The Hum

I sit on the back deck watching over my plants because I believe if they aren't growing well it's because they need attention.  It's a poor excuse for wanting to sit on the back deck, alone, and just observe.  There's a constant hum even if cars aren't barreling down Kimball with their mufflers scuffing the pavement or their traditional Hispanic meringues swinging back and forth with the bass... buum... bauum... buum... bauum... Aside from the squeaking buses squealing to a stop and the high pitched beep as they decompress the front right side of their carriage to let tiny-legged or physically challenged people off, there's a hum.
When everything is supposedly silent, in the middle of the night, the hum persists.  I don't know exactly what it is, but I hear it.  It's almost like a white noise phenomenon whereas you hear it so often that your brain chooses not to hear it.  But that hum persists. 
On tranquil nights, or however you define a tranquil night in Chicago, we'll be watching the sky, hoping for stars, getting extremely excited to see one then two, and our eyes adjust, three-woah-six stars in the sky like we're floating down the Columbia River star gazing beneath an illuminated bed sheet spread over the boat like a fort. (A floating fort!), that hum still persists. 
It sounds like a finely tuned German generator powering the city and rotating beneath us at six thousand RPMs, delicate and soft, like GE designed it to, but alas it's not-or, at least I hope it's not because that would really disturb my sense of reality.
It's the indefinable hum of the city.
Now, I know indefinable is blasphemy in this day in age and I'm sure the challenge would be met with a lot of answers or theories or suggestions as to what the hum is, but I guess I just don't care about those right now.  I guess I would just like to recognize the hum and write about recognizing it.  I'm a gypsy and I'm not a hippie.  I've dabbled in Buddhism and read some Kerouac, but this isn't existential.  In fact, I would say it's just a hum. 
I could try to persuade you that the hum represents a bustling Chicago, but all my friends go to sleep at night.  In my world, in my head, the hum is explicable only by theorizing why it's there.  And that's exhausting.
Sometimes, it's interesting if you have a unique idea like the government is flying drones over the city at night and dropping miniscule particles of aluminum which seep into our skin and acts as a tracking device so they know where we are at all the time.  Cool.  If you believe that and want to go Edward Snowden about revealing or uncovering it then that's great.  All I'm saying is that I don't care.  I get it.  It makes sense.  If I don't know what is happening then what's the goddamned difference?  The statement is sacrilege in our generation, I know. 
But, we're all willingly being tracked by our cellphones anyway so, really, what's the difference?

Off to Chicago Without a Kiss

Barry couldn't hide his bloodline, not that he tried.  It showed vividly over his face as he talked about his Scottish-Canadian father. He had tight pale skin, which wrapped around a long bony nose that sat off-center beneath steel blue eyes.  We sat up late drinking cheap canned beer and talked about Toronto. 
"All he ever said was that they found a few kids smoking a crack pipe in the park where I played and he knew it was time to go."  Barry squinted as he talked.  It was as if he was streaming back to the afternoon his father told him the story, dangling a Marlboro Red out the window of an early nineties Ford Aerostar van.  "I mean those kids could've been smoking tea leaves for all they knew.  How the fuck would he know it was a crack pipe?"
"The fifteen-inch torch of a flame could've given it away," I said. 
"You'd think he would mention that image, though, right?" Barry cracked open another beer and took a small sip, belching loudly after he lowered the can.  "Maybe not, I don't know."
"What, are you pissed that they moved away or something?"
Barry looked into my eyes for a second.  Then a smile spread across his face, but his eyes stayed fixed.  "No, no.  I'm just saying that it's always the same thing, man.  Dad does whatever he wants and he can come up with any excuse for it just like grandad did with him.  I mean I could've played hockey up there."  He imitated the wind up of a slap shot and kicked a beer can on the follow through.  "Been his number one star, you know?" He said and tried to chuckle.
"You could've played down here.  I did."
"You know what I mean," Barry said.  He held a forced smile and rotated the can slowly in his hands.
"Toronto or not, you were always going to be blessed with that fragile frame."
He looked down over his skinny body, which was hidden under a ridiculously bulky jacket.  "Hey, I would have filled out."
I nodded and he shrugged his shoulders. 
We were bundled on the porch, icy fingers beneath wool gloves.  I rubbed the outside of a firm pumpkin still sitting on the railing.  It was the house that his mother and father moved to when we were in middle school.  The icy rim of a basketball goal glowed in the porch light.  The net was nothing but a tattered rag, hanging stiffly and out of use.  We used to shoot hoops deep into summer nights.  Between the railing and a line of shrubs, an old orange ball lay flat and dry rotted half buried in frozen crumbles of soil.  I focused back on Barry and drained the rest of my beer.
"That thing still feels like it did in October," Barry said referencing the pumpkin.  "Is that normal?"  He generally trusted me to know mundane information about the Earth and its processes.
"As long as you don't cut it open, they can save quite a while," I said.  This answer seemed to satisfy him.  He walked to the far end of the porch as if he were beginning to pace then plopped down on a creaky swing, rocking it back and forth with an expressionless gaze.  The swing knocked consistently on the handlebars of a tiny tricycle behind. 
"Did you get to see your boy over the holidays?"  I asked.
He stopped the swing.  "He was just here for a week, actually.  Just left this morning." He paused and shrugged his shoulders.  "I guess she grabbed him this morning."
"What do you mean, you guess?"
"I mean, I assume she did because I overslept.  So, I wake up around ten today and all my shit is thrown around." He stopped.
"All your shit is always thrown around," I interjected.
"And poof.  Gone.  Off to Chicago without a kiss, I suppose."  He said.  "They should have woken me up."
"I'm sure she thought you should have been up."
"Yeah." He stopped and looked at the ground.  Pushing the swing back into creaky motion, he lifted his head.  "That basement is like a fucking dungeon.  I overslept, you know?  What are you goin' to do?  I can't do anything about it now."
"Well, whatever.  Hope you guys had a nice time.  Wish I could've seen the little dude.  It's already been a couple years now."
"My friend, time flies.  I'm just trying to live a little bit of it."  He said it as if I didn't know.
"No shit, Bare."
"I'm just sayin'.  Time flies."  It was as if he was realizing that for the first time.  The cheap saying had dealt him a blow and those Scottish eyes lay fixed on the concrete in front of the swing, like a manikin, back and forth, back and forth they swung.
"Catch," I yelled and hummed a can of beer at him.
He blocked his face.  The can thudded to the porch in a creamy windmill of Labatt Blue propulsion, spinning on its own accord.  Barry laughed and booted it through a gap in the balustrade.  I threw another.  This time he caught it and cracked it open.

We walked into the house and sat in a carpeted living room.  Smells of boxed mashed potatoes and creamed corn still hung in the air.  His mom, Beth, wasn't a very good cook.  For that, Barry wasn't a very healthy eater.  We used to drink Ale 8 One and munch on sugary candy in the basement after we got high on the back porch.  When I would stay the night, candy and chips would be the only thing he would eat. It was strange being back there.  Stories were written into the walls.  It felt like a house that you move from and come back to years later.  Suddenly, everything's a little dingier, a little smaller, a little less significant than you had remembered.  And yet, nothing had really changed.  All those family photos still sat unmoved in a desert of dust atop the boxy tube television set.
"So, how's your pops?" I asked as I dusted a photo of Bare and his father kneeling with hockey sticks.  Barry's glasses were as thick as aquarium glass.
"He's coaching tonight.  They're playing Dayton Ohio or something."  Barry looked at his watch.  "Should be going on about now."
"Well shit, let's go."
Barry smiled and stared into outer space next to my head. 
"Have you talked to him lately?" I asked.
"Last time was when he said I couldn't move in with him."
"When was that?"
"A couple months ago." He shrugged his shoulders then laughed.  "That fucking dick, you know?  Wouldn't expect anything else."
"Fuck it, let's go.  I haven't seen him or a hockey game in a while."
Barry drained the rest of the can.  "I guess we could go for a little bit.  I don't want to stay the whole game, though."
"Deal."
With a reproachful look, Barry grabbed his coat and fumbled with the car keys.

Trees were sparkling like melted sequins glazed over spindly branches.  Traffic was dead and Barry ran two red lights that wouldn't change fast enough for him.  He matted the accelerator and zoomed around dimly lit four lane roads, which sat vacant and silent.  I think he smoked three cigarettes on the way to the ice rink and ash flew around the cabin of the car like graffiti. It was ten after midnight.
I studied his eyes as he drove.  They were iced blue, intermittently illuminated and shadowed by the tread of streetlamps down Man O' War Boulevard.  Those eyes.  There was something about those eyes that told the world they were made to gaze upon frozen heaths and blackened sea rock.  They looked out of place beside the backdrop of a freshly poured strip mall. The Scottish lineage pulsed through him no matter how far removed; no matter how suburban; no matter how American.  It reminded me of when I saw his son for the first time at the University of Kentucky Hospital, wrapped in white cotton, red as a beet.  When he finally opened the slits, sure enough, there they were, again passed through the genetic puzzle beaming steel blue in fluorescent lights.  I thought of what a damn shame it was that the first castle the boy would see would not be the nestled giant of Edinburgh, rather, the futile spires of Versailles, also known as the-marriage-gift-gone-wrong.  And how fitting it became in just a few short months' time.
Barry coasted through a right turn in front of the rink. 
It had been years since I had seen the Ice Center.  The place was grimy before and honestly it didn't look any better or worse.  It looked exactly the same. The parking lot was crumbling, turning into a gravel pit little by little every ice and every thaw. 
"This goddamn place never changes," Barry said as he whipped the wheel and parallel parked next to a Jeep.
"So all the college kids still do this shit?"
"Yep.  Just get fucked up and drive home." Barry belched a musty Labatt Blue burp. "It's a real safe game." 
We approached the front when Barry guided me to a side door where a fat red headed security guard stood smoking a cigarette.  He squinted at Barry when we came around the corner into the light, which flickered over the rusty steel door.  Barry's lips stretched into a slight smile.  The man threw his cigarette butt on the pavement and twisted it with a grin.
"Well hot damn, Barry boy.  How long's it been son?" The man laughed and patted Barry on the back with a swift swat.
Barry smiled bashfully at the ground.  "Just us two."
"Enjoy, Crookshanks.  Nice to see you back 'round here again."  He opened the squeaky door and moved out of the way.
I nodded to the oaf as we passed and he smiled a donkey-like mouthful of long teeth and shiny gums.
  
We entered at the back of the bleachers on the uppermost level.  The uppermost level being the second level, normally ascended to from a wide staircase covered in grip tape off to our right.  The rink was set below the ground in order to help keep the ice cool during Kentucky summers.   Barry walked to the railing and looked down over the packed stands.  Only one side of the rink had bleachers.  The opposite side was a concrete mural, which was the backdrop to the benches and announcer's podium.  The mural was pastel-colored renditions of cartoonish male penguins playing hockey while the females so fittingly figure skated.  In light of the competitive atmosphere, it gave a sense of daycare-like childness that was difficult to ignore considering it took up half a football field's space behind the benches.
And there he was, standing in front of a gal penguin wearing a tu-tu gearing up for the triple axle, Rob Crookshanks, as stoic as ever.  He was perched on top of the bench with arms folded and face furrowed on the ice.  For years he had adorned a respectable mullet.  I was surprised to find that it had been cultivated into a nicely even haircut, which lacked character, but at least shielded him from being misconstrued as the wrong character, especially in Kentucky.
His hair was as white as the ice on top of his head, but toward the ears paint strokes of those blondes and reds still persevered.  His most striking feature, the one thing that had never changed, the Christmas tree decorated red from a bloody late night hockey game, his mustache sat neat and authoritative splayed wide across his upper lip.  That's assuming he has an upper lip.  Rob's mustache could have been the last King of Scotland for all I knew.  It gave him a sense of calm and control, which he undoubtedly already had.  However, it added a bit of flare to the uniform, that modest Great Lakes hockey-dad uniform, clad with beige turtlenecks and bulky tennis shoes, navy crew-necked long sleeves and boot-cut denim.
He walked back and forth behind the bench, his mustache guarding the secrets he shared to his cherry cheeked players.  Dayton was up 1-0 with about eight minutes left in the first.
"Well," Barry exhaled slowly as he scanned up and down the metal rows of packed seats. "Where the fuck should we sit?"  
"What about your old spot?  They don't save it for you guys anymore?"
Barry looked at me, puzzled.  "Why would they?  I haven't been here for over a year, who knows the last time my sister's come and obviously Beth doesn't come."  He looked down at their old bench plank to the left of the tunnel.  "It's being used better now anyway."   Three shirtless, pale backs stood on the bench while a fourth bent over a plastic cup and poured bourbon from behind the cloak of his blue and white parka. 
"Since when do you call your mom by her first name?" 
"Let's just stand behind the rail.  It'll be easier to leave that way," Barry said, avoiding the question.
The University of Kentucky "Cool Cats" were moving the puck around nicely, each pass cracking like fresh wood from tape to tape, as they forechecked effectively in Dayton's zone.  Their blue and white sweaters were stylized after the Toronto Maple Leafs and were neatly austere.
I watched the puck cycle from 13 to 50 to 25 back to 13, who curled around the back of the net, grinding tightly into the ice with the blades of his skates dishing it back to 50 who took a slapper.  The puck bonged off the back of the boards behind the net.  Dayton tried to clear, but 45 poke checked it away and centered to 13 who snapped a shot off the cross bar.  The crowd roared with the PING as blue and white sweaters crashed the net, jamming at the puck feverishly.  The whistle blew.  Somehow the gigantic goaltender had managed to come up with the disc.  He tossed it to the ref and his teammates in red sweaters tapped his puck-blackened pads as they looped in front of the net, getting ready for the faceoff.
"Who's 13?" I asked.
"Valentino.  Dad's been talking about him for a couple years.  He came from Toronto or something."
"And he plays for UK?  That doesn't make any sense."
"Apparently he's as dumb as a bag of shit in the classroom, at least that's what my Dad says.  Plus, the Kentucky girls have to be a pretty big selling point when they come down here, you know.  You think there are chicks like that in Toronto?"  Barry asked.  With his toothpick arm, he pointed to a blonde a few rows to the left of us.  She had a deep v neck on with large tanned breasts bubbled on either side. 
"Well, if he's as dumb as a bag of shit then I get it, I guess."  Valentino won the faceoff back to 50 who started the cycle around Dayton's zone.  "What?  No tanning beds in Toronto?"
"No sun in Toronto."
"Right, like you would know."
A simulated horn rang pathetically from a crackling speaker rusted to the ceiling of the rink to end the period.  As the players began gliding off the ice, Rob talked to Valentino at the side of the bench.  He held up a dry erase board and scribbled some lines on it looking back and forth between Valentino and the marker.  His white helmet nodded a few times and Rob rustled it a bit sending him toward the locker room with a chuckle.  Barry watched intently.  His father stepped out of the bench and walked confidently across the ice.
"Look at that fuckin' stache," a kid a few rows ahead said boisterously.  "Crookshanks! Crookshanks! Crookshanks!" he started chanting.  Little by little, as Rob made his way closer to the tunnel, the entire student section was chanting his name.  A couple kids held their fingers over their lips and scribbled on the exposed skin of the digit was a red mustache.  Rob raised his chin to the stands with a grin then disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. 
"Let's get the fuck out of here," Barry said. 
"I'm intrigued."
"By what?  I told you I couldn't stay the whole game."
"It's been half a period for Christ's sake.  What's the rush?" 
"Look, man. If I'm going to stay here any longer, then, I'm goin' to need something."
"Barry, all the liquor stores are closed."
"Yeah," he paused.  He looked down the uneven bridge of his nose at the ground then snapped back to reality.  "I'll be back," he said finally and exited out the back door swinging it wide.  Before it could shut I heard the husky voice of the security guard, "Bare', how's your ma doin'?"
"Fine," I heard him yell, already a considerable distance away.  He must have been jogging.  The door swung back. Thud.  It closed.

I moseyed my way past some shuffling students down the steps toward the snack bar.  A young blonde sat on a stool behind the counter fiddling with her cell phone.  She had purple bags under her eyes and her hand shook as she flopped down a sack of popcorn.  I watched as a few yellowed kernels bounced out.  
The place smelled like sweaty rubber, as it always had.  On the walls hung pictures of the Championship winning teams from 1996 until present.  They had the Mites, Squirts, Pee Wees, Bantams, Midgets, and collegiate levels represented.  I scanned the Squirts 1998 Championship "Thoroughblades" team and saw my petite little body in the front row on both knees.  It was difficult to make out my face because of the obtrusive cage on the helmet, but I remembered sticking my tongue out for the shot.  The card stock that the picture was printed on was yellowing like old piss at the edges.  I remembered tying my skates in this room, staring at the old photos hanging askew on the walls, thinking of them as ancient history through the fresh convex of my bright eyeballs.  I remember it making me feel uneasy, almost sad, as if everything in the past ended up just being a dated photo on the wall.  I didn't fully understand it at the time, but now, looking up at that little boy in the front row, crinkled through the center from constant ebbs and flows of humidity, in a mere two years' time, as the annual champions are crowned and framed on this wall, the 1998 season will be removed, only to be tossed in a dumpster to make room for the present.  It made me think of how Barry must look at those picture frames, still sitting on his mother's television set collecting dust for eternity. And that strange feeling returned. 
I walked to the stairs and watched as players began waddling out of the tunnel.  They took to the ice one by one, carving its glimmering surface effortlessly.  Their movement was sleek and majestic.  Around and around they went like a turbine, strengthening in numbers and speed.  Valentino brought up the rear with helmet in hand.  He had black hair and a long Jewish nose with striking dark eyes.  He cupped his helmet on his head and joined the engine of players.  The ice seemed to sparkle with every stride.  Applause grew from the crowd.
"All the way from the Windy City, eh?" came the clenched-teeth grunt from Rob.  He stood next to the bleachers holding a clip board with a hardened face. 
I smiled like I was ten.  "You got it, sir."
His eyes shifted around me.  "Where's Bare?"
"He ran out to the car to grab something."  
A droopy scowl dripped down his jowl line.  Those blue eyes turned glassy in the conditioned air.    "Ah." He paused.  "Well, it's nice to see you."  He leaned his head toward the ice and tensed his lips as if being beckoned from beyond.  "Take care," he finally said.  And that was it.
Rob walked into the brightness of the rink, through rotating players, swatting at their blue shorts nonchalantly as they zipped by.
He had always been a tough man to read.  Most of the time when I was a kid, I just assumed that there was nothing going on in his head.  I just assumed that the man had one thing on his mind and that was hockey.  He would stay up till one a.m. during the work week watching the end to all of the West Coast games, stretched supine on a recliner sipping beer, every so often sneaking out the back porch to light a cigarette when he thought Barry and I were asleep.  This time, however, I read him differently.  I couldn't make out exactly what it was, but those bloodshot Scottish eyes were tired.  The blue was dulled to an overcast grey.  They were down a goal so maybe that was it.  Maybe it was Barry.  I honestly couldn't tell.  So, I walked up the stairs back to the railing.  It was empty.

The Cats ended up tying the game about halfway through the second period.  It wasn't anything spectacular, just grunt work around the net.  Valentino put a decent shot to the high glove side of the goalie who couldn't control it.  It bounced around in front of the cage until finally one of the dashing blue and white sweaters smacked it in.
I had found a seat on the top row next to some drunk frat boys.  It wasn't ideal, but I really just wanted to sit down.  They had a couple flasks and passed them from one to the other.  Using the bartering system, I managed to get a few nips off of the tin in exchange for some popcorn.  That warm bourbon tingle started in my toes and circulated throughout my entire body and the puck slowed down for my eyes.  I missed Kentucky.
"Take another," the boy next me said and handed out the tin.
 I tipped it back.  The liquid burned down my esophagus when, all at once, everyone around me sprang to their feet.  The puck sprung out toward the blue line and Valentino picked it up racing down the side boards.  The stands were electric, screaming at deafening volume.  A Dayton defenseman chased Valentino with large rubber band strides.  Curling in front of the net, Valentino chipped a shot.  The puck trickled between the pads of the goaltender, lost out of site, and finally, in a last gasp, it squeezed through and skidded across the faded red line for a goal.
Beer and bourbon flew from the cups of the students as they raised their arms in celebration.  Valentino glided to the right side of the net with his stick in the air when the Dayton defenseman crashed into him on the back boards sandwiching Valentino's helmet between the glass and his chest.  The impact rocked the boards and sent waves reverberating.  Blue and white sweaters rushed to Valentino who lay in a crumpled mess behind the goal.  The crowd didn't know whether to cheer for the goal or boo the refs for missing the blatant late hit so an awkward shuffling silence lingered over the confused students.
Rob flung his clipboard onto the ice and stood up on the bench pointing between the refs and lanky perpetrator.  "Crookshanks! Crookshanks!" we started chanting, thankful for the polarizing behavior.  I had never seen him so animated before.  It was as if some fire was being released from the depth of his soul, which had been pent up for years.  I turned toward Barry to raise my eyebrows in disbelief, but only the empty railing and a googly-eyed bro caught my gesture.  
Rob leaned over the ice screaming spit and turning as purple as pickled eggplant. One of the referees was pudgy and looked like a zebra striped bowling ball on skates. He laughed off Rob's remarks and pointed him back to the coach's bench.  I joined in as the crowd started up a two toned chant of "fat fuck" and my heart pumped through my neck with adrenaline when Valentino was helped toward the bench.  He removed his helmet and blood dripped out of his swollen nose.  That beautiful nose had been squished into a dripping pulp.  Blood speckled down his sweater like a polka dotted picnic blanket.
"At's fucked up, man," my bourbon source said and handed me the tin.  I took another swig.
The Dayton defenseman was eventually escorted off one side of the ice. He kissed goodbye to the crowd who threw trash at him down the tunnel. On the other side, Rob was being led off by the pudgy referee who kept his distance from the fiery Scotsman.  The Crookshanks chant started up again and I escorted myself out the back door.

The red headed security guard had gone home, as the only welcome I had was icy air and the hum of the mercury light above the door.  As I trekked into the lot it was dead silent and I thought of how I missed that about Kentucky.  Barry's Mazda was parked where we had left it, seemingly unmoved on an island of its own in a bubbling champagne aura beneath the streetlamp.
As I neared the car, the windows were fogged and a low beat bellowed through its shell.  I pulled at the door.  It was locked.  I knuckled lightly on the passenger side window.  The latches clicked over and I swung myself inside.  It smelled like Jameson's and Andy Capp's hot fries.  Barry's seat was reclined as far as it would go and he raised a cup to his face.
"Is it supposed to be this goddamned cold in March?" he asked.  His voice echoed like a megaphone in the plastic cup.
"Well, technically, it's the end of February and it's a pretty standard temp right now.  You guys should be warming up in a few weeks."  I said in my best anchorman voice.
He tried to laugh.  "I can't wait to turn on Marley in the summer.  It just makes things so much," he paused.   "You know.  Nicer."  His head bobbed to the tunes in his head.
"They're up 2-1 if you care."
"Not really, but thanks."
"You're dad asked where you were," I said.  He brightened up a bit.
"You talked to him?"
"Just for a minute between periods."
"I'm sure he was, you know," he paused.
"What?"
"Happy to see you.  You know, cause he hasn't seen you in a while."
"I guess."
"Was he?"  He asked as he lit up a cigarette.
 I didn't say anything.
"Well?" He asked again.  
"What are you getting at?"
He bobbed a bit and looked at me with a confused scrunch in his brow.  "Get at?  Get at what?"
"Never mind."
"Just curious how he was."
"You should have just stayed.  It was a pretty interesting period." 
"Nah," he sighed.
We sat silent for a minute.  
A thin, wispy stream of smoke came up from the door and trailed out a small slit in the window.  He pulled the cigarette to his face and drew in a deep inhale, brightening the cherry like an orange light bulb.  His slouched head silhouetted against the golden glow of the window, that bulbous nose reaching out like a knotted tree stump. Slowly, a dark leach emerged from his nostril and extended down over his lips.  It was glossy and viscous.  He threw the cigarette out of the window and grabbed a stiffened towel from the center console, dabbing at his face.  He looked at me and shook his head.
"I thought you were cauterized."
"I am." He said behind the pressed towel.
"And you still get them?"
He nodded and yawned.

I pulled out my phone and hooked it into his AV input.  I streamed "Buffalo Solider."  He closed his eyes and bobbed to the bass.
"Member sitting in my garage during the summers listening to this?" He asked.
I smiled.  "Yeah."
"I miss that."
"Me too."
"Shit was simple," he said and pressed the towel back to his face.  Then he broke out in a loud, sloppy sing along: 
 If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldn't have to ask me,
Who the 'eck do I think I am.
I convinced him to let me drive and meandered my way down those old Kentucky roads, toward home.

I woke in the morning on a futon in the basement.  Barry lay on the shad carpet with his left leg and arm stretched over the right side of his body.  His mouth was scrunched on the carpet and dried blood from his nose left the impression of his father's mustache.  His chest rose and fell in deep compression and as I walked up the stairs, I thought to say "bye," but continued out the door, headed back to Chicago.

. 

the Rodent review

You're trapped in the bowels of a CTA subway somewhere between Clark and Jackson.  A deep aroma of piss and electricity is thick in the air.  The rails begin to rattle and a blinding light bends around the moldy corner, dusty with electrodes.  A train rips by, blowing your sleeves tight around those achy elbows.  It feels like forever.  Does this train ever end? 

Out of the screeching metallic shearing of a mechanic's wet dream, the taps of a tinkering rhythm pervade, as each car trucks by knocking the track like a bum piston.  In the midst of the passing, you think you've found something.  You've found something deeper in the noise.  Until, almost suddenly, the metal shearing orchestra fades into humble vibration.  The white fireworks of a salty marriage between steel and steel flicker once then disappear.  

You walk after the train, slowly and deliberately, making sure not to step on the Tesla coiled tracks.  The yellow light of a stop beckons you further.  Further into the twisted tubes of the subway you go.  There's drumming and harmonized singing in a language unknown and it reverberates through your echo chamber.  It holds the pulse of humanity, you think.  Out of the carnage, a heartbeat persists.  The nationalistic tones of a guitar play a prideful anthem and there you are in awe of the contrast.  Close your eyes.

It's a bright moon and it hangs over a cold sea.  The fire on the sand burns toward the heavens and it illuminates thick cakey stripes of dark paint being pressed down your cheeks.  When they lowered their axes on the ox, just before sundown as the orange glimmer of sun splashed across that ocean of glass, it sent chills through your spine and made you weak at the knees.  Its knees buckled.  You fell simultaneously with the beast.  They hoisted you up and brushed the wet sand off your forehead, rubbing the skin raw.  Keep those eyes closed.

We ate well that night and didn't speak a word.  The carcass had long been devoured by our mouths and the flame.  You lay on the beach listening to waves lap the shore, breaking rocks into pebbles and pebbles into sand.  The glint of the stars sparkled from orbit.  Somewhere, a space shuttle took blast.  In a cloud of gas, it pushed off the Earth and you felt the sand shift.  It felt like an hour glass, you said.  You said it felt like a chunk had fell through.  We couldn't understand. 

The next morning, I followed you into the trees.  They were tall Kapok with stringy vines.  You climbed up like a clumsy chimp.  Somehow you made it up, after losing your footing many times.  I lost you in the leaves and then you reappeared.  Your red back was glistening sweat and reflected the sun like a mirror.  On top of that tree, I saw your eyes.  They peered through the sea.  You jumped.  I lost you in the leaves.  

It took me an hour, but I found your body.  Your leg was twisted in the spiraled brush and you lay face up with eyes open.  You said that the canopy wasn't thick enough for us ground dwellers.  I listened to you breathe.  The trees swayed beneath the ever changing sky and you said you wanted to cry.  I tried to understand.

You had climbed on the platform and were sitting next to a man.  He strummed a guitar as a child cried.  The boy's wet face was forever locked onto yours as his mother pulled him away. The man closed his eyes and let out a wail, digging into the tight coils of the strings with his dirty fingernails.  It sounded like the sky or at least like the wind.  A gush of musty breeze blew through your hair, as a train rolled through the tubing.  Just as soon as its doors open, digital bells rang twice.  "Doors closing."

http://rodent.bandcamp.com/

 

Automation

One million asses, repeatedly sitting and standing, lying and rising, squishing foam of the train seats until a tattered thin, velvet crunched square of blue and orange plaid fabric is all that remains, serving no more of a purpose than to decorate the 1970's schoolroom beige plastic bucket seats.  And it smells like some combination of sweat, piss, and perfume mixed with remnants of vomit and grease from sticky weekend nights where the drunks and the kids rode up and down till dawn.
The train is a vessel.  Chicago trains are relics.  They have too much traffic to shut down for renovation and the city's too poor (and/or cheap) to afford it anyway.  Sloshing around in a sea of reverberations, head phone speakers, highly dramatic telephone conversations, pip-pop-popping Spanish postulations, and sometimes heated Polska mother-daughter confrontations, till the rails screech and rattle to a stop and voice recorded directions tell us passengers what to do and where we're going, interrupted by a disgruntled conductor who reaffirms the automation and also reaffirms everyone's desire to just get off and go... anywhere.
The political environment is hot and the economical environment has chilled down a bit, for me, at least.  Rush Limbaugh preaches and fills the minds of young successful professionals with minutia of irrelevant falsities, when a kid driving a Maserati's main concern should be little Andy Drummer.
He's an eighteen-year-old kid moving out of his parents' house for the first time, unassisted, rebelliously even, and as he drives that U-Haul truck, he realizes within the first mile on I-90 that he's not comfortable behind the thick rubber Mayflower styled captain's wheel.  In a desperate attempt to exit, cutting over two lanes of traffic like the blade of a knife sliding off a potato and into an oppressive index finger, little Andy Drummer drives the nose of a black Maserati into a divider off of the California exit.
Pulverized glass, twisted steel and a thin trail of engine smoke rest on the divider from the shattered Italian sports car.  The U-Haul went skidding on its side down the exit, screeching like the rails beneath my feet, a violent war between metal and concrete and neither side was backing down when finally a firm street light forced a treaty and stopped the machine.
I watched the scene unfold from my moving picture window, looking back until it disappeared and then forgot about it.  See, in a city this big there's too much tragedy and death to pay attention to.  So, you keep your eyes forward and worry about the people and space immediately affecting you. Like Jimmy Carlisle who walked down Ashland Avenue for ten blocks, heard two gun shots, one thudded, screaming death and still managed to buy flowers for his newly pregnant girlfriend.
The story came on the news, he didn't recall a thing.  It's why cell phones and iPods and portable privacy devices are so popular and viral.  They provide enough stimulation and distraction to remove one from an unfavorable situation, say the commute on the train and then you start checking it at home and after you get out of the shower and before you go to bed and before you know it you're waking up in the middle of the goddamned night , waiting for a response from some fleeting, nebulous relationship (do we have those anymore?) wondering why they haven't responded.  
Meanwhile, the clock in the living room ticks steady, on and on and on.

#firstclassproblems

A cartoon yellow sun hung over a frothy pool of splashing kids and she wriggled in the AC, biting her lip a little harder each time the diving board sprang like a doorstop.  See, there was a community pool in her backyard.  And that was fine when she built her house in the development ten years prior.  The community then was seventy.  The community now is seven hundred: thirty three percent little boys and thirty two percent little girls who all love swimming and are forced to do it competitively by nostalgic parents.  

            The real issue isn't the playful little kiddies and their squirmy little bodies.  Rather, it's the fact that she works at home and types medical transcription, i.e. transposing voice recorded southern speaking physician's notes into readable text. The kiddies scream and yell and it infiltrates her every thought, breaking her concentration and stressing the skin below her bottom lip.  She turns the volume up and keeps plucking away at the keys. This is summer.

            Winter's no better.  Apparently, sometime in the last couple years the community decided it would be a good idea to train their elementary swimmers year round.  Thus, they began hoisting large skeletal ribs around the pool with cranes and spreading a large white tarp over to create a dome in the fall.  The structure works as an acoustic amplifier, turning shrieks into ambient howling, again infiltrating the poor woman's brain and stressing her bottom lip. 

            One time, it was so upsetting that she walked over to the pool in her slippers, bundled with a fleece coat.  The stocky coach pumped up his chest as she explained the predicament.  He told her that he was sorry, but there was no possible way to keep the kids down.  She bit her lip and walked back to the house.  Upon phoning the then community board president, Jerry Graft, who softly told her that he completely sympathized, the noise slowly subsided.  After a few months, the team started hosting swim meets every week, which bellowed cacophonous renditions of pop songs and distorted screaming.  The woman phoned Jerry again, who shakily informed her that there was nothing he could do about it. 

            See, Jerry's wife had recently cheated on him three week's prior with the swim coach.  He left work early to surprise his wife with flowers and upon creeping up the stairs to muffled vibrations, he caught her spread eagle on his satin sheets moaning like a dog.  One thing Jerry has never been very good at is confrontation.  So, after his extended peek, he merely turned around and went back to work never saying one word to his wife.  He threw the flowers away in a dumpster two houses down.  He imagined those sweating calves of the swim coach, at least eight inches wide, and those full-veined arms and hands, clinched like a baboon.  He feared for his life should he make a scene or even mention the event to Sally, which happens to be his wife's name.  Surely, things would work out if he let the isolated event slide, he thought.  And things did, he thought. 

            So when the woman phoned him and said that the swim meets were entirely too loud and obtrusive to her household, Jerry decided that no action could be taken.  The woman, obviously unnerved, marched over the frosty grass to the swim meet in her slippers and pulled the swim coach aside.  "Have you the nerve" and "how disrespectful can you be" were a couple things she said.  The coach turned the stereo down a notch and told the kids mockingly that they should keep it down.  And, naturally, they got louder.  Steam poured from the poor woman's ears and she almost bit right through her lip as she ascended her carpeted steps.  Ted, her husband, told her that it wasn't that bad and that she should stop focusing on it.  She told Ted that he needed to grow a pair of balls.  And Ted didn't.

            The weeks passed and winter lifted a little. With it lifted the canvas of the "white albatross," which the woman had cleverly described it once in an email to a girlfriend.  As summer approached, a few things were changing.  One was that Jerry discovered that the banging of his wife by the swim coach was, in fact, not an isolated event.  In fact, it was happening every Tuesday and Thursday after the coach finished taking his morning shit, which he did religiously at 9:30 a.m.  It lasted until 9:48 a.m. where he would then shower and head over to Sally's.  Jerry figured this out when he questioned Sally about a dozen tiny splotches of the swim coach's semen on his maroon satin sheets.  Almost dripping with saliva at the question, Sally exploded on Jerry in a tirade of unabashed confession, describing the positions she had screwed the swim coach in and how much more satisfying in bed he was than Jerry.  As a finale to the rant, she held up a bottle of KY Jelly which she kept next to the bed and tossed it out the window, claiming that if she added that to the moisture she produced for the coach, he may slip all the way through her.

            Jerry calmly phoned his lawyer and requested a divorce explaining to Sally during the telephone conversation that he didn't want any trouble and that he would take his things and leave.  And he did, thereby resigning as community board president, the most prestigious title he would ever have in his entire life. 

            News of Jerry's resignation flowed throughout the community, but no one cared that Jerry was leaving. Everyone was simply mentally picturing and gossiping about the amazingly hot sex that Sally had had with the swim coach.  Even some of the kiddies' mother's began looking at the coach out of the corner of their eyes on the pool deck.  The coach wore a smug grin and stood tall, like a prized stud horse in Kentucky.  Because he was. 

            With the flimsy political environment in the community, middle school kids stayed at the park past dark.  And parents stayed at the pool past closing time.  It was obvious that the reigns of power needed to be handed over.  They needed to be handed over to a "real leader" the woman said to Ted. And Ted said, "I liked Jerry." 

Fallen Winter... Illustrations

Below are the illustrations that I've completed for my upcoming zine, Fallen Winter.  The illustrations will coincide with the works, all of which can be found on this blog.  So, I guess, in theory you could print out the entire zine from this blog and construct your own, but that wouldn't be fun.  And, in actuality, my close friend/editor/colleague, Chaz Oreshkov will be formatting the zine, and I'm sure he'll be doing it in a way that you will never be able to achieve on your own.  I'll keep you updated on a release date.

Also note that I kind of fucked around with the photos on Picasa to hide the highlights from my flash Kodak camera and sharpen the lines.  On one of the ducks, I obviously started playing with the different edit options.  Who knows how it will be finalized as...

ONE MORE NOTE: Back2Print is releasing a travel piece collection on June 16th (currently unnamed) and my "Blood in the Heart" Part I has been chosen for publication in it.  I will be working with Elizabeth S. Tieri on the editing and tightening of it.  **Exciting shit for Huron the next couple weeks with this and FW**  Stay tuned for more updates as we near the release date.  Alright, here goes:

Blood in the Heart pt. II of III (I didn't map this out well)

***LOOKING FOR A NEW TITLE***  I love "Blood in the Heart," but it doesn't really capture the message that I intended.  Maybe I'll use it for something else.  Suggestions being taken...

Hoyne and I rented a car at an Enterprise and he fronted the money.  We set out on that bright morning, giddy with excitement and a little fear because we hadn't mapped out our route or planned places to sleep or really prepared at all other than Hoyne bringing his tent from Chicago with a couple marijuana nugs tucked deep in its compact fabric.

            After a while, snaking through the greater Los Angeles concrete network, we finally hit the coast and saw that beautiful street sign, which read: "Pacific Coast Highway."  Pepperdine sat at the top of the overlook and I wondered how wonderful it would have been to be rich enough to go there.

            Hoyne wore shades and a cut off t-shirt, which showed his tattoos and the sharp angle of the Pacific sun reddened our arms.  We stared over the immense ocean and let our minds wander, sometimes not uttering a word for an hour.

            The 1 intertwined with the 101 at times, pulling the car off of the coast and through valleys of vineyards, which stretched for miles over rolling hills and Mexican workers with straw hats dotted in between the rows and they tossed grapes into the backs of pickup trucks.

            When we reached San Obispo, the 101 continued to stay straight and the 1 broke off northwest and trickled to a two-way road tucked and hidden in the enormous cliffs lining the ocean.  I remember thinking that I was in another world; a celestial world, when I saw those brilliant, intricate color schemes painted down the sides of those bluffs and how their ancient crags stuck out as the first defense against the pummeling ocean, protecting, yet coexisting in a beautiful symbiotic way.  Hoyne said that this is how he knew god existed.  And I thought to myself that this is how I knew he didn’t.

            It took us a few hours, but we winded around those rocky protrusions north until redwoods popped their bushy heads high toward the sun.  The first step out of the car was stiff, compressed bone and then I took that first big inhale of air and could smell nothing but fresh fern and the purest, sweet smell of vegetation just saturated in the air molecules.

            We went to a diner and drank a couple beers and our server let us know that all the campgrounds were full and the two motels within the Big Sur area were close to full occupancy and the price was close to six hundred a night. So, we drove a little further north toward Monterrey and searched for places to pitch the tent.  A lighthouse stood tall far in the distance, perched on a large boulder in the swelling foam and the land surrounding the shore was tall with grass and hundreds of cows grazed near the water way down the valley.  I expected to see Monsanto's cabin and that wandering goat with black lumps of shit in the white sand, but all that I saw were packs of cows and an endless greying sky. 

            We turned the car around and drove back past the diner, finally finding a wide part of the shoulder to park.  Hoyne really wanted to use his tent so he fumbled around with the stakes and the canvas, but could never drive them deep enough to hold, as the Earth was hard and dried, chipping like brick into crusty rectangular pieces.

            That was about two hours ago and now I sit, reclined as far back as the car seat will allow writing by moonlight, which illuminates thick fog rolling in from the never-ending water.  Hoyne breathes softly, chest rising and falling, and he has a Modelo can gripped firmly in his right hand.  The air's gotten cold and my phone hasn't had service for the last six hours.  Hoyne says there isn't a cell phone tower for one hundred miles.  It's kind of nice to be shrouded in fog, but also kind of scary when we hear random pickup trucks speeding around the bend in the road.  I wonder how in the world they don't just fly off the cliff into the steaming water below, but maybe they're used to it and know every dip and turn for the sixty-mile stretch.

            I close my eyes and my brain wanders, far back home to where my mother is curled in bed probably crying at the thought of me alone.  But, I don’t feel sad and I don’t feel scared.  I feel happy.  I hear the animals crying and I can feel that vast ocean churning beneath us and I think of Kerouac and of Nick Adams and wonder how different I am than both of them.  With one crutch on the civilization that raised me and the other dangling off of the side of this bottomless cliff, I feel safe and relaxed, away from the bullshit and alone at last.  Hoyne's lips flutter on the exhale.

Hoyne woke up hungry and we both wanted to get lost in the trees so we bought steaming coffee and some nutty muffins and headed toward the summit of Mt. Manuel.  The air was cool in the valley and hot on the side of the winding trail and we ascended at a brisk pace, facing the clock which limited our exploration.  The issue was that we had to have the car at San Francisco airport by 6:00 p.m. and we knew it would take a couple hours to drive there.  So, we climbed up high and fatigued our legs, gazing down the steep brush inclines with jagged rocks and a waterfall waiting, 3,000 feet below and it was tempting to jump at that white foamy water and we desperately wanted to take a cool swim, but time allowed nothing more than the climb, and it was as wonderful as I could have imagined. 

            The colors were so vivid and popped like blooming spring and it all seemed so foreign compared to the Chicago concrete and the Kentucky limestone that I was accustomed to.  It was a sad moment when we exited that mysterious and haunting cliffscape, but again excitement returned when I thought of San Francisco, the final stop of our adventure. 

            Golden rolling hills and hazy sky flooded through the window of my personal moving picture, when the highway signs became larger and more frequent alerting us of our proximity to the bay.  My arms burned in the sun and I hid them in the shade of the dashboard, massaging my roasting skin.

            We checked in the car and walked into the airport, which was as clean as a hotel, semi-empty aside from some Asian ladies waxing the floors.  We left our luggage at the airport in a locker for twenty-four dollars a night and asked the long dirty finger-nailed concierge where we could find a cheap motel in the city and he pulled out a map highlighting areas around Merchant Street, directly off the B.A.R.T. stop and told us where the hipsters were and where the douche bags were.  Meanwhile, all I could focus on was the thick brown line of muck stuck deep underneath his uncomfortably long fingernails. 

            My shoes and socks were soaked through with sweat and that powdery dirt of the Sur, which turned to mud and crystallized on my leg hairs and when we stepped into our lodging, I stripped down, eyes closed under the warm spray of the shower which washed the dirt down the drain, crusting around the edges of the linoleum.  When I had finished and dried, the remaining filth caked in long brown stripes on the fresh white towel.  After we were clean, we began cracking open the remaining Modelo cans and worked up an appetite.  Hoyne sat tranquil at the table by the balcony and stared into the dark building across the street, sucking at the small pipe in his fingers