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“If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward.”

~Jack Handy

Have a glimpse at what passes for polite conversation; daily conversation between me and an old friend.

“I wish I could disappear. They don't make medication for this sh!t.”

“And they do make some very good medication for it, I promise. I know someone, shall I connect you?”

“No they really don't this isn't crazy; I've been there and done that before. I could fix it if I let myself, but geography and other things keep it in my head. Don't apply it all to yourself. No fixing for it, just running is all. F**k my feet are so damn tired.”

“No, really they do make meds for it. Jolene told me. No cure, that you have to find yourself and running is just as much an answer. Relax. When I get home tonight, I have an idea. So, get ready. It should be helpful.”



You know I set out a time line a couple of months back when certain things transpired. I even picked a place eventually, Boise. Idaho ain’t going to work. The continent is really not big enough. Maybe the space station? Most countries are not as free with letting foreigners into their borders as we are; maybe that is why I am so strongly opposed to immigration reform. I understand the desire. Bobby Blue Bland sang about it on His California Album. I said it before, and I’m gonna say it again sometime in the near future. I hate making declarative statements; but sh!t. I’ve got a travelin bone that is aching, it might be tomorrow or it might be next year. Advil won’t fix the inflammation. He’s a runner, yeah whatever; the Allman Brothers sang about that one; got to keep from hiding. I’ll be damned if I let them catch me.

So I’ll throw three things out mainly because it is hard to disappear when you tell folks where you are going. I’ll pick a place and go, drive and just keep driving, or catch a big jet liner.

If I had been smart and finished school I could get a job and the invitation to come to a few countries across the ocean; too late for that now. The time just ain’t that abundant.

Okay, Story time, that was too much like a “blog”.



Christopher looked at the bag he had packed; laughed and shook his head. Imagine the world of a man sequestered into a duffel bag big enough to hold a day. Time to run again; stupid, silly, mixed up running. Not too many good byes to be said; thankfully. He saw some tears that almost kept him stationary, but they would eventually dry up for the most part. That knowledge didn’t help a whole lot. How long this time? Would declarative statements hold true or would he find himself waylaid by highwaymen again somewhere further down the road. He needed to get somewhere that electricity hadn’t been discovered yet; or was shunned. Maybe go be a Quaker, or find a cave. Damn this defective pancreas and its need for help from an outside source. The stupid disorganized organ had kept him from just being a grizzled hermit and the guy people called “The old man that lives in the woods and needs a shave”. He wondered if you could walk to Vernazza. He supposed you could if you got a flight somewhere close by. He could go and just hang out, until they threw him out. Slip slide away. Maybe Paul Simon needed a roommate; surely Norah needs a pool boy.

He could always just drive, drive, and drive. Stop when the money got under a certain point, grab a shitty job for a month, and find a place to shower. Sleep in the car; hell he spent thirteen months without a bed in St. Louis. The old leather seats in the new car were more comfortable than that hard pallet had been; except for a few nights when it had been inhabited by softer things. Maybe he would just relocate to that one spot he had picked out and said he wasn’t going to live in. Maybe, might, could have, did he?

Christopher looked at his address book and threw it in the garbage, opened his phone; deleted a few numbers then threw it in the garbage as well. He looked at a tattoo on his arm and wished he could throw that away. God bless forever. He switched the St. Jude medallion for one closer to his namesake; put the Jude medallion in an envelope, wrote one address and affixed a stamp to the wrong corner. He wrote a note to a woman who had been so constant for his entire life, he apologized for not waiting, told her he hoped she understood, and took a magnet in the shape of a pair of ruby slippers and left it on the fridge. That magnet, he should take it with him; but allusions were cruel sometimes.

It wasn’t midnight and there were no crossroads to confuse. He had spent the last few months sweltering in a small space; solitary confinement. He was getting too f**king old to start over, again, and under. Vodka, sharp things and too young Jolenes had started to look far more tempting than they should be. He found himself rhyming in replies to poetry not his. Make an ass out of you and me, mostly me. All me, why deny what any fool could see. Roll on, west; even if you went east you would eventually be far enough away to be to the west. Drive on, it don’t mean nothing. Josh Ritter and Johnny should be proud.

Christopher rolled down the window; and put a CD in the radio. He picked up his retirement plan and lit it; took a deep drag. He wondered if semi-colons could be used in oratory conversation. He needed a lobotomy like he needed a hole in his head.

He had brought his newest copy of Moby Dick, called that guy Ishmael and nodded his head at the mention of coffin warehouses, and the back side of funeral processions. He thought about knocking some one’s hat off just because.

At least he didn’t look as old as he was, that might fool a few of them for a bit.

He stopped at the mailbox and put the envelope inside. That was the best good bye he could muster for that old friend. He hoped they had paid attention, but they always did. He didn’t pay attention to the signs, small ones or big ones; he just rolled on.

KB





“When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving.”

~Stephen Wright

Haven't found a story I haven't liked yet, KB.

But I bet I know why you aren't sleeping.

So I had that conversation tonite, and was told not to be talking of leaving, rambling, and disappearing. Careful if you read the following; you may learn more about a man than you ever should on the damned internet.



The week of Mother’s Day 2000 I find out a woman I had spent more than a year getting to know, and learning to love had overdosed. Cocaine. I find in a letter that she was going to ask me to marry her. She wanted to be a librarian. She was beautiful and could hold a conversation about anything. I see a gold ring that probably cost two or three thousand dollars; and think about what if she hadn’t spent those extra nights doing what she did to get that money; what if I hadn’t been around, or hadn’t taken the time to look at her like she was a human and not just a naked ass on stage. I proceed to try and drink myself to death in as short a time as possible; but get detoured by totaling a two ton car made from the finest German steel; on Mother’s Day. I call home from jail.

I move to Houston; I find myself looking into the eyes of a woman who looked like a coffee commercial. Gorgeous; and those eyes showed the hints of a woman who was ready for anything. She grabs me by my tie, and leads me out to dance; to a slow jazz song. She kisses me, and comes home with me; she doesn’t leave. A month or so later she tells me she loves me, and that I make her forget about a man who beat her till she bled from her ears. Tells me she used to be smart, but the drugs and the punches stole it all away. Mother’s Day my mom calls me crying; telling me my Uncle Bunk was dead; the man who I called my grandfather to every one but him. The man who taught me about trains, gardens, working, and fighting. Taught me how to cuss, drink and smoke. Told me to never say I wasn’t worth a damn ever again. I couldn’t even ****ing cry because already was. I carried her to the hospital and after she got out her father left me some place where I had no idea how to get home, and told me I wasn’t worth a damn. She came back to me, and her father told her if she stayed she would be cut off. She stayed. Then her father calls her old boyfriend; the one who had beat her and made her feel like she was too dumb to breathe. He comes to town, and she is drawn in like some ****ed up moth to a white flame. Cocaine. She comes back to me; just to have me hold her she says. I call people; and get her put into rehab. I spend the better part of 120 grand doing so. Stocks I had bought years before to keep me okay in the future, money I had made in Houston selling 25 thousand dollar a pop Plasma televisions to baseball players, and should be retired basketball players.

I left the next day, broke and broken. She used to call, she sounded okay, but I couldn’t talk to her for long. I didn’t want to bring up memories that should have been forgotten. I haven’t seen her or heard from her in years now. I saw a picture when I first started this thing; she looked well. I couldn’t see her eyes real clear though.

I move back home. I don’t have a relationship for almost six years. I kiss a few; spend the night with a couple. Never hear or say I love you. Didn’t want to either. I was done with it. I had to work on me for awhile. I find a peace inside myself. I learn to let the things that had happened in the span of a year gather cobwebs and remain silent. One day I find myself jobless for the second time in a year; not broke, but tired of it all again; I leave a woman who was nothing but a warm body from the past and head to St. Louis.

I live with a man who had been my best friend for years. Ever since I saved his ass from getting kicked because he used a word he shouldn’t have around people who he should have known better. The last friend I have that I talk to on a regular basis. We grow apart; he tells me to go find a woman; just bring some “*****” home. I tell him I’ll do what ever I want; mind his own business. I am already falling in love for the first time in almost 6 years; it was just past Mother’s day. I chase this woman around; such a lovely spark in her eye; she knew so much music, and she could hold a decent conversation. She told me how much she looked forward to Saturday nights when she would stay for two hours past when she got off of work just so she could relax and let me talk, or let me listen. I finally caught her, and that kiss was the first one in so long that meant something. The heat was real. She told me she loved me that night; and it scared the ****ing **** out of me. She told me not to let her sabotage the relationship, and I did. She sang Natural Woman to me the last night I ever got to hold her. She told me I made her feel whole again, and she let me sit with her son and aggravate her with him.

When I asked her if she was done, she told me yes. She called my house 12 times in one night; a week later to see if I was home from the hospital yet. She sat down next to me when I went to the center of my universe, and she wouldn’t let me not let her go with Kirby and me when we went out for my birthday. She smiled when I asked her if she had heard I was getting married, and she looked like she wanted to cry a second later when I asked her if she had heard I wasn’t anymore. She asked if I got an explanation. She didn’t show up for my last Sunday, but she put her arm around me on Monday; and she gave me her address like I told her I wanted so I could send her stories.

Somewhere before that Sunday and after that birthday all of the **** from “I’m done” back to “she overdosed” came flooding back into me with the stupid sound of a car window breaking. Can a man catch a goddamned break? I started writing again. I had to get it out before it consumed me. I started with the Mother’s day when my old uncle died. I sent it to a beautiful red headed woman who I had never met, but had a look in her eye like she would understand. She replied and told me she wanted to slap that woman’s father across his face. Then I posted it for the world wide mothefing web to see.

Shortly after here is this short and dark haired woman I used to know; and she is snooping around my little couch I used for therapy. I knew how smart she was; I knew she had a voice that sent chills up my spine, and I soon found out she liked to listen to Slim Harpo and Willie Nelson. She had even had rabbits named Pancho and Lefty when she was a kid. I e-flirted back and asked questions that I knew the answers to; just to get a reply. She told me she had a crush on me; but she guessed it wasn’t a secret anymore. I remembered back when I had been playing trivia at the bar she worked in; I looked over at my oldest friend and said, “Wow, did you know she was so damn smart”? I remembered the night I saw her at the movie theater in town when I was home from some journey away from my head. I was thinking about the type of woman who can play basketball with the best of them, had the cleanest three point shot I had ever seen; and looked like she was excited she had just seen a Tolkien movie. She looked like she enjoyed stories about unlikely heroes.

We start talking and we do so well together. Like we are in each other’s heads. I write stories and she writes her own to compliment them. What the hell is this! This is better than getting a letter in the mail. This is the thing I have looked for, waited for so many years to see again. There ain’t any cocaine to worry about; she ain’t drunk, at least not on gin. She has her head right where it needs to be. Could it be this is a woman that don’t want or need anyone to save her from herself? Crazy maybe, but crazy like me. Different than most is all it is. She reads a story about my Grandfather, and how he loves his woman so much he refuses to give up and just rest. He will be here until she goes on to a better place where no one gets old. She sees the pain in my words; and she says to me, “Do you want me to come there; I will leave right now”. This woman, who hasn’t seen me in person for months, and who never really knew me until a few weeks earlier just offered to drive four hours in the middle of the night; for no other reason than she thought I needed the company of someone who gave a damn. I told her no, and she knew that was what I would say, and I knew that I would say yes very soon.

I say yes, and she comes to see me; I was so terribly petrified of what she would think when she stepped out and saw me face to face again. We just sat down and talked for a minute; she gave me a magnet that was an allusion to getting Home. Ruby slippers. We talked, we sprawled out; we lay down in bed so much earlier than either one of us was used to. She listened to me tell stories and laughed; and asked for more. She stopped me, told me to sit up; and she hugged me. We kissed and it was sweet. Patient, not like the one that had just happened so soon before. I slept so well that night; and I was so rested when I woke up.

I waited as long as I could and then told her I loved her. I should have said it before she left, but she knew I wanted to and respected the time in which I took to say it. That was the first time I ever volunteered it first. It was the first time I felt like it was returned with the same measure it was given. We talked about me coming home in November, we talked about marriage. Marriage! Children? I asked my Father if he would be my best man, I wrote a story about him building things, and asked him in the end of it. He read it and he cried for me. Happy.

This woman she wrote me words like “I want to give you the world, and every day, I PROMISE to try to do just that. I will give you everything you ever needed, and everything you will ever want. I will give you love in a way that will make you smile just thinking about it. I will give you hope and clarity and reason to the things you do in your life. I will do those things for you, because you do them for me. I will be your safe place and the place where you feel most important and loved. We are good for each other, and make each other better people, and that alone is half the battle. The other half is continuing to do so for each day to come, and I will do my damnedest to keep it that way” I fell apart; let myself think for a moment that I should stop denying myself and get home already. I told her November was too far away. I was coming home in August; then I thought about that blessed ring, and I said forget August that is wasted money. I’m coming home in June.

June never happened; May, and Mother’s day did. Suddenly it was over, couldn’t do it anymore. Here I was; on the anniversary of me being in jail for being so drunk I couldn’t see; the day I tried to forget about a woman who had died because she lost her hope; the day another woman was so tortured by her demons she could do nothing but shake and weep as I drove her to the hospital only to see her father look at me like I was the cause; and tell me I wasn’t worth a damn. Nice day. I earned the right to have that look on my face, and that distress in my voice.

Hey, but it’s getting better right? The first one gave up and died, the second one just gave up and had to go to rehab, the third just gave up and got drunk again, and the fourth just gave up. Maybe the next one will just not give up?

I appreciate the things you do, and try and do for me. I honestly do; the friends thing is alright. The thing is; there is a reason I never go back to a place when I leave. I don’t like ghosts flittering around in the night.

So when you say to me, “I want to hear nothing of running, moving or disappearing.” And I say to you “I'm happy with myself most of the time, not so much recently, but I've got a right to be sad for a bit; and no it ain't because of you. I'll explain something that struck me the other night afterwards”, well there is your explanation.

Sometimes the **** just gets a little heavy; and whiskey doesn’t make me as strong as it used to. That’s why my current favorite songs are Mr. Lamontagne singing “Crazy” and Bird York singing “Prozac Day”. Remember that line in my “evil twin” story, “I refuse to be monotone; keep up or quit”? There is the reason why. Good night Sunshine, and remember this, you just came along at the right time, and you left when you had to. I hold not one grudge. I thank you for the effort you put into keeping me calm and relaxed. As well as you understand me, you may not know me. The talk ain’t just talk, I got to roll on again real soon, or the ghosts will find me again. It ain’t you dear, its all me. Don’t worry; just keep doing what you do. I’ll be alright; always have been, and I always will be.

Night. It's past my bedtime. I'll dispose of what ever I feel like G-bird.