Oh My Friends, My Friends Forgive Me, That I Live And You Are Gone, There's A Grief That Can't Be Spoken, There's A Pain Goes On And On

--"Empty Chairs at Empty Tables", Michael Ball for the Les Miserables Tenth Anniversary Concert

You were chastising me for being cocky that day. I remember that because we were having soup at "this great place close by and not out of the way," which turned out to be thirty minutes out of the way, but still great. I thought it's impossible for one to be cocky while eating soup. I may have even told you that; there's just no way to eat soup aggressively. Then we proceeded to debate the vagaries of soup eating and the social posturing that occurs while one is consuming soup. It was one of those hypothetical debates that concluded a lot more seriously than intended yet still managed to provide much needed levity to a tense situation. I had clam chowder (what else?) and you had broccoli cheddar. I had driven us so you offered to buy lunch which I thought was very nice of you since it had been my suggestion to go for soup in the first place.

I remember there were the faint strains of "Super Trouper" over the radio which I've always liked, but remembered you hated. No good groups came before the 80s was your motto and your creed. We'd debated about that too in the past. That time I didn't even need to tell you what I was thinking because you said there was a special level of hell reserved for ABBA and ABBA cultists. I just smiled, maybe bobbed my head a little, and you knew where my head was at. I never defined myself as an ABBA cultist, but definitely a patron. Sometimes I wish you could have heard when I heard them play. Sometimes I wish you could have seen what I saw when I saw the world. But that would make as much sense as asking you to agree with me on principle. Where would the fun be in that?

That would have been like debating why I like clam chowder and you liked broccoli cheddar. It's a soup built around a vegetable. I didn't get it. I still don't. The day vegetables are the show to meat's or bread's prelude is the day I reconsider my whole theory that vegetables killed the dinosaurs. I enjoyed my soup. You enjoyed yours that day. That was the important fact, not the fact we disagreed about a great many things. Supposedly, I was cocky and you were humble, but I seem to recall many an instance where you flashed a little tenacity and broke for the hills on a moment's notice. That was what was so great about you--you could pick pretty great places for soup and you could pick your battles pretty adequately. You never fought just to fight. You never disagreed to disagree. For you to stick your opinion in it had either to be for a good reason... or for a good laugh, which often were intertwining goals for you.

Eventually, I was getting to the dregs of my bowl. All the clams had been claimed and all the chowder had been chowed. I asked you innocently if you wanted to try some. When you said yes, I proceeded to drop the rest of the contents of my bowl into your bowl. Then I waited for the explosion. On a scale from sparkler to Hiroshima, yours didn't even rate a cigarette butt. You just kept right on eating on your intermingling soup, my screwed-up face watching on, and told me that it didn't taste all that bad. On further review, it was just cheddar, broccoli, potatoes, and chowder in one lump sum. Nothing to fret there. I guess it was just the thought of two things that weren't together being deposited on top of one another. It sounded more gross than it actually was. All I remember was afterwards, watching you finish the soup(s) with such gusto in your performance, was how much I still wanted to eat mine.


where my friends will meet no more

That was you, though, taking all I could give and never flinching.

----

I had the chance to go back to that soup place this past weekend, the first since you died. I even ordered the same things--broccoli cheddar and clam chowder. This time I mixed them both beforehand.

I imagined it didn't taste half as good as when we were there together.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Let's Get Out Of This Country, I'll Admit I'm Bored With Me, I Drowned My Sorrows And Slept Around, When Not In Body At Least In Mind

--"Let's Get Out of This Country", Camera Obscura

I recently bought tickets for my annual trip to Boston for the later part of this May. I can't believe it's been almost two years since I went back. Usually, it's an annual tradition and it felt kind of weird not to go last year. Granted, Chicago was nice and going with Breanne was even nicer, but there's something to be said about having a tradition and sticking to it. I don't know--Boston is kind of like my Mecca; whenever I go there, I always come back centered and more in focus. I know I've written before how I think I must have been a Bostonian in a former life because so much of what I liked seems inexplicably linked to this fair city. It goes much deeper than that, though. A lot of who I am seems more prevalent in Boston than it ever does in Los Angeles.

People always speak ill of East Coasters--how rude and inconsiderate they are--but I've never had that be the case whenever visiting Boston. Indeed, on one of my first trips there I was welcomed with open arms at the Red Sox game. It seems they're willing to accept anyone... as long as they're a diehard Sawx fan. However, this spirit of camaraderie manifests itself in other aspects of the city. I always get the sense of this smalltown feel in a big city. From the shopkeepers to restaurateurs, from the ushers at the game to the people just lounging in the Commons, everybody gives off this vibe of being really down-to-earth and neighborly such as I haven't felt since being back in Sierra Madre. It's a far different experience than Los Angeles, where the most you see of people is in their cars and it's almost a miracle when you can actually strike up a conversation with a stranger.

That also brings me to the fact that I love how Boston is a walking city. Sure, there are cars, but I've never had to once rent a car while going there. With the stops every few blocks are so, I've been more than able to get around adequately. If L.A. were more like that, you can believe me that I'd be seeing more of what the city has to offer on a daily basis like I do in Boston. There's something exhilarating about being able to discover some out-of-the-way establishment that isn't on any guide or tour book simply because you were clever enough to poke your head around where most people are too timid to go.

Lastly, of course, there are the Red Sox, a team I could watch everyday of my life. If there is one case to be made of my moving to Boston, the 2007 World Champions would be it.

It took some doing, but I've gotten my friend Ilessa to accompany on this trip. It's not an ideal situation because I'm sure, unlike in trips past where went on my own and thus had full run of the show, we'll be getting in each other's way quite often. However, she is graduating USC this year and Boston is what I think of when I think of a good place to celebrate. Also, I promised that one of these days I'd take her on my paltry tour of all the various bars and drinking establishments to be had in the city, so there you go. I don't know--it should be fun and it'll be nice to have someone along who is seeing it all with fresh eyes. I haven't had that since, well, Chicago.

It's different with Boston, though. I've kind of adopted it as my city and to be able to share it with someone makes me think I'm master enough to begin teaching. I'm no longer the ingenue still looking at the city with widened eyes and widened mouth. Now that I've gotten a fair grasp of how the city lives and breathes, it's going to be pretty awesome being able to pass along that knowledge to somebody else.

I can't wait.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Through The Storm We Reach The Shore, You Give It All But I Want More, And I'm Waiting For You, With Or Without You

--"With or Without You", U2

When I found out Breanne might be pregnant it wasn’t from a phone call or from her visiting. I found out when I checked my answering machine between helping customers in line at Crown Books. Immediately, my heart stiffened in my chest. The exact type of panic that set upon me proved difficult to describe. The closest I could liken it to is the sense of surprise and sustained sensitivity I had for a few days after my Jennifer said she was dying. The only difference was in the first instance, there was a chance I had created life, and in the second, one was going to be taken away. I know I wasn’t happy about the possibility. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t upset. I was definitely nervous, mostly because the message had been brief and because it’d been an over since she had left it and I had bothered to check my machine. She was probably anxious that I hadn’t called her back sooner or, worse yet, that I was too chicken shit to call her back without prompting.

After checking the message once again to insure I had heard her correctly, I dialed her number. Mr. Holins answered instead of her. Gone was his usual light-hearted tone and gone was the usual response of him automatically calling for “that silly child of his.” I can’t say that he sounded upset, even though he probably was. What I think I was hearing from him was the concern of a parent who had recently received upsetting news. He wasn’t to the point of blame yet. Blame would come later. I was just glad he hadn’t hung up the phone on me instantly. He’s always been the one who took things in stride of the two of her parents. Woe betide me if it had been her mother who had answered.

“She’s speaking with her mother right now, Patrick,” I heard him say.

“Should I call back then?”

“I’d give it some time. Let her call you. I think that would be best.”

I had just about spat out asking, “is she alright?” when I heard the steady drone of the dial tone. I hung up the phone to resume my place behind the register. That was that then, I thought. The only thing I can do now is wait for a call that hopefully comes soon. People who claim that they have all the patience in the world, that they can remain calm in any circumstance, probably have never been forced to extend customer service to perfect strangers when all they really want to do is drive until they land on the doorstep of the girl they may or may not have knocked up. And it’s not like I could tell anyone at work. That would involve explaining the whole situation, which would mean explaining that what I said had never happened (in order to be chivalrous or somesuch quality) had actually happened. That would trace back to my parents who I had assured the two of us were just friends as well. Not only would they know I had lied, but they would bring up the fact that had specifically warned me about the consequences of being irresponsible. They would want to talk to her parents, who would already have all the ammunition they needed against me, and everything would be fucked up beyond belief… all in the span of a day.

The bottom line I was worried about what would happen to us. Could they actually keep me away from her? Would she actually want me to stay away? All these questions were traipsing across my head while I had to wear that stupid grin on my face and say stuff like, “did you find everything you were looking for?” and “that’s a great book there… you’re going to enjoy it, I guarantee.” I didn’t think that that’s what would happen. It was the mystery of how she was taking it that was killing me.

I had known almost two years by then. I thought they might be enough time to predict her behavior, but, as much as you know a person—their likes and dislikes, their proclivities, their tendencies—they can always surprise you. They will always surprise you. She was no different. Given her disposition, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if she had already made the decision to exclude from all knowledge of what she planned to do. She had earned that reputation as a person who didn’t change tracks once a course had been charted. My one hope was that I was able to get in touch with her early enough to have some influence as to how we were both going to handle it. If that wasn’t the case, I could have been receiving a call from her during which I would be instructed how the next few weeks (months?) would proceed with no choice as to my participation or lack thereof. She’d done it to me before with smaller issues. I wouldn’t have put it past her with this particular one.

“You okay there?” Heidi, the girl next to me on register asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Well, you’re kind of freaking the customers out. Stop being so animated. You work in a bookstore, not Disneyland.”

“I’ll dial it down a bit, I guess. Thanks for the heads-up, Heidi.”

She nodded.

The fact of the matter was neither one of us were ready for it, neither one of us had penciled it into our dayplanners. Hell, we hadn’t even talked about it with each other. It was a discussion I, at least, hadn’t planned on having until a few years into the future. We were both teen-agers. Neither one of us were done with school. Neither one of us were planning on something this serious until we were graduated. Maybe even settled in a career somewhere, in a place somewhere. It was all supposed to happen when everything had been taken care of perfectly so that there would be no hassles and no questions about our capability to handle anything thrown our way. It wasn’t all supposed to happen like this, I thought. Not like this at all. In those days I had a sense of being impervious to everything. I didn’t think I was invincible because god knows I had been hurt before, but I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t walk away from. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk away from this without losing something, some small part of my innocence, some small part of my hope, some small part of my understanding of the way my life was going to work out for me. I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want to lose her either. One way or another, I was going to lose something big, I just knew it.

I was like the person whose boat had capsized, worried about just making it through the day. I wasn’t even thinking about the bigger picture. I didn’t understand all that having a kid when you’re young and unmarried entailed—not like I do now. I was approaching the problem that day in terms of solvable and unsolvable, problems and solutions. I wasn’t envisioning the stress, the time, or the wealth of concerns that would need to be fleshed out and decided on every day for the rest of our lives. I wasn’t seeing that. I was seeing how the person I was that day could conceivably handle a problem as huge as that with as little trouble as possible.

When my line died down again, I tried calling her. Her father might have been right in saying she needed some time, but, in all honesty, I really just wanted to hear her voice. Even if she said she was scared or sad or lost, it would have been nice to have some indication as to her state of mind. That’s what I needed to calm down the most. I knew how to handle scared. I knew how to handle lost. I wasn’t good with handling the unknown. This time nobody answered the phone. I didn’t feel like talking to their answering machine so I hung up quickly.

I remember when we were fooling around that night. I was thinking that was everything I wanted. I remember remarking to her in the tent, no one around for miles, that all of it was perfect. She was perfect. That night was going to be perfect. If I had been worried about her getting pregnant I sure as hell didn’t let it stop me and, if she’d been troubled by the thought, she never let me know. I remember her asking if I’d pulled out in time. I remember telling her I was sure I did, but thinking I’m pretty sure I did. We left it at that. It wasn’t like the movies where I misheard her saying it was okay to stay inside of her or it wasn’t like I had to be talked out of it. I thought we were safe. We both had the same idea of everything being kosher. After all, a perfect night like that wasn’t going to be ruined by something as unsettling as a baby scare? What was the logic in that? There was no use in everything coming together the way it did only to end with that as the logical conclusion. Fate wasn’t that cruel. We led charmed lives, don’t you know? That’s exactly what I remember puzzling through my head. Life wouldn’t lead us to each other, across so many improbabilities, so many obstacles, over so many objections, if we weren’t intended for some type of happy ending. That was the logicial conclusion to our night together. Yet the more I thought about while I was at the bookstore, the more I thought it might have been that it’d been so perfect because we didn’t want to see anything wrong. We weren’t as careful as we thought we were only because neither one of us wanted to cast dispersions on the evening. Neither one of us wanted to bring up any unpleasantness only because everything had been going along so pleasantly. It was a careful non-verbal agreement not to ruin the evening for anything at all. Perhaps it was only that day everything we had taken a blind eye to had finally caught up to us.

Then again, I was always good at turning a blind eye to the harsher realities.

If the next customer line were to have asked me if she was worth all this worrying, I would have told him definitely. If Heidi had peeked her head over to me after figuring what was going on and asked me if I loved Breanne, I would have told her definitely. If Breanne had called me right then and asked me if I was willing to tough it out with her, I would have been unsure. Of course, I loved her. I still do. Yet there’s something about being put on the spot that’s a little unsettling. I wanted to know what she was thinking. I wanted to be supportive of her decision. But that was just it, I wanted her to make the tough choices. I didn’t want to be responsible for whose lives were ruined or the possibility that we might not to end a life. That was another topic we had failed to discourse about in our dealings with one another. With any luck I wouldn’t have to. She’d have already talked it over with her parents and they would have settled upon a course. I would play my role, whatever that might be, and everything could go back to being some semblance of normal. I didn’t want to be the decision maker; I just wanted to be involved.

It was interminable every time I heard the work phone ring. She had my number there even though she was loath to call it. In the current situation I was thinking she might just push past her ban on calling work. Every time I heard someone pick up from my vantage point of the register I was sure it was her. Every time I’d been ready to excuse myself to the back room to take the call. Every time it wasn’t her.

Then two hours later, when I had all but given up, she finally called.

“What do you want to do?” was the first thing she said to me. No “sugar,” no apologies for calling me at work, just straight to business.

“What do you want to do?” I asked her back, genius that I was.

I heard her sigh on the other end of the line.

“Look, I can’t talk long. Mother’s been at me all day, darling, but I wanted to let you know I was okay and that there isn’t going to be me blaming you or any of that. We’re in a fix, but we’re in it and we’ll both get through it. It’s only a little fall of rain, you know?”

“And a little fall of rain can’t hurt us,” I said, utilizing the appropriate response.

“I’ll call later tonight when we can talk more.”

I hung up the phone somewhat sure of myself. At least I could see she wasn’t falling apart at home. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she was coming apart at the seams. Like I said, I could predict her behavior all day long, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred I’d be wrong somehow. There are days when I’m sure she’s stronger in character than I am. Other days I’m just as sure she’s immature and wicked to the core. There have been days where I feel stupid and insignificant next to her accomplishments and her choices. Other days I think she’s the laziest woman to have ever worked the Earth. There are a few things I can count on. She’s always going to be stubborn and think she’s right, that’s a given. She’s always going to bust my balls about something that I swear she’d forgotten years ago. She’s always going to be beautiful. And, I guess, she’s going to find some reason to care about me even when I can’t see that reason myself. Everything else is a coin toss.

I shrugged my shoulders at the inconsequentiality of it all. Nothing had been decided. No plan was set in motion. I still didn’t know what I should be preparing myself for. All I knew was I’d be getting a phone call later from her and that we’d “talk.” It wasn’t an ominous pronouncement nor was it a festive one. It was what it was, a postponement of the inevitable, and an invitation for more impatience.

It was funny. I had woken up that morning not missing her one bit. I couldn’t even tell you if I had one thought of her all that day up until I checked the messages. I’d talked to her the afternoon before and it was really getting to that point where some time away from her was a welcome idea. I never feel smothered by her—if anything, I don’t see enough of her—but the time we spend in each other’s company or listening to each other can get rather overwhelming at times. I could have seen myself going the whole day not even mentioning her in my thoughts. However, there I was, doing nothing but fretting about her. There I was, trying to imagine what she was doing at home, what she was saying to her mother, what she was plotting out in her head. It was like I’d given her point on this detail and was now only awaiting my orders.

It was her lead for me to follow, not the other way around. I could have possibly gone the whole day without her, but, now that we were in the thick of things, there was no way I was losing sight of where she was going.

That was also funny. Before her, I didn’t really think about relationships in terms of leaders and followers. It was always what I wanted to do and what the person I was dating wanted to do. Sometimes they met up in the middle or one person altered their plans to accomadate the other, but, when the plans started to be altered too much, I went my way and she went hers. I’d spent too many years trying to mold myself every girl I saw wanted me to be. That’s when I started trying to force them to accept me “as is” with no revisions on my part. I didn’t want to be the person that changed with every passing whim. I wanted to be accepted without conditions and without acquiescing.

I was the person who waited for no one. Fifteen minutes of standing me up and I walked, that was the rule.

Now all I was doing that day was waiting for a call about a topic I wasn’t in any great hurry to hear about. I was possibly plotting out a future that wasn’t the one I woke up with that morning. I was consigning myself to a life with one person that I’d only known for two years. And why?

Because we’d fucked? Or because there was something substantial there? I tended to drift towards the latter explanation, but it also had a lot to do with the former one too. To be honest, the way I was thinking about it was in terms of acceptable risk and reward. Yes, I wanted to be with her again for as many times as possible, but I’d also thought about the idea of trying to go too many days not talking to her, not visiting her, not helping me out and being helped out in return. That would be an unacceptable loss to me. It wouldn’t be total and it wouldn’t have been something I couldn’t have walked away from. But it would have been unacceptable. Even thinking about trying to make being unwed teenage parents wasn’t as scary as it would have been with anyone else I dated. I knew that much. She was the first person to make it some slightly less than impossible, which was saying a lot about her.

I waited for her call that second time because I’d begun a process of trusting her that I couldn’t scale back. She’d hurt me. She’d been mean to me. She’d even caused me to hate her more than once. But she’d never given cause for me to distrust her or to think she didn’t have my best interests at heart. Did I want a kid? No. Did I want a kid with her? Slightly less no. That’s about as eloquent as I can put it.

She turned out not to be pregnant. It took two more weeks of being tortured by her mother asking what I planned to do to make sure. It took two more weeks of hiding it from my parents to make sure. It took a couple of nights of her and I taking turns speaking aloud some troublesome what-if scenarios to make sure.

Not once did I cancel out talking it out or cut a phone call short because I didn’t want to deal with it. I waited the entire time just as anxiously as she did.

I waited for her like I wait for her now because I have that sense that some great reward is headed my way if I stick it out. I also think that even if that great reward never comes, they’ll be reward enough in the waiting around because at the very least it will be with her… and that’s more than I had before I met her.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Have You Ever Been Close To Tragedy, Or Been Close To Folks Who Have, Have You Ever Felt A Pain So Powerful, So Heavy You Collapse

--"The Impression That I Get", The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

I was driving in my car after going out to dinner with my cousin Vincent when he remarked that certain members in our family needed some type of hardship to reach the level of maturity they're supposed to be at. It struck me as an odd thing to say. Why would you want to wish adversity on anyone, especially on someone in your family? But the more I reflected on it, the more I saw that a certain wisdom existed in his words. A lot of people put milestone markers at the great triumphs in their lives. They commemorate their joys with plaques and pictures, videotapes and anniversaries, because they wish to forever remember the day their hard work finally came to fruition.

However, I think it's just as vital to immortalize the days one attempted to accomplish something of import and it didn't come to pass. Those days are important too. That's a lesson these two family members of mine never had. They've never had to face the huge hurdle and stumble while trying to cross it. This is not to say they've never had setbacks, but they've never had those huge moments of crisis that define the kind of individual you're destined to be in later life. I mean--I believe a lot of who I am was only ascertained when I was at my lowest--when Jennifer died, when DeAnn got pregnant, when I was almost kicked out of USC. You never know the person you are until you find out the person you aren't. When the chips are done is when you find out what goals and aspirations are important to you, when you find out what kind of qualities manifest themselves when you're under pressure and not in control, when you find out how it feels to lose a lot of your hope. I know in those times I went through I came to see that the values I thought I held weren't actually the values I believed in.

The majority of people are loathe to make changes in themselves if they believe that they are well-off and happy. They put stock into the maxim that "if it's broke don't fix it" when it comes to getting by on their character, even if their are glaring deficiencies in that character. That's the problem with my family members. They've coasted so long on being the way they are when the rest of us know that they could have gone so much more if they had only put forth the effort to improve themselves. Breanne says that "you have to get your face wet first if you want to swim." With some people they are so afraid of taking the plunge that they convince themselves to stay on the shore and look at all the other people actually getting somewhere. They convince themselves that there is no need for them to move from where they're at, where they've always been. It would take the beach sinking away for them to take action and start swimming.

I know I possess a lot of faults to this day--I'm stubborn, I'm rude, I'm wasteful, and I lack for common sense in a lot of situations--but the impetus for me to change those qualities only will come when those selfsame qualities bring about some kind of tragedy. I know for me to reach whatever level of maturity I have know it took these acts of God to get me to change. I used to be overly critical of those who had different opinions of me. It literally took someone who had different viewpoints on almost every topic you could think of still be accepting of me even when I had displayed the worst of what I had to offer to see that tolerance is something I sorely needed. It literally took someone I cared about dying for me to realize that I can't be so cavalier with friends and friendships. It literally took being kicked out of college for me to get serious about my future. I'm a lazy ass, just like everyone else. I'd rather be who I am than try to be the person I really could be. I know that. I've always known that.

Tonight really got me thinking that there's points to life where crossing over that darkened sea and getting lost from time to time is a good thing. After all, if all we ever do is go with the safe and pleasant routes we've always taken, we'll never see the rest of that dangerous world out there. I don't know about you, but I think there's a risk to everything we do. I think there's an inherent danger of getting hurt, getting embarrassed, getting sad or angry or lonely, in living. To try and avoid that, to try and avoid feeling the unpleasantness of life, is like trying to ride a bike but keeping the training wheels on. Sure, you're technically riding, but you're losing out on all the places you could go. You could lead a life that's safe and somewhat pleasant, never falling once, or you could fail just as much as you succeed and go to places you never imagined you could reach.

Personally, I'd rather fall than stand still. I'd rather get my face wet, thank you very much.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

If Lust And Hate Is The Candy, If Blood And Love Tastes So Sweet, Then We Give 'Em What They Want

--"Candy Everybody Wants", 10,000 Maniacs

When my sherpa guide failed to show up at the designated place last Friday I knew I was in trouble. Not only had my enemies deciphered out my plan, but they apparently had cobbled together the small group of associates I had decided to entrust with it. I turned up the collar on my trench coat and shuffled off to my car, still running behind the alley on Bleeker Street. I had figured something would happen during the meeting and a still-running car is always a lifesaver in these situations. I dropped the car into gear and sped off into the night. It looked like I would another tact if I was ever to get my hands on the item, if I was ever to get my paws on Mr. Jack.

My first encounter with Mr. Jack had been an innocent one. I had been down by the docks with my friend Mola Ani working on how best to solve the red herring shortage when he suggested we relieve some stress by playing a little game. He pulls out a copy of Mr. Jack, with its ornate pieces, cards, and game board, and offers me the standard wager--one appendage or one thousand dollars. The last vestiges of his off hand spoke to our long history of playing games, as did my ever-dwindling bank account. I told him I didn't have everything better to do and that I'd give it a true.

Fourteen hours later (and one foot less) I knew I had to have this game for myself. I offered Mola the priceless antique Jack & Rose duvet I had sitting in the back of the moving van. "Halsha, do you take me for a fool?! This Mr. Jack is worth more than a thousand or so of your duvets!" With that he stormed off, taking his game with him. With a sour expression on my face, I walked back to my still-running car, intent on coming back later to steal away his precious game while he swept. I even contemplated putting the impudent Moari down if need be.

As it turned out, all that was unnecessary.

I came back to the docks later that night, only to find the entire region ablaze. I tried to make out through all the smoke and ash any sign of Mola, but he could not be found. Coughing my lungs out, I approached a nearby firefighter. "What happened here?" I asked him. "It was the game, sir. They were after the game. The poor bastards never even stood a chance," he yelled. He made his way back to the inferno and I continued to watch it as it consumed every building in sight for three miles in each direction. Somebody else wanted this game. Somebody else wanted it bad enough to kill for it.

It can't be my imagination, I thought. It must be that damn good.


do you want to play?

It was then that I tried my usual connections--Leigh McGoldrick over in Dublin, Lynch Lorring in Oslo, Beno in Hong Kong. No one could put me in touch with somebody who had this game. I even stooped to hiring out my ruddy protege, Toby, to sail down the Amazon for a rumored copy among the Yanomami. It was a little known secret they hoarded European board games like dragons to gold. Unfortunately, Toby ran into her own bit of trouble and was forced to barter a signed copy of a plastic Subway cup for her own life. We're still trying to track down the kidnappers. Every number I called, every address I was told to come alone to, it all turned out the same. Bupkis. The two weeks passed like rush hour on the 10. I was beginning to feel like I would never again play this game.

I took to the bourbon hard to ease my suffering. Night after night, they had to call two cabs from The Saucy Royale Bar over in Manhattan Beach just to get me home. "Fucking give me Mr. Jack! I want Mr. Jack now!" is all anyone was ever able to get out of me.

Then, finally, a breakthrough. A sherpa I had met on my last cruise to Palm Springs left me an e-mail with the following "four" words: "We love you, we miss you, get well soon, and hurry back." It was code for "Meet me in the alley behind the Denny's." After spending the next eight days staking out every Denny's in the Los Angeles area, I stumbled on the correct one tonight.

That's when my sherpa didn't show up.

That's when I began to feel like my life could really be in danger.

That's when I knew my obsession with this game could really be the death of me.

It only made me want to possess it more.

When I got back to my office, I found a strange package waiting for me on my chair. Wrapped in butcher paper and tied with green yarn, I was astonished to find a copy of Mr. Jack inside. I laughed maniacally. It was mine at last. After two months of constant dodging and weaving through stacks of leads, I finally had a copy to call my own. I sat down in my chair, swiveled around a but with the game in my hands, and then returned to facing my desk. As I put the box on my desk to open it, I noticed the handwritten note laid across and centered atop the desk:

We took the duvet. We'll be expecting more where that came from. Enjoy the game.

Signed,
The Manitobans

It worse that I thought. Sure, I had procured a copy of the MacGuffin that had instigated this whole adventure. But at what cost? I found myself in league with the dirty Manitobans who had been the bane of my existence ever since birth. Every game of Mr. Jack played would only serve to remind me that I was in their pocket.

I had rolled the dice and it had come up Canadian.

I sighed and called up my bookie to line up a game for that weekend. It was going to take a lot to get out from under the thumb of the Manitobans and I needed to start earning those thumbs as quickly as possible.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

There's No Easy Explanation For It, But Whenever There's A Problem, We Always Work It Out Somehow, Work It Out Somehow

--"Love Will Never Do", Janet Jackson

I originally had another post planned today, but it was too light and too frivolous to follow Breanne's. I can't write it today. I'll have to write it tomorrow. It would just seem like I was treating her situation as some big joke. As much as I want to lighten the mood (and hopefully cheer a certain Little Miss Chipper up), I don't want to do it at the expense of giving serious weight to how I feel about what's going on.

I'm not involved, except to say that it's one of my friends who's hurting right now and I would never be silly and stupid in the face of that. So I'm going to take a small break and explain my feelings both for her and for everyone who bothers to read here because I have the skulking suspicion that a lot of what happens in the near future will have ramifications far into the future.

First, my take (originally posted in the comments of previous post):

If she's ever going to leave her husband it's going to be this year. Things haven't been going well for them and I think she's fed up with feeling unhappy all too often. She says she's going to stick it out because she's not a quitter. I'm trying to encourage her because she really does love him and I can imagine he really does love her. Yet there's not much anyone can do if she's not happy. And I want her to be happy, but I'm not so sure anymore if that means telling her to stay or if the means telling her to leave. All I know is telling her she should do whatever she thinks is right is nothing but a cop-out. She's searching for advice and, for once, I don't know have any to give because it's a situation that's foreign to me. I don't know how you love someone that long and then willingly let go of them without looking back. It's seems like an impossible task to me. More than that, it seems like it would leave you more broken after than you were before so I'm all for her sticking it out. That'd be the courageous thing to do; I just don't know if it's the right thing any more.

And I'm also concerned that if she does leave him if it'll be for me. Because a lot of me wants that to be the scenario that plays out, but, again, the sensible thing to do would be to give her time and space to figure things out alone without jumping into anything too serious with her right away. Sometimes you can't fix what's broken in somebody else no matter how much you want to help. Sometimes people need time to heal before they can be whole enough to open up again.

In a way, I prefer her married because it gives me somebody to pine away for and imagine how perfect everything would be if she were with me. I'm scared if we do ever get back together it'll be a disaster and everyone of my dreams will be shattered. It's easier to criticize how much better a job I could do than actually be put to the test. If she stays married I can always call it the relationship that got away rather than test it out, have it blow up in my face, and call it the relationship that should have never happened in the first place.

I hate her because her problems become my problems and that's the way it's always going to be until I die. It's like signing a pact with the devil that's some new type of agony every day of my life.

I wrote that just after New Year's when I got a good sense of how much everything was deteriorating with Breanne and Greg. That's the only excuse I can give for being so shamelessly selfish in my reply. I wrote it to vent. I wrote it to express feelings that I could never express to her because that's not what a good friend does. He doesn't think how this is all going to affect him; he only thinks about what he can do to help out. And I think I've come around to that point-of-view in the last few days. I don't know--I'm still scared about what it all means... but the point is that however I may feel, I know she's going through something a hundred times worse.

I've broken up with people. I've never been in a rough patch with somebody I was married to. I've hurt people I've loved. I've never had to walk out a lifetime commitment to them. Just contemplating all of what that means scares the shit out of me because I know I'm not mature enough to deal with that kind of responsibility and dedication. I'm a child compared to her. That's why, at first, I didn't want to reply or comment on her post. I sound like an idiot when I'm trying to give advice for a situation I'm neither ready to deal with or have even begun to think about.

Yet what are you going to do when your closest friend says they need your advice now more than ever? Do you walk away or shirk your responsibility? Do you turn tail and say you can't help?

No, you do your best to listen. You do your best to understand. You tell them what would make them happiest and not what you'd like to see happen.

You do all that because you know however uncomfortable you feel, she's feeling worse.

And that can't stand. Not now. Not ever.

You try your best because you made promises to her too. And, while they're not sacred vows before God or whomever, they were for a lifetime and they weren't meant to be broken also.

You try. For her. Forever.

----

And to offset that rather ominous reply, B., one of the first poems I ever wrote about you. This was probably written around the time you turned fifteen (sorry, I don't have the date on it for some reason (also, for those of you who have seen my poems before, yes, it's a blatant palette-swap of an earlier poem... but the feelings are still valid. LOL)):

TO BREANNE FROM PATRICK
by E. Patrick Taroc

As a poet I might not shine;
Words have been hard for me to write,
Yet my love is not hard to find.
I just ask you forgive my flaws,
My defects as they come to light,
And the tears which the words will cause.

What do I love about you, Breanne?
Is it the hair which pales the summer—
Baby bows when first our “love” began,
But chestnut brown it is today?
Do your locks make all grief number
As in the cool winds they sashay?

Or is it the eyes that glimmer
Blue-green like emeralds on strand?
Do they make everything dimmer
When compared to their splendid charm?
Do they make this life all more grand
As we walk its path arm in arm?

Is it the imagination
Which so draws kindred spirits near,
Held captive in fascination?
Is it your love of all things seen
Even when they cause you such strong fear?
It these which cause me to dream?

My love, I adore you for you.
Your soul is what intrigues me most,
More than looks or esprit can do.
They are notes in a symphony,
Of which my soul is glad to host.

You’re my life, Breanne-with-an-e.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Doing That Slouch And Jive, The Artist Must Survive, We've Got All We Need We Cried, And We Don't Look Back

--"Polaroids (cover)", Mary Lou Lord

The first game I can remember inventing was a wrestling board game I made for me and my brother Francis. We were both heavily into the 80s WWF frenzy back then so it was a natural leap to want to capture the action at home. I don't know--I guess I've always been into games from a young age, but that time when I was seven or eight was the first time I actually wanted to create a game. It was simple. We each made up our own stable of wrestlers, came up with their gimmicks, and appropriated two special moves into their repertoire. I remember my big dog was named Polar Bear and his special moves were the Avalanche (body splash) and Bear Hug. Francis' best guy was named Lights' Out. It was basically a dice rolling game wrapped around the theme of wrestling. Looking back, I can see how crude that first attempt at creativity was--cutout ring glued to cardboard, markers stolen from a board game we never played anymore, mismatched dice. The thing was my brother and I loved that game. We played it so much it would spill over into real fights over who was cheating who, who the belts really belonged to (oh yeah, we made up belts for our wrestlers), and whether or not certain wrestlers had earned title shots. As far as first efforts go, that one was pretty solid as I took it with me to a few camping trips when I was Boy Scouts too.

My next two games were invented on the heels of one another. Subsequently, I'm not sure which one came first.

One was the Nature game, which my cousins still talk about, and involved randomly choosing an animal from dozens (duck, lion, elephant, monkey, shark, &c...). Then you would roll the dice to change the environment (one or two meant land, three or four meant water, five or six meant air). If your animal could move in that environment then you got to move or attack your opponent. First person to attack their opponent three times was the winner. Yes, it was another simple game that depended almost entirely on luck (let me tell you picking the duck was the luckiest move in the game because that sucker could fly, swim, and waddle, meaning he always moved on every turn). Yet we played that for months and probably added four zoos' worth of animals to the deck.

The other game was a BMX racing game that I made up the rules for in an afternoon. You basically had a set number spaces of moves you could go on each turn, but the jumps were controlled by you rolling a dice to see how many spaces you jumped. Jump too little and you lost your turn. Jump too much and you lost your turn. Yes, folks, my first games were really about knowing how to roll the dice. However, I did draw some fairly intricate tracks for this game, which took me about an hour to design and get down on paper each.

I guess that reflected my thinking at the time. I figured if it was a board game then it had to involve dice somehow. I was locked into the mentality that players were at the whim of some small cube because that's what I thought of when I thought of games. From Risk to Monopoly to Trivial Pursuit--everything revolved around dice. I only utilized my creativity in regards to outlining the rules and designing the boards. It was only later that I tried to come up with something more strategic when designing rules for my games.

My next major game didn't come until college and the days I was watching Ranma 1/2. I'd been playing a lot of Magic:The Gathering and Big Two so I'd been working on some ideas regarding how cards made for more tactical and strategic games. No longer dependent on dice to provide the randomization, I started thinking about how to create something playable involving cards. When I came across a blatant Chutes and Ladders rip-off themed to Ranma I got my first idea for a card game. It was like poker, but with hands dependent on your opponent's hand. To utilize the example of Poker, it'd be like holding a straight that became a straight flush if your opponent played a pair, or became a pair if your opponent played a flush. I think the ingenious idea of that game I can still salvage because it's a neat mechanic whereby you can't just memorize a hierarchy of hands. The value of every round fluctuated with that particular deal. It was very replayable, and the theme fit perfectly (i.e. Ranma was worth 15 vs. almost everybody, but he was worth 0 if played against Akane because Ranma would never hurt Akane, but Akane would hurt Ranma; Ryoga was worth 12 in human form, but worth 0 if the opponent had the bucket of water because, let's face it, little black piglets can't hurt anyone--but, if he was in little black piglet form, then the opponent couldn't use Akane because Akane could never hurt her itty-bitty pet P-chan; &c...). This game also has the distinction of being the only game I've ever invented that I've ever played with either Jina or Breanne.

Over the next few years I had dozens of ideas for new games. Most of them were alright, but most of them never actually got produced even in a mock-up form. The themes of these games ran the gamut from witches to werewolves, from samurai to purely abstract games. I couldn't stop working on ideas in my head. I still can't. To this day I always have an idea or two rolling around that I'm one step from putting onto paper. Indeed, I have an idea in my head for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl decided entirely be a regular deck of playing cards that I think would make a fantastic game.


from a real sheet for production for my card game 12 Clans

I used to think the underlying reason I had for trying to invent games was because it was another outlet for my imagination. There are few things that I enjoy more than creating a system of rules and tweaking them until they make sense. It's the mathematician in me. Very few people know this, but I actually have more aptitude for math than for English; I actually scored considerably higher on the SATS in the former in comparison to the latter. That's why I always thought it was a way to utilize my fascination for numbers and the way they work with my talent for creating stories. That's all theme is for a game; it's merely placing setting and characters to breathe life to what would otherwise be a lifeless flowchart of numbers and calculations. To me designing games was like trying to come up with that perfect blend of art and logic.

Now I've realized it fills another need for me. It's an avenue of socialization as well. If I look back on all my games, they've always been a blend of the exhilaration of coming up with a good design with the satisfaction of having people enjoy them. Even when they don't work, I always take a little comfort in the fact that friends and family were willing to give them a shot. And when they do work, like that wrestling game, like that Ranma game, I don't think I've had a better time just sitting around a table than when playing those games. There's something nice about being responsible for keeping an evening going, knowing that something I made up has provided the perfect excuse to while away the hours with people I feel close to.

That's my real goal, to find that game that everyone can enjoy and that I can just bring out and put smiles on their faces. Sometimes it's hard to find an activity that people from all walks of life can enjoy. I think games, if done right and with that intention in mind, may be the only things that can really draw a group of disparate people together.

That's what I aspire to, to create something that gets people to get along--even if only for an evening.

That'd be something worth playing.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Little Child, Did You Know That There's A Light, And It's Gonna Shine Right Through Your Eyes, What Do You Think That Life Is Like?

--"I Go Blind", 54-40

After Avonlea and before Everwood, my favorite show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember the first five seasons being glued to my television every week. With its mixture of drama, humor, action, and horror, there was no reason to hate the show. Week after week it provided an engaging and well thought-out story with characters that I had grown to like. Those first five weeks, like Avonlea, had been a great run of uninterrupted excellence.

The sixth season, though, fell apart for me.

Not only was it dealing with some pretty dark issues--rape, emotional abuse, and sex as a stepping stone to violence--but it was also treading on issues that were cutting close to home. Not only were the characters having to deal with especially devastating break-ups, but they were also having to deal with the fallout of some fairly momentous decisions they had made in haste. The fnord repercussions these decisions wrought left its mark all across the season making for one of the incredibly depressing seasons ever on Buffy. Not only that, but I was having to watch them with DeAnn--whom I had introduced to the show--while our own relationship was falling apart. Every storyline, every choice, seemed to be analogous to the way our story was shaping up. Every word spoken sounded like we were speaking them (or shouting them) to one another.

All in all, I thought it was the worst season they ever had on the show. It certainly was the season I enjoyed the least.

Recently I received season six and season seven as Christmas gifts. I thought it would be torture trying to get through season six again. The funny thing is watching it again really isn't that bad. It's taken on some value that I never saw before, almost as if I missed out on some of the finer points Joss Whedon and company were trying to accomplish. To be honest, though, I think it has more to do with my state of mind watching the show now. Separated from the toxic atmosphere of DeAnn and my relationship, I can treat this season as if it were a show and not the shadowy mirror of my life. Back then, it was hard separating the two. It was akin to how every song reminds you about a person you broke up with or how every place you go to has a memory of you and her in happier times attached to it.

Well, Buffy was our show. We watched the show together for years and it seemed like when things started getting darker, it got darker for everyone. Maybe that was just my point-of-view.

However, after giving it some years, after being out of contact with DeAnn for some time, it's really easy to judge the show on its merits. It's really easy to see that, yeah, it took a dark turn, but it wasn't because of me. I wasn't the one causing the show to get depressing.

I was just the one who was transferring my pain and my loss to a show. It was the only thing I had in my life that seemed to understand what I was going through aside from her. I wanted to blame the show. I stated I hated it...

...when the person I really wanted to say it to was her.


I think its that because
I have seen all the fuss
and its no big deal
no big deal

When it came down to it, I was counting on it to cheer me up and it just never seemed to do that as much as I wanted it to.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Now I've Lost The Plot, I'm Not The Hero I Could Be, But Not The Dog I Was, Kind Of Common Cry, Kind Of Living Lie

--"Now They'll Sleep", Belly

I went into Atonement yesterday evening expecting great things. I don’t know if I was expecting to be blown away, but, what with all the glowing reviews and accolades, I was more than anticipating getting more than fair value for the price of admission. At first, I was disappointed. The opening to the film definitely shows its literary roots for I found the establishing of the setting to be rather plodding and mundane. Yet, because I knew it was a literary film and—let’s face it—because it is a British production, I was more than willing to allow ample time for the movie to find its voice. Once it did, I was glad that my patience paid off.

The first piece of advice going into the film is that, at its heart, it’s a film about perspective. The story the audience receives, as with most films, is only partially complete—even moreso in this production. Atonement rates right up there with The Usual Suspects and Rashomon with intentionally obfuscating the “real” story for dramatic effect. However, where it differs and where I think the film’s true strength lies, is that its not used to maliciously trick the audience. Indeed, the twist, if you will, is the fact that this story’s theme, its very title, could not be honored without this obfuscation. Once one discovers who the main character truly is and the driving force behind this main character than one really gleans on the poetic beauty that lies at the heart of the film. From its opening sequence to its romantic denouement, everything centers around this idea about the story, story subject, and storyteller being linked inexplicably. One could no more divide the way the story is told than edit out the character or characters forming its core.

The film has to be told in this purposefully unclear manner for the thematic elements to gel properly.

That’s also why I think the ending stands alone in the last twelve months as an ending to be admired. Not only is it artistically fitting, but it’s also realistically fitting as well. Not for one moment does it sacrifice verisimilitude for dramatic license, nor aesthetic wonder for logical didactics. It lands right on that razor’s edge of both satisfying the soul and the mind.


and things just fall apart

If I had to sum up the lesson to be learned in the movie, it would be to say every choice has consequences that extend far beyond one’s foresight. One cannot plan for every contingency because, unlike an author and his book, tidy endings are the exception to the rule. In saying every choice has consequences, I’d like to extrapolate from that its corollary; every consequence has its origins in a single choice. That’s the movie’s central idea or ideas in a nutshell.

----

In the summer of '94 I got what qualified as my first real job. Having had my accident involving that pesky bus driver two years prior, I didn't want to put in any applications in before then for fear of having to acknowledge I was involved in a Hit and Run accident. I suppose I could have chanced it, but I figured my best shot at getting the job I wouldn't completely abhor would be to wait out until my records were sealed again. I went down with Peter to Universal Studios Theme Park because they were having a job fair to staff the park during the tourist-rich summer season. I wasn't nervous. I didn't expect much from an amusement park job. I didn't believe they'd willingly turn too many people away.

Originally, I had wanted to go into something that I thought would be kickback. I'd done a lot of parking and valet work for Pi Alpha Chi, the service society at my high school, and I wanted something indoors so my first option was Parking Services. I was envisioning being in a booth all day, out of the heat, able to scope out a lot of the guests coming in or out of the park. While it wasn't my ideal job, it beat a lot of the other options they had available.

When it came time for me to let the interviewer which position I was applying for, I announced that I wanted to apply for a position in the Parking Services department. However, either intentionally or by sheer misfortune, he heard my answer as Park Services, i.e. the custodial service. He handed me a application and told me where to find the Park Services office I was to turn it into.

I should have spoken up then. I should have corrected his mistake. But, due to the assembly line pace of the initial screening, the employee who had handed me the application had already called the next candidate up. Rather than make a small scene or go through the teeniest bit of embarrassment, I went with the flow and began to fill out the form. In my head, I was thinking it would be an easy fix to transfer departments later. Indeed, the initial screener made it seem like employees swapped departments all the time. I wasn't really sweating it.

That one omission of what I really wanted ended up costing me eighteen months of less-than-optimal working conditions. Not only did I have to work in the sun, doing one of the most monotonous jobs ever known to man, but it seemed switching departments was akin to getting a meeting with the President of the United States. There was a waiting list for a position to open up--not only that, but both my former manager and future manager had to consider me more suited for the new position than the old position. Again, it was fanciful thinking. I won't say it was all bad. I met a few celebrities that I wouldn't have had I been stuck in a parking garage. I got free food everyday. I also got to learn all the different ways to sneak in and out of the park, as well as all the hidden, secluded places dispersed throughout the grounds.

The point was I let a little embarrassment dictate how my career at Universal was spent. I thought it was a simple choice. I thought it was easily corrected, but it ended up having effect on almost two years of my life. I think that's how a lot of choices we make are. We think they won't matter, that it won't derail our whole life, but it's often the small decisions we make daily that have the greatest pull on the course our life takes.

Like in Atonement, it's better to over-analyze every decision you have control over rather than piffle it away. More often than not you find yourself wishing at the end of your life that you could have been more decisive in key situations rather than less decisive. No one ever cursed being too much in control of their destiny and no one ever cherished being tossed away by the winds of fate.

Every decision is important, even if you can't see it while you're making it. Like the girls in Wicked say, "There are some bridges you don't know you've crossed until you've crossed them."

Yours Swimmingly
mojo shivers

Every Time I See You Falling, I Get Down On My Knees And Pray, I'm Waiting For That Final Moment, You'll Say The Words That I Can't Say

--"Bizarre Love Triangle", New Order

After a few weeks of agonizing, we've decided to welcome Toby into the fold at california. I was agonizing over it because I've only known her a short time and this place has always been somewhat personally directed. While there will be some stories she might be able to tell regarding me, the bulk is going to stem from her own experiences. I know she's more than a capable writer, but I was worried that, unlike Breanne whose stories sometimes relate to me in one way or another, Toby would be too independent.

That still might happen, but circumstances being as they are, with Breanne unfortunately dealing with problems at home and myself feeling like the majority of my best stories have been told, we thought a new voice might not be so bad. Or, as Breanne spun it, this could encompass the overall of theme of friendship that seems to permeate a lot of the writing here. Rather than be a picture of how two old coots, B. and myself, with Toby coming in we could sometimes shift attention to how friendships get built from the ground up.

Hopefully, she won't drift away in a few months time as that will entirely screw up the experiment in so many ways. But I think she fits in nicely here. In a few words since I don't want to try sum her up when she's perfectly capable of doing that herself, she reminds of myself in her fretting and her introspective qualities. But she also reminds me of a younger Breanne in her unwavering desire to find joy in the everyday.

At the bottom of it all, I'm hoping she'll find a niche here. I'm hoping she'll be a new voice with ideas that have never been explored before.

----

Back at La Salle, I had a similar desire. I don't know--I'd been writing all my life, but up until my junior year of high school, I'd never really shared my writing with too many people. It wasn't that I didn't think it was good enough. I merely thought my writing was for me and to share it would be diluting it somehow. I honestly think I could go my whole life with only two or three people reading my stuff. This was in the days before I met Breanne or Jina so there wasn't one obvious person who I automatically sent everything to once completed. And it was also ages before the internet, precluding any notions of my publishing anything seconds after writing it. Nope, those days I would write old-school on my word processor, print it out, and then lock it away for posterity.

One day my friend Peter came up with the idea of doing an underground arts journal to directly compete against the one La Salle Arts Society was positing as being new and edgy. At first mention, I thought it was a good idea. I don't know if that stemmed more from causing mischief, which has always been a motivating factor for my decisions, or more from being impulsive. I don't believe it was caused by an overwhelming desire to have my words read. That didn't come till much later.

When we started The Amethyst Exchange, or AE, we weren't out to change the world. It really was intended to be a place to thumb our noses at the school, certain student organizations, and any other topic we felt strongly about. I contented myself with my first few steps into poetry, with occasional one-off short stories for good measure. Peter and Dan forayed into opinion pieces and other more topical stuff, but I was always seeking something more literary with my own stuff. I was even less into what newsworthy and gossipy than I am now, so I was happy with leaving school topics and school news to the two friends who could cover those areas better than I could.

I've always had a detachment from dwelling too much on what was happening to the world around me. I've always done fine focusing on the people, the events, and the choices that directly affected me.

Eventually, it came to me that, unlike what I originally intended, I rather relished sharing my words with everybody. I started posting more of the stories and poems that mattered to me, rather than keeping those private and sharing what I thought was dreck with the journal. Soon, instead of differentiating between the two, I was writing expressly to put it into the journal. I became motivated to know what people were thinking about what I was writing. While it wasn't always wanted to hear, it was still rewarding to hear a few scattered groups discussing something I had written only days or sometimes hours before it was being read. I enjoyed that feedback.

When we eventually got caught/gave ourselves up to the administration, my love affair with writing for public review didn't end. I started another journal called Our Magazine without Peter and Dan, that was mailed across the country and featured writers I had met in my stumping for The Amethyst Exchange. It its two year history, I managed to produce twenty-four issues. In its heyday it had a circulation of forty "subscribers" and I was receiving a dozen submissions a week. I thought that was pretty good for a xerox-and-scotch tape production.

But I think the greatest bonus I ever got from doing OM was the fact that I met a certain poetess who was looking to share her thoughts on losing her best friend.

I also think I gained something else from the experience, the idea that my words are worth sharing. I don't know if I have full confidence yet that everyone would want to read them, but I think there's enough to keep me happy. I'm happy enough doing this. Even if my dreams of getting something put on the big screen or published in a novel never works out, I could really see myself doing this small little blog for the rest of my life with Breanne... and I guess now with Toby as well.

I still have words unsaid and a lifetime to say them.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

This Year's Fancies, Are Passing Fancies, But Sighing Sighs, Holding Hands, These My Heart Understands

--"I'm Old-Fashioned", Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth from You Were Never Lovelier



speaking of dancing in the new year...

i. december 1994

I’ve always had an aversion to dancing. From an early age, I’ve always thought that I was never good at it, lacking both the rhythm to be presentable or the enthusiasm for it that would at least give the appearance I enjoyed it. It wasn’t my fault. I was never talented when it came to the areas of my life which relied on drawing strength from one’s soul—aside from writing, of course. I was never given to dance and, I guess, dance was never given to me.

Breanne, on the other hand, had been born with both feet a-stirring and a spotlight already shone upon her when it came dancing. She took to it readily—graceful, steady, and with a keen sense of showmanship that often awed as often as it embarrassed me. I have never known a better man or woman on her feet as her.

So it was with these histories in mind that I found myself being poised the question of whether or not I wanted to cut a rug by my plucky companion. Whether it was a serious request or a playful taunt I shall never know because my hasty response put an end to any hope that I would leave her dance studio without dancing to some degree. With her, unfortunately, saying no is more often a suggestion rather than an answer in its own right.

“One dance, sugar? Please, thank you,” she said, tugging on my arm to lift me off the hardwood floor. I was fully content to remain seated, watching her prance around the room. She had mentioned that ever since she quit her lessons with Mrs. Harvick how much she had missed it. My visit gave her the perfect excuse to show off what eight years of lessons three times a week can buy you. I have to admit, something about seeing her almost float across the floor made it seem like fun and I did begin to harbor wishes of being able to move that well myself. She was music in human form and I was her helpless audience. I could have watched her for hours, whirling and swaying away. However, I drew the line at crossing the line from audience to full-blown participant.

“I can’t. I’d only mess you up,” I tried to tell her, but she simply wouldn’t be denied. She tugged and tugged until finally I let her help me up.

She left me standing in the corner of the room as she ran to the far side to change the music on the boombox on the table. She was all smiles. The tempo of the music changed from the jazzy number she had on to that of a slower pace.

I recognized the familiar strains of “The Flame” at once.

I nervously waited, unsure of whether or not I really wanted to do this. But as I waited, I watched her pirouette back to me, her simple ponytail swinging out like an extension of her. She was radiant in her anticipation. I watched as her lovely face, all dimples and warmth, focused back into view. I watched as her chestnut brown hair and oceanic blue-green eyes overwhelmed me in their spell. I watched as her soft hands made their way towards me, one on my shoulder and one stretched out front waiting for mine. I slowly wrapped one of my hands around her waist and took her hand in my other. She had on a ratty old t-shirt and a pair of faded black denim shorts, but she might as well as have been wearing an elegant ball gown with the way I was looking at her.

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be a slow song,” I said before we began.

Then, just like that, I was moving with her. Ostensibly, I was leading her, but every step and every motion she was carefully guiding me with her voice. If I’d been watching the two of us, I would have thought that we were moving at a snail’s pace. Yet, if she minded having to explain what I should be doing, she didn’t let on. She guided me through a simple eight-step progression that allowed me to save face, while at the same time really gave me the sense of just how seriously she took everything about dancing. This wasn’t something she did for fun; this was something she did because it was a part of her. Not only that, this was something she was insistent upon sharing with me because without knowing this side of her I wouldn’t really know her. When the song ended and she sprinted to re-start the tape, I knew that this next time she’d be expecting me to be okay with leading her for real.

When she bounced back to me and the song started once more, I held her tighter to me. I looked at her face, her cheeks flush with all the moving around. I don’t know if she could see it, but I wanted to show her how determined I was not to flub in front of her.

As we started up, I glanced to the room around us. “My god, there’s like a thousand mirrors in here, Breanne.”

“Focus on me. Don’t worry about what you look like, Patrick. Just worry about me.”

I must have misstepped a half dozen times. I came close to stepping on her at least twice. And at least one time I lost track of what I was doing so bad that we almost came close to falling down.

It didn’t matter.

That night for that one dance she was perfect and I was perfect because of her. It didn’t matter that I was a lousy dancer and that was only my fourth slow dance ever; she made me better. Feeling her move in my arms, feeling the joy she possessed for this little thing called dancing, made me impervious to any self-criticism I might have had. For once, I wasn’t afraid of failing and looking like a fool inside. I was afraid of failing her. I was afraid of ruining that joy for her. That made me determined to make myself a better dancer for her. For one song, for that one song, I held her close and willed myself to make it special for her. I don’t know if any of you have ever had one dance where you lost yourself so completely as to forget you’re dancing, but that’s the closest I could come to describing the experience. We were there in that studio, but we were not there, so lost in finding that connection through the music that everything else faded away, including the thousand mirrors.

After it was over, she said I did a remarkable job. I tried to play it off that it was all her; she was the one who was doing the work, which was true. But, she told me, it was also the fact that I had trusted myself which made it work. She continued that as long as I worked on that she’d have me dancing across the aisles in no time.

----

ii. july 1998

I don’t often play miniature golf either. This isn’t so much due to a lack of talent as a lack of opportunity. Miniature golf is fairly low on my list of things to do when I want to relax with friends. It’s one of those activities that have to be suggested to me to realize that I actually enjoy it and usually have a good time doing it.

When Breanne and I have been together, which isn’t very often, and we lack for concise plans, most of the time we’ve turned to bowling as a pleasant diversion. We both enjoy it. We’re both decent at it. We also enjoy the fact that most of the time drinks are involved, which only up the festive atmosphere. Given that, it came as quite a shock to me when, while driving up the coast in her summer before college, she told me to pull the car over and into a miniature golf range. My mild amusement was only tempered by the lingering annoyance at the events of earlier that evening.

We had only an thirty minutes prior stopped at an Arby’s somewhere near Monterrey. The agreement had been that we would drive through and pick up some food, invalidating the need for any further stops before finding a town to bed down for the night. She was to eat first while I drove. Then, later, we would switch. No sooner had we made our way to the on-ramp when we drove past a vagrant in need of a good shower and shave, as well as a good meal. She instructed me to stop the car. No sooner had I done so and begun to ask what she was up to when she hopped out of the car and handed her half of the meal to the stranger. I watched as he shook hands with her, obviously thanking her. A few moments later she was hopping back into the car and letting me know it was okay to head back on the thoroughfare.

To be fair, it wasn’t as bad as I stated in the ensuing argument. She didn’t parcel out what I had ordered. She was doing it for a good reason. She was also informing that, if I wanted, we could consider the rest of the meal a snack and wait to eat once we arrived wherever we were lodging for the night. Yet, me being me, I still took the opening to let her know annoyed I was. Me and food have always had a weird relationship. The thought of giving a perfectly good meal away both was sacrilegious to my egotistical sensibilities and to my sense of timeliness. I had gotten it into my head, despite her protestations otherwise, one of us would get hungry later on, which would necessitate another stop before nightfall.

Eventually, after many alternating bouts of phrases beginning with “seriously” (mine) and “that’s just great” (hers), the rest of the trip had settled into an uncomfortable silence. When we both saw the sign for the miniature golf range I didn’t think either one of us was in any mood to partake of any of the fun to be had there. In fact, it was the furthest idea from my head to the point where I almost said no when she suggested the idea.

I stepped out of the car with great trepidation. I didn’t want to be stopping. Not only would it put us further off schedule, but it would also probably mean that I’d have to talk with her. She, quite frankly, was the last person I wanted to talk to at that moment. I wasn’t just upset at what she had done. I was also upset at the fact she had argued over it at all. I don’t know—sometimes I believe I take more umbridge at the fact somebody disagrees with me than the actual point of contention. That’s how that argument felt. In my heart, I knew what she did wasn’t that big of a deal. The big deal to me was the fact she had gotten me worked up in the first place.

We walked to the front of the building to rent our putters and balls, amid the cheesy medieval décor and even cheesier soft hits music playing over all the speakers they had placed across the course. We both paid our fees separately. I was about to ask her about splitting the greens charge when she took it upon herself to pay for the entire thing.

“That’s for giving it away. We’re even now,” she announced to no one in particular, her back to me.

I followed her to first hole and we began to play. It was like playing with my dad all over again. She was using my excuse of being in a hurry to criticize my every move. If I wasn’t taking my turn fast enough, I was being accused of purposefully missing shots to prolong it. If I wasn’t concentrating hard enough, I was intentionally trying to distract her. It was horrible. I consider the first ten holes the worst holes of golf ever played anywhere. We were both obfuscating the tension that was still underlying the evening. Neither of us wanted to discuss the matter any further, but you could be that the fight was far from over. We had merely found other means to express our frustration with one another.

Not for nothing I suggested that we might call it an evening and get back on the road. More than anything, I thought once we got to the motel that everything would sort itself by morning. I had never gone to bed mad with her—not while we were in close proximity with one another, at any rate—and I was sure that night wouldn’t be the first night we broke that trend. She wouldn’t hear of it, though. Hell’s bells, we started this thing, she said, and she’d be damned if we didn’t finish it.

It wasn’t until we got to the 11th hole that everything took a turn for the unexpected. I’m a hopeless romantic, but even I would have thought a miniature golf course an unlikely source of a memorable night. We had both parlayed our animosity into our game. We arrived three strokes of one another in what was turning out to be quite a contest. I’ve never been as competitive as Breanne, but the fact she was ahead of me was gnawing away at me endlessly. I wanted to beat her and beat her bad. As much as she’s been my friend and more, she’s also been a source of needless jealousy and feelings of inadequacy. Not only did she take to a great many more pursuits more effortlessly than I did, she had also gone to great lengths to assure me that it didn’t matter which of us was better… as long as I knew it was her. There’s a reason why I go to great lengths to limit what I do to things I know I can do well; I’ve always felt like I was in her wake. It wasn’t just one game for me at that point. It wasn’t just about the food or being late, or even her constant harping on me during the game. It was really about showing her up at something for once.

I took my position at the beginning of the hole with admitted venom in my heart and an eye towards regaining the lead. I hit a decent shot which parked me five feet from the hole for a par four hole. Yet just as decently she banked her shot inches in front of mine to the hole. The grin on her face was one shade shy of unbearable. The noticeable thing about Breanne is she gets this luck of smug satisfaction that a multitude of people have mistaken for arrogance. I don’t know if it’s so much that as the unassailable confidence. After all, if you’d spent eighteen years more or less succeeding, when one more success came your way you’d be smiling too.

Since she was nearer to the hole, she took her swing first.

The sound of her ball ringing into the cup was disappointing, but I still had my shot to tie her.

I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if was forcing it or I was somehow fated to miss that shot. Whatever it was, I watched my ball lip into the hole and then right back out. I had fallen another stroke behind her.

When she opened her mouth to rub it in, I did something uncharacteristic of me. I told her that she could just shut up without an ounce of joviality in my voice. It stopped her dead in her tracks. The forcefulness of the tone over something small must have told her volumes about my state of mind because she didn’t say another word. She stood there. She stood there like she was the thirteen-year-old girl she had been when we first met, the only time she had ever been cowered by my bellowing. She said it had reminded her of the tone her daddy took with her when he wanted to be obeyed. Since that time, she took it from me for what it was, empty roaring by a person who was quite often prone to empty roaring. Most of the time, she would have laughed in my face and told me to grow up. We would have moved onto the next hole and that would have been that.

I think it took what I did next to really open her eyes at just how upset I was.

I threw my club into the nearby streamlet, which, unfortunately, was characteristic of my behavior at the time. Then I sat down on a bench close by and closed my eyes. The frustration had finally gotten to me.

I felt her sit next down to me more than I felt it. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to put her arm around me. She didn’t even try to move. By the time I opened my eyes again we’d been sitting there like that for a few minutes. Granted, I think I was overreacting, but feelings are never bad. It’s not acting on them that gets us into trouble. And right then I was feeling pretty shitty.

I was beginning to think our little vacation was in trouble. I was beginning to think that, like many things I do, I had proceeded to ruin a perfectly good time with the one person I’m really capable of having a perfectly good time with. I was beginning to think her and I making this jaunt up the coast was a bad idea. We were only three days in, with four more to go, and we were already at the point where I was throwing clubs and telling her to shut her mouth. It wasn’t looking good.

Two or three minutes after I opened my eyes, with me all set to call it quits and suggest we turn around back home, a song came on over the speakers:



“Breanne, I have a question.”

“Yes, Patrick?”

“You don’t think it’d be too weird to dance at a miniature golf course, would you?” I asked, again uncharacteristically.

She smiled.

“I don’t think it would be too awkward at all, darling.”

When you’re with someone so much, when you spend so much time with them, I think you begin to lose track of everything that you found agreeable about them. Too often you start to tunnel in on only the aspects of their personality that you find rank and base. Too often you start to substitute history for honest effort and tread upon the path the two of you have walked before. It becomes like a ceremony where you re-enact the same rituals, repeat the same stories and phrases, retire the idea that there is anything new under the sun for the two of you to explore. Hell, even I’ve gotten sick a time or two when I knew a “Hell’s bells” or “no more, no less” was coming.

I wasn’t sick of her that night, though. That night was new. That night was fresh. That night was exciting. Gliding her around the manicured fake greens, with all manner of bad lighting shining down upon us, and the wistful sounds of Harriet Wheeler accompanying us, I felt like we were the first people who had ever danced in history. It wasn’t the moment; it was the company. The first time in her studio had been planned. She knew all along that I was going to dance with her and do a poor job at it. In fact, she had admitted as much years later. It had been her plan to show me a few steps in order to get me comfortable with the idea of her as a dance partner. The first time in her studio I had been the pursued.

On the miniature golf course, there wasn’t a pursuer and a pursued. There were just two people sharing a moment that had never been shared before by anyone.

She would have felt like an angel if I knew what angels felt like—soaring as she had us above our situation, moving us as if no one had ever been hurt, making everything okay for the three or four minutes the song lasted. The slightness of her sking, the trace of her fingers, the lingering wisps of her hair catching the air as we circled around the ground, gave me the impression this wasn’t just a simple attempt at reconciliation. This was a balancing of the scales. Maybe there had been tension building between us for a long time before that night. Who knows? With a few steps and a few hurried glances to one other, we set right what once was wrong. We claimed that night as a night to remember, if only because we were the ones who lived it. We touched and it was like we could never let go of one another.

The first time I had danced with Breanne she had been no older than fourteen. A child.

That night, almost four years later, I was dancing with the woman she had become. She was still as confident and manipulative as ever. But I think with her maturity she had also learned something else that was missing from that first time. There was a gentleness to her that had been absent somewhat from the time in the studio. She was teaching me. She was expecting of me to learn from her. She was the person who knew what she was doing and I wasn’t. This time was different. There were no expectations. There were no lessons being taught or learned. We stood as equals that night, equals without a cause or an agenda. When I asked her to dance it wasn’t to distract me from the animosity that had begun to well up inside of me for her. It was to heal that selfsame animosity. And when I told her that she was a wonderful dancer and that I’d remember that night always, it wasn’t to flatter her or butter her up into forgetting what I did.

It was to tell her I was sorry.

We didn’t dance to avoid fighting. We danced as a continuation of the night, as the inevitable conclusion to a night that began in frustration. Sometimes when you’re frustrated with an individual the only thing you can do to end the cycle of frustration is remind yourself why you’re with the person. Sometimes you have to remind yourself why you appreciate a person before you can begun to remember why you love the person in the first place.

As the song came to a close, I felt her let go of and start running towards my Plymouth Duster.

“Where are you going?” I asked her, confused.

“I’m going to get my cell phone out of the car and I’m going to go and see if I can get that radio station to play ‘Cry’ again,” she yelled back at me.

I could only shake my head and wait for her return.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers