 
FORGOTTEN FACES

William White-acre

copyright 2017 by william white-acre

Smashwords Edition

white-acre.wixsite.com/photography

*other books by the author:

Surrounded By Mythology

I, The Hero

True For X

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 JOHNNY

Chapter 2 BRAD

Chapter 3 LAURA

Chapter 4 JOANN

Introduction:

My 30th High School reunion was held a couple of months ago; I did not attend, for many reasons I suppose. Nineteen eighty was a very long time ago. Reunions are like anniversaries, just arbitrary nonsense really. How is the 30 year mark any different than 29.6 years? They are noteworthy only because we look back and see what in the hell happened to us.

In a very short time, I will reach the half century mark: fifty years of living on this planet and I really didn't see the need to look back now at this particular time. That and the fact I didn't want to see how old I've become by staring back at faces that have lived as long as I have. No one needs that kind of reminder. I am not what might be called a nostalgia monger--if I might coin a term. Besides, I still live in the town where I went to High School, which, in its way, is sort of embarrassing, as if to say that I haven't evolved all that much. It's just that, by living in the same city for the last thirty years, I have little time (or inclination) for reaching back and trying to grasp a tiny bit of my past.

In the interest of total disclosure, I was even born in the town where I still reside, right at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, Florida. It was always bad enough living in a town that shared the name of a more famous incarnation in California, where the only thing we shared was proximity to an ocean. The founder of my hometown was a transplant from out West, who had a vision for the swampland that reached from the Everglades to the Atlantic Ocean way back when, you know, in the 1920's or so. Most of my classmates, and friends, have relocated somewhere else, and, presumably, moved on. Not that I am the lone holdout. I suppose there are some of us who have lingered, set down roots. Then again, I can't remember any of my graduating class who were actually born here, in Hollywood.

Florida is, for the most part, the land of transplants, mostly geezers who have elected to escape the cold and die in the subtropics. Oddly, the majority of them stipulate that they would like to be buried back up north, turning their backs on their adopted State, which is, I guess, the ultimate insult to the Sunshine State. For me, I will be buried right here, at the Palms Memorial Cemetery, courtesy of my mother, who had the foresight to buy burial plots way back when. I will be laid to rest next to my mother, father, and sister, which should make for a cozy afterlife since while alive we barely spoke to each other.

The fact that I was born and will die in the same locale is depressing on many different levels, mostly because it means that I have accomplished very little in my life. While it may be true that many people throughout history have spent their existence within the confines of a specific zone, it never the less is somehow pathetic. In the modern American era, where the average person moves umpteen times during their life times, I have to be the outlier of sorts. Not that it qualifies me for the Guinness Book of Records or anything.

If the truth be known, I have little to show for the last forty-eight years. What I have is a failed marriage, a house I was upside down in, and unemployment. I had worked at a local business for closing in on twenty years and was unceremoniously "let go." The company was downsizing in the current economy. It seems that people weren't too eager any longer to buy organic bakery products. Too expensive. Truthfully, I never ate the products my company baked. They all, to me, tasted like pre-fabricated sawdust.

I didn't work in the manufacturing end of things, but rather was a bean counter, stuck away in a small office in the back of the warehouse where the actual baking took place. While the bakers brought flour to life as bread, cookies, rolls, etc., I labored away at spread sheets, trying to squeeze out more profit from a business that relied on the purchasing power of natural food snobs. Our business model leaned towards the imaginary most of the time. Still, the company had been around for over twenty years.

"Rick, can I talk to you for a second?" was how the end began.

I looked at my boss, the aging Hippie with the long hair pulled back into a pony tail, the one that all the employees mocked behind his back. He had hired me even though I had a spotty work record and an Associate degree from the local community college. For the record, I did go on to get my four year degree from FAU. He had told me, back then, that he wanted people to work for him who could see themselves growing with the company. I had told him sure, I could do that. Then he had asked me if I liked bread, quickly followed by some samples of his stock in trade eight grain loaf. I had eaten a slice and smiled, assuring him that it was delicious, while thinking the whole time that Pepperidge Farm did a better job.

"What's up, Chad?" I asked, wondering just what my boss and the CEO of the little bread company tucked away in some warehouses off I-95 wanted.

In a solemn voice, Chad got right to the point: "Rick, the books don't look good." Of course I knew this, I was responsible for the books. "We are going to have to make some changes around here." The "we" was a nice touch. "Your job is going to have to be eliminated."

It was like a punch to the solar plexus. Up until this point I truly believed he had called me into his office to ask my advice on which other person to ax, someone that the company could afford to lose and not interrupt the efficiency output. I was having visions of me having to offer up another victim, someone on the baking assembly line. Who was going to do the books? leaped into my mind.

"Chad, how can you...can you fire me?" I managed to mutter, trying not to whine.

"I'm not firing you, Rick," he assured me. "You will get references--good references. Listen, Rick, this pains me to do this. You have been with us almost from the beginning. You have been a loyal employee."

"Loyal?" I said in almost a whisper. The word sounded somehow preposterous at this juncture. "Who is going to do the finances...the spread sheets?"

"I have made some arrangements," he said, letting his voice trail off as he pretended to be studying some papers on his desk. "We have a decent severance package for you already set up. I wish it could have been more generous but, well, you know how the economy's been. Since it tanked we have been struggling to keep our head above water here. I don't need to tell you that, do I?" He let a smile creep to his mouth, then thought better of it.

I got up from my chair, with my legs weak from the shock, and walked out. I didn't even go back to my little closet sized office but went to my car and drove home. The fact is I never spoke to my boss again. He sent me my check in the mail. It's bad enough seeing his smiling mug (with that ridiculous pony tail) on the bakery packaging at the grocery store every time I go. The only measure of payback I ever got was when I told a woman in the check out line that the bread she was buying was baked with uncertified organic wheat imported from the Dominican Republic. She got a horrified look on her face and grabbed the loaf of bread out of her cart and tossed it. That was the extent of my sweet revenge.

The other recent life altering event was my divorce, which came six months before me being layed off. We had been married almost twenty years, and before that had lived together for another two. I had met her on the beach one day, right after a surfing session. I say surfing but, as any real surfer will tell you, it was actually more like slogging. The surfing scene locally was dependent on two things: large storms in the Atlantic and a vivid imagination.

At any rate, I had been out in the knee high waves pretending to be riding them and was showering off at the shower adjacent to the beach parking lot. Celeste, my future wife, happen to walk by. We made eye contact. I don' t remember but I am sure I must have said something that I thought was witty or appropriately suave. She responded, and smiled. It all began from there.

She lived in a neighboring town and was, like me, a community college graduate. Celeste's future, such as it was, had already been mapped out for her. Her mother owned a boutique specializing in clothes for the significant elderly population in the area. The store was located in a section of the town that was laughably called Fashion Row, a strip of stores that catered to women with money and, apparently, no taste. At any rate, Celeste was to have the store bequeathed to her by her mother. If not anything else, it was a profitable business.

We dated for a while before renting an apartment on the beach, which was overpriced and full of cockroaches and, no matter what counter measures we did, smelled of rotting seaweed. For us, in our twenties, it was paradise, as we spent most of our time on the beach and on the broadwalk that passed right by our front door. There were beautiful sunrises and plenty of time baking in the sun, to which my dermatologist can thank me for so much of my business in counteracting skin cancer; that is until I lost my health insurance when I was downsized.

Those were idyllic times, as they say. We didn't think about responsibility as a concept. I was, at that time, going in and out of jobs, not giving much thought to something that might enhance my future. Celeste was working at her mother's store, putting in time when she had to. The money we made was perfectly adequate for our current lifestyle.

Then we got married. It was a mutual decision. I am here to testify that Celeste was not, in any way, the instigator of our change in status from carefree boyfriend and girlfriend living together to husband and wife. That change happened more in an organic way, I guess. After two years of co-habiting it just seemed like the next step to take.

We took it, honeymooning in Key West. It made our parents happy, if not some of our friends who had made the same step prior to us saying our vows. Along with that I found gainful employment. Next came the purchasing of a house, quickly followed by the arrival of a child. I suppose a psychologist could easily trace the demise of our marriage to the death of our kid, a boy. He died in a car accident when he was just five years old. A neighbor was driving him home from her house when they accidentally drove into a canal in a blinding thunder storm. The woman and her son also perished. It was one of those tragedies that befall the average person, leaving them with an infinite emptiness. I don't think Celeste ever recovered.

Things were, in many ways, different after the accident. We never attempted to have any other children. I, on several occasions, tried to broach the subject, but Celeste was non-receptive. She would just say that she wasn't ready. After a while I never brought it up again. In time, the remainder of our relationship declined. We began to live in different orbits. I don't know how we lasted as long as we did.

When the end did arrive I was, somehow, relieved. "Rick, I have something to tell you," was how Celeste delivered the news. "I know this sounds like I am not being...I...I want a divorce." We were standing in our kitchen, in the house we had bought in one of those newer developments, you know, the ones with the phony sounding names and over abundance of cul-de-sacs; which reminds me of that joke: I live on a one way dead-end street. That concept somehow defines my life.

"You do?" was all I managed to say, as I stared at the floor.

Celeste had met someone else, so it seemed. The store had been turned over to her and she had fallen in love with one of the suppliers, a guy who lived in Fort Lauderdale and, so I thought anyway, seemed a little shady. He drove a Lexus, with the tacky personalized gold trim, and went to tanning salons even though he lived in Florida, two definite signs that he was not to be trusted. I would only meet him once, but first impressions sometimes leave a lasting mark.

The divorce proceedings were amiable. I was glad to let her go. She deserved to find happiness wherever she thought she could find it. Now that she was in her forties, and the child bearing years were behind her, I figured that she thought she could now pursue love unencumbered. Our mutual history was rife with pitfalls. What we had between us waslong gone, extinguished. Second acts in life can and do occur.

So I had no job and no wife. I still had the house in the cul-de-sac, the leftover legacy of my failed marriage. The real estate market had tanked, leaving me with a financial albatross. I ran the numbers, taking our equity into account, and promptly placed it on the market with a price to sell. In my mind, I wanted out. Unloading the property was my best bet. Get out from under it. Better yet, just get out.

For several weeks after losing my job, I rattled around in the empty house feeling sorry for myself. After you are divorced you find that you have suddenly been relegated to second citizen status. Before, when you were a member of the marital club, your membership was never questioned. Your wife's friends were your friends and, truly, friendship usually came in pairs, or couples. Without even knowing, your social circuit had become a set of married couples interlinked by something as simple as a legal document swearing your allegiance to another human being.

Now that I was, more or less, a free agent, my pool of friends had been drastically reduced. My being ostracized was, admittedly, not exactly a medieval shunning, but never the less it existed. Unless I accelerated the process and landed another mate, I was destined to be the oddball individual forever disrupting the couple's balance. It was a strange realization to find out that I had operated for so long with a partner, one that was included in the definition of my life.

And so that was when I found Facebook. Trolling the internet had become my refuge after I lost my wife and then my job. Before, well, let's just say that the internet and me weren't sympatico. Sure I would go online, but mostly to buy something. I hardly ever spent time surfing backwater websites or even prominent news sites; and let me say that includes porn websites too. For some reason I was usually too busy with work and other things to be hanging on my computer.

I made up for all of my internet surfing negligence in a very short time by practically living online. It was like a whole new world opened for me. Although I was never a political junkie before, now, let's just say I was making up for lost time as I visited both the rightwing and leftwing websites, from blogs to established magazines gone cyber. For so long I had been one of the silent majority out there in America, head down, involved in my work and my family. That the questionable machinations going on in Washington could affect me, personally, didn't register. Hell, I hardly ever voted.

Now, after several months on line, I was like a poli-sci drone, steeped in the Byzantine ways of inside the Beltway. Unfortunately, I had no one to share my newfound awareness with. My friends, such as they were, consisted of two long time buddies I played golf with at a local nine hole golf course, the one that catered to miserly retirees and penny pinching French Canadians. All we talked about was our wives--and not favorably. A close second in line was the fortunes of the Dolphins or the Heat, both of which (lately) tested your sense of loyalty.

We were, for the most part, apolitical. Somehow we believed legislation was enacted in a vacuum. Making law was something that materialized and made our lives worse. This disconnect was probably the one thing me and my wife had in common. She was blissfully uninvolved as well. We passed through years of matrimony heartily maintaining our disassociation with the rest of the nation, only coming into contact with the civic structure when it came time to decide on where we were going to go on vacation; which was, most times, out of the country, to the islands.

So this is where Facebook came to my rescue. One day, as I was stumbling around the Publix supermarket, trying to gather up the items on my shopping list I had hastily scribbled on the back of a flyer from a local pizza place that had just opened, featuring ultra thin pizza crust and toppings you normally wouldn't associate with Italian fare, e.g. sushi. Not to be outdone, my local bagel place was now selling pizza bagels, complete with four kinds of cheese injected right into it. It was certainly true as a culture we Americans had taken our short attention spans and desire for something new to extremes. Right on TV you could see the advertisements for the latest concoction in fast food culinary abominations every night, from multi-layered pizzas to burgers constructed from several different barnyard animals to ice cream creations only a thirteen year old sugar junkie could devise. I wouldn't at all be surprised to see barbecued pizza on the menu or, better yet, barbecued sushi tacos.

As I was perusing the natural section of the supermarket, deceiving myself into thinking by buying maybe five percent of my weekly caloric intake from the health food aisle I might avoid the heart attack that was imminent, I ran into a classmate from High School. This in itself wasn't unusual. I wasn't the only one of my graduating class who had decided to stay put after leaving school. What was unusual was I recognized him immediately. He didn't look a whole lot different. Good genes, I guess.

The flip side of that wasn't so immediate. He stood and stared at me for a full (uncomfortable) minute before realizing who I was. I was just about ready to offer him a hint as to my identity when he put my, undoubtedly, bloated face to memory. "Rick, how ya doin!" he finally called out a little too loudly, trying to mask his embarrassment, or mine. We talked for a few minutes, with me leaving out the recent downturns in my personal bio. In the course of our small talk he said, "You should check out Facebook, there are a million people from our class on it--really."

My first reaction was to think: Why in the hell would I do that? Why would I want to contact people from my past? I hadn't, if memory served me correctly, liked many of them; and I am sure the feeling was probably mutual. In High School I had been a proud member of the "stoner" clique. The membership fluctuated of course, but generally hovered around maybe a half dozen. We had our awful New Wave rock, poseur surfing, and dope--now illustratively called weed. No one was going to mistake us for the next generation of leaders.

Still, I was curious. Everyone has that hidden desire to see how everybody else turned out. I practically rushed back to my empty house and aging lap top so I could log on and take a look around, excited about possibly seeing how I might stack up against my past friends.

Not well, as I would discover rather quickly, while several pages (walls) popped up on my screen showing some well preserved specimens from the class of 1980. My voyeuristic impulses were stunned, leaving me wondering why I even took a peek to begin with. Who were these people from my past, the ones with the seemingly perfect lives and well restored physical attributes? Me, with my ingrained facial skin cancer and well fed mid-section, didn't seem in any way their contemporary, someone who had shared a history together.

I found, without much effort, four of my friends from the past, two men and two women. They were a representative sampling of my group, four people who had accompanied me through my High School career. The two men had been my buddies, spending many hours with me at the beach as we made it through our teenage years. Thinking back, I couldn't remember when they had drifted away. We had established a bond back then, us against the world. The proverbial teenage angst had been fought as a trio, a united front. After High School, as I recall, life's necessities divided us. They had both gone off to college, leaving me behind, in more ways than I imagined at the time.

The women, girls as I can only think of them still, left as well, traveling out of state to attend college. One of them, Laura, had been what might best be described as a girl friend. We had a brief romance, maybe a semester or so, before it tapered off and we became friends. Our carnal pursuits consisted of me proving that premature ejaculation is messy, as we lay under the stars on the beach, trying to ignore the planes flying over and landing at the Fort Lauderdale airport. The other woman was JoAnn, who never fit in with my small cliche of friends. She was a neighbor, literally the girl next door.

This quartet of facebook devotees constituted my discoveries, if you want to exclude the one other friend I found, who happened to be in prison for bank fraud. He, too, had been a member of my circle of friends but had moved away for a totally different reason. As luck, ironic as ever, would have it he had been the one voted to most likely succeed from our graduating class. It wasn't because he was financially astute or had a well honed business mind but rather due to his father being filthy rich. He had been mostly devoid of ambition, choosing to accept his dad's bank account as a guiding light for his future.

It was about then I had my eureka moment, while sitting munching on some jalapeno Pringle chips as I surfed the internet, with the orange stained keyboard to prove it. I would go visit my High School friends. It was to be a journey, of sorts, something constructive that would get me back on track in my life. Of course, I would have to fund this adventure; not to mention my friends would have to agree to such an undertaking. It was not an insurmountable problem.

I called the real estate agent who had sold me and my wife the house and immediately put it on the market. Next, I signed on to Facebook and posted myself on the site, complete with a photo taken by my wife at the beach some five years before, showing me, you know, in the best light. The photograph was taken before my stomach expansion and expanding forehead. It was also taken at such a distance that made for some flattering exposure to my face, which, translated, means you couldn't see all the wrinkles. It wasn't like I was posting an ad on some singles website, something my neighbor encouraged me to do by the way. He was trying to be sympathetic, I guess, but it came off as creepy because it just seemed as if he was trying to get some vicarious thrills out of me dating while he sat at home with his wife who had ballooned up to a running back's weight and liked to, apparently, throw it around a little bit.

The house was priced to move, as they say. I wanted out. The funds in my bank account had dwindled but with the sale of the homestead I would have adequate funds to stake me for enough time to decide what I wanted to do. Fortunately my car was, miracle of miracles, paid off, leaving my transportation needs taken care of. I was more than willing to jettison my household belongings, furniture and all, then I stumbled on a local company that organized garage sales/yard sales for a split on the take. They arranged everything, from ads to actually selling the junk. End result, almost two thousand dollars in my pocket and I didn't have to do anything but open the garage.

Chapter 1 JOHNNY

The last memory I have of Johnny was back in 1981, at a bar on the Fort Lauderdale strip, Springbreak, and we are watching a banana eating contest. It is March 3rd and the MC on stage holds up his hand and motions for the DJ to stop the music. A hush settles over the crowd, except for some guy standing behind us who yells out: "Mine's bigger than that!" The MC, a guy wearing one of those cheesy hats woven out of palm fronds, tells us that President Reagan has just been shot. Everyone looks around, like just maybe this guy might have a warped sense of humor. Then the MC waves to the DJ and he cranks up the music again, while the girls on stage return to fellating their bananas or, for the more prudish contestants, simulating a hand job. The 40th President of the United States might be dead but life goes on.

Johnny had come back home for, of all things, SpringBreak, something we had been going to since we were freshman in High School. In fact, being locals, Springbreak was something you usually tried to avoid. This, you must remember, was back then, before the Chamber of Commerce and the Mayor, not to mention every other civic minded personage, voiced their disapproval of the annual pilgrimage to Fort Lauderdale for some R and R away from the academic toiling at colleges all around the country. Springbreak was something that had been going on for so long the local merchants planned their business models around it.

It may have been a bacchanalian pukefest but it was lucrative for the businesses along the beach. That the annual event had been immortalized on film and become an institution in and of itself didn't matter to the politicians and do-gooders who wanted to rid the city of the stink that came with being associated with rampant immorality; it didn't help the cause when each year there was usually a tragic and totally avoidable death associated with the spring time event. Most times some drunken college student would fall off a balcony and splatter on the pool deck below or be run over by a car on the strip, leaving a grieving family back home wondering how junior had died such a senseless death. Recriminations would follow, of course, as usual shown on the local news. In the end, the moralists got their way and shut down the drunken four mile orgy, replacing it with a corporate sponsored beach front suitable for the whole family. Most locals breathed a sigh of relief when the city economy didn't actually slide into the ocean as predicted by all of the people who wanted Springbreak to remain a spring time phenomenon. The party people just moved the festivities a few hundred miles up the beach anyway, proving that the free market system does indeed work, either that or never underestimate the desires of college age kids to ruin their reputations and livers.

Johnny had only gone off to FSU but hadn't come back home for Christmas, choosing instead to go skiing in Colorado. Skiing? That was novel for us. We were warm weather drones. "It's pretty cool, Ricky," he had informed me when I saw him after he got back home. "Better than surfing?" I wanted to know, skeptical. "Nah, just different," he said, smiling, looking at me like we were sharing a joke or something.

As we stood there in the crowd of horny guys, watching the coeds peeling bananas, I really didn't know what we were doing there. I liked watching half drunk girls simulate sex as much as the next guy, but being on the beach with a bunch of tourists seemed somehow lame. It got worse when some of his college buddies from FSU showed up and they stumbled out of the bar and headed for a party a dorm friend of theirs was having in his hotel room. I had begged off, telling Johnny I had to go somewhere. I think I only saw him one more time after that, briefly, when he came home for summer.

That time on the Fort Lauderdale strip was, more or less, the end of our friendship. He had moved on. Different avenues were opening up for him. I was just coming to the realization that I had to go to college, any college. There were no parallel tracks for us to travel on.

I was thinking back on all of this as I shot out a message to Johnny, after having looked over his Facebook page, the one with the picture of him standing on the beach somewhere on Long Island. I was happy to see he was still surfing, at least judging by the wetsuit and board under his arm. He looked ten years younger than me, but then again maybe he fudged on the photo to make himself look better.

What would Johnny think when he saw the message was from me? He would probably delete it immediately and then set up blockers so I would never (ever) get through to him. That didn't happen. He wrote back quickly, telling me that he was "floored" when he saw my name pop up. And, he added, "Hell yes" he would like to see me and "go over old times." I will confess that I was nervous when I first opened up his email, thinking the worse. After all, not everyone is so eager for an injection of nostalgia to be laid on them. Thirty years is a long time and all those passing decades can wear away anybody's desire to re-connect.

My quest or journey had begun.

It began behind the wheel of my car, because I had decided to drive instead of flying around the country. I had elected this mode of transportation for the simple reason that I knew it would take more time and, apparently, I had plenty of that. All of the resumes I had diligently sent out right after losing my job had produced all of one interview, which I tanked when I showed up late for the meeting and--I am not kidding--farted while the guy was telling me what the company expected from its employees. "Burrito," I told him by way of apology, shrugging, trying not to laugh. He didn't miss a beat, as he droned on for another good ten minutes about the job description etc. As expected, I didn't get any call back; evidently flatulence wasn't on the Human Resources guy's check list.

Besides, I wanted to see the U S of A out there. I had never been west of the Mississippi. Hell, you could probably count the number of States I had been to on one hand. That in itself was a disgraceful situation to be in. I had actually been to more countries in Europe. I had a social responsibility to visit my own country before I died. Actuarially, I had maybe twenty years left. The numbers gave me somewhat longer, on into my 70's but then again they weren't taking into account all of those visits to the Cheese cake Factory and participation in countless tail gate parties. I was a walking, eating timebomb.

It was a Tuesday morning when I set out for New York City. Summer wasn't going away in South Florida. Florida had always been a place of two seasons, hot and warm. Lately, if global warming is to be believed, the warm part of the axis had been reduced more and more, leaving all of us natives looking back longingly at the time when there had actually been something of a winter, where the temperatures dipped below eighty once in a while. It was a AC world now, where you dashed from air conditioned car to air conditioned office and back to your air conditioned house. Only the truly masochistic spent any time what so ever outdoors--and that included the beach, which had become a furnace most of the time, with a bubbling cauldron of salt water just waiting to scold you if you ventured in.

The Euros seemed to like it though, because they had pretty much taken over the entire State, especially the Germans, who flocked to the peninsula in order to marinate their body odors more, if possible. "Don't they have plumbing over there?" my ex-wife was fond of asking, even though she had been to Germany and knew damn well they were on the right side of modernity. She would always pinch her nose for added emphasis whenever we encountered some Teutonic tourists in the store, beach, movie theater, where ever. The French were only better by degrees because they liked to mask their stench with perfume, giving off an aroma of lilac doused putridity.

It was our way of acting superior, I guess. The Europeans always saw us Americans as international bumpkins, a society of people who ate everything with our hands and actually saw virtue in soft toilet paper. Our national inferiority complex led us to do strange things, like, you know, shower on a daily basis and worry about inflicting second hand smoke on unsuspecting bystanders. The fact that we didn't really have a culture to speak of, if you subtract Super Sunday and Nascar, shouldn't have made us so apprehensive about our national identity. It would seem after Thoreau and maybe Whitman we didn't have much to offer the world except for an Afro-Asian golfer, (before the world discovered that he liked to practice with his putter a little too much) disaster movies, and that squinty eyed, six foot tall country singer with the virginal track record.

I was getting out of the Sunshine State, at least for a little while, even if I was entertaining fantasies of finding nirvana or is it Shangra La out there? In my fantasy I would pull into a small town tucked away in some forgotten State, one that wasn't on anyone's radar, and be accepted for who I am. It didn't matter that I didn't know who I was. That small detail didn't matter. I would, as can be expected, find love too, She would be, predictably, younger and good looking, but wholesome and full of...of understanding. Being blond was a bonus. No extentions though, just her real hair. (And is anyone ever going to finally tell these women with the fake hair they look stupid? Wearing someone else's hair on your head, regardless of what part of the world it comes from, makes you nothing but simple minded. We can all ridicule a man for wearing a piece of synthetic junk on their head but it is okay for a woman to glue some stranger's hair onto hers so it stretches down her back like some new body part.) She would like to work out but not insist that I do too. No taller than 5 foot 8 because I am just six foot and with heels she might be taller than me. My expectations in my day dreams were often times specific.

Taking to the road was pure American. Almost every writer, musician, you name it had co-opted the concept because it went directly to who we were as Americans, a people restless, forever wanting to see what was next. Our cars were an extention of us, the collective us, a nation of people on the move. Highways going everywhere, from interstates to forest roads.

Then again, there was the matter of gas to put in my car. Of recent, the price of a gallon of gas had spiked, leaving the nation with a nervous breakdown. Over in Europe, and elsewhere, they might have learned to live with outrageously priced liters of petrol, but not over here. We all took it as a personal insult to have to pay a lot for gassing up our cars. I was psychologically prepared for it. It was a small price to pay to get away, to go on the road and see America.

What I wasn't prepared for was the actual driving. Monotony takes on a life all its own when you are behind the wheel watching the sameness of Interstate driving pass by. When driving long distances, and you grow tired of listening to either your aging CDs (Police, Pretenders, Talking Heads, Cars), or to screeching talk radio, you start to engage in thought experiments--which are, if you don't already know, just another way of passing the time. Speaking of talk radio, when did it come to pass in America that every irrational jerk with working vocal chords gets to have a radio show? And do they all have to aspire to be the next Rush Limbaugh?

While I am on the subject, what is up with Rushbo? The man is a raving lunatic most of the time. How can so many people out there across the land give credence to a guy who couldn't even get through Southwest Missouri State something or other college? He dodges the draft way back when because he has a cyst on his fat ass and now is a militaristic bozo going on about how we should be going to war all the time. Not only that, he is thrice married and a drug addict who blabs about family values we should all have. How did all of this happen? When did we all lower our standards?

Living in South Florida meant that it was going to take me a very long time to even get out of Florida. My home state is, without a doubt, one long piece of boring real estate. Nothing changes. The sheer flatness begins to annoy you after you've driven a few hours, finally reaching a point where you can't bear to see another palm tree. I hadn't gotten to Coco Beach yet and I was regretting not flying.

Originally, I had planned on stopping in Daytona Beach and take a look at the beach, maybe have some lunch. By the time I got to the turn off I just kept going, eyeing the roadside sign telling me that Jacksonville was up ahead by X number of miles. I slipped in the Cars CD and kept going.

Since I had started later than I expected, it was just getting dark by the time I saw the Welcome to Georgia sign. Florida was in the rear view mirror. Pressing on, I was determined to make it to South Carolina. To be honest, the gamecock State wasn't much of a destination. Despite the fact they had a colorful governor, the one who followed his heart all the way down to South America, temporarily abandoning his family and responsibilities to the State, the place was mostly ugly, with some of the most conservative politicians in the universe.

They have given us a congressman who called the sitting President of the US a liar on TV and been rewarded for it back home. They had a middle-aged "bachelor" for a senator who gallivanted around the country during the Presidential election mooning over his chosen candidate like some lovesick frat boy. The State still had the unmistakable smell of the Confederacy about it, readily demonstrated by the stubborn need to display the Stars and Bars on their State flag.

I was approaching exhaustion so I knew I would have to stop and find a place somewhere along I95 within the State lines. Besides, I was supposed to be seeing the country, taking the good with the bad. Traveling wasn't always about having a good time. My ex-wife and I had had some of our most vicious fights while traveling overseas. She wasn't what might be called a good traveler, one to take things in stride. I, for the most part, was. Little irritants didn't affect me like they did her, where she would go off on what she considered the smallest infractions.

For instance, we were in London once and she went ballistic when the B and B we were staying at didn't have coffee for breakfast. "Have some tea," I had suggested, which seemed like the reasonable thing to do. She had scoffed at that and called the lady over who ran the small B and B, complaining to her about the coffee situation. I was embarrassed, as the other two guests at the place were staring at us. "How could you not have coffee?" my wife wanted to know, not trying to disguise the disgust in her voice one bit. I tried to intervene but after my wife glowered at me I bailed out, sticking my nose in the corn flakes, hoping that they weren't going to spit in my eggs that were on the way from the kitchen.

Now, I was free. I could encounter mishaps on the road on my own terms. This was my first night on the road and I was going to have to spend it in a motel, a non-descript place I saw from the highway. As I drove in I could see that the motel had seen better days. It was, formally, a proud link in a national chain of motels stretching all across the country, one with a national ad campaign on TV and a 800 switchboard to place reservations from sea to shining sea.

The current owner (s) had attached a wooden sign right over the previous well known logo of the former corporation. As I got out of my car a McDonald's hamburger carton crunched under foot. Across the parking lot I could see two men leaning against a car smoking, passing a cigarette back and forth. They glanced at me then looked away. On the second floor landing two kids were running up and down, squealing. You know when you watch a Steven King movie and the lead character arrives at a place and the director instills just about as much anxious vibe as he can into the scene, well, that was how I felt. Later on that night I was probably going to die, or, knowing a King progression like I do, probably be scared to death for the next hour or so then find out it was all a mistake.

I walked into the office and checked in, fear be damned. At the front desk was a small girl, probably about ten or eleven. She was Indian, from India, and greeted me with a grunt, while she tended to a small video game in her lap. From the back came a loud staccato of interconnected vowels and consonants in what I presumed was Hindi or some lesser known dialect. The girl yelled back: "I know what to do."

I tried to smile at her but she continued to play her game for another minute or two, grimacing as she fingered the tiny buttons. Then a man appeared from the back room and told her to, I assume, get lost because she slithered off the stool behind the desk and disappeared down the hall. The man appeared to have just woken up as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"How many?" he suddenly asked me, scratching his belly and belching.

"Many what?" I replied, wondering if I should bother smiling at him.

He looked up at me for a moment, and then stared over my shoulder and let out a clacking series of sentences directed at, I guess, the little girl. A woman appeared at the side door wearing a beautiful sari and I immediately thought of those Bollywood movies where they do those comical dances to frenetic music. She answered him and then slinked away.

"Sir, are you by yourself?"

"Yes, just me."

"One room then. How many nights?"

"Just tonight," I told him, glancing at a candy machine on the other side of the room that was all but empty, wondering where I was going to get something to eat.

"Very good," he muttered, pushing a form for me to fill out in my direction.

"Is there some place I could get something to eat around here?" I asked him, sniffing at the aroma of curry drifting out from the back room.

He thought for a moment, as if I might have asked him to analyze a vexing math problem, then said "No."

"Really," I exclaimed, surprised. "Nothing. How about what you're cooking back there?"

He ignored my remark and handed me my room key, after running my credit card. Then he pointed off to the north and said my room was in that direction. Before I could ask him anything else he walked away. I could hear him yelling at his daughter through the walls.

It was going to be a long night. In my car I had two energy bars and a small bottle of water, a lame attempt at improving my dietary intake. The energy bars said natural on the package but, after closer scrutiny, I saw they had tons of sugar in them, not to mention some questionable oils and other assorted ingredients that precluded them from ever being thought of as "natural." The bottle of water came, purportedly, from some springs in, of all places, Arkansas.

While it was true I wasn't exactly what might be called a chowhound, I did like to eat dinner. There had to be a town around here, I wondered. How in the hell did these people get their groceries, from India, flown in special, all the way from Mumbai? Now that I'm thinking of it, how in the hell did they end up here at the ends of the earth? Did they immigrate to America and ask to be taken to South Carolina? Maybe it was punishment. They were ordered here by a vindictive judge who didn't much care for foreigners. And what about the little girl, how was her life going to unfold? Brought up with a hick accent, listening to Country music and eating curried grits.

My imagination kicks in when I am hungry. I wasn't about to get back in my car again, not after driving all day. There were all of two cars in the parking lot besides mine. I had seen the two guys when I drove in and didn't think it was prudent to go ask them about where I might get something to eat. They looked like somebody you might see on that Cops show, stars in their own drama as they are getting arrested. As they often did with these roadside motels, they had given me a room right next door to one of guest's staying there. It made for easy cleaning so I imagined. You have a thirty room motel with five people staying there and you stack them on top of each other.

The curtains in the room next to mine were open as I walked by and I could see a middle-aged couple seated at the table in their room, eating. I tried not to stare but I caught a glimpse of several tupper ware containers scattered on the table, that and paper plates piled high with honest to god food: fried chicken, potato salad, some kind of bean salad and, be still my taste buds, cake. It all screamed of home cooking, southern style. It was all I could do to keep walking by.

They were prepared, those two. A large cooler and some planning and you could defeat the fast food industry. Dejected, I fell into my room and pushed back thoughts of knocking on their door and literally begging for food. Surely they would be understanding. I would offer money of course, something to ease my humiliation. Southerners always made too much food anyway. They had enough chicken there to fill a bucket of KFC.

How would that work though? I could clean myself up a bit then stroll on over, real neighborly like, and knock lightly on the door. The man would answer the door and I would greet him with a smile and a greeting: "Hello there, nice night we are having. Mind if I ask you about your chicken situation? Do you happen to have enough for me? Potato salad too? Cole slaw? Is that chocolate cake?" The wife, full of southernly charm, would graciously ask me in and whip out another paper plate and, buffet style, I would load up until the plate collapsed under all the weight. We would exchange histories, marveling at the modern world, while in between mouth fulls I would pretend to care about their grandchildren and how the University of South Carolina football team was doing. Belly full, I would waddle back to my room, guilty, but full.

You can't do that, a voice in my brain told me, mentally slapping me up side the head. I decided to take a shower instead, while I listened to their TV blaring through the thin walls. Afterwards, I sat on my bed and ate my two energy bars, fortunately different flavors, leaving the one with the most sugar content for last as my dessert, washing it all down with my bottled water which tasted like glue. Later on, I got to listen to my two neighbors have sex, which was disturbing on many levels, especially since I couldn't imagine how they could move after eating all that chicken.

Sex, as a concept and a pursuit, was something relegated to my past, distant past. Except for the occasional intimacy with my hand and some off brand hand lotion from Walgreens, I had been out of the game. When you are forty-eight years old, and have been sleeping with the same woman for two decades, you find yourself out of practice when it comes to being reintroduced to the mating ritual. I was far from being a Romeo anyway.

My neighbor, the one suffering from the battered husband syndrome, was always urging me to stop by Mrs. Steveson's house down the street, the woman who was forever watering her lawn in her bikini. She was a widow some three or four years now and, according to the neighborhood scuttlebutt, eager to be neighborly. This widely held belief had never really been substantiated mind you, but by the same token it had never been refuted either. Although she must have been several years my senior, she was well preserved, having spent some of her husband's life insurance money wisely.

Being unexpectedly celibate had its upside. I was assured of not having any unexpected entanglements. Still, I was becoming more and more socially stunted, not unlike a monk who emerges from his barren vestibule tucked away in some monastery. Human contact is part of the over all plan. We humans need it. I wasn't so sure. Then again, I was the idiot driving thousands of miles to visit with people I hadn't spoken to in almost a generation. That was the social equivalent of being reunited with your long lost sibling who had disappeared in a plane crash way back when.

The next morning I was up early, unable to sleep because of my complaining, growling stomach. We as a nation were doomed, I thought, as I studied my face in the mirror, suddenly electing not to shave. It occurred to me that growing a beard would be a logical next step in my journey. It didn't seem possible but I had never grown one before. There was that one time, but after several days my wife finally noticed and stated: "You're not growing a beard." I had rubbed the stubble on my chin and told her no, of course not. Now I was.

First, though, I had to get some food in me. We Americans ran on calories, lots of them. Why else would we have so many factory farms out there in the land of the free? Sheds full of pigs, chickens, cows you name it were going 24/7 just so we could have all the empty calories we wanted, and cheap. Our taxes subsidized it. Systematically, we were all going to die happy, overweight, but content.

The couple next door were at the table again, this time sitting behind some cinnamon rolls and coffee. I hurried by the window, not wanting to see what I was missing. The little girl was back on her post behind the counter, apparently forgoing school to keep the motel running. She gave me my receipt and actually smiled, before returning to her video game. I remembered there had been a gas station on the way in just off the highway and headed right for it, hoping this time it would be open.

I was born in 1962, at the tail end of all that baby boomer madness. That was the year of the Cuban Missile crisis, which, as you can imagine, pretty eventful for people living in South Florida. We weren't all that far from Cuba and, so my parents tell me, imagined the worse. Nukes didn't have far to go if they wanted to find their target. It was also the year John Glenn orbited the earth and, as usual, the Yankees won the World Series. Popular songs of the day were: the Monster Mash, Big Girls Don't Cry, and Go Away Little Girl, all of which my mother sang in the kitchen while she was making dinner. Another big event was the death of Marilyn Monroe.

On a more sports/cultural note, Phil Knight developed the very first Nike running shoe in 62, which I happen to be wearing right now even though I haven't run even once in my life. They were on sale at the mall so I bought them, making me just another poseur in the consumer world. Anyway, I am old enough to remember when gas stations were something different. As novel as it might sound, you could actually get your car repaired at one. Now, you can pump your gas and gorge yourself on everything from microwaved nachos to Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Besides the gas, which is just a small percentage of a gas station profit margin, the business is built around the customer being drawn into the store and buying junk food. The gas station now gives you gas. It is an emporium of packaged slop, expanding the concept of sundries to the tenth degree and beyond. Beer, cheap wine, milk, batteries, lighters, cigarettes, cup cakes, frozen pizza, chips, cookies, duct tape, energy drinks, ice, butter, yogurt (the crappy kind, with tons of sugar), soup, cereal, cans of beans, analgesics, acid blockers, band-aids, and the list goes on. If all the food wasn't so nutritionally bogus, you could survive to the end of your days right in one of the two or three aisles in the store. It would, however, be a pleasurable death none the less, as you worked your way through the modern day American food groups: corn syrup, fat, and sugar.

I knew all of this going in, not that it mattered. Like some crazed junkie, I zoomed up and down the aisles, plucking products right and left. My fast was going to be broken, and I started with a breakfast burrito, a delightful concoction that may or may not have had eggs in it. I nuked it for the appropriate time span then dug right in, while the store clerk, a skinny twenty-something guy with a shaved head and multiple piercings eyed me suspiciously. (By the way, how exactly did that job interview go? Several tattoos peaked out from his rolled up sleeve, showing a number of multi-colored skulls. The manager must have been too scared of the guy not to hire him. "Where do you see yourself in five years?" he might have asked. "Hey man, probably in the pen doing 10 to 20." Much to my guilty dismay later on, I washed it down with a bottle of gatoraid, the original orange flavor because, after all, I am a traditionalists.

After finishing the burrito, I moved on to a package of hostess cup cakes, the devil food chocolate kind in homage to the cake I saw my motel neighbor's eating for dessert. My body, as was usual, seemed to take this brush with nourishment in stride, sending up a rib cage rattling belch. A woman, maybe thirty, glanced at me and laughed. I returned her laugh and said, "Might have eaten that just a little too fast." "You think," she shot back in a New York accent, smiling at me and shaking her head. I watched her pay for her gas and walk out to a waiting SUV, driven by a tall guy wearing some expensive sun glasses. I noticed they had New York plates on their car. She's going to tell him about the disgusting guy in the store who burped up half his greasy breakfast burrito, I imagined, as they sped away.

Tonight, I thought, I am going to be prepared, as I loaded up on supplies. One of those thought experiments I mentioned before had been me pondering the possibility of a person surviving on junk food in a stranded situation. If, for instance, a cataclysmic event occurred right that moment and I was the only one left alive, could I stay in that gas station and survive on the existing stock of food stuff? The bigger question would be: Would I be able to ration my stock? My gluttony would be my down fall.

A four tiered rack of candy bars would taunt me, as I tried to resist mixing and matching. Take a bite of a snicker's bar, and chase it with some skittles, or, more daring still, gobbled down a creamy Milky Way and chase it with some York peppermint patties. The combinations were endless: Pay-Day/Hershey's Kisses, Butterfinger bar/M&M's, Twix bar/Chunk chocolate bar. And, of course, that was just the candy section.

My BP and blood sugar level, currently high enough to make my last GP gasp when he took a look at my most recent labs, would take a hit, that was a given. Adult onset diabetes stalked me like some relentless predator you might see on an Animal Planet program. Surprisingly, my cholesterol was in the healthy range, with plenty of the good kind of HDLs or whatever. My overall health picture would fit nicely into any number of commercials you might see on TV every night, the ones showing some hapless Joe spilling his guts about his declining health, then switch to the next scene with him perking up when he realizes he is going to be saved by the newest concoction from Big Pharma that is going to save his life, his family, even his country.

I tried to be cheerful for the clerk's benefit, imagining that it couldn't be too much fun standing behind a cash register all day completing the transactions of the local public and the wayward travelers stopping for gas. He grunted in response to my announcing that it looked like it was going to be a nice day. Although it was indeed closing in on autumn, outside beyond the air conditioned store it was already probably eighty and climbing. It was almost as if the soul sapping heat of Florida was following me up the east coast seaboard. I paid with my debit card, hoping my tattooed friend behind the counter wasn't able to somehow hack my pin number and empty my bank account while I was in route north. He gave me my receipt and the two bags of supplies, with the bag of cheese doodles sticking out of one of them, matched by a bag of Frito-lay potato chips in the other, then got back to returning a tweet on his I-phone or arranging a burglary with his accomplice in the next county right after he got off work.

I headed back to my car, the five year old Honda Accord, the four cylinder version because I wanted all the gas mileage benefits of a Hybrid without having to pay the price. My ex-wife always teased me about the car, and as usual, there was a kernel of truth in her teasing. "Honey, you look...so...so comfortable in your car," she liked to say, giggling. Flashy, I wasn't. Most of my friends drove SUVs, rolling behemoths that put the fear of god in other drivers sharing the road with them. The closest they ever got to taking them off-road was the unpaved parking lot at the Dolphin Stadium for the football games.

I was the practical one, always. Even in High School I had bought my surf boards second hand. I used my wetsuit until dry rot left it with a series of holes that simply one day disintegrated as I was sliding into it, much to my buddies amusement. My wife drove a mustang convertible, a tricked out one that she thought made her look...what? Dangerous. Alluring. Sexy. To me, she looked like one of those "chicks" who might or might not be casted in the next Dukes of Hazard movie. The Ford Mustang might be some things but I don't ever think anyone thought it was sophisticated, especially painted a custom god-help-my retinas yellow.

Okay, the Honda Accord was a safe pick, one heralded by all of the consumer organizations every year as being "The Best Buy." I guess I didn't have to buy it in white, making it even more non-descript. Living in Florida, the white color reflected more of the hostile sunlight, and if that is being too logical then I plead guilty. I didn't think I had to apologize to anyone for being practical.

After gassing up, though, I wished I had purchased a Smart car or something equally miserly when it came to gas mileage. Even though my car was stingy with the fuel, it was still a shock to have to fork over the cash when the tank needed to be filled up. There were lots and lots of miles ahead of me. I was going to have to watch my budget.

It was back to I95, the highway that stretches all the way from Florida to Maine, a large part of the Dwight D Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. In total, the whole interstate system comprises about 46 billion miles of roads, making it the largest on the globe. The system was instituted back in 1956 after the automobile industry lobbied hard for it--wonder why. It has a simplistic numbering system, with even numbers going west to east and odd the other way. The Interstates and the American people were born for each other, giving us that sensation of open road and freedom we are all congenitally born with.

That doesn't mean they are fun, far from it. The roads, with their intrinsic sameness, are soul stealing ribbons of pavement that make getting from point A to point B an anti-climatic snoozefest for the most part. The adventure of road travel has been sucked out, leaving behind mind numbing hours behind the wheel watching road signs and billboards float by, almost as if they were rooted to another dimension. All the while you cruise along, 70, 80, 90 even, dodging half asleep truckers and inattentive old farts driving RV's the size of Nebraska. The lifeblood of the nation pulses right out your window, as the eighteen wheelers jockey for position, hurrying to bring the people their UPS packages, Wal-mart merchandise, gasoline, scared shitless chickens on flat beds in route to the slaughter house, lumber, just about everything.

The Interstate is our circulatory system on the grand scale. It pulses with activity, day and night. We are all in sync now, like a bad but popular reality show on cable, where the characters are all detestable but bring in the ratings. There is a another Newtonian Law of the land, one in which the advancement of living life is totally independent of gravity, because speed in its elemental shape and form has been squeezed and massaged down to increments where the next instant has already happened. I'm kidding, of course. Yet, with the highways and driving, it is safe to say they are a mainstay in our adjustments to everyday life. We are all in our cars and driving very fast.

If you want proof that we've become an ADD/velocity crazed culture think about the many times you've stood before your microwave and wondered why it was taking so long for the dinging bell to go off. Even microwaving isn't fast enough for us anymore. Along with that compulsion goes the compression of time throughout the day, from the 24 hour news cycle to the all night drug store. Toss in banks in some States being open seven days a week and you have a culture in desperate need of another level of consciousness just to keep up with the first.

"Rick, it's all about productivity," my father used to tell me, winking for emphasis. My dad was--still is--an industrial consultant. I know that sounds, you know, squishy, like you might be wanting to conceal the fact that your dad is some dickhead who works for some insurance company or something. No, actually he did have one of those jobs that are difficult to explain and even harder to justify. Simply, he told companies how to make more money.

He was in his Seventies and still working. "I'm going to retire when I can't do it anymore," he liked to tell me, winking again, letting me know that he had all the secrets to life. My mother was okay with this, I guess. The job kept him away for two thirds of the year, leaving them with a marriage that operated mostly in absentia. She, as is evident, maintained her own life style totally separate from her husband.

Of course, early on, she had me and my sister to raise. That took up her time. By the way, my sister is a lawyer for some law firm in Fort Lauderdale. We don't talk much. She was seven years older than me. I, so it seemed, was just an inconvenience to her, not unlike a family pet that no one wants to put down. She had exited High School by the time I was entering, so our paths didn't cross much, if at all. She went off to college, on a scholarship at that, and never looked back. I didn't even go to her wedding. It was out of State somewhere, when she married some douchbag from Atlanta, who talked like he was doing us all a favor by marrying my sister. I only spoke with him on the phone once but he came off as a prick, one who gave pretention a bad name.

As you have probably already figured out, I was the failure in the family. Hell, even my mother had gone to a better college than me, even though all she got out of her degree from UM was a marriage license with my dad's name on it. My dad was a transplant way back when from the Philly area. He had attended that college in Pittsburgh, the one I can't ever seem to remember the name of, before heading south to Florida to make his fortune. Well, not really a fortune but let's just call it very comfortable. My parents owned two houses, one in Florida and one in North Carolina. "We have the beach and the mountains, what more could you ask for?" my mother was always fond of saying. How about no sixteen hour drive between the two, I would always tell myself, as I smiled idiotically back at her.

She probably thought I was envious of this fact, having two homesteads where you could pick and choose. I didn't see the point, really. My parents home in NC, while nice, situated in the woods on the side of a mountain overlooking a valley, it was still in the sticks, with hicks. The nearest point of civilization was maybe a hour's drive away and even then you had to deal with cretins who were probably sired by their uncle or aunt. It didn't matter in the end because I seldom talked to my mother either.

She had never approved of my ex and that might have been the only thing she ever got right. The friction between them was legendary. My mother saw Celeste as a shrewish woman, who wouldn't know style if it hit her in the head. Odd, that pretty much summed up my mother. Over time, due to my wife's influence, I stopped communicating with my mother, and, by extention, my father. Apparently, I wasn't missed. Several Christmas's past without seeing them before I realized I, effectively, didn't have any parents anymore. As harsh as it sounds, it was liberating.

No longer did I have to make any obligatory phone calls, or meet any onerous family expectations. It left me with the option to be a failure. I met that goal admirably, so my friends on the links like to remind me on a frequent basis. I had taken the Peter Principle and inverted it, or, maybe, improved on it. It had always been my philosophy that a man (or woman) could excel at not excelling. The fact that the philosophy could fit on a bumper sticker: all the better.

Besides, my parents hadn't done me any favors. My last name was Johnson and, in their infinite wisdom or, maybe, warped sense of humor, had named me Richard. That, according to some popular books out there, is a societal blow that is hard to come back from. Being named, first and last, after a part of the male anatomy gives you a certain undeniable handicap to move through life with. I once had a professor in college actually say to the class: "Is your middle name Peter?" I don't need to tell you there was a lot of laughter. For the record, my middle name is: Samuel, a nod to the Bible supposedly.

Not that we were in any way religious. Organized religion had been bred out of my family, both sides, since colonial times. My dad's heritage was a hodge-podge of working class cast-offs, who washed up on America's shores a long time ago. On the other side of things, my mother's family were all German, with maybe an Austrian or two thrown in for good measure. They had come over in the 1800's, looking to forget about Luther and his lunatic fringe view of the Church.

I hadn't even been baptized. My parent's had apparently been too busy or just given up after my sister's christening. For dad, he had other things to do. The Age of Reason for him had morphed into a time to make money, apparently proving that Jesus and the color green were mutually exclusive. Mother, well, she thought organized religion had a place in the world, just not hers. Being spiritual meant being private, as in a one on one encounter with God when the time was right. This left my sister and me to our own devices when it came to confronting the Almighty.

For the most part, we didn't. Penciled in for me on Sunday mornings was golf, leaving no time for any extracurricular activities like attending church. My sister thought Sundays, from start to finish, were for sleeping, which she could do like some snoozing SyFy zombie. It wasn't unusual for her to not appear, at all, for the entire day. That she would go on to get married in a church was surprising to me. Society's dictates are powerful, evidently. My parents had been married at a Justice of the Peace, before embarking on 40 years of separation.

I will say that I, too, was married in a church. It was "customary," so said my wife to be, with a straight face. I was sure she hadn't set foot inside the place since she was baptized so many years before. Also, she was a member of a church that was out of the mainstream, to say the least. It was one of those off-shoots the Protestants are famous for. To each parishioner Jesus was a personal friend, or so I liked to joke, much to my mother-in-law's consternation. They had adult Sunday School and actually had people attend. I was always teasing Celeste, asking why she wasn't getting ready for Sunday School when Sunday rolled around.

At the wedding, my family wasn't well represented. My father had begged off attending, which was easy to do because he was calling from Dallas, telling me he was sorry he couldn't make it. My sister was, you know, busy with a case. This left my mother, who phoned me the day of the wedding to tell me she didn't feel well and to please tell my blushing bride she was sorry she couldn't make it. Celeste was furious, but I was, surprisingly, relieved. None of the three would have been able to disguise their disgust with the proceedings, I was sure of that. I could only imagine them huddled together, passing unflattering comments between themselves as my Bride marched down the aisle. It would have been humiliating to be sure.

Anyway, we were, practically speaking, secularists, except for a brief period after my son died and my wife turned back to her religion for solace. It didn't last long, maybe a month or so. God had no answers why our young, innocent son had to die in a murky canal near Davie, Florida. That was the last time I was in a church, for the funeral. I think it was the only time I've actually cried in public.

It was relatively early, for me anyway, just past nine. Of late, I had been climbing out of bed just shy of eleven o'clock most mornings, fighting off the grogginess of the perpetually unemployed. The night before was usually spent watching bad movies on TV or poking into things on the net. Before I knew it the clock was telling me it was the next day and I would stumble off to bed, collapsing from exhaustion at having endured another day of inactivity.

I needed to get energized, along with lose some weight, not to mention rearrange my diet if my erstwhile doctor is to be believed. "At least you don't smoke," the doctor had told me, letting the sarcasm hang in the room like some of those bionic air fresheners you can buy that pollute the entire house. Not cigarettes anyway, I thought, although my pot smoking days were mostly behind me.

Occasionally, you know, I would indulge when the opportunity presented itself. Like the time I came across my real estate agent getting high in her car. She was an attractive thirty something who knew my wife through a relative or friend. Her business savvy had gotten us the house for a good price before and now I was counting on it getting me out from under the crushing situation I was in. There had never been any interaction between us in the first transaction, because she dealt mostly with my wife. This time, I was having to deal with her all the time. My wife had handed it off to me, telling me: "You handle it, Rick, it's not like I'm living there now."

Now I had to make and answer all the phone calls, keeping tabs on the progress. The real estate agent's name was Rachel, a non-practicing Jewess who was seldom without a wad of gum in her mouth. She had, dare I say it, extensions that reached beyond her shoulders and was colored an anthracite black. She always wore a crimson red lip stick, which gave her an over all neo-Goth look that somehow I found appealing. I knew she wasn't married from our little update chats on the phone but I would never have tried to extend her services, if you know what I mean.

I did find myself stealing looks at her legs sometimes when she wore skirts. Anyway, we had just concluded a short meeting at the house, one in which she told me she thought she might have an offer coming my way from a couple who just moved there from Virginia. "Keep your fingers crossed, Rick, you never know," she said, as she gathered up her brief case and purse and waved good-bye. I walked her to the door and thought she had left. As I was heading out the door a few minutes later, I saw her sitting in her car in the driveway.

It was obvious she was smoking a doober as I walked to my car, even though she tried to hide it. I waved at her and she, embarrassed, rolled down the window. "Good stuff?" was all I could think of to say. She grinned and offered me a hit. I got in the car, taking in the dense smoke mingling with her perfume, and got high with her. It was one of those surreal moments you might see on HBO or Showtime, proving that drugs, gateway or not, are percolating in the bloodstream of America. Memo to the Federal Government, the war on drugs has been lost, I thought, as I took another hit, trying not to admire Rachel's body next to me.

"So," she purred, taking another hit, letting the smoke drift from her mouth, "this couple seems pretty hot to buy your place. Betcha be glad to unload it--huh?"

I took the joint from her manicured hand, noticing the black nail polish, wondering how she got away with being, you know, vampirish in the world of real estate. "Weight off my shoulders," I told her, smiling idiotically back at her.

"Hey, what ever happened between you and Celeste anyway?" she suddenly asked me, catching me totally offguard.

I thought for a moment, wondering just how much I should reveal, then said, "You know, drifted apart. It happens." I shrugged, hoping to let her know it was a water under the bridge type of thing."

"You two were together a long time," she exclaimed, giggling.

I laughed too, for no apparent reason, then stated, "Too long."

'Oh, don't go and get all bitter on me," she teased, laughing until she snorted, then laughing harder still.

"How about you?"

"Me, oh I just broke it off with my boy friend," she answered, frowning. "He was a turd most of the time. Our signs didn't exactly align."

"Signs?"

"Yeah, you know, astrological signs," she explained in a serious tone.

I couldn't tell whether or not she was being serious or not, so I announced, "I'm an Aries."

"Really, the Ram," she sang out, holding up her hands next to her head like horns. "Fire is associated with you and your sign and you are supposed to be a very moral person."

"I am," I stammered out, laughing. "Well, I guess I never have killed anyone before."

"Did you cheat on your wife?" she asked out of nowhere.

"What? No," I protested. "Never once."

"Don't get all worked up, Rick," she said, trying to calm me down. "With divorce and all it is usually about somebody fooling around. Right?"

"Not me," I declared, sighing.

"Oh, sorry," she told me in a sympathetic tone of voice. "I didn't know Celeste had been unfaithful. Me and my big mouth."

"Old news, Rachel," I said, trying to sound unperturbed.

"I'm a Libra," she stated, trying to change the subject. "Like with the scales and all. I don't think our signs get along much, if I'm not mistaken."

I took this as a hint not to pursue any other avenues in regard to the two of us, so I mumbled, "Okay, thanks for the mind altering drugs and keep your fingers crossed about the house. Call me if anything happens." She told me she would and I got out of her car. I figured that was probably going to be the last time I did drugs for a very long time.

Despite my doctor's dire warnings, I was still on a path to slow suicide. It was possible in modern day America to eat yourself to death. I suppose it was one of those cosmic ironies in life that you could live in a country where food was so abundant that you could have too much of a good thing. Obesity levels in the nation were climbing every day, leaving us with a populace that would some time soon literally tip over and not get up. One in three or four kids today were overweight. The average American woman wore a size 12. We, as Americans, couldn't fit our fat asses in the average sized chair.

I was, apparently, leading the way. As far as I was concerned, the hero of the last several decades was the guy who came up with the relaxed fit pants. He should be one of those citizens who gets to go to the White House and receive a medal of honor or something. Order of Merit has been bestowed on you because you have allowed all of us to continue eating million calorie meals and still fit into our clothes.

I am exaggerating, a little. I am six feet tall and weigh, naked and in the morning before breakfast, about 190, okay, it's closer to 200. If I was a professional football player I would be encouraged to up my caloric intake. Since I am not, then I am warned to never eat again. The MetLife ideal weight scale says I should weigh between 157 and 170 for my age. That is the projection for some man with a mid-frame body type. If you have a large frame the numbers are 164-188. It is more than depressing that at 190 I am too heavy for even the bruiser class. I can't even claim that it is all muscle because, as is abundantly obvious, it is not.

Numerous years of devouring the food groups that all share one thing in common, fat, have left me with a body shape like some cartoon character from a remake of the Flintstones. It wasn't always so. When I was younger, a phrase that you find yourself saying more and more frequently as you pass the age of forty, I was, dare I say it, svelte. My metabolism was always in overdrive. I surfed, played pickup basketball, and, generally, was on the move constantly. As weird as it seems now, there was even a time I worked out with weights.

So my life seems to have been sliced in two, skinny me and fat me. Okay, let's be accurate here. If I walked into a room full of people, on average, I wouldn't be the fattest in the place. I suppose if I sucked in my stomach for as long as I could I might even get a Life Insurance policy from MetLife, one without a hundred riders on it disqualifying my benefits if such and such happened, like death from Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream. Besides, I always wore baggy clothes--thank you hip hop culture--and slouched a lot.

It is true I have put up a psychological barrier here, one that allows me to deny the fact that my wife, ex-wife, was probably motivated to leave me because I had let myself go. On the other side of things, Celeste had maintained her figure, thanks to a diabolical twist of fate where she won the gene lottery and took after her skinny-ass dad, while I took after, apparently, the fatso mail man and didn't take after either of my parents. My mother ate like a bird and my father never seemed to stop long enough to enjoy the rewards of life to even eat. As to my sister, she set aside an hour each and every day to work out without fail. I suspect she would probably throw herself off the top of her firm's downtown Lauderdale building if she even gained so much as one pound.

In fact, thinking back, I can remember one of the last conversations I had with my mother that went kind of like: "Why do you have to look so slovenly all the time?" I didn't have a reply and went meekly into the night, as some poet might say, one that truly hated his mother. We all can't be Adonis, mom, I thought, as I plotted ways to somehow make my family all of a sudden embrace food, and lots of it.

Maybe, in my fantasy, we could have weekly family meetings at Denny's. We could sit around the table and consume one of their renowned Grand Slam breakfasts. You know don't you that you can build your own. That's right. Eggs, bacon strips, buttermilk biscuits, sausage patty, english muffin, grits, hash browns, pancakes, oatmeal, toast, granola, yogurt, and (yeah right) fruit. Mix and match until your arteries clog on the spot. As a family we could swap a little of that and a little of this, all sharing that glow of a communal experience made possible by bubbling grease.

I should have had more willpower over the years, or, at the very least, after my golfing buddies started referring to me as: Sir Cumference and Your Roundness. There were times I did think about cutting back on my snacks. Would have turning my back on Little Debbie have made a difference? Probably not. There were plenty more treats waiting in the wings and different ones arriving on the shelves every day, dreamed up by sadistic culinary scientists working for the food conglomerates. They were the real terrorists, if you really want to know. Beady eyed bastards, probably all thin, wearing lab coats, with their degrees from the University of Iowa or Indiana University, somewhere in the mid-west, from towns that owed their existence to the continued misuse of products made from Holy Corn.

Back on I95 north, I now had to contend with the byproduct of a greasy breakfast burrito I had nuked in the microwave. They didn't do an hour special on TLC about this, the gaseous expulsions that were threatening to cloud my vision as I dodged debris on the road left over from humanity on the go: from shredded truck tires to a perfectly intact (believe it) bar stool to card board boxes to empty soda cans. It was a third world of trash, accidentally discarded by motorists in route to who knew where.

Outside my window I could see the Confederacy slip past. Florida, of course, had been part of that nightmarish experiment in human suffering, but it somehow didn't give off the air of hatred that the real South did. Just beyond the interstate General Sherman had marched to the sea, severing the backbone of the Confederate States. It reminded of that time in history class my sophomore year when a guy raised his hand and asked: "Mr. Gleason, why did the Union take them back in?" It seemed like a reasonable enough question, one that our history teacher could slam dunk. The teacher had shrugged and said, "I really don't know." That masters in education from the University of South Florida hadn't been wasted on him.

I didn't either, except that it might have been hard to divvy up the map, leaving a jig saw shape of a country after the war. Maybe the Army Corps of Engineers could have come in and built a canal (moat) on the Tennessee state line on down to Texas and then put up a fence or something, leaving the South as a separate entity. Then again that would have made Jimmy Buffett, among others, a foreigner. You would have had to have a passport to go to New Orleans, not that going to Mardi Gras land didn't feel like crossing the border anyway.

On the few trips that I took to my parent's place in North Carolina I always felt like a stranger in a strange land. The locals sounded like English wasn't their first language, with the vowels oozing out of their mouths like toothpaste. There was a general store type of place near the house that we frequented in order to get the sundries we needed here and there. The owner was a man in his early fifties, who sat in an easy chair by a wood burning stove for most of the day. At least he was always in it when we went there. He wore flannel shirts (or it could have been the same shirt) with suspenders and was always chewing tobacco. If I was going to construct a stereotype of the South he would be the archetype.

He didn't talk so much as grunt a great deal. My parents ignored him most of the time but he was taken with my sister, or, more likely, any female that walked into his store. He would call out to her from his chair, asking her if she needed anything. It was comical, if not painful for her. She would mutter a reply and scurry away, trying to find whatever she was looking for as quickly as possible.

"Hey, honey, you let me know what you need and I'll get it for ya," he would call out, working the easy chair lever and raising himself up into the sitting position. "Oh god," my sister would whisper to mom, hoping that by some miracle the man would go into cardiac arrest and perish on the spot. There was never any immediate danger because the man never got out of the chair. Later, after we had stocked up on milk and other items, we would speculate on whether or not he got up to go to the bathroom throughout the day. "I'm telling you he wears a foley bag," my dad would joke, winking at mother, who would frown at him and then try to change the subject by talking about the how the trees looked so pretty in the Fall. "What's that?" we kids would ask. Then dad, in his customary way of full disclosure, tell us about the time he was in the hospital in the Service and what the nurses had done so he could pee into a retainer. "Gross!" my sister and I would shout out.

Those were the good old days for sure. I had had a brief moment of weakness and thought about swinging by my parent's home in North Carolina but changed my mind. I knew my mother was still there. She would hang on in the mountains until the first frost came on, then retreat back south to Florida, always intent on avoiding winter. What she did up there I couldn't imagine. My sister would drive up a few times throughout the summer months, when she could find the time. She had two daughters and she liked to take them to the mountains, show them something different. Of course grandmother figured into it as well, and grandfather, when he would fly in on occasion.

Uncle Rick was just that person who sent Christmas cards stuffed with twenty dollar bills. I was a name, with a title. Oddly enough, my sister would send me a Christmas card as well, with photos, often times incorporated into the card itself. My nieces were now, I guess, in college. We long since stop exchanging cards. My sister had named them like twins even though they were two years apart. Cindy-Mindy, Terri-Cheri, I couldn't remember.

My exposure to the South was through my experiences at the NC house, tucked up in the Western Carolina mountains, a place of Bible thumping morals and beautiful terrain. North Carolina was a strange place, with various regions that seemed to contradict each other. It was a State with several well respected Universities and, conversely, a streak of ignorance a mile wide. A shoreline full of sunken pirate ships and mountains with a history of moonshiners, showed it supported opposing ends. Big Tobacco still ruled, while hi-industry thrived in some parts. Pockets of poverty festered, and, in Charlotte, well leveraged banks blossomed.

I knew I wouldn't be making a pilgrimage to see my mother. It wasn't going to happen. With the hum of the tires on pavement, passing several eighteen wheelers, I imagined how my mother would react if I just showed up at the door. Never one to conceal her feelings, she would probably gasp, while I could see the horror register on her face. "It's me, mom, Ricky," I would cry out, reaching for the hug that would never come. "What are you doing here?" she would ask, with her hand firmly on the door knob. "Just thought I would drop by and say hi," I would say cheerfully, edging my way in.

The house would smell of...of just baked something. What? Pie, of course, it was my mother's one weakness. Another sniff, and I would know: apple. Such a traditionalist. The table would be set, for tea or coffee. Yes, my mother would be having friends over, the ladies in the neighborhood, other "half-backs" from Florida. The area was teeming with Floridians who had secured a homestead in the cooler climate of the mountains in order to escape Florida's baking sun.

Immediately, I would know I was in the way. How was my mother going to explain her other child, a son? "Oh, Joanie, we didn't know you had a son," one of her crones would announce. Then other pestering questions would come. "You never told us. What does he do for a living?" My mother would be evasive, maybe tell them about my former job, embellishing somewhat, where I would morph into the CEO of the company, a large manufacturing corporation based in Florida. I would play along, telling the ladies, "We make a lot of bread." I would rub my fingers together to emphasize I was talking about money. They would laugh, secretly wondering if I was going to eat all of the proffered apple pie before they could get a taste.

This was how my mother lasted all those years up in the sticks, with fellow travelers from the Sunshine State. They would play bridge and discuss their kids, grown kids now, with kids of their own and careers to worry about. It was the progression of life in its most elementary form. I just wasn't a part of it.

No, onward I went, to the north, leaving South Carolina behind. Next came North Carolina, where I stopped at a rest stop and ate some of my goodies, two packets of cheese and peanut butter crackers, a Slim Jim jerky stick, some potato chips, and for dessert a cherry hostess pie and one of those mini bags of oreos, the ones that laughably state on the bag that there is only 100 calories in the serving. I washed it all down with a sixteen ounce bottle of Dr Pepper I had stashed in the igloo cooler I had on the front seat. Afterwards, against my better judgement, I reclined my seat and told myself I was just going to rest my eyes.

Two hours later I was awakened by barking dogs. Coming out of my sugar induced haze, I saw two dogs squaring off next to my car. Attached to each dog by a lease were a man and a woman, both screaming at each other to control their dog. It wasn't going to be a fair fight, as one of the dogs was a 100 pound rottweiler going up against a mutt half its size. Finally, they pulled the two dogs apart and went their separate ways. I wondered why people traveled with their animals, then again, what choice did they have?

I had one pet in my entire life, a stray cat that I had adopted. My mother had resolutely forbidden us from ever having a pet of any kind. "They are unsanitary," she would often say whenever my sister or me would broach the subject. "Cat's are clean, mom," my sister liked to offer, hoping to wear my mother down with debatable facts from the animal kingdom. "Vile creatures," she would reply, ending the subject for another day.

My cat, such as he was, wasn't sanitary. He had been an outdoor cat for most of his life when I found him on my front porch one day after returning home from work. This was before I met Celeste. I was living in a run down apartment complex near the beach. I named the cat, Tripper, because he had these weird colored eyes that looked like he was stoned. He was a calico cat, with an attitude. He was not going to be domesticated at any costs, even if I bribed him with the best, most expensive cat food. Yet he was affectionate, at times, and entertaining to have around.

Had to get rid of him when I met Celeste. She was allergic, or at least said she was. Like my mother, she didn't much care for pets, of any description. I had wanted to get an aquarium once, a big one, so I could stock it with things I nabbed from the sea. At the time, I was into snorkeling a lot and thought I could set up an interesting habitat in our apartment. "Are you crazy?" had been her response when I told her I was going to buy an aquarium. "That's the dumbest thing you've come up with yet." I knew I was capable of dumber things, but I said, "Come on, Cel, it'll look cool in the front room over there." She shook her head no, then said, "Bunch of stinky fish, in the living room, that is fucking stupid." End result, I never got the aquarium. Good thing, because a friend of mine did and it turned up a leak when he was out of town and ruined his carpet, as well as killed all of his fish.

I had been kicking around the idea of making a detour to Winston-Salem in order to stop at the original Krispy Kreme location. Not exactly Don Quixote stuff but close. It seemed odd to go out of your way for something so, you know, gluttonous, but, then again, I really didn't have any itinerary. New York City was my ultimate destination, but there was no timeline. So what if I wanted to veer off a few hundred miles to gorge on donuts.

Vernon Rudolph started it all back in 1937, in Winston-Salem. The man should be given a knighthood, or something. Taking dough and dropping it into a vat of bubbling oil, now that is genius at work. Oh I guess he didn't really invent the whole donut thing, that tribute probably goes to somebody in the Old Country somewhere, but he did make them fresh and hot.

Winston-Salem, NC is one of those places you never expect to find yourself in. A town named after two cigarettes doesn't inspire much enthusiasm, even if you are a smoker, and I am not. Smoking, to me, is, without a doubt, one of the silliest phenomenon's in the annals of human history. Putting noxious smoke in your lungs for the sole purpose of continuing your nicotine addiction has to be the dumbest act known to man. For this pleasure you get to pay hard earned money, now that is truly fucked up, to say the least. Revenge of the Indians, must be sweet.

Big Tobacco rules North Carolina, it goes without saying. The esteemed Duke University was founded by smoker's money, if you need an example of the weed's largesse. It is hard to believe that at one time there were wide spread advertisements out there telling the public that smoking was actually good for you. In what way, you might ask? Calms your nerves, was the conventional wisdom of the day.

Both of my parents were smokers at one time, choosing to give up the nasty habit when they were in their forties. I am happy to report that their two off spring never took up the habit. It was hard to believe that nearly a quarter of the American population still lights up. Causes cancer--check. Shortens your life span--check. Yellows your teeth--check. Costs a bundle--check. Highly addicting--check. Still legal, oh yes. How we ever drew the line at recreational drugs I don't know.

I had to get off I95 in order to zig and zag over towards Winston-Salem. It wasn't a problem. I checked with my GPS gadget, programing in the address to KK in WS and let the robotic voice lead the way. In the interest of Americana, I was going to see a tiny slice of culinary history, not to mention taste a little bit too. With the Pretenders wailing on my sound system, I sped towards the Piedmont Triad area of NC.

The Piedmont region of NC was home to tobacco, furniture making, and textile mills, the latter having long ago been decimated by foreign competition. Not that the furniture business wasn't on the ropes too. In fact, I contributed to their decline by buying most of my furniture at a local business that specialized in cheap-ass pieces made in China. My wife had wanted me to take a trip with her up to NC so we could pick out some living room suits etc. and have them shipped south for a fraction of the cost. She was one to have every room in the house coordinated from the knobs to the head boards. I just wanted to be able to sit down to eat and watch TV and have something to sleep on. In the end, as it happened, I won out because she really didn't want to drive so far, especially after I suggested we swing by my parent's place and check in with my mother. That alone did the trick.

As I was driving along, playing tag with a Bud Lite beer truck destined for who knew where, I knew I would never want to live in North Carolina. I was well aware there were parts of the State that didn't conform to the stereotypes that were imprinted on my brain, the ones where the inhabitants all played banjos and had rotten teeth. Parts of the State actually had progressive type people, even if they couldn't quite shake their Bible thumping reflexes.

I was there for donuts anyway, just passing through. Finally, the robotic voice told me to make the last turn, and for once the information was accurate and didn't lead me into a blind alley. The Gods were smiling on me as in the distance I could see the neon sign was lit up: Hot. I was just moments away from gastronomic satisfaction.

The emerald colored green lettering danced in my eyes while I parked the car. I knew I was just seconds away from that aroma, the one that made your knees weak. Krispy Kreme flashed by me as I walked in and then took a whiff, taking in all of the stimuli, from the view of the donuts waltzing along the conveyor belt to the cute girl behind the counter to the smell of fulfillment. I was about ready to complete my mission.

KK had many enticing entrees to offer, each one a masterpiece in their own right. Yet, I was a traditionalists. Over the years the masterminds behind the sweet round cakes might have come up with new, more daring items, but I still clung to the original: glazed. Sure it was somehow dated in a world gone mad for variety, but I knew that it was the basis for all the other paths to gluttony. Other people could have their chocolate iced glazed or chocolate iced custard filled, or even the cake or the jelly filled, hell they even had kosher and something called dulce de leche, a nod to the ethnic crowd clamoring at the window watching the next batch being made. Don't think there weren't legions of people out there waiting, salivating, impatient for their next fix of sugar ladled fat. KK even has a store in Indonesia for Christ sake.

Without hesitation, I ordered a dozen of the glazed, even though the girl behind the counter tried to nudge me towards an assortment. "Dontcha want some other kind thrown in there, sir?" I shook my head no, slightly irritated by her presumptuousness. Not that that it deterred me from admiring her rear end when she turned around to fill my order. I knew, though, that if it ever (in fantasy world) came right down to it I would grab for the dozen donuts before I would...I think you get the picture.

There were a few people eating there donuts in the store, greedily licking the icing off their fingers, smacking their lips obscenely. Even though it was past the generally accepted donut eating hour, several munching zombies were going against convention to appease their appetite. It was a foregone conclusion I would be heading back to my car to devour the, in all probability, whole box of donuts.

Even though the words of my former GP would be echoing in my head, I couldn't be stopped. "Oh Mr. Johnson, you do know that each one of those glazed donuts has 200 calories don't you, and 100 of that is from fat. Speaking of fat, each one of those dough bombs have 12 grams of fat and 10 grams of sugar. One more nail in your coffin." Shut up, doc, it's my life, I would scream in my head, in between mouth's full of course, letting that warm, ever so sweet icing slowly melt in my mouth. Like a junky, my euphoria wouldn't last very long and the aftermath would be a hard come down, leaving me bloated and depressed.

Back home I would slink back to my house and slip into a moody depression, only revived by the gnawing of hunger in my stomach. North Carolina loomed before me here and I had to make it to Virginia at least if I wanted to ever get to New York City. My trusty GPS navigator guided me towards 81, leading to the Shenandoah Valley. I had scoped out on line a B and B tucked away in the Blue Ridge mountains. It was going to be a change-up for me, giving me a break from chain roadside motels.

B and B's were not new to me. Me and my ex-wife had frequented them plenty of times over in Europe. It had been her idea at first. I thought they sounded, you know, stupid. I didn't really want to commune with anybody to speak of on my trips. If they could have dropped one of those neutron bombs that kill all the people and leave the structures intact, that would have been my ideal. I was there to see the sights, not rub elbows with the locals.

"That is the stupidest thing you've ever said," my ex told me when I revealed to her my ideal vacation trip.

"Are you kidding, it would be to best trip ever," I shot back, standing my ground. "Just think, no stinky Euros to have to deal with."

She looked at me for a minute, then laughed and declared, "You might have a point there."

This time I would have to only put up with Americans, even if they were hicks from Virginia, at least they took showers once in a while. On the net I had seen their place, a converted farm house buried deep in the boonies. Actually it wasn't that far off 81, so it made for an easy detour, before jumping back on and heading north again. On the webpage they bragged about the home cooking, particularly the biscuits they baked daily from an old family recipe. That, and the photos of a full course country breakfast, complete with bacon and sausage, sold me. The reservation was just a click away, thanks to the wifi and my antique laptop with the bloated registry.

I was full, stuffed actually, but not content. Suddenly it occurred to me I was like one of those pathetic people you might see on the Health Channel, or maybe TLC. The host of the show's voice over would be declaring: "One Richard Johnson is what the medical profession calls a "gorger," a person who goes to great lengths in order to satisfy one single impulse. The camera crew would be in hot pursuit, as I careened from one eatery to the next. Only this time around my predation would be centered around the next snack I could get my mouth around and not some pubescent child.

Soon my fame would spread and I would be recognized on the street, even feted by the fickle press. There would be blogs and websites devoted to my never ending quest to find another 1000 calorie surprise. I would go on Letterman and be made fun of by the late night host, openly mocked but in a comical way. I would smile and asked him if he knew of any good deli's in the area, maybe asked him why he doesn't have that Asian guy on anymore. The audience, of course, would be in on the joke, at my expense. It would all be humiliating but rewarding, because in the morning I knew I would be just that much richer from the cable show check deposited in my bank account.

We were--had become--a nation of goggle eyed voyeurs, unable to turn away from the next, new geek on display, from midgets to the grotesquely over weight. All of us were impatiently waiting for the next train wreck to happen. If a mom could give birth to eight kids and throw in some really disturbing cosmetic surgery for good measure, (which made her looked remarkably like a guppy fish by the way), then we could damn well pass judgement on her. People were cashing in on their god given talents, and, thanks to an expanded TV lineup, they got the opportunity to do just that. It was what constituted the new economy.

Give me a check for eating, I thought, snickering, as I drove north. There was no shame any longer, none. Politicians dropped their pants, for the same and opposite sex, and mumbled a mea culpa before continuing on with their job. The public shrugged, now comfortable with fallibility. Actors (stars) got whacked out on drugs, did their rehab stint, then inked a deal for another picture paying them millions. We still bought the magazines giving us the dirt, with pictures. Hell, even the photographers were cashing big checks, as they hid in the bushes or behind garbage cans with giant lenses trained on him and her in various stages of undress. Not to be outdone, the sport's world gave us athletes mainlining performance enhancing chemicals, ones that made their heads as big as pumpkins and their muscles like outsized cartoon characters. Instead of being ostracized they were praised for rewriting the record books.

Sooner or later everyone else had to get theirs.

All I got was a stomach ache as the donuts made their way down the alimentary canal, threatening to send me to the nearest rest area for a pit stop. My mind recoiled at the thought. I had two real phobias in my life, one being sharks and the other having to poop in a public toilet. A fear of sharks was a contradiction for a non-reformed surfer. I did have a psychological trigger for that one, after almost being bit by one back in the day.

It happened at Dania Beach. Each year around late October or early November the seasonal change brought with it a migration of sharks from the north. Like sharks on parade. They would troll the shallower waters at that time of year. I had been out surfing, or facsimile thereof, and was about to head in. I was just sitting there on my board watching a few of my buds try to catch some of the mushburger waves that were coming in. Before this moment I had never thought much about the actual act of sitting on my surf board, with my feet dangling in the water. If you think about it though you are really the perfect bait, just bobbing up and down out there.

All of a sudden there it was, right in beside me: A medium sized dorsal fin. It appeared for an instant then was gone, vanishing beneath the waves. I wasn't sure I had even seen it. Then I thought (hoped) that maybe it had been a dolphin I saw go by. It wasn't uncommon to have them zip in and around you while you were surfing. I quickly glanced around to see if a wave was forming, one that I could drop in on and get the hell out of there. Nothing. It was almost glassy, leaving me with no option but to paddle in, exposing my hands under the water.

I looked around, scanning the surface, then got into paddle position. Just when I was about to dip my right hand in the water the dorsal reappeared a few feet off to my left. This time I was eye level with a shark. A voice in my head told me not to panic. Don't thrash around. Be calm. Then I heard several people on the beach scream out: "Shark!" That was my cue to paddle like crazy, which I did, not stopping until my board hit the beach. Later, while the adrenaline was ebbing in my body, my buddies mimicked me paddling in, telling me that I looked like a wind up toy on steroids.

The public bathroom phobia was a little more complicated, I guess. It's not like I was ever molested in one or anything. Except for the occasional ballast blast in the stall, the ones that always seem to reverberate forever, I had never really had any traumatic scenes in one. I attribute my fear more to the germ end of things than anything else. Blame it on one of those shows on the Science Channel, you know, where they detail how microbes hitchhike on everything then fester and end up killing the victim, all of it displayed with 3-D graphics and B actors groaning from the resulting disease. It was all morbid scary, with the intention of showing the viewer just how vulnerable you are to what you can't see. Then again, it could have been something as simple as having to endure god awful smells, odors from hell. I have always thought that one of the rings of hell should have been a place where you are stuck there for eternity smelling some foul stink. Of the five senses, wouldn't that be the most offensive?

It goes without saying that the portable types are the worse offenders. No matter how much chemical treatment they dump in them, there is always going to be that stench. And it always ambushes you as you open the door. Then you get to see all of the other deposits. Which reminds me of one of my fellow workers at the bakery, a Cuban guy. He once told me, as we were sitting around at lunch time enjoying some medianoches he had bought at a Cuban place not far from our work, about his father. He had been a political prisoner in Cuba before being permitted to come to the US. In prison, and I am not making this up, his father was made to wade through waist high pools of excrement as punishment for being a "gusano," which loosely translated meant worm.

"I am not fucking kidding you," my co-worker assured me. "Half of the men died from infections and stuff."

"Did you have to tell me about this now?" I protested, putting my sandwich down.

"Sorry, man," he apologized, grinning.

I couldn't remember the last time I had taken a dump in a public bathroom. Probably the time me and my ex were over in Europe waiting for our flight back home. Airport bathrooms were in a league all their own. They were usually crowded and messy, with paper towels scattered on the floor and pools of piss by the urinals from guys with bad aim. We had a greasy breakfast that morning at a small hotel in London and I was paying the price for eating part of my wife's breakfast. She had wisely turned her nose up at the "rashers," which were floating on the plate.

"Where are you going?" my ex had called out, as I mimed out a defecation pose and dashed off to the toilet, just making it.

While dozens of languages buzzed right out side my cubicle, I lost a few pounds with a symphonic send off, muted by the chorus of flushing toilets all around me. It's better than doing it on the plane, I told myself, which was, admittedly, true. Bowel movements on aircraft were totally out of the question. You are stuck in that little unhygienic prison, with some impatient passenger standing outside just bursting to relieve themself. No matter how many times you flush the toilet and all that blue water swirls down the metal bowl the stench still lingers. Then you have to face the next customer in line, nodding a greeting, as you scurry by them and head back to your seat, leaving your stinky calling card back behind you.

This is going to take willpower and sphincter control, I told myself, slipping into concentrate mode. My intestines might have been bubbling and audibly gurgling but there was no way I was going to pull off at the next rest stop I saw. A sign whizzed past telling me that the rest stop was 10 miles ahead. "Not going to do it," I said aloud, gritting my teeth.

I just knew the rest stop would be full of tired and grumpy truckers, strung out on bottomless cups of coffee and pharmaceutical pick me uppers. Then there would be the usual RV people, seeing the US from their mobile living rooms, complete with the obnoxious little dog (s), which they would be out walking, letting them pee and poop everywhere. Throw in some degenerate types, with their banged up cars loaded down with their worldly belongings and you had the makings of a really annoying encounter.

The rest stop exit popped into view. My bowel condition had progressed to anal contractions. Krispy Kreme was laying siege to my lower colon, and winning. "Dammit!" I shouted out, banging my hand on the steering wheel, as I flipped on my turn signal and swerved into the parking lot, speeding past a long row of 18 wheelers. I saw the bathrooms and made a beeline straight for them, screeching to a stop right next to a SUV with a bumper sticker that read: Where's his birth certificate?

I immediately jumped out of my car and half ran half walked to the toilet, slipping past two Asian couples jabbering in their language and pointing at a map. In my rush, I almost knocked over an elderly woman hobbling along with a cane. I offered up a hasty apology and continued on, stopping abruptly at the rest room door when I saw that it was temporarily closed for cleaning. The cleaning crew had placed one of those saw horse type signs in the doorway. I could hear the janitor inside whistling. I must be cursed, I thought, as I looked around for an alternative.

Unless I was willing to invade the women's side of things I was out of luck. I could see in the distance a middle-aged couple standing by their RV, one of those behemoths that take up half the road. Should I? bounced around in my head. How would that work exactly? I thought. "Hello, sir, ma'am, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to let me use your bathroom for a minute?" They were probably from the mid-West and ultra friendly. "Oh sure, be my guest," they would say in unison. I would thank them and then scamper inside the moving palace, depositing a big stinky right in their forward "head," the one with the lace curtains and tiny, miniature soaps in an array of colors. The owner would undoubtedly be a war Veteran, who owned an arsenal of rifles stowed away in one of the storage lockers on board. He would then shoot me dead and then tell the NC Highway Patrol that I had stunk up his whole house.

There was no way I was going to go up to two total strangers and impose on them, especially for something as delicate as a bowel movement. There had to be another option. Then I saw a patch of woods some fifty yards away. I hadn't pooped in the great outdoors since I was a teenager. I had been with some friends out in the Everglades when natured called, so I dropped 'em and squatted. In the time it took me to finish my business I got maybe a dozen mosquito bites on my ass. Squirming, I made a dash for it.

To my endless relief, there were no other forward thinking poopers hiding in the woods. Ducking behind a few trees, I looked back at the rest stop area to see if anybody could see me. No one seemed to notice the pervert lurking in the bushes, so I got into position. It goes without saying that the physical mechanics of taking a crap outdoors are problematic. You have to squat for the ideal angle of attack. The quads come in for a workout.

A ton of the laxative of your choice would have been less effective than a dozen of KK's finest. I, as they say, evacuated my bowels. Colonoscopy patients were less pristine inside than I was after that attack. I kept thinking I was going to be discovered by a traveling troop of Girl Scout girls any second, as they piled out of their van in route to some campfire event or whatever they call it, looking for some rare plant life that only grows next to rest stops in NC. They would all scream at the same time, bringing the police officer who just pulled up in his patrol car. I would be led away, charged with being some (fat) exhibitionists from Florida. My bloated face would be plastered on the local news, as they would be calling me the rest stop molester.

At least I had jettisoned my problem back in the woods. But now I had a pressing problem. I had no toilet paper. The thought of pulling up my underwear at this delicate stage without attending to my rearend didn't seem sanitary. I couldn't just lurk there in the woods with my pants half down. Then I got a fantastic idea. It wasn't exactly McGiver material but it would work. I removed my socks and did the deed, burying them under some leaves. I was ready to take on the road again.

Finally I made it to the Shenandoah Valley, breadbasket of the Confederacy, if memory serves me right from my history class in High School. Highway 81, more or less, bisected the valley, stretching from Tennessee on up to Canada. I was heading to Lexington, hoping to get there before it got too late. My side excursion for a donut run had set me back a little bit, especially the pit stop ordeal.

The B & B was situated just outside the town, home to VMI, the Virginia Military Institute, which was one of those weird hybrid style colleges funded by the State of Virginia. It had been founded back in the eighteen hundreds, chartered to educate and train the future military leaders of America; of course along came that nasty Civil War business and the graduates decided to fight on the wrong side, but who's keeping score at this point? Some people called it the West Point of the South, which is a stretch when you consider the fact that the grads don't even have to serve in the military after graduating if they don't want to. Now that's pretty convenient if you ask me.

The town of less than 10,000 people, believe it or not, has another college called Washington and Lee University. Besides both being Generals, I don't know what the two men have in common. They were both Virginians, true, but one fought on the right side and one fought on the wrong side. George Washington apparently funded the school originally and Lee was its President later on in his career, you know, after that whole awkward period from 1861 to 1865. The South being the South then decided to name the college after the two renowned Generals, giving the place the sound of maybe a local hardware store or something. Good school so I was told by the locals, steeped in the Liberal Arts tradition, what ever that means.

Lexington's other claim to fame was they filmed the movie War of the Worlds there, or, at least, some scenes from the movie. I've seen the movie but as I was driving around the town couldn't remember any landmarks from the film. It was a lousy remake anyway, with that precocious young actress that is so annoying most of the time. Tom Cruise was in it too, putting his Scientologist warrior mentality to good use in trying to save the world. Or was he the bad guy in that movie? I can't remember.

Another of Lexington"s other luminaries had been Stonewall Jackson, one of the better known victims of friendly fire in history, having been shot by his own men during the war between the States. Someone once said of him: "He lives by the New Testament and fights by the Old." What I knew of him was that he hated slavery but owned five slaves, a contradiction that pretty much sums up the guy in my book.

As soon as I drove up to the B & B I knew I was going to hate it. What was I thinking? I asked the gods, while I sat in my car and debated whether or not I should just blow off the deposit I had placed on my credit card. I should have known I wouldn't like it when I saw the name of the place: Honeyhome Inn. It sounded vaguely retarded, the name. I just knew there was going to be a chatty owner of the inn, the wife of a husband and wife team, transplants from who knows where, who bought the place thinking they would just love being inn keepers. She would be brimming with good cheer, as she gave me the low down on the hick town they had taken up residence in. He would remain in the background, visibly disgruntled about having to fix every little thing in the old house they had bought on a whim.

Speaking of the house, it would date from the Civil War, with, if you were lucky, no ghosts from the slavery days. It would be post card perfect from the outside, but inside it would be another broken pipe away from disaster. The stone walls were from a local quarry, giving it that sturdy appearance, as old as history itself. The decor would be Confederate kitsch, complete with portraits of the shrewd Generals that gave the Federal Army so much trouble for four years of war. I don't know what it was about the South and their maintenance of the myth about the good fight. Didn't anybody ever tell them they lost the war and they were fighting basically for the continuance of slavery?

Hell, I was committed now with my reservation and all. Besides, there were those biscuits to look forward to. I could put up with the inconvenience for a little while. With luck, I would be the only guest. It was, after all, the middle of the week. The Inn probably saw most of its business on the weekends, when all those people from Northern Virginia, the DC suburbs, took it upon themselves to go slumming and drive south to see what the past looked like.

No such luck. A couple from, I think, Maryland were just checking in when I walked up to the front desk. My clairvoyance was uncanny, as I was greeted by a Mrs. Slovall, the owner, who almost shouted: "You must be Mr. Johnson, so glad to see you." She had one of those southern accents that you were sure had to be put on. No one talked like that. It was like you had suddenly been dropped into the cast of some antebellum play, the one about the "darkies" and "Miss Juliet." Who was that guy who wrote Camptown Races? Anyway, his music would be playing in the background.

"How was your drive down?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.

"Up," I corrected, holding my irritation to a minimum.

"Oh," she said, as if she might have been smacked.

"I drove up from North Carolina," I said, filling in the blanks for her.

"My, most of our guests drive down from up north," she told me, smiling.

This is going to be excruciating, I told myself, as I signed the register, hoping that the biscuits were worth it. The husband, right on cue, appeared in the living room wearing faded overalls and muttered something about having to rake the leaves out back. They exchanged errand talk for a minute, while I wished I could retrieve my key and disappear into my room.

"Honey, this is Mr. Johnson, he just drove up from North Carolina," Mrs. Slovall announced, motioning towards me.

Mr. Slovall grunted and headed for the back door, presumably to make a dent in the mounds of leaves that were accumulating on the back lot. She smiled at me sheepishly, forever embarrassed by her husband's unfriendliness apparently. Finally, after more painful small talk, I got my key and headed upstairs. Mercifully, Mrs. Slovall didn't follow me up the stairs like some of the Inn keepers did. One batty owner in Ireland had followed me and my wife right into the room, carrying her smelly cat, which she deposited right on our bed, while she went on about the new government in office in Dublin. It took us a good twenty minutes to get rid of her.

My room, with the four poster bed that antique lovers would wet their pants over, smelled like furniture polish. Then I realized I was going to have to be sharing the bathroom. What was I thinking? I had completely forgotten about the quaint features of some of these small B & B's. You were paying to live in somebody's converted home. I'm surprised they didn't make you wash the dishes or walk the dog, take out the garbage. The whole concept was, basically, insane. Where's the charm in forking over money to share a bathroom with strangers?

Now I was depressed. I sat on the bed, with the foot thick comforter emblazoned with Civil War battles. At least the comforter manufacturer hadn't seen fit to put a W next to the skirmishes that the South won. I needed to plot my next move. I had noticed a chain motel on the drive in. It looked new. They would have one of those horrible continental breakfasts in the morning, the ones with the packets of instant oatmeal, dried up bagels and over ripe bananas. Oh sure they would dress it up with dried cereal and maybe some scrambled eggs that looked like they had been made last week. All in all, it would be inedible no matter how much jelly from those little plastic packets I put on the hard as a brick bagel.

Then again, I would have my own bathroom and no one to pester me about my immediate plans. I just knew Mrs. Slovall would want to steer me towards the local sights, maybe try to convert me to the Southern ways. She would, sooner or later, ask me why I wasn't staying another day or two to see everything. I would, polite as ever, lie, make up some excuse about why I was practically running out the door. Then again, though, there were those biscuits and a regular home cooked breakfast to look forward to. The one positive aspect about staying at one of these type places was waking up and smelling the aroma of breakfast drifting up the stairs. It would be a perfect blend of coffee, biscuits, and some section of a pig frying.

"Do you always have to be led around by your appetite?" my ex had once said to me. Actually she asked that on quite a few occasions there at the end of our marriage. By that point, the extent of our mutual entertainment centered around the TV. I no longer wanted to do much of anything anymore. By asking that it was her way of getting a dig in about my weight gain, among other things. A disintegrating marriage is not a pretty sight. Ours was really unpleasant to watch, or, I guess, just boring. It was like slow motion rot, or so said a golf buddy of mine. I lived it, so the crumbling happened all around me as I blindly went about my business.

Driving may be a sedentary act but it is still tiring. I decided to take a quick nap, then explore the town and look for something to eat. It was almost midnight when I finally woke up, groggy, confused, unable to grasp the fact that I had slept so long. Now I had a problem. I was hungry and it was late. I doubted Lexington had any late night eateries. Although, like most small town America, the fast food segment was well represented, from Hardee's to BK, they usually closed their doors at eleven. Then I remembered my food stash in the car.

Staying at a B & B poses another problem and that is you are staying at what is basically somebody's house so coming and going is sort of tricky. There's the family dog to avoid so he won't bark and wake everyone up. The owners might have children sleeping. The houses are always old and creaky, especially the stairs. It was almost impossible to leave the premises without making some kind of noise.

Gotta do it, I told myself, as I staggered to my feet. I opened my door and stuck my head out, listening. The house was stone quiet. The couple in the room across the hall had most likely gone to bed early. Mrs. Stovall was probably sound asleep, dreaming of starring in a musical about southern hospitality. Mr. Stovall most likely slept in his overalls, ever ready to unplug a stopped up toilet, oil some squeaky hinges, or clean out the gutters at a moment's notice.

I slipped down the staircase, pausing every few steps to listen. All I could hear was a grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway grinding time away. The house was dark except for a light left on by the front desk. I finally got to the first floor landing and stopped again. I thought I heard something coming from the kitchen. The door was closed but I thought I could hear noises coming from inside. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a refrigerator door closing. I froze for a moment, trying to decide if I should return to my room, defeated.

I heard a utensil clatter to the floor and a man's voice curse softly. Damn, I thought, somebody's raiding the fridge. My ex's words echoed in my ears, as I was being led once again by my appetite. I crept to the kitchen door and listened for a minute. Must be Mr. Stovall, I thought. Who else would it be at this time of the night?

"Is somebody out there?" I heard a voice ask, startling me.

Hesitantly, I opened the door and stuck my head in, saying, "It's just me."

It was Mr. Stovall, who eyed me for a moment, then said, "Well, come on in."

"I fell asleep in my room and slept right on through dinner time," I said by way of explanation. "I woke up hungry so I thought I'd go out to my car and get something to snack on."

"You did," he stated, glancing at the really large sandwich he had made for himself, a cheese and meat combo, garnished with lettuce and tomato.

"Yeah, I've got some chips...or crackers I bought yesterday," I explained, trying not to smack my lips.

He picked up the knife by his plate and used it to point to the fridge and said, "Got some lunch meat and fixings in there, bottom shelf. Bread's in that bread box yonder."

Yonder, I thought, following where he was pointing. Now this was the time for gastro diplomacy. Best I beg off, and just back out the door, thank the man, and run to my car. He was being nice. In all likelihood he would rather just stab me with that knife than have me sit down and share a midnight snack with him. Surely he was roped into this whole Inn charade by his wife. He probably hated every waking minute of being an Inn keeper. It was like being held prisoner, this business. Everyday he had to put up with nitwits from out of town, not to mention the never ending chores and repairs. Bid the man good-night, dummy.

"That sandwich sure does look good," I found myself saying instead, and the next thing I know I was whipping up a sandwich, mayo and mustard and all.

We, the two midnight fridge raiders, sat there and ate our sandwiches and made small talk in between really large bites. Mr. Stovall wasn't such a bad guy in the end. He might have come off as some curmudgeon but was just not your everyday friendly type guy. We talked about football, the Virginia Tech team in particular, an ACC member like my UM team, and he even offered up some of Mrs. Stovall's self proclaimed famous orange pound cake for dessert.

All in all, it was a productive evening. I had the one hurdle in the morning, the bathroom ordeal, then breakfast and I was gone. Back to it, on the road to see several of my old friends. My plan was unfolding before me. I still couldn't believe I was actually doing what I set out to do.

As expected, I had to wait to use the bathroom in the morning. The couple across the hall were monopolizing it, first her, with her damn hair dryer whining away for what seemed like an hour, then him taking a long ass shower. I kept poking my head out the door to see if the bathroom had been freed up. Finally while I was waiting I decided to read the guest book on one of the bed side tables. Who signs these? I thought, as I read: JUST PERFECT! Some nitwit from Vienna, Va. had written their comments in all caps. We will definitely be back, somebody from Arlington, Va. wrote. The Slovalls are the perfect hosts, some traveler had written from Georgetown. Then I saw what I would probably write if I was some dufus with a personality disorder: The biscuits were divine! They were from somewhere in Pa. I was minutes away from those biscuits right now.

Now came the next ordeal: breakfast. Most times at these places the dining room was actually very small, with only a few tables. I had actually been to a B & B in Scotland where you ate with the family at their family table. Me and my ex had to endure a breakfast with two surly kids and the family dog, who kept poking his nose in my crotch, hoping to score some human food from me. This time around, at least, there were two separate tables in which to sit. I would, hopefully, only have to exchange a morning greeting with the other guests then get on with it.

This was not good, I thought, as I entered the dining area and saw that only one of the tables had been set for breakfast. Some of the B & B hosts got it in their head that we guests were all from some global extended family and wanted to break bread with each other. Crap, I thought, now I was going to have to carry on an early morning conversation and try not to make a pig of myself in front of them. Worse, I might have to compete for the biscuits I could now see set out in a basket, complete with a checkered cloth to keep them warm, right in the middle of the table.

As I was standing there deciding if I should retreat to my room and come down later when, hopefully, the couple had finished, Mrs. Stovall appeared from the kitchen and said cheerily: "Mr. Johnson, I see you're up. Hungry?" Was she kidding? I immediately thought. I mumbled yes, then thought about offering up some excuse to flee back up the stairs. Oh, I forgot, I have to make a phone call. I have to go back upstairs and do my morning yoga. Whoops, forgot to pray. I think I left the water running in the bathroom. Nature calls. Nothing seemed suitable. "This is the Perdues," she said, waving her arm in the couple's direction.

I noticed Mr. Perdue already had a biscuit on his plate, buttered, and ready to go. My natural reflexes took over and the next thing I knew I was extending my hand and committed to a meal with strangers. What I really wanted to do was say: Fuck this. Then go sit at the other table. I had paid good money, hadn't I? I had the right to some service of some sort. I wasn't obligated to do what I didn't want to do.

That would have been the other me, my alter ego, the one who is confident, a little arrogant, and got what he wanted, always. Back to my world, I sat down, trying to not gag because of Mrs. Perdue's perfume that was threatening to dampen all of the wonderful breakfast aroma permeating the house. The Perdues were in their late thirties, I guessed, and the type of couple who, in public, get along just fine. That is to say, unlike some people I know, don't snipe at each other and seem to be in some undefined competition to win every argument, big and small. If there was a course you could take dealing with civility they would ace it.

They were from DC, the Maryland suburbs to be exact. He worked for the government, so he said, smiling, offering no more details. She was a sales rep for some company that didn't ring any bells with me. I was desperately trying to keep the conversation in its elemental stages, not wanting to prolong anything. In a half an hour or so I wouldn't even remember their names, for heaven's sake. Our mutual goal at this stage was to get fed.

Mr. Stovall materialized for a moment in the dining area, pausing to rifle through some drawers on a cabinet across the room, grunting and mumbling the whole time. No greetings were forthcoming, so it seemed. Our shared mid-night meal of the night before didn't happen. He didn't so much as even acknowledge I was sitting there. Mrs. Perdue, grinning at me, leaned over and whispered, "Makes you wonder how Mrs. Slovall does it." She darted her eyes towards Mr. Slovall, then shook her head in what I took to be a pitying motion.

I didn't respond, just nodded solemnly, before reaching for one of the biscuits. It was still warm and as I lifted it out of the basket I could feel its heft. Lots of buttermilk there, I thought. It was as big as my hand. There was a large butter dish on the table, no plastic ware for this Inn. It looked expensive, like a family heirloom or something. The Slovall family China, brought over during Colonial times, survived the harrowing voyage in stormy seas and had been in use since before the Revolution. Probably got it online, I thought, snickering.

Then it came, as I knew it would. They wanted to know what I did, where I was from, what my shoe size was. Just shut up and eat, I telepathically ordered them. Mrs. Slovall has been slaving in the kitchen all morning, the least we could do is put away that mountain of scrambled eggs and kilo of bacon before she comes back in the dining room.

"I am kind of free floating now," I told them, while Mrs. Perdue slurped her coffee and Mr. Perdue frowned at me. I had decided to use that phrase for my trip because (mostly) I couldn't decide what to say, and I thought it sounded cool. It didn't necessarily but I hoped it did.

"In between jobs then," Mr. Perdue offered, a little too snide for my liking.

"There are a lot of people like that now," Mrs. Perdue suggested, giving me a look of sympathy. I glanced at her and noticed for the first time she was attractive. "Half my friends are out there looking."

Looking for what, entered my mind, then I said, "I've got some transitions I am going through." I tried to stop myself but it just popped out and I announced, "I just got divorced."

"Sorry to hear that," Mr. Perdue muttered, stabbing one of the little sausage rolls with his fork and popping it into his mouth.

"Were you married very long?" his wife asked, leaning in to hear my answer.

I thought for a moment, then answered, "Long enough."

To my delight, the conversation dried up shortly after that, and I got to polishing off my breakfast, which was, all and all, worth the price of admission. So much so that I conned Mrs. Stovall out of several biscuits to take on the road with me. The Perdues, no relation to the Chicken magnate, soon mumbled salutations and left for a day of sightseeing. Then I had the table to myself, where I actually made a scrambled egg and bacon biscuit sandwich, knowing full well that by next week one of the fast food chains would have it on their drive thru menu, quickly followed by Mrs. Stovalls microwavables in the frozen section of a grocery store near you.

Next stop: The Big Apple. Believe it or not, I had never been there before. I had passed through one of their airports several times, but had never actually taken the time to stop off. My ex had bugged me about it, begging me to take her there to see a show. A show, I remember thinking. What show? Some goofy musical, with annoying songs that penetrate your skull like laser beams that you can never forget and keep playing over and over in your ears on an endless loop. My wife was no arts maven, that was for sure. Her idea of artistic sophistication was a Will Ferrell movie.

"Come on, honey, we can see a show and go to dinner, maybe see the sights," she would plead. "Don't be a stick in the mud." It didn't work. I held out, stood my ground. Actually I just didn't want to get caught up in all that humanity. New York City was civilization at its worst. All of those people stacked on top of each other like merchandise on a shelf. It gave me the willies to even think about it.

By the end of the day I would be driving right into the heart of the big city. I'm not too proud to say that I was nervous about it. The idea of being behind the wheel of a car and driving the streets of Manhattan scared me. Even though Johnny had given me explicit directions and I had my GPS coordinance, I didn't like the idea of immersing myself directly into the middle of one of the largest and busiest cities in the world.

It had to be done, though. Originally I had thought about parking outside the city somewhere and taking the train to New York. That way I only had to deal with the hassles of public transit. I could leave my car out and away from all of the traffic snarls. It made sense. Then Johnny scoffed at this plan, even jokingly questioning my manhood. I gave in.

My approach to the Big Apple was going to be by tunnel, a long, shadowy underwater tube of concrete that was intimidating and scary. I was wedged in between what seemed like thousands of motorists, all going along at breakneck speed. It was all I could do to not have a nervous breakdown right on the spot; and I will say that I have driven in Rome, with all of those nutcase Italians. On one of our vacations to Europe we had unwisely rented a car to drive out into the Italian countryside. The car had been a shoebox sized Fiat, with a stick shift that shifted like a truck and was fireball red. While my wife screamed non-stop, I drove on the streets of Rome in fear for my life.

Finally, I popped back out into the sunshine and was treated to the sights of instant urban density, man's ultimate achievement, citylife. A taxi next to me honked its horn and I glanced over to see a man wearing a turban shouting obscenities, with a few gestures thrown in for good measure. He then proceeded to cut me off and zoom away, disappearing down a side street. I pulled over as soon as I could, needing to consult the map I had brought because I didn't trust my navigation device, which had been issuing directions in almost a frenzy every since I left New Jersey. Johnny would have to live in Tribeca, I thought, running my eyes over the map, trying to figure out which way all of the tiny streets were going. Downtown Manhattan was nothing but a warren of streets, homage to the city's past as a port of call in Colonial times.

I had been instructed to park at a garage near his loft, costing me a bundle. "Park there, Ricky, then you don't have to worry about moving your car everyday," Johnny had told me, using the name I went by way back in High School. I hadn't been called Ricky in so long it sounded comical, like he was talking to somebody else and not me. I had programmed the address in the navigator and was receiving contradictory directions from the robotic voice. When I had first bought the car, and discovered the GPS system, it had been fun to see just how up to date the software was by testing it on local points of interest. The dumb thing had once directed me to drive into the Atlantic Ocean, adamantly ordering me to: MAKE A LEFT TURN AT THE STOP SIGN.

Drivers in New York City are, generally, on a suicide mission. You have to adopt the attitude that you are going to die in order to get from part of the city to the other. Delivery drivers, cabbies, tourists, bus drivers, city workers, they are all on a collision course, only separated by feeble traffic signals and a failing sense of doing the right thing. Courtesy does not compute. Aggression is rewarded. I was like a sacrificial lamb, thrown out there to appease the traffic gods.

My hands were shaking by the time I got to Johnny's neighborhood. I found the garage, no thanks to my navigator friend who kept telling me to make a turn right into the hole leftover from 9/11, which is, remarkably, still there. My friend lived only a few blocks away from where the Trade Towers had come down. Fortunately for him he had bought his current residence after the terrorist attack. "Most of the toxic gunk has evaporated, Ricky," he told me over the phone, forcing a laugh. "My neighbors weren't so lucky though. Some of them still have respiratory problems even today. Damn Muslims."

I didn't know what to say. My brush with the worst terrorist attack on American soil had been watching the towers come down over and over again on TV. While the rest of the country might have wet their collective pants over the potentiality of another attack, I went to the beach, literally. I rode my beach cruiser up and down the broadwalk, taking in just how deserted the place was. My wife had called me and wondered whether or not she should close up the shop. Why? I asked her, clueless apparently because she reamed me for being insensitive.

Unless we were being attacked by the Ottoman Empire resurrected, I didn't think the danger level was very high. No Islamic commandos were going to be assaulting Hollywood Beach any time soon; maybe some Haitians might float up on their leaky wooden boats though but they weren't that much of a threat, if you discount HIV and TB. My next door neighbor was Jewish and he took 9/11 very hard, deeming it the opening salvo in the coming war between Christians and Muslims, with the Jews stuck in the middle. Wait, aren't you American? I wanted to ask him when he unloaded on me about the pending apocalypse.

"Rick, believe me, things are going down the tubes in a hurry," he said to me the next day as we were standing in our adjacent driveways, while he kept one eye on the horizon, looking, I guess, for incoming Delta-American-US Airways flights to dive bomb us. "My relatives in Israel called us last night and filled us in on what to expect. Not good," he declared, raising his eye brows. "We are all in this together now." I didn't say anything, just nodded.

My wife fell into the category of American who saw doom around every corner. "Honey, what do you think we should do?" she wanted to know, staring at me, waiting for an answer that I didn't have. "Do?" I replied, giving her a puzzled look. "You know, about this whole thing." "Let me know when they start up the next crusade, then I'll sign up," I joked, receiving a stern look and a loud exhalation. "Be serious, will you."

I suppose there were some people out there who went into lock down mode, stocking up on supplies and ammo. For me, I just thought it was all overblown. Let me rephrase that, please. The events on 9/11 were tragic and mind boggling for sure, but they had to be placed into perspective. Did I think that people living in Butthole, Arkansas had anything to fear? No. Was Hollywood, Florida on the terrorists' war map? No. Even though, believe it or not, some of them lived here for a while. Was there even a war?

Cue the Republicans, right about now. Fear is a great motivator and the GOP took full advantage of it. Not that the Democrats wouldn't have done the same thing, just not as effectively. Working that national funk like a carnival barker, Bush parlayed it into two terms, even if the first one was by judicial decree. Didn't matter to me because, like I said before, I didn't pay attention much back then. What Washington did or didn't do was wonderfully obscured by my pursuit of distraction, from golf to movies, with food and booze thrown in for good measure.

There was a tall, skinny Hispanic kid standing in the driveway as I pulled in the garage to park my car. He motioned for me to stop, then I rolled down my window and he asked: "Long or short?" He must have noticed my confused look, so he said, "How long you parking?" His shorthand way of speaking allowed him more time to listen to his I-pod, which was so loud I could feel the reverb from where I sat in the car. You are going to be deaf by the time you are thirty, I thought, as I told him I would be there for a few days. He whipped out a ticket book and scribbled on it, grunting for a moment to the music, before shouting out to someone in the office next to the garage door something in Spanish.

A girl poked her head out and smiled at me, then strutted out to my car. "You Ricky?" she asked, grinning at me, while I tried not to stare at the navel jewelry dangling at eye level. "Johnny, said you'd be here today," she announced, then switched to Spanish to tell her co-worker what to do. A look of disgust flashed across his face for a moment, then he opened my car door and motioned for me to get out. "Wait, Tonto," she protested, before he could drive away. She then asked me if I needed to get anything out of the car first, so I pulled out my suitcase, one of those ones on wheels you see everyone in the airports pulling. Then my car was disappearing up the ramp and I could hear the tires squealing all the way up, from floor to floor, right to the top.

"I hope the car's okay," I said in a weak voice, craning my neck to look up at the building.

"Don't worry, Ricky, we'll take good care of it," she assured me, squeezing my arm.

I then noticed she was wearing four inch heels and jeans that must have been custom fitted (directly) right on her body. I couldn't imagine how she was ever going to get them off they were so tight. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail and festooned with some kind of gold colored plastic trinkets and had a slash of blond on one side. It was also oily and glistened in the afternoon sun. When she touched my arm I noticed her nails were a good two inches long and painted bright orange to match her lipstick. Halloween's still a month away, I thought, stifling a giggle. Although, and I am speaking as a man who was, basically, horny, she was pretty, with that Latina allure that a lot of men find irresistible. I assumed Johnny must have pre-arranged everything, even telling them what kind of car I was driving and what license plates to look for.

"Could you tell me which way Johnny's loft is from here?" I asked, taking a peek at her rear end again.

"Shoor," she said in her home grown New York accent, "it's right down there," she answered, pointing with one of her long nails in the direction. "He's something, that Johnny," she added, giving me a leer or what I took to be one.

"Always was," I said, not being able to come up with anything else to say, then wondering if Johnny was, as they say, "tapping" the girl at the place where he parked his car.

Then again, I thought, that sounded like him or something he would do. Back in the day, he had actually slept with his next door neighbor's wife, and on more than one occasion. The two families often had pool parties together, for heaven's sake. We didn't believe him when he told us back then, calling him a liar. Then one day we pulled up to his house to pick him up to go somewhere and we see him sneaking through the backyards, coming from his neighbor's house and he was carrying his clothes in his hands and was completely naked. The garage door to the neighbor's house was just closing so we knew the husband had just gotten home from work.

Johnny was our resident lothario, mr. stud. He had a dark complexion, with, at the time, longish dark hair and was just over six feet tall. He was also a maniac about working out, from lifting weights to running wind sprints behind the gym. His appeal extended from the brainy types in High School to the airhead cheerleaders. Of our little group, he was the only one who played organized sports, starting for the Varsity football team at safety and centerfield on the baseball team.

And now I discover that he is a known artist too. How did that happen? I wanted to know. Besides the occasional tagging behind the local Publix, he had never shown much artistic aptitude before. Somewhere along the line he had fallen into the art world and come out on top. Fuck, he hadn't even majored in art at FSU.

I found the building his loft was in and stood out front looking over the place. It was one of those former warehouses that had been converted into living spaces by some industrious developer, who went on to make a bundle in the insane New York City real estate market. Johnny's loft was on top, with a view of the Hudson River. It must have cost a fortune, I thought.

Just as I was starting to enter the building a young woman darted in front of me and disappeared inside. I stood there and watched her get on the elevator. I glanced at the names next to the row of buzzers on the wall and saw at the top: Artwave Industries. Puzzled, I rang the bell because I didn't see Johnny's name listed. A disembodied man's voice called out through the intercom: "Yeah, who is it?" I laughed and answered, "It's me, Rick." "Who?" came the response. I thought I had rung the wrong buzzer for a minute when Johnny laughed and said, "Come on up, bro."

Riding up in the elevator I suddenly realized I was nervous. About what? I wondered, laughing uneasily. When I started out on this odyssey I hadn't given much thought to the actual visits, ones in which I was going to have to interact with, essentially, my past. These people, I thought, have moved on with their lives, and, in some cases, really moved on. I had remained back there, in Florida, and was, realistically, stuck in neutral. They had not only put distance, as in miles, between their past and the present, but had expanded their, for lack of a better word, horizons. I was retarded in comparison.

When I got off the elevator I noticed a door open at the end of the hall. I could hear music playing. It was Jimmy Buffet. Like most of Florida, we had spent our time as Parrotheads, followers of Buffet's tropical imagery. The lyrics had been burned in our brains for all eternity. Even now, as I walked down the hallway, I mumbled the words to the song seeping out from his loft.

I knocked lightly at the door and hesitantly pushed it open. The view of the loft unfolded before me like some photo spread for a glossy magazine. The place was huge, with giant windows, giving it a fish bowl feel, as if you might be on display. On one side of the large room I could see the timeworn skyline of New York and on the other a far off view of New Jersey, with the Hudson in the fore ground. It was almost disorienting to your senses, as in visual overload.

"Hey bud, one minute," Johnny announced from across the room and I could see he was fiddling with his phone, tapping on the keys. "I got to get this tweet out right now...for my fans," he sang out, snickering.

Sunlight was streaming across the open expanse, giving me front row seats to some of his art. There were several pieces lined up along one wall, each with an accompanying wooden crate next to it. While he was busy on his phone, I wandered over to take a look at the work. Before driving up to New York I had done my homework on my friends. I knew that Johnny was a sculptor but I was now seeing the finished product. The pieces were, you know, unbelievable. It was as if some being had cloned Johnny's body and grafted it onto someone who had talent.

"There, done," Johnny called out, extending his hand then switching to a bear hug when he got closer. We hugged like old friends might, even though we haven't seen each other for over twenty years. "Sorry about that," he explained, holding up his phone. "Every little event in my life has to be catalogued on Twitter. I just finished another piece and had to tell the masses." Seeing my confused look, he continued, "There's something like fifty thousand or so people hanging on my every tweet," he said, laughing. "They want to know how my sculpting is going every minute of the day. That's how fucked up it is. I can't even take a dump without them wanting to know about it. It's good for my career, right. It's all about exposure or so my agent tells me. The art world is nothing but a bunch of crap really. Your name gets hot so you have to cash in on it. Anyway, I can't believe you are here. Ricky Johnson, my old pal."

"I can't believe I'm here either," I said, glancing around the loft. "This place is incredible. Who did you kill to score all of this?" I joked.

"In a way, Johnny," he explained, grinning at me. "I changed it all up," he added in a mysterious tone.

"You must have made a deal with the devil," I offered, bending over to look closer at one of his works, a three foot tall sculpture that was, apparently, the upper torso of a woman with the other half dissolving into a geometric design of sorts. "These things are pretty cool, Johnny. Pretty cool," I told him, not being able to come up with any other description.

"Thanks," he said with mock modesty. "I've been fucking lucky for sure."

"I think talent had something to do with it," I heard a woman's voice call out from one of the back rooms.

"That's my current paramour," he whispered, smiling at me.

"I heard that," she called out.

Then the woman I had seen enter the building before appeared and waved at me from across the room. "This is Tanya," Johnny announced. "She is my muse," he said, bowing in her direction.

"Didn't I see you downstairs?" she asked, walking into the kitchen, where I could now see she was all of maybe twenty-five.

"Yeah, that was me," I replied.

Johnny, as I was to subsequently learn, went through "live-ins" frequently. They were like art groupies, so he told me, winking. He had been married once, before he got famous. He was now divorced and his ex lived in Vermont, on a farm that raised organic beef. There was also a daughter, who was a sophomore at New York University. Johnny had felt the need for some reason to assure me he was on good terms with his ex-wife and his daughter. This really is a whole different world, maybe universe, I thought.

Johnny hadn't changed all that much. It was obvious he still maintained a physical regimen of some sort because he was trim and youthful looking. I would have guessed him to be ten years younger than his actual age. "The big B," he confessed to me later on, while we were seated in front of one of the giant windows enjoying the view and a beer. "Botox works wonders," he went on to explain, pointing at his forehead. "That and the fact that I take care of myself--you know, work out often and don't overdo it with the calories."

Even though I tried not to, I found myself admiring my old friend, wondering where it had all gone wrong for me. Feeling the need to go on record about myself, I said, "You can see I haven't followed that route exactly." I followed my comment with a chuckle and continued, "I don't know what happened but I just started to not care too much about anything, I guess."

"Hey, you said you lost your job and your wife, right?" Johnny offered, trying to make me feel better. "That can take a lot out of you. I know my divorce sucked, big time."

This was the reconnection process I had anticipated. Two old friends reuniting, trying to bridge that chasm a block of time had created. Before undertaking my journey I had read a few books about friendship and its boundaries etc. Most of them were nothing but a bunch of self-help bullshit, but this one writer had written about some friendships inviolable credos, traits you share with another person that remain intact. I wasn't so sure. As I sat there in a million dollar loft in New York City, drinking one of those overpriced microbrews with the neuvo art label on the bottle, listing the ingredients that included raspberries, I couldn't help but think that this incarnation of my former friend didn't have any connection to me.
Johnny's route to fame--and fortune, had gone from Florida's backward Capital all the way to Gotham, passing through Vermont along the way. The condensed version of his evolution found him being discovered by an art critic on summer vacation. Johnny had retreated to the backwoods of the Green Mountains because he had met a girl from Vermont and taken her up on her invitation. Her family had lots of land and Johnny had lots of energy.

In a movie of the week on TV there would have been a vibrant song warbling as he found his destiny, which came, as he tells it, in an old, dilapidated barn on the property. The barn was empty, except for some old welding equipment. Fast forward the film a little bit and you see Johnny teaching himself how to weld, using all of the broken down parts of the farm equipment from years gone by. Trial and error brought him to an artistic style, one that fused metal and plexi-glass, giving him a signature look that would propel him to the top of the contemporary art world.

One of his early, very early, works was on display at a local store where the art critic spied it sitting by the counter. It was a seven foot piece, so you could hardly miss it. Like in the movies, the critic was blown away, taking no time at all to write about it in one of his columns. "Never before have I seen sculpture blend the strictures of 3-D reality with another dimension," the critic had written, which, to my ears, means absolutely nothing. Somebody understood it because it wasn't long before Johnny was fielding calls to buy the sculpture. Flabbergasted, Johnny sold the piece for a relative pittance, feeling himself lucky to be putting money in his pocket for something he liked doing.

Next came a call from an agent, then another. Johnny's dilemma took shape as he then had to decide what agent to go with. The girl he had traveled to Vermont to be with thought the whole enterprise was somehow unseemly, and comical. She, apparently, saw Johnny as I did, a nice guy with zero artistic visions. He proved us both wrong, I guess.

They were married by this time in the story and had a kid on the way, a daughter. Johnny was not much more than a hired hand on his relatives farm. Although his wife had ambitions to originate an organic farm, from top to bottom, one of those utopian type of dreams you might see in an environmental magazine or something. Not that Johnny objected to this fantasy. He was going along for the ride, but he still was finding time for his now paying hobby, which found him many a night in that barn (now refurbished) constructing his next work.

Word of mouth and writeups in leading magazines, including, believe it or not, Time Magazine, launched his career skyward. At first, so he told me, he was commissioned to do specific type sculptures, which he did gladly, especially when he saw the check in his mail box. Then there were a few art shows around the region, which only increased his exposure. The bottomline was increased dramatically when he landed some public art placements in New England, ones in which his name was again splashed across the media. Long story short, Johnny was well on his way to artistic solvency and then some.

With the new found fame came travel, leading all around the country. His work was being displayed in museums all around the country now, from California to Florida. His price climbed dramatically. Now he not only had an agent but a manager and an accountant and had been incorporated, hence the Artwave Industries on his mail box slot. Johnny might have been a sculptor but he was also an industry of one.

Friction between him and his wife was immediate. She thought his goal in life should be to help organize and run a successful farm. That, to her, was an ambition that was, you know, noble. It wasn't that she didn't care for art but she found it, somehow, demeaning to the human spirit--and those are his words not mine. When her young husband had been tinkering in that barn after hours it was all in good fun, something for him to keep his hands occupied. Then when he was off to yet another art opening or museum gala it was a betrayal of sorts. It wasn't long before they began to slide into the usually stages of marriage dissolution, complete with arguments and hurt feelings, along with accusations and incriminations.

As expected, Johnny had not been faithful. Those many trips away from home gave him plenty of opportunity to cash in on his new high profile. Most of his art clients seemed to be wealthy women, with big bank accounts and lots of free time. Propositions came with the territory, so he told me, grinning. "How could I say no, Ricky," he exclaimed, shaking his head, squelching a laugh. "They had just forked over big bucks for my work, so I felt obligated to...you know." I didn't know, really, so I asked, "Did they pay you extra for the scrumping or was that tacked onto the bill later?" "VERY funny," he shot back, pretending to throw his beer bottle at me.

"So those statues over there are some of your commissions?" I asked, changing the subject slightly.

"Statues," he chortled, giggling. "Hey Tanya! Ricky called my work statues."

"Philistine," she called back, laughing but good naturedly. "Don't offend the master," she scolded, bringing us two more beers. "What do I know? I'm just the hired help around here anyway," she handed me a beer and then winked. I tried not to watch her rear end as she walked back into the kitchen.

"Yeah, Ricky, that's some of my commissioned pieces," Johnny stated proudly. "Destined for Europe," he went on further to say. "Two Germans and one French guy who emailed me a doodle he wanted me to copy. I kid you not. Said it came to him in a dream. His check cleared so what does it matter to me."

I was beginning to see what his ex-wife was talking about, I thought. Then again, what exactly was noble about art anyway? The creative process had long ago been co-opted by the act of making money. I was a CPA, and knew plenty about the central role of money in every nook and cranny of the society. Nobody was beyond its touch.

Johnny's phone beeped and he glanced at the text message, frowning. Then he fired off a text and slid the phone back in his pocket, sighing. At that very moment I was glad I never got into the whole texting mania. First off, my lack of basic dexterity meant I couldn't possible participate in any two way texting communication. The features on my expensive phone (a gift from my wife) probably had cobwebs on them. It wasn't that I was against technology or anything, one of those guys who would rather listen to an LP than an I-pod. I just happen to think that the wonderful invention called the telephone, where voices actually exchanged words, made more sense than the shorthand lexicon popping up on a tiny LCD did.

"More tweets?" I suggested, not knowing whether or not I should say anything at this juncture.

"What? No...it was from my daughter," he answered, taking a long drink of his beer. "She's a pain sometimes. Needs more money, as usual. Thinks I'm an ATM most of the time."

Kids, I had never had to deal with them and was, mostly, glad for that. I told myself that even though I knew that if I miraculously had the ability to bring my son back to life I would in an instant. All of the aggravations and college tuitions in the world couldn't alter that. The fact remained though, I would never know what it was like to be a father and see his child progress through life.

"Only the one daughter, huh?" I offered, trying to sound sympathetic.

"Thank god for that," he joked. "She's in her second year at NYU, lives in a dump in Alphabet City. I only see her when she needs more money."

"He's lying to you," Tanya called out, and for the first time I noticed a slight accent in her voice, watered down from having lived in the US for almost ten years, after she immigrated from one of the Eastern Block countries. "Pearl drops by all the time."

Pearl, I thought, trying not to laugh. "Was that your grand mother's name or something?" I asked Johnny, grinning.

"Funny. No, it was my wife's idea. Said it sounded both sophisticated and mysterious at the same time," he explained, laughing. "I think it sounds stupid, really. Don't tell her that though. She's on her way over here right now."

This new development somehow caught me off guard for a moment. I had never put any thought into meeting my friend's family members. It had never figured in my mission, such as it was. This new wrinkle made me suddenly anxious. I was now going to be judged by relatives. All of my insecurities would pop up and I could easily see me making a fool of myself.

"She is, now," I almost whined. "I can come back later if--"

"What? Don't be stupid, Ricky," Johnny assured me. "She's only gonna pop by...then disappear again," he said, staring out at the view. "Hope she doesn't bring any of her fucked up friends with her."

"John," Tanya chided, "I want you to be on your best behavior. I don't think we need any scenes today. Do we?Promise me you won't do anything stupid. Promise?"

He glanced at me and grinned, then replied, "Yes, mother."

Apparently, so the story goes, Johnny had actually punched out one of his daughter's boy friends before, giving him a bloody nose. The boy friend had been some obnoxious Euro, who thought of himself as an art critic, informing Johnny that his work was "commercial trash." He got popped right in the face for sharing his opinion. Pearl didn't speak to him for over a month after the incident.

A little while later the door opened and in walked his daughter, with one of her girl friends in tow. Pearl was pretty, with long (natural) blond hair, that she had braided into a pony tail. She was tall and had her father's brown eyes, and was wearing the baggy clothes of the day, that fushion of grunge and hip-hop urban whites found so appealing. Although the attire was, generally, visually unappealing, I could still just make out her feminine figure here and there, especially when she tossed off her light jacket and underneath she was wearing only a tight t-shirt with the Mets logo emblazoned on it. I have to say it was disconcerting to be ogling one of my friend's off-spring.

"Oh dad," she sang out from the door, "I'm here!"

"Great, now my life is complete," he called back to her.

Pearl's friend, a pixie sized girl, with a nose ring and a boy's haircut, who was wearing a muscle t-shirt with a man's dress shirt over it, and the obligatory i-pod in-ear headphones draped around her neck, was standing by the door. Tanya greeted Pearl, who gave her a cold look, then headed for the fridge, plucking out a beer, domestic, believe it or not.

"I see you're still drinking that horse piss microbrew," Pearl announced, while her friend tittered in the background.

"Let me get my check book, so you can be on your way," Johnny declared, heading for what served as his study, a nook off to the side with one of those graphic designer type tables serving as a desk, something straight out of an IKEA wet dream. "Don't won't to hold you up. I know you must have lots of important things to do today...like study."

"I betcha you didn't know my dad was not only an artist but a comedian too," she shouted out to her friend, motioning for her to come inside. "Grab a beer, Jeanie," she encouraged. "Stay away from those green bottles though...tastes like shit."

Tanya fetched a beer out of the fridge and handed it to her, while she shyly stood off to the side, wide-eyed, scanning the interior of the loft and then the view. Johnny said something under his breath, then started scribbling out a check, while Pearl turned to Tanya and asked: "Still modeling or does my dad have you on salary?" Tanya, hands on hips, mumbled something in her native tongue and rolled her eyes at me. Pearl then turned her attention to me. Uncomfortable, I tried not to squirm.

"Hi," I finally said, uneasy, almost dropping the beer bottle in my hand.

"Hi, yourself," she shot back, snorting a laugh. "Don't tell me, you are one of my dad's clients. What did he talk you into buying? Oh, wait, you had something commissioned. Right? Let me guess...a sculpture of your wife...no, mother."

"Very funny, Pearl," Johnny scolded. "This happens to be a friend of mine from High School. His name is Ricky."

Momentarily taken back, Pearl said, "Are you kidding me? You knew my dad back in High School? That is some cool shit, man. You and my dad hung out way back when. I can't believe it."

I nodded yes, and mumbled, "That's right. South Broward, home of the Bulldogs."

"No shit," she exclaimed, beaming. "Do I have some things to ask you about! Man, you have to let me...like let me interview you. Like some sociological experiment or something. Did you hear that? This dude went to High School with my dad," she called out to her friend, who was still standing there with a goofy smile on her face. "So what was my dad like back then? Was he cool like he thinks he is now? Is it true that he was into weed--like all the time? What the fuck is a bulldog? Come on, dish it."

"Pearl, here's your pay off, see you later," Johnny stated, holding out the check for her, dangling it under her nose. "I'm sure you and your friend have some place to be. There must be some degeneracy you can contribute to."

"See, right there, was he always so funny before?" she wanted to know, plopping down on the couch right next to me, so close I could smell her fruity body wash. "How about girls, you know his conquests? Tell me about them. Don't spare me any details. I can take it, right dad?"

"Don't indulge her, Ricky," he almost ordered, raising his voice slightly. "I've done enough of that already."

"Wait, was that some rare self-criticism from the great American sculptor of Tri-beca? It can't be. Somebody contact Page 6, now. The greatest living American sculptor, with the live in Russian girl friend half his age, admits to having a fault," Pearl declared, laughing.

"I'm not Russian," Tanya protested.

"Stay out of this, please," Johnny ordered, pointing his finger at Tanya. "I can handle my daughter, thank you."

"So, Ricky, wanta come with us and see New York? Come on. It'll be educational for the both of us," Pearl cooed, grabbing my hand in hers. "I know all the secret spots the tourists don't get to see."

Up close, she was really pretty, and young. It had been so long since I had even come into contact with a young girl I had forgotten the sylphan quality of youth, the sensuous burst of suppressed carnality. An exasperated Johnny was fuming behind her, throwing up his hands. Then his phone rang and he reluctantly retrieved it from his pocket and saw who was calling and stomped off to answer it on the other side of the room, muttering about his agent.

"Sounds tempting but I don't think your father would be on board with that," I told her, smiling idiotically.

Sliding a little closer, she whispered, "What can I do to entice you?"

The stage curtain had just gone up and I was now officially in a french farce or, more accurately, a soft porn production, one in which I was being fondled by the daughter of my best friend in High School. It was one of Hollywood's unrated versions, destined to not be screened in too many theaters across the country. I desperately wanted to pull my hand away but couldn't will my body to do it.

"Fuck this!" Johnny suddenly yelled out, kicking an empty card board box, sending it across the room. "Those morons at the gallery broke off a piece of my Blue Intuition piece and now I have to go up there and fix it because some buyer is coming in tonight to take a look at it."

"John, be calm, you can fix it," Tanya assured him.

"I know I can fucking fix it," he shouted out. "Now I have to shlep up there and..." He walked into his studio and we could hear him throwing things around, with pieces of metal clanging and tools clattering to the floor.

"Time to go," his daughter hissed at me, pulling me with her, keeping a tight grip on my hand.

"Pearl," Tanya protested, "you can't leave with him."

"Tell my dad I'll have him back tomorrow--at the latest," Pearl called over her shoulder, as the three of us dashed out the door.

We piled into a cab and Pearl ordered the driver to take us to Washington Square. I was wedged in between the two girls, while Pearl peppered me with questions about her father. Pearl's friend laughed at her antics, telling me, "She won't give up until she gets what she wants. Believe me, I know." Pearl laughed at this and asked, "So, who was the first bitch my dad hooked up with? Tell me, with lots and lots of details."

The cab driver, a skinny man in his thirties, who looked like he hadn't shaved in a week, yelled back at the dispatcher on his radio, before switching to curses in, I think, Romanian. There were a number of Romanians living in Hallandale, the next town over from where I lived, and I had once dated a girl from there in High School. Her father was some maniac loser who made her practice tennis 12 hours a day because he was certain she was his ticket to riches. When she bombed out of her first junior tournament he had blamed me for being a bad influence. That was where my familiarity with Romanian curse words came in. In the end, she got pregnant her junior year and was, more or less, disowned by her family.

"Come on, Pearl, leave him alone," the pixie complained, clucking her tongue disapprovingly.

"Shut up, bitch," Pearl shot back, reaching over to smack her on the arm.

"I don't think so," her friend screamed out, hitting her back.

"I don't want that in my taxi," the driver commanded, eyeing us in the mirror. "I put you out on the corner."

"Sorry, Mr. taxi driver," Pearl cooed, leaning forward in the seat to see what his name was on his ID. "We'll be good, Alexandru. We will."

He scoffed at her using his name then muttered something under his breath, waving her off with his hand. She sat back, giggling, then poked me in the ribs with her elbow. "Damn, I think I'll get out at the next corner."

"No you won't," she countered, staring at me. "We are going to spend the day together and you are going to like it."

"I am?" I exclaimed, protecting my ribs from another elbow.

"Tell him, Jeanie," she announced, grinning at her friend.

"Tell him what?" she wanted to know, turning her head away to look out the window.

"Let's not have a lover's quarrel right in front of a friend of my dad's, honey," she whispered, reaching over me to squeeze Jeanie's thigh. Jeanie brushed her hand away. "Why are you lesbo's so high maintenance all the time, huh?"

Jeanie turned back to look at her, smiled, and said, "You should know."

Oh boy, I thought, this is another episode of some reality show I've been inserted into. Where's the camera? In the dash board. Or is it one of those minuscule type cameras embedded in Pearl's expensive designer sunglasses? Now I really wanted to get out of that cab and hit the street running.

We finally got to Washington Square Park and the two girls piled out of the car, leaving me to pay the driver. I fumbled around in my pockets, hoping to find some money, at least enough to pay the fare. After I forked over the cash, the driver hissed: "Those two are very crazy, my friend." I didn't doubt that.

My two tour guides were now standing in the park with their arms around each other and kissing. I realized I had a window of opportunity. Take it, a voice in my head ordered. Run. Pick a direction and go. Disappear into crowded Greenwich Village. Let the streets of New York swallow you up.

"Come on, Ricky," Pearl called out to me, holding out her hand. A section of my brain screamed: Just see what's in store. Maybe it will be fun, or, at least, memorable. "Yeah, RICKY, let's go!" Jeanie yelled out.

The Square, the de facto campus for the college, was alive with humanity. There were pockets of activity going on, from impromptu concerts by street musicians to people playing chess, to an obviously insane guy screaming profanity directed at the mayor, to a woman feeding the pigeons, to upscale gang members showing their couture colors, to NYU students milling around between classes. It was an urban education in an urban setting.

Pearl and Jeanie sat down by the fountain among a group of what I took to be students. They ignored me for a minute while they traded greetings with their friends. Pearl's cell phone beeped and she glanced at the screen, then laughed, saying, "Jeanie, it's from Paulette, she wants to know whether or not we are coming over tonight. What should I tell her?" Jeanie thought for a moment, then said, "I guess so." "Don't get too excited, girl." "I know, but, fuck, like it's such work to deal with her some of the time. You know, like when she is in one of her moods about something." Pearl wasn't listening, as she held up her phone and took my photo, sending it on its way to Paulette. Pearl held up what she text back and Jeanie laughed.

"I am here to amuse you, my ladies," I said in what I took to be a Shakespearean actor's voice, bowing slightly.

"Paulette thinks you're cute, Ricky," Jeanie said, grinning at me.

I was about to correct them about my name, having answered to Rick for over twenty years now, but knew it would be futile. They had glommed onto the name already and weren't going to give it up at this stage. My name, with the Y appendage, made it all the more fun for them.

"I think your friend needs glasses," I said in all humbleness.

Pearl laughed then held up her phone and I could see a picture of a girl, early twenties, half naked. I did a double take and stammered out: "Pretty girl."

The two of them thought that was hilarious and Pearl whisked away another text message. "She wants to meet you," Pearl told me a second later. "Hey, maybe tonight you two could hook up? How cool would that be?"

Not for her, I thought, smiling like a moron back at her, hoping I hadn't made a mistake in not running, fleeing really. I had come to reconnect with an old High School buddy not this. Then again, of course, old friends had lives populated by friends and relatives. I really couldn't expect to interact with my old friends minus the family appendages that went along with them. I now realized it was going to be a package deal whether I liked it or not.

"Come on, Ricky!" Jeanie shouted out, grabbing my arm and dragging me along with her. "We got to be somewhere, like an hour ago."

At this stage it was difficult to believe these two were college students. What exactly were they studying? They didn't seem to be oriented towards anything remotely resembling academics. I knew NYU was free spirit central but they did seem to be pushing the envelope when it came to what might be defined as the pursuit of a degree--in anything.

"Don't you guys have classes to attend?" I asked plaintively, impersonating my dad with uncanny precision. Bitter memories aside, like when my father mocked me for having to resort to going to community college because my High School grades were for shit, I was beginning to wonder about these two. I could only imagine Jeanie, like Pearl, had parents with deep pockets, certainly enough wherewithal to subsidize their manic lifestyles in NYC. Both of them had probably gone to Prep school in New York, one of those schools you might see on a TV show in which all of the students are obnoxious, telegenic, and impatient for their trust funds to kick in.

Not to mention their sexual proclivities, and I won't, except to say Lesbianism was certainly in vogue, like some fad gone viral. I'm not complaining, I guess. I was pretty much out of the game so eliminating some prospects from the lineup didn't affect me too much. To me, though, Pearl and Jeanie seemed the product of rampant boredom, or, at least, victims of having too much given to them and they kept having to invent new things to stimulate themselves. Living in hyperactive New York probably made it all that much worse. Even the big city's stimuli must get retreaded sooner or later, making them like junkies looking for the next fix.

I wasn't there to analyze them though. I wouldn't know where to start really. They were two young women (girls actually) who enjoyed their applied privilege and were used to being unfettered, if I might throw in that word. Freedom came with a price most of the time, but for them it was mostly supplied to them by a culture that worshipped youth and parents who facilitated their autonomy by paying them off.

"I'm hungry," Jeanie whined, as if hunger was somehow an inconvenience.

"What's new, fatty?" Pearl shot back, pinching her stomach, which was, by any measure, almost non-existent.

Both girls were bordering on looking anorexic, having that "chic-physique" as they like to say in all those tabloid magazines, the ones that perpetuated the celebrity myth of our doomed culture. Somewhere along the line America had become all about glorifying dimwit movie stars, while the corporate world worked behind the scenes to capitalize on the people's dwindling mental resources to hoodwink them into buying brand name garbage, mostly supplied by China. I could foresee a time in the not so distant future, (like tomorrow) when we would all wear corporate logos tattooed on our foreheads and aspire to be a star on TV, while the Chinese sucked every last penny out of us. The nation would be so hollow that it would eventually collapse into itself, leaving behind one giant wasteland of disposable products piled from coast to coast.

Truthfully, I didn't thing about it all that much. My brain had been pulverized by contaminated fast food and hour upon hour of soul stealing TV for so long I couldn't possibly keep a straight thought for too long. ADD had its rewards. Maybe it was a national defense mechanism, being inattentive most of the time. It gave you breathing room so you wouldn't think too hard about how your life was, essentially, crap. Not everyone could retreat to the confines of an imaginary world, like the one, you know, the Applebee's restaurant tries to construct, where your dining experience is a byproduct of a world gone right. Come in, sit down, select off our menu, for the next hour or so you are going to be transported to a world where all you have to do is eat our nutritionally suspect food. Eat. Laugh. You and your family are safe for now. And just think, dessert is on its way.

I lived in that world for a long time. The middle-class of America didn't really exist any longer and I am not talking about tax brackets gone missing. There had to have been a point in time when we all, collectively, just stop functioning as families. It might have sneaked up on us, I suppose, but I'm sure it happened. Probably during the Reagan Administration, if I had to point fingers.

The 80's were a time when everything started to come off the rails. Using the train metaphor for a minute, the locomotive that was driving our culture crapped out and was replaced by the pursuit of personal attainment. Some might just call it greed, but I like to say that it was more than that. It was as if an unseen UFO deposited one big bomb that injected a massive dose of narcissism into all of us unsuspecting Americans. Then slowly but surely we all went on a binge, one gargantuan crusade for selfishness.

Let me have mine, please. Being self-absorbed was suddenly a virtue. Couple that with the mantra coming out of the Reagan White House, you know, the one that encouraged everyone to get theirs and you had the makings of a disaster. I know my experience wasn't all that different than everybody else's.

"Where are we going?" I complained, secretly delighted to be bracketed by two attractive young girls, who were intent on showering me with attention.

"Yorba's, you tool," Jeanie answered, pinching my arm playfully. "Best food in the Village."

The word food rang in my ears like a giant bell. I was onboard for that, just hoped I could keep my table manners under control. Of late, I had eaten mostly alone and that made for some bad habits, like shouting at the TV with my mouth full or leaving droppings on my shirt front and the inevitable stains. New York was famous for its eateries, right. This was going to be an adventure of the stomach for me. I couldn't wait.

"What are you girls in the mood for?" I wanted to know, trying to get into my role as the visiting geek and old guy.

They exchanged glances and shared a laugh before Pearl said, "You'll see."

This didn't sound good. I wouldn't put it past these two to pull a prank on the rube from out of town, like maybe have me eat monkey brains or something. I could see them leading me off to the back alleys of Chinatown and convince me to taste this delicacy from, you know, the Yellow River. I would be too embarrassed (and afraid) to say no. Then I would die of food poisoning and end up a one line item in the newspaper: Tourist found dead in Chinatown, causes unknown.

We weaved in and out of the small Greenwich Village streets, as the two girls traded small talk about their college friends. I was going along for the ride, knowing full well I was their entertainment for the day. I didn't mind, really. Make fun of me all you want was my attitude. My self-esteem had been beat up on for so long it didn't matter anymore. I suppose it might be a psychological phenomenon of some sort when the individual simply doesn't care about the whole self image thing. Then again, I guess, maybe it is one of those defense mechanism people construct to get through the day.

Finally, we were there, right in front of Yorba's deli. It was a small place with an unassuming storefront. The sign out front had been hand painted. Inside, Yorba was doing a brisk business, with college students and locals ordering up sandwiches at a frantic pace. Jeanie plucked a ticket stub from the machine on the counter and we looked over the menu scribbled in large letters along the far wall. Then I noticed something must be wrong, terribly wrong.

"Why are you even looking at the menu?" Pearl asked Jeanie in an accusing tone of voice. "You know you are going to get what you always get, so don't even check it out. Please."

"How do you know what I'm going to order?" Jeanie shot back, running her eyes up and down the menu scrawled on the wall. "Like they might have something different today. Ever think of that?"

"Sure. Like how many times have we been in here already? Ever see anything different up there? No," Pearl declared, snickering. "I'm having the avocado thingee."

"Big surprise," Jeanie muttered.

I scanned the menu once, twice, then realized, horror of horrors, I was in a vegetarian deli. Unless I wanted some spiced up tofu, I was out of luck. Bean sprouts. Organic goat cheese. Tahini. Hummus. Tamari. Seitan. Tempeh. Agave wheat. Vegan parmesan. What in the hell was this stuff?

"Don't they even have any chicken?" I whined, looking desperately up and down the menu again, hoping that they at least had chicken wings.

Pearl seemed to recoil away from me, then said in a stern voice, "Are you kidding me? Are you that dumb? Chickens are full of e coli, salmonella--"

"Campylobacter," Jeanie interjected, giving me a look of sympathy for being so clueless.

"Yeah, that too," Pearl lectured, smacking my arm. "Do you know what they do to chickens in this country? They let the carcases sit in baths of shit water. That's right, nothing but liquid feces, Ricky. Do you happen to know what zoonotic means? It is when a disease jumps from an animal to a human. Like chickens are the worse, man. That's no joke," she chastised when she noticed I was smiling at her, then she went on a statistical whirlwind, hitting me with numbers so fast I was sure she had to be reading from a teleprompter suspended from the ceiling behind me.

"Do you know it takes 750 million tons of grain and corn a year to raise animals in the US for you to eat meat. That's food that could be used to feed the hungry," Jeanie chimed in, nodding as she pelted me with the stats.

"Yeah, I think you would be a good candidate to make a visit to the killing floors. Then see how good that burger or chicken Mcnugget tastes," Pearl suggested, poking me in the stomach, while a man standing next to us nodded his approval of my public indoctrination.

A pang of guilt rose inside me then was pushed aside by her mention of one of Mcdonald's greatest (in my humble opinion) inventions, where my mind fixated on a pound of those little crunchy morsels of fake chicken sliding down my gullet. Then my mind, and appetite, went to the thought of having a juicy quarter pounder, with cheese. Hey, I knew animals had to die in order for me to stuff my face. I had long ago come to peace with that concept. That the food I ate was bad for me was a given. Like many Americans, I had come to terms with that too. We were a culture heading towards slow motion suicide, okay, I got that. Then, again, we would all die fat and happy, with clogged arteries and a dysfunctional pancreas. It was the pact we had made with the dietetic devil.

"Guilty as charged," I exclaimed, trying to make a joke to ease the tension and stop the brow beating. Then I noticed the dessert column of the menu and my mood lifted, as I announced, "Hey, that chocolate fudge pie sounds good."

The small deli had a narrow counter running along the front window so we stood there and ate our meal, with me pretending to like my falafel concoction that I was sure no one in the middle east would recognize. I just kept thinking how good that pie was going to taste afterwards. Not to be left short, I had tacked on a slice of zucchini bread to my order, while the girls rolled their eyes.

This was our dinner, such as it was. It would have to do. The two sparrows seemed to be running on adrenaline because all they had was a small sandwich and some god awful looking smoothie drink the color of a ripe bruise, telling me it was full of antioxidants. At any rate, they were fueled and ready to go.

It was time to head East, away from the good side of the Village. They had told me they had to stop by a friend's apartment, before going on to their place. My magical mystery tour was just beginning. I was 48 years old and about to embark on a journey into the world of people half my age in the Big Apple. I think a time machine would have been less disorienting.

Their friend's abode, a two bedroom apartment in a dilapidated walk-up in the teens, was another revelation. The friend, a DJ, who was one of those hybrid human beings America was becoming known for, had just gotten out of the shower and was standing there half wet wearing what the Arabs in the Persia Gulf call a thobe. He was short, rail thin, and had a spiky mohawk hair cut. He was Afro-Asian, with some Irish thrown in for good measure, giving him a strange skin hue that leaned towards the color of those tans you see people with who have just skimped on tanning solution at Walgreen's and bought the generic brand. It looked like he had been living on carrot juice maybe. More alarming was the sprinkle of freckles on his face, scattered around his nose and cheeks, giving him the look of an ethnic Raggedy Andy doll. When he smiled at us I noticed several of his front teeth were capped in gold.

The three of them hugged and exchanged weird, secretive hand shakes, before finally bussing each other lightly on the lips. This was the detente established between the Gays and Lesbians, so it seemed. They were united against the mounting forces out there forming in opposition. Gay rights were not going to go down without a fight. They didn't have to fear me. I wasn't a cultural warrior of any sort. Oh, okay, I was just indifferent. Where people derived their pleasure from didn't disgust me. The human body was a vessel to be utilized, or so I told them, laughing uneasily.

"Did he just say that?" the DJ announced, hee-hawing in a laugh that was guttural and scary. "Where did you find this specimen, girls?"

Pearl and Jeanine sold me out immediately, with Pearl saying, "He's a long lost friend of my dad's."

"He's our project for the night," Jeanine explained, punching me lightly in the stomach. "We are going to turn him into a person tonight, right?"

"I guess you are," I offered lamely, grinning like a mental patient.

We all sat down in the living room on three foot square plastic cubes that the DJ had appropriated from a gig at some art opening he had been hired to supply the music for. The entire apartment was minimalist to the extreme, with no furniture to speak of, including no table of any kind. Judging by the DJ's physique, I doubted that he even needed a table to eat at anyway. A short trip to the bathroom gave me a view of the bedrooms, where the only furnishings were two mattresses plopped on the floor and one of those laundry carts overflowing with sheets and towels you might see in the hallway of a hotel. Who knows where he had acquired that. The DJ had piled all of his clothes in it in one big heap.

Unlike the rest of the apartment where all the walls were bare, the bedroom walls were covered in music posters, including one picture poster of that scary creature Lady GaGa, an alumn from NYU, so Pearl told me proudly, as if that was something to be proud of. Then again, the only famous person from my college was some astronaut nobody had ever heard of. Getting back to the Lady, someone from my generation made GaGa even possible and that distinction goes to, if you already didn't know, that perpetually offending Madonna. She paved the way for all of us to have to listen to moderately talented songtresses who have no qualms about mixing their sexuality with their annoying singing voices--or lack thereof.

The three of them sat smoking cigarettes and blowing smoke in each other's face. I thought about asking them about the evils of Big Tobacco but thought better of it. Smoking, the scourge of mankind, was holding its own against the onslaught of governmental disapproval and medical bad notices. I, for one, as you know, thought the habit insane. Here before me sat another generation ruining their health and paying for the privilege. I tried not to cough as the room filled with smoke.

"We're going over to Jing Jing's," Jeanie told the DJ, who promptly laughed his horror film laugh. "I think we can hook Ricky up for the night."

"With who?" he exclaimed, eyeing me. "Lord, girl, the man might have a heart attack or something."

I had the same thought. Healthwise, I was teetering. Mentally, you know, I probably wasn't all that much better. This trip through the Looking Glass might just be my final destination.

"Ricky, are you on any meds?" Pearl wanted to know, smiling at me.

"Probably should be," I answered, forcing a laugh.

"Did you hear what he just said?" the DJ shouted out. "I love this man. Can I borrow him for a night?"

"Oh, like your fucked up friends wouldn't send him over the edge," Jeanie declared, nodding at me in some sort of warped solidarity. "I really don't think he's into anal pursuit," she said, giggling at her own pun.

"Girl, you never know what a man might want," the DJ stated, leering at me. "Sometimes they don't even know it themselves until they find it, right Ricky?"

I cringed then said, "I am pretty sure what I want to find."

"Did you hear that? This man is a gem," the DJ chortled. "My friends would just looove him. Come on, you girls have to share him with me. Don't be stingy."

This banter went on for a little while longer, while I sat there like some zoo animal being gawked at. Strangely though, it didn't bother me all that much. I, of recent, had begun to reside in my own universe, a world where I was looking out and didn't care who was looking in. I had taken cynicism and fine tuned it. Now it was me who did the evaluating and no one else. Life was easier when it came on your terms.

And then we were off again, with the DJ in tow. He had a gig earlier that day at some (get this) bar mitzvah party. Some wealthy Jewish father had forked over big bucks for him to spin out the tunes for his son's nitwit friends. Now he was flush with cash and wanted to spend it. Even though he was, basically, obnoxious, he seemed harmless.

The East Village was a mix of urban ruin and revival. Battered apartment buildings nestled right up against restored ones. Gentrification was stubbornly trying to remake the area but some of the diehards were hanging on to the area's past mystique. In my day, maybe a little earlier, this had been the breeding ground for Punk Rock and all of its nihilistic bullshit. The only thing I can remember about that time period was the whole diaper pin serving as an ear ring trend. I suppose they, the Punks, started the mania for piercing body parts. Now that's a legacy you can be proud of. Hey, in the interest of full disclosure, I once had a pierced ear, but nothing terribly daring. It was just a tiny stud made of fake gold that eventually turned my ear lobe green. I had long since abandoned it, leaving a part of my rebellion behind.

So this was college life, I thought, as we stopped here and there along the route to where we were eventually going to end up: Jing Jing's. I'm sure there were students at NYU who had a more, you know, common place college career, one in which they might actually go to lectures and open a book once in a while. I was willing to bet the college might even have sports teams, complete with uniforms and all. Didn't all those parents out there forking over forty grand a year have to get something for their dough?

I knew Pearl and Jeanie had to have scored some real digits on their SAT's in order to enroll, right? The college did have something of a rep in the academic world. You couldn't have an institution of higher learning operate like some off-Broadway play could you? Too many questions, I thought, as we stopped in front of one of the thousand and one bistros lining the streets of the East Village.

"Where have you been?" Pearl screeched out to a tall girl standing among a group of Village dwellers, all dressed to display their individuality, to include the usual unusual piece of clothing, e.g. one girl was wearing zebra print overalls, with a cane as an accessory--and I'm not talking about a walking cane necessarily. No, it was more like something you would imagine Oscar Wilde to be carrying. There was then a lot of air kissing and hugs.

I stood off to the side like somebody who had just seen a car accident. It was one of those cross cultural moments where you are unsure about the earth's rotation. Not knowing what to do with myself, and my hands surprisingly, which I jammed in the pockets of my relaxed-fit dockers, I glanced up and down the street, wishing I was invisible. Suddenly I was the crazy Uncle who was tagging along on a day pass from St. Joe's Insane Asylum. It was like being in a foreign country without a visa.

Then my fears were realized when one of the girls in the gaggle called out: "Who's the Goober?"

Immediately, if not sooner, I knew who she was referring to. There I was in all my middle-aged glory, with the New Balance (wide width) stuck on my feet, sensibly purchased online minus the shipping charge, aforementioned dockers (kaki color), Miami Dolphins windbreaker in a traffic stopping orange color and cheap dress shirt which had become my signature look not because they were stylish or anything but because I found t-shirts too constricting around my gut. It probably goes without saying I didn't tuck the shirt in. I was the slob everyone had a picture of in their mind when and if they ever thought of one. If possible, I was an embarrassment to myself.

"That's Ricky, he's got it going on," Jeanie announced, coming to my aid, or so I thought. She danced over to my side and pinched my stomach for effect. The others laughed in unison, while I pasted on my idiotic smile.

"Is he somebody's uncle or something?" one of the others called out, snickering. "Looks like he fell off a truck from New Jersey."

"Hey, bridge people are human too," another declared, howling.

"I'm from Florida," I piped up inexplicably.

They all exchanged glances, then Pearl said, "Yeah, Sobe, huh."

I ignored her sarcasm and said, "Not quite."

Almost like a choir, they all sang out: "Not quite."

"Are you guys trying to hurt my feelings or what?" I said, trying to sound, you know, like a good sport.

Then to my horror the DJ came over and hugged me, saying, "Leave him alone you guys...he's one of a kind."

What I was was a representative of the real world out there, minus some self-esteem apparently. Then again, I was on an adventure. Still, a little voice in my head was asking me: Aren't you here to see your old pal, Johnny?

John was busy fixing his art piece. He was supposed to call me with an update and give me instructions on where to meet up later on. It was all surreal in its way. I had no real connection here, in New York. Space aliens would have felt more at home than I did.

We were moving, as a group, all...one...two...three...six of us, four girls and two guys. Pearl was leading the way, locked arm and arm with the girl in the zebra outfit. Jeanie was hanging back and actually holding my hand like I was her guardian for the evening. Some quick math told me that I was old enough to be her father. I was hoping that my hand didn't get all sweaty because she was starting to make me nervous.

On the other side of me the DJ was telling me a story about one of his clients who threw a party where everyone ended up getting naked by the end of the evening. Then he ruined the story by telling me it was a gay party, with no females at all. He winked at me as he finished his story, giving me instant heartburn. Speaking of digestion, I was getting hungry again because the falafel disaster had long ago disappeared down my gullet. It was closing in on eight and I knew my snack time was approaching, time for ice cream or, if I was pretending to watch my calories, sugary cereal. The dreaded gnawing would begin in my stomach at any moment.

I could see that these people existed on adrenaline and little else. Besides, they were young, with metabolisms that were always in overdrive. The New York streets were a smorgasbord of snackery. You could stuff your face with almost every cuisine known to man. I had visions of slipping away from my chaperones and diving into a small eatery for some trendy ice cream of the month or pastry from Belgium. You couldn't walk two feet without passing a shop offering something yummy to eat.

The group came to a halt. Apparently we had made it to Jing Jing's place, a restored walk-up near St. Marks. There was music blaring out of some open windows on the top floor above and several people were standing on the fire escape. A guy yelled out to the DJ from one of the windows and he told him to "fuck off." I asked him if it was one of his old boy friends and he told me to mind my own business.

Jeanie took the lead and guided us up the five flights of stairs, passing groups of people sitting in the stairwells. A dense cloud of pot smoke hung in the air. I couldn't help but wonder what the neighbors thought of this noisy extravaganza, then Pearl told me that Jing Jing owned the whole building. "Explains that," I told her, smiling, trying to catch my breath when we finally reached the top floor.

We were greeted at the door by two girls arguing face to face. One of the girls had one of those asymmetrical haircuts, you know, where one side is longer than the other and was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, which didn't change the fact that she was gorgeous. The other girl was a little shorter and had a pug nose and bangs that hung down into her eyes. She had on a denim work shirt, short skirt and combat boots, the old black leather type. They were both poking each other in the chest with their fingers. Pearl edged her way between them and we followed her.

"Pearl, you silly bitch," somebody yelled out and I then got my first glimpse of Jing Jing. He rushed over and hugged Pearl, kissing her on the lips. "I thought you weren't going to show up tonight for sure...after last week."

"You know I wouldn't miss one of your events," Pearl assured him, slapping him playfully on the cheek.

I noticed that he was in his thirties and had a shaved head. I couldn't imagine where the name Jing Jing came from because he looked like a Puerto Rican or, you know, Hispanic. He was wearing a black muscle T with a shiny silver decoration on the front, a design that I later noticed was a portrait of Michael Jackson. He also had on what I think they call jodhpurs, those riding britches that come down just below the knee. For shoes he had on crocks, one orange and one yellow.

He wagged his finger at the DJ and declared, "I don't want any trouble out of you tonight."

The DJ laughed and said, "I am on my best behavior."

Jeanie leaned over and whispered to me, "Last time we were here there was a food fight of epic proportions."

"Really," I exclaimed, immediately looking around for a buffet table of some sort, with visions of cream pies being tossed around the room. "Hey, what does this guy do for a living?" I asked Jeanie, keeping my voice low so as not to attract any attention.

"He's a record producer," she told me, pointing to some awards hanging on the far wall. "Big time," she added, smiling.

I was positive I had never heard any of the music he produced. I was stuck back in the 80's. The music had moved on without me and, judging by what I had heard here and there, I wasn't missing much. Phony ghetto hip-hop, with artists pretending to be from the hood, to over-produced pop sung by pubescent sluts, to country, overstocked by fraudulent patriotism, to boy band slop performed by metro sexuals, it all wasn't for me. I suppose it was a natural progression in modern life. As you aged, and life wore you down, one of the first things to go was your appreciation of music.

The dreaded introduction to Jing Jing never materialized because he was called away suddenly to answer a phone call by one of his assistants, a young girl wearing a mini-skirt that would have made a GYN blush. She was one of three he kept on staff, a trio of females who would have felt comfortable at Bryant Park on the runway. Jing Jing, as I was told by the DJ, didn't like to even carry a cell phone, that was why he had three PA's hovering around him at all times.

Fine by me, I thought, as I surveyed the room. As expected, I was the oldest one there, except for a guy standing by the bathroom talking to a young girl. I recognized him, I thought. I was always bad about remembering stars and their roles. I was pretty sure he was in a TV show. Anyway, he was in his forties and the two of us stood out like a different species. The actor was talking up the young girl, who seemed to be interested. I watched the dynamic from across the room, admiring the man's confidence. Of course, he was a known star. That had to account for something.

Who are all these people filtered into my mind? Did Jing Jing just send out invites to all of them? Were there party crashers? Hell, was I, technically, a party crasher? I had noticed by the front door there were two large dudes, one black and one white, the kind of guys you might see at a weight lifting competition. They had probably been hired to keep the party under control. Later, Pearl told me they were Jing Jing's private body guards. They were on retainer full time.

So this must have been what it was like to attend a Warhol party, I thought, as I followed Pearl and Jeanie as they made their rounds around the party, stopping here and there to exchange air kisses and small talk with some of the party guests. Then I got a glimpse of a long table full of serving platters of food. A black guy wearing a tuxedo was just delivering another large platter of mini-sandwiches and setting it on the table. Jing Jing had style, making the catering staff wear formal wear.

"Hey Pearl, I'm going to check out the food," I whispered to her, pointing.

She rolled her eyes and hissed, "If I catch you eating meat I'm going to embarrass you in front of everybody here."

"I won't," I assured her, knowing full well I was seconds away from getting a snoot full of expensive finger food with and without animal flesh.

The table of food had to be twenty feet long or more, I marveled, as I stood there drooling. The caterer had placed flower arrangements in the middle and at each end of the table, giving the display a nice touch of class. Not that it wasn't lost on this bunch, who ignored the food for the most part, too charged up on drugs and self-image consciousness. There did seem to be a lot of thin people hanging around. By comparison, I was twice their size.

This realization only made me pause for a moment before diving right in. I hadn't a clue what most of the food even was. All I knew was that it tasted mighty good, down right delicious. The high end culinary arts was wasted on me, I guess, as I vacuumed up a few plates full of various different entrees, greedily licking my fingers afterwards.

Then I noticed a guy watching me off to my left. Embarrassment and me were old friends, so I plowed on. A few minutes later he approached and asked me whether or not I had sampled the what-ever-he-called-it. Don't mind if I do, a voice in my head recited merrily.

"I can't remember the last time I saw someone with an appetite," he announced, grinning at me.

He hadn't said it in a malicious tone or anything, so I said, "Hate to see all this good food go to waste."

"My name's Timor," he told me, offering his hand.

"Rick," I told him, wiping my greasy fingers on a napkin then shaking his hand.

"I'm still wondering how you fit in here...at this soiree," he said in a mock stage type whisper. "Party crasher perhaps."

He spoke in a strange semi-British accent, but with overtones of maybe New England. He was wearing an expensive suit but had smudged Nike running shoes on. This is what eccentric New York style looks like today, I thought, smiling back at him.

"I came with somebody who was invited," I explained defensively, fearing that he might call the body guards over to drag me down the stairs and bounce me right out the front door and onto the street. "She's over there somewhere," I said, pointing in some vague direction. "Her name's Pearl."

"You know Pearl?" the man stated skeptically, eyeing me. "Friend of the family?"

"Matter of fact I am," I declared, now getting agitated by the guy's attitude. "I went to High School with her dad."

"Did you," he said, rubbing his chin. "What might have that been like?"

Who talks like that? I wondered, before telling him in a low mumble that it had been educational. "It was a long time ago."

The guy was in his late twenties, I guessed, and apparently full of it. Judging by the tailored suit he must have some bucks too. Still, this crowd didn't seem like his cohorts of any kind. I couldn't imagine what he was doing there.

"I'm a fan of her father's art," he informed me, nodding, waiting for my reply.

"Me too," I finally said, wishing he would just go away so I could snatch a few more items from a tray a waiter had just plopped down on the table, something in the poultry family apparently.

"He gets it," the guy declared authoritatively. "You can see it in the way he combines elements in his work. There is a cohesion there for sure."

"I guess there is," I said, not having a clue what he was talking about.

"You do know that algorithms are the norm now, right? Not down the road though. You need to think in 3-D, my friend."

Oh, now I was his friend. Feeling the need to say something, I muttered, "I haven't seen Avatar."

He ignored my comment and continued on with his cosmic pep talk, while I looked longingly at the table behind him. How rude would it be if I just reached past him and grabbed a handful of food and jammed it in my mouth? I wondered. What exactly were the rules at this particular party anyway?

"The best minds today can only talk about space and time--that's it. But you know what, that is only the beginning. Cosmology is only in its infancy. You have to think about the mind and its limitations for now. Tomorrow there will be one giant mental expansion, one where we will all be able to actually wrap our heads around the whole Big Bang thing, right? Then we will know how to think in a different dimension."

If you say so, was what I wanted to say but instead said, "I'm not much of a deep thinker."

"Of course you aren't," he said, hitting me with a soft insult before continuing on lecturing me about the universal order that was just around the corner.

Fortunately I was rescued by Pearl, who pulled me away, offering quick apologies as we slipped away, leaving him in mid-sentence. When we had gotten down to the next floor she asked excitedly: "Do you know who you were talking to?"

"Some weird guy talking about the cosmos," I told her.

"That was Timor Dustin Pritchett, dumb-ass, the writer," she said, giving me a pained expression, as if to say I was a clueless moron. "He wrote Found In The Wilderness, duh?"

"That guy writes about the outdoors," I exclaimed, surprised.

"No, stupid, the title is a metaphor. Geez, what goes on down there in Florida anyway? Have you been living in a cave? It's a novel about this Prep school girl who...never mind. I don't have the time to explain it to you."

Thank god for that, I thought, as we made our way down the crowded staircase. The whole building seemed to be throbbing from the sound system. Apparently the owner had wired every floor, installing speakers everywhere. I couldn't imagine having to live in the next apartment building. You would never get any sleep.

Things were progressing nicely. I had managed to tuck away some fine food, complemented by some beer, having bypassed the bubbly being offered by the wait staff. Jeanie had disappeared for the time being and so had the others in their group. Yet, then again, going one on one with Pearl was scary.

"Slow down, Pearl," I complained, after we had reached the ground floor landing. I was breathing heavily and had visions of me upchucking on the front stoop.

"You alright?" she wanted to know, latching on to my arm and looking me close in the eyes. "You better not go DOA on me, Ricky."

Having a heart attack on the spot wasn't, I guess, out of the realm of possibility. My doctor back home had been ragging me about the sludge coursing through my veins for years. As it was I was taking two pills daily just to keep me in the game, some meds to allow me to continue sampling America's finest junk food. It was a tradeoff I was willing to sign on to in order to stuff my face with grease and sugar, or, as my dad liked to say: "Your bargain with the devil." I just knew my dad was going to out live me. He would stand by my closed casket at the funeral, (being that the mortician had decided that he couldn't do anything about the condition of my bloated face), and say: I told you so.

I wheezed a little longer then said, "I'm okay. Just give me a second, will ya. I need to catch my breath."

"I suppose you must know how disgusting you are?" Pearl hit me with, frowning. "I mean even my dad works out and stays in shape, for fuck's sake".

"A lot of good that does him," I shot back, regretting my tone immediately.

"What in the hell does that mean?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, it means something, Ricky. Come on, give it to me," she demanded.

"Do you even like your father?" I countered.

"Do I have to?" she shot back.

"No rules say you do, I guess," I mumbled. "Fuck, I don't like my dad."

"See," she cried out, laughing. "It's normal."

"There's nothing normal about you, Pearl," I told her, smiling.

"Now you are trying to hit on me, Ricky," she teased. "Keep it up and I might fuck you tonight. Would that freak my dad out or what? He might have a nervous break down or something."

"I would have a nervous breakdown," I stated, grinning back at her.

We were off again, heading towards the West Village. I could now see that Pearl's life was a series of whirlwind encounters, ones in which she alighted like a butterfly then flew away. Even though she was so young, I still couldn't imagine where she got all her energy from. Of course I thought of drugs but she didn't seem to be stoned on anything. Who knew?

What I did know was at this pace I was going to collapse before the night was over. As we were walking, and I finally felt my heart beat get back to normal, I got a text message on my phone. It was from Johnny's "in house companion," (in Pearl's words), who wanted to tell me that Johnny had been held up with the sculpture repair and wouldn't be able to meet me later. "Told you," Pearl announced when I told her the news.

"I didn't take you for one of those kids who feels abandoned by their parents," I said, laughing nervously. "You seem more independent than that."

"You are kidding me, right?" she stated angrily. "I don't give a fuck what my dad does...or my mom for that matter. I was talking about you, shit-for-brains. My dad only thinks of himself--nobody else."

"Are you sure that doesn't sound the least bit like a kid with abandonment issues?" I asked her, trying to sound as sincere as I could.

"All of that fast food junk has gone to your brain, Ricky. I mean it. You are mentally slow. I don't need anything from my parents emotionally."

"What about monetarily?" I said, hoping it wasn't too much of a dig.

She stopped in the street as we were crossing and eyed me coldly, then declared, "They brought me into this world so they have to pay the freight."

A turning taxi honked at us and we hurried to the other side, while she continued to mutter under her breath. I had hit a nerve without really meaning to. We walked on a few blocks in silence, while I kept thinking that I shouldn't even be there, in New York, with an old High School friend's daughter. It didn't make any sense to me, especially in my world, where I had become, more or less, a functioning recluse.

I couldn't imagine what our next stop was. Another party didn't excite me too much. My brush with the next generation was wearing thin at this point, leaving me with little confidence in the nation's future. Then again, didn't every generation think the next was deficient in some way or other. I knew my parents thought people my age were total idiots.

Pearl was leading me up and down small streets until I was totally lost, not that I knew my way around the city anyway. We finally stopped in front of a small restaurant serving New American Cuisine, or so said a large sign set out front on the sidewalk. I had no idea what that meant, but it smelled good from outside. I followed Pearl down a tiny alley to a side door. It was locked but she took out her credit card and used it to slide open the door thingee. I told her she was a bad girl and she laughed, telling me that the credit card was the best thing ever invented.

Again with the stairs, I thought, as we trudged up several flights before ending up at a door that was painted bright red. She knocked and somebody yelled out: "We don't want any!" Pearl told them who she was and the door swung open.

A tall, black man, mid-thirties, grabbed Pearl and swung her around, while I jumped out of the way of her swinging feet. I could hear voices inside and some obnoxious jazz music playing. "If you don't put me down I am going to have to go to a chiropractor for sure," Pearl complained, laughing. "Girl, I missed you," the black man sang out, swinging her around one more time.

He then ushered us inside the apartment, eyeing me up and down for a minute, while I tried to act self-assured, like I did this all the time. Yeah, that's right, I always hung out with pretty college girls and visited out of the way places in Greenwich Village. Just another weekend for me.

"This is Ricky," she said over her shoulder, as she rushed inside to hug a woman, fiftyish, who was standing in the kitchen.

"Ricky," the black man repeated, as if he was counting the letters in the name. "And who might you be, really?"

"Just Ricky," I answered, shrugging.

"He happens to be an old friend of my dad's," Pearl called out, adding, "can you believe it?"

"I didn't know your father had any friends," the woman exclaimed, giggling.

I could now see there was another couple in the apartment, both in their late thirties, I guessed. They were seated on the floor because the apartment was laid out like some living room from the Orient. In fact, the black man then hissed at me to take off my shoes. The decor was heavy on the Ying and the Yang type of thing, complete with a low slung table, where numerous bottles of rice wine and beer were placed, most empty. I did as told and removed my shoes, leaving them by the door.

Then I noticed the music I heard hadn't been some really bad jazz but instead was some Japanese or Chinese folk tunes. Which was, all and all, still annoying. So was the smell of incense, which only served to mask the delicious aroma wafting up from the restaurant downstairs.

"We were just starting to have some dinner," the woman in the kitchen announced. "I made a dish I discovered when I was in the Hainan Province last year. Finding the ingredients was a chore in Chinatown but I manage to do it," she said proudly. "We have plenty to go around."

That was music to my ears, even if I, as a rule, didn't care for Chinese food. I was always ready to experiment when it came to food though. That was about as close as I ever got when it came to cultural awareness of any kind. Other nationalities cuisine was okay by me.

Of course I was going to have to sit on the floor and eat it, and with chop sticks, which have to be the dumbest utensil known to man. Really, you Chinese invented gun powder and all you can think up to eat with is two sticks. At least cavemen utilized the dexterity of their fingers for heaven's sake. I just knew that in this company if I asked for a fork I would be asked to leave. You can't tell me that chop sticks make the food taste any better.

I knew better not to ask what was in the food. With Chinese food that was never a good policy. Asians like to play loose and fast with different parts of animals, depositing them in the pot along side spices in a culinary free for all. Prohibitions didn't exist. We Americans could be silly about our diets, turning our collective noses up at anything from Flicka to Bow Wow. It was crazy, of course, chawing on ribs of a cow or gnawing on pork chops and not eating other animals, but we were a selective people. Prejudices died hard.

Besides, with all of the damn incense in the place I doubted I could taste anything anyway. I did know that the beer offered me, some Chinese brew that was probably best not exported, was flat but at least cold. Man this woman was taking this whole Asian thing too far, I thought, as I settled into a modified squat position on the floor.

"Juliet is a professor of Asian Studies," Pearl informed me as I was checking my pants button to see if it had popped off when I sat down on the floor.

"Oh, she is," I said, smiling back at my hostess, who was busy ladling out some portions of her creation onto bona fide earthen ware straight from who knew where in China. I immediately thought about the article I had read about high levels of lead in almost everything made in China. In fact, I had read it yesterday morning as I was sitting on the crapper in my B & B. It was in an old Newsweek someone had thoughtfully left in the john.

"I hope you don't mind spicy fare," she informed me, smiling, handing over the plate that must have weighed five pounds easy. I decided against making a crack about stewed dog and two handed the plate, setting it on the low slung table, pushing several wine bottles out of the way. My hostess then handed me two chop sticks, the decorative type, with carvings on the side depicting, I think, snarling dragons. I knew there had to be a back story to them but hoped it wouldn't come up. There would be a cute tale, with photos to back it up. She would have purchased them in a small village next to the Yangtzee, where her incomprehensible Mandarin was a big hit with the locals.

"Man alive, this is scorching hot," the black man cried out, swigging down half a bottle of flat beer. "Juliet, are you trying to kill me or what?"

Mr. Black guy was right about the heat because even I, the guy who could eat blazing hot buffalo wings and not miss a beat, thought the food was scorching, so hot in fact I drank down a whole bottle of flat-ass Chinese beer in almost one gulp. The hostess, the Asian Studies professor, beamed with pride at the maiming of her guests, as we nursed our burned tongues and mouths with generous amounts of assorted beverages stationed on the table. Pearl, the lucky one, was nibbling on some, supposedly, tiny vegetarian egg roll of some sort, trying not to laugh at our discomfort. Judging by a Chinese palate that could tolerate this kind of food, I knew we as a nation were doomed to be underlings to the Middle Kingdom in the not too distant future.

Man, I sure hope she has some dessert to back this up, I thought, as I forced another assault on my tongue. Later, thankfully, Juliet did supply dessert, something she called "Bing," which was a sort of pastry and was more commonly referred to as a moon cake. Like the lowly moon pie of our American South, this thing was simple but delicious and full of, undoubtedly, bad things for you. I ate four of them and would have had more if that meddling Pearl hadn't actually slapped my hand and said, "Where do you put all of this food anyway?" I meekly withdrew my hand and more or less apologized for my gluttony. The other guests laughed uneasily, while they nursed third degree burns in their mouths.

After dinner, I gallantly volunteered to help with the clean up, while the others sat around discussing world affairs or something. Juliet handed me a dish towel and put me right to work drying dishes. We stood side by side and for the first time I noticed she was, you know, attractive. I guessed her to be in her early fifties, with a nice figure, well preserved by yoga and rides to nowhere on her stationary bike in her bedroom, which I had seen on a pitstop to the bathroom. Hey, it was a small apartment and I couldn't help but notice.

"So, you know Pearl's father then," she began the conversation with, handing me a wok pan to dry.

"Went to High School with him," I explained, giving my now customary aw-shucks grin, as if to say: I'm an uncomplicated guy from a small town.

"When I think of Pearl's father I can't picture him ever being in High School," she announced, suddenly giggling, which I attributed to the rice wine, which she had been hitting pretty hard. "Don't get me wrong, I think that he is a talented artist but somehow...somehow he seems to me to be...what is it? He seems to be devoid of...of a soul." Again she giggled, splashing water on me accidentally.

"I have to be honest with you Juliet, when I first heard he had become this big name artist I laughed," I told her, lowering my voice to a whisper. "The Johnny I knew wouldn't even have known what art was. No lie."

She leaned over until our faces were almost touching, so close I could smell the rice wine on her breath, and whispered, "Pearl hates him, I'm afraid."

"Really," I said, trying to sound surprised, hoping that she would elaborate.

"The psycho-dynamic working there is beyond my comprehension," she declared, squeezing my arm for a moment, then smiling at me. As body language went and signals between the sexes, this seemed to fall on the amorous side, but, then again, I had polished off quite a few bottles of beer, with some rice wine thrown in too. "What is the conflict there?" she asked rhetorically, leaning in to whisper again.

I had an impulse to kiss her but quickly thought better of it, thinking how it might look. I had visions in my head of her pushing me away, laughing, then ridiculing my clumsy move, bringing the others into it. I would be made fun of and have to dash out of the apartment in disgrace, embarrassed to no end. Pearl would offer her apologies for ever bringing me into her home. Mr. Black guy would give his assessment from a male's perspective. I would forever be the horny, drunk dude, with the really bad manners.

"I don't know," I whispered back and we both laughed together.

Then the world tilted on its axis and she leaned in closer and kissed me, right on the lips. The intent was obvious. Startled at first, I then kissed back. It wasn't long before we were like two teenagers left alone upstairs in their room. I could have dry humped her right then and there but for Pearl calling out: "How you two doing in there?" We quickly separated and snickered, while Juliet finally replied, "Almost done."

Indeed. A little longer and I would have probably soiled my underwear. It had been a very long time since I was so, you know, stimulated. What now? rang in my head. Bend her over the kitchen table. She was wearing some traditional Asian garb, something from Mongolia somewhere, giving me easy access to the target. Hundreds of years ago Mongolian women were always accommodating when it came to outdoor sex in the fields, weren't they? Procreation was serious business in agricultural cultures. I'm sure the professor could fill me in on all the historical details.

Of course neither one of us, yoga not withstanding, was exactly young. Some gymnastic screwing would probably put at least one of us in the ER. That would be a nice scenario, with witnesses. Pearl would have to escort us to the college medical center. Some intern, having been awake for 24 hours straight, would take in the explanation and squelch a laugh, before giving one of us a prescription for industrial strength ibuprofen, with a warning thrown in for good measure. "You two might want to consider using a bed next time," he would say snarkily, shaking his head, filing away the story until later when he would tell his fellow med school drones the details. I would come off particularly bad, while Juliet would be the attractive older woman being porked by the pot bellied guy who smelled like a kitchen in a Chinese restaurant.

Cooler heads prevailed as they like to say. The erection in my pants that I no longer thought possible deflated. Like guilty teenagers, we returned to the living room and launched into polite conversation, while we stole looks at each other the whole time. This is going to happen, I thought, as I wondered how in the hell I was going to get rid of Pearl. Surely she wouldn't approve. No one her age approved of anybody my age having sex. It was, you know, gross. I had once had a girl at my work, barely out of her teens, tell me: "Hey, like why don't they invent some kind of instrument or something that takes out the sex gene in people when they get to be your age?" She had a point there. Even though she was trying to be funny, I was insulted. The idea of two old farts commingling wasn't nature's finest hour.

The conversation droned on, with the Black guy chiming in with more and more subjects to explore. I wanted to smack him up side the head. Couldn't everybody there see I wanted to get laid? Wasn't it obvious? Hell, I was practically panting.

Finally, after several offers of after dinner coffee, which, by the way, I never understood--give me some hot caffeine after I just wolfed down a big meal, Pearl said it was time to get going. This development was both good and bad. Good because it meant the little dinner party would be breaking up and bad because I hadn't a clue how I was going to ditch her.

Juliet, sweet Juliet, took care of that. As we were getting ready to leave she pulled Pearl aside and, I suppose, explained it to her. At the door Pearl latched onto my arm and pulled me out into the hallway, hissing at me: "Now I want you to treat her nice. You hear me?" I heard her loud and clear. Then she grinned at me and poked me in the stomach, shaking her head in what I took to be amazement.

I couldn't believe it myself. Maybe Juliet is dying from cancer, I thought. This is her last fling. Not that, I thought. I didn't want to be responsible for being the man who makes the last attempt at giving her pleasure. I didn't need that kind of pressure. She could just be really drunk, and blind. Perhaps she was tired of Asians and wanted some good old American product. Who knew? It was safe to say my charm had never been classified as lethal.

Juliet closed the door and as her guest's footsteps faded away in the hallway she declared: "I need to go to the bathroom and you need to go to the bedroom." To the point, I liked that and did as I was told.

I can now say that yoga practitioners are nimble and it is well represented between the sheets. My deficiencies went, for the most part, un-noticed. Sparing the reader the details, we coupled and lived to tell about it. Juliet's doctorate had not been wasted on her. She was well versed in plenty of different subjects. Higher learning brought me some rewards. I am out of phrases and educational references.

I have to say that waking up in the bed of a beautiful woman in Greenwich Village was one of the highlights of my life. I could have done without the snoring, but that would be nit-picking. Best of all, I didn't suffer from performance anxiety. Chock it up to being drunk maybe, or Juliet's low standards. Anyway, the nightly exercises went well and I didn't disappoint.

The next morning we parted ways on the street in front of her place, with her going off to deliver a morning lecture and me trying to find my way back to Tribeca. It was one of those romantic interludes that defy description, unless you count all those smarmy Hollywood movies throughout the history of cinema. Of course middle-aged hook-ups aren't usually represented too many times on the screen.

Feeling my oats, I decided to wander the streets of lower Manhattan. I didn't really care if I was lost. It was fascinating to be walking and seeing the everyday sights of the area. New York was alive with activity, as usual. Having been a product of suburban sprawl, born in a small beach town that possessed some degree of charm but was, essentially, a one note place next to a big ocean, I couldn't help but be swept up in the sheer energy of the Big Apple. Then again I didn't have to live there either, which would be, in the long run, a chore.

It was almost lunchtime when I got back down to Johnny's loft. Fortunately he was home when I buzzed. "Where in the hell have you been?" came his electronic voice over the intercom speaker downstairs. I laughed and told him I would be right up.

Johnny was alone. His paramour was off to do some shopping. As usual, he was on his phone, tweeting again about the fiasco at the gallery the night before, telling his fans that he had come through with the repairs and the piece had been sold to some guy in Europe, eastern Europe. More money in the bank, I thought, trying not to be glum for his sake. Not that he would have noticed.

"Your daughter is...is priceless," I declared as I walked in the door.

Johnny laughed and said, "That's one way of putting it."

"It is a whole different world out there," I said, beaming, still high on my conquest from the night before, even if I had been the one conquered. "New York is one cool place."

"Can be," he replied, smiling at me. "Hungry?"

"Ah, the magic word!" I sang out, rubbing my belly.

More health food, unfortunately. Johnny, like his daughter, was attuned to living a healthy lifestyle, including what they put in their bodies. It was like suddenly discovering that your long lost brother was a member in a weird ass cult or something. How in the world could somebody live without having a Big Mac once in a while? That didn't seem remotely possible to me. Life without KFC, was that even possible?

"I scored on some organic produce this morning at the farmer's market," he announced proudly, holding up a bag of apples. "From upstate," he told me, waving the bag like some kind of trophy. I was ashamed to say that I hadn't had a fresh apple in I couldn't remember when. Basically, the fruit I ate came processed in Pop Tarts or from a jar of Smuckers. "I'm gonna whip up a fresh salad, with some organic cheese on top. Sound good to you?"

No, it didn't, since I was of the opinion that salad was a colossal waste of time, but I said, "Sure, sounds good." Munching on bitter leaves and bland lettuce, not to mention slivers of carrots and sliced olives and cukes wasn't my idea of eating. I was a simple guy with simple tastes. Who was I kidding? I was, more or less, an unenlightened hunter gatherer, who ate meat with sugar on the side.

Then Johnny said something that made everything almost alright: "Hey, I stopped in this Euro bakery too and got some pastry they specialize in. People kill for their Linzers. They are made with this special buttery type dough."

Now you're talking, I thought, glancing around the kitchen for the tell-tale box of just bought goodies. There it was, a pink box sitting on the far counter. I just knew they were going to be light but filling in the way some of the European concoctions can be. Most times they were like calorie guided bombs that went straight to your satisfaction zone, often aided by heavy cream and good old fashioned sugar, the type that the FDA might frown on. I couldn't wait.

Johnny, ever the good host, handed me the salad thongs and a bowl, urging me to eat up. Off to the side he had placed a serving plate of several different types of cheeses that immediately reminded me of my trips to Europe with my wife. Euros were big on cheese plates and often times half the cheese on the plate was inedible, having been aged so long there were Latin inscriptions stamped on them. My American palate wasn't prepared to digest mold, quite the contrary since most of the food in the States had so many preservatives embedded in it the contents would probably last a hundred years without spoiling. I don't know how many times my wife and I sat down to eat in a Euro city and had to worry about some unknown penicillin reaction happening after we had eaten.

"Got any salad dressing, Johnny?" I asked, looking forlornly at my salad bowl in front of me.

He kind of recoiled for a second, then stated, "You're kidding, right?"

"I don't think so," I replied, wondering whether or not he was being sarcastic or not.

"I already put olive oil on it, virgin olive oil from Italy," he told me, shaking his head like I had just spit on his food or something. "Salad dressing," he muttered, laughing.

The fact that the olive oil was virgin didn't much matter to me. I wanted something to douse the salad with, anything to drown out the taste of fresh veggies. "How about some ketchup and mayo, got that?"

He stared at me for a moment, then said, "You are going to do what I think you are. No way, Ricky. Please."

"If it is good enough for the Russians then it is good enough for me," I declared, laughing. "I am heading to the fridge and don't try to stop me."

"First of all, I don't think the Russkies have anything to do with that type of salad dressing, and second, not in my house," he exclaimed, pretending to guard the fridge.

"Remember the last time we wrestled, Johnny?" I asked him, gritting my teeth for emphasis. "Not a good outcome for you, buddy."

"You're kidding, right? I kicked your ass," he lied. "You were blubbering like a little girl."

"You do know that you are rewriting history now, John-boy," I told him, using the nick name we always used when we wanted to get his goat. "There are people in Hollywood, Florida even to this day who tell the story of your embarrassment...of how you cried and your mommy had to come and rescue you."

He laughed and said, "At least my mom cared enough about me."

"Oh, that was a low blow, even for you, cry baby," I exclaimed, smiling back at him. "Nobody should ever make fun of a man and his mom."

Before we knew it we were wrestling. Two grown men tossing each other around like teenagers. Several dishes got broken. One of his sculptures got overturned. One of my shoes flew off. Even though I out weighed Johnny by a good thirty pounds or more he soon got the upper hand. If I was ever going to have a heart attack now was going to be the time. I was breathing heavily and had gone all red in the face. Fortunately for me, my appearance alarmed him so much he pulled away and stopped fighting. We had tumbled over one of his couches and I was lying flat on my back on the floor.

"You okay?" he asked, looking down at me. "You don't look too good."

Finally catching my breath, I told him, "This is part of my strategy."

"What? To die on my living room floor?" he said, giggling.

"Give me a second, then I'll be ready for round two," I joked, while he helped me to my feet. "Whew, that was fun. Let's eat."

Johnny shook his head, disgusted, while I yanked a bottle of ketchup and a jar mayo out of the fridge, mixing them together for my salad dressing, plopping a giant dollop right on top. Then I told him the mayo and ketchup were both organic so stop worrying. After the salad, I devoured three or four pastries, while Johnny warned me that I wouldn't live to see fifty.

Fifty. I wasn't sure I wanted to even make it to fifty years old. It was a milestone that didn't hold any sway over me. Half a century of living wasn't much of an accomplishment and it certainly didn't bring you any closer to understanding what the previous fifty years had been all about. It was frightening to me that there were people out there who had actually made it to a hundred. They could divide their lives into two neat parts, five decades a piece. The first fifty and the next fifty. The arithmetic was mind boggling. I knew I didn't want to hang around for another fifty-two years.

Maybe I was on course for slow motion suicide, one with stops along the way to imbibe and ingest pleasure in the form of calories. Wasn't that what America had become? A nation of people bent on pleasuring themselves into the grave. I wasn't a philosopher, far from it, and I certainly wasn't an economist, (my accounting background doesn't count), but our brand of capitalism made it easy to systematically unravel our society, one profit source at a time.

Oh it didn't have to be all intellectual as that, really. We were a nation founded on excess and access, be it religious lunacy or rank exploitation. I guess I did pay attention in one of my college history courses, even if I only got a C for the class. Anyway, now our country was at a crossroads of sorts, one where the rule of profit was beginning to destroy the fabric of the culture, be it something as simple as subsidized agriculture that ruined the citizens health with cheap fast food or a government that refused to govern.

That night Johnny took me to an opening held at one of the museums in town. It was the opening of some bigshot artist from France, a painter. During the presentation, where the artist, dressed in all black, from head to toe, pretended to be humble, Johnny pulled me away so he could show off some of his work tucked away in one of the back rooms of the museum. I was still impressed. His name, in giant letters, was displayed on the wall.

"Fuck me," I exclaimed, shocked to find that one of my buddies had scored in a famous museum in New York. "Johnny, this is incredible. I can't believe it.!"

"I can't believe it myself sometimes," he confessed, running his hand along the base of one of his works.

"No one is allowed back here after hours," a voice boomed behind us.

"Hey, Tommy," Johnny called out, smiling.

"Oh, I didn't recognize you, sir," the museum guard sputtered. "Didn't know you were going to be here tonight."

Johnny told him he was just showing me his collection, talking to him like they were old friends. The guard walked with us as we made our way back to the gala going on downstairs. I was bewildered by my friend's success, but proud of him. It didn't seem possible that we had shared our youth together down in Florida. This was one of those turns life takes that you can never be truly prepared for; and as a bystander I had a front row seat to the before and after pictures.

I stayed on in New York for a few more days. Johnny played the host, taking me all around the city, showing me the different neighborhoods. I guess I can say we re-connected, in a way. A lot of years had passed. We weren't the same people, and, in some ways we were. Those long ago years spent on the beach weren't totally washed away, if I might use that imagery.

"I'm heading to see Brad next," I told him, as we walked along the Hudson enjoying the nice autumn day.

"Really," Johnny uttered, stopping to point out a landmark across the river. "That's going to be interesting I'm sure."

"What do you mean?" I wanted to know, glancing over at a couple of tourists video taping themselves with ground zero in the background.

"The last time I talked to him--about five years ago--he was, you know, out there," Johnny explained. "Remember when he didn't care about anything but the weather report and how the waves were doing? Not any more."

"What's going on with him now?" I asked, laughing. "I mean I've talked to him on the phone and emailed a few times, he didn't seem too weird or anything."

"The man lives in Memphis," Johnny stated, bursting out laughing. "Who lives in Tennessee if they don't have to? What, is he the second coming of Elvis?"

"Never been there," I said, by way of apologizing for Brad.

"Nobody has," Johnny sang out, posing like Elvis on stage and pretending to sing.

"He said he married some girl from there he met in college," I explained.

"Was her name Wanda Sue? No, kidding aside, the guy has gone off the deep end. He's like one of those survivalists or something I think. Are you sure you want to go down there, Ricky? Who knows what he might be mixed up in," Johnny said in a serious tone of voice.

The three of us had once been close friends, amigos. We had spent our High School years together surfing and chasing girls. Brad's parents knew my parents well, even went to dinner with them on occasion. We had formed a bogus school club just so we could get our photos in the year book. The name of the club had been The International Surfing Club and the Principal had approved it because she thought it was legit and we were reaching out to surfers from foreign countries. In the photo we had posed in our wet suits on the beach holding our boards, while in the background of the picture we had written in the sand: Bulldogs Eat Shit. The school mascot name for the sports teams was the Bulldogs. Nobody noticed it until the year book had been printed up.

Brad's transformation couldn't be any more surprising than what I had found with Johnny, who was a mini-celeb and doing fantastic, financially and otherwise. All along I had been prepared on this trip to face highs and lows. Meeting old friends after a lengthy time period was always a crap shoot.

Up until that point we had pretty much avoided the Ground Zero area and, for that matter, most talk about that eventful day. Fortunately, Johnny hadn't been living there then but most of his neighbors had. The entire area had been covered in toxic ash, sometimes inches deep. Almost everyone in his building were developing respiratory problems from the fallout.

For me, my personal experience was far removed, like most Americans. I was sitting at my desk when one of the workers came in and said that she had heard on the radio that a plane hit the World Trade Towers. Then, of course, it all began. From then on it was a non-stop horror show on the TV, with the tape being shown over and over again. Crash went the plane, then the other one. Down came the buildings. It was like a festering wound.

Personally, I wasn't afraid. What exactly was there to be afraid of? Were screaming Arabs going to attack Hollywood, Florida? Then again, as I said, several of the 9/11 hijackers had lived in my neck of the woods for a short time before they carried out their criminal assault on the US. Kind of close for comfort, really. Yet how many targets could they hit in the country? Come on. I always had to laugh when I heard people tell me they were frightened of what might happen next. As a result, the country went into lockdown mode for quite a while.

Now it was some eight or nine years later and there was still a big, gaping hole in the ground at the bottom of Manhattan. The 9/11 anniversary had been commemorated just a few weeks before. It didn't seem possible they hadn't built anything yet. Maybe, as some people suggested, they shouldn't build anything there. Just leave a memorial of some sort, something to show what a few insane people can do when they believe in religion so strongly.

"That's it," Johnny told me, and I could hear the weariness in his voice, like he had done this too many times before, shown visitors where it all happened.

I looked out at where some construction equipment was plodding along and said, "Damn, looks like a meteor hit the place or something."

"Kinda did," Johnny muttered, glancing over at several foreign tourists, who were gesturing back and forth at each other.

"Come on, let's get out of here before they ask us to take their picture for them," Johnny suggested, hurrying away.

My last night in New York, as I waited patiently while Johnny fielded dozens of phone calls as usual, we sat in his loft and enjoyed a few beers. He had ordered in some food from a local place that actually served food I could eat. As we were sitting there my phone binged and I received a text from Pearl telling me that she hoped my trip would be "illuminating." She hadn't tried to contact me since that first night so I thought she had had her fun with me and moved on to other diversions.

"From your daughter," I said to Johnny, holding up my phone.

"Oh yeah, is she hitting you up for some money?" he joked, forcing a laugh.

"Just telling me to have a good time on my travels," I said, smiling to myself, knowing full well that it would be a long time before I forgot that night.

"What about the professor? Get in touch with her?" he wanted to know, as he punched out another tweet to his fans, telling them that his old High School friend was leaving in the morning.

"One night stand," I explained, shrugging. "She was only slumming for the evening." And, undoubtedly, she was or had been. Best left to the memory banks, I thought. "Maybe in another life."

Chapter 2 BRAD

Does anybody ever go to Memphis? echoed in my head as I drove southward, back to the South. I was heading west on Interstate 40, one of the main roads that went east-west in the US. It was, all in all, another one of those soul less highways the country was known for, where the act of driving a car becomes like penance. Who knew sameness could be so debilitating?

I had never seen the Mississippi River. It was shameful how much of my own country I hadn't seen. So soon I would see the river Mark Twain had written about and several English teachers had made me read. What was it about the river that made Clemens so devoted to it? Of course, I wasn't much of a river man, being brought up next to an ocean and all. It was a mid-west thing, I guess.

You didn't think much about Memphis. It was known for its blues, right? That and the whole Elvis thing. I was a little young for the Elvis phenomenon. Naturally I knew of him, who didn't? Still, I found the fascination with his life silly. The man didn't even write his own music. He got fat. He took lots of pills. The guy ate fried peanut butter sandwiches for Christ sake. How do you even make that?

The city, like plenty of others, owed its existence to the Mississippi. It was a city overlooked for the most part but it did, inexplicably, have an NBA franchise, even if they were called the Grizzlies. It was safe to say Brown bears had long ago parted the area. How was it cities like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati didn't have an NBA team? Orlando, that miserable excuse for a town, had one too. So did OK City. Something wasn't right with the league.
Anyway, I was heading there, driving again. My car was beginning to smell like the kitchen at Jack in the Box at the end of another shift, heavy on the greasy fryer odor. There was a pile of fast food containers stacking up in my back seat. It couldn't be helped. I was on the move, driving the Interstates, weaving in and out of trucks, lots of trucks. It didn't take long before you really started to hate them, the truckers. They were everywhere, hogging the lanes and getting in your way or, sometimes, breathing down your neck as you raced down a hill.

I was more than happy when I saw the sign for the Memphis exit. My back was stiff from driving and I had been holding a pee for so long my bladder ached. My trusty GPS navigation system was programmed and setting me on course. It wouldn't be long before I got to my destination, the next stop on my odyssey.

Not quite. The women's robotic voice informed me that I must make a right turn, now. Not really possible, I shouted at the stupid machine, smacking it lightly. The sweet talking navigator was telling me to take a right, right into a creek. Foiled again, I thought, as I drove on, looking for a way to turn right. The software, the 4.0 version, hadn't taken into account that my friend, Brad, lived in a trailer on a tract of unincorporated land. I should have gotten the 4.1 white trash version, I thought while I stopped by the side of the road and looked at a map for a second.

Brad was probably the first long term friend I made as a kid. We were, believe it or not, in first grade together. His family had just moved to Florida from somewhere up north. Hell, we played on the same team in Little League. He was the first baseman and I played second base. Our own version of Americana was experienced mostly side by side, from riding our BMX bikes on the back roads to getting our driver's licenses on the very same day. Our birthdays were only a couple weeks apart. By the time we both befriended Johnny, we had been friends forever.

That was then, of course. Brad had graduated from HS and gone on to college at some tiny school in a podunk town in Georgia. It was the only one he could get into, truth be told. Studying and Brad weren't a good mix. He never finished college, dropping out after only one year. Fortunately, (maybe not), he was there long enough to meet his future wife, Becky.

They divorced after ten years of marriage, with Becky taking their two kids, two girls. Brad got court ordered child support in the bargain, an obligation he was not too diligent about fulfilling, telling me: "The bitch bled me dry." I wanted to tell him it was for the kids but he didn't seem too responsive to that way of looking at it so I kept my mouth shut. I also kept my mouth shut because, honestly, the guy scared me.

The Brad I had known way back when was a guy who was always smiling and laughing, eager to have a good time. Not any more, so it seemed. I got my first glimpse of the new Brad when I pulled up into his drive way. I say driveway but that would be wrong. There was no driveway. In fact, I had left anything resembling a road about two miles back. It was all dirt, with a few patches of gravel thrown in. I was sure my flimsy Honda was going to rattle until every nut and bolt in it would fall off.

Brad had the right idea and was driving a manly truck, one of those beasts with the monstrous tires, where you need a step ladder even to climb into the cab. Apparently, so it goes, Brad had taken his divorce pretty hard and decided to withdraw from civilized life. He bought a tract of land in the middle of nowhere and plopped a mobile home on it. The place was in a serious state of disrepair, and that was when he first bought it. Now, well let's just say it hadn't gotten any better. Brad wasn't much for home ownership.

As I pulled up two dogs (Pit bull mixes) dashed out from underneath the trailer, barking and snarling like some hounds from hell. Oh boy, I thought, as I cowered in my car, which, judging by their growls, I was sure the dogs could take apart with a few well placed bites. Brad saved me a moment later, appearing in the doorway to his trailer wearing a torn t-shirt that read in bright red block letters: I make my own bullets and I know how to use them. My first glimpse of my long lost friend told me he had traded one stereotype, that of a surfer with long sun bleached hair, for a militia member with a shaved head and camo duds.

"Get your asses back under that trailer!" he roared and the two dogs slinked away, growling in protest.

I rolled down the window and called out, "Is it safe to get out of my car now?"

"Come on, wuss, they won't hurt you," Brad chided me, laughing.

Those were famous last words always stated by dog owners who hadn't a clue about their own dogs. Once, while I was riding my bike on the broadwalk back in Florida, a man had said that to me as I was riding up on his really large dog, Doberman mix of some sort. No sooner had I slowed down, braking slightly, than the dog jumped up on me and bit my thigh. I didn't trust dogs, or owners.

"Come on, Brad. Are you sure? They look like they could eat me alive," I protested.

Brad disappeared back into his trailer for a moment then reappeared carrying a rifle. He walked out next to my car and stood by the door. "How about now girlie-boy? I got you covered." He fiddled with the gun for a moment, then aimed it at his dogs.

I slowly got out of the car and stood behind him, while he pretended to shoot his dogs, mouthing out a gun going off like we used to do as kids when we played Army around the neighborhood, pretending that we were single handedly winning World War II. One of the dogs growled at me and, to my shock, Brad fired off a round, which landed only a few feet away from the dog. Both dogs beat a retreat out the other side and I didn't see them again for the rest of the day.

Maybe Johnny was right about Brad, I told myself, as we shook hands then hugged awkwardly. I followed him into the mobile home even though I was afraid what I would find inside. It was a shambles, a total mess, with dirty dishes everywhere and dozens of empty beer cans in every corner. Then there was the smell, a nice combination of three day old food scraps rotting in the open air, combined with cheap cigar smoke, the type of cigars you might buy at the Circle K. Yeah, this was going to be a fun visit.

Brad kicked a stack of magazines off a chair and told me to have a seat. I noticed all of the magazines were about guns. This made sense in its way because up until recently Brad had been a gun shop owner. That was before he went belly up and had to declare bankruptcy. Even though every nut in America was buying a gun after the Obama election, fearing the new President would somehow confiscate all their weapons, Brad couldn't make a go of it. Business was bad with the economy and all.

"What's up with the guns anyway?" I had to ask because when we were growing up we never ever had any access to guns.

"What do you mean?" he countered, motioning for me to sit down. "Want a beer?"

I took the beer from him, a Bud, and said, "I never knew you were so into guns, man. It seems kinda weird and all."

He reached behind a cushion and pulled out a hand gun and tossed it in my lap. "Hold it. That particular model has a real nice balance to it. And enough firepower to bring down a bear."

I picked up the gun and pretended to aim it at the far wall. Believe it or not I had only held a gun once before, when I was probably twelve or thirteen years old. Our next door neighbors at the time were into target shooting or something like that. The gun was only a 22 but it felt, you know, sinister in my little hand. They had promised they would take me target shooting with them out in the Everglades but they never did. My parents thought they were both nut cases and wouldn't have allowed it anyway. This handgun was different, heavier, with a sturdy grip. I looked at the logo on the side and read: Glock.

"Nice piece," I mumbled, not knowing what else to say.

"Tomorrow I can take you shooting if you want," he offered, taking a long swig of his beer then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I killed a deer right out back of here not too long ago."

I had to think about this comment for a moment, not knowing exactly how I was supposed to take it or how he intended it to be taken. "Wow, right out back," I finally said, glancing out the window where I could see nothing but undeveloped Tennessee woods. "Must be nice not to have any neighbors around, huh?"

"You got that right," he said, taking the gun back from me. "Gun's loaded," he stated, grinning at me. "Might shoot yourself in the foot or worse. It's all about gun safety, like I always used to say in my store."

He said this last bit while a little trace of sadness seeped into his voice. Suddenly I had visions of him going into some court house, probably the one where he got his bankruptcy finalized, and shooting everyone in it, twice. Then he would turn the gun on himself. This couldn't be the same Brad I had known in Elementary School.

"Sorry to hear about the store," I offered, trying to sound sympathetic. I was actually sympathetic but I was more dumbfounded by what I was seeing. "That must suck big time."

"Suck it does," he announced, laughing, and for a moment I got a glimpse of the former Brad, the one who was always ready to shrug things off no matter what. After all, he was the guy that almost drowned while surfing in a hurricane and laughed about it later, while the paramedics were bundling him up in the ambulance. "I should have burned the shit hole down before I let them take it away from me." Back to the new, scary Brad, I thought. "I could have put a bullet right in the Judge's fucking head." He picked up a rifle, another one that was leaning up against the wall, one of those assault rifle types that some of the politicians manage to ban before the ban was rescinded, and pointed it at a target taped to a door down the narrow hallway. There was a deafening blast and the door seem to buckle and splinters of wood flew every which way.

"What the fuck, Brad!" I yelled out, as I almost jumped out of my skin. "Look what you did, man."

"Yeah, I know, I missed," he said sarcastically, walking down the hallway to examine the target. "Too many beers, I guess," he muttered, holding up the target that was in tatters.

It was a good thing I had good sphincter control because otherwise I would have pooped my pants for sure. I didn't know what to do. This guy might kill me, floated through my consciousness. Who would know? There wasn't anybody around for miles. I should have taken Johnny's advice.

"Hey, I had a nice visit with Johnny," I said, desperately trying to control my voice. "He's got a pretty cool place up there in New York. It's one of those fancy lofts, you know, with--"

"He hasn't gone homo on us has he?" Brad asked, crumpling up the target and tossing it over his shoulder. "Isn't he some artist or something up there? Some faggy shit."

"He's got a daughter...in college, so I doubt that he's gay," I said, laughing uneasily.

He grunted then headed into the kitchen, where I watched him rummage through the kitchen cabinets, tossing things over his shoulder as he went. Then he turned the garbage can over and yanked out a few empty cans and bottles. I couldn't imagine what he was looking for. Maybe I could slip over and grab that Glock on the couch, I thought, something to protect myself with. Then again I wouldn't have a clue how to use it, probably, like he said, shoot myself.

"You know what...how about we go shootin' right now," he said this with a pronounced southern accent, then grinned at me. "Here, gather up some of those beer bottles and put them in this plastic bag."

"No problem," I found myself saying, scooping up several bottles and putting them in the plastic bag with the Piggly-Wiggly logo on it.

Off we went, with me stumbling along behind, dropping a stray beer bottle out of the bag and stopping to pick it up. About a hundred yards or so behind his trailer he had set up a firing range of sorts. The ground was littered with all kinds of shells, from little 22 caliber shorties to shot gun shells. Spread out before us was two sets of targets, one for the traditional paper type and one for actual target dummies, with faces taped on them. I noticed right away that he had painted one of the dummies black and had a magazine photo of our current President attached to it. The eyes had already been shot out.

They make movies about this kind of stuff, I was thinking as Brad started loading up yet another rifle, one that was painted a camouflage color, better to blend in the woods when you are out to shoot some unsuspecting raccoon. When had my High School buddy gone all Rambo, I wondered. Then he tossed me some ear plugs, pointed to his ears and grinned.

Brad grunted to himself, as he took another swig of his beer, then tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder and stated: "This is where it all ends."

"What does?" I asked, but my words were drowned out by a series of rattling gunfire, you know, the automatic kind, like in a war film. Oh yes, Brad had converted one of his toys into a machine gun or whatever they call it now. I looked out to see one of the dummies splinter into several hundred pieces.

Man, this wasn't really happening, was it? Can't you get arrested for this kind of stuff, I wondered? Even in the South they had to frown on their citizens blasting away with an automatic weapon. Paranoia being what it usually is, I then thought that the ATF people had to be onto my buddy. He would have to definitely show up on somebody's radar as a nutcase, a potential homegrown style terrorist. They were probably monitoring us right now, I thought, looking around at the surrounding woods. Any minute armed men, you know, the ones wearing those SWAT outfits, would come running through those trees with their guns blazing. Just my luck. I would either be shot outright or pegged as one of Brad's wacko accomplices, thrown in jail, with my face plastered all over the news.

TWO VIOLENT MILITIA MEMBERS ARRESTED IN MEMPHIS, the headline would read. An unemployed Florida man, late fifties, overweight, with a grudge against the Government, was incarcerated today...so it would go. They would get my age wrong, adding to my humiliation. My parents would be mortified and, probably quickly sell me out: He was always an odd boy growing up, my mother would say. Never the same since his son died, my father would tell the reporters gathering outside their house down in Florida, adding for emphasis, Had an eating habit too.

We would be thrown in some Super-Max facility, and our cells would be right next to the Shoe Bomber and maybe that guy that sent letter bombs, what's his name. We would be let out once a day, for an hour, to exercise, which I would decline so I could stay in my tiny cell and cry some more. Brad would write a manifesto on his cell wall, telling the world that women were bitches and guns were a man's only true friend. He would scribble out a long (long) list of rifles and handguns, including all of their specs, from memory. He would be a hero up in Northern Idaho, where some of the local town councils would inaugurate a day in his honor. On the day stipulated all of the townspeople were expected to fire their guns off into the air.

Brad stopped firing, licked his lips, then smiled at me and said, "Now that is fucking what it's all about!"

"Got that right," I said, smiling, hoping like hell the Feds weren't recording our conversation with one of those satellite dish things you see on the side lines during football games.

"Here," Brad announced, holding out a rifle, a jet black one with a large magazine jutting out the bottom. "Lock and load," he yelled out, holding his head back to howl.

"What do you want me to shoot at?" I asked, immediately realizing it was a really stupid question.

Brad yanked the bottle cap off another beer then said, "Are you fucking kidding me? There, take your pick, ass-wipe."

Even though he had said this with a laugh, I wasn't so sure about his mood swings. At any minute he might start shooting at me, I thought, wondering whether or not I could defend myself at all. How had Brad gotten this way, I wondered? We were from the Reagan Generation, the one where our only military triumph had been in defeating poor little Granada. The rifle felt heavy in my hand and I just knew it was going to feel a lot heavier when I started pulling that trigger. I noticed there was a small scope attached to the top of the gun, so I peered through it and could see the target in the distance dancing around in front of me.

"Is it ready to go?" I asked, my second dumb ass question.

"Put one of those targets in the crosshairs and pull the trigger...that's all you gotta do," Brad told me, whooping again.

I hesitated for a moment, zeroing in on a paper target off to the left, where I could now make out a photo of a woman. She was smiling back at me in the picture. Boom! The rifle jerked in my hand and I kind of staggered back for a second. "Fucking A," I managed to say.

"You son-of-a-bitch!" Brad shouted out, "you shot my wife."

"I did," I said, confused.

"Right in her fucking busybody nose," he sang out, laughing.

Now I was an assassin, great. Hit man for hire. Don't like your spouse? No problem. Me and my really black gun will fix that. Believe me, it is better than marriage counseling. "Quite a kick," I told him, referring to the rifle's recoil.

Brad didn't here me because he was too busy lining up his next shot, this time with a shotgun. He walked several paces forward and let loose, sending the photo of his former wife into oblivion. The only thing left of the target was a piece of her right ear, with a dangling gold earring, one of the ones he bought her for their third anniversary, so he told me in a bitter voice I didn't think he was capable of.

You will be happy to know we spent the next two hours out there blowing things away, mostly surrogate victims of Brad's anger. As a sidekick I was along for the ride, I guess. Hey, shooting guns has its own appeal, not unlike some mental release. Got problems? Just shoot them away. I could now almost understand why so many people in America cling to that whole Second Amendment thing. Of course, I think it might have more to do with good old destructive fun than the constitutional angle.

Back at the mobile home, where the dogs had now sneaked back and were stationed once again underneath, we sat down to talk. This was the nostalgic part of my visits, the time when we would do the "remember whens." There was something, you know, pathetic about this segment. Dredging up the "old times" had its pitfalls. Most of those memories were good ones and, even later, made the present seem somehow inadequate. And that was even without the usual embellishments that always came with how you remembered it to be.

Anyway, we exhausted this exercise in lying pretty quickly, leaving me with a lunatic on my hands, one who was suddenly hungry. I had seen his kitchen and didn't want any part of what came out of it. I also didn't want to go anywhere and be seen in public with this guy. The man had an automatic hand gun strapped on his side, one of those howitzers you might see the Delta Force carry. Probably was the very same type, in fact. The man had owned a gun store, for God's sake. Something told me he wasn't going to be taking it off either.

What to do? We couldn't very well get Domino's delivery, not way the hell out here. I was going to have to accompany him into town. He seemed all giddy now, another mood swing, I realized, more proof that my old friend was probably a walking time bomb. He disappeared into the back bed room for a moment, where I could hear him rummaging around in the closet. He walked back out shirtless, holding up two shirts and wanted, incredibly, my advice on what he should wear. It was then that I noticed he was seriously inked up, with tattoos covering most of his upper torso.

This was a revelation in its way because we weren't really from the tattoo generation or anything. In fact, we kind of leaned the other way, preferring our unblemished surfer tanned skin to some amateurish epidermis art when we were youngsters. From the looks of it, Brad had spent the last thirty years visiting tattoo parlors. I noticed right away he had a large black colored tatt in block letters on his stomach that read: NOT ON MY WATCH. Okay, I told myself, trying not to stare.

On top of everything else that was happening, as it turned out, I had to ride in his truck too, the one with the NRA bumper stickers and a Rebel flag stuck on the rear window. Since when did my surfing buddy become a Confederate sympathizer? I wondered, as we climbed into his mud splattered truck. Making matters worse still, he invited his dogs along for the ride. They eagerly hopped into the truck bed, where one of them stuck his head in the divider window in the back and continued to sniff at my jacket collar until Brad reached over and smacked him on the snout and shut the opening.

I was pretty sure even Tennessee had an open container law on the books, but Brad must have been exempt because there he was gulping down another beer, then tossing the empty beer bottle out the window into the ditch by the side of the road. It was hard to believe way back when we had actually been environmentally conscious about things. The ocean was our immediate focus. We were at the beach practically everyday and instinctually knew that our playground was a sensitive eco-system and we needed to take care of it in order to enjoy ourselves in the water. Hell, we had actually joined in on demonstrations against building on the beach because of the turtle breeding grounds in and around the sea grapes.

That must have been a different Brad. This was his evil twin. In fact, I was beginning to think I had stumbled across some weird ongoing movie plot, you know, the one where there are two personalities inhabiting one body. Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have been less startling to me though. Seeing an old friend turn out like this was both horrifying and disheartening at the same time.

"Hey, bud, I know this pretty good BBQ place we can go to," Brad announced, while we bounced down the rutted road, probably going about fifty miles an hour. In the side mirror I watched as one of the dogs was almost catapulted right out of the bed of the truck. I debated whether or not to mention it to Brad but before I could he yelled out the window: "If one of you pops out I'm not stopping to pick you up!"

"Sounds good," I muttered, hanging on, as the seat belt dug into my chest while my body gyrated around the seat.

"Good old fashioned southern BBQ, Ricky!" he shouted at me, laughing, grabbing another beer from the six pack cooler he had brought along for the ride. "They make it with...with mesquite or some such shit," he explained, swerving to dodge a three foot hole in the road. "Nubians run the place, but they're cool."

Nubians, I thought, figuring he was talking about some recent immigrants, arrivals from who knew where. Geography wasn't one of Brad's strongest subjects in school. He couldn't even name the continents. Later, after a few more hints, I realized he was talking about Afro-Americans. The label he used stemmed from his affiliation with some wacked out political group he had joined on the internet, something he called The Onus. I kid you not. Yes, at first I thought he had said: Anus. It was one of those quasi-racist organizations that say they want to follow the original intent of the constitution, which was, usually, only a cover for their bigotry. They gave lip service to patriotism of course and wanted the US Government to, more or less, go away. Needless to say, they weren't big fans of the President, at least the black side of him.

"I love a good barbecue," I chirped, sounding like some lobotomy victim or one of those stupid guests you hear on a TV cooking show, the ones where the host tries to make conversation with the C-list star while they prepare a meal nobody in the real world would ever cook.

Finally we were on the pavement and the massive tires rumbled along, giving off an annoying whine as we sped down the road. We zoomed past what appeared to be a small farm and the dogs started barking out of control. I looked over and could see a large golden retriever standing in a fenced in yard, returning the pit bull maniacal barks with an indifferent look, as if to say: you white trash canines.

And on we went, with beer number two gone, and the empty again tossed by the road side. I had lost count of how many beers Brad downed. It was safe to say that if we got stopped the Highway Patrol wasn't going to need to use a breathalyzer on him in order to arrest him for DUI. I was sure we were heading towards another statistic, one more fatality. You know all those roadside crosses you see by the side of the highways? You've seen them. They are everywhere, in every State. I began to wonder who was going to place one out there for us when we ended up dead. It wasn't going to be his ex, ditto for mine. Maybe the The Onus organization he belonged to would set one up and blame Brad's death on Big Government. They could attach a plaque to a cross, one that read: Here lies a man who was crushed by the burdens of an intrusive government.

We pulled up to the barbecue place and to my dismay it was crowded. This might be a minefield, I thought, as I climbed out of the truck, literally. The dogs were sniffing the air, probably remembering the last time they had been there and Brad threw a few scraps their way after he had finished eating. I wasn't an expert on Southern social dynamics, far from it, but I sensed this was going to be one of those sociological encounters I dreaded.

On occasion, back in North Carolina at my parent's second home, I had these type of interactions, ones where I was supposed to trade conversation with them, those people. That was what my mother called them anyway, even though she spent half of the year with them, "those people." She referred to the locals like they were some kind of other species and, I guess, they were to her. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't help herself and was always condescending, as if she were speaking to someone where English was a second language. To her, the Southerner was a few chromosomes short of actually being human. These were people who actually thought the banjo was a musical instrument and not a weapon to assault the ears with. Those were her actual words, I might add.

My mother was especially good at patronizing them, laying a sticky word gob of condescension that always made me cringe. The locals picked up on it of course but they were not offended because they, as a rule, thought "half-backs," as they called transplants to their area, were all windbags with money. It was a nice round circle of give and take, one that made the local economy keep functioning.

I didn't share in my parent's attitude to the locals. For the most part I just didn't understand them much, from the way they added syllables to simple words to that whole slavery thing in their history. Really, did you people think it made sense to enslave 3/4 of the population so you could grow one or two crops? Was that your business plan? The Bible told you to do that? And what happened to the English language when it came ashore in Virginia, then migrated south? Do we share the same DNA, at all?

Okay, so I had somewhat of a superior attitude; but I was polite. I didn't sneer at anybody, not this guy. I knew better, even if my parents didn't. Most of these people were victims of circumstance. I often wondered what I would have been like if I had been born into it, you know, the Southern thing. Raised in Alabama, watching the Crimson Tide on Saturdays, off to church on Sunday, with the right Reverend Barret Wilson, known for his sermons celebrating Life, except when it comes to the Death Penalty of course. Save a fetus, kill a convict. I would have pecans stuck in my teeth from the Pecan pie and a quarter of my blood content would be barbecue sauce, the perfect blend of sweet and spicy.

Speaking of that, the barbecue waited. You might think that I would be a big fan of barbecue, judging by my appetite for food and all. You would be wrong though. Barbecue to me was overkill, and I am not referring to the animal wasted by the meat processors across America. No, it was just too much, as in ingredients applied to flesh. On top of that the sauce was always sugar laden, giving it that decadent last kick, as if to say you, the eater, are entering Roman orgy territory. Wipe your mouth, emperor. People would argue that, sure, there are some wastrels out there who dump a pound of sugar and maybe fruit juice for added kick to their concoctions, but some artisans create the perfect blend, something to act as an accompaniment to the main ingredient, which is meat. Not so.

Ribs. Chops. Wings. Pick a part of an animal and somebody out there will drench it with sauce. I think every culture out there does this. Maybe it was ordained by god. Otherwise why would he have given us sugar--or fruit? Maybe it was the act of eating the meat doused in sauce that I didn't care for. Having barbecue sauce drip off your chin was always a turn-off for me, and, probably, quite a few dates I went on and unwisely took to dinner at a restaurant that served barbecue. My double chin could hold a cup of sauce, no problem.

I was hoping Brad just wanted to order up something and take it back to his trailer. This way I could minimize my exposure. No such luck. He suddenly was in a social mood and wanted to sit down and eat a meal, enjoy the ambiance of a rib joint crowded with "Nubians." This had all the makings of a disaster, I thought, as we made our way inside, passing by more than a few stares.

I would probably have been staring too if I didn't happen to know Brad. With his shaved head and numerous tattoos on display, not to mention the sidearm he was packing, which was readily visible, he looked like the next story on the evening news just waiting to happen. Disturbed white male guns down innocent bystanders in a restaurant outside Memphis, siege under way. I was hoping against hope that he wasn't planning on taking me with him.

"Hey, there's two seats at the counter we can grab," he called out over his shoulder, as he made his way past a waitress carrying a large tray full of spare ribs. "Those look good," he told the waitress, who mostly ignored him and pushed on by us.

Segregation, as you know, was a thing of the past, or, at least officially, that was the belief. Blacks and Whites of the South, particularly of the lower econ levels, had always existed on the same playing field somewhat. Doing crappy work had a way of dissolving differences. That's not to say the social order was equitable, not at all. Yet poor people tended to accept life with a certain degree of equivalence. Such was the dining experience we had just started in on. There were a few good old boys seated at a back booth, digging into a pile of wings and a cracker family seated at a table, with their baby propped up in a high chair. It was family hour to some degree.

This made me feel a little better, somewhat. I imagined most of the diners there were wondering what I was doing with Brad, and vice versa. I was dressed in my usual slacks and wrinkled dress shirt, with a cheap jacket on. If anything, I looked like I might be an insurance salesman trying to sell Brad a policy that didn't include any suicide exceptions, for when, you know, he shoots up a place and goes for death by cops. We were night and day different if judged by outward appearances.

"Are you sure you don't want to just grab something to eat and go?" I hissed at Brad, giving it once last shot before he sat down.

Brad stopped for a moment, surveyed the room for a moment then said, "Nah, the place has a good vibe tonight. Enjoy it, Ricky."

We then sat down at the counter, two seats just vacated by two black guys who looked like they were two blues musicians on a break from the local recording studio. One had one of those soul patches under his lower lip, the particular type of facial hair I never could understand, not that a mustache makes anymore sense really, but leaving a section of hair stranded above your chin seemed somehow ridiculous to me. He was reed thin, like heroin diet skinny and was wearing gloves, black leather ones you might see some safe cracker wear. This was odd in itself but he was also wearing a short sleeve shirt too, which, I guess went along way to proving he wasn't actually a heroin addict because you could see his unmarked veins clearly. His friend was tall, basketball tall, maybe six foot six or seven and had what I think they call a frohawk, which is what you call a mohawk unless they happen to be negroid.

A young kid was busy clearing the dishes off the counter, wearing the obligatory ipod earphones, while he bobbed his head up and down to the music. He expertly made no eye contact with us, and disappeared into the kitchen, where I could hear a deep, megaphone voice telling him to hurry up and stop foolin' around. Next came the waitress, a white girl, or, at least, partially white, who had this wonderful almost caramel colored skin and was very pretty. As usual, I fell in love several times a day, whether it was the maid at the hotel or the cashier at the gas station, you name it. She plopped down two menus and hurried away to grab another order that had just appeared in the window by the kitchen.

I hadn't sat down to eat with Brad in so long I had forgotten how diabolically embarrassing he could be. He was the type of guy who found it his life mission to engage the waitress in conversation. Just ordering his meal wasn't his style. I could never figure out if he thought he was being charming, and heaven knows he never had any success with the females delivering his food. I could attest to that. The man had been shut down by more waitresses than any man should have to.

Then came another memory suddenly, slapping up against my brain pan. We had been at a Hooter's back in Florida. Those poor Hooter's waitresses had to endure endless drivel from their customers, guys titillated by short shorts and cleavage, men believing they had been given the green light because the girls were scantily dressed. Brad was no different.

Our waitress was a petite blond with ample equipment, some attributes that made her job application superfluous. She was friendly, you know, in that subtle professional way that garners her more tips, hopefully minus unwanted fondling. Brad started in on her right away, delving into her personal life like a police detective on a cop show. At first, she deflected his questioning by smiling and bending the conversation back to our order. I tried to help out, telling her to bring us a pitcher of beer. She backed away, maintaining a smile, and probably thought she had escaped another horny jackass customer.

Unfortunately, she had to bring the pitcher of beer back to our table. That was when Brad picked up where he had left off by saying, "Melissa, we missed you." His cooing voice oozed out with insincerity but he continued on, while I sat there cringing. "Got a boyfriend, Melissa? I bet he doesn't treat you right."

"Ignore him," I chimed in, giving her what I hoped was a sympathetic look.

"Have you two decided what you are going to have to eat?" she asked, maintaining her composure, even if she really wanted to pour the pitcher of beer over Brad's head.

"Is it true they measure your bust size when you apply for a job here?" Brad wanted to know, leering.

Before I could intervene again she aboutfaced and stalked away. At least we got our beer, I thought, as Brad gave me a look as if to say: What did I do? Then we got a visit from the manager, some weasel who probably wondered every day of his life why he had gone to college only to end up a manager at Hooter's. He was not happy to hear we had been "uncivil" to one of his staff. I apologized, for Brad, even if he wasn't going to. Now we had become a spectacle.

"I'm afraid you two are going to have to leave," the manager said, folding his arms, showing us by his body language that the order was not negotiable.

"What the fuck for?" Brad wanted to know. "I haven't finished my beer, dude."

The manager reached over and grabbed the pitcher of beer and then passed it to one of the bus boys passing by. He then stated with all of the authority he could muster, "End of story."

Brad was flabbergasted at this turn of events, and then finally said, "This is fucked up, man. You mean to tell me I have to leave because I said one little thing to the waitress. Did I hurt her feelings or something," he said in a mocking tone, looking around the restaurant to see if he could make eye contact with her. "Hey, Melissa, I'm sorry," he called out, smirking. "I didn't know you were so sensitive."

Believe me when I say it went down hill from there, with Brad getting the manager in a head lock and me trying to break up the fight. The cops were called and we would have probably been taken off to jail if the officer hadn't been a good friend of Brad's brother. We were escorted off the premises and told never to come back. Somehow I knew that if he started anything now he wasn't going to have a friendly cop to bail him out. Me either.

Due to the weirdness of this cross-cultural experience I knew I wasn't going to be able to enjoy my dinner, and I was hungry. Even though Brad urged me to order the ribs, with the bourbon sauce, I held my ground and ordered some good old southern fried chicken, with hush puppies and fries, giving me a perfect trifecta of grease. Brad scoffed at my selection, telling the disinterested waitress that I was from Florida and didn't know any better. She gave me a look of pity for a moment, one that might have been directed at Brad for my benefit, as if to say she felt sorry for me for being with him, then waltzed off to place our order.

"Interesting place," I said in almost a whisper, looking around me, afraid somebody might overhear my conversation.

"That waitress has a pretty nice booty," Brad announced loud enough for the kitchen staff to hear. A few customers off to my right looked over disapprovingly. "Junk in the trunk," he added for emphasis.

I get it, I thought, and said, "How about saying that a little louder."

Brad ignored my sarcasm and said to the man sitting next to him, an elderly black man with a scraggly beard, "How's the food tonight?"

The black man looked up from his meal, some kind of chili I think, and nodded, muttering, "Best in Memphis."

With his testimonial over, the man went back to his dinner, while Brad elbowed me and gave me a look as if to say: See, told you so. I didn't doubt the food was good. It looked delicious, what I could see around me, and was without a doubt on the do not touch list of every nutritionist out there, full of fat, cholesterol, and chemicals. I couldn't wait to dig in.

Fortunately, the meal went okay, even if I could feel my arteries clogging up more with every bite. Brad polished off a cow sized portion of ribs, licking the sauce off his fingers as he went. Somewhere out there his Neanderthal ancestors were bursting with pride as he ripped the animal flesh right off the bone with his teeth. I, on the other hand, nibbled on some chicken legs and gently dipped my fries in sugary ketchup, proving I was the more civilized one.

The waitress popped back up in front of us, wanting to know if we wanted any dessert. Stupid question, I thought, glancing over at the glass display a few seats down, the one that had several pies encased inside for all to see. I could make out the sensuous swirl of meringue gleaming in the florescent light. Brad stated he didn't want anything, while I asked, "Whatch you got?"

"We have peach pie, apple pie, lemon pie...and I forgot the other one," she informed me in one of those slow meandering south of the Mason-Dixon line accents.

"Well, darlin', why don't you go and find out for him," Brad interjected, winking at her, proving that some men when they get to a certain age think they are immune to sounding like lecherous morons.

She was back in a second and announced, "Pecan." She was now bored with the proceedings, having to serve two aging idiots just so she could get through another week of her life.

Personally, I hated pecan pie, finding it, even for me, way too...icky, with that awful stickiness to it and all, so I picked peach, hoping it was going to be rich and full of sweet flavor. The waitress nodded and hurried off. Then I remembered just how decadent I was and called out after her, "How about some ice cream on top?" She glanced back at me, raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, as in disapproval, and then gave me the high sign.

"Eat much?" Brad exclaimed, laughing at me.

"I like to say I am well nourished," I said back at him, feeling a need to explain my eating habits. "If the world ends tomorrow I'll die happy."

"Got that right," he muttered, then I remembered that I was talking to a guy who believed in the so called New World Order or what ever those lunatics out there were calling it these days. He was one of those conspiracy nuts who believe our government was somehow behind 9/11. "When the shit finally comes down I'm going to be ready for it," he declared a little too loud for my liking. A few customers were glancing over now, wondering what the skin head was going on about.

"That's great, Brad, how 'bout we talk about it later on," I offered, trying to humor him a bit.

"When they come to get me they are going to be in for a big surprise--I can tell you that," he boasted, looking around and grinning. "Boom!" he said in a guttural tone of voice, holding up both of his hands as he pretended to shoot at the far wall. I could now hear the definite murmurings of the crowd, you know, when you are some place and the bystanders start to realize they are being confronted with a mental patient on the loose.

I forced a nervous laugh and explained, "Too many video games."

The waitress brought me my pie ala mode and the check, eyeing us suspiciously, saying, "Hope everything was okay."

I assured her that it was and she backed away. I guess it was about then, as I was digging into my pie and ice cream that I realized just how scary Brad looked. The man was wearing camo and was packing a gun that was readily visible under his jacket. All I could think of was that movie Natural Born Killers. It wouldn't have surprised me if we walked out the door and there was half the county's SWAT teams waiting for us in the parking lot, with their weapons drawn.

They would drill me with about a thousand bullet holes before I could even open my mouth to tell them I was innocent.

"Martial law is right around the corner people," Brad almost shouted out, turning on his stool to address the customers. "It won't be long before we are under the control of a foreign army. How many of you are going to be ready for that?"

The question kind of hung in the air for a minute, while the customers choked on their food. The manager of the place appeared in my peripheral vision and I knew this was going downhill fast, so I shoveled a few more forks full of pie and ice cream into my mouth, risking brain freeze. At the same time I was fishing money out of my pocket to pay the bill, with a large tip of course, and prepared myself to be escorted off the premises.

I waved the check at the waitress and placed the money on the counter, hissing at Brad, "Time to go."

He glanced at me for a moment then yelled out, "Make sure you have a gun--that's all I got to say to you people." This sentiment, in the South particularly, was probably wasted. What self respecting Southerner didn't have a gun in the house? I doubted any invading army would get very far if they tried to duplicate Sherman's tactics today. They would be met with a full scale fusillade, everything from BB's to pellets to buckshot to even hunting arrows.

As expected, the manager walked up on us and said, "Sir, I am going to have to ask you to keep your voice down."

This request seemed reasonable enough to me, so I said, "We were just leaving. Sorry about this."

The manager turned to me, judging me, I suppose, to be the sane one and said in a low voice, "We don't want any trouble in here."

Before I could answer, Brad declared, "They are coming after the black race too you know. You people have to look out too." Despite his solicitous tone of voice, what he said came off in a totally different light. I was wondering just how fast I could make it to his truck without getting beat up.

"Sir, I'm not going to ask you again," the manager ordered in a no nonsense tone and, being that he was a member of that black race, was probably just as offended as anyone else in the restaurant.

"I'm going," Brad muttered, slipping off the stool, a little unsteady on his feet at first after probably drinking a case of beer for the day. "Remember though, if you see the blue helmets coming go for the ammo and shoot and ask questions later." After this comment he laughed and slapped the manager on the back, as if to say we are all in this together.

"He's had a lot to drink," I apologized, leading Brad to the door, hoping he wasn't going to say anything else that might incite a riot.

"The President is not who he says he is!" Brad shouted out, as I pushed him out the door. This last comment produced more than a few grumbles from the customers and I noticed a few black guys were beginning to stand up at their tables. "He wasn't even born in America," Brad concluded with but the door had shut behind us so nobody could hear him any more.

"Dude, are you trying to get us killed," I protested, as we climbed back into his truck, with a chorus of barking dogs in the background.

"Like I wasn't going to let these people know the truth," Brad exclaimed, roaring out of the parking lot, tires screeching on the pavement. "Somebody has to inform the people out there, Ricky. I love my country and I don't want it to be taken over."

Where exactly was this patriotism coming from? I wondered. This was a guy who couldn't have cared less about the "country" before as long as he had his surf board and the beach. There could have been a dictator sitting in the White House for all he cared, long as the authorities didn't stop the next cold front from coming down the pike, bringing with it a four foot swell. Now he was a foot soldier for some shadowy patriot group, one that was going to protect all of us from ourselves. It didn't make much sense.

We drove in silence for a little while. He seemed to be seething over behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. I just wanted to get out of his truck and, honestly, away from him. Thirty years on and my friend Brad had gone off the deep end. Maybe the way he acted now was the reason for his divorce or, you know, he had turned out this way because of his failed marriage. It could have been the chicken and egg thing, I guess.

Brad, after turning up and down several streets, finally stopped in front of a small strip mall. He sat there staring at one of the stores then I noticed it was a gun store, his former business. The sign read: GUNS INC. I chuckled to myself at the name of the store. I tried to picture him behind the counter, all smiles, mr. salesman, demonstrating the latest in stopping power. Guns pretty much sold themselves, I imagined. Weren't most of his customer base pretty much predestined to purchase a firearm? I don't think you got a lot of walkin traffic, window shoppers who just had to buy that cute gun in the window. There was an official bankruptcy notice taped to the front door, announcing to everyone about Brad's failure.

"That's it," I finally said, breaking the silence.

He glanced at me and then said, "A big fucking chunk of my life...gone." He shook his head for a moment then added, "Had some good times there."

This sounded, to me, kind of weird. Maybe each gun sale was a rush for him, I don't know. Then again, thinking about it, he probably thought that every time he handed over a weapon to another citizen he was thwarting the next attack on America. It seemed that way. In a very short time I was realizing that gun owners had a quasi-religious relationship with their firearms. It was something, admittedly, I didn't understand at all. It could have been sexual for all I knew, Freudian maybe.

"What happened to all the inventory?" I wanted to know for some reason.

"God-damn bank got most of it," he spat out, smacking the steering wheel. "I still got my supply though," he said in what I took to be a menacing tone of voice. "I wasn't going to be left high and dry that's for sure."

I didn't doubt that for a second, especially after having been in his trailer, which was a survivalist/militiaman's wet dream come true. Now, after my exposure to Brad, with all the phone calls and emails, I just knew ITF had opened a file on me. I would be the mysterious figure from Florida, perhaps a link to another southern cell. You would open the file and see a photo of my doughy face and below that all the specifics about me. Unemployed. Divorced. Accounting background. Checkered history in college. Grades marginal. Disgruntled. Driving across country, probably carrying communications and contraband to other splinter terrorist groups. Could be the vital link. So the agent's notes would read. The black helicopters would be hovering over my car as I drove westward.

Back to the trailer we went. Brad seemed choked up after seeing his place of business. He didn't say much. I wanted to get back in my car and high tail it out of there and never look back. I hadn't seen Brad in over twenty years and I didn't want to see him for another twenty. I was having second thoughts about the whole trip I was on and I still had two more people on my list.

The dogs bounded out of the truck and snarled at me for a moment before giving it up and racing to the front steps of the trailer. I realized they had to be hungry and wondered if Brad had any dog food around the place. They didn't look emaciated or anything so I figured he had been feeding them regularly.

"Oh yeah, gotta feed the demons," he announced as we were walking in, grabbing a large bag of dog food stashed behind the couch. "Get the fuck out of the way," I heard him shout as he staggered down the front steps and then poured some food in their bowls. "If you don't stop pushing me I'm going to blow your stinkin' head off!" There was a short squeal for a moment then all was quiet, accept for Brad mumbling to himself.

Now it was time for me to extricate myself from the situation. We had made plans to spend a few days together but I didn't think that was going to be possible any longer. If I stayed another day or so I thought he might either shoot me, the dogs, or himself, maybe all of us. Anyway, what was there to talk about? I didn't know this Brad. It was like I had picked up a hitchhiker along the way and he brought me here. There was no connection. This whole trip was about re-connecting.

"Listen, Brad, I thought I--" I started to say when Brad came back inside but he cut me off.

"Hey, you know what time it is?" he wanted to know, excited, beaming at me.

"No, I don't," I said and didn't even try to sound enthusiastic.

"It's OUT GOES THE LIGHT time!" he shouted out, clenching both of his fists in front of him. "I love this time of night."

I don't need to tell you that this sounded, you know, ominous to say the least. I sure hope he wasn't talking about putting on the gloves and boxing, as in he was going to knock my lights out. It wouldn't take much to KO me. Then I had another thought and feared that he was referencing those infrared sights the military use, where they can see in the dark. I had visions of him sending me out in the dark woods in some warped version of hide and seek, one where he comes and finds me cowering by a tree and shoots me point blank.

"You know, Brad, I was thinking that I might just get going...back to my hotel," I offered timidly, trying to test the waters. "We can pick this up tomorrow. I'm kind of tired after driving and all."

Brad stared at me for a minute, then said, "Nah, that's crazy talk." He walked back into the other bed room and I heard him toss around a few things then was back again, this time carrying what looked like a small cannon. I exaggerate, but only a little bit.

"What the fuck is that?" I found myself asking, stepping back.

"Oh Ricky, you are in for a treat tonight, my friend," he sang out, laughing. "This is the real deal...a weapon for the ages," he told me, holding the rifle out before him like an offering. "What I have here is a Bushmaster, 50 caliber annihilator. Yep, bring down the curtain. This weapon separates the poseurs from real men."

It looked like it could shoot an astronaut on the moon is what it looked like to me. You know those war movies you see where the other side has a piece of artillery or some kind of rocket that puts the fear of god in the enemy, well this rifle made me want to crap my pants. Let me out of here, screamed in my head.

"Can't we do this tomorrow?" I whined.

"Nope, the time is right...don't want to miss it," he stated, eyeing me. "Want to hold her?"

No, I didn't want to hold her, I said to myself. What I wanted was to be back in Florida, back in my boring little world. Right now I could be watching some spastic sitcom, laughing like a five year old and having a post dinner snack of caramel pop corn. The AC would be blasting out cold air. The dish washer would be splashing away. My lively giggles would fill the living room. Best of all, I would be (blissfully) alone.

What Brad wanted to do was, get this, shoot out street lights. Apparently the range of the so called Bushmaster was a thousand miles, give or take a few hundred. When we drove back from the restaurant I thought it looked sort of dark on the highway. Brad had a hobby. The State of Tennessee probably wasn't too happy about it though, especially TDOT.

I wondered what the platform built next to the trailer was for when I first drove in. It was about twenty feet high and had--what I now realized--gun placements on every corner. Up we went, in the dark, scrambling up a vertical ladder built into the side of the structure. Here I thought the damn thing was some kind of new age gazebo.

From atop the platform you had a strategic vantage point and could see in every direction, so Brad bragged, having designed the structure himself. I suspected he had gotten the blue prints from one of the looney blogs he read, the ones that warned about the coming apocalypse. Build a look out so nobody can sneak up on you, I imagined it must have said. Mount your rifles and start firing, in all directions.

Unfortunately for Brad, so it seemed, the Tennessee division of roads or whatever was slow in replacing his targets. Most of the streetlights in the near vicinity were knocked out, leaving us with a perfect amateur astronomer's perch, if we only had a telescope and not a big-ass rifle able to bring down an armored car a mile away.

Didn't matter anyway because Brad could hit the lights in the distance or least try to. I would get my chance too, sliding back the bolt, as told to, peering through the sight and seeing a starburst of fuzzy light and then squeezing the trigger, "rocking my world" as Brad liked to put it. The State of Tennessee didn't have to bill me for the carnage because my shots went harmlessly out into the void, unless they killed a pig in the next county without me knowing where the bullet ended up.

"Damn," I muttered more to myself than to him, when Brad had squeezed off a direct hit on an unsuspecting light bulb way down the road.

"It just got a little darker out here," he crowed, laughing, reaching for the box of ammo he had brought along with him. "I should take the old Bushmaster into town one night and see what damage I could do," he said, vocalizing one of his recurring fantasies apparently. "I could pop out all the lights on the Hernando de Soto Bridge."

"At least you have some projects to keep you busy," I cracked but he wasn't really listening. "Getting cold out here," I then complained, hoping to put an end to our vandalism.

Under the trailer the two pit bulls had gone all nervous from the gunfire. One of them was whining in the dark, while the other one was growling at me as we walked back inside. It was definitely time for me to go. I didn't relish driving down that dirt road in the dark but I had to get out of there. Brad was starting to come down off his high from knocking out the streetlights. Unbelievably, he was drinking another beer.

The odor of the trailer, a combination of rotting garbage, stale beer, and dog, was beginning to get to me. Brad plopped himself down in front of the TV and fired it on, zipping through the channels before landing on FOX News, where I could see some bleach-bottle blond yapping about the Democrats doing something or other. My old friend now seemed entranced, as he guzzled down his beer, tossing the empty bottle at the trash can across the room, and missing. The bottle crashed to the floor and rolled up against the fridge.

"You missed," I muttered, laughing.

"Remember when we used to play b-ball at that park in Lauderdale...on the beach? We sucked," Brad asked me, giggling.

He remembered that right. We did. Nobody ever picked us to play in the pick-up games. Wonder why, we couldn't throw the ball in the ocean.

"Listen, bud, I gotta get going," I finally said, easing into my departure speech. "I want to get back to my hotel and crash out. I'm beat."

He looked at me for a moment, then said, "Yeah, we can pick up where we left off tomorrow."

I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not, so I replied, "I'll call you in the morning. Not too early."

I wasn't sure if he believed me or not. He didn't say anything, just stared at the TV. Fox had moved on to reports of a terrorist plot in the works. Brad pointed at the screen and shouted out: "The real terrorists are in the government!"

Okay, I thought, backing towards the front door, hoping he wasn't going to turn one of his hundred and one guns on me. A commercial came on the TV and he then turned to me and said, "Tomorrow we'll go over some field tactics you have to learn before the shit hits the fan."

"Sounds good, tomorrow, I'll be ready for that," I told him, opening the door and stepping out onto the landing. Brad wasn't making any attempts to get up so I waved good-bye and hurried to my car, hoping the fucking dogs weren't going to eat me.

This is the state of America, I wondered, as I drove slowly down the dirt road. It was pitch black and my little Honda scraped over the bumps until I finally made it back to the pavement. I couldn't wait to get to my motel and lock the door behind me. If I hadn't been so tired I would have hit the road and kept going, heading west, never looking back. I was thankful I had never told Brad what motel I was staying at. The whole night I would have been waiting for him to break down my door if he knew where I was staying. It was an unpleasant feeling to be totally creeped out by one of your former friends. He was now definitely in that category.

There would be no more emails or phone calls. It would be all I could do to blank him out of my mind. It might sound heartless to talk this way but the guy was on a one way street to a criminal act. In fact, the responsible thing to do would have been to report him to the authorities but, as he had told me early that day, they were (at least the local ones) well aware of him and his, you know, hobbies. The man had owned a gun store for heavens sake. His name must have popped up somewhere on some government list.

Tomorrow I would head to my next stop. Onward, all the way to Arizona, Phoenix to be precise. Laura was her name, an old girl friend.

Chapter 3 LAURA

Interstate 40, in certain sections, replaced the famous Route 66, giving it a bad rap. There are places, as you drive west, heading to LA, you can see the old road made famous by rock and blues songs, as sung by none other than the Rolling Stones way back when. Now, though, it is just another big highway that loads of people use to get to California. For me, I was planning on making it as far as Amarillo, Texas, some 790 miles away if my GPS navigator unit is correct.

I wanted to get at least through Arkansas and Oklahoma, two States I really didn't have any interest in seeing. With the United States there were plenty of States that fell into that category, places nobody cared to explore. Sorry, it was just a fact. And as I drove through Arkansas and on into Oklahoma, a locale that had seen people actually participate in a "Land Rush" back in the day, desperate people trying to score on some cheap real estate, I couldn't imagine ever living there. Oklahoma had been the center of the Dust Bowl days, and, judging by what I saw floating by my window as I sped towards the setting sun, it had never recovered. It looked like a flat, waste land.

Then came Amarillo, Texas. It was flat too, and it smelled. I couldn't quite place the odor exactly, but it came close to smelling like fermented manure. Stood to reason, because there was a whole lot of cattle grazing out there by the highway, sometimes as far as the eye could see and, being that the land was flat as hell, you could see all the way to Montana.

Why was Texas such a fabled kind of place? I wondered as I pulled into my motel, another chain with the obligatory complementary cookies and USA Today in the lobby. I couldn't imagine why Texas had any kind of mystique about it. Don't Mess With Texas, as a State slogan, made no sense to me. There seemed to be a mess alright and it didn't smell all that good. Nope, smelled like one gigantic fart had been let. Then again, I was only in the pan handle area.

Further south things had to be better, even if I remembered all those photo op's of former President Bush at his ranch, a spread that was, you know, photogenically challenged. It looked like a good place to put a prison. Surely there had to be some sections of Texas that were scenic. Maybe down on the Gulf. I mean all I saw were bored longhorn cattle and overworked pumpjacks, going up and down in search of that last drop of Lone Star crude oil.

Who would want to live here? echoed in my head, as I walked into the motel front office, immediately greeted by a cheerful young man, still fresh from just starting his shift. We made small talk as he took my particulars and handed over my magnetic card, sliding a map layout of the motel across the counter with the number of my room circled in red. Those hospitality courses at the local community college hadn't been wasted on him. He motioned with his pen, the one emblazoned with the motel's logo on it, over his shoulder, telling me to take a left and go around the building, then park by the ground floor room.

I was tired, road driving tired, where your butt is numb and your back aches. Hunger pains danced through my stomach because I hadn't eaten since lunch, which was back in another State at a Sonic fast food joint, one of those establishments that decided to recreate the whole drive-in burger experience from the 50's. I guess they mostly pulled it off, if you took into consideration that probably over 70 percent of their clientele had never even heard of curbside service before. The 1950's might have well as been the 1850's to most of these people.

What I liked about them was I could sit in my car and stuff my face in relative private. I was a big fan of their Extra-Long chili cheese Coney dog, with some tots on the side, topped off by one of their Sonic Blasts, the butterfinger flavored one. In fact, that was what I had had for lunch. My dining experience was almost ruined by the waitress, a High School girl with her hair in pig tails, who smiled at me and instantly made me regretful that I was some 48 year old slob with no future. Sometimes it hits guys my age and older, that instantaneous realization that you will never (ever) again be attractive to some pert and pretty young thing. I tried not to look at her, or, more accurately, ogle her too much.

I almost collapsed in my motel room, wanting nothing better than to stretch out on the bed and sleep for twelve hours. I had just spent the previous almost twelve hours trying to wash the memory of Brad out of my system. The last hour of driving had been grueling, with me battling road hypnosis, you know, where your mind drifts off and you find your eyes fixed on the road ahead while everything passes by in a blur. I couldn't even remember what State I was in.

Even though I was bone tired I still had to get something to eat. As I usually did when I first got into my motel room, I looked for the plastic binder book, the one that told you, the motel guest, where the ice machine was or the coke machine, and had a map of the area or, at least, a layout of the motel grounds with all of the numbered rooms. There was the usual BS about the wonderful continental breakfast in the morning, from 6 to 9 or 10, and don't forget to sample the waffles or scrambled eggs, stretching the concept of continental to the limit. I mean in Europe you were lucky to get some dried up baquette and moldy jam. I once had a breakfast in, I think, Arles, France that consisted of brick hard bread and rancid butter. Now I know why Van Gogh lopped off his ear.

Anyway, in the back of these ubiquitous binders there was always ads for restaurants near the motel. I was a big fan of false advertising. Tell me your restaurant has the best breakfast in...pick a State, and I'll believe you. Fresh baked rolls, I'm there. Home cooked meals, sure, why not? None of it had to be true. Truth in advertising was, at best, fluid nowadays. We were a culture that thought the Olive Garden was somehow Italian cuisine. It's not, by the way. I know because I've actually eaten in a restaurant in Italy, more than once. Some of the dishes you might find on this side of the Atlantic would have the Italians scratching their heads.

I flipped to the back of the binder and then I saw it: Big Texan Steak Ranch. I was intrigued immediately. Steak. Ranch. Not to mention Big. Texan was a given. Home of the 72 ounce steak. Just how big was that anyway? I had never really gotten the whole ounce weight measurement thing down. I did know that there were 16 ounces in a pound, right? Man, that was one big steak. Eating that would definitely violate one mortal sin, maybe two. I also noticed the ad said you got the steak free if you ate the whole thing. What, were they challenging me?

This was true decadence, and nothing less than glorified gluttony. Perhaps only Americans would come up with something this asinine. That people would actually sit down and eat a whole side of beef was, you know, obscene. This was You Tube stupid, dumb in a way that only a videographer could capture, showing the essence of our doomed culture. I was, without bragging, the poster boy for runaway values or beliefs gone stale. Appetite ruled.

Being in Texas, I knew steak was king. In fact, this was the very place Oprah had to come to when she got sued by the cattlemen who took exception to the Queen of daytime TV disparaging hamburgers on her show. She would go on to win the law suit, unearthing a sinister force and unleashing it on America, that being Dr. Phil, the man who got his license to practice any kind of medicine from an advertisement in the back of a magazine. Now we, the American viewing public, have to see his bald head and listen to his Texas twang on television, as he delivers nonsensical crap about pseudo psychology on his very own TV show. Thanks for that, Oprah.

There I was though, the star of my own show, on the web cam pigging out. That's right, the steak house had a web cam, just so all those voyeurs out there on the internet could get their jollies by watching depraved fatsos eat until they dropped. Not one but two web cams were trained on me as I waited for my gargantuan piece of beef to be delivered to my table. Now if I was into texting I would be firing off text messages right this second, telling my friends that I was going to (literally) make a pig of myself. WATCH ME GOBBLE UP MY FOOD. There would be emoticons added too, of course. If twitter and I were friends I'd be giving quick updates, in between bites of juicy steer. How had it come to this?

It wasn't hard to find the Big Texan, being that it was right off I-40 and was big enough to comfortably serve all of the Olympic athletes in one sitting, and I'm not talking about the wimpy Winter Olympics either but their big brother the Summer extravaganza. Modernity had been fused with the good ole atmosphere of a circa 1960 steak house when some wizz-kid decided to add a web cam to the proceedings, making it a wonderful blend of old Americana and the new century.

I couldn't imagine who would want to watch somebody wolf down a few pounds of meat but that was America and beyond, I suppose, since it was on the net after all. I mean were there actually Bulgarians sitting in their homes glued to their monitors, watching fat Americans eat artery clogging slabs of fat? Kenyans? How about Al Qaida? Did OBL have internet service in his cave? They could possibly use my web cam performance as a recruiting tool in the future, telling all those disaffected Muslim youth that I was the typical infidel, chowing down like some crazed crusader fattening himself up for the fight.

Even though it was a weeknight, the restaurant was buzzing when I entered. I had long ago gotten over eating in eateries solo. My level of embarrassment was usually inversely proportional to how hungry I was. Supping alone went against the grain, you know, being that dining was usually a social experience, something to be shared with friends and family. Since I was chronically short of both most of the time I went it on my own, choosing to concentrate on my food and not any unwelcome stares. "Oh look, mommy, there's some fat, old slob eating by himself at that table over there," some kid might say in that way children do, magically absent of any decorum. The mother would hush her child and steal a glance in my direction, maybe even mouth out a silent apology. I would pretend to not notice them.

This time around it didn't matter so much. I was going for the gold, you know, the prize. Cheap bastard, I wanted to eat my weight in meat and not pay for it. That's what it boiled down to, really. I could call it some novel challenge but I knew. My friends, way back when, used to encourage me to enter eating contests, and that was when I had a normal weight. I think the world record holder was some skinny Japanese kid, right? It was all in the mind...and the esophagus too. You had to have good muscle control down there.

I was in a competition. This was about me, a clock, and some flame grilled beef. Oh, okay, my wallet as well. Still, even in my frame of mind (and stomach--empty) I wasn't prepared for what I found once inside the arena.

I know it was Texas and all but the servers were all wearing cowboy hats. I think rodeos were less, you know, cowboy--ee. Females in cowboy hats always put me off anyway. That was taking feminism a little too far if you ask me. What in the hell did Wyatt Earp die for anyway? Was the Wild West populated by damsels wearing cowboy hats and tight jeans? I think not.

Let's do this, I told myself, getting the attention of the hostess and telling her I was there for the free steak. She looked me up and down for a minute, deciding whether or not I would measure up I presume, and said, "Just one minute, sir." Too late to turn back now, I thought, looking around, noticing that several diners had overheard me throw down the gauntlet.

Fortunately, I wasn't alone in my quest to make a pig of myself in front of a bunch of strangers. Seated at the table I was led to by the hostess, a fortyish woman with way too much make-up on, who motioned for me to climb on up and "get ready, darlin'." I smiled sheepishly back at her and had to, as instructed, step up to a table arranged in the middle of the dining area. Big Texan was going to make you work for your free meal in more ways than one. It was now pretty obvious that you were the evening's entertainment. Apparently, so it goes, if there is one thing Americans like to do as much as eating is watching somebody else eat.

My partner in crime was a slim twenty-something guy, with really large glasses. He was wearing a t-shirt that had SIX FLAGS OVER but you couldn't read where because the shirt was so old and faded the location had worn off. He grinned at me and gave me the thumbs up, as if to say: You and me, buster. So we were now comrades. It wasn't a competition, thank god. It would be us against the clock and, truth be told, evolution, because the human body had definitely not been designed to engorge itself. Even early man didn't sit around the camp fire and eat an entire antelope or bison or whatever was on the menu for the day after hunting down their dinner.

Oh it doesn't get any better than this, I thought; of course I'm being sarcastic. This truly was the pinnacle of mankind, or, as my history professor back at FAU would say: "Feudalism revisited." He used that phrase to describe whatever he thought was gratuitously decadent. This endeavor fit nicely under that heading. The Tudors had nothing on me.

"Okay, now I want the two of you to listen up," so said a short guy in what I think they call a ten gallon hat. The damn thing completely dwarfed his head, making him look like a muppet from some traveling Wild West Show. "There are ten rules you have to follow in order to get your dinner free. I want to make sure you understand 'em before we start."

The two of us nodded solemnly, proving that we took this whole thing seriously. In my direct line of vision I could see a couple seated at their table, probably on a date. They looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties, both attractive. I imagined them meeting through one of those internet dating sites, you know, where you fill out a personality test and a computer crunches the data and the next thing you know you are out on a date with a guy at a steak restaurant and some idiot is committing gastronomic suicide before your very eyes. At least they would remember when they first met years later on their Silver anniversary.

I was handed a list of the rules, all ten of them. It seemed all straight forward, if somewhat detailed. Not only would I be expected to eat the half side of beef but some shrimp cocktail, a baked potato, salad and roll too. "What, no dessert?" I said to the master of ceremonies, who frowned back at me, probably having had to deal with plenty of jokers over the years, jackasses who made his job suck even more. He moved on to the other rules, something about sampling the steak first to see if it met your standards, and restrictions on getting up from the table, nobody can assist you, if you get sick all bets are off, pay upfront then you get reimbursed after, seating arrangements are up to management, and no sharing after the contest. He asked us if we both got the rules and we nodded, sharing a grin between us.

At the end of the table was a digital clock, set as a countdown, kind of like a doomsday timepiece; I suppose it was for our health if not anything else. My dining partner leaned over and said in a whisper: "There's two cameras, one over there and one up there. Let's give them a good show." He pointed to his right and then overhead. I was taken back for a minute. I wasn't an exhibitionist, far from it. I was the type of guy who liked to remain in the background most of the time. It suited me. Yet, here I was, on stage, demonstrating one of my few talents.

Off to my right I could see the open flames of the grill spiking up ever now and then, grilling up another steak. The kitchen staff went about their business, unfazed by the spectacle unfolding a few feet away. They had seen it all before, of course. Two more nitwits trying to get a free meal, even if it meant permanently damaging their alimentary canal. Ho-hum, just another day at one of the biggest steak houses in America. Hope they don't puke on one of the paying customers.

Vomiting, now that was a occupational hazard OSHA didn't take into account, the immediate fall-out anyway. Back at my former job I had been the safety officer for a few years. I had to read a manual and bring myself up to speed on various measures to prevent one of us from being killed by over baked bread. It wasn't a laughing matter, even if we thought it was. My boss mostly did lip service to the regs, enough so we wouldn't be cited by the government. At least nobody ever upchucked on another worker, while at work anyway. I can't say the same for our annual company picnic. Too many rum punches. Nina from Sales spewed all over Mike from distribution.

We were ready, even if my partner in gross exhibitionism thought his steak wasn't medium rare. The clock was set. And we were off. Pace yourself, I said aloud, drawing a smirk from my buddy across the table. With his fork he pointed to the camera overhead and smiled. Where do I start? I wondered, having already forgotten about my pre-meal plan, the one where I would sample a little of this and then a little of that, all culminating in me stuffed to the gills. Now all of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe I should get the heavy lifting over with first and start and finish the massive slab of meat on my plate. Leave the small stuff until later.

I took a fork full of the steak. It was beyond delicious, grilled just right. I couldn't help but stare at the diagonal black grill marks on the meat. Across from me my partner was injecting food into his mouth like an assembly line robot, only stopping momentarily to take a quick drink of water. He seemed to have already established a rhythm, three bites of steak, nip of water, two bites of shrimp, one bite of roll, repeat. Don't tell me this guy was a ringer, some stooge who went around the country filling up his stomach gratis.

"Mommy, that man ain't gonna make it," I heard a child's voice announce to all the other patrons, who laughed. The mother hushed her kid and I looked up to see one of the waitresses give me a look of pity, not because she thought I was some hog on display but because I wasn't up to the task at hand.

Oh yeah, I thought, as I dug in, polishing off four bites in succession, drawing a ripple of applause from a nearby table, who, apparently, wanted to see a race between us. Entertainment was entertainment, I guess. Hey, we were a culture that watched phony wrestlers pretend to fight in a ring--and it was televised, with commentators. People paid money to watch on pay for view, which, by my way of thinking, might be the dumbest thing going.

I glanced at the clock and saw that ten minutes had elapsed. Fifty to go. I surveyed the meal before me, trying to judge how I was doing. On the web cam people were wondering where it had all gone wrong. The internet had once been such a noble venture, something to bring the masses together or, at least, transmit information. Nobody, I venture to guess, ever thought it would be used for this, two morons shoveling food into their faces. Wouldn't my parents be proud right about now. I could hear my dad going: "See, I told you he was brain damaged as a child. Otherwise how do you explain why he could only get into that silly college named after an ocean." My mother would nod in agreement, clicking her tongue in disapproval, while she made a mental note to change their phone numbers, cell and home.

The salad sat there mocking me. I knew of all the items in front of me that was going to be the hardest one to get down. Just the thought of those bland lettuce leafs made me shiver. Leave it for last, I told myself, moving on to finish off the shrimp cocktail, which I did with a final slurp, winking at one of the waitresses, who had stopped to check on our progress. She gave me a look that told me instantly that she thought I was beyond stupid and walked away, back to the paying customers.

I am not, on average, a vain type person but it suddenly occurred to me that the web cam above me was trained on the top of my head, right where my bald spot was. As 48 year old men went, I had a pretty good head of hair. No receding hair line had developed and it was still thick, except for a halo towards the back, giving me that monk look. My wife, before she departed, had told me to go see one of those charlatans, you know, the hair restoration quacks you hear about on some annoying infomercial. "Honey, why are you so resistant to the idea? One of my girl friend's husband went and it was no big deal. They just take some hair from the back of your head and replant it where you need it. You'll look ten years younger." To which I always stated: "And poorer." She would scoff at this, saying, as she usually did, "Put it on your credit card." I didn't want any "doctor" fiddling around with my scalp, subject closed.

There were developments across the table at the thirty-five minute mark. A little under a half an hour to go and my buddy was starting to lag a little bit. "He looks kinda green," somebody shouted out from the gallery, while others laughed. I looked over at him and he gave me the thumbs up again, but this time he didn't seem too enthusiastic about it. He was clutching the roll in his left hand and had smushed it into a crumpled ball. More than half his steak was gone, leaving behind a small red pool on his plate. I might remind you that the man had just eaten probably over two pounds of meat. There was some major indigestion coming down the pike.

A moment later he was on his feet, a little unsteady at first, then he was gone, dashing towards the rest room. A collective groan went up from the other customers. "Anybody have any alka seltzer?" some jokester called out. Then all eyes were on me. Miraculously, I had polished off three fourths of my steak and all of my shrimp, and three bites of my roll. The salad sat there mocking me.

Mr. rules giver checked on my progress, eyeing me for, I guess, an untimely eruption. I waved my fork at him and he rolled his eyes. Two more bites and the roll was gone, chased by a couple of gulps of water. I was going down the home stretch and my fellow diners were getting excited. Hey, the fat guy is going to eat the whole steak, I imaged them thinking.

I wasn't home free yet though. There had been two unexpected spasms, like my gag reflex was going into overdrive. Stay calm, I told myself. Just because you essentially just ate a small calf doesn't mean you are going to die from overeating. Plenty of people have done this before me. In fact, as I already knew from reading the brief history of the restaurant, and yes any restaurant worth its reputation has a history to tell, I knew there was a long list of previous gluttons that had gone before me. I know gluttony was the seventh sin and all but didn't it mean anything anymore?

Before I realized it my fork had suddenly gotten heavy in my hand, like it weighed maybe five pounds or more. There was a lump just sitting in my stomach. Mr. Rules had this smirk on his face and one of the passing waitresses exchanged looks with him, as if to say: Another one bites the dust. There was some rarified flatulence rumbling around in my gut. "Fucking shrimp cocktail," I mumbled. I speared another piece of juicy meat with my fork and raised it to my mouth, but I was having trouble guiding it in. A few guys at a table behind me were cheering me on, telling me I could do it. I willed the beef into my mouth and slowly chewed and chewed, hoping like hell I could swallow it.

Down it went. I gulped and tried to drink another sip of water but almost choked, as I coughed...and coughed again. Mr. Rules moved in closer, hoping to disqualify me for spitting up some of the steak. I waved him away, opening my mouth to show him that I had swallowed the piece of meat. He backed away, disappointed. A few people in the back cheered. So this is what it's like to be the modern day version of a gladiator, except that I was not battling wild predators but dead cows. Apparently, as it goes, I had no shame.

I stared down at my plate, trying to calculate how many more bites I had to eat. What if I died right this minute, I wondered, on the web cam. I would be an overnight sensation on the internet, representative of America's lost way, just one more idiot devoted to excess. The pundits would write columns about me, applying my life story as a sign of the times. Right wingers would call me a liberal gone crazy for being too liberal, while on the Left they would say I was some misguided goon from the middle-class who had been corrupted by the venal system and ultimately let down by the inadequate health care industry. In the end, nobody would claim me as one of theirs. A few busybody nutritionists would blame the restaurant and demand an investigation. PETA would picket the ranch, yelling about cruelty to animals. My death would not be in vain.

I judged there to be maybe two bites left on my bloody plate. I glanced at the clock and saw that I had only five minutes left. The seconds were blinking away. The salad had not been touched. This was poetic justice at work. A bunch of dried up leaves were going to defeat me.

"You okay buddy?" some guy called out from another table.

I looked around the dining area, then announced with bravado: "Let's go!"

While most of the people cheered, Mr. Rules literally wiped the look of disappointment off his face with the back of his hand then shrugged. I popped the last two bites of beef into my mouth one after the other and choked them down. On to the salad, I encouraged myself, picking at the lettuce gingerly, dreading having to take one more bite of food. In no time at all I had scarfed up the salad and sat back. There was all of one minute left on the clock.

Now that was something to be proud of, I thought, as I tried to stand up but plopped back down in my seat for a moment. "Steady there, partner," Mr. Rules joked, helping me back to my feet. I was the victor, another brick in the wall that had become our culture. I was holding up my own, leading us all down the rat hole.

Hero? There were actually a few people slapping me on the back as I made my way out of the restaurant, woozily walking to my car, now disgusted by my behavior. I was now a novelty act, some bozo who could eat a side of beef and live to talk about it. Oh, sure, there would be some talk shows who wanted me to tell my story, right?

What's next for me, a spot on some reality show maybe? Dancing With The Stars? Which, by the way, was my ex-wife's favorite show on TV. I can see it now, me with my fifteen minutes of fame extended, parlaying it into a spot on that ridiculous show, with C-list celebs making asses out of themselves, hoping to regenerate their flagging careers. I had a gay side. I could pull off wearing sequins; of course being the geezer slob on the show always meant a one way ticket out of there, voted off by a fickle public that didn't care for fat geriatric hoofers no matter how much weight they lost dancing.

My witless wife and I watched the show for vastly different reasons. She had almost a vested interest in the show, as if she was a relative to one of the dancers or contestants. Immediately following the broadcast, there'd she be, calling in her vote for whatever celeb she was enamored with at the time. This was a woman who had subscriptions to People and Us magazine and read them religiously. Star gazing was her life, really. Me, I watched the show because the female pro dancers were half naked most of the time, even if the skin they were showing was spray tanned.

Wouldn't that be a kick, me on that show? My ex would have a coronary seeing me walking down that cheesy staircase, wearing some loud outfit with about a thousand sequins sparkling in the stage lights. I'd look like a stuffed sausage in my costume but it wouldn't matter because I would be the first one voted off, roundly rejected by the American public who do, surprisingly, have some standards.

Still, there'd I be for at least one week, stinking up the stage, twirling around like some retarded elephant, while my pro dancer would gamely try to get me to dance some minimally sophisticated dance steps. Then the judges would savage me, with that stupid limey saying: "You look like a turtle that's fallen on his back and can't get up." There would be a few boos from the audience, feeling that I had been given a raw deal by the judges because I had at least tried to dance. My partner, at this point, would just want to get off the show and not have to try to teach me for another week, hour after hour of attempting to get me to tell my right foot from my left. She would, most likely, be sick of me sweating all over her too during rehearsals. It would all come to a crashing halt by us being bathed in the dreaded red light on results night.

If all went well, and I landed a good agent, I would be able to at least score some commercials that made fun of me while selling a goofy product, like, you know, men's deodorant or anti-fungal toe cream. Being a national joke doesn't have to be a career ender. Look at the Octomom. The woman has a litter of kids and cashes in. The standards are obviously set pretty low.

After I waddled to my car, I collapsed behind the wheel and hoped I wouldn't either throw up or poop my pants. My stomach was distended and my bowels were on red alert. I had once read somewhere that it takes a year to digest meat in your system--I exaggerate of course; but it does take a while to get that animal flesh out of your colon. At that type of rate I was going to be crapping out steer for weeks, maybe even months. "What a fucking loser," I said aloud, startled by my voice for a second, and, you know, ashamed. This must be what it's like to be a carny sideshow freak, I thought, leaning my head against the steering wheel.

The drive back to my motel room took no time at all, fortunately. I grabbed a quick shower and climbed into bed, hoping by morning I could start the chore of forgetting what I had done. I lay there listening to the sounds of the parking lot infiltrate my room, slamming car doors, parents squawking at their kids, and some jerk-off getting about a ton of ice from the ice machine down the way. Somebody in the next room was listening to one of Fox New's dipsticks go on about commies in the media and had the TV turned up so loud it was echoing in my room. God, I hated motel rooms. Then came the rush of water in a shower above me on the second floor, with the plumbing groaning out a tune when a toilet flushed on the other side of me. Despite the symphony of noise I drifted off to sleep, so stuffed by food my body gave up for the day.

Three in the a.m. and I was awakened suddenly. I lay there in a heap, with the late night quiet seeping into my consciousness. Off in the distance I could just make out the traffic on I-40, a muffled staccato of cars and trucks swooshing by in both directions. There was a piercing ache in my side, deep and persistent. I tried to decide which side my appendix was on because I thought I remembered reading about people who had attacks of appendicitis after eating large meals.

Reaching down, I probed around, playing doctor with myself. There didn't seemed to be any tender areas. What there was, as I noticed now belatedly, were the unmistakable smells of stale farts. In my sleep I had poisoned the air and now I was going to be asphyxiated. Really, is this how you are going to die? I asked myself, climbing out of bed and hurrying to the toilet. Cramps were scrambling through my gut, marching like a platoon on patrol. "Yikes!" I said aloud, bending over at the waist by the toilet seat.

Pain rippled right through me, pausing for a moment to gather momentum, then continue on. I just made it. Like some demon spawn, I expelled some of Texas' finest, which blasted out of me with jet propulsion. As with most of these chain motels, the bathroom acoustics were worthy of Carnegie Hall. Oh god, I thought, you could record a concert in here. It was in full reverb, as my gasps mingled with the ballast blast of my expulsions. Nobody was going to be able to sleep through this.

The next morning I just knew I was going to run into whoever was staying on either side of me. There would be an embarrassing moment, one where they would put the unholy sounds of the night before with the perpetrator. So this is the monster in the bathroom who woke me up at three in the morning, they would think, looking away quickly, disgusted. What, did you have a baby last night? they would be asking themselves. Of course, as it goes, one of them might have the nerve to make a crack like: "Dude, who did you murder last night in there?" I would laugh uneasily, then reply: "Something I ate didn't agree with me." "Yeah, I was thinking about calling the cops," the wit would add, chuckling to himself, while his wife elbowed him in the side, giving him the high sign that it was time to get going, back on the road, far away from this weirdo with the strange bathroom habits.

Heaven help me if they had any kids because I just knew at least one of them would pipe up with: "Check it out, I saw that man on the net last night. He ate, like, a whole cow or something in one hour!" "My reputation proceeds me," I would say in a mock (ridiculous) British accent, grinning like some escape convict or something. Nobody would laugh. They would hurry to their cars and speed out of the parking lot, forgetting all about the free breakfast in the lobby, even if they had fresh Belgian waffles, piping hot from the waffle maker.

Speaking of that, after surviving the event in the bathroom, I made it back to bed and managed to sleep until around seven. I was still a little bit queasy when I got up in the morning but had recovered enough to be thinking about breakfast. My metabolism had taken the overload from the previous evening in stride and was ready to move on, on to the next meal. Mentally, I was trying to put it behind me. It was just another chapter in my trip. Call it an adventure. Some guys climb mountains or cross oceans in preposterously small sail boats. Me, I had to take my challenges where I could find them.

Besides, today was the day I was going to see my former girl friend, my first love. It's true. We first met in our sophomore year of High School. She had just moved to town from across the State. There she was, in my first period class, Mrs. Libowitz's English class, the one where she tried (valiantly) to teach a bunch of lunkheads about the Bard. It didn't go very well, if memory serves me correctly. Despite screening that Romeo and Juliet potboiler by some Euro director, the one that was slightly risque, we weren't buying. We were a bunch of know nothings living in a sleepy town, where all we cared about was scoring some beers for a party on the beach after dark, down past the pier. It was a hopeless task for the teacher.

Make no mistake, after seeing Laura that first day, wearing that short skirt and tight blouse, I wanted her as my Juliet for sure, without that whole dying episode of course. She was the new girl in school but somehow I knew she wasn't going to be having any trouble fitting in. With her long blond hair and physical attributes, you know, it wasn't going to be difficult to find friends, at least on one side of the gender divide.

This is where Brad came in, thank you very much. He was such a dufus most of the time, managing to alienate just about everybody, I knew it wouldn't take him long to zero in on Laura. It took about maybe five minutes because he was in my English class too. He had seen her walk in the classroom and shoved several guys out of the way so he could sit next to her during class. She, to her credit, ignored his advances, which came in hisses throughout the lecture about the Capulets not liking the other dago family and vice-versa. He even resorted to tossing her a crumpled up note, which she tossed back at him, hitting him upside the head, producing a round of titters from the rest of us in the class.

Brad manage to softener her up for me, which I took advantage of right after class, coming to her rescue by telling him to get lost. He gave me a look, one that said: Like she's going to be interested in you. I apologized for my friend's bad manners and offered to walk her to her next class. It was all very noble in that adolescent way, where two walking sets of hormones recognize each other on a molecular level or so my biology teacher, Mr. Johnson (no relationship), might put it.

We were sixteen years old. I was tan and reasonably good looking. She was new in town and didn't know anybody. It was kismet, for at least the first semester anyway. After that, she got her social footing and left me in the dust, abandoning me and my ilk for the more popular clique, the ones that actually were envied by most of the other kids at the school.

Me, not so much, unless you counted the dweebs in my homeroom class who thought I was cool because I skipped a lot and had a fuck-you attitude. My surfing background made them think I was some kind of Murf the Surf character, minus the murder part. Murf had killed two girls in our own backyard, leaving the bodies down by the beach. He was a creepy dude who had also stolen some diamonds or something from a New York museum. He had one of those weird bigger than life images, even though he was just a thug and homicidal lunatic. Americans always seem to glom onto that kind of evil resume for some reason, proving that we collectively deserve what we get. Hollywood, the other one, even made a movie about him. Truth be known, Murf sucked as a surfer too.

As a side note, let me just say the guy got out of prison early because he had found Jesus and wanted to preach to the incarcerated about their failings. Takes one to know one, you know. Let's see, he kills two girls and robs a museum and because he likes Jesus and crew he gets a pass. Now that is your penal system at work.

So Laura, before she moved on to greener pastures, shared in some mutual carnal knowledge with me, it being the first time for both of us. There was that bond between us for all time, I guess. As I remember it, the event (ordeal) happened on the beach at night after lots of beers and a quaalude split two ways. There was some sand issues in body parts and that's all I will say. There was consummation, if not satisfaction for at least one of us.

Even though we would soon go our separate ways we remained friends throughout our High School careers. There would be no more hook-ups, as they like to say now, just time together trying to endure our adolescent years. She would go on to be Homecoming Queen and I would go on to be that guy who personified what was wrong with the current generation at the time. We were pulling up the rear on the Baby Boomer brigade and suffered from it, some more than others. I wasn't helping our identity crises by being such dead weight. Someone had to do it.

What happened to my Laura after all these years? I found her, like the others, on Facebook. There she was in that smallish photo, looking radiant as she stood atop some mountain in Arizona. As I remember it, though, she was the type of girl who didn't like the outdoors very much, and that included the beach. Of all my High School friends, she was the one in the pictures that never had a tan. Not that she didn't look good in a bikini, because she certainly did, having one of those bodies guys drool over and women envy. She never worked out either.

The last time I had seen her was back in the early 90's, at a party one of our mutual friend's was throwing, something to celebrate the fact that he had been stupid like the rest of us and bought a house way overpriced. She was in town to see her parents, or something. We had exchanged personal histories in the kitchen, with the authentic marble counter tops, one more home item that the owner would never get his money back on.

Laura looked, you know, hot, and was holding up exceedingly well after having two kids, a girl and a boy. Although at the time she didn't let on, her marriage was beginning to crumble. She had married some jackass who, evidently, didn't appreciate what he had at home and was scooting around behind her back. I could relate to that. We talked, instead, about our lives, meaning, generally, the spouses we had selected out of a billion and one out there.

"He's owns a business," was pretty much all she said about her husband, saying it in that way people do when they are embarrassed by something.

"Really," I offered up, not knowing what to say. "My wife owns a boutique in Hallandale," I explained, wagging my head comically, as if to inform her that I wasn't sure how she should take that.

"Which one?" she asked, trying to be polite and keep the conversation going.

"You never heard of it," I replied, hoping to stop the subject in its tracks. Laura took the hint and we moved on to other topics, and then I had to field the question about kids and my son's death, etc. The conversation went down hill from there and before I knew it she was making excuses and then was gone. I didn't speak with her again that night. In fact, I didn't talk to her again until I contacted her a few months ago after seeing her Facebook page. Now, as I was driving west, the arranged visit seemed totally preposterous. What was I going to find when I pulled into her driveway in Phoenix?

Interstate 40 took me closer to the AZ state line. Gone was the functioning wasteland of northern Texas, the rolling landscape of awful scenery. It had been replaced by the Land Of Enchantment, or so said the New Mexico license plates. I like that. It was a bold statement to make. I also liked the fact that they also put USA on the bottom of their plates, making sure that the people who went through the inadequate educational system of the US wouldn't be confused when it came time to figure out whether or not this version of Mexico was a part of the United States; although I will say the colors on the plate left a lot to be desired. The only thing worse would have been day-glo paint.

There was no mistaking the fact that you were now in the famous desert west, place of dreams and atom bombs. That whole Manhattan project thing happened around here somewhere, I think. World War II was a long time ago though. Mushroom clouds and radiation poisoning were so yesterday, don't you know. New Mexico was more about Breaking Bad, which was my favorite show on TV, about meth in and around ABQ. My wife, by the way, hated the show, calling it "depressing" and "too real." This from a woman who counted among her top three TV shows: American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and The Bachelor.

Yet I don't really share in that Wild West fascination like a lot of Americans do. Billy the Kid and the shootout at the OK corral made for nice Western motif movies but I never bought into the mystique of the old West. Yeah there's lots of desert and barren landscape and all, so what. The closest I ever got to actually thinking anything about the famed Southwest was remembering that scene in Easy Rider, where the two main characters, Captain America and Billy, were visiting a Hippie commune stuck out in the desert rocks somewhere. I know some people put stock in there being a spiritual angle to the place. Then again, most of that can be attributed to peyote, right?

Don't get me wrong though. There was scenery galore to see: buttes, mesas, pinnacles, massifs, you name it. It was a visual wonderland, in technicolor. You didn't need the aid of some Indian medicine man in order to feel a special vibe. No wonder there were so many new age dipshits out here. The place was tailor made for certain people to latch onto a life altering moment. Not for me though. I was much too grounded, rooted in my cynicism after so many years back East.

I was still going to enjoy myself. I could marvel at the surroundings just like any other tourist. Besides, I was on a mission. In several hours time I would be seeing an old friend, my first love. I40 would take me to I17 and then south to Phoenix. Gallup, New Mexico was in my rear view mirror. The battle with the damn eighteen wheelers continued, with a bunch of RV's thrown in too.

I had stopped at a rest stop on the State line and some Indian (native American) woman had accosted me, wanting money: Five dollars. She had asked me if I wanted to take her picture, for a fee. The only camera I own was on my phone and I don't even know how to work it. I forked over five bucks anyway, which made her happy. She looked like she might have been maybe eighty years old. I watched her walk away, disappearing into the desert. I couldn't imagine where she was walking to.

This was my first brush with the natives. Well Florida has Indians too, the Seminoles, but they mostly seemed like card board cutouts in comparison to the Navajos. My image of Indians pretty much followed the stereotype of movie westerns, you know, with the weathered faces and head dresses, maybe some war paint too; although I didn't actually romanticize them like what's his name did in Dances With The Wolves. I knew that history hadn't been kind to them and we had taken their land, etc, etc. By the same token, I don't think my ancestors had bequeathed to me any responsibility for the national genocide. At any rate, I had just donated five bucks for reparations.

Flagstaff was the next big town in my sights. It was practically at the base of Mount Humphreys, which loomed up ahead like some big gum drop. Predictably, the mountain was revered by the Indians, who thought it was where some god did something or other, and poof there was life on earth. It was one of those mythologies that made you laugh, until you realized that the stories in the Bible were just as asinine. The mountain stood over twelve thousand feet high and commanded your attention from hundreds of miles away. I was impressed; of course I was from Florida where the highest point is something like two or three hundred feet.

So this is Arizona, I thought, as I past by Winslow, made famous by that Eagles song a hundred years ago, then a place called Two Guns and Twin Arrows, giving the gunslingers and braves equal time. Before that I had sped right by the Petrified Forest, a tourist trap where you could gawk at trees that had been turned into some hard ass substance, all in an array of weird colors. The weather was good here in the high country, hovering around the fifties and sunny. Flagstaff was about two hours or so from Phoenix so I didn't want to stop, even though it had a reputation as a quaint town, with a downtown area that had been restored from the early 1900's or late 1800's. It was a college town too, giving it some "energy," so said an article I had read on the net. That usually translated to having to put up with a bunch of annoying young assholes, who were all bent on having a good time before they had to start paying off all those student loans. I stopped only long enough to get gas, then pressed on southward.

It was all downhill, so it seemed. Flagstaff was situated at 7000 feet and Phoenix was probably under two, making for a long descent through some different eco-systems, going from Pine trees to those big fucking cactuses you might see in a photo calendar with pictures of the American Southwest. As I was passing by an overlook I decided to stop in, something I hardly ever did.

It was the touristy thing to do. You would be thrown in with Ma and Pa from Indiana, driving there block long RV, with the SUV attached to the back, better to explore around every nook and cranny in America with. Some guy would have a pair of binoculars and would be surveying the far distance, looking for either the nearest Burger King or the long lost King Fisher bird. There would also have to be a group of Japanese tourist, who would want you to take their picture, which you would do, cutting off half their heads just so you could get in that giant red rock formation in the background. Some family would invariably have the pet dog out and about, peeing on every stationary object within a fifty foot radius. Walking by, a man, usually in his fifties for some reason, would say to you: "Not a bad view." You would nod in agreement and pray that he didn't stop to start a conversation.

Anyway, I threw caution to the wind and stopped. There was only one other car parked there. I couldn't believe my good fortune. I walked, stiff as a board, over to the overlook and stared out in the distance. Whoa, nice view, I thought, shielding my eyes to see the Red Rocks of Sedona way out on the other side of the valley. They didn't look real. It looked like some virtual world almost. Maybe there was something to this touristy business, I told myself. Then three or four cars stopped in succession. I heard several barking dogs. Some dufus with a camera started snapping shots, using one of those lenses you can probably see the craters on the moon with. Unbelievably, a tour bus pulled in carrying, I think, Euros, judging by their loud outfits and pink faces. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The road snaked southward, taking me past places with names like Bumble Bee and Bloody basin. You just knew there were stories to tell about places like that. Not far from where I was driving there happen to be dozens of ghost towns nestled up in the mountains. The entire State was one big mining venture at one time or another. Copper, silver, gold, and all the lesser minerals stuck in the ground had been dug up over the years. When the mines went bust so did the towns near them, leaving behind tiny communities of oddballs who stayed on. They were mostly tourist traps now, I guess, some place for 4 wheelers to head to on the weekends so they could pretend they were going back in time. You pretty much had to have some off road vehicle just to get to most of the towns because the roads were all washed out and rutted.

On the radio, like in most of the vast wasteland of America, all I could get was right-wing talk shows. Syndication hadn't been kind to us Americans, leaving the listening public with numbnuts like Rush, Sean, and all of their clones on the airwaves. You couldn't go ten miles without hearing the same babble, almost like it was all being orchestrated from the same studio. Might be, for all I know. I had long ago exhausted all of my CD's. You can only listen to a rotation of Tom Petty, Stones, Buffet, the Boss, and some party mix I made when I was really drunk one time, which had (inexplicably) Cuban music on it. The only music I could reliably get on the radio was Country. It was no wonder the nation was going down the tubes.

I wasn't far away now. I could see the City of the Sun or whatever they called it, which was, (so I was told by a trucker at a truck stop way back in OK) a steaming pile of humanity. Laura didn't actually live right in Phoenix, but in a 'burb north of the city called Anthem. It turned out to be one of those pre-fab cities America was famous for, you know, with the phony town square that was surrounded by the real America. That would be a Starbucks franchise, next to an Outlet Mall, which wasn't far from a Wal-mart. Throw in a dozen or so fast food joints and medical suites occupying a tastefully done strip mall and you have instant city. Of course you need the usual wiggling rows of townhomes, next to houses with way too much square footage throw in as well. There was even athletic fields, some place for the kiddies to be yelled at by stressed out parents at their baseball or soccer games. This was the new Norman Rockwell ideal.

Off of I-17 I turned, looking for the landmarks Laura had given me: bank, Circle K, etc. Looming ahead, sprouting from the desert floor, and there was no mistaken the fact that I was in the desert because it was damn hot, was a housing development. We Americans had gone on a binge with the size of our homes of late. It was obvious we needed all that space to put our half dozen bathrooms. Five bedroom, six baths, so said all the advertisements on the real estate websites. You never wanted to be too far away from a toilet.

Laura, evidently, was no different. Her and hubby had picked out a Mcmansion, two stories of excess in a locale with temperatures that reached over 100 degrees on a routine basis. How in the world would you be able to cool off such a palace? Ah, that is where Laura's husband's business comes in. I was about to discover that her partner in marriage owned an AC repair place. Made sense to me. Now that is a good career move. You live in a city that closely approximates what it must be like to live on Mars, so why not be a part of the solution. Nobody wants to live without air conditioning.

Personally, I couldn't imagine why Laura wanted to conceal what her husband did for a living. To me, the person who keeps us in air conditioning was a saint and should be honored with a statue. The man was a hero, a representative of a noble profession. In the social pecking order, he was ranked near the top, right above a doctor and one notch below the weatherman at the National Hurricane Center. I too came from a place that felt like the fourth ring of Hades. There had been times throughout my life where the AC went out, say in the third week of July, and I was certain that death would be easier than having to put up with one more minute in a house without cool air coming out of the vents. When that AC guy pulled up in his white van, with the familiar logo on the side, the one that trumpeted his repair skills, I wanted to run right out the door and kiss him.

Laura's neighborhood was eerily quiet as I drove up. There were a few tell-tale signs that the development was taking a hit on the economic front. You could see in several of the front windows to the houses white papers taped up. These were the announcement for all to see that the occupants had lost out on the American Dream and were in foreclosure. As if that wasn't humiliating enough some realtors had posted signs in the front yards that this property was going at a foreclosed price: Don't miss out. It was slow motion decay, not unlike some of those ghost towns up in the hills, only slower. If I came back in maybe fifty years would all of this land have been reclaimed by the elements, with giant weeds eating away at the houses?

If I thought I was nervous seeing my old friends Brad and Johnny, well that was nothing like now. It was all I could do to steer the car towards her driveway. A little voice in my head was screaming: Turn around now! Like she really wants to see you. Look at yourself. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You're fat--and ugly. What is that hair doing? Looks like a chia pet gone bad. It's not too late. Drive right on by. Keep what dignity you have left. This is going to be a disaster.

And there it was, Laura's house, with the garage door open. God, what now? I wondered, realizing it was too late to escape because there she was, my old girl friend. She was just getting out of her SUV, a late model Toyota, one of the smaller sizes, letting you have your anti-environmental vehicle minus the guilt. Surprised, she gave me a look that said: Who is this asshole pulling into my driveway, better not be selling anything. I waved at her and her perturbed expression turned into a smile.

"You made it!" she shouted out, waving back at me.

I took stock of my first love, noticing that she had, you know, filled out here and there, joining the ranks of just about every female in America. I just knew she was one of those women who tried every diet that came down the pike, from weird-ass Asian herbs (that promised to burn fat as you slept) to the latest from the lips of Oprah, which was heavy on organizing your intake and light on probability of success.

Suddenly I thought of all those girls in High School who envied Laura, the girl with the perfect body and a line of boy friends out the door. She had been voted Most Beautiful in our class senior year. Everybody thought she would go on to meet and marry some wealthy and famous guy. It goes without saying she had been captain of the cheerleading squad, and Prom Queen. Me, I didn't go to my prom. Are you kidding? I was too cool for that nonsense. No, I was actually dateless, as in I couldn't have gotten a girl to go with me if I got a mail order bride from Russia. The girls I did hang out with were, you know, skanks and one step away from rehab.

Laura had become just another suburban drudge, with a dress size that depressed her and colored hair that perpetually needed touching up. Where had all that blond hair gone? I wondered, remembering her shoulder length tresses, the ones I fantasized about for so many years, along with a repeat performance back on the beach, preferably without the sand induced friction. She was wearing shorts, which showed that she still hadn't embraced that whole tan thing. Her t-shirt read: D-backs.

"Took me long enough," I called out to her. "Is it always this hot down here?" I complained, climbing out of my car, quickly realizing that this was going to be her first glimpse of me, in the flesh.

She hid her disappointment/surprise well and then hugged me, saying, "This is so weird."

"Weird, you should've seen Brad," I told her, laughing, pulling away, embarrassed that I might smell of day old farts and fast food.

"Oh yeah, I forgot that you had stopped to see him too," she announced cheerfully. "Come on in...I just got home from the store."

She pulled out two bags of groceries and right away I noticed the tell-tale sign of a fellow food traveler. There was a package of ice cream sandwiches right on top, the expensive brand. I had recently downsized to the store brand to save a few pennies. I then had visions of us settling down in front of the TV, with one of those Law and Orders on, digging into our ice cream sandwiches. It would be our mutual night time snack. The ice cream chocolate wafer would be all over my face but I wouldn't care. It would be instant bliss, as the sugar worked through my veins and the ever so satisfying fat content jolted my system into caloric nirvana.

We went in through the garage, which she closed behind us. It made me think of the garage in itself and how it had more or less become a necessary appendage to every house. Just another spot to store junk, that's all it was. Being consumer junkies, we Americans needed more space to fill up with that piece of exercise equipment you never used, or that work bench you bought thinking you were suddenly going to develop an aptitude for home repair, or plastic storage boxes to cram your sports merchandise in you never use. Laura's garage was no different. I spied a tread mill peeking out from under a dozen moving boxes with U-haul printed on the side. Depositories for all of her soon to be ex-husband's junk.

Laura was all full of pep, but then she had always been, relentlessly upbeat really. She had been a cheerleader, after all. I had always liked that about her. Her bright, blue eyes made everything okay sometimes and I'm sorry if that sounds like a greeting card. Even now, in middle age, she was keeping up the enthusiasm. Life was easier that way.

"Nice place you got here," I offered, helping her put away the groceries, eyeing the ice cream sandwiches longingly. "So big."

"Too fucking big," she mumbled, opening and closing several cabinets.

This was shocking because as kids she had been the one to call you out for using profanity. I laughed and said, "Nothing like plenty of space."

She scoffed and said, "My asshole husband's idea."

Two curses, I was dumbfounded, so I said, "I thought it was always the woman who wanted a bigger house."

"Penis," she said matter-of-factly.

"What?"

"Women always want a bigger cock...on their man," she elaborated, smirking.

You know how in those SyFy movies where the towns people are taking over by alien life forms and one of the humans begins to notice something's not quite right with Mom. I was getting that feeling now. Laura, my Laura from yesteryear, had changed. Some alien had taken over her body. She was channeling Kathy Griffin, for heaven's sake.

Before we knew it we were downing some beers. The old Laura was fond of wine coolers and never more than one. The new Laura was two beers ahead of me and had made rumblings about making some mojados or some such drink from south of the border. I was (mostly) a beer kind of guy and hardly ever strayed beyond that. My ex had always tried to get me to drink cocktails when we were out but I had held steadfast. My beer gut proved that.

We had retreated to the living room and were plopped down on one of those massive couches, you know, the ones that would probably take a platoon of movers to even get out the door. It was shaped like a capital L and purple. The entire house was laid out in a desert motif, with different shades of pink, brown, and purple. It was like being in an Okeefe painting. I know because my mother was a big fan and had cheap reproductions all around our house when I was growing up. Across from the couch was a 50 inch flat screen TV, big enough to hold movie premiers on. Add a red carpet and you were in business. Back home I was limping along with a hopelessly outdated 32 inch screen.

Our conversation pretty quickly exhausted all the familiar subject matter. It was fairly obvious we weren't far from being strangers. Take away that tryst on the beach a hundred years ago and we had no connection at all. She had gone on to be one of the most popular girls in school and I had become a footnote in the yearbook, that guy who hung out at the beach all the time pretending he was in the Endless Summer sequel. What had Facebook done to us?

But you know liquor is the great equalizer, that and a bucket of chips with some crazy spicy bean dip, zapped in the microwave per the directions on the side of the carton. It wasn't long until we were both watching the TV in between gulps and bites because the conversation had dwindled to nothing. She had turned on one of those celeb shows, you know, the ones that perpetuate the whole Star fascination in this country. Who is diddling who and how much money they are all making while the culture goes further down hill, that is their reason for existence. We can't get enough of it. Celeb breakups and burnouts, we feed on it, like our lives are improved every time we find out the dirt on some slob who is on the big and little screen.

In HD, on the big screen, I could see a relief map of imperfections on some of the Hollywood nitwits they were parading out in front of us. Moles and acne jumped out at me as if I had taken a hit of acid or something. The host's hair looked like an oil tanker had spilled on his head. He could be a spokesman for Chevron with that oil slick, I thought, grinning, looking over at Laura, who had positioned herself at the other end of the couch, where the easy chair was embedded. She was in partial recline mode and had shards of corn chips scattered on her chest and stomach. I looked down at my stomach and picked off a few stray bits of Tostito that had slipped out of my mouth.

It had come to this. I had traveled over two thousand miles to sit on a humongous couch with my old girl friend, drink beer, (Corona, by the way), and stuff myself with chip and dip. This was the updated version of sitting down and breaking bread with friends, I guess. The meal was negotiable. Food was food. Though it would have been nice to order in something: Pizza Hut, Mexican, maybe something from the Asian side of things.

Then something totally startling happened. When the god-awful show signed off, with the host and hostess teasing about so and so getting a divorce, stay tuned, Laura started talking to me again. It was as if a switch had been turned. And she was talking about that night on the beach. The deflowering was getting good play, so it sounded like to me. Those were the days, I thought, conveniently forgetting that my Laura had promptly dropped me like I had Herpes or something right after that fateful night. How I never developed any long term performance anxiety I'll never know.

"Want another beer?" she asked, sliding out of her easy chair, strutting into the kitchen.

"Sure," I chirped, wondering where exactly she was putting all of this booze.

She was back in a flash and sat down next to me on the couch. I could smell her perfume, expensive, on the credit card, probably still paying for it on a monthly basis. I had her full attention now, even though my ears had perked up because on the TV they were advertising some new drug, one that promised to restore your waistline. It could have been a drug for IBS, I wasn't sure because I was distracted. I could now see the outlines of a nipple peeking out in the middle of the D in D-backs. Were we getting aroused now? I asked myself, ignoring the absurdity of the question.

Laura ran a finger along my thigh, a move I had seen her do at a party one time, except that time it wasn't with me but with the captain of the football team. He was the same dickhead who had been arrested for date rape at college up at UF. Man, was this even happening? I wondered. She edged closer. I laughed nervously, hoping that all those beers I had downed weren't making me hallucinate. Then came the kiss. It was sloppy but effective.

"Wanta move this upstairs?" she cooed, squeezing my arm.

"Yeah," I said, stuttering slightly, hoping that I wasn't drooling.

Off to the bedroom, climbing up the stairs, with the cheesy Indian dream catchers on the wall. Her bedroom was bathed in a golden glow and then I realized it was from the vapor lights of the nearby shopping center parking lot. Still, it gave the room a pleasant vibe, if not a crass commercial one. The room was all feminine, with frilly things everywhere. I couldn't imagine how the husband had ever slept in there. It looked like what a ten year old girl would want in decor, except for maybe a line up of dolls stashed within reach.

I spoke too soon. Right there, on what I guess was a love seat, was a large doll, with really red hair. It had giant eyes that seemed to be staring at me. Haven't I seen some movie like this before? I thought, as I wondered what my next move was going to be. Things had been progressing so fast I couldn't keep up; plus there was a good six pack of Mexican beer sloshing around in my gut.

Laura, ever industrious, was well into removing her clothes. She had stumbled over next to the bed, one of those ridiculous types with the canopy over it, like royalty might have. In no time at all she was down to her bra and panties, while I was struggling to get my pants off. I had almost fallen over, twice, steadying myself on one of the bed posts. Sloppy sex was on the horizon--and then a good bout of remorse, mostly hers.

She popped off her bra and whisked away her panties, tossing them over her shoulder, where they landed on a stuffed animal, that I now noticed was the mascot of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. That it happened to be a gorilla had never added up to me. What did a gorilla have to do with the Sun? There was no time for stupid questions.

"Need some help?" she cooed, whipping my shirt off in one move like a magician. We giggled together, two aging adults bent on reliving our youth.

"I think I got the rest," I informed her, returning her peck, missing her mouth by a good three or four inches. We laughed again, enjoying the moment in unison.

Then we were now naked, completely. Let's just say time hadn't been kind to us. We looked like two aging teletubbies, emphasis on the tubby part. We were matching bookends. Two people who had enjoyed their beer a little too much. While we weren't exactly ready for that Biggest Loser TV show, we were still candidates for some of Richard Simmons obnoxious attention. We were definitely the before in all of those before and after pictures you see in the magazines.

All of those hateful wishes had come true. Every girl in High School who hated Laura for her pristine figure had gotten their revenge. It had all come to pass. What comes around goes around--or whatever the expression is. We were indeed round.

You know those mirrors, the ones that are on a stand and give you the full length treatment. Woman love them. They look like a throw back to earlier times, another century. It is the Looking Glass thing, minus Alice. Actually, you are Alice, except you stay on this side of the dimension and have to endure your image, such as it is.

"Oh god!" was how Laura put it, in horror I might add.

"What?" I exclaimed, alarmed, afraid that maybe the beers had worn off and she had suddenly come to her senses and realized she was disrobed and about to bed down with...me.

My eyes followed where she was looking and I too saw what had frightened her so much. There we were, together, with our reflection showing in the damn mirror, in full length mode. Our nakedness was a creep show, with the sagging anatomy on display. In profile, we looked like two separate pieces of the same puzzle. We were embracing and our chubby contours seemed to mold together like some evil mad scientist experiment type of thing. Even in our mutual drunkenness we could see that it wasn't a good picture.

Laura pulled away and retreated to the bed, grabbing up part of the bed spread to cover herself with. Me, I stood there in all my ugly nudity, wondering what I should grab to cover myself. I quickly bent down and snatched up my shirt from the floor, holding it modestly in front of my most offensive body parts. She was now hunched up in a sitting position and crying. To be accurate, she was blubbering.

"What the fuck happened to me?" she cried out, which, you know, I didn't really have an answer for. Hell, I hadn't seen the woman in over ten years. "I'm nothing but a big fat cow now."

The little bit of rhyme on the end of her sentence made me titter a little but then I squelched my laughter and said, "What's going on?" This sounded somehow judgemental so I added, "You look fine."

"We're both big fat...fatties," she almost shouted, before lapsing back into tears.

Okay, so she was lumping me in with her, that was fair, I thought. She's upset. She has just seen me naked. That would make almost any woman scream and run. At least she hadn't run away. What was my next move here, I wondered. Sex was most probably definitely out of the question. I needed to be supportive. Talk her down. At the very least I needed to get her back downstairs so we could get something to eat. Chip and dip wasn't my idea of dinner.

"Hey, we're pushing fifty, whatya want?" I said, inadvertently rubbing my belly. She moaned louder and fought back more sniffles. "We don't look that bad, Laura."

"Are you kidding me?" she wailed. "We look like two people from a Weight Watchers commercial."

I couldn't argue with that; although some of the stars on their ads were way heavier than the two of us, but I got her point. In America you were defined by the size of your waistline. The evolutionary process had gone in reverse with the two of us. But this wasn't only about the weight issue for her.

For the next half hour or more she went on about how she had screwed up her life and wasted everything. She didn't supply many specifics but I gathered that she meant her tradesman husband and the house that she was upside down in. Now she was going to be divorced and probably foreclosed on. All of that didn't even take into account that she had a deadend job, which she was probably going to get layed-off from. Then along comes an old boy friend, who looks like her long lost clone, and she is supposed to have sexual intercourse with him, (it). This was all too much to bear.

Laura was supposed to be so much more. It had been ordained by the selection of fine genes she had inherited. Her beauty would translate to continuing success throughout life. Then came some questionable life decisions, including a weakness for the hops. Her degree from college had been squandered. She had let herself go. Financial realities hit home. It was all a recipe that she shared with millions of other Americans. She wasn't a failure. She was the norm, placing her right back in the normal category, a place she thought (believed) she was above.

Who knew what decided our stations in life. It wasn't preordained. Beauty and aptitude offered a degree of accuracy but weren't the only barometer of happiness later on. I knew this. I had accepted it. Once you realized that your destiny was not set in stone, hardened by years and years of denial, it came easier for you. At the risk of sounding like some new-age guru, you know, one of those dipshits who hold retreats for the weekend, charging outrageous fees, then tell the believers they are all on a voyage to enlightenment, I can safely say the average person is, you know, average.

Life is about odds and probabilities more than anything else. Sure some of us have a leg up by being pretty or rich, that goes without saying. After that though it all comes down to circumstance. Luck is when you line up the odds and the probabilities and recoup your losses. Get enough wins and you are well on your way to being happy. Along the way (journey, so the weekend guru might say) people use aids like religion, booze, drugs, etc. to help them cope. This isn't sophisticated stuff, people.

We managed to get our clothes back on and down the stairs, heading right for the kitchen. It was a good thing too because just as I was fishing something out of the fridge in walks her daughter, knockout I might add. Judging by the photos I saw on the wall in the living room, both of her kids were nice looking.

Laura's daughter was surprised to find a strange man in the house, and, in that way most teenagers have, let me know it by announcing: "Mom, how many times have I told you to let me know when you are hooking up for the afternoon?"

"Don't be silly, honey, this is my friend from High School I told you about," Laura told her, embarrassed by what might have been.

The daughter smiled at me, and said, "So, he was your first, huh mom."

"She speaks her mind," the proud mother told me, winking.

"On the beach, how romantic," the daughter persisted, eyeing me for my reaction.

"It was Florida," I mumbled, feeling uneasy. Teenage girls made me nervous. I was never sure how you were supposed to act around them.

"Did you come all the way out here to make up for lost time?" the daughter wanted to know, waiting for my reply.

"That's enough from you," Laura chastised. "Don't you have some homework or something else to do?"

"This is like way more fun, mom," she protested.

"Go!" her mom ordered, pointing out the kitchen door.

Pretending to sulk, the daughter said as a parting shot: "I'll talk to you later, poking me in the chest as she walked by.

In my feverish mind I was aroused and I realized why. The daughter was almost an exact replica of Laura some thirty years ago. She had the same body, same blue eyes and identical blond hair. It was almost as if I had been dropped into an Outer Limits TV show, you know, where the poor sap is having to grapple with his past that has miraculously been fast forwarded to the present, with the future right around the corner. This is disgusting, I told myself, trying not to steal another glimpse of the daughter as she left the room. Still the image of her in those shorts and midriff top lingered.

"Nice girl," I said to Laura, smiling.
"Pain in the ass but I love her," she said proudly. "She's very bright, Honor Society."

"Really," I muttered, instantly remembering way back in High School and making fun of the brainy kids in my class, the ones who were now probably way ahead of me in the social derby. At the very least they weren't unemployed and driving around the country looking up old friends that had nothing in common with you anymore.

"Let's find something to eat," Laura declared, rubbing her hands together, before she attacked the cabinets. "How about some chicken? Sound good?"

Silly question, I said to myself. The crises has been survived. The gloom is lifting, rescued by food. In no time at all we were standing side by side, whipping up some dinner together. It was culinary detente. We had weathered the carnal storm and come out the better for it. Girth be damned, we sat down, with the daughter, and broke bread together. So this is what the husband had forsaken in order to bed down with his mistress, a woman (so I was told by the daughter, who had googled her) some ten years his junior with a penchant for attending motorcycle rallies and disrobing, all captured for all posterity on Youtube. Her nasty tatts leaned towards insects, I was told, with promises of a full viewing after dinner, on the daughter's laptop, up in the daughter's bed room, which I politely declined.

Laura, by all accounts, had two perfectly wonderful kids, (even though I never actually got to meet her son, who was always hanging out at his friend's house), her health, and a wayward husband to show for herself after almost a half century of living. In Life's ledger that leaned heavily away from the debit side of things, in my opinion anyway. Her sense of well being could be bolstered by familial aspects, leaving her with some strength to deal with the deficits of life. Now I do sound like some idiot lifestyle coach. Maybe I did miss my calling in life.

Chapter 4 JOANN

I had stayed on in Arizona for longer than expected, enjoying my time with Laura. We had become friends again, almost like brother and sister. She had taken me on day trips around the Grand Canyon State, showing me all of the wonderful sights the place had to offer. I liked to think I helped her out in the depression department or, at the very least, supplied her with a drinking buddy. The daughter, the carbon copy, never stopped trying to play match maker, unable to accept the fact that we didn't have that type of link anymore, if we ever did. I don't know who was more disappointed to see me leave, the daughter or the mother.

Left I did, heading north by northwest, in the general direction of the city by the bay. The next stop on my itinerary was to see Jo-Ann. Of the four friends, she was different. By that I mean she was not someone I hung out with like you do when you are in High School. She never was my girl friend, nor was she one of my surfer buds. Jo-Ann was literally the girl next door.

I could actually see her bedroom from mine; not that I used a pair of Bushnell binoculars to spy on her or anything. Okay, I did, but never really saw anything. She kept the verticals in her bedroom window closed most of the time. Must have been warned by an overprotective mother. "That Johnson boy can see right in your window, dear," I can imagine her mother telling Jo-Ann, adding, "the pervert."

Jo-Ann's parents were both doctors and definitely had plans for their only child. She would follow in their footsteps and become a medical practitioner of some sort. That's why their daughter had to excel at school, especially in science. Their daughter was destined to go to med school, a good one, preferably somewhere in the Northeast. Jo-Ann didn't disappoint, accepted at not only Hopkins but Tufts too.

I can still remember when she got her rejection letter from Yale. Apparently the Ivies didn't want her, even with her 4.0 grade average and sterling SAT's. We were sitting by her pool, enjoying one of the few times we were able to hang out without her mother or father dropping hints for me to leave. I was judged, (rightfully) to be a bad influence; although the parents did take it a little too far sometimes, so far they believed just my very presence might somehow make their daughter's IQ drop a few points. Who am I kidding? My mother once said to me: "Dicky, you do know that Jo-Ann is out of your league--right?"

Was she? I guess so. This is a girl who not only aced all of her exams but gave up some of her free time to tutor disadvantaged kids after school. Oh, I almost forgot, she also could play the piano--like really well, as in recitals and stuff. While Laura was wowing them doing funky cheers on the sidelines, Jo-Ann was attending junior UN councils or flying off during summer break to do charity work in, you know, south of the border places, putting her fluent Spanish to good use. She was as much an overachiever as I was an under achiever.

We had known each other ever since I could remember. We were living proof that the public school system could simultaneously work, and fail. She had learned buckets of knowledge while I had squandered years and years of access to learning. It was more an indictment of me than the schools, sure fire evidence that all the current tinkering with education is misguided and just plain counter-productive. It was sometimes as simple as you get what you put into it.

Jo-Ann got a slot at Tufts, in Boston, one of those "little Ivies" you don't hear much about. They were those group of colleges in the Northeast that had sterling reps as academic institutions but had always been overshadowed by Harvard or Brown etc. Truthfully, when she first told me about her being accepted by Tufts I had gone "Huh?" Then, defensively I might add, she had gone on to tell me about the college and how it was in Boston and was a great school. The whole time I kept thinking: Do you really want to go to a school named Tufts? It sounded like a product that Proctor and Gamble might manufacture in some small town in New England. Since 1921, we have been making Tufts. Your grandmother used them. Now improved, with better absorbency.

Jo-Ann was excited to be going away to college, even if her first choice hadn't panned out. You can imagine how the parents felt. They had wanted more for their daughter. Her parents had met in college, at med school, in Maryland. Horror of horrors, it had been a State school. They were strivers though and wanted more for their kid. "My daughter goes to Yale," I can hear them saying to all of their friends or anybody, including the mail man. They would be bursting with pride.

For me, I didn't share in Jo-Ann's crushing disappointment because I had first gone to community college. Nobody gets rejected from a community college. The four year college I eventually got into wasn't exactly a place a person jumps up and down with joy over. In fact, when asked what college I went to I invariably answer with the initials, saying it real fast and hope it sounds like something else. Then again I was never into that whole college derby thing, where you are trying to one up everybody else. That's what I tell myself anyway.

It was pre-Med for Jo-Ann of course, with her parents leaning on her to take all the right courses. All of those years actually understanding what was going on in biology class were finally going to pay off. I remember one year we were lab partners and she had pulled me aside one day and said: "Don't screw me up on this, Dicky. I need an A in the class." It wasn't the first time I had seen her raw ambition surface. This was a girl who didn't have time for football games or school dances. She was obsessed.

So there was never any prospect of romance between us. I was the boy who lived next door, the one who wrecked his car after getting drunk at a party, and the kid who almost dropped out of High School because he was tired of getting suspended. I had no future. She was on the fast track to private practice, putting her name right up next to her parents at their office in Fort Lauderdale, one more gastroenterologist serving all the old geezers with gas problems.

I haven't really described Jo-Ann's looks. I had known her since we were in elementary school together and had seen her blossom into a young woman, complete with a healthy bustline. When you have grown up with someone your perspective gets distorted a little bit. I had seen her go from pigtails to a perm, (not my favorite look on her). She could have been my sister if it wasn't for that physical attraction I could never quite let go of. Heaven knows it wasn't mutual. My charms were mostly overlooked by her.

Unlike Laura, Jo-Ann had a dark complexion, enhanced by sunbathing by the pool, usually spent reading text books of course. She was 5 foot eight and had dark hair, with eyes to match. I had seen her plenty of times in her bikini so I know what her body looked like; and yes sometimes it had been through my binoculars. Can I help it if her parents never put up a fence around the pool.

As with everything she did, her sunbathing sessions by the pool was always never a completely frivolous use of her time. She was a multi-tasker way before they even invented the term. There she would be, reclining in the lounge chair, ice tea by her side, book in her lap, alternately reading and writing term papers or whatever was on the agenda for the day. Jo-Ann was a list maker and, further more, a list follower. Her day was organized right down to every detail.

"Are you kidding me?" I once said to her as we were sitting in her kitchen talking about nothing in particular.

"What?" she countered, slightly perturbed, always giving me the feeling that I was wasting her time.

I held up a legal pad and shook it at her, then stated: "You have your whole day written down on here."

She gave me a confused look, then said, "So."

"So," I spat out, laughing. "Let me ask you, how far in advance did you write this out?"

She eyed me for a moment, arching her eyebrows, while I tried not to notice a tiny droplet of water, pool water, drift down in between her breasts. We had just come in from the pool and she was only wearing gym shorts and a bikini top. I could see the logo from our High School on the shorts and immediately tried to picture her in gym class. There she'd be, front and center on the volley ball court, reading a novel by...pick your favorite Russian writer and spiking the ball at the same time. It was well known that she didn't like to be teased, or criticized. It goes without saying she had made time to be on the debate team too. Any disagreement with her involved lots and lots of stats, with a few references to this or that University study thrown into the mix. I never once won an argument.

"If you really must know, I made it last night, like I always do," she announced a little defensively. "I do it every night. Everyone should make the best of their time."

I chuckled again and said, "Let's see what you've checked off already today."

She tried to grab the list out of my hand but I pulled it away. She reached over again and I could feel her wet skin against mine. It was, you know, electrifying. It was probably as close as we had ever gotten, if you don't count that time in third or fourth grade when we were riding a boogie board at the beach together. I felt her breath against my face and really wanted to kiss her. How would that be received? I wondered. Jo-Ann could be maddeningly asexual at times, even though she was sensually attractive despite herself.

"Give me the list, Dicky!" she shouted out, snatching the legal pad out of my hand. "It's not funny."

"Sorry," I said, surprised by her reaction. "I didn't know it would piss you off."

"Just because you...you don't care about your future doesn't mean everyone does," she scolded, tossing the legal pad in one of the kitchen drawers.

"You must admit, Jo, that list thing is kinda weird," I said back at her, grinning.

"To you maybe," she said, frowning at me. "It wouldn't hurt for you to have some goals, you know."

"What, are you my mother now," I said, laughing, trying to lighten the mood.

"Maybe you should listen to your parents once in a while," Jo-Ann stated, with her hands on her hips. "What are you going to do after we graduate? You can't hang out at the beach every day."

"I can't," I said in an ironic tone, chuckling.

"There's nothing more pathetic than a guy hanging out at the beach when he's in his twenties," she told me in a stern voice.

"I don't know, seems to me a girl who makes lists of everything she is going to be doing for the day is pretty fucking pathetic too," I said, trying not to show my irritation.

Jo-Ann scowled at me for a minute then said in a lighter tone: "You do what you have to do and I'll do what I have to do."

I knew her well enough to know that the subject was now officially closed, so I mumbled, "Okay, whatever."

I can still remember the day she went off to Boston, her first semester in the big city. In the run up to her going away we hadn't had much time to get together; not that I was doing anything special, so my parents reminded me of on a daily basis. "Why didn't you apply to any colleges?" my mother would ask, eyeballing me, waiting for a reply. "Might think about getting a job...and an apartment," my dad would say to me, shaking his head, giving me that look that said he was totally disgusted with his only son.

The two of us caught up with each other at the beach one day. I had shouted out to her when she was getting in her car to go somewhere that a bunch of us were getting together at the beach for a mini-celebration after graduation. She had assured me that she would swing by. I doubted that she would. To Jo-Ann, friends were just another item on her list, something to accomplish when needed. She was the only girl I knew who didn't have any girl friends to speak of.

True to her word though, she pulled up next to the Dania Pier and paid me a visit. Most of my friends didn't care for her too much, finding her to be a card carrying member of the brainiac class. It didn't matter all that much because she only stayed a few minutes, long enough to pull me aside and tell me: "Dicky, I can't believe we finally did it. Listen, I hope you find what you want to do with your life. You know, once I get out of here I don't think I'm ever coming back." This sounded like too much doomsday stuff for me, so I told her: "What are you talking about? You'll be back. The beach will still be here." She looked out over the ocean, out at the fishermen on the pier, and replied: "It will all be in my rearview mirror by next week." Yikes, this woman is a walking movie cliche--or something, I thought.

Then she was gone. I had walked her to her car, where she placed a chaste kiss on my cheek and waved good-bye. I couldn't help but wonder whether or not her parents knew she was getting out of Dodge. According to Jo-Ann, there ain't gonna be no names added to the medical practice in Fort Lauderdale. She wasn't going to be looking back. And she didn't, actually moving about a far as you can from the Sunshine State. I had to admire her for that.

Of course the parents were in for another shocker too. Their little trained prodigy wasn't going to be no doctor either. Jo-Ann had other plans. Being at Tufts opened up her horizons a little bit. She also abandoned the whole lists thing, moving into the land of spontaneity. Mom and Pop might have been paying the freight up there in Bean Town but Jo-Ann decided to float through several different majors before finally graduating with a degree in (horrors) History. Say what? I would have paid good money to see her parent's reaction when they got the news on that front. Mr. Doctor probably had a mini-stroke while Mrs. Doctor threatened to cut off funding for any further studies up there in that bastion of education in New England. Where did we go wrong? they would have undoubtedly asked themselves. No white lab coat for little Jo-Ann. Naturally, sooner or later it would get back to me, with them blaming Dicky for everything that went wrong.

Jo-Ann would never actually ever use her degree in any meaningful way as it turns out. There would be no need for grad school. She wouldn't have to grub for tenure at some podunk college in who knows where. No, she would meet her ticket to success at a coffee bar in Cambridge. It was kismet, you know, with spilled java and apologies all around. Enter her future husband, one Marcus Oliver Littleton, the tall, gangly doctoral student at MIT.

It was all very cinematic, their first meeting. You could almost hear the sound track playing in the background, but then again that was probably some sketchy tunes coming over the sound system at the coffee bar, most likely some hip fushion jazz or something. She spilled her cup of joe on his shirt and he noticed she was good looking and decided to play the gentleman, telling her that it didn't matter that she just ruined his only good dress shirt, one that he was going to wear to his upcoming dissertation orals. They ended up sharing a cup of coffee after that and immediately hit it off.

This was tricky for both of them because neither one was what you might call adept at dating. Romance for Jo-Ann had been several short lived relationships with area numbnuts from her college and that one idiot from BC who wondered whether or not she would be interested in converting to Catholicism. On his part, Marcus had had one long term relationship with a girl from home (New Jersey) who was hopelessly tied up with the concept of marriage, like now. They were grossly mismatched, sharing almost nothing in common but their neighborhood pedigree. She had dropped out of college to sell real estate, need I say more?

Marcus Oliver Littleton was a bio-chemist by trade and probably (arguably)the smartest man in the world, bar none. This I was told by Jo-Ann and after speaking to him for less than two minutes I had to agree simply because I wasn't sure if I understood half of what he was saying to me. He spoke in a form of English that defied description, something that closely resembled what post-modern American might sound like in two hundred years. His sentences were peppered with acronyms and foreign words like some kind of oral cross word puzzle. I just nodded a lot and smiled, hoping that he wouldn't think I was some kind of cretin with a working vocabulary of maybe a hundred words.

"My husband is a polymath," Jo-Ann had announced when we first talked on the phone after re-connecting after so many years. "He is brilliant, Dicky. I can't wait for you to meet him."

Putting the word brilliant and my name in the same sentence didn't ring true to me. What was a polymath anyway? Did it have something to do with numbers? I was, you know, scared to meet the guy now. Smart people made me nervous, like they knew I was too stupid to be functioning in society at large. If the Brave New World scenario was suddenly instituted across the land I would be relegated to one of those drone types at the bottom of the heap for sure, made to do menial tasks while the other lucky ones would keep everything going. What would I even say to him? Would talking sports be out of the question?

Their courtship was fast and furious. They were married after only three months. Even though they were the same age, Marcus was completing his doctorate, while she was getting her BA. He had entered college at Rutgers when he was all of fourteen, finishing up undergraduate work before he turned eighteen. Then it was on to Harvard grad school before ending up at MIT. The man was an academic machine.

Marcus Oliver had come from modest beginnings, with a single mom supporting him after his dad had died from cancer. He had been recognized as gifted from early on, so his education seemed to unfold before him, with scholarships to private schools here and there, extending on into college. He had been afforded the best of the best and deserved it. His mother, a waitress at a diner in a small town on the Jersey shore, had been bewildered by it all. Where had all those "smarts" come from? she often wondered, as her little Marcus traipsed through several different school systems, in route to the big time.

After they both graduated they left Boston for the West Coast and the rest, as they say, is history. Marcus Oliver Littleton hit it big in the bio world, landing funding from some venture capitalists out west and turning it into big bucks, for him and the small start-up company he help put together. Don't ask me what he did exactly. He explained it to me, twice, but I couldn't figure it out. It had something to do with genes I think, or was it chemical reactions? Who knew?

The man was currently worth some dollar amount approaching a billion, with a B. His waitress mother now had one of those cheesy Mcmansions on the shore, with servants. Marcus had tried to get her to move out west but she was having none of it, wanting to stay in the town where she was born.

For Jo-Ann and Marcus, their homestead was in the Big Sur area and had been totally designed by him. It was one of those houses that functions off the grid, with green power up the ying-yang. There were turbines and solar panels, with geo-thermal something or other thrown in too. I wouldn't have been surprised to find a mini-nuclear plant built on the property. Speaking of property, it was gigantic, big enough for horses and a landing strip for his small ultra light aircraft, that he built himself by the way. The man was a future movie waiting to happen, starring, you know, that Italian-American actor that doesn't look Italian. Anyway, Architectural Digest would wet their pants over this house.

My describing it won't do it justice but I'll just say that it had large windows, (for that passive solar thing), that faced the ocean, giving you a million dollar view, with connecting domes strung out towards the back, housing various rooms. I think it had six bedrooms and lots of bathrooms, including a sauna. There was also an indoor pool and an outdoor pool because you can never have too many pools. Also, not that this wasn't wasted on me, it had an observatory, with one big fucking telescope, so big you could see the astronauts taking a shit in the space station. The place was like Disneyland for the geek crowd. It had dozens of smart features built into the walls, from automated temperature controls to heat sensors telling the house's big brain when someone was in a room. The place made the Jetson's house look like the Rubble's place.

To my amazement I got to stay there, right in the guest quarters out back, a place that had more square footage than my house back in Florida. Get this, it had a talking computer to ask me how I was doing, sounded like that voice from 2001, the film. "Mr. Johnson, is the climate control to your liking? Would you like me to start your shower now? Are the lights illuminated enough in the living room?" They called it Boris, which stood for something or other, some dweebspeak about code and whatchamacallit. Although Boris could be a nosy nuisance sometimes, it was still cool to order it to do something for you. You could program it to do almost anything you wanted.

Jo-Ann and Marcus had a live-in maid, Juanita, who was almost part of the family, judging by her attitude towards me. She was originally from El Salvador and was probably still illegal but Jo-Ann and Marcus treated her like a blood relative. They were always jabbering in Spanish, which, being from Florida of course, I was used to hearing, even though the only thing I understood was Gracias and maybe puta. Juanita's English was bare bones, so she would just grunt at me before reeling off a flurry of Espanol, pointing wildy when she wanted me to do something. It was obvious she was protective of Jo and Marcus and probably saw me as a some kind of con man trying to rip them off.

Jo-Ann, true to her word, had never returned to Florida, insisting her parents visit her out in California. Old wounds heal slowly I guess because her relationship with her parents had never quite recovered from that whole doctor fiasco. Abandoning the medical field had been a devastating blow to her parents, that probably goes without saying. Even though she had landed a filthy rich guy as a husband that didn't change anything for them. All in all her parents thought she had wasted her life by becoming some billionaires' wife.

I don't know. It seemed to me, especially after seeing the house and all, that she had made the right decision. Who needs to look up people's anal canal for a living anyway? How many times can you see the inside of a colon and not second guess your decision to become a doctor of digestive problems? Would her becoming a brain surgeon have been any better? Cracking open a skull and probing around in the old gray matter must have its rewards but you still got that messy blood thing to deal with. So what if she wasn't saving lives. The woman was living in utopia for heaven's sake.

It wasn't all good however. There is always a fly in the ointment. That would be their son, Marcus junior. I was always glad I wasn't made a junior. It seems that it would forever be a burden to live up to, especially if your dad happened to be successful. In my case I'm relatively sure that my father would probably disown me if he could. Having a failure for a son doesn't sit too well.

Marcus Jr. had a tough road ahead of him. Not only is his dad filthy rich but he was a renowned (in some circles admittedly) brain, a guy who had an IQ off the charts and knew how to use it. I mean is Bill Gates's offspring going to be able to live up to what has been established out there? What can the son or daughter do for an encore? Talk about pressure.

The kid never had a chance, really. Then again, you know, he didn't have to go and join up with some freakoid group like the Scientologists. I bet that went down real well with the parents. Say what? I can imagine his parents saying, gasping for air as they realize their only child has gone off the deep end. Make no mistake about it, it was the deep end. I know.

In college, my last year, I befriended a guy in one of my accounting courses. He was originally from somewhere in Virginia and seemed normal enough. We used to play paddle ball on the beach, which was a good place to meet chicks and work on your tan while you slammed a ball against a wall. It was a stupid sport as racquet sports went but exercise never the less. His name was Roger. He was, I guess, kind of handsome, or at least a lot of the girls on the courts thought so. I didn't mind him getting the attention because by the rule of proximity I got exposure too.

We worked the "talent" together and yes that is a cheesy as it sounds. Getting his leftovers didn't injure my self esteem all that much. So the guy was popular with the ladies. There was nothing wrong with that, per se. Then it got weird.

"Rick," he says to me one day, using the new name I had adopted when I got to college, happy to have abandoned "Dicky", "have you ever thought about being audited?"

Now being that we were both studying accounting I immediately thought he was talking about the IRS. Silly me. Oh no, the loon was talking about Scientology and their method to do whatever it is they do to all of those unsuspecting victims. It was all about some sort of spiritual counseling or whatever and was central to what they called dianetics, which is one of those made up words that are usually built into all of those crazy ass religions out there. I guess you could call Scientology a religion. I mean they get tax exemptions don't they?

Anyway, I laughed and shot back: "Why would the IRS audit me? I don't make shit."

"No," he stated, laughing, "I mean...well...by Scientology."

I looked at him for a minute, sure that he was joking, then said, "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious, Rick," he said, staring at me with Village of the Damned eyes.

"What?" I exclaimed, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "You're kidding me, right? Why would I want to do something like that for? You're fucking with me."

"No, I'm serious," he said solemnly. "It will open up new horizons for you. It's the best thing I ever did. No lie."

It was like being on Candid Camera, or, to update that, being punked. I had never known Roger to have much of a sense of humor so I figured he was serious about the whole thing. By the way, you know when they interview women and they always say they are looking for a guy with a good sense of humor, that's a lie. What they are looking for is looks and a decent bank account.

"Maybe I'll think about it," I told him, knowing full well there was no chance in hell I was going to be walking into some local chapter of Scientology and giving myself up to them.

I had heard stories about them, ones that almost always ended up with how you had to fork over money so you could advance up some celestial ladder in order to be "clear" or whatever they called it. It was the classic scheme. You offered a product that would improve your life but you had to pay for it in stages, with each new level costing more and more. As cons went it was laughable but then you were dealing with the human race and we all know how insecure we are. Hell, more than half the people out there believe in a place called heaven. I rest my case.

So Jo-Ann and Marcus had a Scientologist for a son. How that must have blew his dad's mind. Marcus was one of those type guys who not only thought religion was an abuse of the mind but wanted it to be taxed into oblivion. He had a bumper sticker on one of his five cars, the Hummer (that ran on veggie oil), which stated: Man created God. There were no if, ands, or buts about it. Science precluded "fairy tales," as he liked to put it.

This put Scientology in his crosshairs too. You could dress it up anyway you wanted to but it was still some hogwash invented by a mental patient. Not that Hubbard or whatever his name was didn't have some pretty inventive imagination working there. I mean the Scientologists believed that we all came from another planet and were battling Thetans. Do I have that right? Maybe we were supposed to turn into Thetans. Either way, the individual was destined to reach such a state that he or she was perfect. Who knows? Was it really any stranger than people believing some dude died on a cross to save the world from their sins? Hell, sometimes I think the Greeks idea about multiple gods made more sense. Then again, I don't really think about it all that much.

Marcus did though. For a guy who thought it, that being religion as a whole, was all nonsense, he sure spent a lot of time thinking about it. That's where the fear element comes in. Nobody knows for sure. You have to be pretty secure in your view of an afterlife to forsake all of the mythologies out there. Some of them have been around for a very long time. Man is a fragile animal all in all. Our minds need something to grasp in order to make sense of things.

Apparently, as it goes, Marcus was trying to make sense of everything. Jo-Ann, not so much. She was the type of person to mostly ignore what comes next. It was a good policy. Why get yourself all worked up over something you couldn't really control anyway. Only those deep thinkers had to worry about it.

Her husband fit into that category. He had a library in his house the size of a basketball court. Although he lived smack dab in the middle of the digital world, he still had all those books; and he was having every written word he could get his hands on transferred to a massive hard drive somewhere in his house. It was controlled by one of those mainframes you might see on a SyFy movie. He had even hired some guy to oversee all of his files, like a live-in librarian. His quarters was right next to mine. Not that I got to see him much. He was always locked away in his room staring at a giant monitor, tapping away on his keyboard.

I would meet Marcus Jr. once. He stopped by to talk to his mother. Jo-Ann would tell me later that her husband refused to speak to him any longer, deeming him too stupid to make time for. The shunning had been going on for over two years, ever since Junior had showed up to tell them he was moving to some place in Washington State to help open up a new Scientology center. Dad didn't take it too well. There had been lots of shouting and threats, with Papa promising to make it his life mission to ruin all of those "Hubbardites" if he could.

Marcus senior was particularly incensed that the Scientologists had been using his son in some of their advertising, which, you know, reflected badly on him. Marcus had even consulted with a lawyer to see if he could prevent them from using his name, even if it was once removed. They were perfectly within the law, so he was told, which sent him into a frenzy. He had plenty of resources to fall back on. If they wanted war, he would give it too them. I don't suppose anybody wanted a billionaire as an enemy but the Scientologists were used to it. They had taken on Germany when the Germans wanted the fruit-loops from America out of their country. Going to battle was part of the game you played when it came time to defend your religion. All religions went through that.

"This is my son, Marcus Junior," Jo-Ann had introduced him as, smiling, probably wondering where it had all gone wrong. Maybe it had been all of those Classical music tapes she had played when she was pregnant, putting one of the speakers up close to her womb for effect, taking away the stereophonic quality. Could have been those nutritional supplements she took, the ones from somewhere in Asia, the ones that were supposed to increase the umbilical vitamin uptake. Was it all those yoga exercises?

"Hey," was all her son said to me, avoiding eye contact, while he seemed to squirm at the touch of his mother's hand.

"Hey there," I said back at him, extending my hand, which he shook half-heartedly, like maybe I was carrying some virulent virus from overseas.

We made small talk (very small), while Jo-Ann tried again and again to get her son to open up. Is this kid adopted or what? I found myself wondering. He could have been abused as a child. Maybe he was dropped on his head. The pet dog humped his leg when he was in grade school and he never mentally recovered. I didn't know and couldn't imagine what had happened to the dude. All I knew was that he had hit the motherlode when it came to genetics and had decided to throw it all away to become a foot soldier for the Scientologists. This was beyond movie of the week stuff. What movie studio wouldn't want to get their grubby hands on this script?

"Marcus lives in Washington," Jo-Ann chirped, like nothing at all was wrong with this picture. "It's nice up there, right honey."

No longer being a parent, I cringed when I heard other parents talk around their off-spring because they always sounded like babbling idiots. Some parents were worse than others about it. Most just couldn't switch gears when their kids had passed that adult threshold, sticking their children in a time warp where they were forever stuck at the age of, you know, fifteen or sixteen. My parents often talked to me like I was an adolescent.

"Mom, I need to talk to you about something," Junior whined, glancing at me, then scanning the room for any sign of his father.

"Let me get out of here so you two can talk," I offered up, wishing his dad would suddenly appear because I kind of wanted to see the fireworks.

Besides, I knew what was up, even if Jo-Ann didn't. Her son was about to hit her up for some more money. She had confessed to me that she still funneled money to her son without her husband's knowledge. Marcus Senior had laid down the law on that matter, telling his wife that their son would see no more of the Littleton fortune. He had then canceled a trust set up for his son, slamming the door on any future money spigot.

My wish was granted. Just as I was turning to go, Marcus Senior arrived on the scene, entering through a side door that led to his laboratory--more on that later. This was too good to be true. Oh boy, you could sell pay for view tickets to this event.

"What's he doing here?" the father demanded to know.

"Honey, please," Jo-Ann pleaded.

"I told you he wasn't to set foot here ever again!" Marcus Senior thundered.

"I was just leaving," Marcus Junior muttered, looking for help from his mother.

"What happened? Did the Hubbardites throw you out already?" the father mocked, looking at me and laughing. "Let me guess, they couldn't clear you."

"I told you he would never understand," the son whined to his mother.

"Marcus, stop it," Jo-Ann screeched. "He is still our son."

"He's not my son anymore," the father stated. "He stopped being my son when he joined up with those imbeciles. They can have him. He can kiss Hubbard's ass all he wants."

"You think you are so smart but...but you are really just a closed minded asshole," the son cried out. "Well, he is," he added when his mother protested.

"Close minded," the father roared, clenching his fists in front of him. "You are no son of mine because no son of mine would be so colossally ignorant. Only a mental midget would think that Scientology was a legitimate cosmology. I would have thought better of you if you converted to Judaism--you moron."

"That is just like you, dad, you never can--"

"You're a fool," his father interrupted, now red in the face. "You belong to a cult and you don't even realize it. That is the very essence of stupidity."

I have to say it was hard to argue with a guy who had been a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grantee. You're kind of at a disadvantage no matter what you say. This was a guy who had a worker, in stone mind you, chisel over his front door: Beyond the reach of metaphor. What? Embedded or enlaid, whatever you call it, on the floor of his library in giant letters he had inscribed: The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions, which was from some dude named Berkeley. Maybe the college was named after him, I don't know. Marcus had taught a course there once or twice, some class called: Knowing the Unknown. Like I'd sign up for that class.

In their kitchen, on one of those magnetic chalk board thingees you write messages on for the rest of the family to check, you know, dental appointments, impromptu grocery lists, etc., Marcus had written some funky math formula. I kid you not. This was a guy who liked to read physics manuals at breakfast. The math equation was: P8=1/(He-b) 'Psub S something or other. Me and math weren't best friends if it went past the multiplication tables. I had (unwisely) asked him about it one day at breakfast, while we were sitting around digging into our homemade granola, compliments of Jo-Ann, who was pretty handy around the kitchen if you like that whole earth vibe.

Marcus had looked up from his book, the usual three hundred page tome, something dealing with astro-physics I think, and answered, "Probabilities distilled." That was all he said. I exchanged glances with Jo-Ann, who smiled, happy to be in such close association with the most inscrutable man in the world. A moment later he muttered, "I was wondering what my chances were if I went down in my bird-span." That would be his little plane, the one he designed himself and constructed in his workshop out back. He called it that. Bird-span, the plans for a company to build them was in the works, so I was told in between gulps of granola.

I had been at the Littleton compound for over a week now by this time. Jo-Ann had put me on an organic diet, worried that my health was deteriorating rapidly, like right before her eyes. She had lectured me about having to fight off the free radicals, which, to me, sounded like some war you might hear about down in South America. The free radicals had taken over parts of the jungle and were battling the narco-terrorists for control of the Amazon.

"Dicky, you have to look out for those FFA's because they equal fat," she informed me, staring me down, daring me to make some kind of wisecrack about my food intake. "VLDL's too, with them you get the bad cholesterol. That's not good for your heart. Not to mention the triglycerides that are killing your liver. You are a walking time bomb. I'd hate to see you keel over when you are just fifty years old."

Her concern was touching, if a little invasive, I thought. Jo-Ann was just like that though. Way back in the day she had always wanted to save me from myself, always telling me to shape up physically and mentally. I don't know how many times she had urged me to bring my grades up and get into a good college. I didn't listen very much, it goes without saying. Still, I liked her for her effort. Even my parents had given up after a while. I was Mr. Lost Cause for the most part.

Things hadn't exactly started out so good the day I showed up and met her husband, the brain. He was the type that always had something going on in his skull, like some continuous loop of film was playing in there. Sure he would communicate like an ordinary human being, asking you how you were doing or whatever, but in the background the wheels were turning. He had a theorem of some sort named after him, something about axioms and some Greek dude who lived a million years ago.

Like that didn't go right over my head and I told him so, emphasizing my point by sweeping my hand over my head. He did laugh but then again he probably spent a lot of time laughing at simpletons like me. I mean what was it like to be smarter than everyone else? I guess it was hard not to be condescending to all of us knuckle dragging evolutionary dropouts.

Jo-Ann, bless her, came to my rescue that time by saying: "Don't worry about it, Dicky, no one understands how my husband's mind works." Of course this was, all in all, a backhanded slam but I didn't mind because being the dunce suited me just fine. I was used to it. My parents had been calling me an ignoramus since I started talking and said stupid things.

Proving just how stupid I can be, I had, on another occasion, while we were enjoying drinks on one of their several decks, asked Marcus how his day went. In the movies this would be set up by a couple tight reaction shots, ones where one of the other actors would give us a look of mild horror because I had just opened up the proverbial can of worms. I should have right then and there taken the beer bottle, some micro-brew from San Fran, which tasted like the brewmaster had stock in the last strawberry crop, and bashed it over my head.

Marcus looked over at me, then stared into the middle distance, somewhere in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, and mumbled: I was analyzing some DNA bits...the triplet combinations...with the amino acid infiltration."

Okay, you know I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Marcus had resorted to his usual conversational shorthand, which was a way of getting through an explanation to someone he knew didn't have the IQ to comprehend much of anything beyond the basics. It was like listening to a conversation on a cell phone with bad coverage. All I heard was something about sequences and proteins doing this or that. Worst of all, Jo-Ann had retreated momentarily to the kitchen to check on her latest organic masterpiece. I was alone with the mad man.

As was usual with Marcus, he tended to wander conversationally, not unlike some savant with ADD, unable to concentrate on just one subject. No, it was more like those chess masters who hold matches against a dozen different opponents at one time, moving from chess board to chess board, making moves and kicking ass. He was certainly kicking my ass, easily. At the rate he was going I would be drooling on my shirt front any time now, before I collapsed into a fetal position and started sucking my thumb.

"Sometimes our language is too puny for the job," he announced, standing up and walking over to the railing. He was on a roll now. All that pent up energy from being locked away in his lab was bubbling up. Aforementioned laboratory, by the way, was off by itself, some fifty yards from the main house. It was locked up like Fort Knox most of the time, better to keep all of his secret formulas safe from the outside world. Marcus had showed it to me once, and once only, and that had been for all of maybe five minutes. The place looked like some lab where they might be working on the next weapon for the Pentagon, with numerous computers all around and a few digital compound something or other microscopes that cost over 10 grand a piece. It looked like in the movie the Matrix. I kept looking for that colorful suit from the Ironman movie to be hanging up in the middle of the room.

"Because we live in a world of zero authenticity," he declared, continuing on, waving his beer out in front of him, with the other hand raised to his head, where his index finger was tapping against his temple. "You need look no further than that half-wit from Alaska. She is totally unqualified for anything--including being a mother--but she gets her bizarre views broadcast almost on a nightly basis. That, I believe, is a bellwether for our culture."

Oh, yeah, I knew we were doomed as a nation but when you heard it put the way he put it, yikes. It wasn't that he was so eloquent about it but rather he was convincing. I mean this was a guy who used words like "deracinate" in a sentence and didn't feel self-conscious about it. Not one bit. He was entitled, I guess. His vocabulary extended way out there, and in several different languages. Who was I to deny him the use of the full arsenal?

"Take the case of John F. Parker," he announced, grinning at me, now about as happy as I had seen him to date. "This gets to the heart of fate and her vagaries."

"Okay," I mumbled, glad to see Jo-Ann arrive back on the scene, also she was carrying some finger food, a warm up for dinner, even if they were probably going to have zero trans-fat in them. I greedily snatched up a hand full before she slapped at my hand and gave me a disapproving look.

"He, this Parker, happened to be guarding Lincoln at the Ford theatre the night the President was assassinated, except that he stepped out for a drink instead of remaining at his post. That, Richard, is the kingpin of the probable. The man chose to go have a drink at a local bar--and his reasons are immaterial really. He thought the President was in a safe environment. He was simply incompetent at his job. He was an alcoholic. The reasons don't filter into the equation of death."

"I guess not," I said, shrugging at Jo-Ann, trying to show her I didn't know what in the hell her husband was going on about. She gave that look, the one that said: Try to understand, dummy.

"Booth enters the box and history is enacted," Marcus stated, pantomiming shooting somebody in the back of the head. "One of our greatest Presidents is cut down, leaving the country adrift. I just love the probabilities of this. An actor, who is homicidal...President serving in a time of national crises...and some drunken body guard. It doesn't get any better than that, truly."

"Pretty weird," I offered, not knowing what else to say.

What was really weird was me staying there for so long, almost a month. Talk about a freeloader. I don't think they minded though. The compound was so big I could have stayed there for a year and not get in their way. Jo-Ann enjoyed my company, I think. She had some friends but they weren't from the past, somebody you could relate to on a different level. From the age of maybe six or seven until we were eighteen we had lived right next door to each other. I had known her when her two front teeth were missing. She had known me when I got kicked out of school for gluing the doors to all of the girls bathrooms shut. I still had to leave though.

Not before Marcus convinced me to go up with him in his tinkertoy airplane. I don't know if you are familiar with the magazine Popular Mechanics or not but this plane made those you might see on the cover look like a Boeing aircraft. It was small, like a wind up toy. The engine, fueled by french fry oil, could have fit in my luggage. Are you kidding me? I thought as we made our way back to the landing strip. I will say it is quite a kick to stay in a house that has its own airport out back, right next to the riding corral.

Jo-Ann assured me she flew with her husband all the time. I was skeptical because I remember her as being the one who thought riding on a boogie board was dangerous stuff, really. "He's a great pilot," she had said, nodding yes, while thoughts churned through my brain on how I could get out of his invitation to see Northern Cali from a bird's eye view. Did I actually have to see the natural beauty from the air, I had asked in a trembling voice?

Better yet, would my fat ass even fit on the motorized kite you called an airplane? They had laughed at that; although Marcus had then asked me what my weight was. I immediately had visions of us being thousands of feet in the air and the whole damn toy breaking apart under my weight. My giant rump would plunge right into the waiting earth, with me screaming like a little girl all the way down.

I can see the news reports now: Billionaire genius and some unidentified overweight guy plunge to their deaths. Noted Micro-chemist died today while flying his homemade plane. The cause of the accident is being investigated, but preliminary reports point to a weight issue. The billionaire's surviving wife was reported to have said her friend was on board and was just too fat to be flying. "I warned him about his eating and how it was some day going to kill him." I would be the butt of all the late night jokesters.

Flying in an ultra light aircraft is for...the insane. Open air cockpit doesn't really begin to describe what it is like sitting there dangling hundreds of feet up in the air with nothing holding you up but a papier mache wing and a tiny whirling propeller. The whole concept of flight, and air travel, take on a new meaning when you are at one with the elements. Going back, in retro mode, to the Wright brothers is kind of, you know, stupid. Didn't those guys own a bicycle shop? At least I wasn't peddling like mad to keep us airborne.

Oh no, we had a motor, an engine that looked like it was scavenged from some lawn mower, only this one was louder. Sitting right next to an amp at a Guns and Roses concert would be less noisy. Fortunately, so it goes, we had helmets fitted with headphones so we could communicate to each other in flight. This meant that Marcus had to listen to me and my girly voice go on about the laws of gravity and how they were applying to us at that given moment. I'm sure he appreciated me squealing in his ear about how it felt like the whole plane was about to break apart at any moment and could we please return to earth. That was when I wasn't picking bugs out of my teeth. I did say it was an open cockpit.

Marcus had given me the speech that all men who think that flying above the earth is somehow a spiritual experience like to give. It is (flying) so liberating. He may have been the smartest dude on the planet but he was still willing to take hold of a tiny joy stick and zoom through the clouds in a cartoonish flying machine.

"Here's your helmet," Marcus told me, handing me an expensive bucket to put on my head. "The mic is right there and the earphones are embedded inside. We can communicate when we get up there." He pointed helpfully skyward, grinning.

I was beginning to suspect that Marcus had a little bit of the sadist in him. Surely he sensed that I was scared shitless about this undertaking. I had been talked into it by Jo-Ann, who seemed to be on a mission to make me and her husband best buds. I guess it was common knowledge that billionaires don't have many people to pal around with. I mean did Warren Buffet have any drinking buddies? That mayor in New York? I think not. Maybe they could put me on the payroll, but then that would sort of defeat the purpose.

I took the helmet and studied it for a minute, before realizing Marcus probably thought I was too stupid to figure out how to put it on. I promptly plopped it on my head and fumbled with the chin strap for a minute, then asked, "Just how ridiculous do I look with this thing on?"

Marcus ignored me for a minute, busy with the pre-flight check list. We were standing in his earthquake proof hanger, as was his house by the way. He told me proudly that it could withstand a 7 plus on the Richter scale. Man this thing has tiny wheels, I thought, as he then asked me to help him push the damn thing out onto the tarmac. It wasn't heavy, hence the name ultra light I guess. Why would it be? The damn wings were made of parachute material or something that looked just like it.

Speaking of parachutes, I asked Marcus about the prospect of having to use one and he laughed. Laughter wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear at this juncture. He then told me the craft was designed to glide to a landing. I seriously doubted that. Even though I knew absolutely zippo about flying I knew that what went up eventually came down. That coming down part was going to be the hard part, accent on hard.

This was taking aeronautics back to the beginning. I wasn't one of those daring young men in their flying machines. Far from it. Give me a big airliner, with bitchy flight attendants and crying babies. I wanted to be in something so big the actual flying part, you know, defying gravity, was incidental in the whole experience. Now I was going to have to sit in a tiny seat and watch as we bounced down the tarmac and eventually got off the ground. This was insane.

Jo-Ann had come out back to the airstrip to see us off. What else was she doing anyway? Billionaire's wives have lots of time on their hands. She stood off to the side and waved at us, smiling demonically. I was beginning to wonder whether or not she was the sole beneficiary, hoping that her loony husband would fly off and crash into the Pacific. So what if an old friend of hers dies in the process. It can't be helped.

"Be careful, honey," she yelled out to us.

"I'm not too sure about this!" I shouted, hoping I wasn't sounding like too much of a wuss. Even though she had assured me she had been up in this contraption many times it still didn't make me feel any safer. "Nobody ever accused me of being a daredevil, you know." She didn't hear me or wasn't really listening, too busy thinking of how she was going to spend the millions. She probably already had a profile on one of those internet dating sights: Attractive heiress, looking for casual relationship with 21-40 male--lots of sex okay. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this," I called out to no avail.

"Buckle up, Rick," Marcus ordered, as he went over a last minute pre-flight check list.

We had pushed the damn thing out into the middle of the strip, lining it up for a takeoff. A windsock at the end of the runway showed which way the wind was blowing. I could hear the radio Marcus had strapped to his chest crackling, giving him a head's up if we were going to be flying into the path of a 757 streaking south towards LA. Actually we weren't going to be flying anywhere near that high. This was tree top flying at its best.

I climbed into the little seat and fastened up my seat belt, one of those types you might see some race car driver use. Behind me, Marcus was tinkering with the engine and the prop, which, as I might have said, was right smack behind us. Then there was a blast of noise like I had just stuck my head inside one of those leaf blowers and the damn "airplane" shuttered as if it was unhappy about the vibration that was going on. It felt like I was in the world's angriest massage chair. My legs were shaking, from raw fear and the vibrating fuselage. Next to me Marcus was checking out his instrument panel, which consisted of maybe two dials. He looked over at me and smiled, then gave his wife (widow) the thumbs up and we were rolling.

"Oh shit!" I almost screamed, as we began to pick up speed.

"Hang on, Rick," Marcus screeched in my ear over the headphones.

Those tiny wheels were rolling away, while behind me the prop was spinning and the engine was roaring even through the noise reduction headphones. My fat ass was maybe a foot off the ground and we were racing along, bumping down the tarmac. Wind was rushing against my face and I was squinting behind my goggles. It was time for full on sphincter control because this was some scary shit. Unfortunately, it was too late to bail out. With a few alarming bumps we were up in the air, leaving my stomach back on mother earth.

"Holy fuck!" I shouted, as we sprang into the air and the ground was receding below us.

"That wasn't so bad was it?" Marcus wanted to know, with his voice coming over my headphones like some scratchy voiced zombie.

"I guess not," I said in almost a whisper, then I noticed I was holding on to the sides of the seat so tight my fingers hurt. I was just happy I hadn't pooped my pants.

Marcus, Mr. Aviator, circled the landing strip, coming in low to wave at his wife, who gave us a little salute, sending us on our way. Right out over the ocean we went. No way, I was thinking, picturing us plunging into the sea and then eaten by sharks, Great Whites of course. Our mutilated bodies would wash up on shore a few days later, barely enough flesh for an autopsy. If we were going down I wanted it to be right into the ground. At least then we would only be eaten by crows or something.

"Hey Rick, this constitutes the real calculus of life," Marcus stated, with his voice arriving in my headset like a voice on high.

"If you say so," I mumbled, looking down at some waves breaking on the rocky shoreline, the one that looked so beautiful when you are standing on solid ground. Besides, what in the hell was he talking about? Couldn't this guy talk like a normal human being once in a while?

We buzzed along, while the engine droned in my ears and the wind rushed against my face. Our cruising speed was all of maybe 30 miles an hour. We were actually hanging in the air more than flying, or so it seemed. I had to admit this was one cool way to see Carmel, as we putted along a few hundred feet above the famous landmarks of the area. I had a bird's eye view of all the famous people's homes; of course I still had to overcome the continuing fear that we would--at any moment--come crashing down. What a way to go, I thought, us crashing in Clint Eastwood's backyard. Two mangled bodies found submerged in the actor's pool, so the crawler at the bottom of the screen would say on Fox news.

"I saw a whale breeching once," Marcus informed me, gesturing out towards the ocean.

"Really," I muttered, glancing out at the Pacific, wondering just how far out this crazy billionaire actually flew when he was alone.

"This kind of flying clears your head," he said, smiling at me.

"It sure clears your sinuses," I exclaimed, laughing, because the sea air at that altitude was bracing to say the least.

We creeped up the coast and I suddenly wondered whether or not we were bonding, the two of us. Marcus, so I was told by Jo-Ann, didn't have many friends. Like I said, filthy rich guys don't have the time for buddies. He was always too busy counting his money. No, that isn't fair. Marcus didn't impress me as that type of person, you know, always trying to accumulate more wealth like some of those dickwads on Wall Street. He was genuinely interested in everything there was to know about this world of ours. There was nothing wrong in that.

Me, I was barely keeping up. I still got my news from the networks for Christ's sake. A computer to me was something I turned on and hoped work, praying like hell the operating system didn't have any viruses hiding in it. It was all I could do to figure out a spread sheet. Out there in the real world as we know it things were advancing fast. Technology had all of us hurtling along, jumping from one new invention to the next. Ever since the Industrial Revolution came along societies had been locked into this mindboggling race to change everything, leaving us common folk gasping to keep up. Not that it wasn't a good thing to have improvements in our lives. Sometimes I wished that all of these wiz kids would give us time to catch our breath.

Marcus, as far as I could tell, wanted to see and know everything. Jo-Ann had told me he insisted on taking these long trips to places nobody else wanted to go to. They had actually spent a month in the Sahara desert while he studied the desert architecture of some bizzarro nomad tribe. Before that they had cruised down the tributaries of the Amazon in a dugout canoe. Marcus had brought back several large containers of botanical samples to study after that excursion.

He was on a mission, so it seemed, and Jo-Ann "indulged him his whimsy," as she liked to put it. It made for some interesting cocktail party talk, if you could understand him at all. I mostly couldn't. He wasn't one to dumb down his conversation, so it was be well versed in everything from microbiology to geography or pretend that you understood him. I fell into the latter category.

"Marcus likes you," Jo-Ann had announced one morning, while we were sampling one of her breakfast experiments, some stab at modifying the breakfast burrito with asparagus and something else I was too embarrassed to ask about, afraid I would both show my cowardice at trying new things and my ignorance. "It's not often he gets to...to be himself around people," she explained, patting me on the forearm like she was praising a little kid for doing something good. "He always, always has to keep his guard up. You never know when someone is going to find fault with what he does."

This sounded, on the surface, like raving paranoia but then I could see her point. Celebrities in our culture were constantly under a microscope. There was a thriving industry out there making a bundle off the personal lives of the stars. Even though Marcus wasn't a Hollywood star per se, he still commanded attention because of his bank account and high profile life. He had an assistant, a tall woman, late twenties, a graduate of Stanford, who did nothing but field all of his business calls. There was an endless stream of people calling to ask for interviews from magazines and TV shows. Even Oprah's minions had tried to get him on her show to talk about his work and, you know, himself.

That magazine Homes and Gardens or whatever it was called had wet their pants when Jo-Ann agreed to do a spread about their house. I had seen the article while on the john one morning. It had been written about two years ago, a usual puff piece with photos of the interior. As magazine profiles go it was soft, with no slant to speak of, just well lit photographs of furniture and the grounds. The two of them came off as a couple who enjoyed the best things in life but weren't in your face about it.

You couldn't say that about a piece that was written for, of all things, Rolling Stone. The writer must have had it in for Marcus because it more or less said that he had stolen most of his patents and was a hack as a scientist. It also said his house was a "mash-up of derivative style with no soul." That one hurt because Marcus took pride in the building and designing of his home. Marcus, being Marcus, had taken a photo of the writer and had it somehow embossed on a floor tile, and then laid just inside the door of his studio/work shop. He liked to step on the guy's face every time he came in and out of the room.

So now I was best buds with a famous rich guy, I thought, chuckling at the thought. Maybe he could buy the Miami Dolphins and set me up in a sky box, where I could hold parties and surround myself with some babes from SOBE. Like that would happen. First off, he hated Florida, calling it "a petri dish of humidity and bad taste." Who was I to argue with the obvious? Besides, I was sure Jo-Ann was exaggerating for my sake, trying to make me feel good about myself. After all, I was her friend from the past who had absolutely nothing on the ball. In fact, I was heading downwards, fast. No job. No prospects. Foreclosure looming. The best I could hope for was that a hurricane would come in and blow my house away so I could get the insurance.

"Hey, Jo, you think Marcus could buy me an island somewhere so I could set up a mini-kingdom?" I joked, laughing. "No, really," I pressed. "I always wanted to be a king."

She stared at me for a minute, then gave me that look of disappointment she was so good at and said, "I was being serious, Dicky."

"Sorry," I mumbled, stuffing another bite of the weird burrito in my face, trying not to gag at the taste, dreading when I was going to have to take a piss and sniff the awful smell of asparagus wafting up my nose.

What exactly was my friend getting at anyway? I wondered, wishing she had made me some bacon for breakfast. She couldn't be inviting me to stay on at their compound, could she? I could do that. If they wanted, I'd clean their pool (pools plural). If Mr. Billionaire needed a buddy, I could be that for him, even if I had to be his co-pilot and get bugs in my teeth.

So we chugged up the coast a little bit, drawing stares from some of the people on the ground. This retro-flying was, you know, kind of cool. You were part of mother nature, like a bird almost. Not that I really wanted to ever do it again. Adventure for me was trying some new dish from Asia, or maybe South America. Let other guys test their manhood doing stupid things. I was comfortable being a slub, content to have the remote in one hand and a beer in the other. My idea of getting out there and doing it was taking a cruise, where I could test my endurance at the buffet table. You can ask my ex-wife about that.

According to her I was always making a spectacle of myself on cruise ships and if she didn't like being pampered so much by the staff we would never had taken so many trips around the Caribbean. Hey, the food was there for a reason. Besides, I wasn't into chatting with strangers on board like she was. Sometimes she acted like some kind of social secretary or something. By the time we were at sea a few days she practically knew everybody on board the ship.

That was in the past though, gone. I was a new man. Not really, if you really want to know. What I was was a guy at loose ends with his life. Middle age had me by the throat. If I was smart I would become Marcus' boy Friday and get him to pay off my mortgage and then give me a tidy stipend to be his best friend. He could bounce off me all the weird ideas he wanted to. I wouldn't mind. I could just nod and play along, while enjoying myself with the leftovers Jo-Ann and him could throw my way.

That wasn't going to happen. Jo-Ann knew that, even if she could bring herself to actually (formally) request that I stay on at the compound. It would be humiliating for her to admit that her husband was such a misfit socially that he needed to hire a friend. With all of their wealth they still couldn't find happiness. It was like a bad Disney movie or something. Howard Hughes hadn't found any. The man ended up a nutcase, storing his own urine in jars. At least Marcus had Jo-Ann.

It was at dinner a few days later when I announced: "Hey, I was thinking about taking off tomorrow."

Marcus looked up from the magazine he was reading, the latest edition of Scientific American, which for him was definitely light reading, and said, "You are?"

"Dicky...but you haven't been here all that long," Jo-Ann declared, surprised. "I thought we might go into the city...to do some things."

Oh, now she was trying to entice me. Soon there would be bribes, including descriptive tales of restaurants in San Fran. She was good. Hit me in all my vulnerable spots. I had already been informed of their place in San Francisco, somewhere on Nob Hill I think, with views out to here. Don't be weak, I told myself.

Marcus pointed his fork at me and said, "This is existential, right?"

"What?" I mumbled, embarrassed to have started all this. "I have to be getting back to Florida," I whined.

"Piss hole," Marcus muttered, shaking his head in disgust.

"Dicky, what do you have to get back for?" Jo-Ann questioned, staring at me, giving me that look of disapproval again. "There is nothing back there anymore for you. The sooner you admit that the better it will be. Honest."

This was threatening to turn into some kind of intervention. I had hoped they would just shrug and I would be on my way. I had been there going on a month, for Christ's sake. I had become more of a squatter than a guest. Most people would be calling the police, or at least their lawyer to find out how they can get a restraining order.

"Gotta find a job, you know," I chirped, smiling. "The bills are piling up."

Marcus scoffed and stated: "Hon, get Jenkins on the phone."

I knew immediately what this meant. I had met Jenkins before, once. That was his first name, by the way. He was their personal accountant. He handled all the penny anty stuff that needed to be taken care of so the two of them didn't have to sully their hands with petty cash arrangements. Jenkins was pushing seventy and spoke in a soft whisper all the time, so low you had to lean in to even hear what he was saying. What he was usually saying was that he would take care of it. He was old school, loyal to a fault--and honest too.

Jo-Ann reached for her cell phone and I said, "Come on, guys, I have to be getting back to my home. Believe it or not, I'm a Floridian."

Marcus stared at me for a minute then said, "That's preposterous, Richard. Nobody's from that shit hole. Don't embarrass yourself by making absurd statements. Let us take care of your...your particulars. Set up shop here. Why not?"

Oh boy was that enticing. My allowance alone would probably be in the six figures. I could become their personal accountant when Jenkins kicked the bucket. They would call me when they needed to pay for that new big screen TV or new model Hybrid car from some boutique manufacturer in Silicon Valley. "Get the red one, Dicky," Jo-Ann would say to me, smiling, ever polite to the hired help. Marcus would take me along on his adventures. No, scratch that. I wasn't going to be going along on any of his quests to kill himself in some jungle somewhere, while he looked under rocks for the latest mutant strain of vegetation to save the world from jock itch, or something like that.

I would be a satellite phone call away though, ever ready to cut a check for whatever they needed to fill their empty lives. This was what it was like to have every thing but a spiritual base, something to hang on to when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Though they had weathered the storm with their son and all, even if they chose to disown him in the process. Spirituality wasn't all it was cracked up to be either.

Look at me, I didn't ascribe to any real religion or spirit based nonsense. Wait, I'm a bad example. I was basically a mess. On the upside though, I was being courted by two fatcats who wanted me to be their house pet. I could do worse. I could get in my car and drive back East, well southeast to be precise, and face the music back home. Nothing like battling with creditors to make your life worth living. If all went well I could find another job I hate and keep my head above water long enough to die from a heart attack, the big one that several different doctors had been warning me about for so long.

"You can't deny who you are," I spat out, somehow gone crazy enough to actually try to defend my home State.

"You might want to try," Marcus said jokingly and we all laughed, at my expense of course.

"Dicky, you can stay here as long as you want--you know that," Jo-Ann told me, now giving me that earnest look, the one that said she was trying not to pity me for being such a loser. "We love having you here."

"Love it," Marcus said sarcastically.

I laughed at my billionaire bud and said, "Don't think it hasn't been fun. Except for your cooking."

Marcus snorted and Jo-Ann bleated out: "What's wrong with my cooking?"

"Content," Marcus stated, smiling at me. "I think the man is referring to the absence of comfort food."

"Oh Dicky, it's for your own good," she exclaimed, grinning. "You lost some weight, right?"

I pinched at my gut for a second and said, "A few pounds, I guess."

"See," she said triumphantly.

This banter was getting us nowhere. If I kept it going though I knew the bribes would get better, juicier even. Play your cards right and you'll have yourself booked on a world cruise, with a first class cabin, I thought. Think of all the cuisine you could snarf up from around the world. You might even become a player, able to actually afford to go on a date. Wouldn't that be something?

By the end of dinner they had given up on me, with Marcus engrossed in some article about cognitive anthropology, or was it psychology? Jo-Ann was sulking at her end of the table. I imagined her retreating to her computer room and dashing to Facebook in order to find another long lost friend to proposition. Brad wasn't doing anything. Maybe she could connect with him.

I had decided to leave the next morning. Get an early start. It was a long (long) way back to the Sunshine State; at least winter was coming on, bringing the cooler months. In some ways I dreaded having to drive all the way back. The romance of being on the road had long ago worn off. It would be just me and lots and lots of fast food, with the greasy containers piling up in my back seat. Even the prospect of having some highway adventures didn't pep me up much.

It was foggy that morning I left, cold and dank. Winter was arriving in Northern California. One more breakfast with the Littletons, meaning more organic milk and homemade granola. I was dreaming of snarfing up a Mcmuffin and knew that the first Macky-D's I saw I wouldn't be able to help myself and hit the drive thru. I was what I was.

"Are you going to stop in and see Laura on the way back?" Jo-Ann asked, while she puttered around in the kitchen.

I thought that I might but then had been having second thoughts about it. Seeing her twice would be cheating. This whole undertaking of mine had been about seeing my former friends and then moving on, making it all transitory. Even though I had updated my address book it didn't mean that there had been any renewal of any sort. It had been all about touching base with my nostalgia and that almost never included any re-connection.

"I thought about it but I think I'm going to go back East on the northern route," I told her, wincing when I caught a glimpse of Marcus chowing down on some plain yogurt, organic of course, with no bovine hormones used in the milk.

"She'll probably be disappointed if you don't stop by and see her again," Jo-Ann mused, as she thumbed through the latest edition of Vegetarian Times, the one with some smiling actress on the cover, the one whose name I couldn't remember. If not mistaken, I think she was once a notorious party animal, who was drugged out most of the time. She had apparently turned over a new leaf and embraced natural living, minus meat.

"Laura needs to get her life in order," I said, smirking. "I don't think she needs me around getting in the way."

Jo-Ann didn't say anything to that and had obviously turned the page on the subject. Marcus was studiously ignoring our conversation and was typing out something on his little notebook, probably his Noble Prize acceptance speech. Out back, I could hear Juanita yelling at the pool boy in Spanish. This all could have been mine, I told myself, snickering silently. I wasn't kidding myself though. It was going to be hard to leave this place. I would have made a good lacky, being that I had little or no self-esteem to speak of. Sometimes you have to take careers where you find them.

With a resolve I didn't think I had, I gathered up my bags and loaded up the old Honda. I was just another American on the move. I had gone from coast to coast and was heading back, just another lonely road trip. I had experienced the measuring stick of life and come out on...the bottom. It was humbling to know that even one of your long lost friends, the one who was one step away from being on the FBI's Most Wanted List, had more purpose in life than you did. Somebody has to bring up the rear, I jokingly told myself, as I cranked up my car, hoping like hell it was going to take me all the way back to Florida.

"Drive safe," Jo-Ann said, leaning in the window to give me a kiss on the cheek.

I wiped some flour off her nose. She had been in the middle of baking up another all-natural organic cake when I finally managed to get myself in gear to leave. Marcus came out to say good-bye, telling me he was going to miss me as a co-pilot, which was a bare face lie because when we had come in for the landing I had screamed all the way down like some demonic banshee.

I had always wondered about the expression: with a heavy heart. I was experiencing that. It weighed on me that I had decided to pull up anchor and move on. Actually, to be accurate, I wasn't moving on as much as returning. Back East, that was where I was heading.

It didn't seem possible I had looked up some old friends. "Divergent paths," so said some writer of yesteryear, a guy with too much time on his hands, able to sit around and pluck words from the dictionary apparently. Had thirty years actually gone by? By some people's reckoning that is almost a generation. Four people with a connection from their youth had crossed paths again.

I was thinking about this as I headed back towards San Francisco, and on eventually to Interstate 80. My immediate plans were to take that highway all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, before heading southward. My rolling travelogue was going to be taking me through the mid-section of the country, where, I guess, I'd get to see lots and lots of farms. I didn't know what to expect. "Hope you are fond of corn," Marcus had joked, before Jo-Ann jumped into a lecture about the evils of corn syrup and how I was the living, breathing case in point. Believe it or not, I was going to miss her.

So I made it back. There had been adventures along the way, including that night spent in Reno, with the prostitute twins. I wasn't a paying customer, only an unwilling eavesdropper. Some truck driver at the Motel 6 I was staying at--budgetary restrictions had set in--had paid for the full package, giving him several hours of gymnastic sex in the room next to mine. Paper thin walls have a way of supplying demonic acoustics. Every grunt was relayed right into my room, echoing loudly and drowning out another bad Adam Sandler movie playing on TNT.

Then there was that scare in the middle of nowhere, that being some place in Iowa, as I was changing Interstates, going from 80 to 29. I had unexpectedly decided to stop and give two hitchhikers a lift. Hitching was a lost art in the US, beat down by scary movie plots involving beheadings and what have you, leading to the stain of urban myths. Once a certain storyline gets into the nation's blood stream its too late to correct it. Anyway, you didn't see all that many people hitch hiking anymore. It was dangerous, for the hitcher and the prospective driver. We as a society had all lost our innocence. That's why you can't have your kid participate in Trick or Treat any longer. Too many crazies out there waiting to wreak havoc.

I was influenced by the fact that it was a couple hitching. They were actually holding hands when I flew past them, trying to figure out which turn off I needed to take to get to the south bound exit. It was a totally impulse thing to do. One minute I'm speeding along, wondering whether or not I should stop at the next gas station for gas, and the next I'm throwing on the brakes.

"Where you headin'?" the guy in the twosome wanted to know, slightly out of breath because he had run on up ahead of his girl friend to see what was up.

"All the way to Florida," I said, immediately wondering why I was using a boastful tone of voice. "You?"

He didn't answer at first but waved for his girl friend to hurry up and get in the car. "Man, I thought we'd never get a ride."

It was about then that I noticed he was, you know, dirty. His clothes looked like he had been sleeping in them, on the ground. There were rips in the knees of his jeans and although I know that is fashionable in its way, these weren't. His clothes was threadbare, way beyond even thrift store quality.

"Thanks, mister," the girl announced, bending over to catch her breath. "I thought we might end up dying out there in the cold."

It was cold, middle of America cold, where winter wants to take you hostage for a few months. I had been happily traveling along in my heated car not even thinking about it, even though on the weather channel that morning in some motel I found by the side of the Interstate said a front was barreling down from Canada. I was racing south to stay ahead of it.

"It's pretty cold out there," I said, not knowing what else to say. I had committed myself now and had to go through with it.

"Get in, Lulu," he ordered, rubbing his hands together, which I noticed were chaffed a bright red.

"Just push all that junk out of the way," I said, reaching back to sweep some of the fast food wrappers out of the way.

Lulu got in the back, while he jumped in the front. When he closed the door I got my first whiff of it, the smell. I don't know if I can really describe it but to say it smelled like week old garbage. No, it was more like when something goes off in the fridge and you open the door and discover that some leftovers have turned into a bio-weapon that even your tupperware can't contain any longer.

"We're going to Linton," the guy told me, as if I knew where in the hell that was. Turns out it was somewhere in Missouri.

"I can take you down 29, then I'm going on 70 for a ways," I explained, glancing in the rear view mirror where I could see that the Lulu was picking at a candy bar wrapper I had tossed back there when I was half way through Wyoming. She noticed me looking at her so she grinned back at me and I could see that her teeth were mostly black. It was about then that one of those public service announcements flooded into my mind, the one about meth and how it can ruin your life, or, at the very least, your teeth. Her skin wasn't doing all that much better, with a constellation of scabs all around her mouth.

"Perfect," the guy exclaimed, clapping his hands a few times.

I stole a closer look at him and saw that he was way underweight for a man who was just over six feet tall. I guessed him to be in his early twenties but the sickly parlor of his skin made him look like warmed over death. He looked like one of those creatures in the movies that always get run over by a car but don't actually die. I was hoping like hell he didn't have a hook for a hand.

Now I was stuck with them for X number of miles and, as I glanced down at my fuel gauge, was going to have to stop for gas. On top of that I had to take a leak and didn't know how I was going to do that and leave them in my car while I ran to the bathroom. It was situations like this where I wished I was more like my parents, or even my sister. They would just have pulled over and told them it was all a mistake and please get out of my car. Hell, they wouldn't have stopped in the first place. That wasn't my style though. Style, I didn't have a style, unless you count being basically invisible and inconsequential.

This was starting to have all the makings of a straight to DVD movie, one where I end up dead by the side of the road while these two specimens steal my car and sell it for another taste of crystal. My obituary would be fodder for the local news in the nearest farm town, one more statistic in the meth scourge ruining the Heartland of America. Traveling salesman murdered on Interstate 29, story at eleven. They would label me that because what else would a middle-aged man be doing hauling across country with a backseat buried under fast food wrappers?

Fortunately for me, as it goes, the guy fell asleep almost immediately, leaving me to entertain his girl friend. They were married actually, which is even more scary. I found this out because she must have still been "tweaking" and wouldn't shut up, jabbering about everything from her two kids (Yikes!) and her husband's "asshole" parents. They were, apparently, taking care of the kids and had wisely forbidden the two of them from getting anywhere near the grand kids.

"Haven't seen them in over six months," she cried out, and by that I mean she was really crying, in between bouts of profanity, hurled at the back of her husband's head. "Those fuckers...just you wait," she threatened, shaking her tiny fists in the air. "I'm gonna see my kids whether they like it or not."

Okay, play the social worker, I told myself, and said in a serious voice: "You have to work it out." This sounded appropriately non-committal, like I was sympathetic but not totally insane as to believe that these two should be parents in any shape or form.

"I am," she protested, almost shouting at me. "It's all fucked up," she said through clenched (black) teeth. "Got anything to eat," she suddenly asked, switching gears.

"I might have something up here," I told her, fumbling around in the console to see what I could find. "Here," I announced, holding up a candy bar, a Snickers. Oh, yeah, got a great idea for an TV ad. The script would read: Tweaker girl, obviously strung out, asks for a snack. She takes candy bar and eats right through the packaging, then smiles into the camera and tells everyone that it will get her through until the next blast of meth.

"Thanks, mister," she said, taking the bar and gobbling it down in two bites.

Anticipating her next request, I told her, "There's some gatorade back there...on the floor."

She dug through the garbage and found a bottle of the blue stuff, cool blue, my least favorite kind of Gatorade. Blue? Blueberries? Blueberry drink. Was it supposed to be grape? Why couldn't the food industry just be content with the basics? It was bad enough they were producing liver damaging crap, did they have to defy nature and come up with bizarre flavors too? Furthermore, what was I even doing buying gatorade? I sure needed to replenish my electro-thingees. It was pretty taxing sitting on my ass and driving all day. Besides, as Jo-Ann would undoubtedly tell me, the swill was full of corn syrup. I don't care how many athletes drank the shit. They were all whores anyway, eager to promote almost anything if they got paid for it.

She drank down the entire 32 ounce bottle. I kid you not. Then she smacked her lips and stated: "Fuck, that was good."

After that I got her whole life story, so complete I could almost feel her labor pains--twice--as she told me about the deliveries at some waystation of a hospital in the sticks. Then she got teary eyed again and went off on the in-laws, telling me that she wanted to kill "the both of them." This one way conversation went on for miles, right up until I saw the low fuel light come on. Mr. Tweaker hadn't regained consciousness, so I took the chance and made a pit stop.

"Gotta get some gas," I informed her, smiling in the mirror. "If you're hungry I can get some snacks." She mumbled something to herself, which I took as a good sign, hoping that she would follow me into the convenience store so I could keep an eye on her.

One of the off-brand gas stations popped up by the road and I exited. The meth head in the front seat was comatose. Lulu was gnashing her teeth and still going on about her kids. I whipped into the parking lot of the gas station and parked at one of the pumps. I used my debit card, hoping I still had some money in the account, and filled up the tank, while I kept an eye on the two of them. It was going to be dicey slipping away to the men's room and leaving the tweakers in the car. I could just see them rifling through my luggage and stealing whatever they thought might be valuable to pawn. Fortunately for me, you know, I didn't have anything of value.

"It's cold out here," Lulu announced, as she staggered out of the back seat. I then noticed she wasn't wearing much, just some old, tattered jacket that had seen better days.

Man, you two have just about reached bottom, I thought, then said, "Go on inside, I'll be in in a second."

She stared at me for a moment and I could actually see the wheels turning in her brain, before she grunted and mumbled: "I hate the fucking cold."

The gas amount was accepted on my card, so I took once last look at Mr. Meth and dashed inside. It was your typical gas station sundries store, complete with a small TV set playing down below eye level and a closed circuit security camera showing what was going on out in the parking lot on a black and white screen. I squinted, trying to see if I could see my car or not. There was a fat girl, early twenties, behind the counter, who was talking on her cell phone, gesticulating wildly, and spitting out curse words a mile a minute.

"Hey, Lulu, why don't you go pick out some snacks for us while I go to the bathroom," I offered, like we were old friends.

"I gotta go too," she whined, squirming.

This was good news. At least she would be preoccupied while I emptied my bladder. Yet, still, I had some nagging suspicions. Maybe this was part of their plan. Mr. Meth head would play opossum while Lulu pretended to go to the bathroom. I somehow didn't believe these two could pull that off, but you never know. I glanced back at the girl behind the counter, who was still giving somebody on the phone a piece of her mind. I had to risk it.

The two of us wandered back to the bathrooms. I held back a little bit, waiting for her to go in the women's first. She was still unsteady on her feet and almost fell over trying to open the door to the bathroom. When the door closed behind her I waited a second then ducked into the men's. I willed my bladder to empty as fast as it could, keeping an ear cocked for any sounds out in the hallway. All I could hear was muffled sounds of the fat girl behind the counter telling her friend: "Like you didn't know. Bullshit!"

In record time, I was out of the bathroom and heading to the front window to check on my car. Mr. Meth was still out cold in the front seat. Then I heard Lulu stumble out into the hall behind me. Relieved, I headed over to the chip aisle, grabbing a couple bags of potato chips, two different flavors. After that, cheese crackers, then candy bars, rounding out my nutritional requirements for the day.

"I'm parched," Lulu called out to me from in front of the cold drinks aisle. She was holding open one of the glass doors and fondling a six pack of Bud Lite. "What do you want to get?"

I didn't want to get beer, I called out silently. I walked over next to her and said, "How about some bottled water?"

She wrinkled up her nose and said, "Water? Who pays for water?"

As a matter of fact, I'm paying, I thought, then replied, "Coke...Pepsi?"

"Nahh, how about some Red Bull," she said excitedly, fingering one of those slender cans of pure adrenaline pumping fluid.

I thought for a minute, suddenly realizing just how ludicrous this whole scene was, me with a tweaker discussing our drink choices. "Wanta do the Dew?" I joked.

Her eyes lit up and she said, "Yeahhh, that's fucking what we need!"

I plopped our haul down on the counter and the fat girl one handed them by the cash register, all the while jabbering to who was ever on the phone about how she was going to "fuck them up--big time." Suddenly I realized that, maybe, I had twenty something years left on this world, in this America, and in the end it wasn't going to be pretty when this generation of dimwits took over the reigns.

At least I was going to be in junk food heaven, even if I had to somehow figure out how to dump these two creatures before they killed me for my wallet. I forked over the bucks to fatso and me and Lulu headed back out to the car. At the last second she had tossed in a bag of skittles, grinning at me like we were in on some secret nobody else knew about. She was as giddy as a school girl, ripping into the bag of candy and chomping them down with her bad teeth.

We were back on the road and I was breathing through my mouth to avoid the stench of decay coming off the two of them. I was tempted to ask Lulu how and why she had ended up like she was but thought better of it. Besides, Mr. Meth woke up as soon as we got back in the car, bleery eyed and grumpy.

"Whatch you get me?" he wanted to know, turning around to see what Lulu was swallowing down. "Are those skeee-talls? Let me have some, girl."

What a life they must have together, I thought, wondering if I could quickly reach over and open the door and push him out. In the back, Lulu was now squealing with delight, playfully smacking at her man, pretending to hog all the candy. They both had the mind of a twelve year old. The two of them had been responsible for bringing two kids into this world. I couldn't think of anything scarier than that.

Finally, after way too long, their exit came into view. Lulu had crashed in the backseat and was snoring loudly, while Mr. Meth laughed and jerked his thumb in her direction and declared: "Sounds like a pig, huh." I forced a laugh and kept my eyes on the road. He then practically begged me to get off at their exit and give them a lift to their house. I was going to say no way, but then my curiosity got the better of me and I told him okay. I had to see where the two of them were living; of course I was probably playing into their hands by driving down some dark, back roads. Who knew what lurked out there in the heartland?

He directed me here and there, right and left, as we got further and further away from the Interstate. I was about to say something about him promising it wasn't far away when he said, "Here, make a right."

I turned into a driveway and lo and behold we were in front of a two story house that actually looked nice. I had expected it to be some abandoned shithole, with boarded up windows and an overgrown lawn out front. Then the front light came on and I could see a man standing in the doorway. He looked to be about my age or maybe a little older and I realized they had directed me to take them to a relative's home.

"Nice house," I mumbled and he snorted, telling me it was her father's place and he was an asshole.

"Wake up, Lulu," he shouted out, reaching back to smack her on the head. She stirred a little bit and moaned. "We're here. Your dickhead dad is standing on the porch."

She snapped awake and said, "Oh fuck! I'm not ready for this."

"Better get ready," Mr. Meth ordered, climbing out of the car.

Lulu leaned forward and tried to check herself out in the rear view mirror. She was close to me and I could smell the pending death on her, like some Twilight Zone episode where the lead character can divine the future and see a person's demise. I pulled away while she brushed some hair out of her face. She was muttering under her breath, saying something about her parents. Right on cue a woman appeared in the doorway and I could hear her yelling something out the door.

"Mom, it's me, Lulu," she called out in a pitiful voice, one that was chock full of...of sorrow. "I told you we would drop by."

"I don't want you here," her mother yelled out, as the father told his wife to hush. "I am not going through this again, Harold. Not this time."

Now I was smack dab in the middle of a family drama. This isn't happening, I told myself, willing my foot to just push the gas pedal and drive away. Not my business. I'm just the driver. Special delivery, two tweakers about a month away from death. Nice knowing you.

"Who's that driving?" the father asked, and in his voice I could hear, you know, the Viet Nam War. He had probably been an officer who commanded troops in battle. Now he was fighting another war, one in which his daughter was quickly going down the tubes and he didn't know how to manage it.

"Just some guy who picked us up hitch hiking," Mr. Meth replied, motioning in my direction.

"Oh god, Harold, they've been hitch hiking," the mother wailed. That's the least of your problems, woman, I thought. "I don't want them coming in the house."

This didn't look good, for me. If there was no room at the Inn, well, I was going to be their taxi service to the next destination. It wouldn't be long before I was sucking on a meth pipe with them and smelling like some putrid disease. Put that development on my Facebook page. Hey, remember Dicky, he turned into a methhead and died in some jerkwater town in...in Iowa or maybe Indiana--I think it started with an I. I would end up in an article in the Atlantic Monthly, where the writer would tell all of the sickening details of how I went straight downhill, right into the dumper. It wouldn't be romanticized like some loveable stoner or complicated smack addict. This would be real journalism in all of its glory, complete with photos of me in my inevitable descent into hell. At least I wouldn't be fat, having lost weight (finally) after so many bouts with the pipe.

"Good luck," I said in a whisper, backing out of the driveway, hoping Lulu wouldn't call me back because I knew I was too much of a soft touch to keep going. It was right about then a full on shouting match erupted between Lulu and her mother, with Mr. Meth adding his two cents too.

"You can go fuck yourself, mom!" was the last thing I heard as I sped away, escaping not a moment too soon.

I was back in Florida soon enough. Back to find a letter from my bank, the one that was holding my mortgage safe and sound. I was informed that they were foreclosing on my house. No surprise, since I hadn't paid my mortgage in a long time. I needed the money to fund my trip. It was a tradeoff I had to make.

Richard Johnson had hit the trifecta: unemployed, broke, and homeless. I had joined the real America, the one that has been kicked in the teeth every since the Reagan Administration decided to play games with the social order and institute a top down multiplier system, one where the top gets richer and the rest of us are left sucking air. Going to the fridge (at least the power was still on) I took out a beer leftover from before when I left and sat down at the kitchen table. While I drank the Samuel Adams, (very patriotic), I thought about my next move, feeding my depression with a can of Cheese Wiz I found stuck in the back of the fridge. Thanks to all of the preservatives, I knew those unknown chemicals in the can would keep the stuff eatable for a good 100 hundred years.

I sprayed the gunk right in my mouth, chasing it with the beer, temporarily unable to come to grips with my predicament. Soon I would be the neighborhood pariah, the guy who got foreclosed on and single handedly brought down everybody else's property values. Hey, at least your property taxes might go down, I thought, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I didn't want to even think about where I was going to live.

This was the end of the road for me. Then my phone rang and it was my mother, not somebody I really wanted to talk to at the moment. "Richard," I heard her say in that scratchy tone that made me nervous, "I tried to call you at home and it said the number had been disconnected."

"Hello, mom," I managed to say, regretting ever answering the phone.

"Where are you now?" she demanded to know in that way she had of sounding like a supervisor at some manufacturing plant, one where all the employees are working for minimum wage.

"Home," I mumbled. "I told you before that I stopped my land line. Don't need it any longer."

"That's a stupid thing to do," she stated, and I could hear her clucking her tongue in the background, along with the clattering of pots and pans.

"What are you doing there?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.

"I'm putting dishes away," she answered, slamming the cabinet door shut. "Are you done with your globe trotting?" she wanted to know, sighing heavily into the phone.

"Globe trotting," I repeated, laughing. "Yeah, I am done driving around the country."

"Good thing," she muttered. "You need to start thinking about working again, Richard. You can't expect to be doing nothing all the time."

I was silent for a moment and I could hear my dad in the background asking who she was talking to. I could almost see him waving his hand at her dismissively, as if to say: That bum. She ordered him to take out the garbage and then there was the sound of the backdoor slamming shut. Now was a good time as any to tell my parents the good news, that their son was officially a fuck up.

"Mom...listen, I lost the house," I said, feeling my stomach go all queasy. "The bank--"

"What do you mean you lost the house?" she spat out, incredulous.

"The bank foreclosed on me," I told her, as a headache slipped in behind my eyes. "I gotta get out."

"Richard," she started to say then went silent, and for the first time my mother had nothing to say. My slide into financial oblivion had finally shut my mother up.

"I'll talk to you later," I told her and hung up, then turned off my phone.

This was it. I had reached the end of the line. If I was the suicidal type I probably would have offed myself right in the kitchen, after having a nice big dinner...from, you know, Ruth Crist's, kind of like my last meal. Stuff my face and boom!, end it all. That wasn't me, though. No, I would slink away and disappear, figuratively and otherwise. At least my car was paid for.

As I was sitting there finishing up my beer I had visions of me barricading myself inside, daring the authorities to roust me out. The Hollywood Police Department would be called in, then the Broward County Sheriff's deputies too. They would fight over who gets to kick my ass out, like it was good fun evicting deadbeats.

I wouldn't budge, even though they threatened to either tear gas the premises or send in the dogs. The canine unit would be put on notice, ready to have their angry German Shepherds have a go at me. The dogs would be barking wildly, eyeing me, licking their chops at the prospect of biting into my fat butt. Still, I wouldn't give in.

This would start a round of impromptu negotiations, ones in which I would yell at them through the front door, the one I had reinforced with pieces of furniture I bought from Rooms-To-Go and were mostly made of cheesy particle board and treated with toxic chemicals from China, off-gassing every day right into my living room, moving me up the charts for potential cancer victims. I would have also nailed boards up over the windows, making my house look like I was prepping for the next hurricane to come down the pike. Maybe I would even get a gun so I could wave it around to make my point.

The local news teams would eat this action up, arriving like locusts, setting up camp on my front lawn. I could play them against each other, picking favorites I'd like to give interviews too, especially the one with the anchor babe at 6. I had been ogling her for a couple years now, even had a dream about her, one in which she was naked below that news desk. Their satellite trucks would be all lit up, with the generators grinding away and the kleigs lights shining into my neighbor's houses.

Of course what would my notoriety be without my ex-wife horning in on my celebrity. She'd show up on some of the cable shows, probably Fox because I had dissed them, to slam me. "He was always such a loser," she would say, batting her fake eyelashes, looking like some actress from the silent movies era with a ton of pancake makeup on, anything to make all those wrinkles disappear in Hi-def. "He voted for those damn Demo-CRATS, too," she would have to add, getting a thumbs up from the producer off camera

My neighbors would be really pissed off, already hating me for ruining their quiet, stable neighborhood. I hadn't played by the rules and gone and ruined everything for everybody else. Soon the neighbors would be treated to a big foreclosed sign out on my front lawn, with one of those court ordered documents taped to the front window, telling the world that I was a fuck up. Nobody needed to be reminded that they were now stuck upside down in their mortgage and would probably never get any of their money back. I had personally dropped the property values even further. At least your property taxes might go down, I would shout out the window, laughing that crazy laugh all lunatics in the movies have.

It wouldn't be funny to them, you know, because not only did they have to put up with all the press squatting on their front lawns but they would have to see what was in store for them too. That's right, we were all going down the tubes, have been ever since the Republicans decided to de-regulate everything, unleashing all of our worst desires. It was right about that time when the Conservatives decided to institute that trickle down philosophy thing, which just meant that we all got pissed on by the rich. It was all about exchanging the public sector for a private sector. We had all been dying a slow death and we just didn't know it, victims of a gigantic pyramid scheme. At the apex of that pyramid are all the fat cats and at the base is everybody else. We are all holding up the fucking thing.

Hell, I'm an accountant. I know where all the moola is going. You know those pie charts you always see, 10 percent of the population is soaking up 90 percent of the profits. It's like the roaring Twenties all over again, only without the flappers. Net worth is the new God. Unfortunately, the grim reaper had arrived on the scene to take all of us at the bottom away.

Now I had taken the country hostage. I wasn't going to give up without at least making a stink. The 24 news cycle would be on the scene in no time, bringing in the big guns from cable. MSNBC would send over that guy with the mug, the one that was for the working stiff. He would be on my side. We'd have a beer together, with him smuggling in a six pack. After that, the flood gates would open. CNN would have Cooper on the job, bringing his pseudo I care about the common man act. Fox would have that blowhard O'Reilly make his dumbass producer call me up, trying to get me to speak to his boss for a taped segment. No dice, I would tell him and hang up.

There would be a call from those hags on day time TV, the ones who sit around and "chat" about everything from divorce to menopause to political trends. They would want me to be a guest host, maybe. I could sit smack dab in the middle, whoozy from all of the estrogen they were giving off. They would solicit my take on any number of topics, trying to get me to start trouble between the babbling panel of bubble heads. I would be peppered with advice on how to loose weight or land a new wife or, maybe, run for office. I would laugh and tell them they were all hopelessly ignorant, especially the bottle blond one, with a baby factory for a womb. The show would end amiably, because that was their trademark, bringing civility back to America with a twist, the twist being silliness.

It wouldn't take long before the big O would come calling, inviting me to come sit on her couch. Then I would know that I had truly been anointed, She, the king maker, would want to delve into my inner mind, bringing along her audience of sycophantic dimwits to share in the hour long therapy. I would sit there and wonder how in the world this woman ever got to be spokeswoman for the nation because she was, you know, a pea brain.

Yet she was just another leader of us all, one more fantastically rich bitch who got to call the shots. It was all about the airwaves and how it ruled our lives, from full of it actors in really bad movies to mush mouthed talking heads on cable to syndicated talk fests peopled by us, the eager viewers who allowed individuals to dictate nonsense with a smile. Where did reality begin? Hell, where did it end?

My new found fame would soon go straight to my head. It wouldn't be long before I would be demanding a face to face meeting (a sit down) with the President. We could play one on one hoops, you know, with that Wii thingee on my 42 inch flat screen TV, the one I was still making payments on. I would tell him to bring on the change. He would try to finesse the situation, pouring on the charm, but I wouldn't be swayed.

Then I would suddenly be part of that 10 percent, with all the book deals and TV show offers. Idiotic people would pay me big money just to give a speech, no matter what I said. Soon I would be cashing in just like everybody else on the take. The funny thing is it would be the acceptable thing to do. No one would begrudge me the instant bank account. In fact, I would be praised for my embrace of raw greed. That right there should tell you we as a functioning culture are doomed. When you can make money for being, you know, an asswipe, then you know the end is near. The national mantra has become: I got mine, with an exclamation mark. Please, some God help us.

It was all a fantasy. I was just another statistic. Go away, quietly, I could hear my neighbors chanting in the background, and we beg of you: Don't burn down the place.

The next morning I was up early only because I hadn't slept all night. Usually, I wasn't a worrying type person but now, you know, everything was coming down on my head. I don't know why I did it but I called the surf line and checked out the surf report, something I hadn't done in probably ten years or so. A front had deposited a swell along the coastline, from Monster Hole up in the next county on down to Dania Beach. It wasn't long before I was rummaging around in my garage and pulling out my stick, which was buried under a dozen card board boxes full of personal memorabilia. "This is your life, Richard Johnson," I announced to the empty garage, digging around in one of the boxes and pulling out my Little League glove. Bits and pieces of my history were stuffed into those mildew stained boxes.

There was no time for nostalgia though. I picked up my long board, the one I had bought from a guy on the beach one day years before, who had convinced me to give up my out dated swallow tail and transition to a nine footer. The board had been shaped by a guy in Cocoa Beach and had the classic lines of a Malibu style board. I liked it immediately because it was powder blue, with a tiny design on the nose, which was the logo of the guy's company, his initials interlocking. The guy told me he would wait and I dashed to the bank, yanking money out of my dinky checking account to buy it.

My friends all made fun of me after that, laughing at the "plank," but I got the last laugh because with the lousy conditions at South Florida shore breaks I was often the only surfer out on the water. The long board floated me like a barge and I could glide over the mush that passed as waves most of the time. Not that I didn't have to get used to riding the damn thing. It took a ton of dynamite to turn the slab but after a while there was a Zen thing working there, where you got into a different pace and accepted what the ocean gave you. Then I had another problem. How in the hell was I going to get the damn thing to the beach. My Honda wasn't a good surf vehicle at all. In the past, I had always had cars that were rusted out, with salt pitted car racks on top. Even though I was a standing member of a pseudo surf culture, I still had the car to support the image, complete with stickers from all the appropriate surf companies. Being a poseur was hard work most of the time.

One of the boxes stacked off to my right caught my eye. I had written on the side in big black magic marker: Surf junk. I ripped off the tape on top and there was my old wet suit, the O'neill with the two tone colors. One color had faded to an ugly color of pink. There were holes in the knees and the zipper seemed to be stuck. I searched around for some WD-40 and found it in the corner, next to the tool kit I had bought one day at Home Depot when I thought I might want to get into wood working. My ex had had a good laugh about that, telling me that I would probably cut my finger off, or worse. It took me almost twenty minutes but I got the zipper unstuck.

Now I had to tackle the transport problem. There was no way I could just stick the board in my trunk. It was too long, Even though I didn't live all that far from the beach, I couldn't drive there with it hanging out the back. The cops would stop me in no time. By the same token I couldn't pop it out the side window either. The damn Honda was too small for that.

In days gone by I would have been on the phone, calling my buds to pick me up. We would have all been on the phone calling the surf line, telling each other that it was going to be "epic." Make no mistake, it was never anywhere near close to that. We would be lucky to get two footers, ankle snappers. Although, afterwards, when the surf session was over, the waves would take on huge dimensions, as we lied to each other about the rides we had gotten; but that went with the territory.

I looked in the surf box again and found an old strap rack, which was the poor man's surf rack and was usually used by weekenders to transport their boards to the beach. I had bought it right after I got the Honda, thinking that I might once in a while cruise to the beach and get in a session. I didn't, ever. The strap rack was still in the original package. It was pristine, except for a little bit of rust developing on the metal parts from the humidity. I was in business.

It was early, way early for me, who was used to getting up mid-morning or later. I stopped by Burger King as I was heading to the beach to grab something to fuel me up for the day on the waves. Man, I hadn't been that stoked in a long time, if they were still even using that word. Before, in the past, I had subscriptions to all the surf mags and would go through them over and over, dreaming of hitting all the breaks around the world. This in itself was laughable because I had never been on a wave that was more than two or three feet high. I could only imagine myself heading down a steep face, screaming all the way down until I got crunched.

A man can dream though. You take your dreams where you can and mine was being served up on the Atlantic. I pulled into the parking lot and was surprised to see a dozen cars already there. In the interim, since I had been away from the scene, I guess I thought all the local surfers had given it up or moved away. Dreams die hard.

Some ten years ago or so I would have been on the beach by now, waxing my stick, eyeing the ocean, trying to read the break. Back then my buds would be pulling up in their cars, the ones with all the faded paint from the sun and the blowing sand, whooping, eager to get out there. We'd high five each other and head on out, locked into our version of the surfer lifestyle. Now, I was alone, and by that I mean I was (by far) the oldest dude there. I could have been their father.

This was a slap in the face, bringing me back to reality. As I was getting out of my car, a guy and his girl friend pulled up next to me in a late model SUV, one that didn't need a paint job, with lots and lots of primer and bondo work. The mark of a surfer in the old days was how much bondo putty you slapped on your car to plug up the rust holes. This guy was in his early twenties, with a girl friend who looked like she stepped off the cover of Maxim Magazine. He nodded in my direction, as if to say: Hey, Pop, come out to watch the surfers. I sheepishly nodded back at him, like some pervert who had been caught peeping. Actually, I was ogling his girl friend, who was wearing nothing but a t-shirt over a thong.

The guy whipped out his cell phone and told somebody on the phone that it was "going off." He then whipped out his board, brand new by the look of it, and slipped into his wet suit, also new looking. His girl friend told him to have fun and he was off. I stood there watching him strut down to the water and gracefully glide into the surf. His girl friend glanced over at me and gave me a look, one that said: He's pretty hot, huh? I looked away, embarrassed, for her--and me. Nobody should have to see an old fart on a surf board. It went against nature.

I was determined though. The young don't own the beach, even if more than half the people walking on the sand shouldn't be revealing anything of their anatomy. This was brought home immediately when I tried to get into my wet suit, which are not made for the portly. The concept is for a tight fit. Stuffed sausage comes to mind. There was no way the zipper was going to let my stomach slip inside. Unfortunately, I found this out after I had already tried to put it on, giving Miss Maxim a hilarious burlesque show as I tried and tried to pull up the zipper.

Before all dignity was lost, I gave up and decided to just go without a wet suit. It wasn't that cold anyway, I rationalized, deciding to just wear a t-shirt. I was pasty white anyway and looked like one of those albino whales you might see on Animal Planet in a show on the Arctic. Making a spectacle of myself hadn't been on the agenda but I couldn't turn back now, so I got my beast off the top of the car, slathered on two gallons of sunscreen and headed out, ignoring all the snickers.

The lineup was already crowded out there, with jerk-offs taking off right and left. This particular break was the usual disorganized mish-mash of waves you almost always got in South Florida. It was just north of the pier, so you always got the bleary eyed fishermen up there casting lines, chumming the waters for all the sharks to come and take a bite out of the silly surfers. It didn't matter though. We surfers were known for being stupid.

I wasn't thinking of the shark situation though because as I looked out at the water I saw that there were actually waves out there, real bona fide swells. What the fuck, I thought, trying to remember when I had last seen waves this good before. These bad boys actually have faces, I thought, looking around to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Off to my right a guy was videotaping with his I-phone.

"Is this one of those epic days?" I asked aloud, glancing around me, hoping nobody saw me and thought I was some old coot who talked to himself. Slowly I entered the water and discovered the water was kind of chilly, but that wasn't going to stop me. I was larded up like a walrus anyway. All that fast food was good for something. The passing front had gone out to sea, leaving us with just a light offshore breeze, which was working to clean up the faces out there. The water, like it always did after a cold front, had turned a beautiful color of turquoise. It was like walking into a picture on a calendar.

Oh, yeah, back before I had always had surf calendars up in the house, the ones that had photos of world renowned surfers doing impossible things on a wave. My wife was always teasing me about them, telling me that I was dreaming if I ever thought I could do something like that. To her credit, she had once cut out a photograph with my head on it and pasted it to one of the calendar pictures. We laughed about that for weeks. Maybe she did have a sense of humor going for her.

I was the only one out there with a long board, even though they were supposed to be popular again, if you believe trend makers. Riding a long board required a special mind set, making you careful and deliberate about your moves on the board. Short boards were able to do things the long board was never going to be able to pull off, like turn for instance. I exaggerate of course, but you did have to adopt a different riding style.

So while all the young bucks were snapping off turns and fade outs or whatever they are calling it now, I was locked into slow motion riding. While it is true that some guys can look, you know, graceful on a long board, I didn't fall into that category. I did fall a lot though, over the nose, out the back, over the right side, then the left. Surfing is a skill that can be forgotten, so I was finding out.

I didn't care. I was having fun out there. It was giving me a release, time away from my life and all of its predicaments. All around me guys were dropping in and riding. The waves were arriving like clock work. It was unbelievable. So what if I looked like an inflatable balloon riding a surf board.

Two hours passed before I even realized it. My arms were sore from paddling. I had forgotten how much effort went into surfing. Tired, I rode one more wave in to shore and staggered out of the water, with my legs wobbly from all the exercise. A middle-aged tourist couple was standing on the beach and the woman said to me: "Looks like fun." I nodded back at her and told her it was, but hard work. They stared at me, probably wondering whether or not I was going to go into cardiac arrest at any moment.

With my beast under my arm, I walked up to my car, passing by Miss Maxim sunbathing, who was texting somebody on her phone. She glanced up at me as I walked by and smiled. That's right, I thought, I'm the guy with the fat Peter Pan syndrome. It must have been the adrenaline pumping because I felt great, better than I had for a long time, so I exclaimed: "It's unbelievable out there!" We shared a flickering instant together and I walked on to my car.

"So this is what satisfaction feels like," I chortled, laughing, catching a glimpse of my bloated face in the rear mirror as I sat behind the wheel. I didn't care what I looked like at that very moment in time. I was enjoying one of those rare one with the universe moments.

Then, as always with life, things changed. I saw a smudge out on the horizon as I was looking through my windshield. Squinting against the sun, I watched the tiny dot materialize into a small boat. Not ten minutes later I could make out a small skiff, one of those brightly painted ones you might see in a commercial for the Bahamas. "Hey mon, come to our island Paradise, we are so close to A-mary-cah," the smiling man in the TV ad would sing out. Funny, I thought, I had never even been to the Bahamas, even though they were less than a hundred miles away. My wife had always been dead set against going because she thought the Bahamians were all rude.

It wasn't long before I could see that the boat was loaded with Haitians. A small outboard motor was struggling to keep them going. Waves were splashing over the gunnels. They were in a race to make it to shore before they were swamped by the ocean swells.

I had been born and raised in South Florida, home to any number of refugee groups. Cubans running from Castro, people from Central America dodging civil wars, Columbians fleeing right wing death squads, Chinese, even a guy from Somalia I met once on the beach collecting sea shells. The Haitians were in a category all their own. They were trying to escape rampant poverty, launching from the poorest country this side of Bangla Desh. Most of us Floridians were sympathetic, but, you know, after years and years of laying out the welcome mat refugee fatigue sets in.

After all of those years living here I was finally seeing one of the desperate dramas play out before my eyes and not on the local news. A boat load of "migrants" was trying to make it to shore, to a new life. I hurried back down to the beach and stood by the water, silently urging them to hurry up before the boat capsized. Several surfers out on the break had noticed the boat coming in and were paddling over to it. The pier was now crowded with onlookers.

It wasn't more than a hundred yards from shore when the boat listed to one side then tipped over, spilling out the passengers. There were screams, high pitched and frightened. I saw a woman holding a small child, a little girl probably about two, fall into the water. I scanned the surface, watching to see if they came up to the surface. Then I was dashing into the water and swimming madly for the overturned boat.

When I got near the boat I dove down and tried to see if I could find them, the mother and child. Up and down I went, holding my breath as long as I could. Finally, I latched onto the little girl and pulled her above the water. She was gasping for air but seemed to be okay. I held her close to me while I paddled with one hand, looking around for her mother. All around me surfers were paddling up to help.

The little girl was dazed but she kept smiling at me, babbling in Creole. I side stroked back to shore and staggered onto the beach holding the little girl. A tourist was video taping me as I struggled up the beach with the little Haitian girl in my arms. It was that footage that would air on the local news, and then on to You Tube and the networks. Later, after the viral burst, I would be interviewed by several news crews, telling them that some people still want to come to the land of opportunity. It sounded corny but heartfelt. There was a happy ending for the little Haitian girl too when her mother was rescued by a surfer and they were reunited.

Jo-Ann would phone me later, having seen me on TV. Ditto for Laura. Johnny even texted me to say that he was inspired by my heroics and wanted to do a sculpture of the Haitian plight. It goes without saying Brad didn't get in touch, probably wondering why I even tried to save one of the mud people.

After all the hoopla had died down, I settled into my new life, one that had been pared down, reduced to the basics living in a studio apartment serves up. Luckily for me I found a job working at Publix, the grocery store chain in my State. It wasn't in my field of expertise but at least a pay check. Once you have faced expectation a person has to decide what direction to take, one that will hopefully lead to a purpose. For me, I discovered it was to find a way to move on.
