Twenty-one years ago I had to get a ride with my pregnant wife to the hospital on Scott Air Force Base, as she started to feels her contractions coming.  I had just turned twenty little more than two months before.  I had just joined the Air Force about six months before.  Within three years I would be divorced and living in Germany, a single parent at an age I wasn’t necessarily prepared for it.

Some people accuse me of favoritism with Robyn, that I treat her different than I do Bella and Tatiana.  In some ways, that’s true; in other ways, I think it’s unfair.  Because I probably committed what some people consider an ultimate sin for a parent--I was Robyn’s friend.  That’s not to say that I was her friend and not her parent.  There were many times I had to play the parent role, and Robyn spent more time between the ages of six and thirteen under house arrest groundings than probably both Bella and Tatiana will by the time they move out of the house.  But for a lot of the time, especially those years when we were in Germany alone, a time of which I am reminded now, because we are going to have to do a Christmas this year like we did then (except our tree will be much bigger; then it was essentially a tree you might put on a desk, and the presents eventually got bigger than the tree.

It’s a little hard to believe that she is 21.  At that age I was filing for divorce and trying to figure out how I was going to raise a toddler on my own.  It’s good to see that, while common sense has not been a trait that comes easily to either of us, she at least has a little more than me...but I am fairly happy with the lack of common sense I did have, because I got her out of it.

There are many things I want to do in my life.  One thing I know I want to do again is go on another trip with Robyn, just the two of us, like we did in the early part of this century, when we did that two-week, sixteen-state drive-a-thon, including the hunt for someplace to pee after the Grand Canyon, all the caves we went to...just being in the car and driving.  Or that trip to Denver to see Bruce Springsteen, Bill Cosby, a Rockies game (where I got half my face sunburned), and more tourist attractions along the way.  I have never had a travel companion as good as Robyn, and while I love my other children, I definitely miss those trips.

Happy 21st birthday, Yabbut.  I love you.

I have been accused about showing too much happiness about the divorce.  That’s the thing, though; I am not happy about it.  Not at all.  A divorce is a sign of failure, a sign that something about you is just not right, just not good enough.  So I am not in any way happy that I am divorcing...but since I am divorcing and cannot do anything about it (and based on how the marriage was, do not want to do anything about that), I am happy that it will soon be over and that I can move on with that part of my life.

The thing is, there is generally a reason for a marriage...sometimes it’s not a very good reason.  Sometimes even those marriages that start for a bad reason end up good.  And sometimes those marriages that start with good reasons turn bad.  I have a lot to be angry about in the marriage, but I think in the end, when you boil it down to the base elements (the problems with the marriage, not the way that it ended), it was just that we weren’t the people that we wanted to have us be for each other.  I don’t really have a problem not being the person she wanted to be--I won’t get into what I think that is, but I also wouldn’t be that person for anybody else, because it just doesn’t work for me.  It might for other people.  And I married her thinking of the person she could be, and that just never came to be.  And maybe she is okay with that, too.

When we were married, she brought up a few times the collages I have on the walls, some of which included my first ex-wife and at least one girlfriend.  I didn’t have them to rub in her face or anything; they were just a part of my life and I am not the type of person who just turns away from a part of life just because something ended.  Those times, those people--they make me who I am today.  And I’m happy with that guy.  For good or ill, I have to thank them for leading me here.

And I have to thank Melissa, too.  The last couple years of the marriage have not been good (obviously, or why would we be here?), but that is not to say that I don’t remember the good just because of the bad that has led us here.

I remember how you went out of your way when you first visited me to change the recipe because you knew that Robyn didn’t like mushrooms.  So instead of using cream-of-mushroom, you used cream-of-chicken soup, and it didn’t really click in your head until too late and until Robyn had already had seconds that, since she was a vegetarian at the time, that probably wasn’t the best decision.  I remember you introducing me to Elfs at Christmas (yeah, I’m spelling it that way for this).  I remember that time at Senor Frogs, when the waitress twisted my nipples and we walked back to the cruise ship, all the time with me wearing that silly balloon hat. 

I remember the nights after Dane, when I held you.  And even when that wasn’t enough.

There are pictures I have taken off the wall--our wedding pictures; that one of us in Hawaii.  But there are other ones still up there, even though they are just another part of the collage that is my life.  Because, yes, I have not been happy the last few years of my life; but that doesn’t mean that the first part there weren’t moments of great joy or great memories. 

So thank you.  I can not say I can forgive you for everything--don’t know if I will ever get over mid-August, not because it happened, but because of how it happened.  But lack of forgiveness does not equal hate.  Hate has fallen away, shaken off, and all that’s left are parts of the collage.

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When a relationship ends, no matter the reason, no matter if you wanted it to end or not, there is the natural inclination to evaluate the reason for it ended and your part in it--which pretty much boils down to “what is wrong with me?”  Or maybe that’s just me.

I’ve been going through my relationships in my head to figure out what it is about me that moved these situations along.  Some of them are easy to figure out--my first ex-wife was just not the person who was made to be a wife and mother, and we married too young.  For some of the others, it was maybe just that there was too much difference between us.  I believe that there does need to be a little bit of opposites (after all, if the other person is just like you...well, that’s just a little weird). 

So I know I am anal about some stuff.  I know that was a small bone of contention in my last relationship (not so much me being anal, but me being anal about her not being anal, and the trail she seemed to leave in her wake).  I’ve already reestablished some of my habits that began to be dormant over the last seven years or so.  I can walk into the bedroom without groaning at what it looks like (well, as long as I only look with my good eye--the side to the left was hers, and most of her stuff is still there, while I work on getting everything packed up).  I’ve already reestablished the closet and bedroom.

I don’t know, really.  I have to say I had somewhere I was going with this, but now I don’t really remember.  I’ve spent about thirteen years on two relationships that really weren’t that good for me (I won’t lie and say there weren’t good times in both relationships, but in the case of the first, those ended fairly quickly the first time we were together and the second time we only lasted as long as we did because it was a long-distance relationship, and we dragged out to 13 months something that probably would have ended in one month if we were really near each other).  And the relationships with people I probably should have had relationships with...just didn’t happen.

I told somebody the other night that I’ve never broken up with anybody, which is true.  I did once manipulate a situation enough so the girl would break up with me, but I’ve never truly been the person to initiate it. 

So here I am, 40 and turning 41 in little more than three weeks, and duplicating something that happened when I was 23--being the single father of a three-year-old girl and trying to figure out the romantic landscape.  I gotta get it right sometime.  Right?

“I want a divorce.”  Four simple words.  Not four words I had expected to hear.  Certainly not four words I expected to hear over the phone instead of in person.  But I heard them, and I am once again in familiar territory.

Was our marriage perfect?  No.  Were there problems that I created and/or contributed to?  Yes.  The thing is, though, that last Tuesday morning, after I heard those words, I would have told you there was a chance (a small chance) we could still work things out.  Within little more than a day, I knew there wasn’t, and I also knew that I probably wanted the divorce more than she did.

I was sad for that day between.  Knowing somebody no longer loves you is not an easy thing (having it constantly happening, in different meanings of the word love, really blows).  Finding out the person you were married to had a cruel and vicious streak is unbelievably disconcerting.  On Wednesday, once I realized that, yes, it was over and even if there was a chance, I no longer wanted it, I took my ring off.  That has been difficult, because the ring has been there for seven years.  I have a habit of taking it off, turning it over, and putting it back on my finger.  I have tried to do that a few times only to remember there is no longer a ring there.

There was sadness, but it’s gone.  Well, not gone, exactly.  I packaged it up and put it in a box in the corner of my mind’s attic.  If there is an outer sadness, it’s that my (soon-to-be) ex has further destroyed my faith and that I am once again alone.  No, what I have more than anything is anger.

I’m angry about the way she left.  She treated me worse than she did her first husband, who, by all accounts, was an out-and-out bastard dipped in evil sauce.  Before she left, she said she did love me, even if she did not “love you the way you deserve to be loved”, and then she proceeded to completely destroy that statement--either that or love and hate are really, really not that far apart.

And the thing is that I am angry.  And yet I have no way to express it.  I am here with the children, and I am not going to express my anger in front of them.  Although my ex might not believe it, of all the people who have known about this, I have been the one who has talked the kindest about her, who has requested others not talk bad about her in front of the kids.  So I’m suppressing that anger.  And when I talk to her, she acts like it was some event way in the past that I should have gotten over by now, as if I were still perturbed about how Irish immigrants were treated in America during the nineteenth century.  This just happened.  It hasn’t even been a week.  She was scared, she said, and in her fear, she found the absolutely worst way to damage as many people as she could. 

We almost did this before, with some of the same circumstances, in 2006.  There’s a part of me that wishes that when I brought the suitcases into the bedroom and told her to pack her stuff up, since she obviously didn’t want to be with me, that I had stuck to it.  I couldn’t, though--my love was strong, and she hadn’t quite found the way to destroy it.  But if she had, I wouldn’t have had to suffer through losing Dane.  And I wouldn’t have to watch Tatiana go through the same kind of pain Robyn had to, because there would have been no Tatiana (make no mistake, I love Tatiana to the moon and back, but then I wouldn’t have known about her and this suffering would not have existed).  I also wouldn’t have moved to Arkansas; that was never my plan, but I promised her we would do so after I retired.  And now here I am in a house that I don’t plan to leave, because I’m not moving again unless absolutely necessary, and she has left the state, when all that she said she had to be here for is still here. 

So here I am, about to be a single father again.  A twice-divorced single father--I’ll have to build a fence to keep all the women away.  And, you know, I’m having major trust issues right now, so that is really receptive to relationships.  If it wasn’t for the fact that I find the penis ridiculous I might almost explore the homosexual lifestyle, but that is pretty much a non-starter. 

Right now I’m been making cryptic remarks on FaceBook (or maybe not that cryptic), because I have to find little ways to release the anger and not just start shouting at the top of my lungs.  My ex and I talked last night, in hopes that we could come upon an agreement for our divorce settlement, and she talked about how she didn’t want to fight and mentioned that one thing I said was me being an ass.  Perhaps so.  But the thing is--I deserve to be an ass, a little bit.  I am here.  I am taking care of the kids.  I am taking care of the kids and having to manage going to school while I did so, because she left without a concern about how I was going to handle it.  She says one thing, and then her actions tell me that while she says she still cares about me, she really hates me.  Because that isn’t the way you would treat somebody you care about, right? 

Is this the best approach?  I don’t know.  But since she won’t allow me to vent at her, it’s the best I can do (venting is pretty hard to do when somebody is several states away and can hang up on you; not to mention that you don’t really want to say too much that your kids can hear). 

I’m putting this out here for people to read, in part to just release some steam and also to let people who haven’t already figured it out know what’s going on.  I haven’t gotten into the whole details of what’s happened in the last week, and up to now, I’ve only shared them with two people fully (and two others somewhat).  I find it difficult to talk to people about what’s going on inside my heart and head; I always have.  Maybe there’s a reason for that--two of the people I have let inside wanted to divorce me.  If I haven’t talked to you about it (assuming you’re family or a close friend), it’s nothing against you and it’s also not something I feel I am obligated to do.  Listening to people tell me how horrible she was, or that “I told you so”, or how I could be leading my life better holds no interest to me.  I appreciate those who have helped, and those who have indicated they would be willing to listen--those people I cherish.

So I’ve released a little blood, and the anger has resided.  Hopefully, over time, I can put it in its cage forever, but it might take a while.

     The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been repealed, and many are celebrating this as a victory for gay rights, while anybody who voices opposition to the repeal is labeled as a homophobe.  While homophobia is certainly a reason some people protest this repeal, there are legitimate reasons for the exclusion of open homosexuality.  I was in the Air Force for over twenty years, and I understand that in the military the individual is far less important than the whole.  Article One of the Military Code of Conduct states, “I am an American, fighting in the forces that guard my country and our way of life.  I am prepared to give my life in their defense.”  Civilians often don’t understand just what this means.
    Military members have to completely trust each other and have to exist as one entity in the fight against our nation’s enemies.  Allowing homosexuals to serve openly would disrupt this.  Stripping away all reasons that appear to be homophobia, there are two valid reasons this is true.  The first is that openly homosexual members would damage the cohesion of a fighting unit, an argument that John McCain, a military hero and former prisoner of war, agrees with.    Imagine you are in an open shower and a person of the opposite sex comes in and starts to shower in a way so that you and that person can see each other’s naked bodies.  In most cases, this would be an uncomfortable situation for both parties, whether or not there is reciprocal or nonreciprocal sexual interest.  It is a tense situation without any provocative actions, and one that could only be worse if there were any. 
    The second reason is that homosexuals may be accepted too easily.  By this I am not suggesting that accepting others’ lifestyles is wrong, but that by condoning them in the military, it opens the doors for relationships between troops that are non-beneficial to our fighting capability.  If a soldier develops romantic feelings for another soldier in his unit, the soldier’s war-fighting capability is compromised, as he would be likely more concerned about his paramour than his paratroops. 
    You might have noticed that I have used masculine pronouns, and this has been purposeful.  The valid reasons I stated to disallow homosexuals to serve openly would also preclude persons of opposite sex serving, so I think we should also remove this obstacle.  Some might say that declaring it is females that should be removed is misogynistic, and for that I apologize, but there are reasons.  That is not to suggest that women are less able to kill somebody than men.  However, the makeup of the military is mostly masculine, and it only makes logistical  and economical sense to excise the minority.
      So we now have an all-male military with no openly homosexual members.  You have probably already seen a flaw in my logic, though.  Although disallowing open homosexuality and females in the military, it is true that I have not fully eliminated obstacles in the path of our military’s war-fighting capability.  While immediate obstruction has been removed, there is still the possibility that an American soldier might have his mind focused on matters far from the battlefield, whether it be a spouse or parent or child.  As long as the soldier has ties outside the fighting arena, he will be unable to provide full focus.  I have spent much time determining the best course to counteract this and believe I have come up with the solution. 
    When a man is selected for service (and forbidding females might mean we will need to reinstate some version of the draft, which I will touch upon soon), there will need to be an intensive psychological examination to not only judge each soldier’s suitability, but also their ties in the civilian world.  While it might be beneficial to have soldiers who do not have these ties, it is likely that the psychological exam would show us that soldiers without prior emotional attachments would be ineffectual soldiers.  So we must endure the fact that soldiers come in with these ties and remedy this.  The regrettable but inevitable conclusion is that those ties must be removed.  We should of course do this as humanely as possible, and we should also allow the new soldier sufficient time to become emotionally and psychologically conditioned to this change.
    Such a change in our military enlistment policy affects not only the soldier, but his family, so we will need to captain the process.  All males born during the course of a year (excluding those born with defects or diseases) will be entered into a lottery, with a certain percentage chosen for duty (plus an additional percentage to account for deaths, service-preventing injuries, or other unforeseen incidents).  The families of those chosen will be compensated financially and will be well aware they need to get all affairs in order before the soldier’s eighteenth birthday.  Any friends or romantic interests are to be made cognizant that an existing relationship with the soldier as of the eighteenth birthday will result in uncompensated termination. 
    There are many benefits to this plan, such as population control and poverty lessening, but I want to focus on the benefit to the military.  I do sense, however, another objection, in regard to my second reason to not allow homosexuals to serve openly, in that such openness might lead to inappropriate relationships between soldiers that are incompatible with military might and cohesion.  While removing females and preventing open homosexuality might suggest an end to this issue, the simple human fact is people have sexual urges and may succumb to temptations they might not generally when their ability to satisfy their urges is blocked.  This could lead to rape by soldiers, as seen in some third world nations, or a form of institutional homosexuality, as has been seen in prison.  Saltpeter has proven unreliable and something as drastic as castration is inhumane and unlikely to result in soldiers with true fighting power.
    Rather than allow such deplorable actions to occur, I propose we initiate a stress relief program for our soldiers.  Like the policy on removing emotional ties for soldiers, this plan is also financially and socially beneficial.  We allow welfare recipients or those receiving unemployment benefits for extended periods to be volunteered for this program, as well as of-age children of those heavily in debt.  The volunteers will be chosen, as with the soldiers, by lottery.  Upon selection they will be flown to a forward location.  There they will be presented to soldiers, who will review them alone and make the selection of their choice.  The soldier will then go to a private room with his volunteer and relieve the stress that comes with defending his country.  Because of the privacy of this selection the soldier will be free to select either gender, as this choice will not be known to his fellow soldiers, so any homosexual incidents do not interfere with the cohesion of the military.  Also, upon request (which will, of course, be anonymous) different races, ages, body types, or other qualifiers will be met, if possible.  The soldier will be made aware that after transactions the volunteer is terminated, to avoid any possible emotional connection on the soldier’s part .  Once termination is completed, any bankruptcy or debt owed by the selected’s family will be properly nullified by the Internal Revenue Service and other government entities.
    As you can see, allowing open homosexuality is detrimental to the military force.  This is not a matter of homophobia, but of putting the needs of the country over the personal lives of our soldiers and those of our citizens.  The soldiers and citizens of the World War II era are sometimes called the Greatest Generation because of their patriotism and willingness to sacrifice for the good of the country.  That is a noble trait we need to apply to our citizenry, so that such sacrifice of self leads to the reestablishment of the most feared and noble military on the face of the earth.

If you have never read the novel Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, I suggest you do so, as it is probably one of the best novels of the last half-century or so, especially in the science fiction field (although the “science” part is mostly incidental).  I say that to begin with, since that’s probably the last good thing I have to write about Card.  For reasons I don’t fully fathom I have Card’s blog site bookmarked (okay, I know in part, as he does talk about some stuff that is of interest to me).  Generally Card is becoming a caricature, a buffoon who lashes out at “liberals” and “Hollywood” while bemoaning how Christians and conservatives are painted with broad strokes.  Until now I never really felt the need to touch on something he’s written.

Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

In the link above he reviews The Lincoln Lawyer, The Company Men, and American Idol.  The specific section I want to highlight is when he questions the use of the f-word (for the uninitiated, he means “fuck”). 

“Raise your had if movie people are the only ones who ever use the word in your presence.”  The assumption is that you will of course not raise your hand, as he goes to point out that “most of us, as grownups, don't feel the need to use the word. It's such an adolescent thing.”  In fairness to Mr. Card, he was raised under the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and attended Brigham Young University, so there is reason to believe that, at least in that part of his life, the use of the word was minimal.

I was raised in Bible Belt states and worked in fast food, a chicken plant, and the Air Force.  In my over twenty years in the Air Force, I do not believe there has been one working day in which I did not hear this word--from the lowest of airmen to generals to leaders in the intelligence field.    I do not have any objection to Card not using the word in his fiction (most of his works that I’ve read of his had settings that would have made use of the word strange and off-putting), but I could also query why the use of a word is taboo to him but (in his writing) murder is not.

In chastising anybody who uses the word in fiction Card writes, “it isn't only screenwriters and talentless comedians who need to outgrow the F-word habit. When writers tell me, ‘But that's how my character would really talk,’ I always answer, ‘And do you also have to show us how they really wipe their bums after they poop? No? You're able to leave out that extremely realistic trait of your characters? Then why not keep their poopy language out of our heads, too?’"

I actually admire this question, not because of its content, but because if any writer is unable to answer it, then we know that is not a writer worth reading.  How many stories have you read in which pooping is vital (maybe it says something about me, but I can actually name some)?  Now, how many stories have you read in which talking is vital?  Yes, it’s a nice question if not paid proper attention, but it falls apart rather easily.  If you write about young boys or Native Americans or a married couple (Ender’s Game, Alvin the Maker, Lost Boys), then it’s quite easy to not use the word.  Of course, Card has written more than this, but those are some of his most famous works.  On the other hand, if your story is set in a military setting or a locker room, or quite frankly many settings in modern America, then realistic dialogue could very well incorporate this word. 

I’m also quite offended that a writer feels the need to censor words,  as if words are evil and not the actions and intents that surround him.  Of course, what is there to expect from somebody on the board of the National Organization for Marriage?

I’m on Spring Break right now, allowing a little down time after nearly burning out my retinas last night finishing a program before I had to send it to the professor at midnight.  I’m going to be working on getting the house clean the next couple of days, and then we’re going to Mt. Nebo for three days in the middle of the week. 

When I first started using the GI Bill for school my intention was to get a dual degree in Journalism and Computer Science.  I already have two Associate’s degrees through the Air Force in Computer Science and Information Systems Management, and it seemed a waste to not do something beyond that.  However, this semester has made me reevaluate this.  I am taking a C++ class, and it’s been somewhat of a struggle, mainly because I find ways to procrastinate with it (which would explain why I spent about seven hours on the program yesterday and none in the two weeks before).  I can write the elementary code that we are doing right now (not that C++ helps much with this--who thought I would miss Fortran?), but I have no desire to do so.  Plus, I am taking a Survey of Calculus class, which I have a high C in (it was a mid B, but I really bombed my last test).  I think I will be able to get it back in B range before the end of the semester, but it’s hard, especially after not taking a math class for the last 18 years.  Plus, if I continue with the Computer Science degree, I still have to take another math class.

In my two Journalism classes and my Creative Nonfiction writing class, I have high As.  It’s Spring Break, and I am going to start working on an essay tonight that is not due for another 12 days.  I’m too old at this point to continue on something I know I don’t want to do, so I am going to drop the Computer Science degree (I will finish the classes this semester, though) and continue with the Journalism degree.  I believe (based on whatever haggling I will have to do with my advisor in two weeks) that I probably only have another 4 or 5 semesters for that degree, so after that I hope to spend the rest of my GI Bill working on my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.  I likely will not be able to finish it before my GI Bill runs out, but at least I should get a pretty good headstart.

I only have three more C++ programs to write, thankfully.

    The pole was tugged.
    The boy sat on a short pier, a body’s distance from where the Gulf of Mexico tickled the fingernail-clipping of a Florida island.  His feet swung like pendulums over the edge, tiny grits of sand flying off with each oscillation.  The string from his fishing pole disappeared into the ocean like spittle hitting a Coca Cola bottle.  His arms and knees blushed violently.
    He did not like to fish.  He did not like anything anything about fish or any type of seafood.  He had been moved from the cod of Rockport, Massachusetts to the flounder off of Indian Rocks Beach, a journey that only served to change the smell from a foggy mustiness to one of floweriness, but still overwhelmed by the stink of fish.  His mother angered when he refused to eat lobster--he watched her with disgust, imagining severed limbs dipped in urine. 
    Yet here he was, with this pole.  And there was a tug.
    What he pulled out was no snapper, spasming like a live wire, but instead was mass, substance, a solid block of silent gray anger.  It had a demon’s tail, a mouth like a slit throat.  The boy knew he had to release this creature; otherwise, there would be no telling what horrors it would subject him to.  He could think of no course of action that would not get him within contact of the creature, that would not allow it to consume him within its bulk. 
    He heard footsteps behind him.
    “Wow, you caught a stingray,” his aunt said.

    Cory and Scott sat in the room, a table carcass-filled with empty bottles between them.  There had been roughly a dozen people in the room, but it slowly dwindled to just the two, as others went to their own rooms.  This was Cory’s room, filled with military angles and brownness.  Scott was a single parent, so he lived in housing roughly a mile away.  His child was with his parents for the summer, so he was relishing his irresponsibility.  Scott could not drive home, so he was going to sleep in Cory’s room, where there was a bunk bed, although the base had been letting airmen have rooms to themselves for years.  Cory said something about Scott being on top, and Scott blurredly said something about being so drunk he didn’t know if Cory was coming onto him.  Cory said, I could be, and after a moment they both laughed and went to sleep.
    That was a time of new policies, and it seemed like they spent more time in meetings and training than actually working.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  New safety policies.  Suicide prevention.  Statistics entombed them meaninglessly.
    By September of 1996, Cory had left the Air Force and moved to North Dakota, where his parents lived.  Scott reenlisted and was preparing to move to his next assignment in Nebraska.  On the second day of the month, a friend of Cory’s, who Scott still worked with, told him Cory’s mother had called him and told him Cory had committed suicide.  The only thing in the note that made any sense was that it was because “of what happened in Europe.”

    This is what he remembered of his grandfather’s death.
    His grandfather is the first dead body he has seen up close.  His grandfather is pale, like settled milk.  His grandfather was a burly man, and he can see the gut, but it does not move.  The first of his grandfather he sees as he approaches the casket is the nose, a crooked arch that had lost the Frenchman’s love of alcohol it usually expressed. 
    There was a patch of blackness, erased tape, and then he remembered sitting in the pews next to his cousin Eric, and the priest walked zigzaggedly toward them, resting a comforting hand here, giving a consoling nod there.  His collar seemed to pulse like a heartbeat against the blackness of his shirt.  He bent to the two boys and asked, “Did you love your grandfather?”  The boy squeaked nothingness, sure any answer would doom him.  He burst into tears, although his cheeks had been dry since learning of his grandfather's death.
    He cried for two hours.  Ten minutes were for his grandfather, one hour for himself, the rest because he felt it was expected.
    This is what he remembered of his grandfather’s life: angry shouts at the boy’s mother for staying with an abusive boyfriend; the gurgling red death of a slaughtered pig near his grandfather’s barn; horse testicles hanging off a barbwire fence like a sad rearview mirror ornament.
    Time swallowed all else.   

    Highway 71 ran along the spine of Kansas.  The sky was the color of coal strained with cotton.  Snow clung to the shoulders like a lazy pet.  The father peered through the window, frost caught on the corners, as the daughter slept in the back seat, a twisted L interested at the seat belt.  Music whispered in the car.  A box of compilation tapes were on the passenger seat.
    The tow truck moved like a serpent off the median.  The father moved over to the shoulder to avoid it, catching some black ice.  The car went over the side, hitting rocks and ground.  The brakes had no effect, and the car descended with flattened tires.
     Well, this is it, the father thought calmly.  Time had quickened, and he saw the paramedics taking his mangled body out of the car.
    The car hit a large rock, which bent part of the bumper.  His seat belt caught against his chest.  The car stopped.
    “Dad, are we there yet?” a voice whispered sleepily from the back seat.

    They walked along the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  They would have liked to go into the Canyon, to hike or ride a mule, but the itinerary only allowed for a few hours before the moved onto the next destination on their trip. 
    Robyn’s feet were sore.  They both wore hiking boots, but her shoes were new, and she had already walked around the entirety of the meteor crater.  Her dad took a picture of her next to a sign that warned of the possibilities of falling. 
    Suddenly, her dad’s foot scooted along a rock.  His body spun like that of a drunken ballerina.  His body moved toward the rim’s edge, and he reached out to grab a branch.  He looked down the side of the canyon for a moment, and then turned to her and asked if she was ready to go on.
    Years later, he insisted that it was her, not him, who had almost fallen.

    In the air there is more air.  It is a kiss with space travel not understood any more than drowning in the womb.  This memory belongs to another, stolen like a penny from a dresser.  She is young, her teenage years lost as the decade closed on the Beatles, Kennedy, and Woodstock.  She is entombed in the girth of the plane.  She looks out the window and sees cottony clouds sliced through by the plane’s wings.  A pudgy infant is in her lap, plastic glasses swallowing his face, his diaper peeking out the top of his pants.
    That baby is me.  That is my mother.   
    In this thief’s pretty, she can be seen, dew on her lip, a gulp in her throat.  Stark freckles stand on the smoothness of her nose.  She will never like flying.  Does she hold baby too tightly?  Too loosely?  He is in the mist of her arms, and then he is not.  The plane falls in a pocket of air, and the baby is out of her arms tossed forward several rows.  The woman screams.  A man reaches out, stiff business-shirt arms pushing woolen sleeves.  The baby is brought down and stares at the man’s face.  Plastic crunches under a cart’s wheel.

Yesterday I had multitudes, today mirages in the desert. 

We have to write a lyric essay for my Creative Nonwriting class (which I will still call, despite it actually being “Essay Writing”, which, yeah, but is sounds too much like Freshman Composition, which is not quite right).  Now what is a lyric essay, I wondered?  Would I have to find words to match with “hippopotamus”?  Would I have to find some event in my life that would warrant me being able to use “hippopotamus” in an essay? 

One concept of the lyric essay is that it does not follow a straight narrative path.  According to the textbook, the essays “favor fragmentation and imagery: they use white space and juxtaposition as structural elements.”  There are also different forms of lyric essays, including the prose poem; the collage; the braided essay (the essay can wander to and fro, play in the traffic, but it has to come back to the same place--it must have a spine to make it stand); the “hermit crab” essay, which the authors made up to basically say you could use any form to write your essay in, whether it be a recipe, a to-do list; an address book. 

So I sat down the other day, in the long gap between taking a Journalism test and getting into the Programming lab, and wrote down all my different ideas and/or possible forms.

1. Google map directions -- covering the time between when I was first kicked out of my parents’ home until I joined the Air Force, touching upon the directionless way I felt during that time and the almost inevitable mistakes I made.  This would have included what I still think of as one of the funniest “first time” stories I’ve ever know.  I had to cut this one soon after I started writing it, because the directions (unless I cheated on them) would just take too much space. 
2. To-do list -- to-do lists are a huge part of my life.  And yet I couldn’t think of any essay subject to work into this.
3. Snapshots -- this, I guess, would be the collage one.  I wanted to show moments in my life in which death was there or nearby.  This was, surprisingly to me, the one I ended up writing.  I was not enthusiastic about it, but the topic and form (which changed somewhat as I wrote it) worked well together.
4. People watching -- I thought about this while I was sitting and trying to figure out what I wanted to write about, and I would find myself watching people as they go by, just observing their habits, dress, etc.  I could have done something with it, but right now all I can think of is cliche stuff.
5. iTunes shuffle - this is just like one of those things you see on FaceBook every once in a while and you have to hit shuffle on your iPod and put whatever song comes up into some slot (“Song You Marry To”, “Song on Your Deathbed”, etc.).  Somewhat interesting, but nothing that would in any way be elevated beyond a FaceBook type of note.
6. I thought I would like to write something about seeing through my eyes, about all the issues I have with my sight, all my phobias about my eyes.  I think this would be something good, but I have to turn something in by Thursday, and while I have the spine for this, I just don’t have the rest of the skeleton to attach to it.
7. Christmas list -- I love Christmas, but love doesn’t mean you can do something just because you wanna.
8. Summer trip - I actually thought about this while thinking of another, because one event in there (the third on my list) occurred during this trip.  Again, something wonderful to write, but right now no substance to it that I could write about.
9. Word a Day calendar -- I have a love of language, and thought of a way to work that in.  I could have done it (I ended up doing something similar with the snapshot essay, except I ended up using colors instead of words).
10. Essay only using song lyrics -- this just would have taken too much research and time.  Especially if I wrote an essay in which I used names (in the essay I did write, I mention two girls I had crushes on in elementary school, Dawn Milam and Melinda Wampach--never gonna find those in song lyrics.
11. Stand-up routine -- I think I was getting punch-drunk by this point.  I don’t really see how this would be different from a regular essay, except maybe more dick jokes.
12. Cave -- I thought of doing something with the parts of a cave, but this one is just a form in search of a story, and it wasn’t there at this time.
13. Child’s nursery rhyme - yep, punch-drunk.
14. Movie review -- I was just thinking I would have to actually do one of these for my Journalism class, so it was natural to think about it.

Of all of these, I whittled it down to Google maps, snapshots, and eyes.  I have already written snapshots.  I need to do another edit, because some of the intent of what I wanted to write changed as I wrote it, but I think it is pretty good form.  I started the Google map one, and I think it could be good, but our essays are supposed to be five pages or less, and, quite honestly, I would probably have five pages of just directions, not including what I would add (I was looking forward to this, since I would write it in second person and frame all the sentences as instructions.  Ah, well).  The eye one would also have been good framing, but no picture. 

I don’t know how I feel about this essay form.  I’m going to do a second draft, turn it in for review, and then do another draft for final turn-in, and we will see.

Blood flowed.  Metal met bone.  Fists connected.  I sat on the living room couch, a Playstation controller in my hands, commanding lives beneath my thumb pads.  The wrestler I was puppeteering would in June of that year, after killing his wife and before committing suicide, murder his son.  On that last, I had him beat by five months.
    My wife Missa is a nurse.  As is my mother, my sister, my grandmother, an assortment of aunts.  I don’t like hospitals myself.  Walking down the hallways of one, I felt like the soundtrack of a horror movie was playing a drunken symphony of whooshes, beeps, and whispers, and that I was an actor in that movie.  I know death was behind every door, and I still went through them, ignoring the audience’s catcalls.  This hospital was no different.  Only upon reflection do all the clues click to me.  The pause in the nurse’s speech after she first tried to get the heartbeat.  The change in rooms to perform an ultrasound.  Her need to get the doctor, leaving us behind to stare at a screen of silent static.  The doctor passed his decree through a mixture of goop and stillness, then floated to other rooms.
    The doctor suggested a dilation and curettage.  Missa had seen one during her nursing clinicals and resisted the idea.  There were other approaches considered safer, but this was a military hospital and was several steps behind those in the civilian world.  Missa talked to the nurse on the phone and was told the doctor would prescribe Misoprostol, often used for ulcer prevention, but also for inducing labor or abortion.  Two out of three ain’t bad.
    Misoprostol can be self-administered.  My wife did not foresee any problem with doing this at home.  The only thing I needed to do, she said, was to insert the Misoprostol, as it would be difficult for her to do.  She put a dark towel on the bed and a white disposable pad on top of it.  She lay on top of them  The pills were tiny, no bigger than the allergy pills I often forget to take.  I lubricated two of my fingers and inserted the pills with a fishhook motion, like a wrestler cheating out of the referee’s view.
    “What now?” I asked.
    “We wait.”
    I stood silently, listening to San Antonio snow whisper goodbye like a Dali clock off the roof.  Missa explained the process could take a while, so I should find something to occupy myself.  I asked her if she wanted anything--perhaps some cake from my stepdaughter’s birthday the previous day.  Celebrating had been muted, so there was plenty of cake remaining.  Missa passed on the offer.  I went into the living room and powered on the Playstation.  Beating somebody up sounded good to me.
    I performed my medical procedure at ten minutes to three in the afternoon.  The rejection of a nearly three-month-old fetus is a muted and mocking form of labor, like hearing a favorite song played by untalented and bored children.  Instead of doctors and nurses, there is only a hapless husband, taking sabbaticals from smashing people in the head with a metal chair to see if there is any help he can provide.  There was not. There was no room of eager relatives looking up at every swoosh of the door; there were only empty chairs and a telephone to be ignored.  This empty labor lasted five hours and at the end, there was no crying from a stretching baby covered in blood and what appeared to be congealed bacon grease.  There was only a tiny pinkish creature, some cross between a tadpole and a Spielbergian alien.
    My wife called me into the room, and I saw the small blob, a bullseye on the dark blue of the towel and the whiteness of the pad.  There was surprisingly little blood.  I looked at the small form.  It was barely half the length of my thumb.  A fetus at eleven weeks has formed some recognizable features--it was recognizable as human, but it appeared to be a human drawn by a talented toddler.  The arms and legs were discernible, but there was a tone to them that I could only think of as tabula rasa.  Those arms would not freckle.  The mouth was a tiny line, as if at the last second someone thought to draw a smile on its features.  The eyes were drops of blue ballpoint pen stains.  The gender was indistinguishable, but my wife insisted it was a boy.  His name was Dane Xavier.
    We had a baby blanket we were never going to use.  Missa cut a small section out of it and put the fetus on one side of it, folded it over, and folded it over again.  She put the blanket into a sandwich bag.  I watched my wife perform all this with cool efficiency.  She worked in a hospice and often caught a final breath.  Before Dane, I had seen one dead person in a casket. 
    We discussed what to do.   Missa wanted to cremate.  I wasn’t positive, but I couldn’t think of what else to do--flush it down the toilet, bury it in the backyard.  There seemed no good solution.  It was late at night, and we had to wait to go to the funeral home, so the fetus went into the closet with shoes, shirts, pants, and boxes of papered history.  Missa said there wouldn’t be any issue with decomposition, which was beneficial as our daughters didn’t have to see the sandwich bag in the freezer.  We put the bag on a high shelf the dog couldn’t reach.
    The person we talked to at the funeral home said it would cost fifty dollars for cremation.  I wrote the check, and Missa took the bag out of her purse like a packed lunch.  A few days later we were given an urn the size of a closed fist.  It was put on our dresser, next to a box my wife had put together, like a time capsule, with baby socks, sonograms, the pregnancy test.  This is your life for the pre-birth crowd.  The check was never cashed.
    The average temperature for cremation is between 1600 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.  It takes approximately two to three hours to cremate a human body.  A person who weighed 150 pounds would be completely cremated at roughly the rate of a pound a minute.  It would only take a second or two for Dane.
    How do you mourn what never was?  The collected ashes on my dresser are a person with whom I never interacted, never shared a pizza, never tossed a ball.   He would never come hesitantly from school, stuttering to explain a bad grade or a black eye.  He would never experience a first kiss.  There would be no bones to break, no casts to sign.  He was a world of not, a life of never. 
    We held our own memorial service and moved on.  The world asks how everything is, and you say fine.  Never mind waking up at three in the morning to a wife’s sobbing and the comfort that can not be provided. 
    Life is a highway, notable automobile spokesman Tom Cochrane told us, and we drove on.  One passenger gets dropped off, and another gets picked up.  Five months later, with no plan or intent, Missa became pregnant again.  It was a pregnancy on eggshells, fought together against hardhearted doctors, bleeding frights, and that question of what if, what if.  Tatiana Annaliese was born in February of 2008.  As with the previous pregnancy, my wife refused to entertain the idea of naming our child Reese’s Peanut Butter Cutlip.
    Soon after Tatiana’s first birthday I deployed for six months.  I had spent large blocks of time away from my oldest daughter before, including a period during 1996 in which I was sent to Las Vegas and Italy, and moved my permanent base from Germany to Nebraska, necessitating my mother to keep her for nearly eight months.  Besides missing my kid, it didn’t worry me.  It did now.  Tatiana would experience so much I would not witness, and there was so much I could not protect her from.  I hadn’t thought about that when I was twenty-six.
    But, in the morning, after I walked from work under the sharp Qatari sun, I would sleep and dream that Tatiana in her crib on a previous day was being watched by Dane.  Monsters in the closet would stay away, because he would not let them by.  In my dream he was an adult.  I could never see his face, but I could see his sharp blue eyes, his mother’s eyes, and I knew that he would be there for Tatiana in a way I was never able to be for him.

Today is Tatiana’s birthday.  She’s three, an occasion that we’ve decided to celebrate by performing unique gymnastic acts that scare the snot out of her mother.

She handled her cake much better than she did last year.  She blew out the candle okay, although the first few times she tried she really did little more than spit on it.  Last year she decided the best way to put out the candle was with her fingers.  That didn’t really hurt her, but she freaked out when all of us yelled at the same time.

I’ve thought several times about getting a job, even though I am going to school full time.  But, since I am getting my retirement pay and a housing stipend (in addition to whatever Missa earns working), I have decided to take advantage of the time I do have.  I am gone for a large portion of the day Monday through Thursday (I only have one class on Friday), but it still leaves me enough time to spend with her.  I don’t have to worry about any military exercises, TDYs, or, thank goodness, deployments.  I also don’t have to worry about being called in to work to do something my my civilian “boss” who is getting paid three or four times what I am getting paid, to do something he should know how to do (he didn’t--after reaching the point at which you can retire, stuff like that will make you).

So I get to take advantage of it.  Unlike the four or five months before, this last month or so I have not been the first person she sees when she wakes up (which entails her popping out of bed and sneaking in the hallway to see if you can see her), but I do get to come home to her excitedly jump around that I’m here.  I’m also the A number 1 drink-getter, an honor that loses its luster after the five-thousandth time she walks by her sister and mother to hold a cup out to me and say “woookwat” (chocolate).  I’m also in the enviable position of being her gymnastic equipment every time I go by her.  She holds her hands out to me, then climbs with her feet up me, until she is standing on my shoulders.  She then drops down and throws her head back, with her legs wrapped around my neck, so that she is hanging upside down in front of me.  Then she lets her feet go, so that I have to catch her by the legs before she drops to the floor.  The routine is completed when I arc her over my head and catch her by the armpits, so that we are essentially back to back.  She loves this.  My wife, as I pointed out before, practically drops a load.

I have three years of GI Bill to use.  I may need to, at some point, get a job, depending on circumstances, but until I’m happy with this existence, with watching my little Tater with a frosting buzz doing spin after spin after spin (face plant) after spin.

This morning, on the way to school, I stopped for a bite at Hardee’s.  It was a quarter to seven, and my first class didn’t start until eight, but I left early to ensure I got there in time and also because, although there is a bus system on campus, I prefer to walk to class.  At least, I think, I am getting some exercise, and even if it doesn’t appear to be doing anything for the size of my stomach, I will have some well-toned calf muscles (all my classes are in a close cluster of buildings, but the nearest parking lot is probably about half a mile away and is a severely uphill journey).

I sat near a window still dandruffy with last week’s snow and looked outside as I bit into my sourdough breakfast sandwich.  The sky was a purple ululation, and I thought of a poem I had written probably eighteen years ago.  There was no purple in the poem, no wailing clouds, but somehow the poem leaped immediately to mind (there is painting mentioned in the poem, so there’s that).  Maybe it was the perfect melding of inconsequential things that form something full of consequence.  I was in a Hardee’s, which is where I first worked and also where I first met my ex-wife, who the poem is peripherally about.  Although it’s not really, somehow.  Now I’m not sure, but that probably explains why I gave poetry up as something I would never do much beyond playing Chopsticks on, so to speak.

Here’s the poem, in one of its later revisions.  The original is lost somewhere in a computer gravesite.  I believe the original was probably its best form.

***

For Alicia by the ocean’s edge,
where misted waves melt in black
sand, among bleeding white rocks
and dead fish.
Under a glutton moon
I slept, beneath the pier,
while brine lapped at my face
like that dog I bought you last year.

For Alicia, whose painted toes dangle
in the water,
I wrote a poem in the sand
with my toe, calloused and red.
The tide swallowed my words
and etched them across the beach,
like your streak-splatter paintings
I never understood.

***

There was more after that, but mostly it was the result of a professor trying to make more of a poem that what it was (not that I think poems can’t be made better, but, again, I realize I do not have the stuff of a poet, and this was best as it was, red hot from the pen).

I found myself needing to find the poem today.  Not exactly sure why.  However, tonight I searched for it.  Like the transitive connection from Hardee’s window to eighteen-year-old poem, my search made me feel like I was wandering in a life-size version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. 

I guess I have to explain.  Both my wife and I pack rats, although in different ways and of different things.  There have been times when our two powers combined have made things difficult (like my search tonight).  I have almost everything I have written over the last twenty years.  I also have every card or letter that I’ve received over that time (just remember that if you want to get snippy with me; I can go back two decades and use your words against you).  Unfortunately my stories, poems, cards and letters are no longer as organized as they were years ago, so I didn’t know exactly where they were.

In my search for this one poem I found many other embarrassing poems (“poems”?  Well, no, not really, more like Henry Rollinsish bon mots that essentialy were “my father is a dick and let me explain that graphically” and “I’m lonely”).  I found cards and letters that highlighted my short marriage and the subsequent divorce, plus my exhausting and futile effort to make the mother of my child be a part of her life.  I found letters that slowly and decisively led up to an eyeblink of a relationship I should not have gotten into .  No letter exists to commemorate the death of that relationship, but there exists somewhere an e-mail that spills some liquor on its grave.  All that remains is my nickname.

I have two letters and a card from my friend Cory.  In the first letter he writes me from his deployment to Italy.  He told me about the awesome food he was eating and the great hotel he was in, and he enclosed some money to pay his phone bill (I can’t remember, but I assume I paid it, since he didn’t kick my ass later).  The card is for Christmas.  There is not a date on it, so I can’t say for sure what year it is from, but probably not 1995, since that is when I received the last letter from him.  I bought his computer from him before he separated, and he had a problem with my check, so he was checking in with me on it (I got the money to him).  He wrote about the troubles he was having with the Air Force, both with getting his household goods and with them saying they overpaid him and they would like his money back.  “Hope things are going to rough for you, Scott.  Don’t party too hard and have a joyous holiday season.”  He signed his name and wrote his address then included a P.S.: “Have you talked to Sarah recently?”  I had.  We met her as she was working at a snack bar during one of our exercises.  She was a colonel’s daughter, eighteen, and a high school senior.  We flirted with her outrageously and for some reason kept calling her “Susie Q”, borne from an original name mistake.  I called her house and asked if Susan was there.  Of course not.  I hung up and then realized my mistake, screwed up some courage, and called her back, explaining my mistake.  We dated for six weeks.  We had broken up (she had) after my squadron’s Christmas party.  She was eighteen.  I was 25, a single parent.  Of course we broke up.  I called Cory and talked about the money, letting him know it was getting to him that week, and I talked about what went down with Sarah.  I was going TDY to Las Vegas for three weeks in February and then to Italy myself for three months before I moved back to the states.  Things work out that way.  I knew about Las Vegas when I talked to Cory, but not Italy.  I don’t remember the last words we said on the phone, so I guess it’s going to be “have you talked to Sarah recently?”.  We got off the phone, I closed the book on Sarah and put that relationship to gather dustily with others.  A blanket of snow brushed one year to the next and life moved on.  Nine months later, Cory killed himself.

I look at these papers, these poems, stories, cards, letters, scraps of a life five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road.  There is a small part of me, a very small part, that wants to put all of these in a cardboard box, take them outside, and fire them up in the burn pit, to watch ashes battle with snow.  There’s also a small part of me that wants to strap a backpack on and walk the world like Kwai Chang Caine.  Both of these would be a mistake.  Maybe releasing the past, letting the footprints on the beach be washed away, would be good.  Maybe a clean slate is good, as the cliche suggests.  But in the pain, embarrassment, fright, disappointment of memories, there is also beauty and strength and wonder, hidden like a flower in the hand of a small child.

I didn’t think I would have trouble adjusting to being a civilian.  I thought that I would get out, put the military behind me, and move on with my life.  And, in part, that is what I have done.

Interestingly enough, it’s the small things with which I am having trouble adjusting.  I’ll be quite honest, I hated wearing the uniform, especially blues.  But it was something I got used to, and I knew what I had to wear what day--blues on Monday and ABUs the rest of the week (or when deployed, just straight ABUs, with the occasional gas mask for exercises).  Now I have to make choices.  That sucks.  If it was up to me, I would probably wear the same things again and again, which might explain why one of my Pawleys Island T-shirts sort of reads Pa  ys   la   .

And haircuts.  Again, I thought, yay, I’m out, long hair in a ponytail or something, but I discovered I can’t stand my hair too long.  But I also can’t stand to pay 15 bucks for something I used to get for less than seven dollars (and which generally is a pretty simple haircut to do).  My wife has cut my hair a couple of times and done a decent job, but as she has pointed out, I have frustrating hair, with cowlicks multiplying like Tribbles.

I also have a problem with shaving.  I tried the full beard (about 10 percent of the way to a full ZZ Top), and that wasn’t working.  Then I tried the goatee, and that wasn’t working (plus my wife has fought any facial hair I had).  I did the clean-shaven thing a few weeks ago, and I rediscovered that I hate shaving.  Right now, I’m thinking shave it once a week, and the rest of the time just let it grow out.

But...I get to be a part of my daughter’s life every day.  I get to go to school and learn new things.  I get to have my own home, without being concerned that in a few years I might have to move again. I get to wear an earring again (and yet, even after being retired for about five months, I still haven’t). 

I don’t have to worry about writing Enlisted Performance Reports, satanic documents that disrupt and harangue the very English language.  I don’t have to listen to some fatass, four-star-ass-kissing Captain threaten everybody on my shift with an Article 15 if something gets screwed up.  I don’t have to work with (#name redacted#).

But I really wish I could figure out what to do with my facial hair.  Fu manchu?

I watched the below video today.  I think the young man says all that needs to be said about children living with same-sex parents.



To me, the arguments against same-sex marriage make very little sense.

There is the argument that they are against the word of the Bible.  I am not a religious person, but I have respect for people who are.  However, I don’t take much stock in people who take so much stock in the Bible.  It makes some sense as a guidebook, but very little as a rulebook.  After all, in the same book that is often used against homosexuality, it is said that the blind, lame, or those who are dwarves cannot approach the alter of God.

I also believe that the Bible was written by man, as were many other religious books.  Whether or not these men received word from God, I believe that each writer has put his own spin on things.  There is also the fact that many of the high points of the Bible are, as pointed out by Joseph Campbell, variations of stories that have been passed on long before the birth of Christ.

But to take the religious out of it, let’s look at some of the other protests against same-sex marriage.  The first thing to look at is the very definition of marriage, which is commonly seen as union between a man and a woman.  Some people, suck as the Family Research Council, say that it is for producing children.  They answer many questions on their web site about some protestations that might be brought against this, but I don’t think they are really sufficient.   They declare that procreation is the significant factor, and that if it were not for procreation, then there would be very little people who would even want the government to interfere in our affairs.  I guess you could ask somebody that when they are not allowed to see their partner of 30 years as they are dying, because they are not “family”.

By the way, when it comes to definitions and how we need to adhere to them--”decimate” used to mean to execute one out of every 10, but that is no longer so, and I have to say I find that desecration of Latin worse than what some want to do with “marriage”. 

One of the more laughable protests brought up by the FRC (or as I lovingly like to call them, the Fucking Retarded Cocksuckers...or Cunnilinguists, dependent on their gender), is that homosexual marriages would lead to children being without a mother and a father, which is ABSOLUTELY necessary.  I think Mr. Wahls provided a counterargument to that, but let me also add something of my own.  I have a mother and a father.  The first 15 years of my life I probably saw my father less than three years total, and that is counting the first two years in which my parents still lived together.  The next ten years I did not see him at all and had one short 15-minute phone conversation with him.  The last 15 years--nothing.  I know he’s alive, but that’s all I know.  Having a father did nothing for me.

It is not specifically mentioned on their web site, but it appears based on what they write that they would prefer a child to come from Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell or Britney Spears and Jason Alexander than from a stable homosexual relationship (which, according to their statistics, is unlikely to happen--it’s more likely a homosexual father will rape his child, do drugs, cheat on his spouse, and die of AIDS than be a stable parent).  I could take some of the fight against homosexual marriage if it was coincided with a fight against frivolous marriages.  But it’s not.

I was going to touch on Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, but now I’m too pissed to even get into it.  I think I’m gonna go beat up some straights instead.

The master closet is off of our master bathroom.  That’s a little strange for me, as I’ve never had a master closet that wasn’t actually in the bedroom.  There are some shelves in there, between the two sides of the closet--mine, too organized, shirts broken up by different categories: sports T-shirts; wrestling T-shirts; music T-shirts; location (usually bought on vacation) T-shirts; Christmas T-shirts; humor T-shirts; pop culture T-shirts; logo T-shirts; dress shirts; collared shirts.  I think I might be a little OCD. 

I’ve used one of the shelves in there to store my notebooks.  There are probably about four dozen of them.  Except for two or three of them, every one of them has at least a quarter of its pages blank.  It is with only a little shame that I admit I’ve bought six new notebooks in the last couple of weeks--five for classes I am taking and one for my to-do lists.  I already have a weekly planner (which I bought last July), which is decent, but I found that two pages it allows for a week’s worth of to-doness is not quite enough for me.  I was using another notebook to do my list, but then I decided to change my process, and I found it difficult to do so within that same notebook. 

These are some of the things I’ve found scattered in the notebooks:

-- to-do lists--probably the number one usage
-- journal entries, some as far back as 1994, with the most recent being somewhere around 2003 (most of my writing is on the computer now)
-- story fragments and ideas
-- I’ll call it poetry, but only in a Henry Rollinsish kind of way.  If you read the earlier stuff, you would think, “man, this guy doesn’t like his dad”, and if you read my later stuff from the 90s, you would think, “man, this guy needs to get laid”. 
-- grocery lists
-- food diaries
-- exercise diaries
-- budgets
-- school notes
-- episodes from favorite shows I hadn’t seen
-- Christmas lists (usually what gifts I’ve wrapped for people and what elf is giving it)
-- Easter egg list.  One year we found an Easter egg that had been hidden the previous years (luckily we don’t use real eggs, just plastic), so ever since then I’ve written down where I’m hiding stuff
-- Packing lists (packing lists were sometimes for vacations, and vacations often had their own binder, with maps, coupons, itineraries, and a multitude of other goodies guaranteed to take more time than we had, and would drive my wife insane)
-- Names.  This was before Tatiana was born and we were trying to figure out names.  This was an epic process that lasted weeks (weeks spent over books that would have rivaled the preparation of any fantasy league fanatic), and which almost led to divorce when Missa decided she didn’t like the name we had agreed on.  Tatiana came very close to being called Gwendolyn, which, after knowing her, would not have sat well on her.  Of course, I’m still hoping she’ll go by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cutlip. 

There are a good two or three dozen other uses these notebooks have served.  As I went through them the other day, it was like looking at a photo album of faded pictures, trying to figure out what this or that meant.  And who was the person that wrote these things?  What was that life he led?

In the blankness, maddening scribbles.

There are many things about me that frustrate my wife. 

There are many reasons why people stay together in marriage.  I think, although it is mentioned most often, love is one of the slightest of these.  Love will bring people together; I don’t think it’s what keeps them together.  People say opposite attracts or that people who share a common interest will be able to stay together.  I don’t know.  I agree that there are things about a spouse you need to like, you need to love, but I think  it’s the things about your betrothed that you dislike that keep you together.  Or, rather, how you are able to incorporate them into your life and live with them, or else turn into The War of the Roses and end up dead in a chandelier. 

We’ve been together over seven years, longer than any other relationship I’ve had combined, and it seems that, at least right now, that she has been able to survive with my flaws.

As I have written, there are many things about me that are frustrating, but I will just cover the top three.  I don’t want my faults to be my magnum opus. 

 I don’t do well with confrontation.  Whenever Missa and I disagree about something, she wants to get right into it.  And I want to ruminate over it, to let it swish around in my brain before I discuss it with the other person.  Chances are if I am allowed this time, I will be able to have a civil discussion with the other person and concede to them if I realize they are actually right about something.  If I am forced to confront the matter right away, I, quite frankly, can be an asshole.  That really hurts Missa, who feels better when she is able to get right into something and get it over with, even if feelings are hurt  for a short time. 

 I don’t take things seriously.  Or at least I don’t appear to.  There’s hardly an event in my life that I won’t respond to with a smart-ass remark.  True, occasionally I get off a rather delicious bon mot.  But I know, especially in times of stress, the humor does not help her.  A few years ago, when we shortly thought (because of the incompetence of the military medical services--who would’ve thought?) that I might be having serious kidney issues, I reacted to it with jokes, some of which dealt with my (supposedly) imminent demise.  She was not amused.  Of course, for me to not be able to deal with things humorously would cause a burden on me, so I try to balance sometimes, so that the comments don’t come out as much.  At least not right away, when we’re in the thick of it.

 I can’t stand when people repeat themselves, when they say something to me when they’ve already said it a time or twenty before.  Unfortunately, my response to this is a somewhat rude acknowledgement that I’ve heard it before. 

Of course, I think those are my top three.  Missa might have an entirely different set, including some that I hadn’t even thought of.  But she takes them in stride, biding her time until she can cash in the insurance (that’s another one she doesn’t find funny at all).

I'm stressing out about different things right now, so I found it difficult to come up with something to write here.  So I cheated a little (okay, a lot) and decided to post something I blogged on MySpace about three years ago.  It was on MySpace, so it's almost as if it were completely new for the world.  A little warning, if you're squeamish about some sexual discussion (even solitary) you might want to skip:

***

On Friday it was finally time for me to check whether or not my vasectomy had taken. I certainly hoped so, because I didn't want to go through the process again, especially after I recently also had to suffer through a kidney stone. It's not been a good time for stuff going through my penis.

I had my own vision of what it would be like when I went to the lab to take care of business. The lab would be staffed with buxom young redheads who would hand my specimen container in a discrete carrying device, then lead me to a luxurious room containing a king-sized bed covered in satin. There would also be a plasma TV and plenty of adult DVDs to assist me in what I needed to do.

Here is what happened. I come to the lab, which looks like pretty much every other part of the hospital. The are no buxom young women. No women at all, actually. I tell the guy at the counter I need to give a specimen. He makes me clarify just what kind of specimen. Thanks, man. He asks me loudly if I've had intercourse in the last three days. Considering they tell you not to have intercourse three days before you give a sample, I thought this was a superfluous question, or at least one I could have checked yes or no on a piece of paper.

After filling out my paperwork, he places a specimen jar down on the counter. I wait for a paper bag or something to put it in, but, nope, just the little jar. He points behind a glass door and tells me I can use one of the bathrooms.

One of the bathrooms?

For some reason I thank him and take my specimen jar, palming it close to my thigh so nobody sees it. I walk toward the bathrooms and try to visually pick one. I decide on the one farthest away from the waiting room, although it is right next to another bathroom. I step in and close and lock the door.

Once I entered the room, I surveyed my surroundings. To my left was a sink with a mirror above it. A trash can was next to it. To my right was the toilet. Next to it was the cord to call help if it was needed. Not going to use that. I turned around. Hmm. Nothing else there. No satin sheets. No DVDs. Not even a tattered copy of a Playboy magazine. This was going to be interesting.

The first thing I did was stare into the mirror. Then I checked out the ceiling tiles. As far as I could tell, there were no recording devices there, but you can make really small cameras nowadays.

The next thing I did was take out my iPod. I wasn't smart enough to download some viewing material onto it, but it did have a stopwatch. This was a very delicate operation. If I was too fast, they would think I was some type of premature freak. If I took too long, somebody might come in check on me, startling me so much I dropped the specimen on the floor. I started the timer.

Not to get too much into the graphics of it, but I assume for most men there are certain ways that work better than others (in much the same way that a sexual position might be da bomb for one couple, while the same position for another couple might be one of those "well, we're never trying that again"s. There was really nothing in this bathroom that was necessarily helpful for me. I couldn't do it standing it up, because my legs might lock, and the last thing I wanted was for somebody to have to break into the bathroom to find me lying on the floor with a bruise on my head and my junk in my hand and my little shot of evidence creeping sadly down the side of the trash can.

I could sit on the toilet, but that presented additional problems. First, I would have the cold metal backing of the flusher to contend with. Second, and more problematic, is that sitting on the toilet with the specimen bottle did not present an easy-catch system. I obviously couldn't go up into the bottle, as everything would fall back out. And anatomy prevented me from making any changes to meet the bottle halfway.

What I ended up doing was leaning diagonally across the toilet, so that I was resting my head against the wall and suspending my back above the empty spot between the toilet and wall. This way I could lean both myself and the bottle together to make everything work out. This still didn't work out very well, as at the moment of culmination I decided to position everything to prevent any spillage. Doing so made me lose my mojo, though--actually I thought I lost everything and would have to come back in three days. Finally, I made a sad little deposit (nerves, I tell ya!), positive that when I brought it up I would be laughed at and told I need to do better than that.

I checked my stopwatch and waited a few moments more just to make sure. Then, cupping the bottle again and walking sideways, I went up to the counter. Now, there were women. Three sitting in the waiting area. And one buxom blonde standing at the counter. I did everything I could do to prevent her from thinking I needed assistance, so I wouldn't have to explain what was in my hand. The guy came back and had me sit the bottle on the counter for what was approximately 10 hours, but may have been for 20 seconds. Finally, he let me go and I booked out of there.

Later, after they called me and let me know my gun had been fully unloaded, Missa told me her breasts were sore and she was...concerned. Me, too. So I went to Walgreens and grabbed a pregnancy test. Negative. Thank God.

He sits.  The monitor is in front of him.  His hands are on the keyboard.  He looks at the wall, wondering if he should put decorations there.  The wall seems bare.  A Diet Coke is within reach, but it only has a puddle left.  He is unwilling to get up and get more.  He stares at the monitor.  The page is still blank.  On his desk are bills to pay, packages to send, pictures to download, games to play.  The page is still blank.

Beginning is the hardest part, they say.  Who are they?  They are they--that’s all I can say.  Ideas in his mind ricochet, dissolve and reform, build like DNA.  The page is blank.

A cat stares at him.  It wants food.  Or attention.  The cat is staring, and the blank page can be blamed on it.  His heart rate increases and he gently pushed the cat away with his foot.  The cat moves back, spins around once, and stares at him.  The page, that canvas, is blank.

Perhaps, he thinks, he can do this tomorrow.  Or the next day.  There are so many things to do, for this and that.  What is one blank page after one blank page.  One click on one button, and the page will be gone.  He will not see it, but he will still feel its blankness. 

What if, he thinks, I take these characters and ideas and send them dancing on the blank page, directing like an orchestra, setting them to play?  Will I then look at them and only see a child’s clumsy scissored figure?  The page is blank.

I imagine that the moment you die you don’t even see it coming.  You get no more than “what the...” and it’s all over.  I don’t mean the death that is expected, whether from a long illness or jumping out of a plane without a parachute, but the one that just comes out of nowhere, that’s just Atropos cutting the thread.  I could be wrong.

I do know the moment you almost die is not like that.  This moment is one that runs longer than Harry Potter movies, one that needs to be broken into a Christmas and Summer release.  I’ve had a few moments like that.  Today, as I was driving on slushy roads with Arkansas drivers who look at snow like it was a public school history course that taught you something, I felt like that moment might come to me.  It did not.

In 2008 I fell through the attic onto the garage floor.  Well, not the garage floor...on the stuff on the garage floor.  That included books, toys, and a picture frame.  The reason I fell is because I was reaching for a small stuffed pumpkin, so that I could store it (the moral of this story is Halloween sucks.  I’m just saying, this never would have happened to me with Christmas decorations).  The first thing I noticed as I fell was that the ceiling in the garage was very flimsy.  It was not like I jumped on that spot.  It was not even as if I had put my full weight on that spot.  I leaned forward slightly and put my arm forward, reaching for the pumpkin, and I just slipped.  Whee.

The thing is that I think I actually landed on the floor before my mind decided I had landed on the floor.  I was already there, on books, toys, and picture frames, and yet I was slowly spinning in air, trying to be a professional wrestler, knowing I could land right, seeing the garage door go from sunrise to sunset, thinking to myself, well, I guess I’m gonna die.

It takes a few moments for me to realize that, yay, I’m not dead and, huh, I’m bleeding.  Bella comes into the garage and asks if I’m okay.  I’m on the floor, there’s a large section of the ceiling hanging loosely, my shirt is torn, and there’s a long bloody streak down my back, and she asks if I’m okay.  I do the same thing with my wife all the time when I know she’s not okay, like I’m Charlie Brown just so sure the football will be there this time. 

I call my wife and start to talk to her about my audition for the Flying Wallendas, but before I was able to, she told me she was with her patient at the time.  So I said she could call me back.  She did and then freaked out when I told her I had fallen through the attic.  Oh my God, are you okay?  You are?  Maybe you should come here so I can fix you up.

Say, can you stop and get me something at Wendy’s on the way?

This is something we joke about now, especially since we are now in a new house with a new attic (one that is much sturdier than the old one).  But sometimes I think--what if there was nothing on the floor; what if I didn’t rotate like I did; what if; what if?  So even over two years later, the moment of near-death is still happening. 

Why don’t you ever look at me, she asks?

I can’t.

One time, while I was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, my lieutenant held inspections every once in a while (something a little less common in the Air Force than in other branches, and especially in an office environment like the one I was in).  He marked me off for not staring straight ahead, until I pointed out I really couldn’t.  For the same reason I kept getting yelled at by my TI in Basic Training. 

I don’t see out of my left eye.  I don’t mean to say I am blind in it, but my right eye is so much stronger that, unless I cover my right eye, the left is always neglected.  My left eye also points inward.  People have asked me what I’m looking at or wondered why I was looking at them when I was doing no such thing.  I actually don’t look at anything straight on; I see better when I tilt my head so that I am looking out of the corner of my eye.

This could have been corrected when I was younger, I suppose.  But, much as I dread anything being close to my eye right now (or seeing somebody else put something near their eye), I apparently have disliked anything at all near my eyes for much of my life, to include glasses.

I have of a picture of me as a toddler, surely at a time when I was still wearing diapers, and I am wearing glasses.  I know one time, while we lived in Florida, we drove back from the optometrist’s office with my new pair of glasses...which I promptly threw out of the car, off of the bridge, and into the water.  I cannot remember how my mother reacted to that, but I can only say, since I still have skin on my ass, she showed a saintlike restraint.

Today is no different.  I have my glasses, but I only wear them when I have to --when I am driving.  Or today, when I am at school and can’t see the board.