37. Dad's Desk

.

‘Wait until your father gets home!’ That’s what Mom used to say when the trouble I’d gotten into was more than she could deal with. Those 6 simple words always had the desired effect – which is to say, they scared the bejesus out of me. No, it was worse than that – they scared the bejaysus out of me! ‘Wait until your father gets home!’ It’s the sentence that’s been going around in my head for the last half hour, eversince I went somewhere I shouldn’t have gone and did something I shouldn’t have done.
.
What the hell did you do now?
.
Got myself into some trouble. Dad’ll be home soon. It’ll be Big Trouble. Better come up with answers, because that’s what he’ll be looking for. Straight answers and lots of them. I sat behind his desk, plain and simple. Stepped over one of the new lines he’d so clearly drawn and transgressed, as a result, a number of his new rules. It started out innocently enough… but one thing can lead to another…
.
Been minding my own business, reading the newspaper, when the telephone rang. By the time I’d finished and got pants up, flushed toilet, washed hands and got out the bathroom door, it had rung 8 times. Been expecting a call from Rachel for days and, certain she was the one ringing my bell, I shot down the hall like a heat-seeking missile, intent not to miss it. Heading for the phone in the living-room, about to descend the stairs, I saw Dad’s bedroom door was open and the ringing was also coming from in there. We’ve always had just the one phone in the house, the one in the kitchen, and I’d forgotten that Dad had put one in his room a while back, after he had a line put in when he brought home the laptop and required Internet access. (The phone he brought home - also from the office -was installed on his desk beside the laptop: I know he makes calls because sometimes I can just about hear him talking, usually late at night, but I don’t know to whom, can never make out the words.) Standing there at the top of the stairs, I was no more than 10 paces from his bedroom door, when the 9th ring registered. Downstairs was at least 50. Time was of the essence. Dad’s rule about not going into his room when he wasn’t there was not present to mind. I was on Auto Pilot, remember – I was a heat-seeking missile, and in the heat of the moment I chose to answer the nearest phone – thereby, inadvertently breaking the rule.
.
And, of course, the phone being on Dad’s desk and all, caused me to break the other rule, the one about not going near his desk. As I’ve said, it started out innocently enough, no malice aforethought or bad intentions, no immediate awareness of being in violation of the requests he’d made and I’d agreed to. Oblivious to the invisible lines.
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Dad likes to think of himself as a pretty reasonable guy, practical and logical. I guess he is, too, most of the time. When he hasn’t been drinking, or isn’t under any out-of-the-ordinary stress. So, the reason why I went into his room will be, I think, acceptable to him.
.
But what I’d gotten up to while I was at his desk is another bucket of cockles.
.
There is no acceptable answer.

.

 

36. Sleepwalking

By God if this house isn’t booby-trapped! Hair-triggers everywhere just waiting to be tripped. A certain smell, a song on the radio, a word repeating in my head - can throw a switch that makes memories run in dream-sequence looking like half-remembered recently-discovered old home movies. Like being taken by the hand down a long forgotten lane. When it happens, a warm drowsiness slips over me like a woollen mitten and I head for the solace of bed. To find myself (or lose myself, depending on factors I struggle to control), to seek the security of pillows, the place I rest this fractured head.
.
There’s no place like home.

.

.

It’s been happening more frequently these past few days. Happened again yesterday afternoon in Judy’s room. Went in to feed Fred and was dragged headfirst into a waking/standing stupor. A familiarly sweet smell was the trigger this time - froze me to the spot for the briefest moment - felt like fireworks all the colors of the rainbow going off behind my eyes. And I remember thinking
.
Uh-oh, there they are, Past’s stretchyfingers reaching into the present.
.
The scent was Judy.
.
On the dressing table, amidst countless colourful cosmetic containers that completely covered the counter-top, I spied a small bottle of perfume: Anais Anais. Oxygen and Gravity conspired together to make me sit down and, standing no longer an option, I dropped to her bed and found myself back at
.
That Night.
In the hospital.
.
Buried face in her pillows but couldn’t escape the image, a frame from a film noir, perfectly (perversely, too, maybe) preserved in Time:

.

My father’s hand

holding a cup of steaming espresso

violently trembling

shaking in a kind of Morse Code

I cannot decipher

.

.

It still hasn’t ended
.
That night
she keeps dying
in my head

35. Like Father Like Son

I thought, just for a change, I’d take advantage of the supervised study session taking place in the school’s library this evening. Yeah - me and about half a dozen other sad sacks.
.
Been staring for the last hour at Doubtfire’s book and can’t make head or tail of the text. Trying to recall just what it was that caused the honeymoon period with my new friend, Writing, to come to such an abrupt

.

.

probably when I first realised - and was overwhelmed by - the amount of disciplined work and focused energy it would take to complete a novel, or to finish up just one of the dozen rambling short story’s I had on the go. The enormity of it immobilized me. And what, in the end, did I have to show for it all? A few short stories (mostly unfinished), a poem or two (about holes), and the first few chapters of what was going to be a novel, a crick in my neck and a shiny callus near the top knuckle of my birdy finger. 
.
Suffered writer’s cramp on occasion towards the end, but managed to write on through it. Suffered writer’s block, too, once or twice, but, unlike cramp, you can’t just write on through it. What can you do when the block comes? Bash your head against the desk. In pain. In vain. But, I ask you, Journal, does that a writer make? Not! And anyway, perhaps I would write, but I just don’t have any ideas at the moment. I’m plotless. Or am I just caught in the shadow of Dad’s weakness – suffering nothing more serious than a simple lack of discipline?

34. Flying Cheese

In bed, SnakeLight wrapped around neck, watching shadows wax and wane as I look this way and that, trying to shake off a dream still as real and physically present as the grains of sand left behind in the eyes after the Sandman’s paid a visit.
.
A dream where I’m lost in space:
.
   a rectangular swathe of white ground (about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide) beneath, nothing but blackness above and all around a choir of children’s voices beset me in surround-sound from giant speakers I cannot see a nostril-crinkling smell (like Gruyere cheese melting under a grill) crinkles nostrils as strong wind blows dragging hair back on head with invisible fingers
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   voices sing Step on a crack look down and notice that along with the rest of me feet are bare ‘white ground’ beneath soles as dry flimsy blue Rizla paper clicking sound fills aural space when voices pause evenly spaced rows of thinstraightbluelines crossing magic carpet surfing inky-black night swallows me up straight and fine
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    lines… the word ‘feint’ comes to mind the why exceeding grasp gasp with each click a small round hole appears in the (gradually turning yellow) fabric I’m precariously standing upon what with the color and the randomly dotted holes I dont I dot I do believe that the fabric is metamorphosing into a huge slice of Swiss cheese beginning to feel faint start walking carefully exerting all the force I can muster keep on straight and narrow and an arrow through the head for Custer (in the kitchen)
.
    voices again: Break your mother’s back followed by a series of clicks the sound of paper-hole-puncher pumping out punched holes like confetti each step I take more harrowing dangerous than the last time walking forward faster more frantic with every footfall knowing all the while that at any moment now I will step into a Blackhole forever          
              falling
Backwards
In Time.
.
Tick-tick-tick. Through space –
.
click-click-click
.
Same sound fills ears only now the flying slice of magic cheese has turned back into the bed and the bunched-up pillows punched up for support.
.
Pen poised at the ready, I’m wondering (yet again) where the sound is coming from. Is it Dad ? If I’m right, I won’t disturb him, it’s very late and he’ll be wondering what I’m doing up. If I’m wrong and he’s fast asleep, I’ll slip in and steal a cigarette. Lines or no lines.

Could sure use a smoke right about now.


later
Crescent moon hangs precariously on flatvelvet backdrop. Cheese by ashtray on bedside table – a lump thereof: stiff and oily as a Madam Tussaud waxwork. Like some far away planet glowing in the moon’s jaundiced light.
.
Words crawl in. Words crawl out. Words play pinochle on your snout. Spilling inkblack upon virgin (no longer) page.
.
Cheese before bed. Bad idea if you want to avoid vivid dreams. It’s all the ‘B’ vitamins. In the cheese, I mean.

.

,

B’s. Beware: Bumps, Bends and Blackholes Dead Ahead. Lump of Swiss. Lump in throat. Can’t swallow down words anymore. They’re gushing up and spurting out at breakneck speed, and fall mouthless, treading paper carefully between lines
.
getting down to it
.
spilling the beans
.
stepping on a crack…
.
breaking your mother’s back
.
Lump of hashish next to cheese. A kind and unexpected gift - or ‘token’ if you will - backhanded to me by Mikey this morning as he headed off to work after a short, unplanned visit and a quick cup of coffee. He said the guys were meeting up next Friday to shoot the shit and roll the die and that I’d better turn up this time, or else! I think I just might.
.
Is it hash?
.
Well, it’s hashish.
.
That’s clever. You’re funny!
.
You make me laugh, too. Thanks.
.
Beside the cheese. Near the wasted roach
.
in a bed of dust
.
dead in the ashtray
.

Words. BlackhOles


                                                cosmic forces


                   c a s


                    h o                            ran


dom


                               travel


                                                                       TIME


                matter


                                                                                                Energy


            ngth equilibrium
Wav  


       ele




bleed shiny from silver nib


pulling themselves


up by bootstraps


out of dark weedy place


go marching across page


arm in arm two by two


grab your partner dosey-doe!


dancing words


footloose


fancyfree


                                                             high


stepping


             out
stepping

33. Three Friends & A Die

Now it’s dark.
.
Outside, too.
.
Look! A UFO!
.
Yes, a little one. Hovering. Down below. There! See? A tiny red light winking. Off and on.
.
Rub eyes to erase illusion and look again.
.
Red light grows bright
.
dies
.
down. Drop about three feet
.
dangles
.
UFO shoots forward
.
flies w obb

                   ly
.
loses                  velo
c
i
t
y

falls
   to earth.
.
Dark.
.
Nervous - click - laughter (is it me?) as understanding clicks into place. It’s Stevens again. Playing with his glow-in-the-dark Frisbee. Smoking a cigarette under cover of darkness. Alone. Again. Sad and spooky.
.

Time to get out of here.
.
Going out tonight with the guys. Rumor has it we’re meeting in Maggie’s Pub at 9 for a beer and a roll. Hope Dad doesn’t show up and embarrass me.
.
Pete’s bringing the Magic Die, that is, if he remembers, because his memory’s like a sieve. Mikey calls him Old Scarecrow Brain - but only ever behind his back: he knows Pete could kick his ass, even on a bad hair day.
.
Pete claims to have gotten the idea for the rolling-of-the-die from a book he vaguely remembers having read once called The Diceman, by some crazy psychiatrist.
.

.
So, here’s the deal: We’ve all been allocated a number from 1 to 4, and before rolling, we each pick a place to go or a thing to do for the evening – and whoever’s the first to roll his own number wins and we indulge his plan.
.
A rowdy hullabaloo ensued the first time we played because we couldn’t agree on what form the game should take. Eventually, someone suggested taking turns, and that the person who rolled his own number first would be the one to call the shots for the night. That settled that. But we were faced with a new question: Who would roll first? Just wanting to get on with it at that point, I tossed the die to Troy and told him to roll, and that the order of play would be clockwise. I asked if anybody had a problem with that and no one did. So that became the way we played the game from then on. We always sit in the same order, and the winner of the last game gets to start the new one.
.
Tonight, Mikey goes first. I’m next. Only the Die knows where we’re going.
.
We’ve performed this curious ritual 5 or six 6 times now and I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging. Pete always picks some kind of pornography: whether it be an evening in a lap-dancing bar, a visit to a seedy skinflick moviehouse on the other side of town, or a walk down 8th Street where the babes of the night strut their stuff. Pete’s the horniest bastard I’ve ever met, and you can be sure that sex will always feature in any suggestions he might make. His hair’s grown so long thesedays that he could wear it in a ponytail if he had the notion. And his goatee is coming along nicely, too: he looks like a werewolf in heat or something.
.

.

Troy, who takes a lot of shit from everybody over his name and the fact that his dad is a nurse, tends to come up with ideas of a more financial nature, such as a night at the dogs, or a game of poker. With Troy, gambling is always involved one way or another. You can bet on it.
.
Mikey, lost behind the thick lenses of his glasses, only ever has one plan: Go back to his place, fire up the hi-fi and ‘spaaak up a few doobidges’. He’s such a stoner!
.
‘What’s a doobidge,’ Pete wanted to know that first night we played, the first and only time Mikey had ever won the toss.
.
‘A doobidge,’ Mikey explained, ‘is a small bundle of dried leaves from a plant known as marishuana.’ Troy doubled over, arms laced across his stomach, holding back a laughter attack. ‘These leaves,’ Mikey went on, ignoring Troy altogether, ‘are rolled into a funnel made of thin paper, inserted into your mouth and set on fire. You suck the smoke into your lungs and hold it there -’
.
‘He’s completely lost the plot,’ Pete interrupted, loosening Troy’s hold on himself and falling into uncontrollable spasms.
.
Theseguys. They crack me up.
.
Fortunately, so far, the die continues to ignore Mikey.
.
‘Oh Jesus, no! If he wins again,’ Troy likes to point out, ‘we’ll have to revisit the planet he lives on. And as we all know, that’s a very far away place.’ Indeed.
.
So what’s it going to be tonight? I wonder as I polish my boots. I’m toying with the idea of pushing the envelope a little, stepping outside my comfort zone, expanding my horizons if you will. Should the die roll in my favor, we’ll be off to see a play in town called Blood Brothers. I read a raving review in the Miami Globe. It’ll be a new experience for us all.
.
Christ! Is that the time? I’d better put a bit of elbow grease into this.
.
later
Shat. Showered. Shaved. After-shaved. Ready to go with 10 minutes to spare. Wish me luck. Pray that 6 comes up - that’s my number.
.
Of course, with 4 of us there are 2 unassigned numbers, 2 and 5. Should 1 of these unclaimed numbers come up 3 times in a row, the rule is that the person rolling the die last has to stand everyone a beer, and we continue to shoot as we continue to drink. If, and it’s a big IF (and it hasn’t happened yet), but if we keep rolling 2 and 5 over and over again, we just stay put and keep drinking. If it reaches closing time and we haven’t had a matching number, we call it a night and go home, allowing that Fate had determined the uneventful outcome.
.
‘It could happen,’ I said during our last session, last month, talking off the top of my head as I’m compelled to do on occasion – and, to back up my claim, submit the dodgy odds of 10-to-1.
.
This got an unintended rise out of Pete. He was visibly exasperated by the figures I seemingly plucked out of mid-air.
.
‘Where’d you get them from? Those precise odds, 10-to-1? Why not 20-to-1, or 7-to-4?
.
‘I said approximately,’ I explained coolly. That got him going even more, and a raging argument erupted.
.
‘Just ‘cause you’re granddad was a jockey back in Ireland and you used to go to the races with him doesn’t mean you know doodley-squat about odds or betting on horses.’
.
Pete comes across brutal at times, but if you know him well, you know he doesn’t mean much by it, he’s just blunt and to the point and unwittingly tactless. He opens his mouth, speaks his mind, inserts his foot – all the way up to his knee - not necessarily in that order.
.
‘You’re full of shit, Pete,’ I returned with a beautiful backhand stroke. With Pete, you’ve got to give as good as you get. ‘Don’t worry about me, bro, I know the odds, all right. I know the odds.’
.
‘It’s one thing to know the odds,’ Troy piped up, in an attempt to make light of our pseudo-argument, ‘but it’s another ball game to know the score.’
.
Mike beams in from his planet saying, ‘Intriguing observation, Troy, but consider this: You might know the odds, and you might know the score, but what is that if you don’t know the evens?’
.
It’s often hit and miss with Mikey, but on this occasion he connected with our collective funny bones and we cracked up raucously.
.
Pete won that night and we went to a Wet T-Shirt contest. Warm beer, cold breasts, hard nipples, and Zappa saying: Here comes the ice-pick in the forehead.
.

.

You know, these are some pretty great guys when you stop and think about it. As they say in Ireland, we have the ‘craic’. I love these guys.
.
I’m going to miss them when I go.

32. On The Couch

Bored shiftless with lights off lying listless turning restlessly this way and that playing hide-and-seek with comfort and the dry-mouth desire for a smoke.
.
Switch on radio and catch The Beatles doing Hey Jude, no less. The lyrics like a message in the dark: Don’t be afraid / take a sad song and make it better / the minute you let her under your skin / then you begin / to make it better. Spine shivers. Nah! Nah nananana nah!
.
Close eyes and conjure up Judy’s image. Never bored when she’s around. Always had something going on.
.
One night she showed me something so weird I haven’t thought about it till now. We were alone at home one night (T-Minus 10 months) - the folks at some office party, Judy and me here on the couch, vaguely watching some crummy movie.
.
‘Check this out,’ Judy says buttoning off the volume and going over to the stereo rack by the TV. ‘Pick a record, Leo. Any record.’
.
‘What do you mean? What for?’
.
‘Just do it!’
.
‘Okay. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.’ (One of the sayings I’d picked up in Ireland that could always be relied upon to get a laugh out of Judy.) ‘Crash Test Dummy’s,’ I say. ‘God Shuffled His Feet. But why?’
.
‘Why, why, why? Is that the only word you know? We’ll watch the movie to the sound of the album. Yeah?’
.
I lit a cigarette and we shared it.

.

.

‘Yeah. So? What’s the big deal?’
.
‘Shut up, little brother,’ she tells me. ‘You’ll see. Just watch and listen.’
.
She crawls back into the groove she’s made in the couch beside me. I shut up, watch intently, listen eagerly, wait expectantly. And by the time the needle’s halfway into the first track, to my total amazement, something amazing is starting to happen. As if what I’m seeing on the screen is - inexplicably - synchronising with the sound from the stereo, matching up, as if one is made for the other. Mesmerised, I remain silent until the LP stops.
.
‘You see what I mean?’ she says getting up to flip the album over. Impressed beyond all recognition, I ask her how she found out about this.
.
‘Discovered it for myself.’
.
She often watches TV alone in her room like this, she tells me and I turn away from a sudden urge (to bundle her in my arms and kiss and tickle her all over) and admit to her that it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.
.
We’ve watched movies together that way ever since. I used to marvel at how her funny little mind worked. Still do. Marvel. But, don’t get me wrong: Judy marched to the same beat as everyone else - just whistled a different tune is all.
.
Occurs to me that I haven’t been in her room since… B.C. (Before Crash). Have I been deliberately avoiding it? Or is it that it just hasn’t crossed my mind until now?
.
Doesn’t matter. Either way… got to go in there sometime.

31. Two Cherries

Before I know it, these last few days shall pass and (this waking nightmare) will be over (donewithgone) and I’ll be discovering what these wet dreams are really all about. After that? Dad and I’ll be winging our way to Ireland, land of Saints and Scholars.
.
And the clouds will be like headlines on a new front page sky… shiver me timbers…
.
We’ll be a-sailing a-way. Turning to a fresh page, starting a new chapter.
.
Rachel F. The name haunts me. But it’s good. Thoughts of making blindingly passionate love to her – the one and only girl to feature in my after-hours imaginings, where feverish fantasies frolic around in the buff. And then, with not so much as a farewell note or a single red rose, I touch my mouth against her sleeping lips and steal out into the night, disappearing forever from her life. But if I changed my mind and decided to leave her a poem, this is what I’d write:

.

A tender token of our special night

I leave to you this poem

but look not here upon the page

it waits for you at home

What passed between us when we were one

close as two bodies get

is not a thing to trap on paper

nor a thing you can forget

The thing was a poem and

the poem is the thing

lock it in your memory just as it seems

reflect on it often and we’ll meet again

In yours, in mine

In dreams

.

Now I remember why I don’t write poetry. But it’s kind of romantic, though, don’t’cha think? I’ll be the one she’ll always remember: the one who, in the fruity vernacular of the day, popped her cherry. And she’ll feel good in remembering it as a fair deal: she popped mine.
.
Rationale enters suddenly and gives Romance the elbow. Lust and Raging Hormones are best not confused with Love.

.

.

We’re a pair of cherries sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g! A pair of musical notes side by side in the kind of candy-coated pop-song Bobby Sherman would’ve been singing when I was still sucking my thumb, unable to distinguish a noteworthy tune from a throwaway teeny-bop ditty.
.
Sherman. Sweet as sherbet and just as likely to cause stomach cramps later.

30. Affirmations

Hand’s beginning to cramp so I’ll give it a rest, go see what Dad’s up to. Busy packing again by the sounds of it. When he started all this moving malarky, he told me that all I had to do was clear out my bedroom and Judy’s and he’d take care of the rest. Said he’s going to throw a lot of stuff out - give it to charity, have a garage sale maybe. And that he was ‘detaching’ himself from as many material belongings and creature-comforts as he could. From now on he’d be travelling light. I wondered if this included booze, but instead asked if that was what all those yellow post-it stickers stuck around the house were about.
.
‘Affirmations,’ he said with a hint of excitement. ‘They help you make things happen, help you focus. When you’re deciding what to take and what to discard ask yourself this question: Would my life be noticeably worse off without this? If you can’t honestly say YES, just throw it in there.’ He pointed to an enormous chest-high box by the dining-table. It had a large post-it sticker on it that read: Let Go - Move On. I felt like saying, Wow, groovy, but bit my tongue.
,
Where does he gets his ideas thesedays?
,
Packing is one of many tasks I haven’t gotten around to yet. More to the point, I’ve been putting it off.
,
Why?
,
Because I’m lazy? Because I’m a little disoriented with the speed of things? Because the thought of going through Judy’s things, deciding what to keep and what to let go, is more than I can face?
.
I know I won’t be able to let go of anything. And I also know that I’m going to have to, like it or not. She’s got so much stuff. Of course, her bed and the rest of the furniture will go, but I’ll box up what I can of her smaller sized belongings and bring them with us. Her tapes and LP’s will fill a dozen boxes alone.

.

29. Burnt Toast

Talk about bad-rushed decisions. This morning, over burnt toast, Dad was ready to do a little fucking around with my head (float like a butterfly) and that he did (sting like a bee).
.
‘I had the strangest dream last night,’ was his opening gambit. ‘Woke to the disturbing sight of you lurking about in my room, at my desk, banging around looking for I don’t know what. When I asked what you were doing, you said I was dreaming in a very odd voice, and to go back to sleep.’ He smiled. ‘And you know what, Leo?’
.
I gulped. ‘What?’
.
‘That’s just what I did. Went back to sleep.’
.
‘Good move…’
.
‘Yeah. Went right back to sleep and forgot all about it. But you know what?’
.
‘What?’
.
‘Well, I got to thinking. I know that was only a dream, but in real life, you know, I wouldn’t like the idea of you rummaging around in my desk. You know what I mean? So, I guess right here is as good as a time as any to draw some lines. Okay?’
.
‘Lines? Okay.’

.

.

‘Good. Here’s the thing: I don’t want you sitting at my desk, or going into my bedroom for that matter. It’s out of bounds, all right? In other words, you don’t go in there. It’s my own personal, private space. I keep my things there is what I’m saying. It might look like a mess to you, but not to me – I know where everything is. There’s order in the chaos, I assure you. I don’t want you moving things around so I can’t find them later. Know what I mean?’
.
‘Sure,’ I said.
.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘As long as we have that straight.’
.
I averted my eyes to consider my slippers, big left toe poking out of one. Time for a new pair, I made a note to myself.
.
‘We have got that straight, haven’t we?’
.
‘Straight as an arrow. Straight lines. Sure.’
.
And I’ve been wondering eversince: What’s he hiding in there?

28. Hypnotizing Jack

.

Suspicion confirmed. The source of tonight’s clicking sound – the one that’s pervaded and pulled me back from my ‘flying-carpet’ dream is coming from Dad’s room all right.
.
Stand outside his door listening to him fingering his keyboard. Locating the source of the clicking for the first time, I go back to bed with a sense of relief and an even stronger craving for a cigarette.
.
Toss and turn for hours as I do everything I can think of to seduce pretty Sleep back into my bed, into my head. Tried counting sheep. End up doing anagrams again. Here’s a good one:
.
Desperation – a rope ends it. Coincidence?
.
And just as I’m about to make that final slip, take that last trip, Dad’s snoring shatters the calm and once again fishes me out of the depths I was slipping into and reconnects me with my desire for a nicotine injection. Recognizing the opportunity, I get out of bed and return to his room, impressing myself with how silently I manage to open the door and enter. 
.
Fumble around the darkness, laying hands flat on the makeshift desk in the corner, moving them back and forth carefully, feeling for a pack of smokes.
.
In hindsight, not carefully enough.
.
Stumble and back of hand strikes and knocks over an empty glass with a clank that causes the lamp on Dad’s side of the bed to come on. My breath hitches - sticks in my throat. Suddenly, I’m still and silent as water in an ice-cube tray.
.
Dad speaks. His voice colder still. I freeze.
.
‘If I’m not dreaming, Leo, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’
.
I go to answer, not really knowing what to say, but, damn! my tongue is numb. Sometimes I find myself forced into making rushed decisions. And sometimes I make the right ones. But most of the time I don’t.
.
‘You’re dreaming,’ I say, aiming at sounding convincing, mesmerising even.

.

.

‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ Dad raises a hand, takes a strand of fringe between thumb and forefinger and rubs it. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’
.
To my amazement and disgust, he rips a strand of hair from his head. Oh shit! I think. He’s not fooling around.
.
You're fucked now.
.
He looks at me, rubs his eyes, looks at me again. ‘You still here, then?’
.
I blink, smile sheepishly. ‘No. Not really.’
.
He raises his other arm and looks away for a second to peer at his watch.
.
‘Goddamnit! It’s 4:15 in the am, Leo. What the hell are you doin’ in here? What in God’s name do you think you’re lookin’ for?’
.
‘I’m not over at your desk. I’m not looking for anything. In fact, I’m not here at all. You’re just dreaming, Dad. Go back to sleep.’ I’d made a wrong decision and I was sticking to it.
.
‘You know what, Leo?’ he says pleasantly. ‘That’s just what I’m going to do. And so are you. Go back to sleep. You’ll need your energy for all the explaining you’re gonna be doing in the morning.’
.
Slinking towards the opened door, holding hands up before me, wiggling fingers in his general direction, I say in a slow, deep voice, ‘You will remember nothing… nothing… you will forget everything…’
.

‘Go on,’ Dad barks. ‘Get the hell out.’

.

.

Slept a short, troubled sleep. And by the time I’d fallen asleep I’d decided, over-confidently I know now, that I’d successfully sold the old man on the idea that tonight’s little episode was nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

27. I Am Rock

Silence is deafening.
.
Stuck on one of Judy's mixed tapes. Simon & Garfunkel’s hushed harmonies float up from bedside table where a spent butt in the ashtray, supposed to be crushed out, sends smoky tendrils upward entwining. Sitting Indian-style, journal laid across pretzel-shaped legs, setting free slap-dab-sentences to the beat of the changing songs. To the best of my ability. Fingers hurt. Left wrist aches. Came easy once but not anymore.
.
Writing, I mean. Pushing this pen isn’t proving to be a walk in the park or anything. More a long wobbly stroll on a thin blue tightrope. No safety net below.
.
Hard gathering up these sad-scattered-racing-angry words, skidding into walls, into the crash-barriers I’ve erected. It’s a matter of recognition. Cognition. There’s a big difference between riding a bicycle and writing. Just because you rode the bicycle-of-writing once doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to just hop back in the saddle and do it again.
.
There’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over!
.
Judy loves Paul Simon, especially that album with the African guys on it – and that song about the girl with the diamonds on the soles of her shoes. It’s playing now, volume cranked. Turn it down, so as not to disturb Jack (snoring susurrously).

.

.
And a rock feels no pain.
.
Light last cigarette. 
.
Ah! One of Judy's all time favorite TMBG tunes - haven't heard in ages: Where You’re Eyes Don’t Go.

.

.

Words dry matt black in the contained circle of white projecting from the Black&Decker SnakeLight torch coiled about my dome as the Me-Above amuses itself thinking it looks like a science-fiction type turban (a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms) Me-Below feels like a surreal snake charmer, seducing words – blackwet and wriggly – out under clinical light, onto clean page (and does a parody of each unconscious thing you do), feeling like a crazed carpenter, nailing words to a paper-cross with a fine steel point. Making a point with slippery hands (when you turn around to look it’s gone behind you), I abandon the slab of stone my bed’s become, thinking that if Sleep were a woman – then she’d be a Bitch with a capital B for standing me up again!
.
I'm learning to stop making dates with Sleep and Death - its an endeavour fraught with disappoint. And, as They Might Be Giants point out: if it weren't for disappointment I wouldn't have any appointments!
.
Drag feet across carpet and fall into study chair. Switch off torch, drop it to floor. Click on desklamp and slide journal into the light of the 60-watt bulb. This paper before me, this chair beneath me, this desk I lean elbows upon
.
Awake? Am I? Isn’t all this just a little too strange to be awake?
.
But if you are awake, how can you be looking down from the ceiling?
.
It feels so real (on its face it’s wearing your confused expression) Asleep? Could be (where your eyes don’t go) just another dream.
.
Mind’s grown wooly. No. Not wooly, really: more like a lump of cheese. Writing and writing and I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Trying to get at... the point. Can’t keep it up much longer.
.
Pen’s heavy as lead.

.

.

You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.
.
Sheep? Sleep? Where are you?
.
I am an Island.
.
And an island never cries.

26. Creative-writing-juices-flowing

.

I’m getting ready to read the 3rd chapter of the book Dad gave me: Planning. The first was Theme, the second Viewpoint. It’s really interesting, and there’s a lot to take in, so I’m reading kind of slow, underlining as I go. It’s got me thinking again, about writing and all, and I realize I’ve missed it more than I knew.

.

Why did I stop anyway? At the start of my creative stint it seemed that ink oozed blackgoldfluid into a bubblingbabbling brook twinkling beneath High Summer Stars… a stream teeming with schools of words and ideas and how I managed to catch some between the lines. Black and white fully formed sentences innocent of preconception came of their own accord – as though ‘chuting’ down the conduit my arm turns into when fountain-pen's in hand - the link between the place of their origin and the empty sheet beneath pen ... somehow fell into an order of their own design upon the page. It was at times like that (in my opinion) when I did my best writing, or (if you'll allow me to say) the writing did the best me.
.
And when those times came, it was the finest feeling, the biggest buzz, better than jumping 3,000 feet from a plane with a parachute on your back, or 300 feet from a crane in a screaming bungee-jump. And, with writing, when it’s all over and the deed’s done, not only do you have the memory of the experience, you also have a permanent record of it to boot.

.

When it was just happening – the process of writing – happening all by itself – with no force from me – it was the closest thing to perfection, the closest I’d ever gotten to an out-of-body experience (which, by the way, I think I’m having off and on from time to time thesenights). Unwittingly, at the high point of my writing spree, I sabotaged myself by throwing a Spaniard in the works. How? By interfering with the happening… by slowing down to notice the happening - notice the way it was happening without me noticing.
.
Brings to mind some graffiti I read on the bathroom wall in the Ladies room at the Driving Test Centre. 

.

Notice:

By the time you’ve noticed this Notice

you’ll have noticed that this Notice

is not worth Noticing!

.

The quality of the writing eventually grew thin, like water from a faucet just twisted off tight, the steady flow of ideas diminished into a drip before finally running dry. The wonderful words, like the sheep thesenights, scattered, disappearing into the foliage and underbrush. No matter I did could coax them from their hiding places.
.
Writing is not, I’ve sadly come to discover, a process you want to become too fascinated by. (Or is it with? Check that.) To attempt to process the process while it is actually in process… maybe that’s not such a good idea. Perhaps it’s true that some stones are best left unturned. Some balls of yarn are best left unwound.
.
But how do you know until you do...
.
What fascinates me most is the way black marks upon the page, shaped by the tiniest (autonomous) inflection of fingers, capture the meaning of invisible, matterless thought and transmute it to paper. It still gets me to wondering. Is a piece of Time captured too, in the same moment - by default? The Idea frozen in Time. Time frozen in the idea. A disposable snap-shot pressed between hard covers. Safe. Sound. Snug as a bug in a rug.

.
And quite dead. Only to come to life again when a pair of human eyes gaze upon it.
.
By itself, without my attention, the writing went so well: then I showed up, things unplugged, unhinged, went to hell.
.
When my arm and the ink and the paper and the pen became inextricably entwined all in one connected current – that’s as good as it got.

.

I’m not feeling it anymore.

Goodbye, Muse

Miss you already

Stare at walls

Rub pen
Magic-lamp

Summon her back

Wayward Genie

Abandonment abounds

Whole parts
My life

Lining up on deck

Jumping ship

Losing them

Losing

It

25. Life Is But A Dream

Stayed up all night with UB the night he was here – the night I started thinking and feeling again for the first time. We were still awake when the birds began twittering and the candle gave up the ghost. He said some strange things then, a lot of which are still ricocheting around my brain like bee-bees in a rubber room. 
.
He said he was proud of me, the way I was taking it and all, and that he empathised.

.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what you must be going through.’

.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, ‘I can’t imagine what I’m going through either.’

.

‘You are stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, Leo,’ he levelled with me. ‘Sure, it’s difficult to look at head on. But the way you choose to look at it determines the way you deal with it, or fail to deal with it. Some facts are cold, hard pills to swallow, but they must be considered. On the one hand, a tragic accident has taken place: on the other, you’re left to deal with it, to reconcile it, and try to get on with your life. And you wrestle to attach some sense, some meaning to what seems like madness. You struggle to absorb the blow.’

.

‘That’s it,’ I agreed, ‘but what can you do? It’s so hard to…’ My chin jiggled uncontrollably as I fought to withhold a bucketful of tears. And it wasn’t long before my head’s nestled between UB’s broad arm and chest. His other arm encircled me then, hugging me close and tight. I imagined he was Santa Claus - pretending that if I told him what I wanted he’d grant my wish. 

.

I cried long and hard cradled in the safety of his sturdy frame. Still and quiet, save for the soft rocking motion he made as he hummed a little tune. Row Row Row Your Boat. Then, in a soft whisper, he sings the words.

.

…gently down the stream

merrily, merrily, merrily,  merrily,

life is but a dream…

24. Barrel of Monkeys

The tables have turned: now I’m battling Wakefulness, trying to get on board the Sleep Train. Oh, the irony and the ecstasy.

Love. Why am I thinking about that? What’s love got to do with it? Surely this can’t be love? But why am I not sure? Have I never been in love before? And if not, why not? Well, there was this one girl, many years ago, named Dawn. Another story for another sleepless night.

And, Judy? I love her so much, but that doesn’t count, she’s my sister.

You’re almost 18, right? So, why are you still a virgin?

Don’t know.

Do you feel bad about it?

No. But, come to think of it, I don’t feel good, either. It’s just the way it is. What can you do?

The obsession’s in the chasing and not the apprehending, it’s the pursuit you see, and never the rest…

And now, with Rachel’s Promise hanging in the air like a Golden Ring, I set sights forward and try to think in terms of the Good Things the future claims to have in store. It’s the only way to look at it.

No use crying over spilt milk.

Or unspilt milk.

.

.

I’d doodle at this point if I were any good at it. Along with Math, History and Geography, Art has not proven to be one of my strongest subjects. The only thing I can draw is Kilroy peering over a brick wall. But only with a pencil, and all I’ve got is a pen.

This fountain pen Judy gave me. Cast across page like a net to see what I can catch, aware of Me-Above laughing a little underbreath at the Me-Below. He looks at me and imagines a late-night fisherman trawling for words. Or Little Jack Horner sitting in the corner. But I’m just Leo Mac, sitting back, scrawling like a hack. I stick in my pen, pull out a word, and say what a good boy am I. I pull out

another. 

Then

another. Light
words.

Comfortable. Distracting.

Just look at them come

tirelessly.

.

I’m reminded of a sunny but cold afternoon… years ago when I went mackerel fishing with my uncles in Co. Kerry. Instead of just one hook at the end of your line, you had about a million, and when you reeled it in, it was just this long string of flapping fish, one after another. Gills gasping and glinting in the glow of the falling sun upon the still evening water. 

Thrilling.

.

And that reminds me of those multi-colored plastic figures in that game Judy and I used to play when we were kids. What was it called? Oh yeah, Barrel Of Monkeys. I got really hooked on it for a while (excuse the pun – it is late, forgive me), and for two intense weeks I proudly held the title of Undefeated Barrel O’ Monkeys Champion. Hooked I was, right up until the tables turned one day and Judy humiliated the hell out of me, five times in a row no less. Then, before I knew what was going on, she was beating me all the time and, I don’t know, somehow all the fun went out of it.

.

.

That was when I first noticed her competitive streak and the first time I was aware of my own. But we’re competitive in different ways. She’s only competitive when losing. I only get competitive when winning. When losing, I like to pack it in early. Why drag out the inevitable? Or as Mom (who had a penchant for collecting sayings) might say, were she here to say it: The sooner you start licking your wounds, the sooner they’ll heal.

I think that was one of her own.

221. 222. 223 –

No, that’s not right - I’m going in the wrong direction. I was counting down, wasn’t I?

221. 220. 219…