| Writing Samples - Novels "Dear Me" Fifth Sample |
I'm beginning to see the real me - and it's not a pretty sight - under each layer of hatred is a solid foundation of judgment - and behind that is a thick wall of disgust - and beneath that is a pool of false justice, with oily banks of neglect and loathing, the result - the massive oil spill that is my soul coats everything in me, everything that was ever sacred, with a black film of slow death - the free-flying birds of my broken spirit flap helpless in the malignant ooze - the hope of the drunken and dead Lynyrd Skynyrd promise of my lost youth is long gone, burned up in a pyre of free-flight aviation fuel and the twisted wreckage of my former selves - my Free Birds having died in the refuse of my harsh opinions, my self-insulated self-inflicted abhorrence of all things not me - suffocated in the dirty black sludge of the real me - I am ugly - the ugliest of the ugly - deep in there where no one has ever seen, not even me Now, I look - and I see - finally! - but I am not scared - I am not repulsed - and that is what is so repulsive: I accept it - the only it that is left But then I have to - this is my door - my only door - and now, I know it - I accept it! - I am walking through it with words underfoot - I walk on the words - the words support me – sometimes they crumble away, out from under, leaving me to freefall, and sometimes they build and build only to topple down on me like great blocks of angry stone - RAIN down on me - then the words rise up around me, renewed! – they spin and tear at me like a tempest, ripping me apart - words and paper - spinning, rising, falling, dropping, lying still - but never lying - never lying - that's the only rule: NEVER LIE! I have only the words to save me, now - and an oil slick-thin veneer of hope that they can. It’s not much. Chapter 221 It got so bad that strippers took men into the VIP room to feed them cheap champagne loaded with cyanide— and the men knew it. That's why they were there! The strippers then stripped the men's wallets, walked around the corner, bought guns, and went quick and tidy. Women. Don't ever think it's any other way. Chapter 222 Millie had forgiven me. To be precise: She had slept around awhile—out on the singular Coast—to get even. Then, she forgave me. And moved back to Paradise. “Honestly,” she said, Millie—as if testifying under oath, only somewhat frivolously—she had never been mad at all; just irritated that she hadn't had an opportunity to have a few flings after her “failed marriage,” as she continually referred to it. I said I didn’t think any sentence regarding contrition over marital infidelity should start with the word “Honestly.” I loved hearing Millie’s disgruntled grunt and would have done, did do, anything to provoke it. So, I continued to remind her, as I had been for however long it had been, that she had only been married to Beau—Beau!—the used car loser for nine months when I came around and demonstrated the proper use of a new Stearns and Foster; and further, that she had been single and living it up in San Francisco, Seattle and Santa Fe— Millie had a thing for s-towns, went through a phase, like teenage Artie and his hippie S-girls—the six years before her “failed marriage.” Millie refused to give me the great satisfaction of her lovely grunt, instead saying, “It's not the same thing.” Who was I to disagree? I tell you who I was. I was: Nobody. So, Millie was back. To her credit, Millie never said a word about Denise that was unkind either to me or to Denise’s memory. She also never referred to my sexual escapades with Denise as a mercy fuck, which I might have struck her or anyone else for saying, even though there was some truth to it even if Denise and I rarely had sex after high school. Okay, we had a lot. But it was the same thing. Chapter 223 So, Millie returned to Paradise—again. We called “Like, Number Six.” Her presence—as it always did—brought about changes. We, my friends and I, often said of Millie, “She’s a catalyst.” A friend of mine, Earnest Lee Dimm—yeah!—from Oklahoma, thought it had something to do with ranching. This was why I had removed Ernie from my “friendship closet,” as a drunken motivational speaker once recommended to me in a tittie bar in Delray Beach. She said she was there doing research for a coming book, but I think she was looking at goochie like I was. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs and every time she did there was a sticky sound on the naugahyde. When I asked her out for a drink somewhere else—even another tittie bar— she said, “No thanks,” while staring into the bottomless black eyes of a stripper named Summer’s Eve. Seriously. Anyway, Millie’s presence always meant that something was going to happen, usually something not so much cryptic as apocalyptic. And it did. Chapter 224 Arthur’s precise motivation was never clear. He made sure of that. But I think what finally did it, as far as putting into motion this whole end-of-the-world thing, was when Millie rebuffed him in the hot tub. Because Millie, in a way, was like the Virgin Mary, only not twelve years old. Okay and not a virgin. Not by a long shot. And her name wasn’t Mary and she didn’t conceive anyone immaculately or otherwise. At least she hadn’t at this point. NONETHELESS she, Millie, was, let’s say, forty-ish, in her forties, but absolutely, positively fine—in her Prime. And, despite her many recreational sojourns to s-cities, Millie had a purity about her, her soul, that was palpable. She couldn’t, at least with any degree of self-honesty, wear white at her wedding, but: Millie was pure of thought, pure of heart. And, most important, to anyone who ever knew her well, if Millie Franklin was anything, she was: Honest. Oddly enough, Arthur was too—if in his own, peculiarly unsettling way. So, it went something like this: Arthur was feeling pretty cozy with all of us in the Coconut Grove house, almost like he fit in. (And he almost did. At least, it was the closest he ever got.) So, one night, we're all out in the hot tub naked, smoking a little hoochie—Dad wasn’t around—sipping some merlot, and Arthur…slips his hand between Millie's legs. Right there! In front of all of us! So, of course: She slapped him—right there in front of all of us! Millie! You have to understand: Arthur was so incredibly dysfunctional that he had no idea that what he was doing was inappropriate. NONETHELESS: I said, “Arthur! What the hell?” “You do it!” he shouted. “Well, yeah Arthur, but--” “And he does it!” Arthur was pointing at Artie. Chapter 225 I looked over at Artie. Artie looked at Millie. Millie looked at Arthur—somewhat the way Carlotta Inzi looked at her father that time in alley a few weeks before having him shot in the parking lot of his favorite deli on Miami Beach—then: Millie looked at me—with the most helpless frown I ever saw on her face—and got out of the hot tub. Even having just received this awful information, I couldn't help thinking that she had the prettiest ass of any woman I'd ever seen naked, except Denise. Denise had been dead a few years at this point. I tore my eyes away from Millie's perfect wet bottom and locked eyes with Artie. I said, perhaps lacking originality—any at all!—”Artie! What the hell?” It might have been the Thai-stick talking. Artie said, “It was just a few times.” I, we, could just hear him, above the hiss of the sauna jets. “When?” I asked, a little incredulous. Okay, a lot. “Last week,” Artie said so low that I almost missed it. Almost. Chapter 226 “LAST WEEK!” I shouted at Millie. We were up in our bedroom. She had gotten dressed—thank God!—and shouted back, “You were gone!” knowing full well it was not the best defense. “I was in FORT LAUDERDALE!” I said. “You could have COME UP!” We're talking 23 miles, maybe, on the Expressway, I-95. And I went juvenile: “Instead, you just came here!” “That is really beneath you, Dan Olaf,” Millie said venomously. If Millie hated anything it was lowering oneself to an adolescent mentality in a perfectly good adult moment, even an argument. I could tell all of this because she called me Dan, not Danny, and used my last name. Shit! “Well,” I sputtered, caught slumming, “it's true!” All of it. Millie spun on me. “Yes, it's true. And I wish I could say that it was because you don't pay enough attention to me, that you don't love me or show me you love me, or that you aren't romantic enough, or ANY GODDAM THING!” She was crying. “But I can't, GODDAM YOU!” I had left her no excuse—this time. Millie sat on the bed, sobbing. “Since Denise died...” She didn't have to finish it. I knew what she meant: Since Denise died you have given me one hundred percent of your love and attention and-- “And I don't deserve it,” Millie said, finalizing our commingled thoughts. I stared at Millie from less than five feet away. Her face was aimed at the floor, tears rolling off her cheeks onto the dark old Dade County Pine hardwood floors. It was a touching moment, a sad sight, moving as all Hell—yet all I could think of was her lovely ass, in her green shorts, on the blue chenille bedspread we'd found at an estate sale in Gables by the Sea just two weeks before. Then it hit me: “Did you two do it on the new bedspread?” I had a fleeting thought that this might be how Martha Stewart fought and regretted having said it. Millie laughed. We could do that to each other. Then she confessed, “Yes,” through the renewed sobs. I decided it was time to sit next to her and offer comfort. Millie shrieked: “Don't you do that, don't you dare do that, you bastard!” and leapt away from me. “GodDAMN you!” I knew she meant: Stop being nice, you damned insensitive male-beast! Millie turned away to the wide, wood blinds. The moon was falling through them like heavy water, bathing her body, giving shape to her lovely breasts under the silky whatever it was she was wearing. I was getting an erection. “Oh, Christ,” I muttered, looking down at it. “Danny!” Millie yelped on seeing it with me. “I can't help it!” I shouted. “I love you! You turn me on!” “Oh, Jesus Christ!” she grumbled; more hollered, really. Then she started pulling things out of her dresser and said: “I'm going to my mother's.” Millie’s mother had been dead for several years—this was after Millie’s father had died—but Millie still used those words when she was going to the empty Hallandale condo, just a block from the beach. Usually, she went there to lounge by the pool and reminisce with her mother's old friends, or risk some melanoma out on the clean beach with the damn yankees and vacationing Canadians. Damn Canada. I did something I had never done, next; something I had only seen in the movies: I stood up, strode across the room, spun Millie around roughly and kissed her full on the mouth. After, she stared up at me, kind of, well, dumbstruck. Then she said: “What the fuck are you doing?” She said it plainly, by the way, with no real emotion other than, well, maybe, dumbstruckness. “Being... passionate,” I guessed. “Well, cut it out!” she yelled. “Okay, it's a little inappropriate,” I had to admit. But it always worked in the movies! Damn the movies. So, I said, “Would you rather I shoot you?” “Frankly, yes,” Millie said, “right about now. Yes. Shoot me. Please. Just shoot me.” I said, “Okay, why Artie?” skipping over the shooting part, my mother's incredibly pragmatic side coming through. “Why do you think.” She sounded disgusted—not with me, though, with herself. I understood—I had been there before many, many times—and I knew the answer to her rhetorical query. I answered, even if she didn’t really want me to: “Because he was available.” “But so were at least ten dozen boy toys ten blocks from here on Main,” Millie said. I wondered why she was packing so much underwear. But I said, “They're all gay.” “So!” she shouted. “Artie's your friend!” Again, I understood perfectly, but I said, after several interminable moments of mental mutterings, “Artie's no friend of mine,” finally, and a bit too glibly. “Don't,” Millie said to me, very close. “Just don't.” She meant not to lower myself any lower than she already had lowered herself; but I didn't see that it could really hurt. Self-loathing is a strong elixir. “I should have seen it coming,” I said. Millie stopped. Looked me dead in the eye. “How?” she demanded. I knew there was no way I could have seen it coming—she just did it out of the blue; honest, pure of heart and soul Millie—so I suggested that: “Maybe it was because he was your first.” Remember? Millie did. She said: “You think?” Giving it thought. We were quiet, now. Contemplating that. I said, “Could be.” As if we were tv detectives on a case. Millie nodded, thinking. It was apparently an intriguing premise, one for which she had no answer, no contemplative connection. “Weirder things,” I suggested with a shrug. Millie nodded again. Took a few steps. Looked at me. Stared through me, more. Through me to him, Artie, then back again. Then she shook her head. “I don't think that's it,” she said. “But it could be,” I said. “It could,” she allowed. “But you don't think so.” “No.” “Just: He was available and he's my friend.” Still: My competition. Millie looked at me, through me, and back to me again, then nodded, turned back to her powder blue Adidas sports tote and packed some more underwear. Why so damn much underwear! I screamed in my own head. I wanted to scream it outside my head, but instead I said, “Whatever,” like a pissed-off college girl. “It doesn't matter.” “It matters!” Millie screamed, spinning around, scaring me back a few steps. That did it. I do not like to be scared! “I'm angry!” I finally let her know, loudly, in case she really thought I wasn't. “Good!” she shouted back. “You should be!” “Well, I am!” I shouted. “Well, good!” she shouted back and looked at her suitcase. “Why am I packing so much goddam underwear! I don't even wear underwear except when I'm having my period. And I just had it!” All of this was true. Then, apparently not planning to be gone longer than 28 days, Millie took all of the underwear out of her powder blue Adidas sports tote, stuffed it back in the dresser, went to her dead mother's condo in Hallandale, by the beach, and didn't come back for longer than I thought I could stand. That long. I was angry enough to punch Artie in the face, and he was embarrassed enough to let me. He offered to move out and I said okay, but less than ten minutes later I told him he could stay but I wanted Arthur to leave. Arthur said he didn’t want to leave. He said he didn’t see why he should have to when all he did was tell the truth when Artie on the other hand had been fucking my girlfriend every time I left the house for two minutes. I told Arthur I knew he was lying about that because: “Everyone knows Artie can’t last two minutes.” Artie felt even worse—because that much was true—and I felt a lot better. Arthur moved out. It took him ten days to find a place that fulfilled his needs, as he put it—a faux basement apartment in the Gables (who knew there were two in the whole county!) with no natural light and two 220-lines in the wall—and we didn’t miss him much. Finally! But I did miss Millie: four days and I thought I was going to die without her. I was sure of it! That much. Chapter 227 I found Millie out by the pool of her dead mother's condo. The sun was hot, the air cool. Her mother’s building, the “Ocean Breezy Apartments” was a tall, thin, ugly, white edifice right on A-1-A, one in from the beach, about two miles from the causeway. I had always hated going there, to find her, to apologize and make up, but this time was worse: Millie was going to have apologize to me. She was sunning with some leathery old Jewish widows from New Jersey. When they saw me, the crones threatened to call security, but Millie said that wouldn't be necessary; she had a razor upstairs. One of them asked if she had soap. Millie laughed appropriately and assured her and the others that she, Millie, would have me shave and shower the moment we got in the door. “And wash his shirt?” “And wash his shirt.” They nodded and went back to their Mahjong. I have to confess: It was nice to feel threatening, even to leathered-up old Jewish ladies. Millie and I went upstairs and, the moment we got in the door, had sex—as was our way— in the kitchen, which was just inside the front door, then sat naked on the balcony, overlooking the aqua Atlantic a short block away, and talked until midnight. More precisely, we talked a little, cried a lot, talked some more, cried some more, then held each other tighter than we ever had before and pledged never to let anything like this ever come between us again. We knew it wouldn't—we could feel it—and we were right: It, anything, didn't. Right to The End. (Well, right to Just Before The End, because there was, there was always, Arthur, waiting. But by then, everything was moot. Every damn thing there was or ever had been.) The warm breeze off the Gulf Stream felt especially soothing that night. What stars we could see above the incandescent city glow and around the puffs of tropical cumuli were reassuring. “Danny,” Millie said after one particularly long period of silence between us, “I really don't know why I did it.” She looked frightened. I tried to reassure her: “Well, there was this time, once—” Millie interrupted me. “This isn't the time to tell me you fucked someone I don't know about. And please don't let it be one of my friends.” I paused a moment, then said, “I was going to say, There was a time once when I was worried about Artie and you...” I couldn't really insult her any further, so I stopped. “Why didn't you say something?” she asked, almost begging. “What was I going to say? 'Millie, I'm worried that you might fuck Artie some day because I'm up in Ft. Lauderdale a lot, working with the mayor—that dickless dweeb.” (We still said dweeb, then.) “And I guess I'd understand but please don't do it'?” Millie snuggled closer. “That would have been nice.” Women. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between what is, what was, and maybe even what will be - maybe because the middle part and the last part all look the same - but even the past is hard to tell from what I think and feel today - what I dream - sometimes it all runs together when I'm lying in bed in the morning and I'm still halfway asleep - sometimes even in the middle of the night - sometimes even in the middle of the day, dead awake! Dead awake - hmmm I was gardening the other day, planting wildflowers like New Agers used to do in protest over the domestication of everything – (maybe they were right on that one) - it was something purple and small I don’t know the name of and suddenly I didn't know what year it was either – I was pretty sure it was September, though not positive – but I had no idea whatsoever about the year – that freaked me out and I began to think: Do I even know that any of what happened actually happened – I mean, if I don’t even know what year it is, how can I be sure that what happened really did happen – suddenly, I didn't know if there were seven or eight billion people still out there – or just seven or eight - or none - just me - I actually had to drive into town to see! - there was no one – and the clocks all had different dates, having stopped at different times, so I came home and took a nap - and never woke up - missed dinner and my Steinbeck - slept right through I finally woke up in the middle of the night dreaming that I was smiling, only to find out that I was smiling - that was it - I was dreaming that I was smiling and I woke up smiling - no reason for it - nothing had happened in the dream before I was dreaming that I was smiling to cause me to be smiling - there was no dream before - I was out, cold - then suddenly, I was smiling in a dream, then I was smiling awake - it was very disconcerting - what have I got to be so all-fired happy about? Fire! Jesus. |
| LETTER #31 |
| LETTER #32 |
