I’ll never forget

when I first saw my brother.

 

We were sitting on the bed.

It was a part of the process,

my sister said

nudging my brother along.

He laughed nervously,

it was the kind of laugh you’d get

sitting in to the principal’s office

for something you knew was bad

but did anyway, and it’s funny, because

you knew you’d end up right where

you are, deep down, and it’s also

funny because you know this isn’t

who you are or who you wanted

to be, at least not for a lifetime--

a moment, maybe.

Are we what we have allowed

ourselves to become, or

is it the coming back that counts?

And what about he who is

so far he can no longer  see

the shore from which he came?

I wondered.

 

It was the white jacket that gave him away

when I first heard the story.

Though looking back, I don’t even know if

he was wearing one for sure.

Thinking about it, it would be pretty stupid,

and my brother’s not the stupid type,

not even when he has a good excuse.

Maybe that’s how thirteen years passed

without even a raised eyebrow, a hand on

the shoulder and a concerned word in the corner.

White coat removed, I guess when you’re

a regular, these things come up.

Business is never just business.

A whore is never just a whore,

especially if you’re a regular,

and sometimes even when you’re not.

But no matter what though,

He stuck out like a sore thumb

In those back alleys where

You only went if you were crazy or

 unfixed, looking to survive

(whatever that means),

Where he was, it only meant one thing.

 

I didn’t do much asking.

I took what I could get and put

the pieces together as best I could.

The cocaine arrest, the pills to come down.

He didn’t know how else to get through

the days…and I guess,

after fucking up long enough, this

was his only chance to get back on track,

be what we he knew he could be,

get into the Ivy school (the man

my mother’s friend once said would make

one helluva mechanic). Boy did she

bite her lip. And here he is, out of med school,

almost done with a residency so grueling

he’d fall asleep at the wheel on the way home.

 

“I wasn’t built for this kind of work,”

he told me. His kids were beckoning

from downstairs. Outside, the igloo

they built last week was still standing.

You could fit five full size people in that thing,

throw a party. No snowman could compete.

It was enough to give any parent

in the neighborhood an inferiority complex.

 

I don’t know if he thought about when

it would all stop -- the cocaine, the extra prescriptions,

the secrets -- if it could, but the people in his support group

are way worse…their needle tracks deeper,

he says. One anesthesiologist even took hits

mid surgery….right there….right from

what was supposed to go to the patient.

 

And you would think it would have been worse,

finding out about the rehab facility in Florida,

the support groups demanded by the hospitals,

the urine tests. They told me he was at a residency

program in when I asked where he was at Thanksgiving.

What a cruel time to demand this kind of work,

I thought. I missed him, imagined him bringing

Pina Coladas to the patients, nurses swooning

as he walked by. I could even see pink

flamingoes through the hospital window.

In the month he was gone, he tried to break out twice.

You’d think it would have been like watching Superman

take off his spandex shell to discover all you truly

believed in is a strategic arrangement of smoke and mirrors;

spray-painted abs; thighs muscles but padded cutlets;

and after changing into flannel pajamas,

the man in the costume sits down on a lounger

with the gusto of Grandpa Joe and watches Jerry Springer

over a Swanson (extra creamy) mac and cheese.

 

But it wasn’t. It was wonderful

being there, sitting beside my two older siblings

whose adventure stories I used to tell over

campfires like Greek myths. In that moment,

I felt I was receiver of something I knew

one day would belong to me,

part of a myth that had become real

as I looked at my brother,

more whole than before he was broken.

That night the sky opened, and snow

fell from it. I remembered the first time

I saw the sky like that, my mother asked me

who I thought made the snow and with veins

pulsing with awe, I knew

it could only be my brother.

It was moving day, and one of the last things to load onto the borrowed truck was the full length mirror that had lived upon a door for so many years.

We pried it from its ancient perch, and two of us carried it through the house, stepping with light feet over boxes and the odd item waiting to be loaded.

Once outside, and for a reason I cannot remember, we turned it parallel to the ground so it faced the sky above.

To look into the depths of that glassy, glossy surface was to astound the mind, as the sky above was now captured, in its entirety, and held in our hands.

I wondered then, what would happen if I released the old mirror and allowed myself to fall into it. Would I fall down into the sky?

The question took me, and I found myself letting go and watching as that sky-filled surface fell toward the ground with impossible slowness.

There was a crash of light, a shattering of the sky, and less important, the sound of a mirror as it went to pieces.

It was a thing of beauty, the breaking of the mirror, no author of ill fortune, I was sure.

And when I looked at what had happened. When I knelt down and peered into the ragged, jagged pieces of leftover mirror...

I saw that each remaining bit, no matter how large or small, yes, each one, held in it, the entirety of the sky.

His bedroom wall could have been transplanted from a teenage boudoir: pictures, collages, meticulously taped in haphazard patterns, like some two-dimensional cathedral for worshipping a minor celebrity deity -- i.e., himself.  Like the rest of the apartment, it was dim, and filled to the brim with odd treasures: carved wooden masks, velvet pillows, a framed postcard of an elephant and a beaded maroon dress strewn on a lamp. Whether despite or because of his cologne, he smelled sour.  She wondered how long it had been since he’d showered.  She guessed a week but it could have been more.  She registered the irony that someone who made a living telling people how they should look could have such little regard for grooming himself. 

“Wow, you know some pretty famous people.”

            He shrugged his shoulders coyly and laughed.  “To me they’re just friends.  I only surround myself with people who feed me spiritually, and I think I feed them as well. Spiritually, that is.”

            “Isn’t that just what friendship is?”

            “Not to most people. To you and me, maybe. Most people don’t understand it that way, or don’t look for what we look for.”

            “You mean people don’t look for a connection with their friends? That’s the whole point of friendship…”

            “Well in the fashion world, friendship is usually about glory. Even though personally, fashion has nothing to do with that.  I’ll tell you something you may not know: sometimes, when you have a fire, people can’t help but be drawn to it.  I suppose people think I have that.”

 “Yeah…” She nodded and blinked her eyes slowly to affect understanding of what he was saying.  She looked down, eyes scrolling over a dainty stainless steel watch, a birthday present her parents got her a few months ago for her sixteenth birthday.  “I guess I should call Lynn.  She’s supposed to meet us after dinner.”

            “Relax,” he said.  “We never get to be alone. I’m having a good time.”

“I think she’s expecting us to meet her soon, though.”

“Why do we always have to hang out with your friends?  Let’s just stay in tonight.  I have some new dresses I’m dying to see on you.  Let me show you…” He got up to lead the way towards the door.

“Maybe another night. . . .. Since when do you like staying in, anyway?”

“Since tonight. Since always. Why does it matter? I’m saying I want to spend time with you and you seem less than interested.”

“If I made plans with you, and someone asked me to bail on you and stay with them, I wouldn’t do that either.”

“Come on. There are always people around when I see you. Don’t you like me?”  He had this puppy dog look on his face, and she couldn’t tell if he was really hurt, or just trying to be cute.

“Of course I do,” she said, redialing Lynn.  She was only half-paying attention while checking her phone for a text.

            “I know that.” She had been thinking of something else and forgot what he was responding to. “You must know, though, that there comes a time when a friendship should be taken to the next level.  And I’m just not sure that you’re as committed to that as I am.”

            She glanced up from dialing Lynn, and was taken aback by the sudden seriousness of his demeanor.

            “Well…” he looked at her expectantly. There was a right answer.

“I really like you, …a lot…and I’m really happy you feel the same way, because this friendship does mean a lot to me, and I would never want you to think otherwise,” she said, lips straining into a wide smile.

“I’m flattered,” he kept looking down at his cuticles, inspecting them, “but I’m sorry, I can’t quite believe it.  Actions speak louder than words.”

“I don’t think I’ve done anything to make you feel that way,” she said. Her eyelids pinched together in confusion, and this made her nostrils scrunch together.  She didn’t know it, but this reminded her father of a face she made as a child, when she used to look up at the sun from the inside of the porch door.  “But I’m happy that it’s in the open now, and that you know how I feel.  Let’s get out of here. I think we could both use some fresh air.” At this, he began laughing heartily, as though she had so much to learn about this world. 

“It’s not that simple,” he said, as a grimace froze over his suddenly haggard face.  He was pacing now, stomping across his bedroom like an expectant father.  They had gone to the bedroom after having dinner with his mother.  He had wanted to show her the new sketches he had made.  She remembered him using the word “groundbreaking.” So they went in and she stood over him as he showed off his babies, long and drawn in whispers. And for some reason, it comforted her that the door was open, and she could still hear his mother, whom he had heroically rescued from the squalor of mud huts in India (as he enjoyed reminding everyone), washing dishes in the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” he said with the warmth of someone trying to be a good host, though it felt more like an order.  “Right over there.” 

He sat at his desk and gestured for her to sit on the corner of the bed.  She looked around for an alternative, and he confronted her hesitation by asking whether there was a problem.

She glanced back at the door and for a moment and entertained the thought that maybe he was interested in her as more than a friend, but discarded that theory when she looked back at him: an unmarried, incense-burning, thirty-year-old fashion guru sitting beside his sketches, legs crossed, right hand resting on his knee.  One memory, though, kept yanking at her.  Three months ago they had gone to a club to meet a few of A’s friends.  She was there with friends of her own, but everyone sat together at the black leather booth (everything looked black and leather in that light) and introduced themselves.  Just then a man in a long black coat clutching a giant camera ambled their direction.  This was a big night at Bungalow 8 -- the Hilton sisters were causing their grandfather Conrad to roll over in his grave again, and her friend Lynn said she could have sworn she saw George Clooney checking her out.  She was in the big leagues now, she thought, laughing at the high-school boys in braces and backpacks who would follow her to her locker. Just as the man aimed his lens towards them, A. put his hand on her chin, tilted it towards him, and planted a terse, shocking, unimpassioned kiss on her lips.  She felt as if a plane had hit her.

“Why did you do that?”  she asked. 

“Oh please, it was just a kiss for the camera.  That’s what makes it onto page six. Beauty like yours was meant to be exposed, but you can’t do it on your own.”

            “Oh, I understand,” she said, even though she didn’t.  She thought about it more, and began to like the sound of what he was saying.  Maybe she didn’t want to be on page six, but she always felt she had something to say to others, something different, and probably unexpected.

Something clenched at her heart from a dull and remote place, and she assured herself it was nothing.

This was a minor misunderstanding, but she’d still feel better standing. Interactions always feel more ephemeral when you stand.  You’re somehow closer to an out. 

“Can’t we can talk while I’m standing?” She affected nonchalance. 

“This is important to me,” he retorted.

She sat on the corner of the bed.  She was, after all, an adult, and if he wanted an adult conversation, she could give him that.

“This relationship has been going on for a while now, and it feels like I’m just not getting back as much as I’m giving,” he said, sitting on the chair across from her. “I’d like for you to put yourself in my situation. I can’t help but feel thrown to the waste side by you. And I think it’s time this tease came to a stop.”

 “What tease?” 

“Don’t play dumb,” he insisted. He looked disgusted, like he had just smelled something putrid.

“I’m not playing dumb.” A thought dawned on her. “Do you mean to say you’re interested in me romantically?”  The increased volume of her voice didn’t startle him. She looked at him. He was calm as the Alaskan wilderness, motionless, and then, after a brief and loaded silence, he rose and sat next to her on the bed. 

“Oh, so all of a sudden you realize what this is about…”

“I had no idea. And no offense, but I thought you were gay. I mean, you must get that a lot,” she said

            “That’s interesting.” He paused, “Did I ever tell you I was gay?  Did you ask me?”  She didn’t tell him it was obvious.  “Oh, so because I design clothes I’m gay. I see. Actually, I think my profession allows me to appreciate the female body even more. Take yours, for example...”

She didn’t think then, but her joints contorted and her bones shifted at once as if struck by lightning, as if her body has a mind of its own. Standing, she announced she was leaving and just as quickly felt an implacable force grab hold of her arm and pull her back down. A hundred-pound waif, she snapped back like elastic. The area he grabbed (just above her elbow) was tender and algae-blue the next morning but faded over two weeks, during which she wore three quarter sleeve sweaters, and fidgeted a lot with her earrings.

“I’m a man, after all, and you’re quite beautiful, and it hasn’t been easy for me to suppress how I feel towards you. Do you know how many times I imagined you naked?”

“You shouldn’t be telling me this,” she said, moving towards the door.  He beat her to the punch, planting himself face-forward in her path.

“I can make you stay,” he cooed. 

She was too frightened to scream.  In the back of her throat she felt that burning feeling that comes when you want to cry but suppress it.  She mustered a half-moaning bellow instead and he dragged her to the bed by her right arm.  Then, with the meticulous precision of a surgeon, he shifted behind her, maneuvering one arm around her chest and shoulders and covered her mouth with his other hand.  His smell was unbearable, and she could feel his oily, volcanic black hair scrape against her cheek.

He let go expecting silence. She let out a proper scream, and this time he reacted, restoring his grip on her mouth and holding her jaw with viselike fingers.  “Don’t try that with me or you’ll be sorry,” he purred into the cavern of her ear.  The knot in her throat ballooned and she felt like she was drowning.  His voice echoed fiercely inside her, birthing a hatred that has since worn many faces: denial, resentment, self-loathing, antipathy. 

He let go, warily.  “I only want to see you naked.   Do you know how happy that would make me?” he asked, as if appealing to reason.

She was frozen.

 “I just want to see you naked. I swear,” he promised, unbuttoning her sweater.  She didn’t stop him.  If he saw her naked, maybe that would be enough.  After she begged, he acceded to letting her keep on her underwear.  She had never had to beg for anything before and was crying now as he stood over her and took off his shirt and pants slowly, savoring each step of the process. She was a virgin.  He knew.  He didn’t touch her at first, but she could feel him pawing her all over with his eyes, irises moving up and down her skin, eliciting goose bumps in the wake of their path and a slight trembling that she tried to calm.  It was like eluding a police dog sniffing for drugs.  She tried to change the shape and texture of the fear as much as possible, forcing her bones to buckle down.  She knew couldn’t look him straight in the eye without revealing it, so she looked past him, imagined he wasn’t even there, that she was lying in a desert and it was warm, but not too warm, and she was waiting for someone to emerge from the vast sameness of it all, like a movie set--cloudless sky, sand everywhere, no sound, not even the faint humming of the wind, just complete silence that both scared and consoled her, but mostly, made her feel as if she was in a universe separate from that which everyone else inhabited, especially him.

It seemed like eons had passed when he finally raised one arm, moved it towards her breast, and began to draw circles around her nipple with a taloned index finger.  The desert began to fade and she could see him again (blurrily, though), hear him breathing so closely it was startling when she came back to earth.  She wanted to scream and beat him till her knuckles were bloody.  She imagined him crying like a baby taking in its first gasps of air upon its violent release from the womb, she imagined his tears mixing with blood and dripping down his lips that were now wet and slightly open. “I’d like to give you a massage,” he stated, not asking, rising up from his leisurely sprawl to flip her onto her stomach.   Her head was leaning sideways on his pillow and she closed her eyes.

He straddled her back and felt him lean over and reach for something cold that he spilled on her shoulder-blades before his hands explored the bony geography of her back. He pulled down her underwear and she felt a sharp, heavy pain. Her body jolted reflexively, though he did not stop, and was making noises now.

Buried in that pillow, these were the thoughts she had:  Dying the day she went fishing with her dad and brother and went out so far it was the first time she couldn’t see the shore except for from an airplane the bluefish violently writhing on the line then on the boat a mammoth tree she used to climb in her backyard in spring it cried pink and white petals when her favorite branch died she grieved its amputation the piano and how she should remember to always arch her wrist and fingers as if holding an imaginary apple in her hand even as she moved across the keys fireflies the sound of wind she didn’t think she could remember it the shag rug in her old bedroom that she used to hate but now missed what he will think of in the morning when he wakes up next to her mascara stains on his pillow dying again.

When he was finished, he was in a better mood, less volatile, as he sat on the corner of the bed, slumped and panting. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” he asked, as if waking her up in the morning to get ready for school.

She rose. Her entire body was throbbing and, after starting to change, she announced she was going to the bathroom to wash up. She thought asking would sound too suspicious. Leaving the door slightly ajar, she stood outside it for a moment to make sure he didn’t follow her or peek to check the direction in which she turned.  He didn't, and so, shoes in hand, she ran out.  She didn’t remember passing anyone on the streets that night.  She didn’t even remember passing buildings. All she would remember is floating through a blur of lights before catching the train home. 

Chapter 16: Bulls-eye

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I was paralyzed there. I couldn't move a muscle. It felt like I had been there forever waiting, waiting, waiting. I felt like I was breathing through a bag, unable to get the oxygen I needed. Images flashed through my eyes: the monster, Laila, trolls, elves, Klein and the sanctuary man. What if more sanctuary creatures came in my room right now? I start worrying. Then I hear footsteps and start panicking. They're getting closer and I can't move. I can't move! I hear my doorknob slowly creak open. Then my whole body shuts down from panic.

 

 I wake up what seems like years later, I'm alive! When I heard those footsteps coming I thought for sure I was a goner. I turn my head to see Klein. He was the one who came in the door! Faintly I hear him speaking, calling my name. I slowly sit up and become more aware. “Klein?,” I asked, “What happened, how long have I been here?” Klein stared at me with a scared look, “I've been with you for 5 minutes now, but I'm not sure how long you were here before hand. I waited 2 hours for you to show up for training, but you never arrived. I came to check on you, and found you paralyzed here. Are you ok?” I think about and then realize I'm perfectly fine, the pain is gone completely. “I'm fine, really I'm okay.” I reply. “Uh-huh, I'm taking you to the head elf.” Klein says, and before I can protest hes already scooped me up in his arms and carries me into the corridor. “Klein!” I say, “Seriously I'm perfectly fine, I'll visit the head elf, but at least let me walk!” He gives me an un-sure look but then gently lowers me to the floor. We walk until finally reaching a graceful glass door. Klein knocks, and the head elf comes out, that same bland look on his face. “How is it possible you've only been here for four days and your back to me again.” I gave him a death stare and he laughed it off. “I found her in her room passed out and paralyzed.” says Klein interrupting the head elf's rude laughter. The head elf immediately cut off his laughter. “What happened? How do you feel now? Do you remember any of your feelings before being paralyzed?” he said questionably. “Well, I fell just after getting breakfast, I felt an electrifying pain and just, fell. After being there for awhile I passed out and the last thing I remember is that Klein was in my room.” I say. “These symptoms are very familiar to me, a few others seeking the tree have had them. It is a side-effect of your curse. This makes your journey to the tree even more rushed, because your pains will only get worse with time,” replies the elf sorrowfully. Great I think to myself, more problems. “Then I want to get to that tree as fast as possible.” I turn to Klein. “I'm going to training.” I quickly walk away hoping he doesn't stop me. He doesn't. He just joins me in silence, both of us walking. His hands brush mine but I push him away. I need to get out of this place as fast as I can without a distraction like Klein. We finally arrive at the training center. A tear escapes my eye. No I can't get attached to him, I won't get attached to him, but somewhere deep down I know I'm lying to myself. I pick up the bow and position it in the way Klein showed me. I shoot and graze the target. “You've been taught well.” He says. I give him a glance and turn away. “Whats wrong?” He asks sincerely. “Why are you mad at me?” “I'm not.” I mumble under my breath. “You know I don't believe that, is there anyway I can help?” I bite my lip and draw my bow once again, but this time I hit the bulls-eye.

 

38

It was a miserable New York three-day rain, repetitious and relentless weather flicked off by some no-name junior hurricane pinwheeling 400 miles at sea. The wet air had an unfamiliar sweet scent, peaches-jasmine-ganja--was it Georgia air, or Jamaica air, clocking up the coast? He was slip-steering his old BMW up the rainy Hutchinson parkway to Connecticut, steering more with the rear wheels than the front.

Loose ball joints supplied the oscillation, a predictable waggle he could work with. Two fingers on the wheel at six o'clock.  Pop the gas, drift right. Tap the brake, drift left. Cool. The rain was pelting, foggy, drizzling, driving, round and round again, a tedium of grim variety, like the Variety Kel-Bowl-Paks of a jailhouse breakfast. The car came to rest at the yacht club, but Adam continued in the controlled skid of the sailor he was, in his deck shoes, from parking lot to ramp to puddled dock to rainy boat deck.

He waggled his boat-gift as he climbed down into the yacht's salon, a pound of fair-trade, organic Columbian coffee, smelling like chocolate but with a dark little dig. His yellow Helly jacket, short curly brown hair, and sunny smile all said, You, Captain, supply the three-hundred-thousand-dollar racing sailboat, but I, Crew, bring twenty-dollar coffee.  

Actually what Adam brought to the boat was speed.  The young reflexes that a racing captain counts on to win. But the captain had never mentioned that.

The teak-and-holly, brass-accented, navy-blue-cushioned cabin was perfectly squared away, but dank, with the sharp-sweet warm-lettuce smell that was algae advancing from the bilge, and of mold crossly wafting off the rubber and canvas of soaked foul weather gear and deck shoes. Captain Dennis, fifty--twenty-five years older than Adam--was damp and cross too, but never disheveled. Now, like a knight flipping down his visor, he flipped on a silver-hair, blue-eyed smile of welcome-and-almost-kindness. That barbed twinkle.

Grrr-rattle, zing, went the little Braun grinder. Dennis's visor slipped up unawares, to reveal him glaring horribly through the clear top, at the amber waves of grinds.

--Watch the decanter, it's Baccarat.

--Got it, Cap.

Dennis was never called Captain, only Dennis. Or Cap, in mild rebuke, as when warning that his irritability was threatening to de-tune the crew, when it could cost a race.

Mostly Adam ignored the captain's sarcasm and insults, because in a sport where six miles an hour is fast, folks get tense, and where a fifteen-ton machine must be assisted in a pretty pirouette, folks get busy.  But Dennis was tense and they had't even gotten under way.

Adam had spotted the decanter on the table, and it irritated him.  Extra weight above the water line, especially unsecured glass, on a racing boat!  A racer should be stripped down to fighting weight. Serious captains jettisoned the cushions and toilets. But Dennis used his boat for other tasks between races, "entertaining" clients, as he put it, aboard. Or their administrative assistants.  The Baccarat decanter was a prop. A power prop. Adam thought of his dad's 400-horsepower Sea-Ray. A power boat, a stinkpot. Ouch.
    
As Dennis turned to make the coffee Adam reached down to lift the hatch on the boat's wine locker, to stow the rum. This rum was a beautiful liquid, not brown, not gold, a color much better than the ones God had made, dropped in your first Crayola box.  Probably it was Goslings, or an even more expensive brand he had never heard of.  The 38-foot Beneteau had the wine locker in the deck, between the table and the engine, at the exact center of gravity of the boat, to minimize the pitch and roll that causes wine bruising.  Where most nations put sick bay, the French put the wine.

Down in the locker, occupying the teak cutout where the decanter belonged, was a heavy, clear plastic bag, oil-streaked from the inside, sitting on a machinist's rag, Bridgeport blue with a red hemstitch, and in the bag was a black .38. Not the neglected stainless steel anti-pirate cannon you might find in the bottom of a locker on any cruiser, but a street weapon, prepped for immediate use.

More crew arrived, and their thumping on deck--you should never hear a step on deck, because a deck is a living thing--rattled Adam, abut it also covered the clack of the wine locker closing empty, and the bump as he replaced the decanter back on the table. Dennis set out coffee cups and swept the decanter behind a galley rail. He may have sensed the warmth of Adam's hand on the heavy crystal neck, but he gave no sign.

Win tumble-danced down the steps into the cabin in Breton red shorts and red  SOSpenders, those wearable airbags of the sea.

--Touch the spinnaker, and I am going to shoot you, said Dennis. Dale's on foredeck.

--Yup, grinned Win.

Last race, Win had been too slow in dowsing the new spinnaker, that big pink triangle of downwind lingerie, and ended up under it, instead of on top of it. That had cost precious time turning round the mark, a buoy, one apex of that day's triangular race course. Win would abide in the doghouse, and master the new rig in time.

Win had a big brown-red birthmark on this left thigh, which he considered port-wine-colored, and he slapped it whenever he said "port." When he said "starboard," he didn't, he just smiled. He was a patrician electrician, a rare working man from the upper class, and a good sailor, because when his brain came up empty he just switched to another part of his body.  Born to social mastery, of parents degenerated from true wealth into the professions, themselves born of prodigal grandparents who idled in wealthy circles invisible to Adam, no mastery he sought was beyond him, given time, his legacy. Win could stand on deck in a cold rain and remain pleasant for hours.

Win clearly felt superior to everyone aboard, but calling him a snob would be like calling a fish wet. He would have no idea what you were talking about, and he might feel hurt. Besides, he was a working electrician, which was pretty democratic, and he was nice, or at least very polite. He seemed always to put the other person's feelings first.  Dennis was fascinated with him, fawned on him a bit, but got nowhere. Adam knew Win could watch any one of them die without getting ruffled. He admired that, himself being no vegetarian. He admired the philosophical consistency of it. But Adam looked to Dennis, the senior man, for direction, as a young man will.

Dale descended the ladder. Perfect shoes, with the fine boat tread called razor-sipes, brass eyelets, clean, buttery waterproofed leather, delicate ankles, long slim tan legs. Who said the shape of a leg carries a promise of more wonderful curves aloft?  But then down dropped a curtain of sturdy white cotton: loose preppy shorts, thick navy blue sweater, then long brown neck, Hepburn chin and cheekbones, gray eyes, eyes that smiled, and blond hair in a knot behind a Mount Gay baseball hat, her sole concession to frivolity.  She was, of course, Connecticut-born.

Adam didn't know her age, but she felt senior to him, without it being uncomfortable. He could sense a connection between her and Dennis, but a long slack one, like an invisible fishing line that had sunk the hook but not reeled in the catch. He couldn't tell which end the hook was in. At first he had thought in her, but maybe not. Relationships could be like that. The two of them sometimes let him see these delicate things openly, and then dazzled him back to blind.

Next came Frank, a once pretty beach boy with cuddly muscles now drooping toward fat slabs, big curly red hair, and a very winning smile--with a flickering micro-expression of a snarl. Adam's reaction to Frank was to be very friendly, and a little afraid, until he got tired of it, and then switched to just plain wary.  Frank was a motor boater, who loved to go fast, fish, fix his engine, dig clams, drink beer and bake in the sun with half-naked women. Some said he used to be a cop. Adam grasped that he was crewing on the sailboat for political reasons.

Frank was a provisional member of the yacht club, up for election to Full Member. The club was half power, and half sail, a little world like the Morlocks and Eloi of Orwell.  Dennis was the only board member who could blackball Frank for full membership. Frank had political skills. All the powerboat board members owed Frank either tools or alcohol. The remaining, sail members had taken the cowardly view that friendship with Frank would be less trouble than enmity. He had everybody lined up where he wanted them, except Dennis.

Once he became a Full Member, Frank could be as crazy as he liked, with impunity for the rest of his life. There were no expulsions: the only ways out of the club were death, or sixty days arrears. Matter of fact, lunacy was appreciated in a fresh member, even prized, because it gave cover to everyone else.  There was not a dull personality in the club. Adam had heard on Connecticut Public Radio that any ordinary group has fifteen percent strong personalities, whether PTA, Marine Corps, or rain-forest hunter-gatherers. But In the yacht club it was 100%.  So everybody needed cover, and recruitment was cordial. Initially.

Naturally they were prudent about he kinds of lunacy they selected.  There were the police to think about, and the safety of children, the Coast Guard, and New York liability lawyers, always cruising inshore. Hence the two-year provisional period before full membership, to "avoid future damage below the waterline," as the Commodore put it.

Frank had volunteered to crew because he had sniffed out Dennis's antipathy, and surmised the secret Blackball Rule. He had it right. Any board member could quietly veto full membership of a provisional member, for any reason, or no reason. Maybe because of the way the provisional looked at a spouse.  Or the way the spouse looked back. Or because his political views weakened the insecure cohesion of the majority. Anything, cut of one’s jib. But Frank needed the club badly, because he had just been divorced and lost his house, and needed to live aboard, to be in town and near his business, to stay on top of it during rough economic times.

Dennis set out the coffee, and the instructions.

--This is not a race. It is a drill, a practice run, on a triangular course we will lay in the Sound. We will put our nose out to see the weather and lay our first course to windward, to some mark. We will then make a broad reach, with the wind over whichever side. By we, I mean I. I will call it. Then we will lay a course to head home, to finish the triangle, before the wind, with a spinnaker set, if the wind holds.

--Dale will be foredeck, tend the jib, and set the spinnaker. I will drive. Adam will trim, and Win is rail meat. Frank will be utility, and follow Win. We will make every move tight and clean, best we can, better, since we don't have the pressure of a real race. When we drop the sails and motor in, we will have lunch and debrief in the cockpit.  We will be honest about our mistakes, and we will not defend an error.

He then glanced at Adam.

--The boat is tuned, now we tune the crew.

--Cap, will there be keelhauling? said Dale, brightly.

--No time, says Dennis. We will just shoot, and over they go.

They motored on a vector calculated for maximum distance from Interstate 95, south out of Indian Harbor, and set the sails at Tweed Island, and the clouds parted, and the sun came out, and they confronted the vast blue-and-sparkle of Long Island Sound, a wilderness smack in the center of a watershed of forty million people. Dale  muttered the conventional invocation.

--I wonder what the poor people are doing now?

They dug in at Great Captain Island, turning the wheel hard over to fill the sail, southwest toward Execution Rock, where the Brits chained down the Patriots to die on the next tide, because they didn't dare hang them on crowded Broadway. They hardened up their direction to windward to bear on Matinecock Point, but had to fall off a bit and settle for a bearing on Sands Point. Where Perry Como, who mastered show business with an immigrant name, stood smiling in his famous sweater, and, where, calling it East Egg, Scott Fitzgerald mastered the novel of wealth and sex. Half a degree west was Kings Point, where peers of Dennis Connor played hooky from Bronx high schools, racing in sailboats they'd swiped instead of cars.  

Just beyond was Elm Point, where Albert Einstein--before the serenity of Princeton airbrushed away his youthful lust--swiped North Shore sailboats too, and usually during storms, from his terrified society hostesses, and thought about the relativity of true wind versus apparent wind on a boat underway. Here too young Walt Whitman, fired yet again from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, sailed with his father, and coaxed him to build row houses together in Brooklyn, to get them both some cash. And on leafy Hunter Island, a nautical mile east, Chief Wampage of the Siwanoy, in 1643, had a prophetic vision of the White Castle on the Bruckner Expressway, and whetted his ax for Anne Hutchinson's neck. The Sound made them all one, those present and those gone before, with its vast, inviting blue glitter.

Dennis "drove," that is, steered by watching the sails only, and by feeling the resistance of the water beneath through his butt.  Adam handled the lines, trimming the sails precisely to Dennis's specifications, which were telegraphed by silent gestures of index finger, chin and eyebrows, Dennis being inarticulate when under stress. But Dennis knew how the whole world was turning round the mast of the boat, and Adam felt like Stephen Hawking's best grad student, an interpreter of cerebral delight. Dennis was slip sliding the vectors of wind and water, allowing the boat to slip sideways just enough to amplify the wind ahead and trick it into drawing the boat into it. Like steering down a wet parkway, thought Adam.  They fell off three degrees, to leeward, and gathered a knot of speed out of thin air.

Dennis looked up at the sails, only, at their shape, and the angle of the telltale pieces of yarn on them.  He would smell something on the wind, and slowly turn the wheel two degrees.  He never looked down, not even at the compass, never looked at where he was going, and if they were headed for a rock or another boat, that was your lookout, as crew.  Hazards were called out crisply by crew, and always acknowledged, always politely, by the wheel. Not like driving with the family.  Jet ski crossing, ten o'clock. Got the jet ski, thank you.

--Puff, three boat lengths, called Win, from his punishment seat on the port rail.

--Got the puff, thank you.

Dennis dipped under the wind shift, moving off course but gaining speed, and turned back on course with fresh impetus packed neatly into the five-ton keel. Very nice, thought Adam, it's like a skateboarder pumping in a dip for speed. They reached the mark Dennis had called, a channel buoy.

--Coming about!  called Dennis, and the heavy boom swept across the deck and the concave jib popped to convex on the foredeck.  Dale slipped round the mast, finessing the boom, and Win and Frank slipped under it. What seconds ago was downhill on deck, became uphill, and the two men scrambled up to the starboard rail.  But the jib sheet snagged on the rigging, trapping Dale behind it on the foredeck. Frank was closest.

--Take that line off and put it back over here! No, not that line, stupid, that line, near the thing!  No, no, that thing! There, dammit, that one! blustered Dennis. Inarticulate in action. Way he was made. Frank was stymied. Win clambered over him.


--Lazy shackle back aft to the starboard car, glossed Win blithely, and made it so. Frank went purple with rage.

Now the freed jib slammed Dale against the lifelines, pinning her in a torrent of bow wave. Frank, unawares of her peril, glared at Dennis, who rushed forward. A strong puff, that nobody saw and nobody called, tilted the boat hard over, and water swept the deck and drowned the port winch. Adam had moved to the wheel, the way a shortstop automatically covers second, and now Win slipped into the cockpit to backfill Adam on trim. The heavy rudder emerged angrily and pivoted uselessly in the air to port. The port jib sheet whipped into the wheel hub, and jammed. Meanwhile Dale was enduring forces of wind and water that can make a fifteen-ton boat into a moth flicked away by Mother Nature.

Dennis rushed the bow with a knife, where Frank was crouched over the anchor.  Dennis stepped into a coil of anchor line, which Frank then tugged to lasso Dennis's leg. That line led through a section of the lifelines that fence the deck, and around to the anchor. The life lines had been unclipped. He had rigged a horizontal gallows, on a hair trigger. Dennis's way lay open to the sea. Frank's hand lay on the anchor quick release, a thick finger in the pull ring. Dennis  registered condescending admiration. Frank had him over a barrel. With one tug he could put Frank overboard, the anchor making speed for the bottom.

Adam, in the cockpit, missed the setup, distracted by a heavy thud-and-shatter below. Baccarat. But he caught the flash of Frank's murderous grin at Dennis, then spotted the lethal trap. He dove below into the cabin, emerging at the forward hatch with the oily gun in its blue rag, and pointed it at Frank. Dennis with his knife turned and slashed open the belly of the jib. Dale spilled out, born again, this time by Cesarian, and madder than a wet cat.

Dennis tossed the knife, back handle, to Win, and sneered at Frank. Win cut the sheets, and the boat stood up, and stalled, the elegant swan becoming a fluttering goose. Adam waved the pistol nervously, and Frank raised his right hand from the untagged quick-release, slowly, like he was taking an oath. With his left hand he deftly whipped a snake wave down the anchor line, releasing Dennis. Dennis followed Dale aft to the cockpit.

Adam handed the gun to Dennis, glad to be rid of it. From the cockpit Dennis used it to point the prisoner back to rail meat position on the starboard rail, midships. Frank rose from his crouch and obeyed, walking aft of the mast, eye on the gun.  A powerful wind shift then jibed the mainsail, swung it over the deck, and the boom clanged against Frank's head, just above the ear, and swept him overboard, through the slack lifelines.

As Frank bobbed along the waterline, Dennis threw the gun in after him. Win, facing aft to start the engine, missed both splashes, big and little, Frank and gun, but got the engine started and in gear. Frank slipped under the hull and was turned to chum by the bronze, bottom-sand-sharpened, crustacean-serrated prop.  

With the shortened sheets cleated down and the sails unmaneuverable, Adam motor sailed home, alternately tapping the throttle and braking with the rudder, right and left, slip sliding along, while Dennis distributed sandwiches and debriefed.

--Nobody called the puff. Nobody called the wind shift.  Lookouts were distracted by deck action that was beyond their help. I went forward without a safety harness and tether. I failed to spot and replace frayed wire rigging, which caught the jib sail.

--I must also report a fatality to the Commodore. It is a Club rule when a power boater is lost on a sailboat, and vice-versa, of course, when a sailor dies on a powerboat.  The rule preserves the balance of sail and power in the Club. It is a good rule. There was no gun, and there was no trap rigged on the deck by Frank.

--Nobody spotted the unfastened life lines in proper time. Adam was observant, often.  Very good. Dale was tethered in her harness on the foredeck, Good. I was not.  Bad.  As you plainly saw. Frank had fabulous line handling, but inattention and emotion caused him to slip overboard.  He was unsuitable for full membership. Win, admiring the pink track of our dear chum back there in the sunset, is a fucking upper-class ghoul.

If I had to describe what music feels like I’d probably say that it feels like your phone vibrating in your pocket, only much more intense. Which is me describing my amplifier shaking the walls, everything turned up all the way as I play my way through my favorite song. But it’s so literal, that’s what music feels like but it’s not at all what it feels like. I crave music like a heroine addict craves his drug and to me it is the ultimate escape. Music feels like everything I love in my life brought together to make something unbelievable. It’s exhilarating like that terrifying first time on the far too steep rollercoaster, or that second in mid-air before you plummet back towards ground, or in most cases your trampoline. It’s as familiar and warm as my bed and knows me as well as my best friend. It’s new and different, like Lady Gaga was back in ‘08. It’s like that moment when you actually understand what your teacher is on about in math class, that click of understanding, that tiny adjustment which makes you sigh in relief from a pain you didn’t even notice before. Music is magical, it’s incredible, it’s like reading Harry Potter when you’re seven years old and spending an entire year believing that Hagrid’s going to come for you. It’s realising you’re special, it’s feeling loved, it’s feeling like you’re apart of something bigger than just the handful of people you actually talk to on Facebook. It’s a gift which is given to everyone at a different level and some not at all, it’s as precious as a newborn child giving you their first ever smile, as obnoxious as your neighbor’s teenage son and as all consuming as wildfire.

Music isn’t just an intense vibration. If it was then it could be replaced with battery operated sex and as good as sex is, well there’s something about music that transcends pure physical activity. It’s magical, it’s unique, it’s escape and it’s freedom. If music is your life, then you know what I'm on about, if it isn't I suggest the next best thing. Captioned pictures of cats.

 

 

Clutching my own hand

Born, alone, I learn to stand

Patting my own back

I celebrate myself

Packing my own sack

And I long forget my health

Because he doesn't exist

And trust isn't real

Add it to my list

And get rid of what I feel

Blank like paper

Falling like rain

I'll run first

And cry later

Can't look at myself

Or those broken eyes

Make myself stop dreaming

Before I get hurt by lies

Because soul mates are illusional

And we're just delusional

On my faith forsaken soul

Life has taken its toll

But enough is never enough

So let me run

Break me from these cuffs

I'm a lock without a key

No, you can't touch me

Everyone needs their half

But I came whole

And I'm happy with that.

 

Solitary soul

With a color of its own

A wolf that has a pack

But its heart beats alone

Standing in a crowd

Of people who match, people who belong

But one little bird sings its own song.

 

Solitude is habitual

Mood is situational

For sometimes the bird believes someone should understand

But to be understanding itself

Is to understand that no one can

For this soul walks its own path alone

Thought it was tragic

But now it's beautiful and it's home,

 

For I am untouchable.

 

 

I watched the bamboo dying

                Sadly, silently, sighing  

It belonged to a girl; fiery phoenix bird  

                Greenless, lifeless, leafless

It cannot utter a word

 

I watched her parents give it to her

                Sapling, tender and gentle

It was nourished everyday

                Promising, vulnerable, sentimental

 

It stood tall under the artificial sun

                Its world a sugar-sweet grapefruit-

Flying trees, talking knolls seemingly begun

                But a phoenix is a phoenix

 

Resting precariously in the marbles 

                It depended on her everyday

For a drink of life, a glimpse of light

                But hope began to fade.

 

It called out to me; me a simple wren

                Its only company gray bunnies    

A life of sweet sugar

                Turned bitter honey

 

We watched the scintillating phoenix

                A storm cloud always in haste

Under our roof it rained everyday

                But the plant never got a taste

 

The lightning struck

                And our world shook

Then suddenly the sky changed hue

                Shambles, emotions, detriment, came slowly into view

 

Her parents took up the bamboo

                Thunder echoing perpetually in their chests

Green to yellow, forever anew

                There was almost nothing left.

 

 

you,

dangerous but beautiful

with the ability to steal

what is most precious, and peaceful 

to be respected

not owned

 

you,

shiny metal casket

you move me

until I crash

in a bent heap

I lay

my thoughts hazed

body abstracted

my eys glazed

as my blood was ejected

 

Again,

I thought of you,

twisted metal

you did this

and now I'll never heal

 

you have taken from me

my natural form

I lay just as shattered as you

yet,

even in pieces

your beauty shimmers in the moonlight

 

As I close my eyes

to the street lights

I realize

it wasn't you,

twisted metal,

that did this

it was me

and me alone.