Chapter 3
Such is Such and One is One; A Brief History

Strange things began to happen almost immediately after the disappearance of the moon. On the first night, the night that began with Clarence at the market wondering what the big deal was now that he had all of the money that he could spend. He still just wanted scotch and pee bee and jay. Jill was in her apartment thinking about the smell of gasoline and the sexiness of a bum with blue eyes so intrinsically beautiful that they drove him to a madness where he could not forget the last love of his lost past. And then there was Dexter Drake (whom you have yet to meet), who at this very same time, was at the studio on Wilshire and LaBrea recording “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone (And, Baby, I’m as Gone as Anyone You Ever Seen)” with the rest of his band, The Premodernists. The band was out of tune, Dexter’s voice—never very good—sounded like an old bulldog’s fart, but it didn’t matter what they sounded like. The studio could clean it up.

When Clarence stepped out of the market with a box of food and a bar of soap, he looked up to see the fallout from the asteroid-to-moon collision. Shooting stars showered the planet as they hadn’t since the first formulative years; as a matter of fact, to describe it as a shower would be understating the display. It was as if a phosphorescent paintbrush was swiping across the sky. I mean, even through the smog and light pollution of L.A., the streams of fiery rock that were parts of the moon were visible.

Clarence looked up and thought, Boy, I sure wouldn’t mind living long enough to eat another pee bee and jay. There was a strange acceptance of fate. He decided to walk home from the market, not willing to risk another freaked-out cabbie in his quest for a simple end to it all.

Now, it is a certain fact that the most common of wishes upon the falling stars that night were to please let the Earth keep spinning, though at the time it seemed impossible. Night upon night for more than a month these wishes were made and answered. The Earth kept spinning on at nearly the same rate as it always had, losing little more than a day a year. 364 as opposed to 365 seemed a good trade off for what most experts said was a certain death. The 31st day of July would eventually be eliminated from the calendar. It was an easy decision, but one that met with quite a bit of international furor. Some argued that the day should be taken off of February since it was a fucked-up month anyway; still others argued that the whole month of August should be eliminated and a new, eleven month calendar should be developed in which “Super months” would be the new standard. Countries and regions took their position as Israel sat back and smiled, watching what they had gone through when the false messiah had come. Like any good Jewish mother, they shook their heads, clucked their tongues, and said, “I told you so.”

Other wishes upon those streaking trails of light in the sky that were mostly not answered included such things as: Let Cherry Mary love me; Give me one more crack at that pitch and I’ll hit a homer; Why, I sure wish I could tell that son of a bitch a thing or two; If only she’d take me back, I would show her what a real man was like; My tits could get just a little perkier, then everybody would love me; Ninety-seven bucks, all I need is ninety-seven bucks and I’d make it work; God, please don’t kill me; Please start, please start; If only, if only; Give me a sign. These wishes and more were wished in the same manner as they always had. They seemed silly in the context of the situation, yet they were fully understandable and fully human.

Another change was, for time immemorial, there had been a tidal bump associated with the gravitational pull of the moon. The bump acted like the flushing of a toilet, or, at least, a stirring of the pot. Metaphorically, it allowed the ocean to freshen herself up after the wild night of fucking, birth, and death that happened every day. This bump ceased almost immediately, but to most scientific experts’ surprise, the tides still flowed, they just flowed a bit less dramatically for, in the furor of post-lunar illogicality, it was almost forgotten that there was a supplementary solar tide always in effect. Once noticed, it was called the “New Tide” as opposed to the old “New Tide.” This “New Tide” was not really new, since it was always there, enhancing the lunar tide, but now, since the moon was gone, the thermodynamic tides, never really seriously considered as a factor in the all-important sloshing effect of the oceans, combined with the solar tides, to produce a strange facsimile of the lunar tidal calendar. High tides were not as high and low tides were not as low; the benefits of this were enormous to cities at the edge of the sea. The less dramatic and more regular tides allowed development right up to the “mid tide” line. The wild whore—the cruel mistress—untold centuries, who was the sea, became a bit tamer as she settled into her less-than-elegant middle age.

This new set of circumstances allowed scientists to begin to rethink accepted, well-founded theories. Their dogmas were washed away with the moon and this, for the most part, allowed the old, overused, completely dust-ridden chalkboards of the past to be not only erased, but to be completely destroyed. For most, it was a relief to no longer be constrained by the great minds and the scientific psychopaths of the past. New planets, stars, solar systems, and galaxies were discovered on a daily basis. In the first months, these astronomical delights were of very little interest to most people who stared up into the moonless skies watching the showers of rock burn across the night while they contemplated astronomers’ predictions of a slowing of the Earth’s orbit (it was a common new psychosis for folks to feel like they were being lifted off of the earth by a lack of gravity), or a change in poles as the earth shifted on its axis (every day that was colder than average became proof that Southern California was becoming the new North Pole), or a change in oceanic conditions which would ultimately kill off the algae that fed the entire world oxygen and nutrients (ignoring the plight of the South American rainforest became en vogue as folks teemed to the shorelines pumping the sea with plant fertilizer to feed the algae they were sure were going to die), or the disappearance of the atmosphere which would lead the Earth into a period of extravagant barrenness and a rocky future.

The reactions of people to all of these changes varied from sedate, existential acceptance to extreme acts of freedom. Of all the far reaching idiocies, the case of the Immortalis Group seemed the most absurd. This experiment ended tragically when the cult baked all of its members, including seventy-three children, when it closed itself in a huge cavern in the western Appalachians with extravagant hydroponics units in order to grow enough food for a population of one hundred and seventy. The inadequate ventilation system turned all of the inhabitants into jerky within four days. Why didn’t they move the rock that covered the cavern’s entrance? many asked. The answer, in all likelihood was that the rock was locked into place by a non-removable latch and key system that could only be operated from the outside, yet, the only people with the keys were locked on the inside. Since the world was coming to an end, there had been no need to bring any communication devices or to provide any emergency latches.

Peoples’ reactions to the end of life were easy to understand. All of the possibilities that scientists set forth equaled one thing: death to humanity. But, by defining their work as important and ignoring God, the scientists did what scientists have always done; they plodded forward in obscurity and came away with meaning; sometimes those tragically sluggish steps forwards helped to remove the veil of God, while others seemed to seal an apocalyptic fate that had no apocalypse to it. Normal folks were not so fortunate as the revivified science community since took the earlier apocalyptic predictions of the scientists as gospel; people were like confused children stuck between warring parents, never knowing which one to listen to at any given moment.

The strangeness of the new world eventually only became strange to people like Clarence. As the taxi driver immediately identified, he was what would become known as a “Moonie.” This is in deference to the “Moonie” cults of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, headed by the megalomaniacal Rev. Sun Ye Moon, who for a short time, gained extraordinary power over the nuclear stockpiles of the long forgotten Soviet Empire. A “Moonie” was a person who could not forget about the moon and became obsessed with nostalgia to the point that the moon was the only thing that seemed to matter.

During the early months after the moon’s downfall, Clarence found himself unusually obsessed with creatures that seemed to be reliant upon the moon for life. He studied the great squid off of the coast of Southern California that had regularly migrated from the ocean’s deep chasms to the surface. These squid never came up any longer unless they were coaxed up by a highly luminescent light that simulated the moon. When this light shone on the top of the water, the squid ascended from the depths in quantities never seen before. The staggering number of cephalopods shocked scientists who had never even imagined that such numbers existed just off of the coast of the largest megalopolis in the world. Clarence assumed that this abundance had to do with the squid making fewer trips to the surface where the majority of predation occurred, but also, a lack of moonlight made the squid mad for whatever light they could find. So when squidders shone there light beams on the surface of the water, the squid came like cockroaches to a chocolate pie. They were so aggressive in these hyperactive uberswarms that it became highly illegal to produce the hordes without the proper equipment to harvest the animals since, as soon as the squid were on the surface, anything in the water was doomed to a painful death by tentacle lashing. As a rather pleasant side effect, calamari became a poor man’s feast.

Along the California coast lives a strange little silver fish called the grunion that, for all of time belly crawled onto the beaches of Southern California, shining and twinkling in the twilight of the full moon. They danced and wriggled along the line of the highest of tides and, if looked upon by the uninitiated, the sand itself appeared to be a reflection of the moon on water. While the females buried their little fannies in the sand, the males sent rivers of semen everywhere; those shining and shimmering chimeras spreading the volume of life not only on the eggs of the females but also sending their life-forces back to the sea where larger predatory fish waited and sighed as the semen soup swept the entire coast with the sweetness of sperm. This dance of life occurred just beyond the line of the highest spring and summer tides in order for the baby grunion to be safely hatched out of reach of oceanic predators. But, with the downfall of the moon, the grunion no longer followed the moon’s trail for there was no trail to follow and there was no moon to produce large fluctuations of tides. No longer did the Vietnamese, Chinese, black, white, Latino, Pilipino converge on every south facing sandy beach on these Spring and Summer evenings to catch the fish by hand. I can even remember my grandmother telling stories of catching those fish by the bucketfuls and coming home to gut the little fishies using her long fingernail like a knife and spoon, flicking the entrails into the sink.

But now, and Clarence was more than amazed by the fundamental ability of life to survive, the grunion figured out a way to lay their little eggs beneath the surface of the relatively safe ocean floor. While most scientists predicted the demise of the grunion within one breeding season, the little fish figured out how to lay their eggs and not expose themselves to the predators that awaited their predictable arrival. In so doing, the grunion began to overpopulate, spurring on a boom of predatory fishes and mammals to prey upon the fishes. The new numbers of the fish were so massive that farmers and gardeners alike used them for a new, non-nitrogen based fertilizer that, in turn, quickly restored the health of the oceans by eliminating the runoff of nitrogen from farms and gardens into the seas of the world.

Now, mind you, it was not just the grunion and the squid that profited from the change in the ecosystem of the earth. Salmon, mice, rabbits, elk, frogs, insects, moss all benefited; even the ice caps stopped their steady recession due to the slowing of the earth’s orbit and a slight change to the tilt of the planet. The distinction between night and day became so apparent that the contrast profited all creatures appreciative of difference, even humankind. For a short period of time, people became recognizably more tolerant of each other. Cases of clinical insanity lessened, seeming to prove the relation between the lunar and the loony. Jehovah Witness’s proclaimed their theosophy wrong, that the multitude indeed would inherit the Earth, not just a chosen few, and, strangely enough, they found ways in which to interpret these changes within the Gospels. Women’s menstrual cycles almost universally came in line with one another. This was, obviously, a mixed blessing. If the plea of “period” was used for the denial of a lover’s ardor, it was now a cause for an immediate call to the reticent lady’s OBGYN and not the cause of a frustrating evening for the denied romantic. But, all in all, this aspect would help in the control of the world’s population problems.

The Earth would become a garden again, if only humanity could see the new possibility for life.
Soon people forgot about the moon and began life anew. And this, I suppose, is where Jill’s epic love story, in which I am simply a narrator and hardly a participant, begins.

Chapter 2
You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone
And, Baby, It IS Gone

I know what you’re saying; you’re saying, Hey Man, is that it?
It would seem so, but it’s not. This is just the beginning of this story that’s about as old any story that has ever been told. I mean, it seems to me that this is how we all got here in the first place.
The crowd stayed for several moments, watching the leviathan of a moon crawl slowly away from the Earth like a snail with a cracked shell. They watched until they got tired. Clarence, who had been to enough public venues to understand the psychology of large groups, decided he better hightail it out of that humongous cereal bowl of humanity before the puffed rice began to snap, crackle, and pop. He watched the moon a moment more and thought, Be seeing you in my dreams, baby.
And that was it. Such anticlimactic occurrences had followed him through his life. From his father’s last weeping breath, to his first kiss, to his first fuck, to his mama’s last breath. It was never conclusive. They always kept him thinking, That’s it? That’s what all the fuss is about? All of those life-changing moments made him weep for there inconclusiveness, their shuttering questionability. It took hours for him to realize that his father was not going to take another breath, that those warm lips had gone cold in his inability to move forward, that his pecker had spilled itself so quickly he hardly knew he was inside, and the empty minutes and hours watching his mother’s flat chest immobile on that dirty old bed. And now, now that old moon creaked and groaned its lumbering way away from its only ally throughout time. The Earth moaned, like a weeping mother watching her only son go off to a war that she knew he would not come back from.
Weaving his way through the stunned crowd, he ran into the big Viking man he had seen earlier. Although he shouldered the giant forcefully, that man took no notice of him other than shifting his bulk closer, more protectively towards the woman next to him. Clarence couldn’t see the woman, neither did he want to. He squeezed through the crowd until he finally got to the Gladiatorial tunnels that led outside. When he reached the outdoors, the night sky of Los Angeles was crisp and cold. It was darker than a dark girl’s eyes. The night was punctuated by little glowing red tips of cigarettes and nanosmokes. People were already exiting the Coliseum en masse. The talk was excited and unintelligible. Clarence walked out with a comet tail of thousands spreading behind him.
He stopped when he was safely out of the stream of folks. He began humming a song as he watched the people. He started to snap his fingers, thump his chest, tap his toes to a melody that he was building in his mind and heart. He was as red-faced as his brown face could be; he knew the song he was humming was one that he would not ever like. It sounded like something out of Brittany DeGaul’s collection. The talkers were talking behind him as the talkers always would. He hummed and hummed. It seemed like a sad little 4/2 rhythm, but not in a good, classic way. No, this sounded contrived and awful. At least to Clarence’s educated ears. He started to sing lyrics that made no sense, yet held the rhythm fine.
He did not live a long ways from the stadium and walking was the most logical course since cabbing was so expensive and bussing was impossible in L.A. The crowds of the night were particularly taxing on the system. It was still dark in the city. Clarence looked up and watched the moon pass over the Western horizon.
That was it, man.
Gone.
Like a bad dream.
Or a good one for that matter.
Finally and forever.
Gone.
Clarence heard the noise of the crowd exiting and the lights finally came on, whitewashing the entire universe of stars with the incandescent blaze. He heard several people talking behind him.
Boy, no matter what happened, the talkers could talk. Always could; always would.
One of those voices said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m glad I have you.”
Another voice said, “Can I have an ice-cream sandwich?”
Another voice said, “Watch where the fuck you’re going, asshole.”
And another voice said, “I’m really sorry, Tom. Really, but, man, I’ve got to go.”
And another voice said, “Please, Jill. Please, not tonight.”
Another voice said, “Moon go bye-bye, mama?”
But Clarence didn’t really notice because he was humming this song with this catchy little rhythm that wormed into his brain like a terrible 20th century pop song. He couldn’t get rid of it as his hums became words and those words took the form of a chorus.
#
While Clarence was alone, Jill was truly alone. She was, in fact, the loneliest person in the entire lonely world. She was with just another lover—Tom. Tom was nice enough, but when “The Cheese Grater” knocked the moon off-course, she looked over to him and knew that she was wasting her time and her life. She held his hand long after she thought possible. She held his hand and she shivered.
If things went how science promised they would go with the moon’s disappearance, Tom would be Jill’s last lover.
She thought, Your last lover? Get out of it, girly. Get out now. Better to be alone than with this chump.
The moon flew overhead. Someone ran into Tom. He stepped into Jill and put his big, Viking arms around her protectively. She never felt worse. His embrace—so strong, so protective—felt like a python squeezing the life out of her. Slick and dryly-slimy.
Let go, you. Let go of me, you!… He can’t hear you, Jilly.
She let him hold her because she felt badly for feeling like this. He was a good man.
Well…let’s be honest. There’re no good men. Tom? Tom’s no-so-bad. But good? No no no.
“Come on, babe. Let’s go,” Tom said.
Jill nodded.
Anything. Anything. Just don’t touch me anymore.
She held his hand as they walked. They were behind some fool humming an irritating song. Just humming. The sound of his breath through his nose reached into her skull, drowning out the screaming of her own internal monolog.
For that she was thankful and annoyed.
What a waste! What a waste? What are you doing, Jilly? Get out now. Chew that wrist till that hand comes off. Leave him with your hand and you with a stump, because that sure is better than feeling like this.
Jeezus, why don’t he shut that fucking humming down? She mind-screamed to the man in front of her.
Tom began to hum the same tune as the dude in front of them. Jill almost screamed and laughed at the same time. She was shaking her head.
Oh, shit, not this. Not a fucking choir!
Tom hummed along with the fool in front of them. The tune was familiar-but-not.
What a waste to be with this not-so-bad man.
The man in front of them began singing as Tom hummed the tune.
“You don’t know whachoo got.”
But what’s the alternative to not-so-bad, Jilly?
Oh, Jeezus, no. Now he’s singing.
“No, you don’t know whachoo got,” Tom sang in a disjunctive call and response tone.
Sometimes it seems like the only other type of man is a bad man and not-so-bad’s as good as it gets.
Both these fools sound like frogs croaking in a boiling pot.
“No, you don’t know whachoo got.”
But if Tom’s as good as it gets then that means I’m never going to be happy with a man.
They sound like foghorns.
“Till it’s gone.”
The lights of the city were re-ignited. The crowd stopped a moment, contemplated the emptiness of the night and then began talking excitedly again.
Because I sure don’t want bad, either. Had enough of bad in this life. From Papa, to the boys, to all them other men. Had enough of bad.
The dude in front of her and Tom belted out together, “No, you don’t know whatchoo got, I say you don’t know what you got, I say you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”
Jill thought, His voice sounds like an old man’s farts.
“You don’t know whachoo got,” Tom sang lowly like he was some kind of torchlight singer.
I sure wish that fool would shut it down. Sure wish Tom would shut it down, too.
“No you don’t know whachoo got.”
“Shut it down, Tom!”
“Huh?” Tom asked.
What about good? What about great?
She didn’t know what good and great meant, but she did know that she didn’t want her life to be defined by the emptiness of Tom or the ugliness that her past lovers and brothers seemed to exemplify.
“No you don’t know whachoo got.”
“No you don’t know whachoo got,” Tom echoed the singing voice ahead of them as if he were a backup singer.
Both them’re driving me insane.
“I said, ‘Shut it down, Tom!’”
Jill stopped walking.
“What’s wrong, babe?”
People behind them split around Tom’s giant form.
Wrong? Everything’s wrong. It’s all over and I lost, Tom. I lost. It ain’t even that that old moon’s flying away like a wounded slug. It ain’t even that. It’s that it’s just over. Game’s over and I lost.
“I’m really sorry, Tom. Really, but, man, I’ve got to go.”
She let go of his hand. He looked down on her. His conqueror’s blue eyes sadly recognizing what was happening.
He said, “Please, Jill. Please, not tonight.”
Jill walked away, swept up in the crowd as Tom stood there forcing the river of humanity to branch into two streams around his implacable bulk.
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
Don’t lie. Don’t lie ever no more, Jilly.
She watched his sadly slumped form for a moment. From a distance he was handsome, even attractive with those strong shoulders and Nordic eyes. From a distance everything was attractive.
“I’m not so sorry, Tom. Just should’ve done it earlier than this,” she said loud enough for him to hear.
#
Clarence was alone, walking away from the crowd, singing what would soon become the hit song, “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone (And Baby I am as Gone as Anyone You Ever Seen).” Jill was also alone, walking away from the crowd in the opposite direction. Tom was left in the crowd, alone, singing an insane chorus of “You don’t know what you got. No you don’t know what you got. No you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” He was thinking sadly what a fine, fine song that sounded like and, even with his heartache, he wanted a copy of the song.
Clarence was singing and humming all the way home. He was singing and humming with enthusiasm even though he knew that the song was garbage with no other meaning than to be packaged and sold. He was thinking what a waste of a lifetime it was that the last song he would ever write would be some piece of shit meant to be bought, packaged, and sold to an uneducated public. He thought of all the songs that came and went. He thought that this was just like them. It would come and go. But it was in his head, like when you wake in the morning only to have that horrible song playing up there filling your skull so full that the song itself comes seeping from your tightly shut lips for all to hear your lack of taste. Then you ask your lover to scream in your ear just to get that song out of your head. You play and play and play all the music you can think of to get that song out of there, but the only thing you can do is give in, allowing the song to play its course over and over again until there’s nothing left. Clarence knew that he had to submit to the tune, but it was terrible; it was like surrendering to the meaningless of life.
He began to run towards his home because he needed to get this song out of his head. The only way to do so was to lay it down on tape. He hated the song more than anything at that moment. But what was even worse than having this real, steaming piece of shit coming out of his mouth and onto tape was the thought of laying it down on tape for a dying world that would never hear it.
#
Jill passed by a newspaper stand. The front page of The Los Angeles Times, said “KABOOM!!!” above a close-up picture of the moon with its cratered face looking like a poxer’s at the end of his term. Jill walked past, shaking her head. If she had stayed with Tom or if she could have just waited an hour more she could’ve gotten a ride from him, but now she was forced to walk the seven miles to the apartment that she hadn’t been to for months. It was always there, but she just didn’t care to go back. It was empty and small and cramped and probably stunk, though she was used to the stink because she carried it with her everywhere she went.
That stink that she carried in her blood came, no doubt, from being the daughter of Jaime Saragosa, the international semi-conductor engineer who would later develop several nuclear reactors in Latin America; the one in Tijuana would make history. Jaime raised Jill and all of her brothers to be people of power and industry. He pushed them along their predetermined courses. Jill was set on a path of, first, military honor, and, then after, political power. She was to be the second female president of the International Coalition of Free States. She was his princess and nothing less would do. Jaime was a man who plotted for his daughter and the world. And, although, the boys—Jill’s brothers—were not disappointments to Jaime, Jill most certainly was.
On her walk, she remembered when she left home.
She was eighteen; she forgot to leave a forwarding address; she found a life for herself, sad though it might have been.
#
“Now, Jill, listen to me,” her father said. He was still a big man. A man with traceable Hispanic blood in him. Red-faced. Angry. Powerful as only the wealthy can be powerful. He carried a built-in aura of invincibility and endowment. As if…as if the world were truly his oyster and only he had the crackers.
Jill was young in her body, heart, and mind. Her black hair and black eyes painted over an artificially pale face made her look as if she were in deep mourning, but it was the style for the time and she was only following trends. She was emotional, opinionated, and she wanted to, for once, fit in. She was a teenager and wanted what teenagers have wanted since, shit, I don’t know, since the whole goddamned world began spinning. She wanted to be understood even though she did not even understand herself.
Jaime’s red face was blowing its cruel wind at her as she stood in resolute sadness. “I have invited Colonel Jackson over for dinner tonight; so you will need to wash that…that cowshit off of your face. There’s nothing to do about your hair, so you will need to pull it up. After you wash it. You know how your Aunt Rose does that thing with your hair every once in a while? Goddamn, I wish your mom was alive. She’d tell you what a mess you are. Jeezus Christy. Put your hair up in your hat. You know the one. Right. The one I like. It’s yellow with little red flowers on the front. You used to look so pretty. And now. Damn, I wish your mom were alive. I mean, Jeezus Christy, look at you. You look like a fucking corpse!”
Jaime was working himself up to a fury. Jill could see the rage building. His words were hurting her, but not nearly as much as his hands would if she spoke. So she was silent.
“Okay, papa,” Jill said. She began walking away. The stairs were only a few feet away. If she reached them, she could rise through the flights of stairs. She could run her hands over the curved and smooth, carved ebony balustrade that rose step by step to the upper levels of Casa Saragosa, so named after the first Don Saragosa who owned much of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas before the United States grabbed the land. Don Saragosa made his deals with the Americans and held onto nearly all of his Rancho in San Dimas, but not without a cost to the local population. If Jill could reach the top flight of stairs, she could run past her mother’s portrait—the mother she never really met, the mother who had become deified and demonized by the father until there was no hope of turning even to the memory of the mother into anything other than a guilt trip—she could run to her bedroom, lock the door, and let go of the rational tears of a teenage girl who loves too much for her father to understand. Jill was taught no better than to follow orders, but she knew something better as she took the first step towards her liberation.
“Jill!” her father stopped her as she touched the black wood of the balustrade.
Her soul fell out of her asshole like an unexpected shit. She stopped and said, “Yes, papa.”
“Colonel Jackson has informed me that there is an immediate opening for a female combat specialist in his division and that your tests, particularly in Open Hand Weaponry, make you the perfect candidate. This is, my dear, an interview and I expect you to perform at a level commensurate with your training.”
“Yes, papa.”
Her head was down and she was thinking, Well, now is the time, Jilly girl.
This was the first time she referred to herself like this. But since then, most conversations were held outside of other peoples’ hearing; most of the time Jill spoke to her many different personalities, all of whom served their own purpose.
Now is the time to tell him that you ain’t joining up, that it ain’t his life, that he and his dreams and all his talk about your mother is all just fuckin’ sick. What you think now, Jilly? You think you can do it or are you going to run upstairs, put that fuckin’ hair in that fuckin’ hat and get that fuckin’ sweet ass of yours all perfect for your own death, baby? You felt that thing that came out of you a minute ago. You felt it come out of your sweet little asshole, right? You felt it. You know what it was? It was your soul, ba-bay.
This was eighteen year old Jill, which was not so much different than thirty year old Jill. She spoke her mind, even when it was only in her mind. Something in her early training had shook off the ability to lie, even to herself.
So, you going to walk up them stairs? you going to look at that picture of the bitch-mama that you never met? you going to wash your face of that black cowshit you been putting on since you found your soul? you going to stuff that hair up nice and pretty like Aunt Rose do? you going to put that yellow hat with red flowers on? you going to salute that old Colonel Jackson? you going to show him how you can smash the heads of babies and guerillas while eating peanut butter jelly? you going to say, “Yes sir,” “No sir,” “It’s an honor, sir?” “Hell yes, sir?” “Kill ‘em all, sir?” “Firebomb?” “Nuke the fuckers?” “Squash the head like tomatoes, sir?” “That’s what I do, sir?” “First in class, sir?” “Plug a gnat’s asshole at a hundred meters, sir?” “Zipperheaded terrorist hippy Arab nationalist bloody gutted gollypops, SIR!”
You going to say all of that, Jilly? Or, you going to take your stand here and now?
She began up the stairs. As she got to the top flight, she looked at the portrait of her mom. All brown hair and smiling. She was a lovely looking woman. She had on a yellow hat with red flowers. Jill shivered.
“Jill,” Jaime called out from down below. “Pack your bags. If everything goes as planned, the colonel will be taking you after dinner.”
She felt her shoulders tighten around her neck when she stepped into her room, her refuge from the world. She walked to her closet, slowly pulling clothes, an evening gown in a pretty brocade, two pairs of denim pants, her boots, some socks, a combat 18 inch K-bar knife, several thousand credits, a ream of paper and a pen. She packed everything but the Corps issue knife. From this point forward, she would never be allowed to be without her knife. She dressed in her black fatigues with the red “X”s across the chest and back that showed that she was a graduate of the Junior Combat Expedition. She laced her combat boots, tightening the strings to give support to the ankles should a demonstration be necessary for the colonel.
They want a killer, they going to get a killer, huh, ba-bay?
She looked at her contact memobrand to see who she would tell that she was going away to the Corps tonight and would never be back again. There was no one for her to say goodbye to. She lay on her back and thought of foreign lands and wars and burning flesh and crushing skulls and bleeding-out children in front of their parents and gas showers and victory.
You going to become part of it, now, huh? Been training since you popped out of bitch-mama’s puss. Now you going to become part of it.
Jill thought it wasn’t really fair for her to think of her mama like that. She didn’t know her. No one did. Not even papa.
The soft bed felt good. She would be sleeping on the cold earth soon enough. It was alright. She would be a part of Colonel Jackson’s company. She would be deployed all over the world to clean it of the human refuse of the enemies of the state. To clear lands far and wide for the nation’s interest, for development and democracy.
That’s it. Convince yourself. Better get them before they get you. Better protect the good ole’ USA because they coming here soon enough. Better kill, kill, kill.
She lay on the bed, not a tear spilling out. She sat up from her bed.
Papa’s right about the makeup and hair. What’s it for? Just cosmetics. Just cowshit. Trying to fit in. Why? Why fit in? Fit in with what?
The speaker on the wall screamed: “Jill, the colonel has arrived.”
“Yes, papa,” Jill snapped. She stood, walked to her dresser where her fighting gloves were laid out. They were leather with reinforced wrist straps. She fingered the holes and began wrapping her wrists in case the Colonel needed a demonstration of her ripping through a wall. She tested the gloves by punching the wall flat-fisted several times. The plaster dented and cracked. Her wrists were strong and stiff. She smiled.
Going to do it, Ba-bay? Going to go along with them, huh?
Jill shut her mind down with a knee snap kick to her bedpost. The post splintered.
“Jill!” the speaker on the wall screamed. “The colonel is waiting.”
#
Jill was shocked by the memories. They seemed a long time ago but they weren’t. Not long at all. Matter of fact, they were so recent that they hurt like road rash.
Still walking away from The Coliseum and Tom, it seemed as if it had been just a few minutes when she came to her apartment building. It was an old building, hailing back to a brighter day in Los Angeles history—built in 1927—as if there were any bright days in Los Angeles history. The balustrade was textured and slimy with years of filthy hands running along it. A few gargoyles remained at the corners of the building. The cement steps were painted yellow about twenty years prior. They were now the pissy yellow complexion of a colicky newborn. A drunkard was lying on the steps, blocking the way into the building. A bit of vomit dripped down the steps from his mouth. The front of his blue polyester pants was darkened by a stream of urine that he had released without bothering to wake. Somewhere in the night, some joker had bothered to use red spray paint to silhouette his body like a corpse. Besides his head, in permanent marker read, “Here lies Dope. RIP.”
Jill weighed her choices. She could attempt to jump over the man. She could step on top of him. Or, she could wake him.
She didn’t feel like she had the hoppers to accomplish the first. She felt like the second option was cruel and she had already been cruel enough this evening. And the third option appeared to be damn near impossible. This bum was not waking for hours, if at all. So she sat down on a step below the drunk, well-away from his stream of urine and waterfall of puke. She listened to his snores. There was something pretty and reassuring about them, as if this were the sound of the sleeping earth that may just go on sleeping for a while. It was late and Jill closed her eyes, trying to blank-out the thoughts that couldn’t be blanked.
#
“Coming, sir!” Jill barked. She could feel her father’s pride at the sound of her voice.
She grabbed her bag, slotted her knife in the sheath, left the snap open and, as an afterthought, put on the yellow hat with red flowers that had been her mother’s.
She walked down the stairs, running her hand over the ebony balustrade. The two men were at the base of the stairs looking up. Both had strange expressions on their faces. When she reached the bottom of the staircase, she felt dizzy looking at Colonel Jackson. He was silent but for a slight breath. Jill could hear the weakness in that breath. She was too young, by far, to know what that heavy inhalation was, but now, now she would understand that it was the sound of an old man wanting a lay with a young girl in combat fatigues and a yellow hat with red flowers on it. It was the sound of a man needing something that he had lost a long time ago.
Jill ran double time down the stairwell. The sounds from her boot heals sounded like an entire company was coming down the stairs. Her militaristic bearing was impressive, and, for a moment, her father ignored her unusual attire.
“Colonel Jackson, may I introduce you to my daughter, Combat Specialist Jill Saragosa,” Jaime Saragosa said.
Jill saluted. She held the salute as if she were made of tin.
“It is good to meet you, Combat Specialist.” Jill held her salute. “I have seen your training records and am very surprised, very surprised that no other company has picked you up.” Jill held rigid. “Any reason for that?”
“Yes, sir,” Jill reported.
“May I ask why?” His breath was raspy, horny as a herd of steers.
“Yes, sir.”
Jaime watched in the stunned awe of seeing a falcon that he had created take flight for the first time.
“And, why is that?”
“No company has yet deserved me.”
The colonel laughed. “No?”
“No, sir.”
“You may stand at ease, Combat Specialist.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jill said. She released her salute and stood with her feet planted exactly at shoulder width. She was erect; so was the colonel.
“And you think that you are 109th material?”
“That is not my decision, sir.”
“Obviously,” the Colonel said. He sounded indignant, but was, in fact, in the midst of a minor orgasm. “A demonstration then.” He was smiling again. If this were to be a member of his company, he would find a position for her. He hadn’t felt this way in many years. Besides, his wife would be more than happy that he had found a new personal secretary since the last had reached her expiration date years ago. Matter of fact, the last expired as soon as he married her.
“What sort of demonstration, sir?” Her voice was sharp and stiff.
“Your training.”
Without a moment’s pause, Jill began a beautiful dance with her combat knife flying through the air towards the portrait of her mother. The knife embedded itself into her mother’s smiling lips. Jill pirouetted and, from a stand-still, she vaulted seven stairs for each stride. She looked like an antelope as she sprang up the stairs, but when she turned, knife in her hand, she looked more dangerous than any antelope. As the colonel and Jaime watched, Jill jumped from the landing and tumbled down the staircase with a series of acrobatics that ended with her fist splintering the ebony stair post, showering her father with shards of wood.
She returned to her stiff, “at ease” stance exactly where she had been.
Both Jaime and the Colonel were shocked by Jill’s dance that was the most beautifully violent thing that they had seen since the thermonuclear explosion of 2012. After a moment of heavy breathing that the Colonel’s wife would recognize from the last time she had heard it twenty years prior, he said, “That is very impressive, but what would you do with a real enemy.”
“Kill it.”
“Hmm,” the colonel said.
Jaime was excited by Jill’s performance. His vision was about to become realized. “You see now, Jax? You see what I said?”
“I see.” The colonel looked her over. His eyes were admiring and lecherous. It would be a look that Jill would become used to; her eighteen year-old mind sensed the power in the look. “In conversation with some of your trainers, I have heard that you have displayed some strange behaviors. Do you care to comment on that?”
“Strange? What do you mean by strange?” Jaime asked.
“I’m not talking to you, Jaime.”
“I do not comment on rumors,” Jill responded.
“Rumors? What rumors?” Jaime asked.
“I am not talking to you, Jaime.”
“Don’t tell me that you ruined this opportunity, Jill.”
The colonel persisted. “You are telling me that you deny the rumors then.”
“No, sir. I deny nothing. I am telling you that I do not comment on rumors.”
“Jesus Christy! What rumors?”
The colonel turned and said, “Please, Jaime. I am not speaking with you.” He turned to Jill. “And if I ordered you to comment?”
“I am not under your command.”
“Not yet,” the colonel said.
“You answer him, Jill.”
“Shut it down, papa,” Jill said, her voice callused like Clarence’s fingertips.
“What?”
“Shut it down, papa,” she ordered. Jaime was silent for a moment.
“I guess that I don’t understand, Combat Specialist. Are you or are you not interested in joining the most elite, exclusive combat company in the entire Corps?”
“No, sir. I am not interested.”
“Just like your god damned mother?” Jaime screamed as he hit his daughter for the last time in either of their lives.
#
She wanted a drink as she sat in the moonless night accompanied by her passed-out friend. She needed a drink. She began humming a song. It was a sad, sad song that she had heard earlier in the evening. It would be a song that she would learn to hate more than anything else in the world.
The sun was beginning to show. Had she really been walking for so many hours before finding her apartment building? Was it really morning?
Yes, yes.
She watched the sun turn the sky blue. It was the coldest part of the day. She looked to the drunk. His vomit, his urine, they weren’t so bad. He was human. That was cool. She leaned against the handrails looking just about as pretty as a daisy in the rising sun. She was warming herself, preparing for a new day.
The world was waking up as the earth and the drunk slept. Jill watched the city and saw that there was beauty here.
She looked up to the gargoyle above her, its face lit up in the sun, scowling horribly at all that came under its gaze. She wondered, had it always been so for all those hundreds of years since it was first placed there in the 1920’s? Had it smiled at the rising sun unnoticed by the generations of people who had passed under it? It didn’t matter. It was dead. It was stone.
She looked at the drunk on the steps above her. His grizzled and vomit-splattered face looked meek and vulnerable. He was alive. And when he was dead, he would be no more. He would not even be a memory. He would be nothing and that gargoyle would still be there, smiling in the sunrise. But it was dead and this man, this drunk, this bum, this offal-endowed creature was alive and had been alive. And that was a blessing beyond any imagination.
Jill looked at the castle that she had chosen over and above that which her father had envisioned for her. In a lot of ways, she wouldn’t trade this moment for any other.
She was Jill Saragosa. She was, perhaps for the first time, herself.
The sun rose.
The new day began.
She fell asleep against the handrail of her tenement, below the drunkest drunkard to ever drink a drink. Her beauty was exquisite in that moment. A daisy in the desert sun.
Her last thought was, Most likely be dead before I wake. That’s good.
What she had dreaded had not come. When she closed her eyes, she did not see the knife, nor the colonel, nor her father’s blood. She did not see any of it as she had for so many years since.
#
That same morning, perhaps an hour or two earlier, Clarence got to the abandoned building that he called home. It was three hours after starting away from The Coliseum, just about 4:00 am when he slid the oversized passkey into the tumbler of the Wilson Unbreakable deadbolt on the reinforced metal door of the old Simmons Hardware building. It was a huge, multi-level storehouse that had inventoried the most diverse selection of hardware in the Western Hemisphere; that is, before the corporation went bankrupt, leaving oversized shells of buildings in largely unpopulated areas of big cities across the country. Now the building in Los Angeles was populated by only Clarence and a multitude of fauna that defied description and classification. Clarence considered himself one of the vermin; that is how he justified his tenuous relationship with his various brethren. He lived on the third floor, figuring that it was too dangerous to live on the first two floors due to the easy access for the less than ambitious criminals that seemed to overwhelm the city, and the two floors above him seemed an awful long walk upstairs for an out of shape jazzman.
The door into the building was covered with graffiti. It seems that taggers “flyboy” and “dope” were having an eternal war over the door’s surface since each name was crossed out in red at least seven times. “Dope” was the last to hit the door, but, Clarence assumed, should humanity last long enough, “flyboy” would be around again to mark his name in an absurd monument to his ever-lasting demise.
He walked up the staircase, the cement steps echoing against his Rocket-thong boots. The metal heals sounded funky in the empty stairwell dusted with rat turds. He sang a bit to test his toad-like voice.
“Ah, man,” Clarence said when he looked at the door at the landing of the third floor. It was grayish blue, like a corpse, but still hopping and alive. There were seven locks on the door, each made by a different manufacture. He pulled his key ring with seven keys on it. Selecting the middle key, he inserted it into the middle lock and listened to the vibration of metal rasping against metal. Turning the key, the sound of the tumbler was like a bass drum,
Thickump.
The tips of his finger turned the key back, hearing the reverse bass drum effect,
Pmmmmukith.
He turned the key back and forth time after time, establishing a rhythm that went,
Thick-ump pmmmmik-ith Thick pmmmm Thick-ump Pmmmik-ith.
Finally, his finger got sore from turning the key. He selected the sixth key on the ring and slid it into the keyhole. It sounded like a tiny xylophone:
Thr-ii-i-i-i-i-ip.
He tried pulling the key back out, but the sound was not pleasant at all.
Each key entered its given lock as Clarence assessed the sound and wondered what this obsession of sound and feel was for.
What weird, Darwinian fatal flaw was this mania with noise that would inevitably lead to the end of his family line? Who could live with this fanatic? Who could swing with this monkey?
None but a lunatic herself.
When he opened the door, the emptiness was transparent yet all encompassing. He stepped into it and added to it. The diseased world was over as he entered his studio and walked to his guitar, plugging it into the discola recorder. Without tuning the guitar, he played the opening riffs of “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone (And Baby I am as Gone as Anyone You Ever Seen).” The guitar seemed to not need tuning.
He set the guitar down, picked up an electronic bass, and virtually mimicked the guitar riffs.
He put down his bass guitar and sat at his drum set, setting down an incredibly attractive rhythm no drum machine could replicate.
He stood from the drums, picked up a mic already plugged into the discola, and began singing.
After each instrument had played its part, he overlaid all of the imperfect sounds, synching them up passably.
And that was it, man. As simple as pie.
#
The song was technically perfect, yet he somehow hated it. It made him laugh as he set the electronic cassette into the compuset. He thought he’d change the title from “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone (And Baby I am as Gone as Anyone You Ever Seen)” to “The Last Song I Ever Wrote (And Baby is it Ever a Piece of Shit).” He played the song one last time in the compuset, and, though it seemed to be his final testament to the earth, he sent the song through the electronic morass to the central brain of the music montage and gallery known as AGENT. He thought it somewhat absurd that his last work would be a shitty song to a shitty world with a shitty future; but it also seemed appropriate that the song was super-square since his whole life had been a record of disappointments and underachievement. Those were what seemed to him to be the twin inheritances of humanity.
Clarence came from a long line of jazzmen and women going back hundreds of years. Matter of fact, the name Monk and the name Jazz had gone together for as long as there was either one. That was a long time. Maybe all time. None of his ancestors with the exception of one were known in this world. That was okay with him, but Clarence had none of the marketable qualities that were required of him to b a productive member of society, and that forced him into creating songs in order to make a living. Clarence knew that he could sell the song that he had just written. That’s why the recording went over the compuset; but he did not ever want his name to be associated with the song or any of the others like it with which he made a living. The return address for these songs was not that of Clarence ‘The Marvelous’ Monk, which was what went on all of the recordings that he was proud of and could not sell. These usually came back with rejections and questions from the recording companies that ranged from: “Although we appreciate your talents as a musician and writer, we regret that we cannot possibly sell your work. Perhaps you could try to write something a little more marketable” to “Please do not waste our time with this garbage again. Perhaps you should think about a new line of work.” In fact, the return address actually bore the nom de plume of “Charlie ‘The Chipmunk’ Parker.” This was a name that from Clarence’s earliest childhood, he could remember his father recounting—probably inaccurately—an acidic feud between the ancient jazzmen, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker. Clarence was sure that no one would understand the allusions that he made, but, for him at the very least, he found his humor of minor amusement. He sometimes felt badly about using the great “Bird’s” name in vain, yet, most of time he didn’t care one way or the other. After all, Bird’s bones were long since dust.
Clarence put a roll of tape on the antique tape machine and played a bit of old time jazz, “The Clown” by Charles Mingus. As soon as he heard those rotund bass lines, he began to feel a bit better. He lay on his couch that faced the east. The smell in the apartment was murky and Clarence watched a cockroach the size of a Chihuahua lumber across his floor towards the kitchen.
“Close the frigrator door this time, will ya?” Clarence laughed. His voice sounded strange. Unearthly in the emptiness. He stood up and followed the roach, hoping it wouldn’t turn on him and bite one of his toes off. When he entered the kitchen, he fully expected to see the giant insect standing at the refrigerator silhouetted in the glow of the overhead light that had stopped working years ago. Course, that didn’t happen. Clarence reached to the top of the fridge, pulled down the bottle of scotch, twisted the top off, took a swig, then another, then another, found a glass, and carried both the glass and bottle with him back to the couch.
Lying down on the couch, he couldn’t shake the feeling of mildew and moon-dust settling all around him. The smell was like dirty hair in the rain.
“It is gone, baby,” he said to fill the emptiness as he sipped the scotch from the glass. The bottle was open and on the ground beneath him. “Most likely be dead before I wake up, but, just in case, might as well wake up with a hangover.” He slugged the whiskey down and poured another, feeling the gentle burn in his empty stomach. The tiredness, the disappointment, the emptiness got to him just as the sun began to rise on the city.
He slept.
When Clarence woke, the sun was beginning to go down. How long had he slept? Sunrise to sundown? First thing he thought was, Still alive, huh? Well, now what’s to do? The second thing he thought was, Damn if my head don’t hurt.
He stood from his couch, tripped over the bottle that he had left there, and fell to the ground. Laughing to himself, he looked at the streams of dust reflecting in the falling light of the first day. The ray of dust and light shot into his forehead. He lay there a moment and felt the warmth, wondering what it would look like, should all of the light of that old sun be falling on him. He listened for the sound of it frying his brain and he heard the tinklings of the first day that was turning to night.
#
This was a day of decision for Clarence. Maybe a day of rebirth. Maybe not.
When he stumbled to the kitchenette, a hastily thrown together room made up of old tin pots and mason jars, he took an inventory of the cupboard: three slices of bread, one moldy and two still good; two cans of chicken soup; a can of pickled beets; a half bag of spaghetti with nothing to make sauce out of; an empty box of pancake batter; a quarter-filled bottle of vodka; two dead roaches; and a jar of peanut butter and jelly mix.
He took out the bread along with the peanut butter and jelly and began spreading the oddly mixed goo across the flavorless white bread. When he was done, he brought the sandwich to his studio where his compuset was flashing and dancing annoyingly.
Taking a bite of the sandwich, he said, “Nothing better than peebee N’ jay.” He swallowed half the sandwich, realizing that he hadn’t eaten in some time. Not since yesterday afternoon. Surprised, he took a smaller bite. There wasn’t much left. He thought, Got to ration the joy, boy.
“No wonder you got so knocked-out this morning on such a little, itty bit of drink. No wonder. Should eat if you’re going to drink, man.”
He thought of turning on the vid screen, but decided against it. For all he knew, the world was falling apart as he ate the last of his savory-sweet sandwich. The compuset was flashing brighter and quicker in frustrating silence. Clarence had long since deactivated the sound module that was responsible for the audio notification of incoming messages. An oddity of modern law was that it was illegal to do so. He just could never find a sound notifier whose buzz did anything other than annoy him. Even so, if he continued to ignore the thing, pretty soon, the compuset would send out bright pulses of light like a strobe effect that Clarence could not ignore. He brushed the crumbs off of his lap and stood.
“Well, nothing’s all that important, now is it?” He walked to the compuset and scanned the message. “I guess it is.”
It was a notice from his agent, meaning the preprogrammed set of computerized values called AGENT. AGENT stood for the “Artists Guarantee to End Negotiations Team,” and it had signed Clarence and The Premodernists to a 60/30 deal with the usual frontal fee for “You Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone (And Baby, I’m as Gone as Anyone You Ever Seen.” Clarence acknowledged the notice and accepted the contract without reading the details. It was all standard; AGENT never negotiated past Clarence’s predetermined limitations. He then checked his bank and found that the frontal fee had already been deposited.
“Guess I’m gonna have to go shopping now.” His tongue ran over his pink gums, tasting the last cling of peanut butter
Clarence left his building, hailed a cab for what was perhaps the first time in ten years, and asked the cabbie, “So, what’s the news, budd-o?”
“Same business, different day.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing new in the world?” Clarence wondered how anything could be the same. “No missing flying objects or anything?”
“Listen, budd-o, I just don’t want to talk about none of that moon nonsense. I’m just about tired of it, you know?” The cabbie turned to Clarence, his eyes ringed red like an amthropmophinetic freak. “All I hear all day is, Did you see? Where was you? Why with her? I’m just so tired of it, you know? Just let it go, budd-oes.” He turned back in order to hammer punch his steering wheel. “We all got to go on with our lives, like the president says. The economy’ll suffer if all of us don’t just get back to work. It’s patriotic to work. It’s patriotic to produce; to spend. That’s why I’m on the road. Doing my duty.” He seemed to be convincing himself of something that he didn’t believe. “You hear me? Just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Alright, man, don’t know whose cock you got stuck down your throat, but it ain’t mine and it ain’t me that put it there.”
“No no no no no. Not me that’s the problem. Not me, at all, budd-o. It’s you moonies that’s the problem. You moonies just don’t shut up.”
So this is what we got to look forward to, huh? End of the world and you’re spending it with this freak.
“Listen, man, don’t know what this ‘moonies’ crap’s all about, but you got me pegged in the wrong hole. What the hell’s a moonie, man?” Clarence stopped and thought of the moon, where it was going and what it was going to do when it got there. “You going to give me a lift to the market or what?” Clarence said in his most irate voice, and, yet, it seemed sadly weak, like a child not used to yelling.
“Yeah, yeah. I just want to make sure that you ain’t going to talk to me about…”
“Ain’t going to talk to you about nothing, man. Just get this jalopy going and you and I don’t say a word until it’s time to drop me off and then all you’re going to say is, ‘Thank you, sir, that’ll be twelve,’ and I’ll say, ‘Thanks, man. You keep the change.’ And then we’ll part ways like happy little oysters in a stew. Got it, man?”
The cabbie’s tight shoulders released their tension. He engaged the gears and they took off down the street. The red lights streaked across Clarence’s window. He held his mouth and watched L.A. slip by with its bums and its old brownstones built hundreds of years ago yet still standing like a dead forest all brown and crunchy and waiting to fall in a forgotten desert. The cab didn’t stop for neither reds nor yellows nor greens. The driver just zipped right through intersections and Clarence was quiet, almost not caring, just wanting to get to the market and spend his fee for the song before the fools who bought it had second thoughts. The cabbie’s breathing was raspy and pink like his eyes.
Something’s wrong with him, Clarence thought, but he was silent.
The city ratcheted by, making a clicking, rhythmic beat as the cab hit each bump in the road like a bass drum.
Ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom bomp bomp booomp ba-boom.
Clarence caught the rhythm. The cabbie’s breaths were the lyrics. Raspy, human cords.
Husch husch husch uchmmm.
Clarence looked out the window and searched the sky, but the moon was gone. There, there was the rhythm again. He listened to the cab’s engine cough up its gaseous exhaust, sounding like the cabbie, and the two were a chorus.
Husch husch husch uchmmm wua-wua-wua-wua-wuah wuah Husch husch husch uchmmm wua-wua-wua-wua-wuah wuah.
Occasionally, the cabbie would sound a guttural clearance of phlegm deep in his chest like a sounding humpback whale, and then the car would cough a bit of exhaust in response.
Hua-auch poua-auhp.
Clarence held his breath to hear the composition. He held his breath until his brown face turned blue. He got it. In his head, he got it. The tuneless and the rhythmic sounds of discordant life turned shallow and deep like a drowning child scratching for the filmy membrane at the top of the water that marked the junction between life and death. He closed his eyes to the tune and knew that he had one more song left in him. One more song that made sense to the rest. The song of the cabman and the cab that went:
Hua-auch poua-auh
Ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom bomp bomp booomp ba-boom
Hua-auch poua-auhp
Bimp, kuh-bu-kuhkuhkuhkuh hhecsh hhecsh bimp
kuh-bu-kuhkuhkuhkuh hhecsh hhecsh bimp
kuh-bu-kuhkuhkuhkuh
Hua-auch poua-auhp
Husch husch husch uchmmm wua-wua-wua-wua-wuah wuah
Husch husch husch
uchmmm
wua-wua-wua-wua-wuah wuah
Hua-auch poua-auhp.
The cab and the driver exchanged breaths of exhaustion and despair and disrepair. The two orchestrated the sounds of lifetimes together. Clarence wished he had been in the cab at the beginning, when both cabbie and cab were new and fresh, their breaths clean as they rocketed through the city, painting the night red and green like Polowski’s paintbrushes on a canvas of Los Angeles. But that wasn’t the song that he was hearing. That song was done and no one had captured it; yet here was a song that was equally beautiful, but one that was tragic and done. The song of the death of a man and his cab, the death of a city and a world. But with death…
With death, what? Huh? Clarence thought. Peace? Bullshit, budd-oe. With death comes death and that is it, man. Remember mama? Remember daddy? No peace in all that. Just pain.
The cab stopped, the rhythm stopped. Clarence sat still, eyes closed. He saw the end of the song that he felt needed no end. And then it was perfect. The only words to the song came at the end. An epic dénouement. The perfect untying of the knot.
“Thank you, sir. That will be twelve,” the cabbie said derisively.
Clarence stepped out of the cab, gave the driver a fifteen credit, and said, “Thanks, man. Keep the change.”
Clarence thought, We’re just oysters in a stew.
#
Jill felt the sun and it was good. The smell of gas and meat came from the street, but it wasn’t gas at all, it was Dexter Drake’s chemically tainted sweat. She kept her eyes closed and instinctually clamped her thighs together against something that was out there. She stretched, feeling her muscles taught as truck springs. She thought of Don Quixote and smiled as she stretched fully before opening her eyes. She was shocked, not by the cold and not by the fact that she had slept on the steps of her building, but she was shocked when she saw the staring and lost blue eyes of the vagrant on the step above her. She sat up, prepared to defend herself.
The bum cleared his throat; he was a huge man, towering over Jill, but looking so small that he was harmless. “Dib be…dib be mak lub?” the vagrant asked, his lips trembling.
“Huh?” she asked. She stood while the bum stayed seated, his pants dark blue at the crotch.
“Dib be mak lub?”
It took Jill no more than a moment to realize what the bum had said, although the seeming absurdity of the question along with his lisp made it seem unlikely. She almost laughed until she saw the beauty of the old man’s eyes. The depths of tragedy and pain were made lovely and sad. She realized that if she looked too deeply into them there was a possibility of what he proposed. He was beautiful beneath the shell of stink and loss.
“No, I’m afraid we did not make love,” she said, surprised to hear the humor in her voice.
The old man’s face washed over with relief. “Goob.”
Jill brushed her bottom of the dirt and gravel. “Good?” she asked, strangely insulted.
“Mary woul neber hab forgibben me again ib be dib mak lub.”
“Mary is your woman?”
The bum nodded. “Mary ib my lub, my live.”

Scott Underwood Approximately 84,000 words
5801 E. 2nd St.
Long Beach, CA 90803
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All Things Great and Growing

Overture

Dexter Drake lay in a bed in a hospital in a dying city at the edge of the Pacific. Grayish, bloody goo—pureed filet mignon—pumped into his stomach. He breathed easily. Oxygen flooded his brain. He had entered the door to the labyrinth. He was lost, but he was no more lost than he had been in life. He would never find his way out.
He heard the horn, and, although he let out a farting “har har” at the end of it all, that horn haunted him.

Book 1

Clarence Monk, Jill Saragosa, and the Moon

Chapter 1
A Slice of Cheese

Jill Saragosa pressed record on the reel-to-reel tape recorder. She said, “Clarence stood on the fifty yard line when the moon disappeared…”
#
Clarence stood on the fifty yard line of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He was alone surrounded by more than one hundred and seventy thousand other nameless faces. He had come early to make sure that he got a good view of the destruction of the moon; The Coliseum was the place to be. This day, this, perhaps, final day for life on Earth, marked another important occasion in Clarence’s life: this was the first in six thousand eight hundred and seventy eight days (I won’t bore you with the hours, minutes, and seconds of the thing) that Clarence did not pick up his horn. He had always thought that on the day of “The” Apocalypse, he would be blowing that horn loud and proud like an angel in the army of God; but, the fact was, on this day, he was just too depressed to do anything other than mope.
Even though a good three quarters of the population inhabiting the Western United States were watching the astronomical event first-hand and nearly the entire human race would view it live or on reruns flowing through their compusets, the moon’s disappearance freaked Clarence out in ways that many of his fellow men and women could not understand. He found himself alone at a time when he shared so much with his simian brothers and sisters.
His breath steamed in the cool Californian night. Christmas was right around the corner, but there would probably never be another Christmas again. He watched the steam exhale from the stands surrounding him. Hundreds of thousands of faces in the crowd, most of which were bundled up in the absurd California way; overdressed in pea coats and parkas, gloves and scarves and hand warmers because it had, indeed, fallen below sixty degrees. To Clarence, this group appeared to be a psychedelic herd of penned-in herbivores waiting their slaughter, breathing their last breaths selfishly-heavy on a cold, Midwestern night. But, to contrast this vision, there were a few mostly naked individuals with slogans painted on their bodies as if they were insane, Rust Belt football fans. These few added quite a bit of character to the mostly conservative citizens of posthistoric Los Angeles.
There was hardly any room in the stands or on the field. The over one-hundred thousand seats in the stands had long ago been reserved for the city’s elite; while, for the less privileged, the field had been opened up on a first-come first-serve basis the day of the destruction. Clarence was one of the plebian hordes and, looking around himself, he wondered how and why he had gone there in the first place. He never trusted crowds, never felt at home as part of them. Matter of fact, most of the time Clarence felt self-conscious unless he was alone at home with his horn and a glass of scotch whiskey.
Feeling the sweat of claustrophobia dripping down the small of his back, Clarence was grateful when there was a disturbance in the crowd to break his anxiety. His eyes followed the sounds until the mostly shoulder-to-shoulder mass of people was split by a particularly rotund, naked gentleman barreling through the crowd like a prized bull being run to slaughter; folks were equally disturbed and amused at the nude man who was so plump that his penis was completely engulfed by the overhang of his gut. He had, “i needs me a slice of cheese,” painted on his belly and he ran streaking through the crowd that parted like the sea before Moses. As he ran by within feet of Clarence, the distinct odor of sweaty-beer trailed him. The streaker finally collapsed in a drunken heap no more than a dozen feet from Clarence who looked down at the man and then up to see a brief glimpse of a woman.
She was looking at him. Her crooked grin looked like a tiger smiling at a rabbit, but, instead of a mane, she had longish brown hair split down the center of her scalp, on each side was a loosely tied pigtail. She was holding onto the hand of a giant of a man. He looked like he should have a Viking helmet on. The crowd closed around the fat and naked drunkard, cutting off Clarence’s view of the woman.
Before long, a mother and her child stepped atop the fat man as if he were Mount McKinley. The man, dead or drunk, seemed to pay this extra weight no mind at all.
Folks were excited in the stadium. The crowd around Clarence seemed so funky and mundane. He heard them talking and he found it strange that he was so bored that on this last day he was eavesdropping on other people’s conversations, but he was doing it anyway because he was sad and bored with all of this nonsense. Looking around him, it was clear that there was no escape from the stadium.
One old woman was telling a middle-aged man, “So, it’s finally coming. This was God’s wrath. I hope you made your peace with The Man.”
“I did, mama.”
“Better of. Don’t want no boy of mine going to the hot place. God’s wrath. That’s what it is.”
A man, obviously retorting to the God-woman, said, “You can go to hell, lady. Stop blaming God. This is the way nature works. One species dies and another is born. It’s our turn.”
The God woman said, “You going to hell now. Praise God.”
A short haired woman asked no one in particular, “We knew that it was happening. So why didn’t they send up the nukes?”
The crowd was becoming anxious, really, bored to the point of violence with all of this waiting.
“Why don’t that god damned meteor come already?” Clarence said to himself.
“Ain’t there nothing to be done?” a woman asked him as if they had been having a conversation all along. She had trimethadrine rotted teeth and a head that looked like it was a ball of cotton candy on the end of a stick.
Clarence thought, She’s been spending her whole life killing herself and now she wants to live. It’s a wonder. It’s a wonder. He said nothing to her.
A man, maybe twenty-five with a beautiful Ashcrom suit, a four karat diamond ring, and a diamond and ruby studded, platinum Swiss watch worth more than Clarence made in five years (which, really, wasn’t dick), said something to the woman on his side.
“What? I can’t hear you, darling,” she said. She was blonde, wearing a vintage Sylania evening gown; an outlawed mink stole (Clarence wondered aloud, “Why is that animal dead but eating himself out like a cat with a dirty ass?”); gold and diamond jewelry on every digit and, Clarence was sure, near every orifice; and a diamond and ruby studded tiara that matched the man’s watch.
The man replied loudly, his white-capped teeth snarling like a five thousand dollar guard dog, “I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m tired of this world anyway.’”
Other things that Clarence heard were, “Can you believe it? We are sooo lucky to be living at this moment,” said by a young mother to her five year old son, “Well, that weed sure did the trick,” said by an elderly man to his middle-aged daughter, “Feels like I’m already dead, but in a good way. Not in a flying through space and my head’s about to pop way,” said by a teenaged Neuropunk to his Neuropunk-but-pretty girlfriend.
The crowd was agitated and it was getting more so as those fatal minutes ticked on by. Small skirmishes broke out as more and more bodies packed the field. Police were stationed all around the stadium and field, but they, for the most part, didn’t give a shit in a manure yard.
Clarence’s nerves were twitching, doing a funky sort of boogaloo-bop. There was no hope, yet his body seemed to be reacting to this doom with an overcharge of survival energy. As his fellow human beings began to tear at each other, doing what evolution told them to do when they were trapped and their lives were threatened, Clarence about joined them in a primal rage that he had never felt. He felt dirty and animalistic, like a mink with his sharp teeth imbedded in its own ass for eternity while being wrapped around some infinitely banal twat’s neck.
And just when it seemed like he would blow his rage upon the nearest person, the lights of L.A., the lights of the entire West Coast of the United States of America, shut off. For the first time in several centuries, darkness embraced the earth, unseen stars blanketed the sky, the moon sat high and alone, and Los Angeles was silent.
#
Jill Saragosa was also standing in the crowd at The Coliseum; her hand was in another man’s. His name was Tom and he was very sweet. He leaned over and whispered in Jill’s ear, “There’s no one else that I ever want to be with. If it all ends tonight, I’m happy to be with you.”
Jill smiled and patted Tom’s thick chest. She didn’t say anything, but she thought, What the hell am I doing with my life?
She watched the sea of the crowd split in half as a naked, fat man with some illegible lettering painted on his belly ran through. For a moment, she saw a pleasant looking man in blue jeans and burgundy sweater. He had a hipster sort of beard that pointed at the end, but above that beard was a set of soft brownish-red lips being gnawed apart by his own teeth. Then there were the brown eyes, eyes like the family’s Golden Retriever’s. Those eyes watched the fat man fall with none of the shocked amusement of the crowd. Then he looked at her and she smiled at him. The sea of humanity instantly enclosed onto itself again like the wound that a bullet makes. She could no longer see him, but she heard all of the same conversations that Clarence had. She was so close that it seemed as if she could smell him.
She thought, Tom, I’m sorry, but I really really really don’t feel like I should be spending the last moments of my life with you. You see, I just saw a man that I would rather be with. I just saw him, and, Tom, really, he is very beautiful. He’s dark-skinned. I know. I know that you can’t help your skin color. It’s not really that anyways. It’s something that you can’t do anything about. It’s something else, Tom. Something that you can never be.
Tom, it’s not you, it’s me.
Well, that’s not true, either. And we’re being honest here, right?
It’s not him or me.
It’s you. It’s you, Tom. Mr. Tom I’m-so-perfect-it-makes-me-want-to-throw-up. It’s all your fault, Tom. It’s your fault for not being him. For being so god damned perfect that you are inhuman that you can say, “If it all ends tonight, I’m happy to be with you” and mean it. That’s what’s so horrible. You mean it.
Jill held onto Tom’s hand as she thought these thoughts. This wasn’t the first time that her thoughts took control of her rationality, but she had thought that she had tamed this unrelenting voice.
You’re such a whore, Jill. Here this man would do anything for you. Anything. And yet, here you are, a whore. He’s sweet, Jill. You should love him. You should say you love him. You should fake it if you have to. Whatever, but do it now, Jilly. Your life is wasting.
She held onto Tom’s hand. He was strong and handsome and sweet. Everything that a princess should want.
But nothing that Jill wanted.
I’m crawling out of my hide like that weasel around that twisted bitch’s neck over there.
Tom held her hand. Sweet Tom. Tall Tom. Rich Tom. Strong Tom. He held her hand and smiled because he was going to die holding onto her hand. He was happy.
I wonder if he would notice if I chewed my hand off at the wrist like that weasel over there around that twisted bitch’s neck must have when it got caught in the trap?
She laughed.
Tom looked down and smiled more. He said, “I know what you’re thinking. How weird? How strange? We’re all going to die soon and I am so happy at this moment to be with you.” He had completely misinterpreted her laugh.
Jill felt like she was going to begin to tear her hair out. A howl was building in her breast. Her nerves were doing the mamba. The animal in her was screaming at her to kick Tom in his enormous gonads and run.
Anything to get away.
An instant before she let loose on the forward thrust kick that she learned in the predraft self-defense training school at the Warsaw War Center, the lights of L.A. and the whole West Coast of the United States of America went black.
The shock of darkness postponed Jill’s cruelty towards the untenably perfect Tom.
The crowd was silent.
A child squalled and was instantly silenced by the palm of a motherly hand.
An old man coughed twenty yards away.
A young, drunk man farted loudly and said, “Jeez, Ernie,” to his friend next to him.
No one laughed.
A rat scavenged among the crowd that had disturbed his midnight mass.
Not a woman screamed.
No one knew what would happen. All they knew was that as soon as the asteroid hit the moon, the human race would begin to die; whether that death was quick or slow seemed to be the only question, a question unanswerable to anyone other than God. But Jill had other questions, like, what the hell was she doing with her life and why was she holding this man’s hand on this last night of her life. It was stupid.
Just like everything I’ve ever done, she thought.
#
All of the lights of Los Angeles were extinguished. The darkness was punctuated by the stars and the moon and the satellites that beat through the curtain of smog. Shooting stars striped the sky, forerunners to the planetoid that would smash the moon, and, most probably, the earth. The lights were out and the moon glowed like a drunkard’s face beneath a streetlight.
As the clock struck 12:39 am, there was a slight, galactic whisper. It was like the breath of a sleeping newborn child as its parents listen, unable to sleep for fear that that breath would stop, even momentarily.
It was the first full moon of December.
It was the last full moon in the history of Earth.
No one really saw the nearly planet-sized “planetoid” XXX319385, otherwise known as “The Cheese Grater,” as it approached Earth’s full moon. It hit the dark side of the moon, approaching from the oceanic darkness of space. Oh, sure, there were certainly spaceships sent up to monitor its approach, but from Earth one only saw the results, which were horrifying enough.
“The Cheese Grater” had completed its long, 4.8 billion year orbit through the universe, a product of “The Big Bang,” it had been propelled into a strangely huge orbit that circumnavigated much of existence, slowly wearing down into an orb approximately the size of the moon itself.
“The Cheese Grater” slammed into the Earth’s moon, sending awful chills of fear and regret throughout the world’s population.
The universe itself felt nothing as the insignificant moon of an insignificant planet in an insignificant solar system in an insignificant galaxy was sent out of orbit. The only significant thing in the whole string of events ended up being the sighs of fear and regret released by the singularly unique species that could, in fact, sigh in fear and regret with the recognition of their disappointed possibility.
The moon was there, shining and gentle. The crowd in The Coliseum stood silent. The moment was coming soon. So soon. No one bothered to look down at their feet. It was time. No one closed their eyes tight. All were sure that it would be the last significant moment for any and all of them. A child screamed, but quieted quickly. It squirmed and cooed and held its breath. It tried everything. The sense of the impending (what, if not doom?) was intriguing to the child and it tested the silence in ways that no one but it noticed. Finally, in frustration at the lack of attention it was being given, it fell asleep against its mother’s breast, the breast that had fed it up to this point and the breast that now pounded with an unbearable thump similar to the pulsing of a tribal drum.
The moon spasmodically twitched and seemed to expand for a moment. The crowd gasped in silent terror. All the breaths halted at once like a universal hiccup. Hearts swooned, old men dropped to the ground, silently clutching their chests. Many did not survive the shock of the initial emotional impact. They were hardly noticed as they fell amongst the discarded hot dog wrappers and soda containers. There was no sound. Just a silent echo.
A corona of dust and sand exploded into a halo around the moon. The class C planetoid was obliterated by the harder rock of the moon. The halo of dust and debris lit up in the full moon’s glow, seeming to shine like the hope and mystery that had been sapped from the human consciousness for the past several decades of poverty, war, pollution, and famine. The crowd forgot to breathe as the moon, the earth’s silent partner for nearly 4.5 billion years, was shoved from out of its comfortable orbit and into space towards an inevitable crash with the giant planet of Jupiter.
The crowd watched. Although everyone anticipated what would happen should the moon explode towards the Earth, this explosive movement out to space seemed to bring up all sorts of new fears. Had the planetoid been on a trajectory that was off by the astronomical equivalent of a pussy-hair, the moon would have been an eight-ball in the Earthly corner pocket.
Game over, baby.
It was pretty much surly a nearly instant death for humanity had it been the focus of the collision of either the moon or The Cheesegrater. It would have been like a combo pool shot—Cheesegrater to the moon to the North American continent—but now, with this change in plans, now with extinction still assured, but the time of that death still a question, now all sorts of new questions arose.
Now what was to happen?
It was certain that humanity had the privilege of watching the oceans’ tides end. With the exception of some minor solar tides, the lunar tidal calendar was now null and void.
What else?
Would the Earth suffocate as the algae of the oceans that relied on the ebb and flow of tides begin to die?
What else?
Surely starvation? Why? you ask. Because that’s what they said on the news.
What else?
Re-freezing polar regions seemed a likely outcome and, with it, the Earth’s axis was sure to become wobbly like a top.
What else?
Expanding rainforests as carbon levels rose.
What else?
No more romantic evenings staring at the moon.
What else?
No one knew and I ain’t telling.

This is the edited version of the novel All Things Great and Growing. It is a love story taking place in a Los Angeles of the future in which Earth’s moon has been knocked out of orbit. We follow Clarence Monk and Jill Saragosa as they develop a love affair obssessed with music and the Earth. As humanity continues to follow its self-destructive path, these two find a sanctuary in a glass building where they establish a new Eden, if only in thier delusions.

I will be posting chapter installments on a weekly basis. Commentary is appreciated.

William Faulkner’s Nobel Speech…Please read the rest:

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this.”

and

“The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

You sang that Neruda poem
As the ancients
Of Machu Picchu
Unclenched their stony fists.

Your voice resonates
With the ghosts surrounding us,
Yet, I think that song
Is all that is needed.

I memorize the breath of your hair
As Pedro says:
“All there is in life is poetry, art, music…
The rest is bullshit.”

But I see more.
Sometimes.

I see wet bodies
Atop beds of flowers
Filleted by the pleasant squeeze
Of The Gardener’s shears.

I see the storm coming
To this desert flower.
The rain falls into the sand and on the street
Like kisses to a dry, naked belly.

I see poetry and paintings and drunks together
Beneath these megalopolitan shadows
As you reminisce on what was, is,
And what might be hereafter.

I hear you sing of the ancient rocks
That are unclenching their fists a world away.

#

 In this country of white light

—blinding and shockingly cruel—

The rains of winter will give way to the droughts of summer.

A brief spring and then…

What?

More of the same.

#

These are the gifts that she is offering:

Another season; another lie; another nail; another unwanted song.

Pleasure and its shocking lashes.

The unwanted, recognized rationalizations

Told with the smile of willful ignorance

While I foolishly drown

In the deluge of the detached night.

#

When I look at the palm trees of this city

I see a life wracked by this passionless wind

That disguises itself in a fine body and a willing pussy.

Stupid decisions made for a foolish woman

Because of my own adolescent desire to save someone,

Anyone.

Seeds planted in the fertile,

Passionless soil of her womb

Project these lovely roots

That I will cultivate with joy and sorrow in her stead.

#

This city has eaten me with its comforts and pleasures.

These children have consumed what was left of my pride.

This woman has fucked me with her naive delusions.

A rage amounting to impotency overwhelms me as we wail away on each other

Like sodomites in the throes of some final judgment.

No pillars of salt.

No peace at the edge of the desert.

# 

And I asked for it all.

This is a strange place to be.

There are times when the ocean is smooth and glassy; all seems right. These days, I feel like sliding into Christy, soft and slippery. A summer swell; a flooding of fluids. The swaying biting pleasure of lovemaking, or fucking, or what have you. An oceanic lushness of passions and embraces; voices speaking a language deeper and older than those uttered through human lips. A kelp forest of movement and life. The sighing of water slipping from shore. These days seem like small breakers peeling off of a point-break, wedging towards a smooth rock and sand beach where the kids are playing. Darby, my eight year old daughter, keeps her head down, searching—always searching—for something interesting and right; always looking for another piece of the evolutionary puzzle that will help her understand the world and her place in it. Then there is Buster, my one year old, who also looks at the sand, but he is looking for something so different than Darby. He is looking for those aberrancies, those things that don’t belong and stray from what should be. He picks them up—whatever they may be: rocks, seaweed, shells, cigarette butts. The first sense he satisfies is touch. He feels them for his catalog of textures. Then he looks them over, wondering, not knowing, but adding to his sensory knowledge. And finally, he puts them in his mouth to taste them out. He tastes the life and he grins knowing that the catalog is filling up with textures, images, and tastes. A lifetime of exploration and experience that ends only when those things end.

Then there are the times when the south wind rips at the surface, shredding the seeming calm with a cold that repulses me. There is no lovemaking here; at best, there is a passionless distance, a cold safety. Nothing is smooth, nothing soft. The wind-shredded waves barrel through, rolling up everything that does not have a firm foundation on the seafloor. Those swells reach for me, seeming to say, “One day, you won’t be watching, and then you’ll also come unattached. You will no longer be rooted to this thing that you have placed so much confidence in. This body, this mind—useless in comparison to my numbing power. You, too, will end up on that rocky beach, broken and unrecognizable from what you thought you knew of yourself and your love. And those kids, I will take them with me and they, too, will be left on the shore. Because you decided that there was something in me that is not there. You fooled yourself. I made no promises. I am incapable.” The kids aren’t here now. They are somewhere else, almost protected from the violence of my self-delusion. But they aren’t safe. They aren’t free from the threat. They just don’t recognize it yet. They don’t see the old bitch, the bountiful mother that plans both their sustenance and deprivation, as only a mother sea can. It has always been her foremost rule: That which she mindlessly creates, she destroys with equal unconsciousness. Her devastation is never out of anger or malice, it is simply her nature.

I find myself on smooth days, looking with something like clarity, wondering when the sea will turn, when the body will become cold, when the lushness will give way to desiccation. I still decide that it is a good day, yet one of a limited number. You see, the decision has been made. It has had to be made. It is the nature of the churning sea that I have often tried to fight over this past decade. These are the moments when I have appeared different than I am. I know—have always known—that it is foolishness to hope to dam the bitch up, just as it is foolishness to protect those kids from her. To do so seems arrogant, yet, arrogance is a warm delusion. So, when does this fluctuation between warmth and cold become acceptable? At times it seems okay. Why wouldn’t it be? The coldness will always be there. It is always waiting. Why not take the pleasure for now until she acknowledges that I am often admiring her abuse? Why not accept the happy lies, the ignorant turning of an ocean that will not be nourishing forever, but for now seems acceptably calm? Is it because I know that she will rip apart everything that holds her dear? Is it because I know that those who I love are even more subject to her than me? I think that mostly it comes down to knowing that I will have to turn my back on her, to walk away from the beauty that I have always admired because, even though there are more calm days than the others, her numbing hunger for selfhood will inevitably leave us to reconstruct that which she destroys.

And we will love her anyway, just as we love the sea that will always reclaim what it has given.

The unsung hero. Archtypal fool in the modern world. What’s left?