Easy

In "The Great Gatsby," Nick says, "You can't repeat the past."

Gatsby is incredulous: "Can't repeat the past. . . Why of course you can!"

We begin to think that tomorrow will be just like today. Or worse, we don't recognize the irony in Fitzgerald:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter— tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—”

Try it sometime.

* * * * *

Our lives together was something normal, a routine which I never recognized. Sherri worked at the movie theater nights, and I would see her when she got off. We did not go out much. Occasionally we would go to see one of her friends for dinner, but there was no danger or excitement in it. I spent time with her brothers, and soon I was the new male figure in their lives. I would take them out and play ball with them and tease them and quiz them. It was at their house that we spent the most time. On weekends, we went to the new spectacle--the indoor mall.

Going to the mall. I shiver when I write that now. But like everyone else, we got into our cars and drove to the new phenomenon. There were four anchor stores at each cardinal point--a Sears, a J.C. Penneys, and two local department stores, Iveys and Burdines. In between these stores on two levels were the specialty stores. I was against all of it, of course. I talked about the lack of fresh air as we leaned against the second floor railing and felt the floor vibrate beneath our feet. Yes, this was horrible, I would say as I stood watching the pretty girls go giggling by in threes and fours. Then we would go to the Mr. Dunderbach's and get delicious sandwiches and beer sitting below the hanging meats beside the cold case filled with mysteries like blood sausage and head cheese.

We were feeling like adults. There was something in that. We had entered the world. We had duties and responsibilities, and we kept them. I felt it all deeply. This was life, an every day life you could count on. There was family and there was school, and there was Sherri. We had been prepared for this through years of training, images of smiling women taking homemade pies from the oven, men raking the yard, kids sitting on the floor doing their homework. It was easy.

The Smallest Slight. . . .

Sometimes, it is the smallest thing that sets you back. Or maybe it isn't so small. You can't tell. You are not able to judge. Things have been going well and you have been happy. You know that this cannot last, but what can you do? You have some minor success and think that you will build upon that. There is a bright future waiting out there. That is what you hope.

You would not believe what set me back this morning. You'd laugh at the smallness of the thing. It could be a simple oversight, but it might not be. The ego is bruised. I will renew my energy, I tell myself. I will re-commit myself, resurge, reinvent. There will be a quiet seriousness. I will not rely on the approbation of others.

Then I opened Canaperi's blog and saw this.

It should have put things in perspective, right?

I'll tell you the truth. It didn't help. Sometimes it takes only the smallest of slights. . . .

“Human relationships didn’t work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death…in a cesspool.”
Charles Bukowski—1978

Let's Get Lost

I have no image to show today. I do have images, but I must choose from the NYC photos or from the surf series, and I've shown enough of those here. I've gone back and dug up an old image that I don't think I've posted here before, but I don't know. I post too much. Nobody posts this much. I am stuck today, haunted by bad dreams and too much juggling. Sometimes, we just get lost. I've included you in that to make me less lonesome.

"Let's Get Lost."

Markus Jenemark

(photo by Markus Jenemark)

I was surfing around the net looking for good photo sites yesterday and ended up going places I hadn't been for awhile. I went to a site that is sort of the internet standard for certain kind of photographers that I don't go to any more because I am tired of seeing images of landfills and abandoned urban areas. I clicked on some of the links and found a plethora of that which I've come to think of as "The Photography of Complaint." I don't mind that people want to make those images at all, but it reminds me of going to the Whitney Museum. After looking at expressionless faces and the blank remains of the modern world for a while, I clicked on Jan Bernhardtz website and followed the links to some of his own sites. He has a bunch now. I really feel Jan's photos deep down, but I realized that his new photography is also full of strange objects and blank spaces. When I look at his photographs, however, I don't feel The Complaint so much. It is attitudinal and atmospheric, and perhaps it is generational.

(photo by Markus Jenemark)

He had a link on his site to a photographer who is an editor at F Blog, Markus Jenemark. The site is newish and hasn't many photos on it yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw. He doesn't include any words with the photos, only headings, so I was able to link everyone and everything on the site in my mind into one big family. I am pretty certain this is not the case, but I am still allowing myself the fantasy this morning. Here are his children and his wife, his sister and father, etc,. surrounded by the objects of their bucolic life. After The Photography of Complaint, I allowed myself this Gazing with Desire. No matter. Go look for yourself and see what you think. He tells me that he posts about once a week, so there will be a body of work growing in slow motion there.

(photo by Markus Jenemark)

Remember the butter bean we all put on wet sponges in elementary school that grew roots and sprouted over the days until we put it in water and it started to grow toward the window light. Was it a butter bean? Lima? I suddenly wish to grow one and photograph it as a bromide. It was such a simple thing. I hope I remember how to do it.

To Be or. . . Whatever

I started off this morning writing about Kennedy, but it was too easy. I'll save it for a better time.

I've been thinking about Hamlet of late. I am no Shakespeare scholar, so my thoughts are pretty naive, but they are pure. To be or not to be. To act or not to act. To take arms against fate or to suffer. I'm beginning to be of a mind that Shakespeare thought Hamlet's thinking trivial nonsense. All fates lie in the same direction. Where critics take Hamlet's wonderings seriously, I don't think Shakespeare did. Hamlet gave birth to Vladamir and Estragon. I'm finding it more and more difficult to find a likable character in a Shakespeare play. Maybe it is not the language that gives students so much trouble with his plays after all.

I'd have done better writing about Kennedy.

Or Tupac.

But enough of this. I must go face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Or something.

Distraction

The letter came. I was on academic probation. I knew I wasn't doing well in organic chemistry, but my grades were abysmal--a B, two C's, and two D's. I'd managed to get below a 2.0 grade average, hence the letter which informed me that another similar performance could place me on academic suspension. I had really made no friends at the university. I went to my classes and came home. The campus was a sterile, uninviting place to me. Soon, I would be released from my doctor's care. It was time to begin thinking about a new school.

I stopped by to see Tommy one day at the little government housing apartment. It was new and had not yet become run down, so it wasn't as depressing as it would be. His daughter, little Aniston, was as cute as a baby could be and she always smiled when she saw me. And his wife, Suzi, had fallen into a comfortable routine with some of the other mother's in the complex. From the outside, their lives did not look that bad. They had subsidized housing and food stamps. They were getting by.

When I knocked on the door, Tommy opened it a crack and said, "Come here, I want to show you something." I could see he was trying to hold something back with his foot. "Come in quick, and don't let the cat out."

They have a new cat, I thought. But when I slipped by Tommy who was still holding the door, I saw a giant black thing like a baby panther looking me in the eyes. Involuntarily, I jumped.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's an ocelot. Sit down."

I walked over to the couch and sat, but the big cat followed me. It just stood in front of me, looking.

"What the hell are you doing with this? It's scaring me."

Tommy laughed. "He won't hurt you. I found him. I was driving down Mercy Drive the other day and something jumped out of the weeds on the side of the road. I thought I'd hit it and stopped the car to see. When I opened the door, this thing just climbed in. Scared the hell out of me, too. I didn't get in the car for awhile."

As he talked, the ocelot came closer and I could hear it purring, but it was not comforting to me. The low hum inside its chest sounded ominous as it breathed in and out. It bumped my leg with its head like it wanted to be touched, and I could feel the power in it.

"Why do you have this in the house? Aren't you afraid it will eat the baby?"

He shook his head and lit a Marlboro. "No, it is friendly. I looked in the paper and found an ad a fellow had placed who lost his ocelot. I called him. I hope he gives me a reward."

Now the cat had his paws in my lap and was pulling itself up to my face. I could feel the weight of the cat and the shock of adrenaline that I had involuntarily released. I was certain the cat would smell it and go mad, but it just looked at me with those yellow, expressionless eyes and continued with its purring.

"Tommy, get the cat off me. It's scaring me."

He laughed at that and came over, but the cat didn't want to move.

"OK, OK, leave it alone," I said. Goddamnit, I didn't know what to do. Tommy walked across the room and went to a cabinet in the kitchen. As soon as the ocelot heard the door open, it turned and dashed in to see Tommy who was opening a bag of cat treats. I didn't like that thing at all.

"Tommy, I've got to tell you, I think its weird to have that in the house. It's too damned big! Some night you'll be sleeping and it will be pacing around and just decide to eat one of you. I'm not kidding. It's not natural."

"We sleep with the doors shut," he said. Besides, I'm taking him back on Saturday."

The next time I went over, the cat was gone.

"Was the fellow glad to get his cat back?" I asked Tommy.

"Yea, I guess. I put the cat in the car and drove it over there and it ran right into the house. The son of a bitch didn't give me any money for bringing it back, though."

"What!?"

"No, but he gave me one of his frogs. He had a bunch of exotic animals in his house, and he gave me this Amazonian thing." He motioned to a ten gallon aquarium with about an inch of water in it. I walked over and looked inside. There was a giant green frog with a triangle head and arms that looked broken, bent unnaturally in front of its head.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"What does it eat?"

"He gave me these little pellets to put in there, but so far it hasn't eaten anything." With that, he put his finger into the water in front of the giant frog to nudge it, I guess, but quick as a blink, the frogs legs grabbed Tommy's finger and pulled it toward it's large, open mouth. Tommy screamed and jumped, pulling his finger out of the aquarium and high over his head dancing around with a hop and a step, twirling in place. Of course, I had screamed and jumped, too. There we were, the two of us, eyes popped, mouths open, staring at each other and the frog trying to comprehend what had happened.

"You alright?" I asked Tommy. He looked at his finger.

"Yea," he said. Fuck that goddamned thing. I'm going to flush it down the toilet, the little bastard."

He was mad and scared, but he didn't move. He wasn't ready to get near the frog again yet.

Then I started to laugh which made him mad which made me laugh harder until he, too started in. Then we laughed until we cried.

Life was like that then. It was the sort of luck we knew. We had been distracted from the troubles for awhile. It was what we had.

Fate and Hope

The broken hearts/broken minds syndrome seems to be going around. People have responded to two things I've posted lately--the tales of perplexity and the site with surf portraits. Two sides of the coin--Man's Fate and Man's Hope (excuse the gendered language if you can--these are the titles to two Malraux novels written in the '30s). I like having two sites. They look like night and day.

But life has me in its jaws at the moment and I so I am posting what I can. I had a note from my Korean friend the other day (if you don't know, here and here) that broke me up. She has a pretty good command of English, but some things translate comically, I think. She told me that she was feeling bad and took a "menstrual holiday" from work. Sweet Jesus, we are behind the times in the U.S. A Menstrual Holiday would do us all good. My friend went to the beach. See what I mean. Fate and Hope.

Speaking of Malraux, he is often quotable. I'll leave you with some from which to choose. You might find something to make you feel better as I did.

‘The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.’ Malraux, L'Intemporel (3rd volume of The Metamorphosis of the Gods.)

'In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it'. Malraux in a television program about art, 1975.

From La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

• If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?

• The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.

"The art museum is one of the places that give us the highest idea of man.” ("The Voices of Silence")

"There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman."

The quote "What is [a] man? A miserable little pile of secrets" is often falsely attributed to Malraux. The actual quote, "Man is what he hides, a wretched little pile of secrets," is an (until recently) obscure aphorism in the psychiatric community, to which Malraux replied, "Man is what he achieves." (Wikipedia)

I know, I know--Wikipedia. I am getting lazy. Google "Malraux Quotations" and you'll find plenty.

What more can I say? Take care of yourselves. Eat well and healthily right now. Avoid alcohol. Go to bed early--remember, the best sleep is before midnight. Hydrate. Drink a cup of green tea every day. Wash your hands more than you have been doing. And remember, while tragedy is the significant fall of a person due to a character flaw, a wrong decision, and a twist of fate, comedy lies in the reversal of fortune through luck and circumstance. Man's Fate. Man's Hope.

Things Fall Apart

I bought a new camera. Not new, but old. A Mamiya 6, a medium format rangefinder. Then I bought a lens. I sent cashiers checks for each, mailing them from an NYC post office. I dreamed of having them when I got home. The check for the camera did not include the cost of shipping, so I had to send another. The check for the lens never arrived, so I had to have the bank cancel the check and reissue another. Consequently, I waited doubly long to receive them. The camera came first, a real beauty. The lens took another week. Finally, though, I was able to put them together and go make photographs.

I got up the next morning and my air conditioner was not working. When it is ninety-five degrees with 100% humidity. . . . I called the repairmen.

Of course, the a.c. quit. I am the product of depression-era parents who never spent money on luxuries, and they have instilled me with a cosmic guiltiness over such things. I can't shake it even now. I still have not told my mother, for instance, that I am renting an art studio while driving the beater Volvo in the rain with one window that won't close completely and a broken air conditioner.

The repairmen came out that day. They told me that my compressor had frozen up. I asked what could cause that. "Owner malfunction," they said. Together. In tandem. "What?" They showed me the filter. "You need to change these," they said.

My mother buys me filters and tells me to change them all the time. Like every week.

On Saturday, I went shooting with the camera. It did not work right. There is something wrong with the film advance. I don't know. All I can think is that I don't live correctly. I don't have the right values.

Other things are going wrong, too. According to Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

If you are having bad times also, tell your story. Better make it humorous, though. You'll find out. People want to laugh.

A Few Days One Summer

I've set up a website for the photos I have been taking at the beach. I get the email addresses of the people I photograph and tell them I will send them the images, but I have so many now, I can't remember who's who, so a few days ago, I sent them all the web address instead.

Now, you too can share the fun. Just visit A Few Days One Summer. I'll be updating it as long as I continue working on the project. Today, for instance. As soon as I make this entry, I am going to the beach. The weather is iffy, but what else is there to do?

Stripped

The sunlight hit me like a hammer. I'd gone from midnight to noon in the opening of a door. Strip Club. I knew why they called it that now. I didn't have a dollar left. If I came back, I'd have to bring a lot more money. And if I wanted a lot more money, I'd have to get a job. I couldn't spend my mother's and my father's money on this. I'd go to hell for sure. Besides, I had a girlfriend. It was stupid and wrong. Of course, that was why I liked it.

But what do you do at three o'clock in the afternoon after you've been sitting in a Go-Go bar? I didn't feel like studying. The beer had made me hungry. I'd go home and make a sandwich and hang out by the pool.

It took just over a week before I found myself pulling into the parking lot of the Go-Go lounge again. I hadn't meant to, hadn't planned on it, but I was there. It wasn't as difficult this time. I was experienced.

I'd already counted my money and separated it, putting the singles in my right front pocket, the larger bills in my left. I had the fiver in my hand when I walked into the gloom.

"Five dollars," said the rough voice on my right. I handed him the bill without hesitation and headed straight for the bar. The server followed me to the stool. "Give me a beer," I said before she could ask me. A girl in black high heels was dancing. The shoes were pointed and looked too big on her as if she was a kid parading around in the house in her mother's size eights. She wore black underwear and held herself up with one hand on a fire pole that ran from stage to ceiling. I was certain that if she let go, she would topple over on her back. But she didn't let go of the pole. Rather, she reached up with both hands over her head and set herself twirling around and around like an Olympic competitor, circling her legs around the cold metal and letting go, her head stretching to the floor until she was looking at me upside down. I felt my face go red. She stared into my eyes and licked her lips, then stuck one finger in her mouth and sucked on it for a second before slowly placing it between her legs.

"That'll be two-fifty." The barmaid was standing beside me with the beer. I was glad for the interruption.

It wasn't as bright outside when I left this time. Traffic was heavy as people were driving home after work, anxious to make supper and watch the evening news. I thought for a moment. Did my mother drive by here on her way home? I imagined getting the angry phone call that night. What would I tell her? "Oh, mom, don't be silly. A guy in my class is working there. I just dropped off some assignments he missed in class." Yea. That would work.

But the traffic did make me nervous. I really didn't want anyone I knew seeing me coming out of this joint. No, this was a secret.

I was going to see Sherri that night, and I smelled like a very bad bar, so when I got home, I stripped off my clothes and leaped into the shower. Drying off, though, I could still smell something. The whole apartment smelled like it. What the hell? Then I realized what it was. The little pile of clothes lying on the floor had soaked up the sweet and sour smell of cigarettes and beer. They were saturated. It made me wonder what the older, married fellows told their wives when they got home. I was going to have to do some laundry.

Picking up my pants, I went through the pockets, placing my keys and the few dollars I had left on the dresser. My wallet? Where was my wallet? In a panic, I patted down my pants, once, twice, sticking my hands into the pockets over and over again. I swiveled my head quickly back and forth, eyes scouring the floor. I looked at the dresser top, then ran into the bathroom. Shit! Maybe it was in the car, I prayed, grabbing my keys and slipping on my flip-flops as I ran out the door. My eyes were already scanning the front seats as I shoved the key into the lock. Nothing. I jumped into the driver's side and ran my hands along the floorboard. I reached up under the seat where I found some old papers and gum wrappers and three pencils, but nothing like a wallet. I got out of the car and kneeled on rough cement, sticking my head into the car so that I could peer beneath the seats. Over and over again, I ran my hands under the floor mats and into dark recesses where I could not see. No, no, no.

But there wasn't any luck. The wallet was gone. I stood up and stared out at nothing through the twilight for a long moment, thinking. Where could it be? I'd had it when I walked into the bar. Did I pull it out for any reason? Nope. I had not stopped anywhere between there and the apartment. It was gone. It was just gone. I'd had it at the bar, and I didn't have it now. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I was sitting on the metal stool looking up at "Brandy's" cooter like it was the Super Bowl. Or worse. Maybe I'd been pick-pocketed. I thought back. Had anyone come close to me? Maybe it was the barmaid in her little leotard. But that didn't make sense. Nothing did. I knew what I would have to do, but I didn't move. I thought it through, saw myself walking back through the little door into the darkness, heard myself asking the doorman if anyone had turned in a wallet like I was a fool, saw him waving me through to look for it in the darkness, me going down on my hands and knees to search the sticky floor where I had sat, finding nothing, standing, looking around in the darkness like the idiot I was. Naked. Stripped.

Courage

That first term at the university, I had made a mistake. I was taking Statistics, Marine Biology, Organic Chemistry I, Introduction to Physics, and an engineering course that was a school requirement. And I was buried. The coursework was much greater than what I had gotten used to, and I could see right away that there would be no keeping up. But as one must, I was living in denial. I could pull this off, I told myself. God would help me.

I wasn't spending much time out of the classroom at the university. Each morning, I would drive from my apartment on the southern edge of town thirty minutes to the college. By mid-afternoon, I was making the trip back. Most days, I would go out by the pool before studying a little, and then I would wait until evening when I would see Sherri. It was a good life, and an easy one. It was open to temptation.

I drove by one twice each day, one of the two topless go-go bars that had opened in town. I would glance at it as I drove by on my way to school in the morning, sitting in the early sunlight like a ruined palace, the empty dirt parking lot littered with smashed paper cups and cigarette packages. It looked dangerous. In the afternoons when I returned home, the parking lot would be half-full with the cars of the day's first patrons, and I would think about stopping, wondering how one acted while drinking beer and looking at the "Girls Girls Girls" promised by the blinking sign. Now that the drinking age had been lowered to eighteen, I would be able to go, but so far I had only been to a couple of bars with a buddy of mine who wanted the thrill of ordering a drink in one of the lounges connected to an ABC package store, dark and seamy places with cheap highballs of which we knew little. Each morning I would think, "I will go there today just to see," and each afternoon just as I would need to pull into the turning lane to cross the lanes of traffic to the parking lot entrance, my body would go rigid with fright, my jaws clenching, my hands refusing to turn the steering wheel, and I would tell myself, "Not today. Today is not the day."

This went on week after week until I could stand it no longer. I knew that I would have to go. It was no longer the curiosity to see dancing naked women that drove me (though that was certainly a very big draw) as much as the fear--rather the shame I felt at my cowardice. And so one day as I approached the point where my resolve had usually failed me, I made the sweep across the traffic lanes, flying into the parking lot as if I were being chased. Immediately I wondered if anyone who would recognize my car had seen me, already feeling the guilty shame of recognition. Stepping out of the car into the afternoon sunlight, I hunched my shoulders and bent my head toward the ground while walking quickly to the little entrance.

When I opened the door, the darkness and the foul air engulfed me. I stood still waiting for my eyes to adjust for a second before I heard a man's voice next to my ear. "Five dollars," it said. I jumped, startled, for I couldn't see him. I hadn't thought of this. Now what? Five dollars? Just to walk in? Completely disoriented, I thought about turning around and walking back out the door, but I wasn't even certain in which direction that lay, so reluctantly, I reached into my front pocket and rummaged around for a bill. I didn't like carrying big wallets and so I always carried my money loose, sometimes folded but never sorted, and I had no idea what denomination I was pulling out. It was still impossible for me to see. I held the money out in the direction of the voice and felt it taken from my hand. I waited a minute to see if I was getting change, and in a moment that seemed too long, I was handed five bills back. A ten. I felt brilliant. I had given him a ten.

Inside, there was a U-shaped bar built around a lighted stage. All around the room were little tables and chairs. I could see that much. And so stumbling my way through the dimness, I made my way to the nearest bar stool and sat down. Before I had a chance to adjust my seat, a woman dressed in a leotard and a mini-skirt approached me holding a drink tray. In a bored voice bordering on meanness, she said, "What are you drinking?"

"Beer."

She didn't ask me what kind.

On the stage there was a skinny girl who looked my age dancing around in a baby blue bikini bottom. She had the top in her hand and was waving it slowly around her head as she gyrated her hips in big circles with her knees bent. The movement looked as awkward as she looked bored, but now she was dancing her way over to where I sat, the inkling of a smile beginning to scar her face. When she reached me, I had to lean weirdly back to look at her, my head level with her shins. I noticed some folded dollar bills stuck in the waistband of her bathing suit. She was looking down at my eyes with an expression that I guessed was meant to be sexy but which seemed to me to be the look my eighth grade teacher used to give me when she wanted me to know how disappointed she was with something I had done, a sort of punishing sympathy that oozed from every pore.

She stood there squirming around as the song from the jukebox wound down, then bent her knees and brought her head down toward mine. I noticed she was pulling out the waistband to her bikini next to the folded dollar bills. You didn't have to be very smart to figure out what to do next, so I took one of the five bills the doorman had given me and handed it to her. She smiled then and stood up and folded it just right and put it next to the other bills in her waistband. Then, slipping the bathing suit top over her head, she walked toward some stairs at the far end of the stage.

"That'll be two-fifty." The lady in the leotard was standing next to me with a small, sweaty glass of beer on her tray. I put three dollars on her tray and took my beer.

It was going to be a short afternoon, I thought. I'd been in the bar for less than three minutes and had only one dollar left in my pocket. It was a small beer. As I brought it to my lips, I realized that I my eyes were beginning to adjust.

The Audience

I woke to an email from Ulf Fagelhammer this morning. He is the curator of 591 Photography. He was informing me that my part of the Summer Exhibition is featured today. Here is the link. This is quite a privilege for me and an honor. I'd like to thank both Ulf and Rhonda Prince for asking me to participate in the exhibit. If you haven't, look around at the rest of the photographs. 591 is very productive and a great source for new photography. You're bound to find something you like.

* * *

"My mother wants to have you over for dinner. She wants to meet you."

These words sent a shiver through me. I was in new territory here. The last time someone's parents wanted to meet me, I was in the eighth grade. And that hadn't gone so well.

"OK," I said resignedly. "When?"

"Sunday. I don't have to work."

So when Sunday came around, I had no choice but to prepare myself for the visit. From what I'd heard about her mother, I was sure she wouldn't like me. I looked in the mirror. I hadn't cut my hair since high school and since my operation, I had quit shaving, too. "Is this the boy you want dating your daughter?" I asked myself. Of course, I thought I was a swell guy, but the image in the mirror maligned that idea. "I'm a sweet boy," I thought, not for the first time. But the fellow in the mirror wasn't close to being a mother's dream.

Sherri had told me about her father's death and how devastated her mother had been. Now she was left to raise the youngest of her children alone. Sort of. Sherri was still living at home and had become quite a surrogate, helping her mother in every way she could. She, of course, enjoyed it. She was incredible in that way. It was organic, I thought. It was just the way she was built.

I found the house at the blind end of a street just before the turnabout. It was not a spectacular home, but it was much better than the one in which I'd grown up. It was big but practical in a new neighborhood that had been developed to serve white collar families whose men wore suits to work and drove new cars. My jeans and flannel shirt and new work boots were not the right sartorial choice for dinner, but I didn't have anything that was. Resigned, I walk up the swooping sidewalk to the front door. Sherri opened it before I rang the bell.

"Come in," she grinned, taking me by the hand and leading me inside. And there they all were, lined up and waiting behind her to greet me. "This is Anders, and this is Lars," she said indicating the two boys. I shook hands with Anders who was the elder, then with Lars. Twelve and ten. Sherri had already informed me. They were regular looking kids who stood straight and tall, Anders dark, Lars fair, and I could see the surprise register on their faces when I came in. I could tell that I was something new.

"And this is my mother."

Mom was grinning, too. I noticed that they all had the same teeth. Anders and Lars were both in braces, but the teeth were large. They all had big, white teeth which really became noticeable when they were collected this way. I began to think of them as The Chompers. It helped put me at ease somehow.

"Please come sit," her mother commanded, motioning me into the living room. "May I get you something to drink?"

Anders and Lars followed me in and sat down. They barely took their eyes off me. And there we were, all seated in the living room, all eyes turned to me. I grinned stupidly feeling like a lodge moose head mounted stupidly for display, my face, my lips, even my ears involuntarily mimicking the look.

"So you're attending the university?" Sherri's mother asked.

"Yes I am," I answered woodenly as if I were being interviewed by a five o'clock news reporter.

"What is your major?" she continued.

"Zoology."

"Oh, really," she said as if she'd never met anyone who had thought of doing such a thing. It sounded good to me, though, smart, official. Yes, I was majoring in Zoology. I would be a Zoologist. It sounded good. I was on the right track there, I thought. Who could quarrel with that.

Then Anders and Lars began to pepper me with questions, quizzing me about animals and their habits, and Sherri's mother excused herself to tend to dinner saying it would only be a moment. And with her out of the room, I began to relax. It was easy with kids. I told them things that made them laugh, and soon the tension of the moment fell away and we all began to laugh. These were good kids, I thought, and her mother was nice, too. And I could tell that Sherri was happy. "I'm going to go help my mother," she said, and I said, "O.K." The boys wanted to show me some of their things.

This is alright, I thought. Everything could be fine.

Who Wants To Live Like That?

It was time to go back to school. I had enrolled at the new university in my own home town since I would be under doctor's care for a while still. But the college was not much of a place, a few big buildings and a giant reflecting pond carved out of a southern pine forest. New buildings and a series of parking lots. It was uninspiring.

I was required to attend an orientation before the term began. There were a series of them, and for some reason, I picked a Saturday afternoon. I filed into a large auditorium with a host of other mostly unlikely-looking students and found a seat in the rear near an exit door. And then I heard a familiar voice.

"Hey, asshole, what are you doing here?"

It was Steve. I hadn't seen him since he had gotten married and enlisted in the service. He was out now and living in town.

"I played football in the service," he told me. "I was a running back and got my knee torn up so bad that I couldn't play any more. Now they are paying me for a disability and sending me to college."

He looked much the same as when I'd last saw him a couple years ago, but something was different.

"You still playing music," I asked him?

"Sure. Why don't you come out to my house for dinner. I have a music room set up in the house."

My gut told me that I didn't want to go. I could feel the old sinking in my chest, the hopeless despair of growing up around miscreants and criminals. But hell, I thought, maybe he'd changed. I mean, he was going to go to college. He'd been in the service and had been married for years now. Things might be different. So I agreed.

I asked Sherri if she would like to go to dinner with me at an old friend's house who was going to the university this term. She liked that. It seemed more significant to me after I saw her reaction, the gleam and glow that accompanied the "yes." I just hoped everything would be OK.

And so the following week, we drove to a part of town I had never really explored, on the far reaches of the city. He lived in an average looking neighborhood with little block houses and carports and medium sized yards. It didn't look much different from where we grew up. Groups of kids were playing in the street. A worn mother was calling for her kid to come home. I felt an uneasy nostalgia as we drove the curb-less roads looking for the address Steve had given me. And then we were there, a sloppy looking house painted brown with dark brown trim. The yard was mostly sand. It wasn't his house, of course. He was a renter.

His wife greeted us at the door, her voice the same as I remembered, high and cartoon-like. But she was different now, a married woman, a woman who'd lived in service housing, who had socialized with the wives of servicemen. She looked nervous and worried.

"Come in, come in, I have dinner cooking. STEVE, COME OUT HERE! Come in, sit down, I have to check on the chicken."

The inside of the house looked much like the outside. The floors were uncovered Terrazzo, hard and cold. Some mismatched furniture littered a small living room. There was nothing on the walls, nothing you would call decoration. Before we sat, Steve came charging down the short hallway smoking a cigarette and grinning.

"Steve, this is my girlfriend, Sherri," I offered. He looked at her extended hand. He put his cigarette in his mouth and left it between his lips as he shook it. Sherri had a smile on her face, but I could tell by her eyes that she was disoriented. "Hello," Steve said. "Nice to meet you."

Dinner wasn't much. There were a few pieces of chicken and some mashed potatoes and green beans. There wasn't enough chicken for four people and the beans were from a can. Steve gave me a piece of meat that was all bone and fat and gristle. But Sherri sat tall and kept smiling while Steve's wife explained that they were not really moved in yet. Every word she spoke sounded like a distress signal. I noticed she kept shooting furtive glances quickly at Steve as if she were checking something. Things didn't look right between them. Then I realized that this was the first time I'd ever sat down to a dinner prepared by one of my friends. Tommy was married, but we'd never sat down to eat a formal meal. I'd never thought about it before. I felt like my parents, like I was starting on that same, stilted path. But before I could really be overcome by the heebeejeebees, dinner was obviously over. We all sat rigidly silent until Steve said, "C'mon, let's go into the music room." Sherri insisted on staying to help clean up.

Steve took me to a small bedroom crammed with amplifiers and guitars and a reel to reel recorder. He lit up a cigarette and stuck it between his lips and plugged in a six string Rickenbacker. "Here," he said, handing the guitar to me. I strummed a few chords while he picked up his old Hoffner bass. "What do you want to play?" I asked him. He named some song I didn't know. He told me the progression and we began playing, but I kept making mistakes that annoyed him. "Do you know any Crosby, Stills, and Nash" I asked him? He told me to play and he would follow along. Our musical tastes had obviously diverged in the years since we'd played in a band together. Our playing was awkward and unsatisfactory and soon we fell to riffing instead of playing songs. And then Steve broke out a joint. He lit up and took a hit and handed it over to me, but I held up my hand in polite refusal. "No, no thanks, that's OK," I said, "I don't smoke any more." He looked at me as if I were a Martian. He couldn't understand the language, it seemed.

"What?"

"No, really, I don't want any." And with that, Steve took a hit with a vengeance and put down his bass. Just then Sherri walked in and Steve offered her the joint. Sherri looked at me as if she were wondering if it was expected of her. I gave two slight shakes of my head and looked to the floor.

"Oh, no thanks," she said.

It was dark when we got into the car. It had been a dreadful night. "Did you have a good time?" I asked Sherri.

"Yes, they were very nice."

"No they aren't," I said. "Steve is not nice. He's never been nice. And his wife's a nut. I don't ever want to go back there again."

"Well, the night was a little odd," she said.

"Odd? What the fuck was for dinner? They gave me a chicken asshole to eat. Did you see that?"

She was laughing now and it sounded good. The further we got away from the house, the better I began to feel. Ghosts and hobgoblins. That was all. I didn't have to go back. I wouldn't. I was in the car with Sherri who had never lived like that before. She smelled sweet. Her voice was untroubled. We would go back and lie on my bed and turn on the little black and white t.v. We would laugh and snuggle. Poor Steve, I thought. But I didn't really care.

The Genie and the Bottle

I was not much with tools. I'd never had a fascination with building things. My father was a tool and dye maker and had every tool you could imagine and some that you couldn't. He fixed things around the house and worked on his own car and would take the television apart and test the tubes with a meter and then go to the store and buy new ones to make the old black and white work. But when he'd ask me to help him, I was miserable. I would stand in the sun while he changed the brakes on the car. We were supposed to be bonding, I guess, or I was supposed to be learning important life lessons, so he would ask me for a tool and I would inevitably hand him the wrong thing. Eventually, he would tell me to go play. Released from ignominious toil, I would run as far as I could just to be away.

So when I finished tightening the last nut on the new workout bench I bought, I felt an unjustifiable sense of achievement. I stood back and looked at my work. A weight bench. It looked flimsy and cheap. I hoped it wouldn't fall apart. I set the skinny bar on the rack and put some of the little cement weights covered in plastic on each side. It didn't look very heavy. I lay down and lifted it. One, two, three. . . .

Sherri had gotten a job. She was the manager of one of the new Twin Theaters that were just beginning to spring up. I couldn't imagine it. She was nineteen, but she was the manager. She made schedules for the kids selling tickets and popcorn and counted all the money at night putting it into heavy zippered bags and placing them in a thick metal safe. She was a nineteen, as I said, and a Cub Scout Den Mother and the manager of a movie theater. And a full-time student. The girl stayed busy which was OK with me. My life was not greatly changed except for having a girlfriend. There weren't many hours required.

Sometimes, though, we would meet up with some of her friends. One was a pretty brunette, an Italian from a big family that lived in a small house. I never could figure out how they all fit. Whenever we went over there, ten or twenty of them were sitting around the living room watching television and yelling about something. I felt awkward as if I were spying on some dirty family secret, but nobody ever seemed to mind. Her mother would come out and ask us if we would like something to eat, happy to see us in that distressed tone. Happily distressed, I thought, feeling as though putting the two words together made me clever. But I wasn't clever, I knew, for I was never able to hide my yearning for Sherri's friend and all her sisters, older and younger, each one dark with slow, hooded eyes that seemed to reveal the absence of heavy thought or distressing notions. I thought of them as "uncomplicated." In their presence, I was always jumpy, my head snapping this way and that. The estrogen, it seemed, affected my nervous system.

It was Sherri's fault, of course. She had changed me. Before, I had maintained the old romantic notions of love. It had always been something far away, remote, an achingly unattainable goal, a sweet and heavy yearning. Now, however. . . it was attainable. It was corporeal. It attacked my every sense so that sometimes even walking felt impossible. I would be gripped by seizures, arrested by desire. What else was there? It is hard to put the genie back into the bottle. I was already fallen. I had the knowledge. The knowing. Memory is funny, unreliable as it is. Some things are difficult to remember and other things are just impossible to forget. There was no forgetting now. It was Sherri's fault. Yes. Yes. Sherri.

The Clown

I could go out now. I could drive a car again. I hadn't even been dressed for two months. It was time.

So I showered and went to my closet. A shirt, some jeans. . . . But these weren't mine. I couldn't begin to get them on. What the hell? I tried another pair, but the result was the same. Two months of lying in bed and eating three squares a day plus snacks had done a number on me. I went to the mirror. I guess I didn't look so good. Jesus Christ, how was I going to go to the store to buy pants if I couldn't put any on? I couldn't wear my pajamas. And so miserably, I found the biggest pair of pants I had and struggled to suck in my gut enough to get them fastened. But I couldn't. I was sweating. Bad.

I called my mother in a near panic to tell her. "What am I going to do?" I asked.

"There are some safety pins in the kitchen drawer. See if you can get your pants fastened with one."

More sucking, more sweating. Finally, it was done. I put my shirt over the top of my pants and found my keys. I couldn't breathe.

Outside, everything was too bright. It was Saturday, so there were people about the complex. I walked by a couple who said hello. I raised my hand in an awkward wave. I felt ridiculous. Surely they were talking about me now. "What the hell was wrong with him," I imagined the fellow saying to the girl. She would wrinkle her nose as if she smelled something bad and then the two of them would laugh. I was fat, pale, pasty, flabby, stiff, and ill-dressed. I wanted to go inside, take my clothes off, and go back to bed.

I unlocked the door to my car. Bending to sit made everything worse. Sitting, I pushed my hips forward and leaned back as far as I could trying to ease the pressure. I was certain the safety pin wouldn't hold, that something would tear or break and with a sudden "pop" I would be exposed. But excruciatingly and with great care, sucking in my stomach, my thighs already going numb, I was able to keep it fastened.

I strarted the engine and put the car in reverse. I couldn't turn to look over my shoulder, of course, so I looked into the rear view mirror and prayed that I wouldn't hit anything. Then I eased out onto the highway. Zip, zip. . . Holy Moses. The speed limits must have changed. By now my shirt was soaked with sweat, my heart beating like a rabbit's. My hair was beginning to feel greasy.

The Mall. People were everywhere, a giant horde of "normal" folks marching around merrily on their day off. It made me dizzy. But I had to get pants. I couldn't stay in these much longer. And so I went into a men's store and made a beeline for the jeans.

A slick man came over right away. He was thin, wearing slim polyester pants and a polyester shirt tucked in and pinned to his underwear. That is what I guessed, anyway. He had short hair with long sideburns and a short mustache. When he said, "May I help you," there was condescension in his voice. But I didn't have time to argue.

"I need a pair of jeans," I said quickly.

"What size?"

I told him a size two up from what I used to wear. I could tell he thought that was funny, but he pulled some out of a stack.

In the dressing room, I couldn't get them on. I stuck my head out and saw slick standing over by the register. "Hey," I yelled, I need a larger size. He took his time reacting, turning to the fellow he was talking to and saying something that made the other fellow grin, then slowly he walked over to the jeans and pulled out another pair.

They looked ridiculous. They waist was much larger than the length. They were clown pants. I thought of a silly song I had once heard, "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down my pants." I looked into the mirror. I was a clown, alright, but the pants fit around my waist. This was the size. This was me. But now what? Was I going to wear them out or try to squeeze back into the pair I wore in. I thought about that for a moment before deciding not to provide the salesman with any more fun. And so, tortuously, I squeezed back into the pants I had come in, sweating and panting squirming, trying to fasten the latch of the safety pin over and over again.

Back home, I ripped off my clothes and fell into the bed. I lay there for a moment thinking. I reached down and felt my stomach. It was hideous. How had I let this happen? Why hadn't I noticed. I thought about Sherri. Maybe she had never realized. It was always dark or dim. I was always lying down. I was miserable. And I was hungry. What the hell. I got up to see if there were any more of the cinnamon rolls my mother had bought.

Responsibility

The days went by, my mother taking care of me in the daytime, Sherri providing the care at night. When my father met Sherri, he liked her immediately. He could make her laugh and blush which gave him a big kick. And as the days went by, I became accustomed to the new routine. And despite my early fears, I was not smitten by any plague or disaster, and I continued to heal. Eventually, I was allowed to walk a bit, and I was able to get out of the apartment. I began a slow shuffle around the complex where I lived. I had not seen it though I'd lived there for a month. I found that my apartment was not far from the pool, and so in the cool afternoons, I would sit in the warm sunlight and listen to the outside world come drifting on the breezes. There was rarely anyone else there during the week, so I would sit and think without thinking amid the whirling images that swept by one after another.

"You are really healing up," my mother told me. "I didn't think a hole that big could ever heal." And one afternoon on my weekly trip to the doctor, he asked me, "How are you feeling?" And in a throw away line, I told him, "Fine. Good." "Well," he said, "I think you can start moving around now. You will still need to do the Sitz baths in the morning and at night, but you can get back to doing the things you were doing before."

Just like that, I was free. Or my mother was. She would no longer have to come to the apartment every day to play nurse. All that was required now, I could do myself.

I didn't know how I felt. I would no longer be cared for. I would do all the things life required once again. I would cook and clean and do dishes. I would resume my studies.

And I would have to go out with Sherri.

I hadn't seen this coming somehow. Oh, it was nice having her there with me alone in the night, just the two of us, but now what? I had not wanted a girlfriend, I thought, at least not like this. There would be responsibilities, duties. I would have to take her around to my friends. What else? I wasn't sure. I hadn't had a girlfriend since I'd gotten a car. I'd barely had a date. I wasn't certain what all this entailed.

But Sherri was thrilled at the news. We wouldn't be shut up in the apartment any more. We could go shopping and to movies. I could come over and meet her family.

My god, I wondered, what had I done? I wasn't certain, but I knew what I would have to do.

Things Gone Wrong

(film fogged by airport X-ray machine--evidence of things gone wrong)

My phone lines are down. A moving van came through yesterday and pulled them off the house, and so I am without internet. I am stealing this from the neighbor outside on my laptop so that I can post today, so my post will not be lengthy. Things are falling apart all about me. Not just around me. It goes deeper than that. But it is both. Some examples. I sent certified checks to vendors, one for my camera and another for the lens. One was for the wrong amount and the other was never delivered. I still do not have the camera and lens. They are not even in the mail yet. I left work early yesterday to go to the beach and take more surf photos. It began to rain as soon as I got there. I used some of the film I took to NYC in my Holga at the beach last weekend. When it came back from the lab, the rolls were almost black, fogged by the airport X-ray machines. I feel dread and the looming of gloom, and I must begin a regimen that will keep it all at bay. It is the season of violent and destructive storms here. Discipline. I must be vigilant.

* * * * *

The routine continued day after day. There is something about a routine, though, that is comforting. You know what to expect and there is a rhythm like the beating of a heart. So I bathed and ate and watched T.V. and waited for Sherri to come over in the evenings. And fortune of fortunes, PBS began running a series that carried me through the weeks, "An American Family," the exploits of the Louds. In this documentary, a film crew took up part-time residence with an all-American California family. Week after week, under the camera's gaze, the family disintegrated. I couldn't wait for each installment.

And so the routine. Day's with my mother, weekly trips to the doctor, T.V. shows, and weekends with my father.

And Sherri at night. She was a happy girl, always beaming. She was from the south and had a syrupy accent that was charming, too. At first, I wondered that she came over every night, but in my youthful naiveté, I came to accept it as some tribute that I was due and put the thoughts and wondering aside. As all young men feel without thinking, without the knowledge that they feel it, without the ability to articulate it. . . .

But of course even a routine cannot remain unchanged. Slowly, imperceptibly, one element here, another there, there are subtle shifts and dislocations. And then, of course, comes the moment when everything in the structure is subject to a radical restructuring. Boom!

Sherri and I were friends. She stopped by with gossip from school and stories about her life. She told me about her family, about her father dying of cancer in her senior year of high school, of her mother, a southern aristocrat who had always been privileged, who had always been cared for, now debilitated by the tragedy, of her older brother and sister, both married, both parents, both living in other states, and of her younger brothers at home to whom she now played surrogate parent. She was nineteen and already a cub scout den mother. The stories unfolded night after night in the intimacy of the bedroom of my otherwise barren apartment. I heard it all, but somehow I had not paid attention.

And so as things go, one night as she moved close to me, I saw her eyes go soft, limpid. She leaned close to me and paused, staring. Instinctively, I knew what I was to do. I was surprised by it and had not thought of it, being content merely to have her company at night, to have the distraction from the empty room and the loneliness. I had neither anticipated this nor expected it, but now it was there, the liquid eyes and the slightly parted lips and the almost imperceptible leaning, and knowing what was expected, I was too embarrassed not to. And so we kissed.

It was an embarrassed kiss, not one of passion, but then her hands were on me and my mind began to spin. Christ, I thought, I am an invalid, and for all purposes an unconfessed virgin. What was she thinking? What was she doing? But there was nothing to stop it, nothing crying "no." It seemed to me that I had something to say, as if I wanted to explain some point that might have been overlooked, but I didn't or couldn't, choked by guilt and pleasure and something else. There seemed nothing to do but close my eyes to the spinning world and enter it as it was, vertiginous and imperfect.

When she was gone that night, the bed continued to spin. What now? I wondered. She was happy when she left. She would be back tomorrow. I was no longer above the fray, no longer an aloof observer. All of that was over now. Things would surely go wrong.

Routine

Three times each day, I had to soak in a tub for half an hour. A Sitz bath, the doctor said. And that is how my morning started. I would rise and strip the bandage from my wound, and sit in a hot bath for half an hour. If you are going back to bed after rising, I have to admit, it is not a bad thing. After that, I would lie on my stomach under a heat lamp to dry the healing flesh. That is when my mother would show up ready for work. I would lie there as she went about the business of sprinkling the area with an antibiotic powder and then packing the incision with gauze.

"My, this is really deep. I don't know how it is going to heal," she said that first morning of our new routine. I had nothing to say. I could only trust that it would. I could not see the thing nor did I want to try with a series of mirrors. My mother's reactions were enough.

Before eight o'clock, she was gone, and I was left to lie on my little rubber donut to read or to watch the little 13" black and white television with it's four stations. And so life became a routine. Usually, I would fall back to sleep for awhile with the t.v. on until mid-morning when there were some reruns of old shows that I could watch, Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dick Van Dyke, Bewitched, and That Girl. At noon, I would have to climb back into the tub once again and wait for my mother to arrive on her lunch break. And once again, she would repeat the cleaning and powdering and packing after which she would make us lunch. I was eating big double decker sandwiches loaded with meat, and cans of Campbell's soup, and fruit and cookies and whatever else she brought into the house. When she went back to work, there was nothing to watch on television, but I usually fell into a food coma and slept for much of the rest of the day. At five, when my mother got off work, we went through the routine yet again and then she would leave in a hurry to get home. Sometimes, my father would come by, but he lived a long distance from my apartment, so I saw him mainly on the weekends. And so as the sun would go down, I had the night to myself with a pile of books and magazines and the little black and white t.v.

This might have been maddening for someone else, but for me, it was not so unusual. I grew up an only child and was used to occupying myself and being alone. Still, there was a spookiness about lying in a bare apartment day and night, eating and watching t.v. and taking baths and sleeping. I got to know the rhythms of the apartment complex, the activity of people going to their cars in the mornings and coming home at night, the scraping of shoes on the sidewalks, the metallic grating of starters, the dying of engines, the hushed thumping of car doors. There was nothing to do but lay and wait.

So I was not unhappy when Sherri came by one evening as my mother was finishing up with me. My mother and I looked at one another after the knock on the door. I heard my mother say hello and then, "Go on in. He's in the bedroom."

I stared at the door frame, waiting.

"Hi," she beamed with that toothy smile. I thought I'd stop by to see how you were doing."

Living in the little cracker box house with my father, I had not had company at home for of years, and so I was more than a little awkward and not sure how to proceed.

"Hi. Come in." There were no chairs in the room, nor in the entire apartment for that matter, so I wiggled and said, "Here, you can sit on the bed."

And within a few moments, my mother said that she had to go. She had a look in her eye when she told me she'd see me in the morning. Then I heard the front door close. I looked at Sherri. She was beaming.

Accuracy and Truth

I take liberties when I write, of course, not to lie but to tell the truth. What, you might query? But I am not a reporter. I leave things out and enhance what is important to me so that I can reveal the emotional truth. If there is such a thing. But anyone looking at my photographs will know that even in using a camera, I am representing rather than recording.

Anyway, I got an email from my Korean friend who I met in NYC.

Thank you very much for making my story nicely
I like it very much and I am very glad to be written by you
I'm so sorry but would you mind if I ask to correct or delete something?
I think something is not true. I'm sorry if I told you like that

"For two nights she stayed "in a very big apartment on the Upper West Side. He has a lot of money and a balcony that overlooks the park. But this morning, he was very cold to me. He told me that he could not see me any more, that he had a new girlfriend and what he had done was wrong."

I think It's not a very big apartment..It was a very nice, to be sure but I think It wasn't big and he makes money a lot but doesn't have money a lot because he doesn't save money , spend moeny a lot..I'm sorry if I make you feel bad but I don't want to write not true and I think some people might think that i like him because he is rich
That's not true and I don't want that anyone think like that
I'm so sorry but please correct a little for me

I am certain that she did not like him for the money. Do not think that. No, no, not at all. I am sorry, M, if it seemed that way. Your words will be my correction. I am flattered that you trusted me tell it at all.

M tells me that her trip was good for her, that she knows that she must act now and do things to change her life. Yes, that is what travel does for it. And now she is back to work. I have all my fingers and toes crossed. I have travelled much and it seems that all my insights and resolutions get trampled on by the tyranny of work. Maybe not the work so much as the conditions that surround it. But there is nothing as liberating as travel--even if it is to say goodbye.

My friend has written to me and told me a little of what happened after we parted, of what happened when she picked up her belongings. Curious? I will ask her if I can tell that part, too.

After Care

It was mid-afternoon when she walked in. I had recovered from the drugging. Now would come the weeks of healing. I would be confined to bed for most of the time. And so I was lying in the adjustable hospital bed playing with the controls that would put me in one or another more comfortable position when she stopped in the door frame and smiled.

"Hello," she beamed. "How are you?"

She was wearing a mini-dress that showed her legs. She had good legs and and a lot of dresses.

"Hello. I am as you see," I said, spreading my arms to the room. "Come in."

And we chatted about nothing, really, but it was nice to have the friendly distraction like the chirping of birds in the room. And when she sat, there were those legs that seemed to lengthened when she sat as the little dressed inched up a bit.

She came every afternoon for the rest of the week. When I first came to the hospital, there were many visitors, but by the time I was to be released, people had done their duties and had tired of coming, but not my new friend Sherri. Each day she would come, sometimes bringing me candy or a magazine, always smiling that big smile. I didn't really know what to make of it. I didn't know what to do.

One day, the doctor came into my room to examine me.

"You look like you are ready to go home," he said to me while turning to my mother. She had come to consult with the doctor. "You will have to change the bandage three times a day. Now here is what you do," and he told me to roll over on my stomach. Then he pulled the bandage off and they were helping my mother to a chair. The nurse told her to put her head between her legs. I think she might have blacked out while she was sitting.

When she finally was upright again, she looked at the doctor and said, "I can't do that."

"Well, somebody has to," he told her.

Later, when everyone was gone, I asked my mother what we were going to do.

"I will have to do it, honey," she said. "But it is deep. I've never seen anything like it before. But I will come over on my way to work, then at lunch, and then again on my way home. That's the only thing to do."

And the next day, I was released from the hospital. Banished, really, for when I got to my new apartment, it was bare but for a bed and a small, 13" black and white television. And after I was situated, my mother left. There was food in the refrigerator and the little television without remote control. There were no nurses, no drugs to help me sleep, no buttons to push to make the bed conform to my wishes. My mother would be by in the morning. I lay in the bed, eyes open, miserable. I was alone.

Aspire

Hours and hours of scanning and cooking photographs. It is exciting, but tedious and boring, too, the hours flying away until there are no more. Now there is work, the working world, as well. The hours stolen by work are more than the ones you put in on the job, of course. You think about it before you go, you think about it afterwards. No, a job leaves little time for living in the present. And mucking about with photographs has left me little time for writing. I want to get back to my narrative. Tomorrow. There is nothing that can't be done tomorrow, as they say.

Now, though, I must prepare for all the things I've left undone and which have come to be done since I went away. Loathsome. But Philip Larkin worked and wrote those wonderful poems besides. I read one review that called them a "piquant mixture of lyricism and discontent." Now there's something to which one may aspire.

Tomorrow. I promise. There is nothing that can't be done. . . .

Another Day at the Beach

"You're right. It's awfully jungular now."

"What do you mean 'jungular?'" I asked.

"Of or having to do with a jungle."

"I don't think that's a word. Jungly, maybe."

Suddenly, though, nothing sounded right. Jungle. I thought about the word but couldn't define it on a bet. It is an old word, I thought, archaic. It has no contemporary meaning.

* * * * * * * *

Back from New York, but still on vacation, I decided to go to the beach and pick up on the surfer series again. Driving over, though, I began to have doubts and fears that I would not be able to do it, would not have the nerve or the luck I had before. Despair and disappointment began to form a cloud around me as I thought about the camera and lens I had just bought on eBay that would be here next week. Useless, I thought. They would never get used.

But the day was clear and bright and the beach white and beautiful. Driving toward the jetties, though, I realized that it was high tide and higher than normal due to the proximity of the Full Sturgeon Moon. The driving was not so easy. The choice was either to drive through the soft sand or through the sand packed with salt water, and wishing to do neither, I decided to park where I was. I turned my wheels and drove into the softer sand and immediately felt my car sink. Uh-oh. I put it in reverse immediately and the tires began to spin. I was stuck. I got out to look at the tires and they were not in deep at all. The car did not look stuck. It looked fine. There was nothing to do but get back in and try to gingerly get the wheels to catch some traction. No deal. Of course, I'd bought the cheapest tires I could get and they seemed to lack something, some purchase, as they began to spin and throw sand into the air. The car dropped another inch. The old Volvo's three inch clearance was nearly exhausted.

I started to get into the car again when I heard a voice cry out, "If you need some help, we can push."

Sheepishly, I assumed the pose of a schlemiel, shoulders raised, palms up, and got into the car. The two guys were older even that I, but with their pushing, the bucket of rust began to move.

In half a panic, I drove back up the beach where the beach was broader and firmer and parked the car again. No sinking. This time, I was fine. Shaken, I grabbed the little Holga and three rolls of film and began to walk. Hot. Bright. A boy and a girl with surfboards walked toward me up the beach. OK, I thought, I'll ask.

"Excuse me. . . . " They posed beautifully together. And as always, I pronounced the day a success already. For that, the drive was worth it.

Then came a father and a daughter. Then a girl I'd photographed a couple weeks ago.

In a little while, I was done. How had I managed it? I don't know.

And so I finished the day with an hour of body surfing, swimming hard, kicking my feet and arching my back until I felt the lift and then the glide, swimming back out without touching bottom but paddling as if I had a board, then floating and rising with the swell until the next set came in.

Now showered and slathered in cocoa butter, I sit on the veranda of the sushi bar alone once again. I wanted to see "500 Days of Summer" at the little art film house in town, but when I got there, the line was long and I thought it better to go another day. But before you say, "Good, the trip has had its effect," remember that I am still on vacation. I have not yet returned to work. It certainly will not take long for them to beat it all out of me.