it from its perch, hold it for a moment like a snow globe, replace it as carefully as a surgeon might repair a mistake. I need to accept the hospitality I’ll be shown in Portland and Seattle in a couple weeks. I need to feel the sun on my shoulders. I need…

And as I reread this and accept yet another truth about me, I obviously need to get over myself.

Done.

Salut!

I've Been Tagged (just like riding a bicycle)

2006-01-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve been tagged by Rex and will play along because, well…he’s Rex L. Camino, Baby!

5 JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE: Convenience Store Clerk; Busboy (3 days); Golf Course Bagroom Attendant; Medicare Claims Processor; Assistant to an Academic Chair of Excellence (actually a book editor)

5 MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER: Being There; City Lights; Bringing Up Baby; To Kill a Mockingbird; The Natural tied with A River Runs Through It (who could ever limit movies and music to 5?)

5 PLACES YOU’VE LIVED: Augusta, GA; Chattanooga, TN: Nashville, TN (I am far better traveled than lived)

5 TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH: 24 (Hands down!); Cops; Reno 911; Law and Order SVU & CI reruns; Seinfeld reruns

5 PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION: Barecelona, Spain; Tokyo, Japan; Manley/Sydney, Australia; Key West, FL.; Santa Barbara, CA

5 WEB SITES YOU VISIT DAILY: CNN; Nashville Is Talking; Drudge; The Tennessean; and Fox News

5 OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS: Steak (1. Filet 2.Ribeye 3.T-bone); Fries; Mexican; Crab legs; Dalton’s Cheeseburger

5 PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE: Naples, FL; The Middle Keys;Ireland; Manley/Sydney, Australia; Santa Barbara, CA

5 ALBUMS YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: (An impossible task) Neil Young’s Live Rust; Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger; Mickey Newbury’s Nights When I am Sane; John Prine’s Great Days Anthology; The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues

5 PEOPLE YOU’D TAG TO PLAY THIS GAME: Phil, MJ, Hamel, Roxy, and Don --
Come on, play along. Sorry if you’ve already been tagged and I missed it.

What are you hearing now?: A One Act Play

2006-01-13T00:23:00.000-08:00

Characters—
Girl: Young. Brunette. Self-assured. Petite Build.
Guy: Average even by average standards. Indeterminate age (25-40).

Setting—
Out of doors in park, coastal area, parking lot, etc.
*******************************************************

Girl: So you’re the one with the soundtrack playing in his head?

Guy: That’s right.

Girl: I thought you’d look older.

Guy: I get that a lot.

Girl: I bet. [Pause] So what are you hearing right now?

Guy: It’s dancing between Clarence Carter’s Slip Away and Badfinger’s Baby Blue.

Girl: I don’t know either one.

Guy: You’re too young. But you should know them. They’re worth your while.

Girl: Will you let me hear them?

Guy: There’s no room for you in there right now. It’s full.

Girl: When will you have room?

Guy: I don’t know. It stays pretty crowded.

Girl: Are you divorced yet?

Guy: Almost.

Girl: Is she in there?

Guy: Not really.

[Long pause]

Girl: What are you hearing now?

Guy: It just switched to The Sloop John B.

Girl: [Smiling, begins to sing] My Grandfather and me… My Dad used to sing that to me.

Guy: Good for you.

Girl: You’re kind of a bastard, aren’t you? Or is that an act?

Guy: A little of both.

Girl: What do you like?

Guy: To be left alone. And company.

Girl: What do you like now?

Guy: [Pause] Company.

Girl: I can’t figure you out.

Guy: You never will [smiles].

[Long pause]

Girl: And now?

Guy: Take a Letter, Maria.

Girl: [Blank stare]

Guy: R.B. Greaves?

Girl: Nope.

Guy: Jesus Christ. There is so much I could teach you.

Girl: [Pause. Smiles] Probably not. [Turns, exits stage left].

Lights Fade. Curtain Falls.

How Did God Made Da People?

2006-01-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

I. Sunday Late p.m.
I am taking full advantage of this mild and beautiful January night with a “that’ll get your attention” drink and a glorious Ashton. The train in the near distance so rumbles and whistles that it feels as if I am on it, feet dangling from an open, graffiti-covered car, going wherever such trains go at this time of night. The sound is gone in the time it took me to write that sentence—and with it the brief tinge of excitement that always follows a train whistle.

II. Overheard at a Child’s Birthday Party
Woman (holding 8-9 month old baby) to husband returning from restroom: Where’d you disappear to?

Man following his four-year-old son: I was in the restroom. N. had to go ‘poo-poo’ and wanted me to wait.

Woman handing over 8-9 month old baby: Here, hold this. I have to go potty!

Man (with sardonic chuckle): Hold THIS? I guess he doesn’t want to be around you either.

Woman walking away: Yeah. But he doesn’t have a choice.

III. The Cabbie and Uncle G.’s Girl
The cabbie looks the stereotypical part but speaks English more clearly than me. He has opinions and ideas and takes on life that he feels compelled to share with us. Likely his talkativeness is a nervous response to Uncle G.’s girlfriend who is happily perched on the cabbie’s lap, offering commentary into the dispatch radio as we near 75 mph up West End Avenue.

The Cabbie takes us to the Villager.

He gives Uncle G.’s girl a candy bar.

Uncle G. tips him $20.

We laugh like children on our way into the bar and the possibility of trouble.

IV. Electric Travel
I am three and a half weeks from a trip away from myself. To Portland again I venture. The necessity of adventure is tangible. The need to be elsewhere and with friends is electric.

V. How Did God Made Da People?
Emerson is interested in “how did God made da people?” He thinks maybe we should go to church and “talk to God about dat.” I told him we would do just that.

I admire my son so. At just four years, he regularly forms complex conceptual questions that I barely approached in my twenties. Instead of Man’s Place in the universe, I struggled over the price of beer and which cable channel was running Simon & Simon reruns.

Indeed, Em. How did God made da people?

Hmmm. With much the same care, Boy, which he made the train whistle.

2006-01-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

Balls...

2006-01-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

And a grand swordsman, he...

Trading Nostalgia for Promise

2006-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

The five disc random track shuffle is set to go with Ray Charles, The Band, David Gray, The Killers, and…Rod Stewart (of all things). Jesus, now that I think about it, maybe I should add some Cher and Judy Garland and just watch some gay porn instead of write this. Where is my head tonight?

Ahhh, there it is. Still trying unsuccessfully to wrap itself around the abortion that was 2005. While my mind does a quick flip through its rolodex of dismay, I’ll savor this Makers and a splash… Yeah, that’s not going to last long.

I have always loved New Years. The Eve is a night of revelation fostered in hellos and goodbyes. Possibility and nostalgia. I have always tended toward the nostalgic. An unfortunate quirk that causes me to forsake what could be for what could have been. I refer to it as an unfortunate quirk when what it is downright devastating—a self-induced stasis that destroys any hint of personal growth.

2005 was a different Beast, however. And it is with a cheer in the air and a charge in my step that I bid this mean year a thankful adieu. I have had past years offer me treasures I hold still; and I have had some years take serious shots at me. But the Lady 2005 goddamn near did me in. I mean with an ass-whipping of Southern Gothic proportion. 2005 followed me to the Jeep at 3 a.m., asked me for a light, then proceeded to beat me into near submission. As I lay motionless in the gutter, she rifled through my pockets, took my shoes, wrote Fuck You in black Sharpie across my ample belly, and mule-kicked me low. Then she decided to get serious.

I am an easy-going sort for the most part. Sure, I’ve long been a worrier, but I get by. I love and am loved. I laugh loudly when things are funny. I usually smile politely when they are not. And I am lucky by nature. By that I mean while severe things may happen to (and around me), catastrophic events pass me by and settle elsewhere. And I have certainly been blessed with more than my share of good things. It is not a bad way to get by. So imagine my surprise when confronted with 2005.

I deplore baseless claims of victimization. And in no way do I suggest I was a victim of a bad year. I was simply guilty of shortsightedness and naiveté and I hit a rough patch. This led to a trying year. We all have them and we strive to make the next one better. But to 2005 I say, I will never forget you, for you were no gentle lover. In fact you kept me awake for the better part of your life. Due largely to you, I have forgotten how to sleep. I don’t think I’ve done so since April. Often I am unsure whether or not I’ll sleep again. But not a problem—think of the extra time I’ll have to learn things.

And 2005, you nearly taught me how to hate. Me!!! Now that’s just plain mean. For you know I don’t even like the word, much less the emotion. But you were swift Lady, and true. And I will unlearn the thing that gives such emotion a suggested foothold; for I will pass no such thing onto my Boy. It is a slow thing to rid one’s self of. But I like the old me and intend to reclaim my values.

And 2005, you caused me to evaluate man’s propensity for violence in general and my own capabilities in particular. I don’t believe I would need to be pushed any further to discover just what those capabilities are. But dear 2005, it is late. And I rest like an heir at the eve of your gravesite. I am confident you will push me no further. That, 2005, is in the best interest of us both.

I will make a deal with you, Year. You go quietly into your good night and I will go boisterously into mine. I will treat you as a lesson. And this New Year’s Eve, I’ll not grasp sadly for what is lost, but stride proudly into the light of all that is new and promising and good. I hereby trade nostalgia for promise. Self-pity for self-confidence. Self-doubt for self-actualization.

2005, you did not succeed. I stand tall. Bent but not broken. And now you fade ironically away, becoming little more than a reference point for insignificant statistics. Me? Well, I strengthen and move on to 2006. I’m a Category 3, Baby. Tropical Storm Emerson and I have a new year to whom we must introduce ourselves. And this is going to blossom into a beautiful friendship. I know it because the feeling is bone deep.

I know it because it is so.