Welcome Back

“So, you said there was a park up here, one that you liked…”

“Yeah but, I was ten when we moved.  It might be horrible now.  Hoyt Park”.

I typed it into my phone for directions.

I remember it being beautiful.  Covered in snow, with toboggans and an ice skating rink, covered in skaters.  The old waters works was by there, covered in oxidized green. 

Baseball fields and an old cemetery covered it now. 

“I don’t remember it this way”.

“It’s alright, let’s take Lola out”.

We ended up trailing a mother and her two children on a path around the ball fields.  The smaller child was wailing.  The more the child cried, the more the mother screamed and dragged her.  Finally, she walked off, pretending to leave the child behind.  This brought the kid to near hysterically screaming.  The older one wanted to pet Lola.  I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to tell the lady that Alec could take Lola to the car and could help her take the kids home.   Or I could wait with Lola, and Alec could drive them home.  I knew none of it would be acceptable, that I would be some yuppie bitch judging her. 

Alec and I walked toward the car with Lola, the wailing in my ears echoing as I watched them climb over some weird back hill next to the cemetery.

We drove through a terrible part of my former hometown to our hotel.

“Go get beer,” I instructed,  “a lot of it”. 

Summer Lovin'

Oh summer, how I love you.  Not for your weather, but for your absence of work.  If only you were about ten months longer. 

"I can't remember the last time I took a shower.  Probably won't take one today either.  I just take my clothes off at night, lay them at the foot of the bed, then put them right back on again the next morning". 

"And then I laid there and farted, creating a wind symphony with the other people in the room".

"On the day of the presentation of your research for your Specialist's degree, you must also make a cardboard triboard of your achievements!  No, electronic presentations are not acceptable. Paper, glue and scissors is what you will need to complete THIS professional program!".

"I know.  My boob has been sticking out all day.  There is nothing I can do about it.  This shirt is see-through".

"Hi, I'm Hilary.  I was Aidan's Spanish teacher this year!".
"You the one that was callin' all the time?" the mother asked coldly, turning her back and walking away.  A hush fell over the party for at least thirty seconds.

"Emma is at Grady".  

"Goooooooooollll!"

"God, we were wild.  three-ways, strippers, we did it all". 

"Where does all the beer go that you buy?".

"That thing you asked me to sign electronically; I just typed my name on the line.  Will that work?". 

"Okay, here's the doggie Xanax...". 

"It's a U.P. thing". 

"NO era penal".  

"And then, I shit my pants". 

"Can you advocate for a refugee, Central American family that is being placed in Atlanta?".

"Michael is on his way back to the emergency room".

"Oh my God, I have to wear sunglasses in my living room that house is so bright.  I am getting a second liner on all of my curtains".  

"If you see this man, call 911.  He's wanted".  You mean the guy I just passed outside the Texaco?

"What are your personal goals for the upcoming school year?". 

Oh no.  Do you mean the one that starts in like, ten days?.....In the 'fall' as we like to call it?  Didn't we just pack up 'last year'?

Betwixt or Between

I felt like a hammer had hit me in the head.  The incredibly loud PA, the singers screaming so loud their veins were popping out of their necks, the drum beats that blistered the bottom of my feet.  All of my favorite songs.  As soon as the music started, I was in a different world.

Man, I had to pee.  I did my business and walked straight out into the night, along Glenwood and over Moreland.  It was one in the morning.  I needed air.  I wasn't used to going to shows until the middle of the night.  I didn't help that I had put down nearly a twelve pack before even going.  But, wow, what a show.  My favorite local band from a decade and a half ago.  And, they sounded incredible.  I felt shell shocked.  And weirdly melancholy.  So much change.  The recent death, that shouldn't effect me because I didn't know him personally.  Everything is different.  Gone. 

I got up the next morning and my mood deepened.  I felt nostalgic, exhilarated and sad all at the same time.  I wanted to go again, see them again, who knew when I would ever get another opportunity.  Oddly, I wasn't sure if I could handle the physical exertion. 

My dog, the love of my life, has been sick. I took her to the vet and they said she had some seasonal allergies.  I looked up some remedies on the internet while I nursed my head with coffee and came across an article about the most toxic plants for dogs.  Most were in my backyard and would only require ingestion of a leaf or two to cause paralysis.   

There was no question.  Those plants had to go.  It was unequivocal.  I was almost angry at them.  She could have died.  But as Alec hacked at the old growth azaleas and oak hydrangeas that were in the backyard when we bought the place, I felt horrible.  I always thought they were beautiful, and they were poisoning my dog.  We cut them off at the base.  As I dug up all the things I had planted in the backyard, the things that I loved, I felt my throat closing and choking. 

I slept in a feverish sleep, dreaming of Lola falling into a deep ocean off of a boat.  I stared into the water, waiting for her to surface.  She didn't.  I panicked and woke up clutching my throat.  I had another dream of holding someone's baby during a car crash.  I didn't really care about the baby, but was doing my civil duty to try to save it.  I woke up clutching Lola in our bed while she tried to scuttle away, sleepy. 

I felt odd in my EDS class Monday morning.  It was back to my normal school world, so different from the world I had been in for days.  I guess my old world.

I am not sure which, if any, is my true world. 

Smoke

In the early 90s I was really into music.  Actually, before the early nineties.  In the 80s, at the Metroplex.  By the time I was in college, music in Atlanta was pretty awesome.  I remember going to Homage and seeing Smoke all lined up on the stage, sitting down, facing the audience with their instruments, looking totally impressive.  Later, when I had dropped out of college, I worked in Cabbagetown for a little while.  I was a baker, the only job I have ever fully enjoyed.  I was completely dedicated to my work, but would go next door sometimes to the musicians' practice spaces, that now host lofts and restaurants, and smoke pot, but only really fast, because I had ideas about what I wanted to do in the bakery.  The Gold Sparkle Band was awesome for stuff like that.  I would work late, instead of early, because I am not an early riser, unlike most bakers.  It would get dark and I would fiddle with pie crusts and recipes, alone in the bakery, happy with my day, happy that I could say when someone asked me, "What did you do for work today?",  that I could say that I baked four apple pies, made twelve scones and a layer cake.  But in the night, the sun would set on the stacks of the old mill and I could sometimes hear Smoke tuning up.  I didn't have to go outside, their music permeated the neighborhood.
And I would bake while they played. 

Days Gone By

"I'm fucked..." she said, her head lowered.  I saw the bright burgundy side of her carefully shaved head and we hugged each other.  She was crying.

I was surprised the first time I saw her in the teacher's copy room.  We had worked together when I was sixteen years old.  In a hair shop.  I had clamored for the job, being a punk rock kid in the suburbs.  I went to the Metroplex, a wonderful club 'downtown' as we called it, in Atlanta, not in Cobb County.  I had been going there since I was fifteen and it was my livelihood, the only place I wanted to be, except Little Five Points, but that was during the day time.  And this place, this hair shop, they could dye my hair purple and pink and blue and green for free; I had to work there.  And they were awesome.  People saw them everywhere, their hair -  their incredible hair!

I got the job.  My  punk rock, Cobb County classmates were pretty impressed.  I had a car now and was frequenting the Metroplex much less than I had when the only obstacle was getting a ride.  Even though I now had one, it had gotten weirdly boring, not the golden ticket that it was when I had to get rides from older classmates.   The hair shop took me to new places.  Clubs. Gay dance clubs.  Everyone wore outrageous costumes that I adored.  I felt way more adult.  It was a new scene for me.  And I was still in high school.  I walked into school everyday, did what I had to do, and went to work at the salon, and to clubs.

Seeing her in the teacher's workroom gave me a weird sense of deja vu, kind of like looking at a live snapshot of a former life.  She gave me my first fake ID.  I totally idolized her as a teenager, her awesome vintage clothes, funny expressions and wildly cool lifestyle.  We ran into each other frequently at one of the schools I work at after our initial copy room meeting.  I was always glad to see her, hopeful that teaching would work out for her and that her first few years wouldn't be as hard as mine were.  It felt weird to be in a veteran position to her, work-wise.  It felt weird to say that I was finishing my eighth year teaching, that I teach both elementary and high school at the same time, that no, it's not really hard, I've done it before. 

Spring Break passed in strange haze.  Long sunny days lazed by, Lola and I in the yard, her running and playing, then resting on the blanket next to me for a while.  Me, drinking beer and succumbing to the hypnotic atmosphere of "The Goldfinch" for hours at a time, interrupted only by text messages that I reviewed immediately from my mom that described the unimaginable horrors faced by my stepfather in the ICU.  The combination of elements created a weird emotional mix of bliss and extreme depression.

Returning to school was difficult.  I was surprised when I walked up the steps that gray day and to see her burst into tears. 
"They're not going to let me finish my program.  They say I'm no good.  I'm fucked.  I'm fucked.  I have so much riding on this.......".
I could feel the desperation.  I have been in hard positions in life before and have been scared, but I knew her situation.  She really did have everything riding on this.

"They're wrong.....they're wrong....." I repeated over and over. 

I've Always Been This Way

"Well, it is broken.  Right there..." my doctor stated, pointing at the x-ray of my arm.
"It needs to be immobilized until we can get you in to see Spider Pig".

I have been re-watching the television show, Six Feet Under on the nights that Alec works.  I have been doing it for a couple of months.  I am in the last season.  I remember coming home from a year in Spain in the fall of 2005.  It was a rough time in my life and I watched the last season in a marathon session on rented DVDs.   I would get really wasted and sit on my bed and watch and watch and watch.  And cry. 

"Her jaw is broken in two places.  She has to be muzzled and can't come out of her crate except to pee for six to eight weeks".

I laid next to the baby Pit Bull that my mom rescued from euthanasia and cried.  We had literally gotten her at the like, thirteenth hour.  Her eyes seemed to scream above her wired shut mouth.  I couldn't hold her enough.  But I couldn't really hold her.  I just laid next to her cage while she pressed her body up to the side and I petted her from the outside. 

Margaret killed herself a month and a half before I came home.  I learned that she loved the show and watched it religiously.  As I downloaded a new episode all these years later, I happened to see the original release date:  June something, 2005.  With each episode I watch, I know I am getting closer to the day she did it in late July, 2005.  It fills me with doom, but I can't stop watching it.  What shocked me is that she didn't see the last three episodes.  She didn't hold off until the end.  I can tell by the release dates.  Maybe when I watch the last three episodes she won't be with me anymore, maybe she will get out of my head.

Spider Pig's office looked as dingy as ever.  I looked over at the physical therapy area.  My old cool receptionist was gone.  I remember that she was in graduate school; she probably graduated and got the kind of job she really wanted.  The actual physical therapist was gone too, he was getting married and wanted to move back to his old hometown and buy a house near his parents and have land and kids with his high school sweetheart.  A new guy was in there.  A year has passed.

Everyone has moved on.  Except me.  I am just broken again and living in that nasty office, watching people with catheters and reading the same old magazines. 

It's Beginning to Feel Alot Like Christmas

LeDario.  Born on February 2nd and one of the odder students I have taught.   Sports a kind of cool old school 80's fade but always has a strange, far away look in his eyes.  Writes compulsively, big essay length tomes instead of doing any class work.  Steals compulsively.  Steals things of no value just to annoy others, like your lunch.  And then he doesn't eat it, he just hides it somewhere where it will rot.  The remote control to the overhead projector that is mounted to the ceiling.  The springs from staplers.

Christine.  Born on February 2nd.  When I began teaching her I asked her all day elementary teacher if she had Asperger's. 
"No," he replied, "she is just fucking creepy and scares me sometimes". 
"Don't look at me!" she hissed at the other students when entering the classroom, walking stiffly yet rapidly to her chair in the corner, head erect but somehow pointed at the ground at the same time.  Seething.  Hyper intelligent, yet again large glassy eyes that don't seem all the way there.  Presented a highly articulate self written treatise in front of the entire school about how much school sucks and bowed primly at the end before leaving the stage, in front of smiling kids and parents that still actually like school.  

"Alec, I have met some of the weirder people this year that have the exact same birthday as me...."
"Wow, Bill's birthday was just like a day or two after yours!".
Alec's boss is bizarre.  Sings out loud randomly.  Talks to people like there are retarded as if he is just trying to get his ass kicked.  Will not say anything directly to anyone, just pontificates loudly into the air, slowly parsing his words out into even chunks. 
"Weirdos," we said in unison.
"Another weirdo birthday". 

The first week back from Christmas break we ended up missing two school days because of weather.  Two weeks ago Atlanta experienced a well-publicized "storm" that shut the city down and called for an early dismissal from school and an additional three days off.  I worked on Monday and am now on my second snow day and school is called off again for tomorrow.  We have a previously scheduled break for next week, no school again.  It is kind of awesome, but a little weird.  The kids see a cloud in the sky on the rare days that we have classes and pull out their phones, assuming school will be called out.  We have no momentum.  It feels like teaching in Mexico. 

There is a fifteen foot cliff about nine feet away from the side of my house.  It is filling with ice and snow.  Though the recommendation from the City was that the dig-out for the basement of the new house, that is being built next to my really old house, happen rapidly and that the retaining wall for the basement would be built within a matter of days to prevent erosion and destruction of my foundation, these smart builders decided to do the dig the day before everyone knew that a major storm was going to shut Atlanta down for days.  They won't even work if it is cloudy outside, so it was pretty obvious they weren't going to come out in this shit storm.  I feel dizzy when I look through the windows of my house into the pit.  It feels like the house is sliding....

"William S. Burroughs, February 5th!  Another weirdo birthday!".