i can hear the sparrows sing

A word from the editors at the Decadent Cafe's BADLANDS PRESS: We are unable to

lay claim to the following story. We received the manuscript in the mail. No return address. Only a plain brown manila envelope.

Is it Fiction? Fact? We leave this matter to the reader. Also since we have no idea who wrote the story, we have decided, tongue in cheek, to credit the author as: Nobody. We did chose the title 'I CAN HEAR THE SPARROWS SING'. Why we chose this title will become apparent as the reader moves through the story. Also we wish to thank Jennifer Rayport for her assistance in proofreading. She, due to the condition of the manuscript, and our insistence that the authors style be left untouched, went way beyond the call of duty. Thanks!

Publisher: Trevanian.

Senior editor: M. S. C.

Also the below in verse, a dedication, was included, and we leave it to the reader to make of it what they will.

Dedicated to Diana: You have passed over to freedom's gate, to welcoming, greeting arms.

Peace, my love, peace.

The true Lost Generation faked your vibrancy.

And like all fakes the colors faded, cracked, crumbled.

Dust to dust to dust.

I, a member of the true Lost Generation, thank you for the privilege of you sharing you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: NO MONTH. ENTRY DATE: 20 Third day? Millionth day. Day? Head almost clear. I guess the body adjusts to the drugs. A more pressing problem is the colored penis, huh-hu pencils. So tired. Yes. Sleep on it. Goodnight all.

Add more sheer...cheer. GOODNIGHT DR. FRANKENSTEIN AND MRS. MARTHA CASTRATE. AND DAMN YOU BOTH TO HELL!!!!!!!

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 21 Dr. Frankenstein? Mrs. Martha Castrate? Forget THEM. Strive.

Find a way around THEM. Never say die. Thought for the day.

Thoughts for today: Do people really think or does thinking do people? Thoughts for today: Beware the man who wants to save the world. Thoughts for today: If you take a black man and put him in a white skin and vice-versa, can you tell them apart? Thoughts for today: If all the have-nots who believe they are oppressed changed places with the haves, would they become the oppressors? THOUGHT: I AM SANE! ENTRY DATE: JUNE 22.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: DO THE SPARROWS KNOW I AM IN HERE? Felt alive today for the first time in many days. Had a energy. A will. I took this will and watched from the window to out there for a long while today. Yes, out there. Out there. A lush expanse of grass. Trees. Huge green leaves. Branches heavy with sparrows. Lake Sparrow's sky blue cleansing waters. Sparrows singing. Free. Freedom. Do they sing for me?

EDITOR'S NOTE: NO ENTRY DATES FOR JUNE 23-24.

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 25.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: RESISTANCE! What a DAY! Today, as if a rubbery-legged infant, or a man walking on Hemingway-drunk legs, I learned how to walk anew and in doing so embraced, since first incarcerated here, the first fledgling steps of resistance. How did I accomplish this? I WAS AWARE OF TIME, AND ITS PASSING! YES, I WAS AWARE! A mean feat. For here in this mental graveyard time is a

ghost who WALKS UPON THE DUSTED BONES OF SHATTERED DREAMS, DREAMS ONCE ALIVE BUT NOW MERE DUST. DUST I SAY!!!

But over the past several days I have been, like Pavlov's dog, training myself to become attuned to the sounds and movement outside the door; how their uniqueness signals a change in this otherwise unvarying routine. This serves as undeniable proof, to me, of my newly found awareness.

STOP! Just saying I have become aware is not enough. I could be fooling myself. Huh! Deluding myself. Or maybe the drugs are defeating me, insidiously altering my life-sustaining sanity and metamorphosing it into my previous: dead-societal-dried-oakscarred-void-of-sunlight-life-of-insanity?

NO! I SAY. A THOUSAND TIMES NO! ENOUGH! No. Wait. No, I have to think. Write it down. If Pavlov's dog could write he would have done so. Yes. Prove to myself that I am aware. I can do this. I can do it in minute-by-minute detail. I can?

Yes, I can.

YES I CAN! Well, here goes nothing. I mean, what have I got to lose?

Right? Nothing.

NOTHING! So let's see, the unvaried day, like its predecessors, begins so: I come fog-headed awake to a day-beginning overture...which is a key chiming in the door. The door creaks open exposing a sternfaced nurse who woodenly stands guard while an orderly...a pimply apathetic-faced boy about 18...enters carrying a red plastic tray which in turn holds a full-blown-going-off-to-war-need-myWheaties-military breakfast: eggs, potatoes, toast, coffee and this morning, ham; yesterday was a bacon day. The nurse and the orderly return exactly 20 minutes later. The orderly, after carefully using his fingers as an abacus to count the silverware, departs, tray in hand. The orderly's departure is the nurse's pill cue. She hands me a plastic cup containing an assortment of rainbow drugs...Dr. Frankenstein's mind-numbing-mind-bending-brew.

She, stern, eagle-eyed, watches while I swallow each and every pill. She leaves, the chiming of the lock snapping her morning finale. About 15 minutes later the urge to use the bathroom, due to Frankenstein's mind-numbing-mind bending-brew, I am sure, especially since regularity wasn't one of my strong suits, threatens and I go to the bathroom and empty my bowels; a pleasurable, I may add, vacating. I next stretch out on the bed and slip away into a twilight sleep where pleasant dreams await; I am dimly aware here of the sparrows singing and their songs guide sleeps way. A few hours later I awake to the sound of the daily newspaper scratching the linoleum beneath the door. I go to the

bathroom and empty my bladder; again a pleasurable vacating. I am awake, alert now, and stand at the window and think while watching the sparrows carouse amongst the trees. Sometimes I do a hat trick and think, listen to the sparrows, and gaze at the blue waters of Lake Sparrow all at the same time; I hear Mozart, see freedom, and think a thousand nights past lost. But thinking is tiring, especially when ugly thoughts intrude; thoughts all too willing to eat each other...and here I go and lie on the bed and daydream.

Time passes in this fashion until once again the key chimes in the door and it slowly creaks open. The clanging of metal chairs being brought in rings about me. I know all too well what this clanging brings: Frankenstein and Mrs. Martha Castrate.

Today I noticed, and had never noticed this before, that Mrs. Martha Castrate emits a nasal wheeze...a sound akin to a toy choo-choo.

No not yet. Not THEM yet. NOT THEM! These words are my steps.

My first steps!

Enough!

And from here the day continues to pass in sounds...sounds that blend together at times and at other times seem disembodied.

Strange voices outside the door. The sparrows in the trees. People strolling outside on the lawn. Lunch arrives. Dinner arrives. The last sounds of the day are the greetings and farewells said during shift change. Now although it is not quite dark outside yet...the sun has escaped, yes, but gray shades color the sky...it is here that evening begins and this beginning can be told by the night nurse's first of a hundred trips up and down the hall. I have never seen her. I only know that she, and she could be a he, is out there because her shoes make a tapping sound on the linoleum floor and also because at least once a night on her return walk she pauses and peers through the 3-inch by 2-inch wire mesh window imbedded into the door of my room. What this peeping Tom or Joan expects to see escapes me: perhaps she stops and peers in every room hoping to witness an obscene act, or derives smug jailer to jailed satisfaction. I do know that I see a rather Red-NosedReindeer-like strawberry nose mashed against the glass, a rather silly nose. To spend one's life walking up and down a hall peering through little wire mesh glass windows is, aside from the Freudian association, such a tragic waste of life. So in an attempt to brighten up this unknown nose, I have taken, over the past few days, to smiling at it. What the nose knows, escapes me. The nose never smiles back. It just remains mashed up against the wire mesh glass, and sometimes I imagine it is a bug on a windshield. After a few minutes, the nose continues walking. Here evening's quiet arrives. Here a dread silence visits. And to ward off the dread I hold the memory of the sparrows songs for as long as possible...but their songs soon fade, and reality sets in, leaving

me alone in this prison, these walls...these unseen seen chains. I await in this state, fear my only company; and fear hunts out every nook and cranny of my mind...depositing droppings. To escape from fear, it is here that I retire to the one refuge allowed me: the bathroom. I am safe here, safe from prying eyes, safe from THEM! SAFE! I sit on the crapper and using a colored pencil write.

I have spent life accumulating facts, useless trivia facts.

And now considering I spend so much time in the crapper, a useless fact regression concerning the term Crapper is in order. John Crapper invented the flush toilet. Infamy. To spend all eternity known as shit. Yes, it is truly a shitty world.

Enough levity. I haven't felt this good in days. And as I examine what I have written, I? This awareness is the beginning of? RESISTANCE! Pray, yes I pray so.

Weary. Tired. Time to lay me down to sleep and Pray The Lord My Soul To Keep; keep from?

I can say it. They cannot hurt me here. Here in the crapper I am safe. Safe from Frankenstein and Mrs. Martha Castrate.

Why waste letters on THEM? Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate.

Yes, better.

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 26 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: WHAT PRICE SANITY? Resistance continues!

YES! With this firmly in mind, it is time to speak of THEM! I, for the first time, consciously defied THEM today. THEM, being Doctor Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate. Always during their previous distasteful visits, I have, due mostly to the drugs, lain catatonic-like in bed silently listening to Doctor Frankenstein, who while jotting down notes on a pad of paper, clucks incessantly beneath a ridiculous goatee. Goatees are in just now.

"And how are we doing today? Feeling better?"

Blab, blab, blab.

Dumb ass. I mean, how does he expect me to feel? What, all doped up to the gills and what not.

But today! Today the moment Doctor Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate entered the room, I deftly slid off the bed and calmly squatted Zen fashion beneath the window. My robe puddled at my feet and the sun shone on my face; a rather serene Ghandi image, if I say so myself. And I ignored THEM, their presence, and inwardly-recited Hamlet. Unarguably a great play. But as I

mentally recited the lines, not-so-deftly going from act 1 to act 2 to the finale, a line from the play seemed to fit Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate & myself to a T. Horatio: Lord, madness lies in this direction.

Hamlet: There are more to the heavens and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

A well worn, to be sure, Shakespearean phrase. But to coin its usage, I would say, were I to speak to THEM, this: There are more to the heavens and earth then are dreamt of in our philosophy.

But I did not squander words on THEM who hold the key to my freedom. To stoop so low, to lay satisfaction at Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate's feet? Never. NEVER! But this Shakespearean verse begs the obvious question. Which of us, this dubious trio, is mad? I cannot, shall not, be so presumptuous as to vouch for Dr. Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate's sanity. But I can vouch for myself. And I offer the above Shakespearean quote as proof positive concerning my sanity.

I mean, can this quote from Shakespeare be the ranting and raving of a madman?

To this I scream: NO! But to write seated on the crapper in the middle of the night is maddening, yes.

Silently reciting Shakespeare revokes madness's license, and the license revoked, sanity returns.

I VIEW ALL THIS AS FURTHER PROOF THAT YES I AM SANE! IN FACT I AM THE ONLY SANE MAN IN THE WORLD. AND RESISTANCE SHALL CONTINUE! I AM IAM.......................huh, hu tired.

ENTRY DATE: THOUGHT FOR THE TAKE AWAY THE 'S' AND WHAT DO

JUNE 27.

DAY: SANITY, AND ADD A 'V' YOU HAVE?

It was Sunday. It is now Monday morning. I know the latter because quietness and darkness have snuffed out the daily activity. I know the former because of the newspaper delivered many hours earlier. Thick. So many advertisements for televisions, computers, stereos, clothing...from in here all it seems the OUTLANDERS do is purchase. I was once like them, I suppose. And I have only been here but a few days, but already from IN-HERE this desire to pick life from a shelf and purchase it is such a strange concept; except for my freedom, I covet nothing.

THEM, of course, made their daily appearance. THEM, being Dr. Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate. I continued my resistance by silently reciting, and rather fitting, considering the buy-thisno-buy-that-no-buy-this-no-buy-that nature of the newspaper

advertisements: The Merchant Of Venice. The first act eluded me for quite some time. I mean I once knew the play by heart. Rattled off the lines in my sleep. But today, today? Huh. Huh. I guess my heart wasn't really in it today. The thought of THEM sitting there annoyed me even more than on previous days. But eventually I laid THEM aside and from there on lost myself in the Jew and his problems. I mean, the Jew's problems seemed so much greater than mine. I only have THEM to torment me. The Jew had the entire world. As evidenced by Shylock's utterance in scene 3: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, sense, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we Will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?

Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be

by Christian example? Why, revenge.

But I have no recourse such as revenge against THEM. Except to believe THEM do not exist...

Yes, THEM do not exist. Not really. So why even mention THEM. Poof< >GONE. THEY ARE GONE! And they are gone.

But my day consisted of much more than Shakespeare and just daydreaming in my bed. After all, it was Sunday. A day of rest and relaxation and love thy neighbor and forgive those who trespass against us and. OH GLORIOUS SUNDAY! PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN. BARBECUE THE MEAT. FRY THE POPCORN. OR IS IT POP THE PIP CORN. WHATEVER. AFTER THE STOMACH HAS BEEN FEASTED THE OUTLANDERS GO AND VISIT US DEEMED LESS FORTUNATE THEN THEM. YES, THE OUTLANDERS came to visit the CASTRATED ones like myself. I watched, amused, from the window. They arrived shed of their weekend trademarks: golf or jogging clothes. And are instead smartly attired in starched white shirts or blouses, black trousers or black skirts and black shoes. I suppose these are their mourning clothes. They, the OUTLANDERS...and I know them well for I was once one of them...spend exactly one half-hour ASSUAGING THEIR GUILT before handing the CASTRATED one over to a white-coated attendant. Such devotion! Heart wrenching. Brings a tear to the eye. Yes indeed, brings a tear to the eye.

But the sparrows enjoyed the show so. They chirped, and fluttered and danced and skittered. They also enjoyed the bread crumbs tossed about by the LETS MAKE THE SPARROWS HAPPY BEFORE GOING OUT TONIGHT FOR BAKED DUCK OUTLANDERS. But I babble. Or do I ramble? (I wish I could ramble, and roam too). I suppose this is because I am afraid. I have

discovered while here, or perhaps I knew this all along, that frightened people often babble. Why am I frightened? Many reasons, but mainly because I have, for the first time, reread the earlier entries. A single echo rings out: sanity...my sanity. And as I reread the words from the earlier entries, I realized that I had written them just to write words on paper...words, yes words, words breathe life where life had once perished. Or so I believe.

Yes I believe that these words show that I am sane. And I am sane, I know this now. But as I sit here on the crapper, the day spent, these words in this journal weigh heavily on my mind. I wrote, and therefore I am more of who I was less than a week ago...not less, as Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate desire. But am I really? Or have I fallen into Dr. Frankenstein's trap? FOR IT IS THIS VILLAIN WHO SUPPLIES THE NECESSARY WRITING INSTRUMENTS: THE CHEAP PAPER AND THE CHILD'S COLORED PENCILS. As I read the above, I can't help believing that I have fallen into Frankenstein's trap. That the writing of these words is stealing my found sanity, returning me inch by inch to societal-civilized insanity.

I also believe that these words are nurturing my found-anew sanity.

But in truth, I know not which belief is true. I do know that I dare not cease writing, even if the tools used are supplied by Dr. Frankenstein. Writing, these words, are my only companion; were they to die, undoubtedly so would I. With all this foremost in mind, I have decided to chronicle the events leading up to my incarceration. The reason for doing so is self-preservation: if I lose the battle, I will have this, these words. That said, I now add that I have never in my life maintained a journal. But I have written, and am aware of writing's first command: keep things simple. Easier said than done. I cannot in all honesty keep things simple. In the face of the opposition before me simple is a sparrow flying out an open window to the broad, freedom-loving, embracing sky.

So this begins my tale. Yes, my tale of how I wound up seated on the crapper, writing in the middle of the night with a child's soft-tipped pencil clutched in my hand. I, in previous entries, spoke of sanity...actually boasted: Me, I, the only sane person; no, strike person, I am a man; I am also the only sane man in the world...the women can speak for themselves. Ah yes, PC. O'well. So how did I become such? How did I become the ONLY SANE MAN IN THE WORLD. Why was I chosen to be anointed by??????? ?BY. INDEED! BY WHO? BY WHOM? A PERPLEXING QUESTION. WHO IS THIS THING, THIS ENTITY, THIS BEING, THIS NON-BEING...THAT BESTOWS SUCH A GREAT MARVELOUS GIFT AS SANITY? A VIRGIN, OF COURSE. MYTHOLOGY DICTATES THAT ONLY A VIRGIN HAS THE POWER TO BESTOW SUCH A PRECIOUS GIFT. AND WHO AM I TO MESS WITH MYTHOLOGY? SO I WILL

REFER TO THIS VIRGIN AS: MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY. Such a title has a ring to it, a rhyme. YES! And this MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY IS SO UNLIKE THAT FAKE VIRGIN WHO SPREAD HER LEGS FOR ALL WHO HAD A ROMAN COIN OR 2.

AH! Never mind such foolery. To continue. Why was I chosen to be anointed by MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S shining VIRGIN LIGHT for such an honor? I've asked myself this question, tortured myself really, a thousand times. And a thousand times the answer remained the same: SEARCHES ME? But I am able to pinpoint the day MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S bright cleansing VIRGIN LIGHT graced me. Or at the very least the day I first noticed the VIRGIN LIGHT, for it may have shone for years, but society's puritan darkness blocked out its beacon. On this day I speak of, the day I first saw the VIRGIN LIGHT, the sky swirled as dark as the soft melancholy heart of an Irish ballad. Which is to say a June day where spring threatened to dump its last April shower before summer's sweltering heat set in.

An observational pause here...the first of many, I am sure.

The above is such a great build-up, such a tedious ending. O'well, as my Pa was fond of saying: Endings are always tedious. I, youthful innocence guiding me, once asked him why this was so. He, a bellyful of whiskey guiding him, answered: Because endings are when you store your tools away and head for the next job.

So with endings and beginnings in mind, I continue. I live, correction, lived...Wait! Just a second...please. I, I? No. Where I reside. No. To divulge such information could harm innocent people uninvolved in this farce. And 'FARCE' is the operative word here. So I shall do as the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature did...shroud the setting in double meanings. So I shall call the State I live in Winnemac, and the city, which is the State Capital, Zenith. A quick thumbnail description of Zenith would be: Zenith is the Political Correctness Center Of The Universe. But Zenith deserves more than a thumbnail; Zenith deserves both thumb-nails and all 8 fingernails and 10 toenails and bamboo shoots. And...

ENOUGH RUBBISH! First off, Zenith once, and the year escapes me right now, won the dubious honor as an All-American City.

Yes, an All-American City. I wonder how many Castrated people languish...

ENOUGH! Melancholy moments. I must endeavor to keep their greedy jaws at bay.

Where was I? Right. Hu-huh, Zenith. Yes, Zenith is an AllAmerican City alright. Entering the city from what the locals call the Beltline is almost a magical experience. The City is built around an Isthmus and the Beltline juts out between twin lakes;

appropriately named Lake Sparrow and Lake Robin. At 55 miles per hour Lake Sparrow and Lake Robin quickly fade...giving way to a literally breathtaking view of the Capitol Dome, which is an exact replica of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.. Positioned proudly atop the dome is a BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY, her bronzed weathertarnished arms towering majestically out toward God's heavens, as if welcoming all to enter. Now one must imagine a magical flying broom...rising high, high, higher, higherrrr yet! Why? One may inquire. Because Broom Street is the next exit. And Broom Street's currents crash into the very bowels of Zenith. On the way, of course, is Main Street: All-American Cities have a Main Street.

Washington Street is followed by Mifflin Street, otherwise known to the townies as Muffin Street. There is a grocery co-operative on the corner of Mifflin and Broom. The front of the co-operative is decorated by a mural. Painted in the drab colors of the proletariat, the mural depicts huge men wielding axes crushing the evil factories. This mural is the unofficial entrance for fairy tail, huh, tale land.

As I reread the above paragraph, I realize I really hate this town! Gad, I must rise above such a petty emotion.

Well, so much for thumbnails and toenails. Now about this VIRGIN LIGHT I spoke of. Yes, this VIRGIN LIGHT. The day I first saw the VIRGIN LIGHT, I was on the Beltline fighting morning rushhour traffic. I had the cruise set on 60, which was exactly 5 miles above the posted 55 mile-per-hour speed limit.

Another observational pause here. I, like 80 percent of the people in America, drove 5 miles over the posted speed limit because of an inner belief that the police were kindly sorts who disliked harassing honest white citizens like myself...and were willing to overlook a few miles over the posted speed limit. But the truth of the matter, a blinding truth, a truth I refused to embrace until now, was that I really drove 5 miles over the posted speed limit because 5 miles over the speed limit signified my entire life. What I mean is, is that 5 miles over anything was the ????? (Maximum) I was willing to risk. But I remembered! Yes, I remembered the rebel in me, which at 45 was a petrified flower held for eternity between the pages of a long ago high-school year book, happily and hideously speeding along at 10 or 15 or even 30 miles over the speed limit.

But I leap ahead of the story. A failing.

Besides that was long ago.

About the: VIRGIN LIGHT. There I was droning toward work while mentally bitching about my wife Martha. Yes, the very same Mrs. Martha Castrate who now accompanies Dr. Frankenstein. We had had over breakfast an all-too-familiar argument. It was a rather boring and oooooo-soooooo repetitious argument. She wanted to attend a cocktail party later in the evening. I had other thoughts

on the matter. I had lost the argument, which was par for the course.

So while driving, I rehashed the argument, this time winning instead of losing. I considered this bitching, mental driving-to-work aerobics. And I always took solace in the fact that most of the married people on the road were probably practicing similar mental, bitching-about-their-mates aerobics.

The longer I stewed over the argument between Mrs Martha Castrate & myself, the more I became totally lost in droll repetitious nothingness...or more aptly: middle-aged selfjustifying oblivion. This self-justifying obliviousness dissipated when a guy whose cue-ball head barely peeks over the steering wheel of a Buick, an old one with long chrome tail fins and a heart-thumping V-8, cuts me off...causing me to swerve onto the shoulder of the road to avoid crashing into him. To add insult to injury, he flashed the time-honored middle finger. As the Buick streaked past me, I noticed on the bumper a white sticker with red day-glow letters: ITALIAN AND PROUD OF IT! I was already steamed, and when the cue ball head in the Buick flashed the middle finger, the left-over frustrations from breakfast crowded my thoughts and an instant rage gripped me, a rage I had not experienced since I was in high school and a muscular rag of a kid named Tony Falcone had won Diana LaBronze.

Tony had escorted Diana to the prom and I sat at home watching reruns of: 'Father Knows Best'. So right then and there a blinding flashbulb goes off and I suddenly see life as clear as a crystal bell. I see the guy in the Buick is Tony and is also a wop dago bastard and mash down hard on the accelerator and seconds later catch up to him...which in a Honda Civic is a mean feat. I roll down my window and scream: YOU WOP DAGO BASTARD, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU! I fully intend on adding a few more choice ethnic slurs when I realize he is a she and not just a she but a kindly looking grandmotherly type sporting an all-but-bald-head and a shriveledup frame; the latter explains why she can barely see over the steering wheel.

I immediately think: Gee, here's a woman so old she has lost most of her hair and boy am I a jerk.

Right where I am feeling guilty she shows me the barrel of what I assume to be, but only because my experience with firearms is limited to the evening news, a 357-magnum. She flashes a fullset-of-white-teeth smile at me, proving that although she lacked for hair, she had great teeth. But, and understandably so, her mouth full of teeth were lost on me. My eyes grew wide in astonishment and fixated on the gun and the huge black metal hole.

My insides shriveled up, the testicles thinking they were about to be eaten followed suit and curled upward...painfully seeking refuge in the stomach.

I managed, and how escapes me now, to gain a smidgen of control over my thoughts and eased up on the accelerator; no, incorrect, I yanked my foot off the goddamn pedal and stomped on the brake and swung the car onto the shoulder of the road. The grandmother passed a satisfied smirk before speeding on up the road.

Guns cause fear and fear causes hyperventilation. So I did both. And in doing so paid scant attention to her smirk. Instead I prayed for a breath. Just a little air for the lungs. OH GOD SOME AIR. MY HEART. GOD GIVE ME SOME AIR TO BREATHE! God, taking a breather from his strenuous duties on the 700 Club, answered my prayers, allowing a blitz of air that tasted so sweet I experienced a sugar rush and head dizzy, almost passed out. But no, blanking out wasn't in the cards. Instead the road, the cars darting to their destination, the landscape, were suddenly drained of all color. Everywhere about me took on an eerie reverse black and white affect; sort of a negative that had been exposed to light. I blinked in confusion and after several seconds colors were once again apparent. I gathered up the remainder of my wits and slowly worked my way to work. I did this much as the turtle raced the hare: neither looking at the other cars around me and the occupants, nor going so fast as to attract undue attention.

And on and on I drove. And drove. Mindlessly to the campus.

A pause, again. I will call this pause an occupational pause, for I feel an urge, an urge almost like a pissing urge, to explain my profession...how I earn a living, or my keep, or contribution to society. No, the former is past tense. So delete it. Present tense is required. Since I am no longer gainfully employed, not how I earn my keep, but how I used to earn my keep: I WAS A PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY! As I look at the words: I WAS A PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, I cringe inside. And with good cause, because I have dreaded this moment all day. I dreaded it while laying in bed and thinking about what I was going to write in this journal...knowing full well I had to at some point announce what I once did for a living.

But now I see I feared for naught. Fear. MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY has shown me fear's sleight of hand...fear's trickery. Yes I had feared for naught.

But I digress, laughingly so. In the same vein, laughingly, I wish to renounce and denounce this empty-headed, theory-based profession. Fling it aside. Do the French thing, and, like the French did to Joan of Arc, burn philosophy at the stake.

But before I renounce-denounce this empty-headed, theorybased profession, a little amusement is called for. A drum roll for...Diogenes and Alexander the Great. And since both men are thousands of years gone, a little respect here. That said, forward. Diogenes, like any philosopher worth his salt, sat

crosslegged on the ground contemplating the way the sunlight shone on the dirt: Gee, why is the sunlight shining on dirt?

At this very moment Alexander the Great, in-between pillaging, stood over him, thus blocking out most of the sun's rays, which in turn cast cookie-cutter shadows upon the dirt. The ensuing conversation is suspect, but a very eminent professor saw fit to include the conversation in a text book. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies; so who am I to quibble with its authenticity?

Alexander: Hey you? Yeah you! Why are you studying dirt?

Diogenes: Get out of the way, blockhead. You're blocking the light.

My only comment is this: LIGHT is blinding. Shade is, after all, comforting. It begs no questions, demands no answers.

Now I regress. Enough foolery!

Do I convey resentment at my former profession? Yes. So obvious. So petty. Maybe. But everything I was, a Philosophy Professor, is directly responsible for my incarceration.

But I forge ahead. (A repeated failing). Such denouncements, void of facts, only serve to prejudice. Yes, prejudice even my own hand.

I was Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the University of Zenith, and due to my lofty position, parked in lot A, which was located at the gates to the campus. I was fairly stunned still and stared at the blue and white card with the letter A dangling from my rear-view mirror and repeated: This is Zenith. Not Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. People who live in these cities expect on a daily basis to be confronted by guns.

I then wanted to scream out: BUT Zenith! MAN, Zenith IS FREAKING WHEAT BREAD!" From good old healthy wheat bread, slippery fish-thoughts flapped about inside me. At some point I giggled uncontrollably.

What brought on the giggles wasn't the gun, but the thought that for a moment my life had zoomed from 60 miles an hour to a 100 miles an hour. I had, as already stated, led a staid life and a 100 miles an hour was a frightening speed for one such as me. A part of me also realized that I had felt alive for the first time in years. The thought intrigued me and I began to inspect it; since I was a creature of academe, dissect it really, when Bruce shyly tapped on the window, a just as shy smile on his face. I was so lost in thought that he startled the piss out of me, literally...as more then a few drops trickled down my leg. I, shame stained, crossed my legs so Bruce wouldn't notice, and rolled down the window.

Bruce was/is of Spanish descent, and had the dark Mediterranean features of his ancestors, a short frame that peaked at 5'6, bronze skin and black wiry hair. Although he longed to run

for public office, his shyness kept him from his heart's desire.

We were also very close friends. We 'WERE' friends, and I want to note here and now the usage of the word 'WERE', as opposed to 'ARE'. He met me in the parking lot every work day, come rain or shine, at exactly 9 on the dot, and I had often set my watch by him.

"So James. Day-dreaming this early?"

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, and I hadn't, James...no last names please...is my name. But my last name is a good strong Irish name. Great grandparents. They emigrated from the old sod. Sad to say that for the longest time I wouldn't admit my grandparents had emigrated from Ireland. I guess because...

No, the reasons will become apparent as the story unfolds.

Hopefully.

"You know what just happened to me?" I blurted out.

"Course papers blew out the window on the way to work," he joked, and offered up an all-too-familiar, thin-sounding laugh.

"This isn't a joking matter," I stated.

The tips of his shoulders jumped nervously, while at the same time his eyes fluttered rapidly. "Sorry," he replied, "I... Tell me. What happened? Martha? She's ill! The flu. I'll send a card.

No, better yet I'll have Kathy drop by."

"Bruce, Bruce, Bruce," I said more to shut him up, than out of exasperation.

"Well what, for crying out loud? Jesus James, tell me!"

So I told him.

"An old lady, you say?" he responded, eyes wide. "Brandishing a gun?"

"Right. Right on the Beltline. Just smiled and pointed the damn thing at me."

"Jesus, we better inform the police."

"Bruce, what good can the police do?"

"Well, well well well," he stammered, the question catching him off guard. "They should be informed."

I waved a hand, dismissing the idea.

And right then without even knowing what I was doing I retreated from anger and self-righteousness and landed squarely at guilt's door and uttered words that would shift the blame from the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL onto myself. Always blame myself.

Easy. Shoulder the blame. So stupid!

"You know the worst part?"

"It's difficult to imagine anything worse, James."

"She had a bumper sticker, white, red day-glow letters. The damn thing read: ITALIAN AND PROUD OF IT! When I caught up to her, I called her a wop dago bastard. The words just spilled out."

He stood staring at me in stunned silence and I half expected him to exclaim: Jesus James how horrible!

I expected this because he had recently chaired a committee to enact a university bylaw to expel any student who uttered inflammatory sexual or racial remarks. The resolution had narrowly passed. I had voted against it, believing that freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas, however repugnant, were the cornerstone of education.

"I know," I sadly responded just to hear a voice, even my own. "I am a professor. How could I utter such racial slurs?"

"James," he said, then snickered. "You just suffered a hairraising experience and you're upset because you're imperfect? The imperfect liberal, James?"

"I'm upset about the gun, certainly," I angrily retorted.

"But damn Bruce, I am a professor not a sailor!"

"James, it isn't like you hollered damn nigger. So okay, James. Say 3 Our Fathers. Now can we go up the hill? And I still think we should inform the police."

The hill in question was Bosom Hill. Otherwise known on campus as: Mother's Path To Knowledge. Mother's Path led into the bowels of the University. A soft sigh echoing and asking why he failed to understand escaped my lips. But, exiting the car, I let it go.

Continuance of MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY and her VIRGIN LIGHT that I speak of must wait for the morrow. The dawn is peeking in the window. How can this be? Time time time. Hours of time have elapsed in a second...a fog-blown second. It is late. It is early. I am fatigued, yet energized.

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 28.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: IS THERE REALLY SUCH A BEAST AS THE AMERICAN DREAM? As I daydreamed in bed today, I reached a decision...and a decision reached is resistance stoked. I am using colored pencils to write this journal. Therefore it seems only fitting that I choose a color to fit the mood of the day. And why not, why not indeed? Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate color my day by visiting, and they permit me to use these child's playinstruments...nay encourage me to use them. So it is only fitting that I, their humble servant, choose a color based solely on how their presence colors my day...my mood really. After all, they, THEM, the Castrators, lopped off my head. So red, as in the inferno raging within at the sight of THEM!, is today's color.

By the way, I badly mangled a recital of 'Henry the IV' during their visit today. Good old long-dead King Henry the Headhunter. Lop off a head here, a head there, here a head, there a head, everywhere a head, head. Such bloody rot, I imagine...the heads, of course.

As evidenced by the above, anger also visited me...lingering well past their departure. Anger lingers still. It appears I must also guard against anger. Anger is self-defeating.

So many enemies facing me. Must cast these shadowy enemies aside.

Lethargy holds the pencil. Do the sparrows know? Is this why they sing? Why? Why? Why? I grow tired. The lingering effects of Frankenstein's mindnumbing-mind-bending-brew?

No. This tiredness is of the soul. And the sight of Mrs. Martha Castrate aches my soul. She always is dressed, like the OUTLANDERS who visit the Castrated ones, in black. Black shoes.

Black blazer. Black skirt. Almost as if she was attending a funeral. And maybe she is...was. Maybe my sanity is...

NO! A thousand times NO! To dwell? To loiter? To reflect? The past is past. Forward.

Resistance. Forward!

So the color for today is red. Yes. Red. RED><LIGHT. Yesterday I spoke of MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY and her blinding VIRGIN LIGHT. Yes, this all-consuming, blinding VIRGIN LIGHT. Well, I left the all-consuming blinding VIRGIN LIGHT behind as Bruce and I walked up Mother's Path. Mothers are also forgiving, and this Mother who protected me from the outside world, who showered coins upon me, who sheltered me from the wind, this Mother fuc...!

Be nice!

This Mother forgave me: because with each upward step leading to the University I began to leave the little incident behind.

After all, life goes on and moments, even frightening ones or regretful ones, are, if not quickly forgotten, certainly relegated to the back burner. So it was with me. I had finals to grade and Bruce had to do whatever Bruce had to do. At the Philosophy building we said our: Goodbye-have-a-good-day-see-you-laters.

From there all too soon I found myself staring out of my office window at Lake Sparrow. Rough choppy waters lay out there.

A comment on what lay ahead? Perhaps. But I stood in my element, the university, my office, the books on the shelf...they, the sum of my life, all shielded me.

As a way of putting final closure on the incident, I shook my head at what had essentially been a bad way to start the day and sat at my desk and soon became immersed in grading the final exams that had taken place the previous week. At first the work was dull, monotonous, and I mindlessly scratched out B's and A's.

Occasionally the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL and the ethnic slurs I had hurled her way will-o-wisp'ed within me. But I paid them scant attention. About an hour had expired when I came to a student who had miserably failed the exam. The sorry state of the

paper created an all-too-familiar paradox for me. I had learned a few pertinent facts about professors over the years, namely that they came in 3 colors: red, white and brown. The red professors upon seeing such a crude paper automatically red-pencilled it.

These professors acted so because they themselves had had to struggle very hard to become professors and believed others, if they wanted to succeed, should tread the same path. The white professors never bothered to sharpen their red pencil and never failed anybody because they were tenured. The brown professors fell between the two. I favored brown. I hated failing a student.

Failing them meant that they had to attend summer school...an extra burden for those students who met the price of higher education by toiling at a job all summer. Yet I carried an inbred sense of duty. I taught. As hokey as it sounds, students came to me expecting to learn, or to put it in simple terms, to acquire tools, living tools. To dispatch a student upon the mean streets minus the necessary tools meant I had failed them.

Yuck. So much for my little speech on my teaching philosophy and the honorable professor. It is sufficient to say I always tried to be impartial, as opposed to partial, and weighed in the students favor whether they were slackers, or had worked diligently and had honestly tried but in the end failed to grasp the course. In this case the student was Joanne Cardanelle. I couldn't restrain a smile as I stared down at her name pencilled at the upper right-hand corner of the paper...a good strong Italian name. Joanne was timid. Always quiet in class. She entered class alone and left alone. But she studied. I knew this by the way she mixed up philosophers. What Socrates said was attributed to Plato. What Aristotle preached was attributed to Diogenes.

So maybe I would have passed her anyway...I will never know for sure. But all maybe's aside, that day was her lucky day. She could and should thank: THE FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL. But FIENDISH GRANDMOTHERS FROM HELL aside, to continue, I laughed uneasily and marked her paper C+.

I knew I was passing her partly out of guilt; my penance...or as Bruce said: My Our Father's. Yes I had performed my penance for uttering, however justified, the inflammatory retorts at the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL! And they were justified. I know this now. The BITCH had attempted to run me off the road. She pointed an instrument of destruction at me thus frightening the piss out of me. I...

ENOUGH. ENOUGH! I shoot ahead in a vain attempt to justify.

No. Must explain. Show what happened. Do not tell. This is the first rule of teaching. Show show show...!

Needless to say the act of penance had momentarily cleansed, as a gas station attendant cleansed the bugs from a car's windshield while secretly chuckling knowing the windshield was

soon to be once again obscured by bugs, the specter of the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL. And also the residual guilt that lingered within me.

From here, the work went smoothly. So much so that I had lost track of time, not an unusual occurrence while caught up in grading, when an annoying knock pounded at the door. I considered pretending I wasn't there but in the end civility overcame common sense and I yelled out: Enter.

I had expected an overly courageous student or a very timid one, the former demanding a good grade, the latter pleading. But it turned out to be Professor Nelson. He flung the door open wide, the ever-present wire-rimmed reading glasses perched low on his bilious nose.

Right then he was the last person on earth I wanted to see, and I sighed audibly at his presence. He was the senior professor in the department, and at 69 was due to retire at the end of the summer session, which was when he hit 70...70 the mandatory retirement age. His contemporaries, and he was the last, had all retired by the time I, and a host of other young professors, had arrived on the scene. Consequently he, due to, to hear him tell it, antiquated ideas, became the odd man out in the department.

Truthfully...he was crusty, obstinate. He drank too much and fought with everybody. Soon he would be gone and at the time I didn't believe a tear would be shed at his departure.

At the time. Now. But once again I forge ahead of the story.

That day, if he heard my sigh, he, as usual, ignored it. He wasn't the kind of man to stand on protocol and wait for an invitation. On that day he followed usual form and crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite the desk and crossed his legs.

He had a full head of snow white hair, but it was unkept, dirty.

If slothful about his hair he was even more so about his clothes.

He either owned dozens of white shirts and camel-haired sport coats or one of each; and I had come to believe over the years the latter. Various stains shaded the coat and shirt. He carried a briefcase. There were no papers in the briefcase. Nor course books. Nor homework. He only carried 2 things in the briefcase. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch and a tube of plastic cups. And like my father, like all men who drink all day, he had the unmistakable odor of decay about him.

Although I found his intrusiveness annoying, I was the head of the department and had long ago accepted the good with the bad.

Like a good soldier, I suppose.

"Not busy, are you Jimmie?"

"No," I lied.

"Want a drink?"

I think that day I shook my head at him. But maybe not.

Whatever the case this little ritual had to be played out. And

when he pulled out the plastic cups from the briefcase, I am sure I automatically replied, "A few drops."

Then I waited for him to pour a few drops in the glass, as was customary. After doing so, he returned the bottle and tube of plastic cups to his briefcase. When he handed me a glass, I leaned back in the chair, expecting him to bend my ear about an imaginary slight or hurt.

"Mmmmm," he uttered instead, taking a sip.

I incorrectly assumed the 'Mmmmm' was in appreciation of the whiskey. I took a baby sip, barely wetting my lips and nodded.

"Yes, Jimmie," he snorted, "I always considered you a dumb shit. Not as dumb as most of the others. But dumb. Or ignorant.

Same thing."

About all I could muster was to raise my eyebrows. Not in surprise. Nelson referred to everybody as dumb or stupid. Or when really soused: Assholes. I raised them half in amusement and half in helplessness. "What happened now?" I asked.

"Happened? Oh, Jimmie. Nothing. I retire in a few weeks. The best of times, don't you know."

"So I hear," I nodded.

As if a stupid statement, he exhaled a contemptuous breath, expelling a foul odor at me. God, I disliked him, I thought at the time. At the time, yes, I did.

"I am allowed to orate a lecture," he cynically announced.

"A final say before green grasses grow high enough to cover my ass. Care to guess the subject Jimmie?"

Not a clue, but attempted a guess. "Scotch as the meaning of life?"

He attempted a half smile, but gave up and stared cheerlessly at me, "That's good Jimmie. Keep traveling in the direction you're traveling and you'll need a sense of humor. But no Jimmie," he said, wagging a chastising pudgy finger at me. "Although..." His eyes twinkled and he again wagged the finger, only this time at the ceiling. "While a young man at the University Of Chicago, I dated this woman. She wanted to go bowling. Can you believe it?

Bowling? I mean, here I was, if I may steal a term from Mr. Wolf, a future Master of the Universe...which is to say that I was doing my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and this woman invites me to go bowling. I, the elite...bowling! Imagine it! But I also was a young man. Hormones. Such a long long long time ago."

His eyes fell to the glass in his hand and stared as if seeing years, all those long-ago years, at first appreciated years, but now dirty, thankless years. I wondered what he thought right then. Did he think: ET TU BRUTE?-THEN FALL CAESAR! I DO! But never mind.

He drained the glass in a single gulp and nodded. "So you

called an old woman a wop dago bastard, Jimmie, did ya?"

He had muttered this without raising his eyes from the glass.

And at first I was caught off guard, but quickly regained my sense of mental balance as he raised his head to stare at me through the reading glasses. Bruce. I guess he saw what I was thinking.

"Yes, Bruce Brownnose," Nelson sneered, "Why do you think he walks you up Mother's Path every morning? Like I said. Dumb.

You're dumb, Jimmie."

He abruptly stood. "Well, got to run. By the way I once called a man a nigger. Not as HORRIFIC! as calling an old woman a wop dago bastard, huh Jimmie? Fascinating term, nigger. Think about the word nigger. Look it up in the dictionary. Got to go.

Students waiting for the great one to arrive. Can't keep future bright lights waiting."

Instant horror spread across my face as I realized what he had said. I leaned forward and uttered, "A....!"

I could not say the word: Nigger.

The reading glasses perched precariously upon the tip of his nose, but still he managed to peer through them at me as if I were crazy. "He is," he stated. Then he was gone.

The crazy old coot had shook me so I stood and stared out the window at the lake. The word nigger ran though my mind. I shivered. He had to be baiting me, I assured myself. Bruce and his big mouth. Jesus, I uttered aloud, angry.

Turning to the desk, I vowed to have a talk with Bruce. He had probably made an innocent remark about the gun and how I should have phoned the police. I was sure of this.

Then. But now, time affords me...

A pause here, a pause there. O'well.

As my anger subsided, I noticed the office reeked of whiskey.

I dumped the left-over whiskey in the toilet and sat down at the desk to finish the grading. About an hour later the grading petered out. Completed actually. The work plate all but empty, my mind drifted to what Nelson had said: By the way I once called a man a nigger.

Although the word repulsed me, I found myself drawn to it and rested back in the chair and, arms locked behind head, played the elimination game. Who had Nelson called a nigger? Somebody in the Department? In the University? At the U of C? A futile endeavor, really. Also stupid. As already stated, I had performed the required penance by passing Joanne Cardanelle.

To dwell on Nelson's slur served to remind me of the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL. The gun loomed ever so large before me. The FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL'S gleaming white smile. The Buick's tail-fins fading away up the Beltline. The racial epithets. Yes, the racial epitaphs. Those nasty words that I had hurled, flung really, in a moment of anger.

And here I thought of what Bruce had said: It wasn't like I had called a person a nigger?

But I had. I, I should know better. I had called her a nigger. An elderly woman who was probably a frightened little old lady who thought I had meant her harm. I had called her a nigger.

I had...

And here guilt bit me to the quick. At first I attempted to toy with guilt, and let me say right here and now that one should never toy with guilt. NO-SIR-REE-BUSTER. Guilt will turn on you like a rabid dog. But what did I know? I toyed, tinkering, examining, self-pitying...in short I lingered when I should have run; soon guilt immersed me. Where there once had been a happy middle class little person who dotted the I's and crossed the T's, there now sat a person who questioned every second of his life: past and present. This self-questioning was overwhelming. I shut my eyes tight against the tide of feelings that were threatening to overcome me. To no avail. At last I gave in and lay my head in my arms and cried lonely silver tears. My body quivered. My husked breath echoed in my ears. When I could almost cry no more, a hopeful cry sprang out: YOU ARE A MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE! LIKE NELSON! But I knew better. Oh, yes, I KNEW BETTER! I wasn't any more a Master Of the Universe than the girl Nelson had taken bowling many years ago. I was a fraud. A fake. And as I recognized this fact, guilt pointed her bony finger at me and shouted from ear to ear: You are a racist and no matter how far you run you cannot run from yourself! You are a fake and no matter how far you hide you cannot hide from yourself!

A pause here. I need to clarify to myself, yes even justify to myself why I felt so strongly. For indeed I was a fake.

Professor Nelson, well he was real. I thought then that Bruce was real. And Martha. Oh, yes! I believed with every fiber of my being that she was real, and still do...but real can be faked. But me?

Professor James. This honorable member of higher learning. He was a hoax. A counterfeit. A fraud. A fake.

But I ramble. A common cowardly trait. I guess the most fortuitous route to travel in explaining why I felt so strongly about being a fake is to invoke my childhood. This little stroll down memory lane will also help explain my dislike for Italians. I was raised in the 'Back of the Yards', one of Chicago's famous ethnic neighborhoods. The ethnic nationality in question were the Irish. The men for the most part were muscular men who worked either the seasonal construction trades pounding nails or pouring cement or painting walls, or at the Stockyards wading knee deep in blood while hefting a sledgehammer slaughtering sad-eyed cows and pigs who didn't understand...neither the animal nor the men...their fate, but accepted it. At night these men gathered

shoulder-to-shoulder in the local saloons. As a mere child of 8, 9, 10, and so on, I sat many a night perched on a stool sipping wide-eyed on a Coke while I listened to my Pa and his friends rant and rave about every race except their own.

They preached: God made the Irish special and the rest garbage.

The saloon became my church, and I and my best friends, Butch and Michael, feasted on our father's cheap, whiskey-soaked philosophy. (We had long ago, using one of our mother's sewing needles, pricked our fingers and one by one pressed pinkie fingers together becoming Indian blood-brothers forever. Haven't seen them in 20 years; I guess forever isn't as long as it used to be).

So it was that in these saloons we learned that the Irish were numero-uno on the evolutionary pecking order. As befitting members of the supreme race, we, Butch, Michael and I, searched far and wide, our nickel but really chrome-plated 6-shooters slaying Indians, Niggers, Jews, and other slime lower on the food chain than us. To the north of the 'Back of the Yards' lay 'Little Italy' and we reveled the most in shooting dead these greasy black-haired youth who always walked holding their family jewels while cracking wise: Heya, Pauly, Ia laid her soa fine last night.

She rodea my vine 99 times fine.

The Italians didn't know it, and wouldn't now admit it, but they rhymed black rap music before its time.

OH! What a glorious feeling to be on the top rung of the evolutionary ladder, king of the old evolutionary pecking order.

God, we were a delirious lot. And foremost of all we experienced zero guilt over this. Zip. zilch.

Ah but tis a sad romantic who expects life's sinewy shadowed web to remain unchanged by the winds of time. As with all blood brothers, the turpentine years thinned the blood in our veins. At the age of 17, Michael's hormones jumped a little bit further than he knew possible, (literally as public schools shied away from teaching sex education then,) and his girlfriend Peggy grew a whole lot pregnant. Michael did the honorable thing and married her, and his father secured him a union card and a job working at the foundry on 69th and Western. Butch and I mourned his passing by vowing to use the condom stored away in our wallets...which up until then were there solely for boasting privileges. Butch's condom had a pin hole and his girlfriend, Sally, blew up like, well like a rubber filled with water. Alas poor Butch, as honorable as Michael, paid off the union rep, and union card in hand, painted houses to support the family.

The dubious honor of the last virgin amongst us fell on me.

And I fully intended on correcting this sorry state and was gearing up to use my condom on the before-mentioned Diana LaBronze, who had showed signs of giving way sometime soon; I knew

this because she let me touch her breasts. My Ma had suspicions, especially following Michael's and Butch's untimely weddings.

Nothing got past my Ma. She, Catholic to a fault, was very aware of the difference between good girls and bad girls, and steadfastly maintained that bad girls didn't wear anything but white or yellow, and never patent leather shoes, and always looked demurely away when a boy glanced at her, and last, but not least, was chaperoned when out on a date. But as Catholic as she was, she was undoubtedly relieved to find crusty semen-stained sheets while washing the laundry. I guess she figured that if the stains weren't there then they were inside some girl. Better to be on the sheets. She was sure the Pope would agree.

A wise woman in the ways of the Lord, my Ma plotted to send me to college. My Pa, the thrifty sort, steadfastly maintained I needed one good lay and my pimples would vanish along with whatever else ailed me. He, falling back on his own limited experience in such matters, plotted to send me to the institution responsible for getting him laid: the Army. He used the argument that the Army would pay me all of 20 dollars a month where-as college would cost him an arm and a leg. The fact that a year later I was carrying signs protesting a war nobody won is testament to my Ma's iron religious will. Which is to say: Ma crossed her legs until Pa gave in.

Ah, PUSSY! Needless to say college was a foreign word to the folks chipping out an existence in the 'Back of the Yards'. Said a very hurt Diana LaBronze moments before she rejected my offer to accompany her to the prom: Dat place you going, Jimmie. College.

What you gonna do there?

Said Tony Falcone after Diana had accepted his invitation to attend the prom: You go to dat place called college. I go to dat place called Diana's hotbox. Sucker.

Said I to myself, "Agggggggggg."

I, who was afraid to argue with my Ma over even such a trivial thing as what channel to watch on television, grumbled about the unfairness in going away to college...I could paint houses like Butch, or, like Michael, secure a union card and work at the Foundry. My grumbling reached my Pa's ears. At the time he was nursing a nasty hangover and bonged me over the head with what amounted to a 2-by-4 but in reality was a tree stump. Thereafter I grumbled silently. A few months later, I, an eye toward how much I hated Diana and Tony, fearfully set off for this place called college.

About that sign I carried against the war in Vietnam. I would like to state here and now and for the record that I never cared a rat's ass who won the war or who went over and got their ass shot to pieces. I carried the sign for one reason. I wanted to get

laid. I REALLY WANTED TO GET LAID. I MEAN I FELT LIKE I WAS THE ONLY FREAKING VIRGIN IN THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD! So sex foremost on my mind, those first weeks at school I stumbled around campus passing discreet, over the shoulder, deadcalf eyes at the coeds wearing cutoffs and jeans. I had never viewed such regal women; they were all of golden hair and Venus figures, and their speech, musical. So unlike the lisping moonfaced girls who spoke in rapid Chicago-ese: DatgootJimmie.

And view them I did. During class, I pretended to study the course books or listen to the professor while simultaneously maintaining furtive eyes on them as they sat with fluid eyes staring in adoration at the professor.

At some point I decided that I had to have one of them. I would be the envy of the neighborhood if I came prancing home with such a beauty screwed upon my forearm. So I walked with purpose in my step, much like the heel-to-ball-of-the-foot strut I had mastered while roaming the 'Back of the Yards' shooting imaginary Indians and other slime lower on the evolutionary scale than myself. But to these regal women I crawled lower on the evolutionary scale then lice. They accorded zero attention to my over-bloated bravado. They just sat on the grass spouting eloquent lines from great and knowledgeable men. Emerson. Keats. Oh, hell, scores and scores of men. Occasionally a golden-haired boy would pause, stoop and after a few passed words, laughter rang out.

I moaned in my room night after night: But oh, if only the great and noble golden-haired goddesses on campus would direct a word my way.

As the weeks dragged by, and drag they did, excruciating second by second, I went from the gregarious kid who only weeks earlier had, if fearfully, nervously laughed while leaving Chicago, to a walking zombie. I began to see myself as berthed from the rancid carcass of dead steak and eggs and pork and beans and wallowed in the Magna-Cum-Laude of stupidity. This stench of stupidity, I was sure, floated around me. I assuaged this feeling of inferiority by taking the long train ride from school to Chicago on weekends and there I stuffed myself with Ma's cooking while at the same time refuelling the battered ego with Pa's preaching; and he always preached the same old song: You watch out for those Jews now, Jimmie. Colleges are filled with Jews.

Always at weekend's end, I left for school, sure of my position and my faith, but by the time I arrived at school this sureness had fled somewhere along the fading-city-to-corn-stalklandscape-to-ivory-tower campus.

As the semester deepened along with the falling of the leaves from the trees, finally giving way to winter, I withdrew deeper and deeper until I cloaked myself with myself. I attended class but James wasn't really there. I no longer passed the Venus

golden-haired goddesses furtive stares, instead I buried my nose in the books, but in the words I gleaned shame and ignorance, not knowledge. When I dined at the student cafeteria, I always chose a table far away from the other students who it seemed were grouped in threes and fours. On the rare occasions that I raised my eyes; if I saw another pair of eyes looking at me, I imagined that they were seeing the foul odor of ugliness surrounding me. At night, under the cover of winter's cold darkness, I wandered around the campus and hungrily stared at the couples laughing and dancing and having fun. Shivering, I returned to my room more lonely, if possible, than before.

I didn't know it at the time but I had discovered a species higher on the evolutionary scale than myself and the ladder was insurmountable. I had left my chrome-plated 6-shooter at home. The bullets the gun once held now pierced my heart, and they were laden with silver bullets of shock.

So there I was, the loneliest boy in the world without a wit of an idea of why or how to escape this aloneness. I would like to report that I escaped my predicament because of selfdetermination, by drowning myself in my studies, as some do, or by grabbing the bull by the horns, as Hemingway did, and boldly taking one of these blond delectable beauties and deflowering her on the grass. Yes, I MOST! certainly would love to report such.

But, alas, this wasn't the case. I actually escaped this loneliness by sinking lower on the evolutionary scale. I strolled around campus one night, despair my only companion, when I spied a rag-tag group of people gathered around a bonfire. I, out of a desperation to connect with other humans, paused to see what the commotion was all about. Within the circle of people, I saw what I presumed to be a rag burning. I quickly realized that the rag was a flag, an American flag. I was shocked, to say the least...this desecration of the flag lay beyond my comprehension. I wanted to break through the crowd and stamp out the fire. I wanted to run to my room and hide. I finally decided to run to my room and hide, and turned to do so when the girl standing next to me spoke. I wasn't sure she had spoken TO ME, but out of politeness muttered, "Huh?" "I said," she said, "it's kind of sad to see the flag burn.

But I guess it's necessary. Sends a strong statement to the President. Shows him that we are against the war. Yes it is sad.

But necessary."

I hadn't really paid much attention to her at first, but did so then, if only to extinguish the sight of the sacred flag burning. I examined her fully and at the sight of her my mind said: Flower child.

I had seen their ilk often on campus. They were a ragged group passing out flyers that urged all to attend rallies against

the war and against discrimination. I had always tossed the flyers handed me in the nearest trash basket. As lonely as I was, I had made an oath to have nothing to do with people such as these. I knew from my Pa, and from the news stories, that they were mostly Jewish, and communist to boot. Besides I had noticed while wandering around campus that the girls and boys with the golden hair often snickered at these people. Well, in my mind, if the golden-haired ones snickered at these people, then this could only mean that they were lower on the evolutionary scale than I. And I was far down on the evolutionary ladder.

So I attempted a courteous goodbye. But tongue-twisted, I failed to respond for several seconds, and she asked, "Are you a mute?"

The mere thought of associating with such riff-raff, and certainly riff-raff lower on the campus evolutionary scale than I, was painful. But I hungered for a dewdrop of human companionship, and she offered this. And I forsook my distress and meekly squeaked out, "YES IT IS." Those 3 simple words were the beginning of what I now see as a life of guilt and fakery. They also landed me in this institution. Or the guilt combined...never mind. I, as usual, digress.

Needless to say, she wasn't one of the golden-haired goddesses I envisioned parading to drooling eyes up and down the streets of the old neighborhood. But she was a girl and she had spoken to me. Admittedly she and her ilk were lower on the campus evolutionary scale then even I, but at that point...quibble, me?

No. A resounding NO! I WAS SPEAKING TO A GIRL. AND for a few minutes I stood there and fumbled words her way each time she spoke to me. Even now I am unsure what she said. But I believe it went something like this. "Say, do you believe in women's rights?"

I. "Yes." Her. "Oh, you mean you are not one of those men who believe that women are sexual objects?"

I, who still had 'THE CONDOM' in my wallet. "Gosh no."

Her. "Gosh you're nice."

I, a red light bulb flicking on in my head...the little one, " " Her. "Say, do you want to do 'IT?'" I. "Do what?"

She blushed. "You know. Do 'IT'."

Incredible as it may seem, I didn't have so much as a clue as to what she meant. When a boy and girl got together in my neighborhood they didn't boldly talk about it before hand. They sat in the old man's Chevy and fumbled clothes exposing tits, chest, pussy, cock leading to 2 sweating bodies and afterwards, which were mere seconds from the starting point, dressed and

stared at shoes in guilt while murmuring about this awesome sin they had committed. And this description I received from Michael.

But, dimly recognizing my ignorance, I nodded my head.

While we carried on this conversation the great symbol of freedom flamed. While the flag burned, a hair-down-to-his-ass hippie freak rambled on, incoherently I might add, about overthrowing my lifelong fortress...WHICH WAS THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE TO HATE THOSE LOWER ON THE FOOD CHAIN THAN MYSELF. But the great symbol be damned! Faced by the prospect at last of a sexual conquest, I paid the flag and the incoherent rambling scant attention. Instead I dutifully followed her back to her dorm. That night began the initiation into a life of guilt. My guilt began in the morning when I noticed a little green metal bar about the size of a Camel Straight...which by the way killed my Pa, Camel Straights, that is...attached to the upper paneling of her door frame. I asked her, her being Martha, what it was. She explained, saying that she was Jewish. What could I do? My Ma had instilled certain values concerning women in me. Therefore simply by virtue of my upbringing storming away lay out of the question.

No. I had caressed her while making love to her. Which meant I had silently sworn to protect her and cherish her and probably even marry her; after all I could do no less than Michael and Butch.

Yet my Pa had instructed that I stay away from Jews, lest I be contaminated. (He never mentioned what dread disease I might catch. Zits were the worst I could imagine and I already had zits).

So out of guilt I did 'IT' again, and instantly felt more guilty about doing 'IT' with a Jewish girl, and then I felt guilty about feeling guilty about doing 'IT' with a Jewish girl and then I felt guilty and miserable. I attended class in this guilty and miserable state and that night Martha & I did 'IT' again. I went home over the weekend, and over dinner zipped my lips, as silence is the better part of valor and safer. Ma and Pa inquired as to my silence. Lest I blurt out I was seeing a Jewish girl, I feigned a fever and dashed to my bedroom. I stayed in bed the entire weekend, sweating and sweating and was very relieved when I stepped off the train at campus. I was so relieved I met Martha & did 'IT' again. And I was feeling awfully guilty by this time. So we did 'IT' again.

Very soon I was attending rallies against the war and consorting with all sorts of unsavory characters. There was Tree, who was rumored to have constructed pipe bombs in his bathroom tub. Tree managed to convince me by sheer, forceful, fright of his beard that America was an imperialist country. And Joyce, she of the fountain mouth that sprouted quotes from Marx and Lenin. She preached incessantly and in doing so instilled a belief in communism in me. And Charles and Scott, the gay blades who loved

shocking people by performing oral copulation on whomsoever's living-room floor they were parked at the time. And Vincent, yes Vincent, a black man so so black and a voice so so sweet. And many others who only a short time ago I could never conceive of consorting with.

But I was young, mind pliable, lonely, and love-horny. All these are a recipe for a very dangerous combination. As I hung with these people, it flickered across my mind: what would my parents think?

But I must admit, the thoughts were flickering at best. I was what the kids back in the old neighborhood called: PUSSY-WHIPPED. I think my Pa would have said something like this: Jimmie my boy, you're expending so much sperm you've addled your brain.

Perhaps I was. But sex is sex and faced by its possible termination, I readily denounced my parents and everything they had stood tall for. But I wasn't stupid, and never denounced my parents to their face. I knew to do so meant a tree stump growing out of my head. I accomplished this last feat by only returning home for the Christmas holidays during the remainder of my time in college. Because of this I attended school year-round. Professor Anderson, who taught philosophy and who instilled a love for teaching in me, saw this as dedication and secured a grant that financially carried me all the way through graduate school.

During this noble-ignoble period I completely shed, much like a snake shedding its skin, the values learned in the 'Back of the Yards'. And reshaped myself in Martha's image of what a man should be. As if she knew? But to be fair when we met we were both searching for ourselves. Also to be fair I was willing to sell my values more readily than she was. The coin of the realm? Pussy.

A little aside to this rather sordid story. I had traded in one group of bigots for another. I had traded in shot and beer drinkers for upturned noses. Point being, I had really not traveled an inch. The group who I now ran with, deep thinkers all, considered themselves the creme-de-la-creme of campus society.

Their assessment of themselves proved correct when many of the blond-haired goddesses whom I had previously desired left their Sorority houses bag and baggage in hand and moved into the many cooperatives springing up around campus. I was firmly entrenched as a deep thinker by this time, and found that I had my choice of blond goddesses. Unfortunately my Ma's instilled respect for women prevailed. I had made love to Martha and was duty bound to marry her. So I watched helplessly while these delectable flowers were deflowered by beards spewing poetry. But I consoled myself with a singular thought: I was once again numero-uno in the evolutionary pecking order. Unfortunately there was very little joy in this.

Because I was a white male I now felt guilty about being such.

Now as I write the above words, I sadly admit that I haven't

honestly come by much in life. Which is to say that my life is, has been, woven from self-serving lies. Fake, we all were. Me. Martha. Tree. Vincent. The blond goddesses. Michael and Butch? No. They are real. They probably still frequent the same saloons our fathers did and still believe in their own superiority. Oh, they are probably miserable. But at least they were honest.

Once again time has run away and dawn's red hue is peeking in. Time to go to bed. Besides, unlike yesterday my fingers are tired. And so am I. The mind looks downward instead of back or forward. An all-too-common refrain springs to mind: My kingdom for? Say my kingdom for the key to walk where I desire. A taken for granted right. Such a little right. Yes, little a wright.

Yes, my kingdom for a key. Goodnight.

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 29.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: AS YOU FROM CRIMES WOULD PARDONED BE, LET YOUR INDULGENCE SET ME FREE. Reread the final words for the 28th. Didn't really need to reread them to remember. The depression. A sense of overwhelming odds. Due to the drugs, no doubt, but also the confinement: the 4 walls, the locked door, the feeling of hopelessness...all contribute to mental deterioration. I suppose this state of mind affects people confined to a concentration camp, or a prison. And although I am helpless against the drug's onslaught, I can rally against this slow mental decay. I can. I will. I am here. I exist here and now. This, these 4 walls and single window are my home.

So I shall live here as if it were home. While still a functioning member of society, I practiced what many friends and colleagues considered a ridiculous quirk and what I considered a hobby: I nicknamed all my inanimate objects, both around the house and the office. The answering machine: Cracker the Parrot. The computer: Bill Gates. The television: John Wayne. The Honda: Hiroshima.

Yes, widgets all, constructed out of plastic and micro-chips.

And silly. Maybe. But it gave the objects a sense of being to me.

They became more than mere widgets. Following the same suit, today I hereby nickname the window: Sparrow outlook. The bed: Dreams.

The floor: Shakespeare. And the room: Paradise.

So this is my first day in Paradise. Well, not really. I've existed here, facing within these walls, window, bed, and floor for many days. And they have all been paradise. Yes. Sing it out: AAAANOTHER DAAAAAY INNNNNNNNN PARADISE. And it was just another day in Paradise. Ham and eggs for breakfast. Dr. Frankenstein's mind-numbing-mind-bending-brew. Gaga land. Tuna salad sandwich and chips for lunch. Dinner remains a mystery...even to my sick stomach. Speaking of a sick stomach,

Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate visited...as expected.

I silently slow-waltzed through: Much Ado About Nothing.

Beatrice, in Act-2 uttered: There was a star danc'd, and under that I was born.

I would say to THEM: A virgin visited, she blessed me and I was born again.

To Mrs. Martha Castrate I would echo what Leonato cried in Scene 8: Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?

But THEM would not understand. Which sums up their visit: Much Ado About Nothing!

So without a peep from me, they left. Maybe they are home right now cumin together. Which begs the question: Do shrinks shoot neurotic sperm? Or does shrink sperm go to little sperm clinics where they are divested of their narcissistic neurosis?

Which brings us to the color of the day. Cream. Sperm cream.

But enough levity. The hour glass empties. Grain by grain.

Time to return to the story at hand before the sands of time run out. Yesterday I confessed to fakery and cowardice. True enough on both counts. I probably even cried crocodile tears that day in my office. And I cried for a long time. At least long enough for the sun to hang string-like above Lake Sparrow. By the time I left the office and headed for home, the sun appeared to sizzle away, leaving shadows to follow me to the parking lot.

My tears were all dried up by this time; I left them on the parched landscape of my desk...nothing grew there anyway. But I had also cried inside. And these tears watered MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S seedling that had been planted earlier in the day.

Consequently, brave new thoughts began to take root. Where did they take root? Well the knife and scalpel men who dissect the brain in the hopes of unleashing its secrets declare the brain a twin-sided monster: the right side and the left side, or the artistic devil-may-care versus the analytical reasoning. I hereby announce a third side to the brain, or a middle ground. Since I discovered this middle ground, and did so without picking apart some poor soul's skull, I baptize this: The NETHER world section of the brain, a parched landscape devoid of either reasoning or artistic madness. And it was here where MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S seedling began to flower into a garden.

And by the time I arrived at home I was caught in this NETHER world where beliefs and ideas clash in a struggle to either destroy each other or find common ground. Martha was in the study sitting at the oak roll-top desk going through the day' s mail.

(Found it at a garage sale. Scratched and gouged. Years of built up dirt. My hands turned white from sanding the wood. Then turned brown from brushing on several layers of stain. But God it is a thing of beauty.) Befitting her structured mind, she had letters neatly stacked according to their order of impotence. Bills in one

pile, advertisements, catalogs and what-not in another, correspondence in yet another...and then there was a miscellaneous stack. I leaned over and planted the perfunctory peck on her cheek. She continued stacking the mail, only pausing to smile. Did she smell something amiss in me? Perhaps MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S garden? No. But then she was busy placing life in its proper slot.

After the peck on the cheek, I distracted myself by absently removing a book from the shelf and sitting in the easy chair opposite her. The title turned out to be 'To Have and Have Not,'

by Ernest Hemingway. I had read the book thrice, as I had all of Hemingway's works, but enjoyed leafing through them and rereading familiar passages, if only because life bled from every page.

While I read, the all-too-familiar routine between Martha & me ensued. The years had held little variances in our normal routine, not to mention day-to-day, and the discussion quickly took its familiar form: how our respective day had gone. She taught English Literature and griped about the lack of interest in the classics among the students this semester as opposed to last. The same gripe she had the year before and the year before and and and.

As she droned, I gave fleeting thought to Joanne Cardanelle, and briefly considered mentioning her and the passing grade I had given her. But to do so would lead directly to the gun-toting FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL. And I had zero intention of mentioning the old bitch or my precarious mental state. Martha, like Bruce, wouldn't understand, and like Bruce, would utter something just as inane as say 3 Our Father's. Except Martha, because psychotherapy and its ilk were her temple, would say: Dear, we will discuss this, talk it out. Take all the time you need. Get your feelings out.

Talk talk talk. I just wanted to hide behind the book; escape really, from the thoughts tearing away at me. Here and now it appears I had wished for the wrong thing!

In this vein the dialogue continued for a long, stretched out 10 minutes; and rather one-sided, as all I contributed was a grunt here and there at the appropriate pauses in the conversation. I was about to grunt when she abruptly changed the course of the conversation. "You still upset about the party?"

I sighed. The day's circle was now complete. Martha, as if applying a paint brush to canvas, had deftly joined the 2 ends of the day: morning/party/argument/evening/party/argument. The party in question was a fund-raiser for the Mayor. There is no reason in the world whatsoever why anybody outside Zenith should know who the Mayor of Zenith is. So I will provide a brief unbiased history. First of all, he is now the Mayor of Zenith; I already stated this...I know, a redundancy. But he was also the Mayor 20 years ago when I first arrived in Zenith to attend school. But he

wasn't just an ordinary Mayor. He was a hippie-long-hairedagainst-the-establishment-throw-away-your-draft-card-and-castaside-all-material-possessions Mayor.

How he became Mayor is a rather interesting story and proves that any fool, even a dog, can, if in the right place and time, be elected to public office. He had begun life as a law student and had, during a demonstration against the Vietnam war, run afoul of the at-the-time fascist police and in the police station was forced to submit to a head-shearing crew cut; in short like Samson, he lost his locks. He wasn't, to say the least, a happy camper. He decided to take his bald head and run for Mayor on the student reform platform, and things being what they were, what with the anti-war sentiment and legislation recently passed allowing citizens 18 or older to vote, won...much to his and the local population's surprise. He served 2 terms, grew back his locks, helped enact some very progressive reforms concerning welfare and public transportation, then grew up, trimmed his hair and moved away to New York City to practice law. Unfortunately in New York City, he was, to be polite, a very tiny fish in an ocean and 10 years later returned to much hoopla from the ex-hippie now older intellectual population who had traded in their crash pads and Salvation Army rags for remodeled Victorians and clothes from Land's End. And yes, they welcomed him as the Trojans welcomed wood resembling a horse. Once again a 20-pound carp in a mud puddle, he, locks fashionably shaggy and slightly tinted gray, decided to run for Mayor. To no one's surprise, he won. He now sought a second term. One last item here. Before the Mayor became the Mayor he was, while in Law school, partners in a club called the Dangles. The Dangles was, to put it mildly, a strip club. The first such in Zenith. But things change. He now opposes adult clubs. Opposes kids skateboarding. Opposes police discloser. He even opposes on street parking. Strange. Or maybe not. A French philosopher wrote: The more things change the more they stay the same.

They do. The only difference is that the 'Have Not's' became 'The Haves.' A truly frightening thought. Yes frightening.

"No," I automatically replied, knowing from experience what to expect next. Martha believed in discussing even the slightest transgression or argument until the original reason for the argument became obscured in a sea of words. She said it made for a healthy relationship. I always deferred to her request, neither caring one way over the other. This apathy irritated her and had done so for years.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. But are you upset?"

"Me? I am the one who wants to attend the party."

"Yes," I replied, pausing to read a passage in the book. I

had chosen a page near the end of the story. Morgan, the main character, was on his boat shot to hell and gone. He knew he was dying. He thought about his wife. His fat wife. What will she do?

How will she get along? Jesus he had gone and got himself shot to pieces. She couldn't get along without him. Not now. When young, thin, yes. But not now. She is old. Jesus what will she do? Why did he have to get himself shot to pieces? Jesus!

Martha interrupted my reading. "You were saying?"

"I was thinking." I placed a book-mark finger on the page and looked up at her. Were I shot to pieces would you get along without me? I smiled, thinking: Hell yes! "The fund raiser is at Bruce's house. You would rather it be held here. That's all."

"You are wrong."

"Just wondering."

"Well, you are wrong," she steadily replied.

Her tone indicated unless I wanted to resume the argument, further discussion that mined the same vein was finished. As much as I am loath to admit, I offered very little input in our marriage...our life. I sadly admit this. I was the car, she steered. I had realized this fact long ago, and had resigned myself to the role. But as I watched her, the silver letter opener she had received for volunteering at the annual Public Television fund drive cleanly slicing the paper, I thought poor Martha.

Although she never said so, she probably entertained the thought on more than one occasion that she had married the wrong man. Sure I was Chairmen of my department. But every department had to have a head...pun intended. The title, honorary...not at all to be confused with say Chancellor. Martha was better suited to be a politician's wife. To kiss abandoned babies at an orphanage.

Entertain guests at the Governor's ball. I, on the other hand, always disliked such affairs. But out of deference to Martha, the driving force in our marriage, I had always consented to attend them.

"Yes," I replied and buried my face in the book.

Whenever leaving for the evening, we left the porch light on, and Martha did so that night. The dark clouds of earlier had given way to a rather balmy star-studded night, the kind where fireflies light the way. We decided to walk the 8 blocks to Bruce's house. How was I feeling? Better than I had all day. Somewhere between Hemingway and dressing for the cocktail party, MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S young sprout folded its buds...as all young must rest, you know, for a short time anyway. Of course a smidgen of residue sanity-insanity dust remained...for how could it not?

But the moment my shoes hit the sidewalk, the pavement scraped away, as one clears away dog shit from their heels, the last remnants of MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S seedling.

Or so I thought at the time. In retrospect, I attribute this

to the familiar. Martha. Home. Bruce's house. A cocktail party. My life revolved around such. I had paid my dues. Now those dues were shielding me. Little did I know at the time that the shield was constructed of paper.

As we held hands, a habit more than a signature of enduring romance, I felt an inner relief and chuckled at my own stupidity.

After all, I reasoned, what was a minor slip? Life goes on. So what. Adjust. Do as the good priest Bruce instructed: Say 3 Our Father's. So as we walked I silently made the required penance. I hadn't attended mass in years, and how readily the words came back surprised me: Our Father Who Art In Heaven Hallowed Be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done On Earth As It Is In Heaven.

And so forth, and so on, and the rest, et al.

By the time we reached Bruce's house, good spirits replaced guilt and I looked forward to spending a few hours imbibing wine and discussing politics and mentioned as much to Martha.

"You're too predictable," she replied. "You always complain about these affairs, but once you get there you're in good spirits."

She really said that she knew what was best. She had always known. Ever since that first night we had met. She was right. So I smiled acceptance of this. In return she gave my hand the habitual reassuring squeeze.

ENTRY DATE: JUNE 30.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: HAS A SOCIETY WITHOUT DECADENCE LOST ITS SOUL? How does it go. (Sung in a hoarse whisper).

It's just another day in Paradise.

Tis the same old routine: in here where broken dreams die the Nurse jingles in carrying food & medication & a healthy shit.

And at this the Sparrows burst out in song.

Later the Nurse scratches in 2 chairs, forcing me to squat silently beneath the window, while Frankenstein & Martha Castrate fill the chairs bare.

And at this the Sparrows burst out in song.

Frankenstein urges sound, words, a 'do-ron-do-ron-ron-ron.'

But 'Antony & Cleopatra' are confused by the urged words and Frankenstein & Martha slurp away to play, as the Nurse carts the chairs away.

And at this the Sparrows burst out in song, singing: Yes, it's just another day in PARADISE! Fun. Fun. Fun. Must do this again: Tomorrow.

After all tomorrow is only a day away.

Enough levity. Precious crapper. Chose a black crayon.

Reason: such a bland non-color...like the day.

Short night last night. Almost fell asleep on the crapper.

Just about had to crawl to the bed. Medication probably. So no preamble tonight. Tonight let's get right to it.

I had destroyed MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S seedling, or so I thought...nay, I say; I had conquered nothing. It was at Bruce's house where the change from societal insanity to sanity firmly took root. But I dance ahead of the story. A repeated failing, I admit. It is sufficient to say that the party began innocently enough and there wasn't a reason in the world to expect anything more exciting then a few boring hours listening to professors discuss and rehash subjects about as interesting as the history of the nail, businessmen complain about crime, and liberals and conservatives engage in bitter ideological battle...a battlefield of inches.

Bruce, joined by Kathy, his girlfriend, met us at the door.

"Hi Martha," Kathy beamed.

Kathy always beamed. She was a beamer. Beamed at everything.

Part of her nature. And she was a nice enough woman. A bit white bread; by this I mean born and reared in a small town in the heartland...which is all well and good and she made a hell of an apple pie but she also came equipped with the narrow views which rural America often breeds. She had practiced the fine art of teaching grade school for 15 spinster years before returning to graduate school to obtain her Ph.D. There she met Bruce. They had been dating for about 4 months. She pushed 38 and I suspected she had latched herself onto Bruce, shy-to-a-fault Bruce, because her biological clock ticked along with the end of the nuclear world clock: 3 minutes to midnight. But I admit this was conjecture on my part. Besides she made Bruce happy. Made him beam. 2 beamers.

Another couple entered and Kathy excused herself to go over and greet them. Martha & I said we would catch her later.

"Glad you both could make it, James," Bruce said.

"You know I wouldn't miss one of your get-togethers," I replied, and saw out of the corner of my eye Martha's mouth smile a: Sure buster, smile.

"Has the Mayor arrived yet?" she inquired.

Bruce nodded while at the same time pointing to the far corner toward the piano. Beyond the piano lay a large picture window, and beyond that a wide expanse of well-manicured lawn

which inclined down to the lapping shore of Lake Sparrow. A candystriped tent was set up on the lawn, and dozens of people moved about under it...which was expected. The Mayor rarely traveled without an entourage.

In attendance were the Police Chief, the Head of the School Board, and various other agency heads. Also as expected, the city fathers attracted the local business elite; they could be counted upon to follow the Mayor's coattails. The University represented the city's intellectual center and as such many Deans and Professors had also come to pay homage to the Mayor.

I at last spotted the Mayor, or rather spotted the Police Chief decked out in his parade uniform standing next to the Mayor.

The child in me rather fancied the gold braids and I stared at them and thought: I wouldn't mind wearing such a uniform. The thought caught me off guard. After all I wasn't a little kid.

Before I could dwell on the thought, Martha nudged me. She had pushed up on her tiptoes, then craned this way and that way and this way and that way...much like an ostrich searching a bush for a prize berry.

"Do you see him?"

"Yes," I responded, and pointed, "standing next to the Police Chief."

She announced, "I'll run over and say hello."

Her face glowed. Having uttered this simple announcement, she meandered her way through the crowd. I suppose I should explain why she glowed so. The Mayor was as close to a male hero as Martha had...would...could allow herself to have.

"She basks in these parties where the Mayor is present, James. Have you noticed?" Before I could respond, Bruce considered his statement a faux-pas and hurriedly continued, "But, you know, these parties bring out the best in her."

"Yes," I replied. Then for a moment I almost asked him if he had mentioned the elderly woman in the Buick pointing a gun at me and the inflammatory retorts I had flung at her to Professor Nelson.

But it no longer mattered. All that was past me. Why bring it up? Why rehash a painful moment? So I let it go.

"Yes, well," Bruce said, considered adding a few more words, but instead shrugged timidly as a few people entered. "Excuse me."

As I had already stated, all the king's men and women came to pay homage, and people littered every room. The kitchen. The dining room. The hall. The living room. And the closeness made the house warm and the air thin, but I rather disliked...as is probably evident...the Mayor and forsook the fresh air in the back yard and strayed to the living room and sat on the couch. Oddly I had the couch to myself. A Mexican boy carrying a tray of drinks stooped and offered me a glass. I took one. Tasted sweet. Campari.

I glanced at the cocktail table before me. A neat stack of unread,

and this could be told by their fine, unwrinkled covers, Village Voices rested there. Staring at them, I sadly realized: Bruce should have married Martha. They were both orderly. For them life was a stack of mail. Sort it, lay each piece in its respective pile, and everything would follow suit.

For the next several minutes I was sort of staring off into the room, the kind of blank-eyed stare that sees everything but inputs nothing, when Frank Garden plopped down next to me. Frank was a very tall black man, of towering size really, and as an undergrad had excelled at basketball and had, as he liked to brag after imbibing a bit too much wine or beer, rejected an offer from the Chicago Bulls. He had instead attended graduate school, and was now a professor and taught African-American Studies. Steve, a gray-bearded professor of literature, plopped down on the other side of me.

"Steve and I have an argument going and we require a man of unimpeachable intelligence to show him the error of his ways," Frank said. But said is the wrong verb. He declared, as if God. They were both a bit soused, not enough to be obnoxious, but enough to add importance to their silly little argument.

"His way," Steve corrected.

"About this argument," Frank said.

"Yes," I replied.

"Who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature?" Frank asked, "I say it's Buck. Steve wrongly thinks Steinbeck."

"Wrongly," Steve lightly stated. But by the way his eyebrows stitched together I could see that he was taking this argument very, very seriously. And why not? He taught literature. HE SHOULD KNOW THE ANSWER. Hell, I knew the answer, but only because I was an avid fan of the writer in question. But the argument was silly.

Certainly nothing to get heated up over.

"Now don't go telling us Hemingway. I mean we both know how much you like the bastard. Jesus knows why. He wrote from the point of his dick."

It was Frank who was baiting me. And I started to respond in kind. But I stopped myself short as I always did and let it go.

The slight prick was just one of those little things. Certainly not worth arguing about.

"It wasn't Hemingway," I truthfully replied. Then I lied.

"But who escapes me. I teach philosophy."

"Shit," Frank announced, "James is correct. He teaches philosophy. Let's go find an expert on Literature."

"Wait," Steve intoned, "I am an expert on literature!

But Frank already had darted up and away in search of an expert on Literature. Steve shot up and chased after him, muttering something to himself.

"Sinclair Lewis," I whispered.

I wasn't one of those know-it-all-people, and didn't walk around pretending to be so. But like most people, I had moments every now and then when I feel superior, and that was one such moment; looking back I attribute the feeling to the helplessness I had felt all day...God gives and takes, an old saying by my Ma. So feeling a wee bit superior to them, I, a smirk on my face, stared at the stack of Village Voices on the table. After a moment, I took the smirk and mingled for about an hour, engaging in a conversation here and a conversation there, and had drifted outside to the candy-striped tent and was taking a breather at the punch bowl when I overheard a conversation that earthquaked the sanity-insanity within me and sent me reeling out of the house.

From the vantage point at the punch bowl I had a bird's-eye view of the entire area. The Mayor stood a few yards to my left entertaining a bevy of men and women. Just to my right, Martha spoke to 2 other professors in her department while at the same time gazing out past the candy-striped tent to the lake...a wistful longing in her eyes. The waters were still, and along the opposite shoreline lights blinked. All in all a peaceful setting, I mused inwardly, and certainly worthy of a wistful longing.

I wasn't given to poetry, and smiled at my own thoughts, when at that moment I noticed Rachel Rown walk up to Bruce. I had failed to notice her presence before, and that she was there surprised me. Although she was one of Bruce's students, she was a student and students, if only because universities were rumor mills and an open appearance of impropriety between student and faculty were no-no's, usually weren't invited to such affairs. And I had heard rumors concerning them, that they were engaging in an affair, and briefly wondered if the rumors were true...were they playing around? It certainly wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. Dozens of professors had affairs with students. But I quickly dismissed the thought as ludicrous. As shy as Bruce was, Rachel must have crawled naked onto his lap. But she wasn't the type of girl for such bold behavior; although plenty of girls were. She was about 22 and bubbled over with innocent, youthful enthusiasm. Bruce had taken her under wing and, more than likely because she was graduating, he had invited her.

So like I said, I dismissed the idea, and was about to turn and go back into the house. Just to the right of Bruce stood Kathy. As Rachel spoke, I, in the way one accidently views oneself in a mirror and is momentarily startled at the appearance of a stranger, glanced at Kathy. During this intrusive millisecond her face resembled a rabid dog: the lips snarled up and she, ferociousness in her voice, growled: HE'S NOW MINE YOU BITCH! Certainly every soul in the room had heard her. And for a moment I was embarrassed for her. Then as I looked about me, and

seeing how nothing had changed, how Martha still happily chatted, how the Mayor accepted the homage directed his way, and how I was the only person in the room who had viewed this, I became stunned.

So stunned by this that for a moment everybody and everything in the room stood perfectly still. Nothing moved. Not even time.

During this moment I had shifted my gaze back to Kathy. She stood blind to my intrusive gaze and glared through hateful sugar-coated eyes at Rachel who gushed about graduating and taking a position in Washington, D.C.. Bruce's head bobbed and he wore a fatherly smile. A millisecond later the moment passed and Kathy congratulated Rachel.

And there was the earthquake. The institution that had shielded me all these years was as fake as I. This was a truth. And this, the truth that had evaded me all day now filled every pore in my body. I shook my head at the truth and at the people chattering before me. A moment later this truth fled, leaving behind a vacant void. I began to tremble. The people around me...in this case Frank and Steve since they had moved into my direct line of vision...became grotesque gargoyles. They were talking to me now, but gibberish filtered forth. And although I couldn't understand a word they were saying, just by watching them, I suddenly knew, and this knowledge didn't come to me in a blinding flash, but more like a blinking turn signal, why the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL had pointed the gun at me. In that brief second frozen in time when she had the gun pointed at me and our eyes had met she had known that I, and I alone had stumbled upon the answer that she had sought her entire useless life to discover. What was the answer? Simple. Her life had been useless.

And yes, her life is useless. And as proof of this I offer up this hypothesis: If her life wasn't useless, then why would she carry a gun and why point it and most damning of all: Why bother to cut other cars off? What was the rush? Life was meant to be enjoyed, slowly savored like fine wine...not hurried as if life's sole purpose were a 14-word epitaph and 6 feet of dirt, or 6 inches of brass urn.

But I laughingly regress.

Insanity so engulfed me my face contorted into a deranged grin. And I screamed at Bruce, Steve, "SHUT UP YOU STUPID BASTARDS! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!" A part of me, the part of me that was my life sustaining societal sanity, but what I now know to be insanity, cautioned: take it easy.

So out of habit I took it easy. I slowly took in a deep breath, hoping to regain control of my senses. But to no avail. My heart POUNDED! POUNDED! I knew I had to run or my heart would burst in my chest. To pump my legs up to the thighs like welloiled pistons and flee. But instead of running like a fool, I took

a deep breath and calmly sifted my way through the crowd. As I did so I was sure every person there pointed accusingly at me. In their eyes I saw that they saw and smelled the stench of the 'Chicago Stockyards'. They snickered.

Once outside on the sidewalk, I hurried up the street, my hands striking repeatedly at my sides in a vain attempt to slap away the voices raging throughout the corridors of my mind. In the distance lay the Capitol dome. Spotlights shone bright on the BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY atop the dome. She seemed to be holding her one arm out to me and me alone as if inviting me to talk to her and I did so in a low murmuring drone. In this fashion wisps of who I was spilled from me. I was a professor. A respected member of the community. Yes, but I needed help. I was losing it.

A therapist? Yes, this was the ticket. In the morning I would make an appointment to see a Therapist.

I had found an answer and relief washed over me. A second elapsed and the relief vanished, replaced by a cry the size of a bee buzz: You are fooling yourself. Turning back is out of the question. You have gone too far.

If anybody in their worst nightmares could imagine the innate dark center of the earth fears clawing at them when they believe that they are going insane, they would immediately run screaming to the nearest hospital, and drop on their knees and beg, like a demon in Dante's inferno, for mercy against this descent into the fires of hell. I wanted to. But there was no escape from my thoughts. MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S seedling entangled its roots to and fro. For every sane, or what I now consider an insane thought, my mind offered up a piece of the puzzle that had worked in me all day, nay for years. And funny as it was, or maybe not since my chosen profession was philosophy, in the end the sum total of my thoughts evolved into a Zen-like Koan and destroyed all my arguments to the contrary: I am a respected member of the community. So? What is the sound of one hand clapping? I'm a professor. Big deal! What is Mu? Seeing a therapist is the ticket.

Yes, the ticket your kind always flees to whenever in doubt. But who are you? And who were you before you were born? Who were you before your father was born.?

Who? Who? Who? Who? WHO! I would have continued in this fashion, happily questioning and re-questioning, and in doing so perhaps returned to what is known as civilized sanity, or perhaps sat down on the sidewalk and gone stark raving mad, my mind lost in the endless equations it was battling against. But neither civilized sanity nor madness were the blue plate special that evening. I was a good block and a half away from the Capitol and still murmuring madly to the BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY when I spotted a blue and white patrol car

double-parked on the street. On the sidewalk 2 police officers questioned a young woman. I passed her with an out-of-habit cursory inspection, and saw that she was rather scraggly looking.

Right then society and its years of conditioning took over and as far gone as I believed myself to be, I obviously wasn't THAT far gone because like magic the sight of the police served to stem my mad muttering, and I assumed what I hoped to be the role of Mr. Solid Citizen out on an evening stroll. I even passed across a friendly smile as I walked abreast of them. One of the officers returned the smile. But fearful my face might betray my inner emotions, I hurried past them.

Ahead of me against the floodlights the BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY stood majestic. Behind me a half block were the police, still questioning the girl. I stood between despair and them. But if I may be so presumptuous, I really stood at the precipice of my life. All I had been, and all I was and all I would be rode on my next actions. I don't know why, and I will leave this to the headshrinkers to argue over, but I thought about my father right then. He had died over 10 years ago and in the interim I hadn't given him much thought at all. He had, and this took much effort on his part, grown to, if not love Martha, accept her. No not accept: endure perhaps. I suppose he had also learned to endure me, his son, this offspring of his who had traveled a path foreign to him...his was a life steeped in the old ways. You never complained. You, to use his own words, just gritted your teeth and got on with what had to be gotten on with.

At that moment in time, I didn't have so much as a clue as to what had to be gotten on with, I just knew that I had to get on with some sort of action or melt away. And melt away was out of the question. So subconsciously I drew back to where the police stood. A few feet before I reached the police, I knew what I had to do and also knew that this action could quite possibly destroy my life as I had known it.

Yes, hindsight magically opens doors, providing a clear view of what at one time was blind. And as I sit here, I, utilizing hindsight, understand all too clearly why I drew back to where the police were. Because the one time in my life that I had questioned authority...

Enough! That road is for the headshrinkers to tinker and bicker over.

Night-e-night.

ENTRY DATE: JULY 1.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: ARROGANCE IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD DEFEAT AND THE FINAL STEP OF VICTORY. What color would a child use to draw Fate? Black? No. Black

is reserved for the Grim Reaper. Green? Yes, green, an envious green. Fate, this elusive secret agent, has to be envious of us, these puny humans. Still, although envious, or maybe on account of, Fate fools us, fools with us, toys with us. We believe Fate can offer riches or steal the breath from a newborn's tiny lungs.

Fate believes we humans are idiots. But Fate toils alone and is a lonely, green, envious hunter. Lonely, yes. But also brutal. Spin Fate's clown-laughing wheel of fortune-misfortune and Fate will relentlessly stalk the unlucky target...for eternity if necessary.

Dr. Frankenstein, with, I am sure, some helpful friendly persuasion from Mrs. Martha Castrate, spun Fate's wheel of fortune-misfortune and the wheel twirled round and round and round...finally landing on the key to unlock my silence. Yes, I spoke today. I uttered a word. I uttered a word in front of the nurse. Yes, my resolve evaporated. What facilitated this monumental blunder? Did Frankenstein trip me up using crafty shrink methods? No. The mere thought is insulting to my intelligence. Outwitting Frankenstein is akin to outwitting a poodle. Mrs. Martha Castrate then? She cried, cajoled, pleaded, demanded. Again no. I, over the years, have directed words and sentences totalling in the millions at Mrs. Martha Castrate; thus drying the word-well up...only parched dust lay at the well's bottom for her. No, the Frankenstein twins, after littering my thoughts while I worked through Shakespeare's: The Comedy Of Errors, had departed empty-handed, which is to say without a peep or an echo from me.

And I was feeling quite smug about my continued silence; which I imagined was giving THEM the willies. And as the door clanged shut behind THEM, Egeon's...in act-2 in The Comedy Of Errors...words rang in my mind.

Careful hours with time's deformed hand have written strange defeatures in my face.

SMUG DEFEATURES. Yes, I was getting to THEM. Or I so arrogantly believed. But as I have already stated, Fate spun its wheel of fortune-misfortune and the clown laughed laughed laughed and an hour after the Frankenstein twins departed the wheel stopped and the nurse rattled the key in the door. At the time, I was stretched out on the bed going over what to write in tonight's entry, and was very surprised and caught off guard. Thinking Frankenstein & Martha Castrate were back, I, in my haste, almost snagged an ankle on the bed railing in an attempt to position myself under the window. And I had made it too, and was settled into the lotus position by the time the nurse, followed by Christie, brought in a chair. I squinted dumbfounded at her...Christie, not the nurse. Dumbfounded? Hell, rendered speechless...truly unable to utilize my vocal cords. A frightening thought, the loss of speech. Make-believe was one thing. But to

become speechless! FRIGHTENING! REALLY FREAKING FRIGHTENING! Here I squatted the little boy who cried wolf and now the wolf had stolen my vocal cords.

"Aye aye, captain sir, captain sir," Christie, upon viewing what I am sure was this ridiculous figure squatting, whispered.

"Hello Christie," I automatically whispered back.

So much for the deaf and dumb act. Might as well throw away the tin cup...if I had one. The nurse, as if discovering the secret to the Fountain Of Youth, charged from the room. I easily imagined her snatching the phone at the nurses station and frantically punching out the number to Frankenstein's office. A hurried rush of words: HE SPOKE. DOCTOR. HE SPOKE! Frankenstein cautioning her to slow down. Take a deep breath.

But God it was worth it. What a sight for sore eyes she was, and warm memories flooded within me. I couldn't help but smile. It was good to see her smiling face. Hear her voice. Great really.

"Like, wow, I blew it for you," Christie said while perching on the chair. She leaned forward, elbows on knees. "I am sorry, James. The police were gonna, like...lock me up! Your wife threatened to make sure I, like, spent the next year in a juvenile detention center. Wow. I fucked up big time. Hey, I'm gonna blow."

Tears flowed. Little innocent rivers. I had so many questions. I held them aside and arose and hugged her. She grasped me and sobbed.

"Quiet. It's okay. We are free you and I. They can't harm us."

"They, like, want this," she sobbed.

I whispered in her ear. "Good. We will give THEM what they want."

"James, like No." A shadowy eye darkened the glass in the door. The nurse had returned. Screw her. They, the bastards, may have tricked me...but they had outfoxed themselves; they, these barbarians, had delivered the means to carry this journal to the outside world.

Oh how arrogant and smug they must feel right now.

"Come. I want to show you something. It's in the bathroom hid behind the toilet. Come."

We had a grand time in the bathroom! Laughed and cried. She left carrying in her purse what I had written. She seemed a bit perplexed by the journal. "Like," she asked, "what am I to do with this?"

I told her to hold on to it for me. That maybe on some rainy day we would read it and laugh anew...maybe not.

"Huh," she mumbled. "They said, like I can visit you again next week; should, like, I?" I thought: What delightful fools the Castrate twins are. Then spread my eyes wide and clown grinned to show how wonderful such a

visit would be.

But all this transpired hours ago and my lone comment is: The only way to defeat Fate is to ass-kick her out to the cold dark lonely night. I did so. And for the first time in my life I took control of my own destiny.

So this is how my day went. But it is late, so very very very late, and time to get right to it. But before I get right to it, another observational pause is in order. I know, boring. But I am now convinced I am playing to a real audience as opposed to a make-believe one. So an announcement: I AM NOT SO EASILY FOOLED! Having uttered this comment, I am faced with a dilemma. I earlier eloquently spoke of Fate. Yes Fate. Does Frankenstein control my fate? Do Frankensteins control all our fates? Point being: Did Frankenstein deliver Christie? Did the creator of beasts, both within and without, sneak like a thief while I dozed on his MIND-NUMBING-MIND-BENDING-BREW into the bathroom and read my journal and thus produce Christie at this precise moment in the journal?

The dilemma in the above is this: Does Fate control Frankenstein, or does Frankenstein control fate?

I DON'T KNOW. BUT TO WHOMSOEVER IS READING (FRANKENSTEIN?) THIS JOURNAL LET ME SAY: BEWARE FATE! SHE IS A CRUEL HUNTRESS! Now to get right to it, Christie was the woman the police had detained. She was on her way to work. She worked, to be polite, the night shift hustling johns who cruised up and down King Street. The police had detained her because of the cocktail party at Bruce's house. "A precaution," Officer Richards explained, after I had identified myself, and she in turn had given her name.

Christie wasn't wearing much, just a long black-tee shirt with a logo of the band 'Black Sabbath' on it. The shirt crested revealingly at the folds of her ass. Slight of build, she had the look of one whose survival depended on their wits. And right now her animal-enamel intense eyes looked downright confused at my interference...confused, yes, but also calculating. I readily understood. Men like me, pillars of society so to speak, paid young girls like her for a quick blow job, but rarely, if ever, rallied to their defense.

But how she was dressed. Looked. Who she was. What she did for a living. All of no matter to me. As I had mentioned in yesterday's entry: I had to be there.

Why? Why escaped me at the time. But I, the solid citizen in me, played it by the numbers.

"Yes," I understand, I steadily replied to Officer Richards, "She is my niece. I was so lost in thought that I failed to recognize her at first. My mistake."

Officer Richards wasn't fooled, not for a second. And she

showed as much by turning a disdainful smirk my way. I offered a warm, well-practiced-in-the-classroom, disarming smile in return.

"Well the way she is dressed..."

"Is her prerogative," I, cutting her off, stated. I still offered her my engaging smile, only this time I added a hard teachers edge to it. "And unless there is a further problem, we shall be returning to the party. I do so wish to introduce my niece to the Mayor."

In retrospect, the moment for Officer Richards to challenge me was right then. She wore the uniform and had the power. She could have asked me the girl's name. Or asked Christie, who was twitching all over in absolute befuddlement by this time, if I really was her uncle. But Officer Richards fumbled the ball. And why not, although she had the power, the authority, she also had a policeman's mentality and policemen always defer to the higher power...which in this case was the mayor and a man, me, who knew him. Such is the nature of power.

"I wrote her a loitering ticket. She is required to appear in court tomorrow. Nothing I can do about it now. Sorry."

"I'll make suitable arrangements," I assured.

She, along with her partner, climbed into their patrol car.

But the car stayed put...the officers sat there pretending to read over some papers. I couldn't resist a smile at this so obvious ploy...how often I had seen this years ago while attending rallies against the war. I took Christie by the elbow and walked up the street. We were 4 blocks away from Bruce's house and it wasn't until we had traversed 2 of those blocks that I asked her her name.

Up until now she had played along, but here she stopped and eyed me suspiciously. She, a little slip of a girl, about 5'1, and a 100 pounds even, had to tilt her head backwards to do so.

"Like, what's it to ya?"

"Well," I replied, "How can I introduce you to the Mayor unless I know your name."

"Mister, like...you're crazy."

"Nevertheless."

"Mister I ain't dressed like this because I am going to the queen's ball."

"You are now."

"Like. No I'm not."

"I'll pay you."

"I knew it. It's, like, sex you want. Well you have to wear a rubb..."

"No," I replied grinning. "Just want to introduce you to the Mayor as my niece."

"Like why?"

"Truth?"

"Like, it's the only way you're getting me in the Mayor's face."

I shrugged.

"I can, like, dig that."

"So you will do it?"

"Just wait on mister." she said, "Like I ain't so smart, but I ain't a fool either. We shake the Mayor's tree and he's gonna have the men in blue rattle a cage with me in it. You know?"

"Yes," I replied, "Guarantees. Yes. Sorry. No. But I believe that any possible repercussions will fall on my shoulders not yours."

"How much?"

"Fifty."

"Cash?"

"American," I joked, but she had never traveled overseas and the joke's desired effect, which was to lighten the moment, fell on deaf ears.

"Deal," she cracked. She crooked her arm in mine and we started walking.

"By the way my wife is there."

I expected her to offer further protest, but "Like, too much!" was her only comment.

Did I have the faintest clue as to what I was doing, or even why? Hell no! (I do now of course, hindsight, but I leave it to the reader to figure out...Frankenstein?) But I had to do something if only because lack of action would surely lead to madness. The reader (Frankenstein?) may scoff at this, thinking I am and have been overreacting, but the reader (Frankenstein?) has the luxury of reading about the events unfolding around me as opposed to actually experiencing them: the confusion and feeling of helplessness.

So I state here and now for the record that I wasn't overreacting. I was reacting.

But again I digress.

I experienced an overwhelming euphoria, almost as if high on acid, as Christie and I, arm in arm, casually entered Bruce's house. And this euphoria steeled me for the expected outcry over the entrance of this scantily clad girl. But not one person took notice of our grand entrance...due mostly to the fact that the majority of the people had migrated to the yard. After a moment, I picked out Martha from amongst the people crowded beneath the candy-striped tent. She stood talking to Kathy. A few feet away Bruce stood grouped along with 6 or 7 men and women who were listening to the Mayor. The Mayor must have said something funny right then because almost in unison the group laughed. Frank and Steve stood exactly where I had left them, their hands flying up and down, indicating they still were heatedly arguing.

A grand entrance requires a standing ovation followed by earshattering applause; nay, cries out for one. Any good showman knows this. In the absence of a standing ovation and applause, the showman himself is absent. The showman stands on the stage looking out, but he looks through lone eyes. So it was with me. I had staged a sure-fire hit, and expected a grand welcome.

Consequently, the lack of reception doused my enthusiasm. My euphoria doused, indecision returned. And I was torn between dashing out of there before we were taken notice of, or fearing the mad dash might attract attention, quietly slipping out unnoticed. Christie tugged at my arm. I shook my head. She tugged again. I resisted an urge to throttle her. The third time she shook my hand, I looked down at her in exasperation.

"Like...which one is the Mayor?" she asked.

Suddenly this euphoria that I had experienced only a few moments earlier vanished entirely. My heart began to race, just like it had done earlier at the party when I had stormed out and before that when the FIENDISH GRANDMOTHER FROM HELL had pointed the gun at me. For a man of my position and faith I was now driving well over the posted speed limit of 55. Hell, the speedometer needle quivered at a 100, 100 and 10, 100 and 20, and faster and faster...and any moment I expected to crash and burn.

"Let's just go," I choked out in a whisper.

I was unable to continue speaking because panic assaulted me, mugged me, really...and within seconds I hyperventilated and gasped for breath. She shrugged as if acquiescing, and turned for the door. But at the last moment she had second thoughts and tugged on my hand and pulled me in the direction of the yard.

Aghast, I felt the color drain from my face, as Van Gogh must have felt his life bleed from his fingers onto the canvas. But fear held me in its grip. And too weak to resist, I found us standing at Bruce's side. Bruce had said something I failed to catch to the Mayor. The group gathered there focused their attention on the Mayor's response. All but one person, that is. And as luck, bad luck, would have it, Beth took notice of us. Beth resembled a Bell Pepper in every sense of the vegetable. She practiced the fine art of radical feminism, and although never quite came right out and said so, believed, as Andrea Dvorken did, in her heart of hearts that all men should be tarred and feathered once a week just for good measure. I mentally scrambled for something to say. But Beth beat me to it.

"James, who do we have here?" she asked, looking distastefully at Christie's clothing.

My vocal cords were frozen embryos. My muscles, locked, the key lost in MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S garden. Yet I could see and hear everything going on around me as clear as a crystal bell.

To my right stood what I knew to be a long folding table, a linen

tablecloth covered it to disguise the vinyl surface. A crystal punch bowl, half full, rested on the table. Scores of empty cups matching the leaf design on the bowl littered the table. To my left lapped the shores of Lake Sparrow, its peaceful darkness only broken by the occasional light shining on the opposite shore. And then I heard, as if Tinkerbell was buzzing in my ear, Christie.

"I am his niece," she innocently replied.

My eyes furious storms, I, astounded, glared down at her, this little rag-a-muffin. I could scarcely believe my ears. What was she doing to me! What had ever I done to her? Save her from the police! And this was how she repaid me. I saw the hopes and dreams nurtured for years withering on the vine and repeatedly thought: Why me? Why me? Why me?

"James," Beth cynically remarked, "I thought you were an only child?"

"My mother is his adopted stepsister," Christie, quick on her feet, replied.

"James how wonderful of your parents," Beth pointed out.

"I came to visit for the week," Christie said.

Bruce, who obviously had ceased conversing with the Mayor long enough to follow this discourse, piped in. "James, what a delightful surprise."

The luxury of blaming Christie vanished, out of the picture: left on the cutting room floor of my mind. The moment awaited me and me alone. Seconds passed...excruciating seconds. Attention focused on me and my next few words...especially from the men, for I had delivered this succulent creature into their lair. I saw the people around me as if they shone out from a carnival mirror; distorted shapes and faces and accusing eyes seeing the stench of the: Chicago Stockyards. But I knew without knowing why that all I had to do was walk through the mirror and come out the other side and everything would be all right. The distorted shapes and faces and accusing eyes would vanish.

But how does one walk through a mirror? I asked myself.

As I examined the expectant faces, I thought that the answer was simple. A carnival mirror was just an illusion. One step at a time. Or in this case one word at a time.

"Yes," I said. The word felt strange, almost as if it was the first word that I had spoken in my entire life. But I knew I had spoken it because the expectant faces leaned forward eagerly awaiting more. "I wanted her to meet the Mayor." Ah, the expectant faces said by expression alone and leaned back, now waiting for the Mayor to speak. "After all," I continued, now enjoying hearing the new sound of my own voice, "she's a future voter. Another couple of years...I mean of course you will still be in office, Mayor."

"Oh sure," Christie piped in, "I am 16. In 2 years, like,

wow, I can vote."

"I may need you this year," the Mayor jested.

The group gathered there had come to pay homage to the Mayor, and they paid hearty homage to his little joke by laughing harder and longer than absolutely necessary. The ruckus they created brought more than a few of the other guests over, including Martha and Kathy. By this time the conversation flew; Christie and the Mayor, by virtue of being opposites, became the center of attention. My eyes settled upon Martha. And did so without apprehension. You see I knew Martha. I knew her well.

"Your niece seems to have captivated the Mayor," Beth commented to her.

Martha leaned close and whispered in my ear. "What is this, James, a sick joke?"

"No. Not at all," I uttered, but barely.

The predictable, as in A for Acceptance occurred. Martha was momentarily confused by my answer...but only for a moment. But I pitied her during this moment. Perhaps had she denounced Christie; but she lacked the courage of her own convictions, or at least the convictions she preached. Form and appearance were her gods. These were her peers. She would fiddle and burn, as Nero did, but never play the fool in public.

"Yes," she replied, her voice strained, her masked face delighted.

To report a farce, other than the farce that Christie and I perpetrated, would delight me to no end. The good Mayor, so enchanted by Christie, dropping to his knees and like Dylan Thomas often did while drunk at similar parties, crawling on all fours nipping at women's ankles, the police chief running naked to the waterfront and shooting at imaginary fish. But to report these antics would be untrue. The party, in truth, never missed a (before Christie arrived) beat. The political discourse continued.

More than a few of the men ogled Christie, but respectfully, after all she was my niece, and only did so out of the corner of their eyes. And the women accorded her all due courtesy...but their hearts weren't in it. As for Martha, she wore her stage face unflinchingly.

A few hours later all the king's men had left, leaving the peasants to clean the goose that had been cooked in honor of the royal court. Which is to say: The Mayor and the Police Chief had driven away in an Oldsmobile chauffeured by a uniformed police officer. The royal court gone, the other guests one by one or in twos said their farewells and departed. Kathy and Bruce were inside.

I stood outside on the sidewalk.

Martha waited a few feet away, her back to me. As for this imaginary carnival mirror I walked through, gone; the fear and elation and excitement of traveling well over a 100 miles per hour, gone. My old steadfast

self had returned. But as Christie and I stood outside of Bruce's house, I wanted to convey the feelings of absolute freedom I, if only momentarily, felt. But I was unable to translate this freedom into words. I tried. I tried for Christie's sake. I owed her as much. But I fumbled the words, and she grew exasperated.

"Like...just tell me why?"

Her features were silhouetted by a distant street lamp. I shuffled my feet. I shrugged my shoulders. I performed all the actions that people do when an answer fails them.

"Please," she pleaded.

"I, I can say I a hundred times. Later. Give me time to think."

"Sure. Like right. Like we're gonna have time. Sure."

"We will."

She sneered cynically, catching me by surprise. I hadn't believed her old enough to sneer with the cynicism age brings. For lack of something to say I said the wrong thing. "I owe you fifty dollars."

"Money, huh," she snorted, "I, like, expected more from you.

Like I want something else."

"You want me to accompany you to court for your loitering ticket?" I ventured.

"Yes. This way, like, I am sure to see you again."

"When is court?"

"Tomorrow at 2."

"Sure," I firmly nodded.

"You're saying this? But, like, not meaning it?"

I handed her a business card from my billfold. Both my office and home number were on it. "I'll be there."

"Oh hell, like, how dumb you think I am?"

Her statement confused me and I held my hands palms out to show as much.

"It's like this. Men always toss out their business cards.

Like, you know? So meet me tomorrow. Coffee shop. Steep & Brew.

Noon. Know it?"

Sure did. Steep & Brew had occupied the same location long enough to become an institution in Zenith. In other words the place was a throw-back coffee shop. No 'Starbucks' chrome here.

Its image projected the sixties. The interior dark and smokey, the tables and chairs mismatched. The core group of regulars, some fixtures since the place opened, were gloomy poet-in-resident types and hard-core feminists. I had once frequented Steep & Brew on a regular basis, but hadn't passed time there in over 2 decades.

I nodded, "I could say yes and not show."

"Yeah, like I know," she replied, giving me the smirk again, "But at least I'll know, you know?"

I knew. "Noon it is."

She pulled up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on my lips.

The tee shirt she wore hiked up and I noticed she wasn't wearing panties. I blushed. She laughed, a teasing little thing.

"Like, maybe you are different," she said and was off, dancing away up the sidewalk.

Tramping through a carnival mirror. The VIRGIN LIGHT. The nether world. Sanity. Insanity. I have loosely bandied about these phrases to explain the sudden change in my personality. But at this point was I a different person? Were horns growing out of my head? When I spoke did dribble ripple off my bottom lip? Did I ramble on incoherently about a conspiracy between rival ant factions plotting to destroy humankind? No. I was exactly the same. I had not changed one iota. In fact, I was as confused as ever, and vainly attempted to explain this to Martha during the long walk home. I fell back on every excuse in the book, and even utilized a few I had heard my Pa use on my Ma: A joke. I did it for her. I wanted to liven up the Mayor's evening. I had had (my Pa's favorite excuse) one too many.

But the sum total of my defense fell on deaf ears. I saw years of security evaporating and envisioned residing in a fleabag hotel in Chicago. The image scared the high-holy-hell out of me and in a last desperate attempt to salvage my middle-class soul, I descended into cowardice and attempted to take her hand, hoping against hope to fall back on our years of love and tenderness. But she yanked her hand away. I grew resentful at her rebuke and continued on in silence. After all, I hadn't murdered anyone. Jesus, she found time to protest against capital punishment.

The bedroom listened, but the room was as silent as Grant's tomb. I lay on the bed, the long-standing habit of reading the New York Times before retiring held like a pacifier. I wasn't, as habit dictated, poring over the day's events. I intently observed Martha for the slightest sign of relenting. Years of habit assured me that eventually her anger would give way to words. Words were her forte. So the New York Times held firmly in hand, I, like a spy, watched and waited, secure in the knowledge of routine. She had a habit, before retiring for the night, of sitting on a chair at the vanity facing the tear-shaped mirror and giving her hair exactly a hundred strokes. At the same time she stared at my reflection from the bed in the mirror. She usually talked as she worked: her course-work for the next day, or what we should plan for dinner tomorrow. Stuff like that. But that night she worked silently. And with a vengeance, as was apparent by the brush strokes. The brush grasping the hair, pulling, grasping, pulling.

Ouch!

As I studied her, waiting for an opening, my mind was a worm-

hole of guilty thoughts. The overwhelming theme was this: I had betrayed the one person in my life who had trusted me.

When the voices in my head became too much to bear, I blurted out, "Will you talk to me!"

"What would you like me to say. You bring a tramp into our life and I should be happy. You introduced a tramp to the Mayor.

So so embarrassed. I..."

"She's no tramp. Just a kid," I defended, but the conviction in my voice failed to convince even me.

"She's a fucking tramp!" she replied angrily, fixing on my reflection in the mirror.

"Martha?"

"You fucking her? Is that it? You suddenly find your sex drive? Huh!" Such a little prick. A bloody little prick: You suddenly find your sex drive, huh! Whenever she grew heated or angry she reminded me of this fact. The little man who lost his sex drive.

For about 2 years now. Just up and fled. Odds were that next she would toss out the 'Children' taunt. How my sperm were dead. Which was why we were childless.

Perhaps had we had children? Things? Yes, perhaps.

Enough! Children would only have created more guilt, at least now.

So to continue. I usually let the taunt go. But for a naked moment rage filled me, of the kind I hadn't experienced since a kid, and I imagined jumping off the bed and screaming: WHAT ABOUT YOU, HUH! But sadness quickly filled the rage. A weighed-down, unable-to-move sadness. My silence served to further provoke her.

The brush in her hand froze in mid-motion.

"You are fucking her. Is this it? Some mid-age crisis? The childless man attempting to prove his manhood? I mean, I could understand this. We could work on this. See a marriage counselor."

A deep sigh. "No. Christie and I are not engaging in carnal relations," I enjoined. "I first met her tonight. She's a kid. A kid harassed by the police because the Mayor attended a party on the block. I mean, Martha, 20 years ago we were this kid."

She glared, unbelieving. "Ho, ho, ho!" she mocked, "just back up a bit, buster. We paraded, yes, but not around in tee-shirts up to our asses. We marched, protested. We stood for...."

And on she droned, offering up a grocery list of differences between our youth and Christie's. And as she rambled, all I could think was: she who doth protest the loudest is often the guiltiest. As soon as the thought faded, the street lamps of the dark lonely highway I had traveled briefly on and off all day flickered on and for an instant the VIRGIN LIGHT returned. But the VIRGIN LIGHT blinked out quickly and ferociously, leaving me impotent against the tirade directed my way. I suppose, no, I knew

damn well that despair and defeat lived within my eyes and she saw this; and when she had finished speaking, she stared triumphantly at my reflection in the mirror. I escaped into the shelter she understood. I sighed as a defeated fighter must do when explaining to his manager what went wrong, and explained all. I told of the grandmother. About the slurs I had called her. About Kathy. About how it was all too much. So I saw a kid. A kid hassled by the police. It wasn't right. I mean who the hell is the Mayor, Huh?" My recital, wonderfully soulful and heartfelt, but how could it be else, for each and every word carried bones of truth. And the bones I had offered up for my actions were ones Martha understood. A sympathetic chord shone from the tear-shaped mirror.

She laid the brush on the vanity next to the comb and crossed the room and lay next to me on the bed, her face shining at mine. A moment later her face disappeared, her hair splaying and tickling my thigh. I wasn't surprised by this and not because we hadn't engaged in carnal relations in years. But because she had performed the oral act of copulation on me exactly 6 times. She had done so many years ago the first time we had made love. The subsequent oral couplings had always occurred when she had felt our marriage threatened or out of misbegotten pity. She felt both right now: pity and threatened. And I wanted to stop her. But my love for her bound my vocal cords. She desperately wanted to save something important to her. And I could not take this away from her. Not without, I knew, tearing out my own soul.

My insides shriveled up at the touch of her mouth searching, then grasping purchase of my member. I let the newspaper drop from my hands to the floor and turned my head into the soft folds of the pillow and gritted my teeth. I attempted to convince myself that what she was doing felt good. But my thoughts rang hollow, and I just felt pathetic; and despite all my efforts to the contrary, as her mouth earnestly worked cruising the tingling nerves at the tip of my penis and sliding down the shaft until her lips reached the growth of hair beneath, the expected orgasm grew fainter instead of closer. I knew I had to react, or act, lest I hurt her irrevocably. So I imagined it was Diana LaBronze sucking on me...Diana forever young, held picture-perfect in my mind at the tender age of 17. The image of Diana heightened my pent-up passion, and I moaned a lonely lost-wolf howl, then almost lost control altogether and shouted out Diana's name, but instead bit down hard on my bottom lip, forcing Diana's name back into the recesses of my throat.

To linger, her head resting on my inner thigh, was never Martha's way. She scooted up and head on the pillow faced me. "A long time, James."

"YES," I managed to squeak out.

"Maybe we have both taken the demands of work too seriously."

"The demands of work, yes."

"A vacation. Just you and me. We could go abroad. We have the money. Spend a few weeks. See Europe."

"All of it?" I managed to jest.

"Stop being foolish," she replied. "2 weeks isn't enough time to see all of Europe. A few countries. A tour. I can speak to Phyllis at the student travel center. She books 2-week tours all the time. Say yes."

"Yes," I said, "Yes, and Yes." "There is one little thing, James," she declared.

Up until then my mind washed in the sexual act and was incapable of intelligently engaging in the conversation at hand.

But I grasped what she had just said, and thought: Ah, this was her analytical mind at work. Already planning what to bring. Yes. What to bring on such a long journey was a problem. Let's see, xpair of panties. And I giggled inwardly thinking: why are panties referred to as pairs...because there are 2 cheeks, and I giggled inwardly again. And pumps, they had to absolutely, positively complement the skirt, and this presented another problem: what color blouse. And and and. And the endless possibilities were truly mind-boggling and finally I laughed out loud.

"What is so funny James?"

"Thinking about you laying there thinking about what to pack for the trip. You know how you are."

"What are you talking about James?"

"The trip to Europe. You mentioned one little thing. You were considering what to bring, right?"

"No, James," she, propping up on one elbow, replied. A bang of hair fell over one eye, obscuring it, but the other eye crossed itself at me. "You must promise never to see this girl again."

I thought instantly: She had performed the ultimate sacrifice and now she wanted her just reward.

"Martha," I contended, "I wasn't playing around with her. I told the truth."

"James, I believe you. It was just a little prank. But the embarrassment. My friends. Colleagues. The Mayor. You must also promise to never reveal the truth. This is as much for your own good. Some still remember how you voted against the bylaw to expel any student who engaged in racial or inflammatory behavior."

"Martha," I responded, "this is a small city, made even smaller by the University."

My intent was lost on her. She brushed away the lock of hair covering her eye and glared down at me. "Why, you can't honestly intend to maintain this facade. Is this what you are thinking? And after I just..."

"Martha, the little prank, as you refer to it, will selfdestruct on its own."

"What do you mean?"

"The police issued her a loitering ticket. She is to appear in court tomorrow.

Somebody at the party is bound to recognize her. An assistant DA. A judge. The Police Chief."

"Oh how I hate you right now!" She retorted suddenly and forcefully. "No, I am sorry," she retracted, "I love you. You're overworked. I should have seen this sooner. I hate this damn predicament. And of course you are right. Oh James? Oh James, just promise never to see her again. The rest will blow over."

Before I could respond, she was off the bed and sitting at the tear-shaped mirror. The brush worked through her hair.

"Beth will talk. You know Beth. And Bruce. Well, he's a bootlicker. If the Mayor is upset, Bruce may play cool for a while. Poor dear, such a shy man. Can't blame him really. And..."

As if a magic thinking wand, the brush waved in her hand as she spoke. I wanted to blurt out that I had agreed to meet Christie tomorrow. And I had further agreed to accompany her to court. The only defense against blurting out these admissions at hand was the New York Times and I readily grabbed it off the floor and used it to shield my reflection in the mirror. Martha continued talking, a self-convincing speech. Occasionally I grunted a response. But my thoughts were on Christie and what she had said. Men always promised to meet her. Men always promise.

Well, hey here is my business card. Oh hell, do you think I am stupid? Men always hand me their business card. What's a business card but ink on paper? The card could be found in the gutter. On a sidewalk. Left in a restaurant fish bowl while waiting along with thousands of other cards to be the one fished out for a free lunch.

"We can survive this," Martha said while sliding under the covers. "Just keep your promise."

And here was my chance. Blurt out that I had arranged to meet Christie. I had promised. Surely she'd understand a promise. She understood the importance of such an oath. I would promise Martha to only meet Christie in the company of other people. What harm would this cause? Yes, this was the ticket.

But I deluded myself. As Martha reached to the nightstand and switched off the lamp, I lay back, too cowardly to speak.

"Goodnight James," she said.

"Yes," I answered cynically, "Good night."

"And you will never see her again?"

"No," I answered.

At first Martha's breathing was heavy, husky, indicating she lay awake. So was I. Each passing moment the darkness swelled around me...my cowardice feeding the ever-increasing void. Men always promise, I silently thought. After a while Martha's breathing grew shallow. She now slept. Yes, men promise. Study

history: men promise. I promise to marry you. I promise to return from this war or that war. I promise to remain faithful for forever and a day. Men always give me their business cards. Men always promise.

The night wore on in this fashion until between the linen curtains, dawn's red hue peaked along the eastern sky. I had lain there afraid to rustle and wake Martha. In anger I at last thought: Fucking dago bitch. This is her doing.

Unlike 20 hours earlier, there wasn't a whit of remorse or guilt at this thought. Instead I snorted madly and forced myself asleep by murmuring as if counting sheep: Fucking dago bitch, fucking dago bitch, fucking dago bitch, fucking dago bitch, fucking dago bitch...

A scant few hours later I found myself droopy-eyed at the kitchen table. But Martha was oblivious to the dark circles under my eyes, or the haunting, hunted shadow laying there. Lot's wife had turned to salt because she grabbed a gander when warned otherwise. Unlike Lot's wife, Martha should have grabbed a gander at her husband sitting glumly. But like Lot's wife, Martha was blinded by her position and faith: that an enjoyable-repulsive blow job and an extracted promise could fix anything.

So Martha paid no heed to the little broken man sitting there. Instead as if a woman who has discovered life's crusade, she ricocheted around the kitchen: at the coffee grinder grinding out the correct amount of Jamaican decaf. "Do you suppose they have decaf in Europe? Oh, silly me, they must."

At the coffee pot brewing exactly 2 cups. "Maybe we should grind up a pound or 2 and bring it along."

At the stove where 4 eggs boiled. "We have to remember to watch our cholesterol while in Europe, James."

At the counter squeezing out 2 glasses of fresh orange juice.

"We can't very well pack a crate of oranges. Can we?"

At the vitamin center setup alongside the cutting table measuring from each bottle the correct dosage of each vitamin: C for Calcium, C for C, and B-complex to un-complex life. "Must pack a supply of vitamins."

At last I couldn't take what I viewed as 'good cheer' any longer and wanted to jump up from where I sat at the table and cry out: Your husband is in more trouble than a trip to Europe can fix. Just grab a gander. Last night I counted: Dago Bitches, instead of sheep.

After this imaginary outburst, I imagined her sitting down.

Resting a caring hand on mine. And listening. Really listening, not just pretending to listen. And as she did so, I would explain about the promise I had made to Christie, further explaining that I hadn't told her about the promise last night because I was afraid of how she'd react. She'd bury her deep blue eyes into my

sad browns and say she understood, really understood. And of course I should keep the promise. Christie was a nice girl. She certainly wasn't any less nice than the orphan Indian girl in Guatemala we contributed 20 dollars a month to. Yes, James, do see Christie. I will even go with you. Maybe we can listen to her.

Maybe we can help her. Maybe we can even learn something.

"Vitamins," she said, shaking a finger in the air, "yes, must stock up. I'll draw up a list James. Will you be so kind as to stop at the Peoples Pharmacy?"

"Yes," I acquiesced.

An hour later, Martha's vitamin list in hand, I escaped. The pressure of listening to Martha happily ramble on was too much to bear and I felt the madness that had threatened to overtake me the previous evening return. Perhaps had I unloaded the major portion of my burden and said simply but firmly that I had promised to meet Christie and that I intended on keeping this promise because I had promised, the ooze of indecision within me would have dried up MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S garden...and the plants would have died on the vine. But cowardice had prevented me. Yesterday I strove in every manner possible to rekindle the VIRGIN LIGHT that I had momentarily gleaned. Not today. My mind could take no more without cracking, of this I was sure.

Once again dawn beckons. But before I lay me down to sleep, a final thought. Looking back, I can't help wondering: Where had Martha & I gone wrong?

Interesting question. Where had our youthful dreams lighted?

Actually I do know where our dreams lighted...they flew away on the wings of a crow. Those massive black wings pumping a blood-beating heart blossoming into a moonlit etched silhouette black cape, a disappearing black cape.

Looking back I see now that this is where our dreams lighted; carried away by Poe's Black Crow. We were so smug in our position and faith that we never noticed. Instead, we happily sorted out the day's mail or read Hemingway. All the while the crow feasted.

All the while we, our youthful beliefs, died little by little day by day. But because of a dago bald-headed bitch brandishing a 357Magnum, I took notice. An angry crow-God, perched high on a treebranch, snorted knowingly. Yes, the crow knew all about position and faith. He read the crystal ball well. I had torn away society's binding blinding straps. But Martha, poor dear Martha.

Poor dear Martha who thought God a fictional character devised by men to chain women. Martha whose temple bowed down to Freud.

Martha who each morning and before sleep drew her in, anointed herself in the waters of therapy.

YES. ENTRY DATE: JULY 2. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: WHAT DID THE CITIZENS OF TROY THINK WHEN AWAKING AND FINDING THE ATHENIANS

GONE? Is a long-standing enemy's absence cause for joy or paranoia?

Why do I pose such a question? Obviously because Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate missed their daily appearance.

Odd! Yes, I found this odd.

So much so that their absence occupied my day. And as the day wore on I graduated to joy, and forward on to overwhelming joy...then sinking to paranoia, and finally despair. This rollercoaster emotional ride began when the time for their daily visits came and went. At their absence, tardiness really, for I knew they would arrive at some point, joyous emotions visited first. I rather fancied...and while doing so envisioned I puffed on a fine cigar...THEM discussing yesterday's event; my utterance, a breakthrough, to be sure, Dr. Frankenstein self-assuredly assured; and Martha, poor dear Martha, grasping at any crumb, hugged her bosom and nodded at the great man who sat before her. And I could hardly contain the excitement and anticipation I felt at their impending arrival...and they most certainly would arrive, late, but arrive. And they would expect me to speak. Speak boy. Speak speak.

And since I had some free time, some freedom waiting time, I opened the change purse where time is kept like so many pennies, and while watching the sparrows sing and play, bathed in the sheer joy, the joy at the silence that would greet THEM, the joy at stealing their little hollow victory. But as the day wore on, lunch passed by, and with THEM still absent, I grew very elated, and imagined that the impossible impassible was possible...Frankenstein & Martha Castrate to never return. The doors to this yuppie prison flung open. The SPARROWS SINGING OUT: FREE, FREE, FREE AT LAST! So I cashed in a few more coins and imagined a canoe ferrying me across Lake Sparrow where on the other side cheering throngs of sane people like myself greeted me. Upon arrival, I even saw myself writing Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate a note...or something.

In this fashion, the earth slowly rotated afternoon into early evening. By evening's clear, the coin purse had run dry and insidious fears & doubts snuck into my mind. Ah, what wonderful creatures, Fear & Doubt. Such sneaky little bastards. Doubt opened creaking closet doors. From the darkness winged bats sprang out and shrieked: THEY ARE PLOTTING! Fear slid up to the attic and released a thousand scurrying ants...each carrying a single crumb for the mind to feast upon: LOBOTOMY! From there Fear & Doubt teamed up and together gang-raped my mind until I was positive the evil twins were hatching something

horrific...and lobotomy certainly fit horrific.

I knew intellectually, of course, that lobotomies were illegal. But I knew this from the logical mind. But the heart, this beating mysterious wonder who cries, laughs, shouts out, runs wild, leaps for joy...yes the heart, this unthinking wonder cast aside logic and instead settled for rhyme. The poetic heart embraced Fear & Doubt and in doing so sank. My spirits followed along, sinking to the deepest, darkest depths. Overcome, I curled up in the fetal position on the bed and drifted into an almost catatonic state.

The thought of my mind pilfered, like my freedom, was too much to contemplate...even for a second. How many hours I wasted away in this state? 5? 6? 7?

But what were mere hours, for at some point I lost track of time altogether. Dinner came and went uneaten. The nurse placed Frankenstein's MIND-NUMBING-MIND-BENDING-BREW in my mouth and waited to see me swallow before leaving. Full darkness descended.

The freedom sparrows who usually fell silent at night's entrance, whispered in song...perhaps they sensed my despair. But their songs fell on deaf ears, and I lay unmoved and unmoving, my mind unable or unwilling to embrace what the heart had embraced. And why should it? Why should the mind embrace its own destruction!

But at last the heart gave way as hearts must do, and the mind, now firmly in control, slayed FEAR & Doubt.

And so it was. And in the wee hours of the morning Fear & Doubt died, unwillingly, but die they did.

My lone comment on today is: Idleness. Idleness is the enemy.

Not Mrs. Martha Castrate the CASTRATOR, nor Frankenstein the BRAIN DRAINER; they hath cast their spell and failed. Idleness is the true enemy.

Or as my Ma was fond of saying: An idle mind is a devil's workshop. I must guard against idleness.

This belief firmly planted, I return to the story. Ah yes the color of the day: Purple. Figure it out. (Frankenstein? Are you reading this as I sleep? You sneaky little devil! I bet when you were a kid you hid, no, still do, Playboy magazines under your bed).

So where did I leave off yesterday? I? Yes, I had escaped the house and Martha's good cheer and her plans for going to Europe.

But although I had escaped Martha's hyperactive good cheer, I couldn't escape myself. Nor could I escape MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY and her little sprout...which was now a full mind-flowering garden. But there were still chambers of my mind where MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S little garden hadn't fluoridated, and within these chambers I hid, clinging to my middle-class beliefs; and here in these chambers Martha's caring presence kept me company.

And here, Martha watching over, I, as the pavement ground out from under the Honda, resolved to cancel meeting Christie at Steep &

Brew. Guilt, this blood-brother of mine, shamed me to the quick for deserting Christie. But I held guilt at bay by repeatedly muttering...in a self-justifying manner...over and over like a record stuck on the same chord or bank of lyrics that sang out: 20 years of marriage and my upbringing dictated allegiance to Martha...not Christie.

Yes, allegiance held Martha's hand.

A part of me loathed my cowardice. But if you narrate a belief often enough, the belief, true or false, embraces the narration. And by the time I arrived at parking lot A, I had convinced myself that the decision, well, the decision was best for all concerned.

A spineless resolution to be sure, and spineless is too light a word here. But resolving the conundrum served as a release valve, and I slumped over the steering wheel. When I at last looked up, the clock on the dash board showed 10 past the hour.

Perhaps by slumping over the wheel, I had subconsciously expected Bruce to do his shy man tap dance on the window and chase away the self-loathing blues. We would huff and puff up Mother's Path and laugh and gossip over who said what or who had made a fool of themselves at the party last night. But Bruce failed to make the performance.

I chalked his absence up to a hangover and quickly gathered up my briefcase and headed up the hill. Once inside the office, I resumed where I had left off in the Honda and sat at the desk and stared blankly about...a deer caught in the headlights stare. How long I would have sat there is a good question. Perhaps all day.

And why not? Except for filing away a few odds and ends, my academic plate was empty. I only turned away from my droll thoughtless gaze when a knock echoed against the office door.

Reflex took control, and I yelled enter and Professor Nelson did so. He carried his trademark briefcase and as usual without waiting for an invitation seated himself at the chair opposite my desk and removed the Scotch and the tube of plastic glasses.

"Jimmie you need a drink," he snarled.

I instantly lay aside my gloom and took undue interest in him. I did so because he had over the years always, if curt, which was his style, asked, "Jimmie would you like a drink?"

Yes, the subtle difference between: like a drink and: need a drink.

Was enough, despite my state of mind, to set off the alarm bells inside my head. I was, after all, a well-conditioned university creature. And like all creatures, tuned into my environment, which was: the politics of university survival. A wrong word, or misplaced sentence, and bang, you are teaching 5 days a week instead of 2, or worse yet a committee is created to investigate whether tenure revocation is in order. Tenure revoked,

the Chancellor mock-awards the professor a year of probation.

Which meant: good luck Joe, you have a year to find another job.

Nelson's simple change in greeting indicated something was amiss and I assumed it involved me. 60 questions were unnecessary.

Bruce. I ventured such.

He paused before answering. Instead he followed his usual habit of pulling 2 glasses from the tube and setting them on my desk. He unscrewed the cap from the scotch and filled both glasses to the rim. He usually replaced the bottle back in his briefcase, but today he set the bottle on my desk and motioned a stern finger for me to take a glass. I did so.

"I take it you missed your shadow in parking lot A this morning?" He, peering at me above the glasses perched on his bilious nose, idly inquired while sipping his scotch.

I readily admitted as much. But added, "The cocktail party lasted late. Bruce is probably nursing a hangover."

"You bring...delicately speaking...a hooker to a fund-raiser involving the ex-hippie, royal-majestic-bow-down-and-kiss-my-feet Mayor and introduce her as your niece and you expect marching bands. My boy you are dumb as salt."

"They know she is a..."

A snort. "My boy, Zenith is a small town. The Police Chief, this virtuous man and Christian recognized her. Seems the good Chief makes it a habit of personally booking...delicately speaking...all girls brought in on loitering charges. Part of his campaign to stamp out such un-Christian-like behavior. Or so he says. Personally, I always believed when a man dons a uniform you have a potential Hitler. And the good Chief has worn the gold braids for near 20 years. Funny, if this were Chicago or any other large city, the City Council would have booted his ass out to pasture long ago. Another 10 years and he will out-tenure Hoover.

Ah, the bodies in the closets. He must know where each and every one is buried. Funny, or maybe not, but I seem to remember that when he assumed office, succeeding the gestapo Chief who had held office for 10 years, he promised to clean up the department in 4 years and be gone."

Falling back on my profession, I quipped by quoting a Greek philosopher. "I fear death yes, but I fear dishonor more."

"Sure, sure," he absently nodded. "Jimmie, do you know what the only COURSE universities DON'T offer is?"

"No." "A course in intelligence."

Although I had fallen in his trap, I replied, "An old joke."

"Perhaps. But true nevertheless. Remember yesterday? I told you I once called a man a nigger."

"How could I forget?" I intoned.

He smiled. A rather gentle smile, turning his face soft and

unassuming. Used to a snarling Nelson, I was taken aback by the gentleness there. "The person in question is Frank Garden."

"Frank?" I further intoned, and took a large swallow from my drink. For a second I gagged. I gagged for 2 reasons. First: I wasn't a drinking man, not really, oh a few glasses of wine, a beer here and there, and an occasional few sips of scotch shared with Nelson...because I was Chairman of the Department, more to please him than out of enjoyment. Second: Frank, although a bit pretentious, was a very respected Professor. As I cleared my throat, I reminded myself that over the years Frank had often led the pack championing Professors Nelson's retirement...even on 2 occasions going so far as to venture Nelson's outright dismissal.

Beth, it seemed, always sided with Frank.

"Beth involved?" I inquired.

"Yes," he answered.

"And you called Frank a nigger?"

"Sure," he laughed, as if enjoying an inside joke. "And he is."

What he had just told me explained a lot. I had always thought that Frank and Beth had disliked Nelson because he was a kook. Now I saw that at least Frank had a very good reason for disliking Nelson. A very good reason indeed!

Or at least I thought so then, now sitting here on the crapper. But once again I digress.

"Hold on a second here," I answered, "Frank is a respected man. A man renowned in the field of African-American Studies. You can not go around call him a a a a a ...."

I still could not utter the word: nigger.

Nelson took a sip from his drink, then slid his reading glasses up, and scratched his nose. "Yes, just so. But the man's a nigger. The incident took place a few years before you arrived on the scene. At the time Frank and Beth were first-year Assistant Professors. Young. Brash. Full of themselves and sixties revolution: Women's rights, Black's rights."

Over the years I had put up with Nelson's shenanigans, but right there the so-called proverbial straw that broke the camel's back did so. And my hands held out before me in the time-honored form of caution, I snapped, "Hold on a second! I Chair this Department."

"Many have sat in the same chair," he scoffed "Yes, but?"

"Do you want to hear the story or not?" he cynically shot back. "Or I can leave. But you and I teach philosophy. Right?"

"Bruce involved?"

"He and I were buddies. I, a few years older, had taken him under wing."

Involuntarily my right hand shot up, and I shook my head.

"Perhaps I should go," he muttered. "I...The past, what is the past but past? Why dredge it up? I apologize."

He stood to leave, an old man with a sad tale stored away in his heart just waiting for the correct moment to be set free.

Although I didn't have a great deal of respect for him, especially right there and then...I mean he had called a man a nigger...I felt compelled to listen. As a human being I owed him that much courtesy. Besides I could tell by the sad look in his eyes that he had been waiting a long, long time to tell his story, and since he was retiring, he needed to relate it...otherwise the tale stored away in his heart would remain forever a scarred wound.

"I am the Chairman," I sighed. "And you are correct, many men have occupied this chair. Better men then me. So sit down, please.

As Chairman of this Department I fully realize the past affects the present."

"As Chairman of this Department?" he asked, his eyebrows inverted into an upside-down V. I couldn't help but smile. Something he had never made me do before. "As a would-be philosopher," I replied.

"A seeker of truth?"

"Hell, right now I am very unsure of truth," I responded.

"But sit down. Jesus, I dislike staring up at people while conversing with them. Makes me feel inferior."

"King Richard the Third utilized this while dealing with members of the Royal Court," he instructed while sitting back on the chair.

"I am aware," I replied.

"Hitler also," he commented, ignoring me. "Inferior men search out the little things. Use them to their advantage. Frank is like that. He is a tall man, yes, but he is black. The world is white. Even the soap we use is white. Imagine it, Jimmie, the soap the black man uses to wash away the stain of inferiority the white man inflicts is white. I mean, really, imagine it, Jimmie. You are black and in the morning when you step in the shower, this confessional booth where even Captains and Kings are trapped naked and alone with their innermost thoughts, you turn on the water to wash away the fears that kept you tossing and turning half the night and reach for a bar of...white soap. As Conrad said: The horror! The horror!

I had always considered Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness,' and the line 'the horror, the horror' to represent the finest piece of literature ever written. But I had never truly understood, not from the heart, their true meaning until right then. I examined Professor Nelson's eyes and in them lay Conrad's vignette: THE HORROR! THE HORROR! Nelson smirked at my intrusive gaze.

"Age Jimmie, age," he cracked sharply but simply. "Only age

can grasp the true meaning of those words. A little man sporting a sawed-off mustache churning millions of people into soap, a...

Stop! Sorry. Frank. Right Frank. And a junkie. A man hooked on the sweet poppy was Frank's undoing. His name? Daniel Logan. Although before your time, you may have heard his name bandied about.

Gossip being what it is."

Because I HAD heard his name, gossip being what it is, bandied about, a glumness overtook the glumness already present within me. Frank or Beth were the culprits who bandied his name about and usually after partaking of a drink too many. Where within me interest at the story should have lay, now lay an empty hollow. And I wished Professor Nelson would leave.

"Yes," I replied.

"Interesting fellow...an understatement really. He came to Zenith to escape his addiction. Heroin. Back then I wasn't the outcast I am now. I used to spend my evenings at Jan's Pub and Grill. The intellectual elite gathered there to spoon-feed off of and feed on intellectual beliefs of equality and pseudorevolution. How Daniel Logan wound up at Jan's is anybody's guess.

I mean he was more than the sum total of all of us at the bar put together. But I always supposed he was lonely and sought human companionship...although the first time I laid eyes on him I thought that he had the coldest eyes I had ever seen in a human being. His eyes were void of all human warmth. It was like he...he...he had witnessed the sum total of human suffering from the birth of the world to the holocaust. His voice also lacked all human warmth. I am not speaking hyperbole here. A fact. The coldest eyes I had seen in my entire life. Yet, yet, warm. Warmth.

A cold, if you can accept an oxymoron, warmth. But to make a long story short, he quickly integrated with the people who frequented the bar; and why has remained a mystery to me: he wasn't involved in any way, shape, or form in academia...as were most of the regulars. As he integrated, he never lied, or attempted to misrepresent himself. He explained straight away his reason for moving to Zenith: to detox off heroin. He also explained his roots: from New York City, and a journalist. As you can imagine, the regulars took to him straight away. And why not? He was the real thing. An ex-journalist. An ex-junkie. We were pretenders. We waxed eloquent, yes, but we waxed under the umbrella of academia.

We worked in theory as opposed to carrying a wooden shoe box and shining shoes for a living, nor did we ship out overseas and wallow and fight in jungles and mud and arrive home in a body bag, nor did we live in substandard housing, our sons and daughters strung out on drugs. But we waxed eloquent. We waxed out the answers, and others less fortunate than us paid the bill. But Logan had paid the bill. Despite paying the bill, he never tooted his own horn. He was, in fact, extremely reluctant to discuss his

past, and only consented when called upon. I guess he had had...?"

Nelson paused for a sip and a soft smile. A remembrance smile. A sigh followed, a deep sigh. "He had, as Frost wrote: a promise to keep and many miles to go before he slept. He had a promise to himself. He once explained this to me. Heroin had devastated his life and he had vowed to play it straight or, as he phrased it: withdraw from the game."

Nelson laughed, his shoulders involuntarily shrugging. "He took up with a woman. A beautiful woman. I believe through all the pain and misery Logan had witnessed, he had found a little piece of happiness here in Zenith. They were like 2 starry-eyed kids.

Always holding hands, kissing, hugging, laughing. Their love lighted up the entire bar. We were all affected by its glow."

Nelson removed his glasses and pulling out a shirttail cleaned them and replaced them back over his ears.

"What a summer!" he shouted. "Jesus. What a summer," he whispered. "Logan by sheer force of determination brought out in us all the bullshit we had preached. Love. Peace. Unity. He...he was detoxing off heroin. He explained this to me. He had, in detoxifying, rediscovered life. He said it was akin to surviving a plane crash. Suddenly the little things that drive us were rendered impotent: the monthly automobile payment, the mortgage payment, the credit card bills, whether the sun would shine in the morning. The list is endless. He described it as a glorious awareness. Every moment to be lived and to be cherished. We, the elite who extolled such beliefs but who lived them only in our dreams or white papers, fell under his spell and began to believe." Here he paused and spaced his words. "And believing is dangerous for a professor. But Frank believed most of all. He fell in love with Logan."

I suppose the astonishment showed on my face because he nodded vigorously.

"Yes. Frank is gay. Why do you suppose he never married?" He waved a hand, dismissing the statement. "But never mind. Alice was the name of Logan's girlfriend. Like Alice in Wonderland. She was Alice in Wonderland. Beautiful. But emotionally damaged...very fragile. Damaged by life, I suppose. This damage left her susceptible to suggestion. Frank wanted Logan, and over a period of months whispered innuendo and rumor in her ear concerning Logan. A ladies man. A man of dissolute character. I guess it all became too much for her because she broke off the relationship."

"How do you know it was Frank?"

"At the time I didn't have the faintest notion that Frank was the culprit behind Alice's breaking off the relationship," He replied, "I only found this out later on."

"How?" "Listen."

"Continue."

"Well, needless to say, Logan was beside himself, unable to understand why Alice would end the relationship. I was in the bar when Frank made a play for Logan. We were all drunk that evening.

Logan sat at a window table. I and a visiting professor from Norway, Swen, had joined him. Frank entered, saw Logan, and stumbled over. He spoke in a low whining whisper, but even so I heard him confess his love for Logan. Logan, a bit stunned, not unkindly, rejected him. Frank, head low, left the bar. A few minutes later he returned and loudly announced to the entire bar that Logan had raped Alice, and this was why she had broken off their relationship. The idyllic summer died right then. You see the dreaded word rape had been tossed out. About 50 people were in the bar. 50 stunned people. 48 cowards. Frank stormed to where Logan sat and spewed out every vile curse imaginable. You see don't you, that Frank was using the age-old trick of reversing the cards...by focusing the blame on Logan, showing him to be the bad guy, then Frank was obviously the good guy. I think it's called diverting the truth by..."

"I know," I stated. "What did Logan do?"

Why, Logan just sat staring at Frank, I suppose too stunned to respond. At first not a soul stood to defend Logan. Frank's ploy had worked. Besides Frank was black. And he had uttered the R word. Rape. And these were university creatures after all. After about 10 minutes of hurling every imaginable vile curse known to man at Logan, Swen, understanding the importance of a second party defending Logan against such vile accusations, stood and told Frank to shut the fuck up. Swen was from Norway. What did he know?

What did I know? That's when I stood and faced Frank. I told him he was a nigger pure and simple. So Jimmie we have the N word and the R word. You can guess the rest."

"So be careful Jimmie. Be very careful."

His final words of caution still rang in my ears when I realized he stood at the door.

"What about Beth?"

"She and Swen were a couple. Beth took to Frank's faith and Swen abruptly returned to Norway. She blamed Logan. The 2 of them intensified their smear campaign against Logan. Logan left for New York. End of Story."

"Do you know what happened to Logan?"

"Yes," he replied, hand on the doorknob. "He committed suicide. A couple of years ago. One paragraph in the New York Times. He had been in Budapest working for some wire service during the fall of communism. He filed his stories, flew to Paris and..."

"And Alice?"

"She's confined at Lake Sparrow. I visit her from time to

time. That is how I and probably I alone know the story. She talks to her collected selves; or so she tells me." His head dropped for a second, then he sighed, "Jimmie, I wouldn't want to see you go.

Dumb as you are. Even after I retire I will maintain the office; I earned it. You are the only person in the department who I talk to. Or talks to me. It gets lonely drinking in my office alone.

I..."

All the built-up pain showed on his face. And if he intended on finishing the sentence, I will never know because the door closed behind him and that was the final conversation between us.

Endings? I miss Nelson. Which is ironic because I never thought such a thing possible. Huh, Nelson? Just a minor annoyance. I figured every department had a Nelson. Every Department Chairman drummed a finger atop their desk while waiting for their version of Nelson to leave their office. Now I know different. A sigh. A shake of the head. Too tired to continue. But not from the drugs...all too much. Too much remembering.

ENTRY DATE JULY 3.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: WHEN WE MEET THE ENEMY, IS HE TRULY OURSELF? Today?

Today was a day of discovery... ...about myself, and about the Castrators.

Although they were absent yesterday, they, as anticipated, very much anticipated, I was soon to discover, arrived at their normal hour today. And despite the grip that FEAR & DOUBT held over me for endless hours the previous day, I, from my position on the floor, almost shouted out a joyful greeting. The force of the emotion, overwhelming, shocked me. And I was intrigued by this this...emotion! So powerful.

So although Macbeth lay on tongue's tip, I lay crazy Macbeth and his witches aside and uncomfortably, for self-examination is always uncomfortable and painful, dwelled on the 'whys' of this feeling. Had I feared their absence so...so much more than even I realized? The routine, the key jingling in the lock, the chairs brought in, Frankenstein's incessant clucking, silently ridiculing THEM. Were they my only entertainment? A real-life television show? If true, gad, what a discovery! A horrible discovery.

Pavlov's dog, of course, springs to mind. I had mentioned Pavlov's dog in the beginning of this journal. But I had mocked. I mocked, yes, but was I mocking myself?

These thoughts troubled me greatly, and searching for an insight, a crumb, anything to prove how wrong I was, I snuck a glance at Frankenstein & Mrs. Martha Castrate. Mrs. Martha Castrate, draped out in her usual black, maintained, as she had

from day one, a steady gaze on Dr. Frankenstein. And Frankenstein held rare form this morning. Forgoing his usual bland urging to speak, he pored over notes, only pausing long enough to cluck knowingly beneath his ridiculous goatee before flipping a page.

The sight of these 2 conspirators arrested self-examination and brought to mind John Kennedy Tool's: A Confederacy Of Dunces.

And they epitomized the title. And I was shocked I hadn't recognized this before today. Truly shocked. Frankenstein wasn't Frankenstein, but Ignatius, the main character in Tool's novel.

Poor Ignatius, a bumbling fool caught up in his own selfimportance. And Mrs. Martha Castrate. Poor dear Martha Castrate.

She wasn't a Castrator really. She existed in this farce without any foreknowledge that she really existed. Thus, lacking all basis in reality, she simply played the role assigned her. And myself?

What role did I play? I also lacked all basis in reality. The difference? I knew it.

And in this knowledge, I had found my answer. So Frankenstein, since you are reading this journal, I leave it to you to figure out what the answer was/is.

But to continue. After stumbling upon this rather interesting discovery, I longed to inform THEM. But discretion, as a wise man once noted, is the better part of valor. Besides, Frankenstein, now masquerading as Ignatius, chose that moment to exercise his vocal cords. "So James," he clucked under his tongue while closing the note-pad.

Instead of tuning him out, I, for the first time, decided to play along. It seemed proper...after all, I had named him and renamed him. I had, in effect, created him and recreated him. So I imagined that we were on a stage. A thousand hushed patrons sat waiting for the drama to unfold. The villain is a turncoat named Frankenstein who is masquerading as Ignatius. Ignatius is a fraud who pretends to be a friend of the Crown. The setting is a Victorian English sitting-parlor. 2 chairs. A fireplace. A pudgy English setter sleeps by the fireplace. Ignatius is announced by the maid and I call out for him to enter. He sits, his face wearing concern. I said nothing but said: Care for coffee? Tea perhaps? Or perhaps a powdered Faggot? Tut, tut, my mistake. Just coffee or tea. The powdered Faggot might mess your suit. So sorry old chap.

"You had a visitor 2 days ago," Frankenstein continued, "You and this visitor carried on a rather lengthy conversation, or so the nurse informed me."

Yes, we did, my good man. And I can inform you with all honesty, that the Crown is sound. Its enemies defeated. We have, thanks to your diligence, overcome. Good job, old chap.

"A rather lengthy conversation," Frankenstein emphasized. "I can only summarize a single conclusion from this conversation: you

are avoiding conversing with me. And I do understand."

A kidnapping! A professor? A respected professor. That blackguard Frankenstein. What roguish scheme will he stoop to next? Thank you for this information. Once again you have set aside personal gain for the Crown and the Queen shall be grateful.

Grateful! I should say, old chap, a Dukedom is in order.

"I had, up until now, had, how shall I say...reservations about proceeding too quickly," Frankenstein said, "But I believe the time has come. You are ready to proceed to the next step. I want to help you. I am your friend. So is Martha. She cares deeply for you. Both of us believe you are an intelligent man. Therefore I hope you understand what I am about to explain. You are experiencing what is commonly referred to as the 3 stages before true healing sets in. First: denial. Denial that you are ill.

Denial that you belong here. I believe that you are now in the second stage: anger and bitterness over your forced commitment.

The third stage is acceptance. You've passed through the first stage and are now in the second stage."

The curtain descends. The stage is set for scene-2. When the curtain is raised, the 2 men are still in the sitting room but a woman has entered. She, with a flower-embroidered handkerchief dabbing her eyes, sobs. Doctor Frankenstein masquerading as Ignatius nods solemnly.

There, there, I say to her, the Crown shall move the heavens and the earth to find the blackguard Frankenstein who kidnapped your husband. And I assure you that his safety is of the deepest concern. If a hair on his head is harmed, woe be to the hairharmer. We shall split the person in half like...well like splitting a hair.

"I want to help you through the second stage to the third stage, "Frankenstein assured. "The third stage, James, is where true healing begins. Hold out your hand. Let me help you. Let Martha help you. Do this for yourself. Accept. Believe in your own good."

Throughout the thundering applause, the third and final scene is set. The 2 men sit in the parlor. The woman, tears streaming down her face, has departed. Doctor Frankenstein masquerading as Ignatius sighs heavily: Poor woman, he says.

Yes, I say, and we must rescue her husband from the blackguard Dr. Frankenstein. From you!

Me! Yes, you are Dr. Frankenstein!

Denial flashes across Frankenstein's face, then anger, then acceptance.

The 3 stages of guilt, I say. Let me help you Doctor Frankenstein. Hold out your hand. You are a very sick man.

The curtain descends. Applause rings the theater. Hours later

the stage is dark. Only the night watchman is there. He sits in the middle row, seat 5-f. He sits there all night long, a colored pencil for company. A red pencil.

A fun fun fun, must do it again kind of day. But the true fable beckons. So now to get back to it. Yes I went to Steep & Brew. Big surprise! Huh. No. Surprises are dull anyway. Let me begin with denial: When I walked into Steep & Brew at the tick of noon I wasn't...as others, especially Martha, have stated on numerous occasions, lost in the throes of some middle-aged fantasy: a middle-aged man, younger woman, sex, lust. As selfevidence, I offer up this tidbit about professors: I was a professor. Male professors on a daily basis have their succulent choice of adoring young women who gaze in awe at this great intelligent man at the blackboard. Really, what a lark, great intelligent man at the blackboard. I had often wondered while standing at the blackboard how these same girls saw their intellectual idols 20 years in the future. More than likely as bald men living out a...

Ah, but I deteriorate into a pit of cynicism. So let me pull away from such self-indulgent crap as a man acting as a donkey would pull away from a 2-wheeled cart. Ah, but what an endearing sight, a man pulling a cart as if he were a donkey!

Enough! I am failing to explain myself! I simply lay down words, a meaningless pattern of words: THE QUICK BROWN FOX...

My anger bleeding forth, I imagine. Also frustration at my incarceration, and betrayal by Martha; the betrayal, yes. Never matter. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE...

Okay let's start over. So why did I go to Steep & Brew? What changed my mind? In a word or a name: Nelson. Yes, Nelson, he of the inner pain and loneness. He the ostracized. It all came down to Nelson. After he left my office, I, for at least an hour, stood at the window staring at Lake Sparrow, beneath the waters really, and below the water a thousand Nelsons swam. A few feet deeper 10 thousand Bruces swam...the Bruces nipped at the Nelsons' fins.

Below the Bruces swam a million Marthas...they fed off the Bruces.

As I watched this seemingly endless feeding frenzy, I went crazy.

What I mean is I went way beyond MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S VIRGIN LIGHT. I traveled to somewhere in the Twilight Zone.

I at last tore away from the visions in the water. What I had to do thundered throughout my entire body. A sense of purpose filled me. If a mere 24 hours ago I had gleaned THE VIRGIN LIGHT, I was now pulsating, as a padre on a Vatican-ordained mission is pulsating, by THE VIRGIN LIGHT. And THE VIRGIN LIGHT narrowed my mind into a singular view. Save them. Save the world. Go out amongst the natives. The savages. Teach them. Yes, I would show Bruce and Martha the VIRGIN LIGHT. Shine the VIRGIN LIGHT into a mirror and let them see their reflection: FEAR!

(Frankenstein are you reading? Are you learning?) It was this sense of mission that propelled me to Steep & Brew. Simple, huh?

In hindsight: Absolutely!

But I wasn't afforded hindsight's crystal ball that day.

Instead I paved the path as I went along. Righteousness my sword, I stepped outside and began walking. But in actuality my feet walked...I merely followed along. And they carried me toward Steep & Brew. I arrived about 10 minutes early and after peeking like a peeping tom in the window and not spotting Christie, I stepped away from the plastic tables littering the sidewalk and waited for her. The hot sun moistened my collar. I have already made the observation that idleness is dangerous. But permit me to rouse the observation again: idle waiting is dangerous. Idleness provides the mind time to think. So it was with me. As the seconds ticked I felt the religious fervor dissipate. Doubts, insidious doubts, entered. Soon indecision plagued me. An assortment of collective selves spoke to me. James 1: Go to your office. James 2: Go to court. James 3: Go home and prepare for the trip to Europe. James 4: Yes, go home. The trip. Think about Europe. Such fun. See 14 countries in 14 days. Such fun.

YES FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN! So out of desperation, I fled inside and anchored the tail end of a line of people waiting to order the coffee of the day, which, by the way, was Brazilian. As a murderer mumbles while awaiting the executioner's song, I repeated over and over: What am I doing here?

I repeated this refrain a dozen times, and had I repeated it once more the thought would have taken root and I would most certainly have fled to the sanctuary of my office to once again wallow in cowardice and self-pity and indecision. But Father Time wasn't handing out 'get out of jail free' cards right then.

Magically, where only a mere half-second ago a long, gray-haired man in faded blues stood in front of me, Christie, forsaking the racy clothing of the previous evening for blue jean cut-offs and a plain white blouse, stood at my side. A loopy, sloopy, crazy, unbelieving-what-she-was-seeing grin rested on her young face.

Like Father Time, Mother Fate was not to be denied this opportunity to mess with me. Mother Fate spun her wheel of fortune-misfortune and delivered Beth. She, this good stench staunch woman who hadn't had a good fuck since her father humped her mother during the ninth month of pregnancy, walked in. Did I say walked in. Wow, what an understatement! God she looked like General Patton. Thousands of cotton balls had died for her. Yards of army green covered her bulk. Swagger rode the balls of her feet. And an, 'I have arrived' victory smile lip-sticked her unlipsticked lips.

I vainly attempted to hide amongst the crowd standing at the

counter by doing the shoulders-scrunched-up, head-bowed-so-mychin-rested-on-my-chest thing. Standing there cowering, a grown man, gave cause to dwell on black widow spiders. And I briefly wondered whether Beth ate her mates. I shuddered at the image.

Which was when she noticed me.

"Taking your niece out for an espresso?" Beth inquired. But by the way she announced it, a sort of a haughty, vinegardrenched, feminist cynicism, she really said: That she knew Christie wasn't any more my niece than she, Beth, was a member of womanhood.

Disgusted and ashamed by my actions, I unfolded, as an accordion must if it is to speak, and straightened up. "She isn't my niece," I heard myself sarcastically reply, "And you know this so cut the crap. She's a friend. You have a problem with this...work on it. Isn't that what you do, Beth? Work on things.

Work on this. Also while you are at it, work on delivering your final grades on time. Otherwise you will be teaching a mini-course in Home Economics for the summer."

The counter girl, maybe 20 years of age and by her baggy army fatigues, obviously one of Beth's students, legions really, passed me a menacing, wild-eyed stare. Kill the intruder. Kill the blasphemous man. Kill! Kill! Kill! The Horror! The Horror!

Perhaps I had overreacted and read more in her stare than was actually there. Perhaps not. Whatever the case, for a moment the menacing stare shocked me back to reality. And reality dictated that my outburst was dumb. Especially in Steep & Brew, which was as close to a church as Beth had. Beth taught Women's History.

Steep & Brew was her office. Here she gathered her students and preached the true gospel: ALL MEN WERE EVIL. Although I had charged in like a knight decked out in shining armor, or more appropriately a junkie on a mission, I wasn't oblivious to this. A part of me, the part that still clung to my middle-class beliefs, cautioned. The cautions were whispered voices from my youth that lay rooted deep in the recesses of my head: to embarrass Beth here was asking for trouble. Here gathered her admirers. Young impressionable female students who were willing to stand before a firing squad holding high the imaginary flag of female oppression. Be cool man. Be cool.

And I wanted to flee back to my office more than ever right then. And probably save, and save is the operative word here, myself. But Christie said to the counter girl, "Fuck you." To Beth, "Fuck you too."

2 words. And 3 words. Words I dearly wanted to say. Ah, but cowardice overshadows bravery.

For a millisecond an incredulous expression thundered across Beth's face: How dare this muffin address me...me!...like this.

And in my temple no less!

But Beth, age and experience her weapons, quickly hid behind a preacher's mask of gentle persuasion.

"The, like, welfare office look, huh?" Christie sneered.

"Well, like, save it lady."

As if Beth's head were plastic, I could see the wheels searching through her index file of: true-believer speeches. Let's see, this little ditty worked on this girl, or, oh yes, this one...

But Christie was having none of this. Our coffee sat on the counter. Christie picked up both cups and walked up the 3 stairs leading to the rear of the coffee shop. I, laying 2 dollars gently on the counter, followed...rather meekly I may add. As I reached the top of the stairs I glanced behind at Beth. From her eyes little daggers of ice flew in my direction. I couldn't help thinking about Nelson's story. About the smear campaign directed

by Beth and Frank at this Logan fellow. Would Beth do the same to me? Would Frank aid in her endeavor?

"Leave her," Christie distastefully ordered.

I put such thoughts aside and dutifully followed her into the bowels of Steep & Brew. Strains of the song, 'Eve Of Destruction,' wafted from the speakers. A wannabe poet sat alone at a table, and I use the word wannabe, because the fellow had the look of many whom I had witnessed over the years: freshly laundered jeans frayed at the appropriate knees, hair down to his ass, and a fashionable 3-day stubble on his scrubbed clean face. In 10 years he would be selling stocks on Wall Street. He recited out loud a jumbled mess of words...something about 'berthed from the bovines of a cow.' Although crowded, nobody paid much attention.

Meandering the tables, Christie managed to locate one well away from the wannabe-but-never-would-be poet. We each picked a chair and sat.

"Like, what a witch," she said right off.

Bitch, I thought. But refrained from echoing the thought out loud. Fear, I imagined. Or reserve. Or? Already my mind worried on the repercussions to ensue over the encounter with Beth.

"Surprised to see me?" I asked, wanting to shift both my thoughts and the conversation away from Beth.

"Well, like yeah," she responded. "Kept me awake half the night. Half the time I spent laughing at them stuffed shirts at the party. The other half I worked over what it was that you wanted. Like I mean, shit, what am I to you? A piece of ass at the most. Like I mean you must be one horny fuck. Wife not putting out, huh? You looking for something permanent on the side, on a regular basis, a little snatch say 3 times a week? Yeah, this must be it. Otherwise why would you risk a comfy life? Yeah a little snatch 3 times a week. Yeah, well I can handle this. Rent a 2-room pad on Willi street. You spring for the rent, and say, $200 a

month. Sound good? I mean it's fair. A bargain, really. I'm young, a regular pony. Do for you things your old lady blushes at. Suck you dry. Yeah. So like this is what I figure. Yeah."

There are moments, rare moments, where you are alone in a crowded room with somebody. Somewhere Beth sat. Out there the wannabe poet recited. But they were all a million miles away.

Christie held time in her hand. And I digested her every word. And she amazed me.

"Suck me dry," I murmured, thinking of Martha.

"Yeah," she replied, "Like deflate you from the inside out."

How could I do anything but laugh out loud. The mere thought tingled my toes; yet at the same time such a remarkable unremarkable statement made by a remarkable girl sailed me back to my youth. So I laughed, and not a slight snicker, but outrageously. Oh how I laughed. Doubled over the table. Chest heaving in and out. Spittle splashing the table. I am sure the other customers glared at me. Steep & Brew was for deep thinkers, not drunken idiots. People laughing like this belonged in a bar.

But if they stared at me, I, in my fit of soul-cleansing laughter, failed to notice them. All too soon the laughter drained from my body, or deflated, as Christie put it, from the inside out. I swiped away the tears at my eyes.

"I apologize," I muttered.

"For laughing?"

"Yes," I replied, still giddy enough to be light headed, "I wasn't laughing at you."

"You're, like...strange, mister."

Maybe, I thought. Maybe. But Christ, I hadn't laughed so hard in years.

"Do we have a deal, mister?"

"No," I replied, shaking my head, "I am a little too old to be sucked dry. Although 20 years ago...but."

"You for real? Like for real?"

"Who knows?"

"I mean for real real? You want to help for nothing? No snatch? No blow jobs? Not, like, even a hand job in the back of your car?"

"Nope. We made a deal last night. You maintained your part of the bargain. My turn."

She stared at me, those youthful eyes examining, attempting to understand. She uttered something, but I missed it.

"Drink your coffee."

"You're thinking about puking out, like, is this it, uh huh?" she puttered out as one does when desperate to understand.

A sigh so deep it tickled the heart cavity. "Puking out," I slowly etched out, "dogs my every moment."

"You're afraid? You do want pussy but are afraid to ask. Is

this it? Hell, like, pussy ain't nothing. We could rent a place. A small place..."

I cut her off. "You ever been afraid?"

"Sure, lots mister. But shit I ain't nothing. You're a...like like like?" She shrugged, "I don't know what. But you know the Mayor so you must be somebody important."

I smiled faintly at this. "What I do is printed on the card I gave you last night."

"Oh like hell lots of men give me cards. I never read them.

Shit I like...like I just throw them away."

"I'm a professor."

"No shit!"

"No shit."

"Wow!" She exclaimed, and continued. "Like I dig it now. Wife an iceberg, huh. Well, I can fix your needs. Fill the bill..."

"Just court."

Voice solemn as if attending a funeral. "Like for real?"

"Yes." The loopy, buck-toothed grin of earlier returned, but the loopy grin seemed sad. "Wow. Like, I mean, I stayed awake half the night thinking you wanted a mistress. Kinda disappointed. I had planned out the apartment. Furniture. Real furniture. Not the throwaway kind I have now. Shit. Like, I mean." As suddenly as the loopy grin had returned, it ran off her face. What remained was the plain clean blank slate of youth; she had used up her well of experience and had received a failing grade and lacked the direction on how to proceed from here. An instant later the loopy buck-toothed unbelieving grin animated her face. "Oh well, shit. I never was very lucky. Thought, like, I had a live one. Just as well."

For a moment I thought about my life. "Neither am I, I guess."

"Shit mister you..."

"James," I informed her.

"What?"

"My name is James. The name on the card."

"Well yeah, like I said I tossed it." She shrugged. "But James. Yeah James. Like, your life is great."

"The grass is always greener."

"Yeah, I've heard this. Well, hell it don't matter. Anyway, I am glad you're not angry about me trying to hustle you. You, like, ain't...are you?"

"No." "Good. Anyway, like huh, like you don't have to go to court."

"Yes. But I want to."

"It ain't nothing. I made it seem like a big deal because, well, like, you know why. But it ain't. 5 minutes."

"A few minutes ago I asked if you had ever been afraid.

Remember?"

"Yeah, sure, I am sitting right here, ain't I?" "And?" "Mister, I mean James, I live on the streets. Like I don't have time to be frightened. Like, you know what I mean?"

At this precise moment, I stole a glance at the people around me. As if radar, my eyes locked on Beth. She was glaring hate at me. It took an enormous effort but I tore away from her malignant glare.

"No. I never had such luxury."

What she did next surprised, surpassed me. She touched my hand. Just a simple gesture of reassurance, but I automatically yanked away, afraid Beth might see and misconstrue its meaning.

She wasn't offended by the oh-so-obvious rebuff. Perhaps she lay somewhere beyond being offended; a condition due to her poverty, or living on the street. This I thought then, after all at the time my knowledge of her, her inner feelings, was limited.

"I suppose, like, I should ask, like why do you want to come to court with me. But like hell sure, come to court. Do me good.

You a professor and all. Yeah, show them I am somebody. Like a real person."

She felt sorry for me, or for herself...which one escapes me.

I also felt sorry for her...and for myself. I had dashed her dreams. A steady man. An apartment, real furniture. Dashed dreams are a sad sight. I should know, I knew enough about dashed dreams.

We were just 2 sad people feeling sorry for one another. One a pillar of society, the other...

I let the remainder of the thought slip away.

"Mister," she said.

"James," I woodenly admonished.

"What?"

"The name is James."

She squeezed my hand. This time I left my hand in hers.

Warmth rested in her touch. Calm. Reassurance.

"Like it's a quarter of," she said. "Time we go."

By this time my evolution from middle-class insanity to sanity should have been completed. How Christie's throw-cautionto-the-wind, carefree youth slayed for all eternity the frightened little man in me. How she touched my hand and turned a frog into a prince. But fairy tales, simply by their nature, are fairy tales.

As we left Steep & Brew, Beth's ice-cold eyes followed me...sucking dry the joy of the laughter and Christie's soft touch. The moment my feet touched the sidewalk they stopped dead, and a statue-frozen, frightened little man waffled between fleeing to the safe confines of my ivory tower or resolutely staying the course with Christie. Students thronged the sidewalk and as if I

were indeed a statue they circulated around me without so much as missing a step.

Finally my feet did the thinking and placed one shoe in front of the other. They steered me toward the Capitol. Beyond the Capitol lay the courthouse. Because Christie had no choice, or believed so, she followed along. She had to almost skip because I walked fast, my hands slapping at my side like they had the previous evening. We had gone a block when she said, "Hey, like, slow down mister, I mean James." She panted from trying to keep up. "Like I have short legs. So slow down will'ya?"

I ignored her, and zeroing in on the BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY atop the Capitol dome, continued. I saw myself as a Harley Davidson, and I roared ahead, my thighs pumping up and down like pistons. My shoes, these tires, pounded and crushed at the pavement with such force pain vibrated throughout my entire body.

The impending shocks chipped away layer and layer and layer and years and years and years of middle-class bullshit. I distinctly remember several colleagues staring at me as if I was insane. My mind, revving above the red line, swept them aside. I was speeding now, baby, I thought. A 100 and 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. The wind stroked my face, splaying my hair back. The highway ahead was clear, all impediments mere dust under my tires. I clearly saw all I had been and was and would be. Yesterday's rubble washed away today's crap...tomorrow promised a clear, blue sky.

At last I eased up on the throttle, and slowly wound the engine down until the tachometer steadied at an even 1000 R.P.M. A smooth secure vibration sang throughout the powerful beast within me.

I had reached the granite steps of the Capitol, and almost breathless, paused. My breath came heavy, and I measured it for a moment. Several times Christie asked if I was okay. She always began with: mister, then quickly corrected herself. I calmly went over to a vender selling Cokes and hot dogs from a pushcart and purchased 2 Cokes and returned to where Christie stood; by her gaze, a little cross-eyed, I knew she thought I was more than a little strange...this guy is full-tilt bananas. I handed over a Coke.

"Ting," I announced in a crystal clear voice. "An angel just earned his wings."

"You're crazy mister."

"So is James," I replied.

ENTRY DATE: JULY FREEDOM DAY 4.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: DOES SANITY DANCE OR WALK? It is Sunday. The OUTLANDERS HAVE COME AND GONE. It is also the fourth of July. Freedom day. Although the hour

is late, an occasional pop-pop-popping of cheap firecrackers echoride the wind in the distance across Lake Sparrow. Penny firecrackers. They remind me of years ago. My Pa would light a whole pack of Black Cat firecrackers at once and...

Never mind.

To begin another day in Paradise. First off, yesterday's production turned out to be a one-show play. Although the crowd had loved it so, especially the unmasking of Dr. Frankenstein masquerading as Ignatius. The moment the nurse positioned the chairs so THEM, THEM being Frankenstein & Martha Castrate, faced me, I lapsed into: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Dr. Frankenstein clucked his tongue and reread what were now becoming tattered notes. Mrs. Martha Castrate...repetitiously wrapped in the same drab black power suit which made me wonder if the poor woman was in a constant state of mourning...demurely sat, as usual, hands folded in her lap, gazing intelligently at Frankenstein. A tock, and a second later, Frankenstein's clucking the only sound in the room, I happened across her staring at me. Startling, to say the least. Dear Mrs. Martha Castrate, who up until today religiously had avoided eye contact, stared directly at me.

What resided behind those eyes all but silenced Bottom as Pyramus, in: A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Come, tears, confound, Out, sword, and wound The pap of Pyramus; Ay, that left pap, Where heart doth hop.

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.

Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky.

Tongue, lose thy light, Moon, take thy flight, Now die, die, die, die, die.

Yes all but silenced. So in went a mental figurative bookmark. I preyed into Martha's eyes. Did remorse swim in those ocean-blue eyes? Betrayal? Did she see betrayal in my blank, brown, soulless eyes? I'll never know because the eye contact lasted a pondering, slow, trapped-in-rush-hour second. Then she turned away, thus ending our first contact since she had signed the consent order committing me to Paradise.

A mere second later Dr. Frankenstein ceased his incessant clucking by clearing his throat. Since Mrs. Martha Castrate's eye contact had distracted me from: A Midsummer Night's Dream, I discovered as he spoke what had facilitated her inspecting gaze.

"James, did you give thought to what I said yesterday? The 3 stages. Are you ready to hold out your hand and accept help?

James, James, James.

Unless you help us, I am afraid I must, heart heavy, employ other means to drive you from your shell. I am afraid the drugs failed. I had expected as much. But I had high hopes in allowing this Ms. Christie to visit you. Especially when you and she conversed. But if you...well, you are leaving me no choice. I am unable, ethically speaking, to allow you to sink further and further. We could lose you. You could lose you. So I have scheduled you for an electroshock treatment. I wish to assure you that despite the years and years of bad press concerning such treatment, the treatment is harmless. In fact the treatment has proven very beneficial. Marvelous, actually. Especially in cases where the patient has withdrawn to such an extent that the outside world is completely shut out."

For a second, I wasn't sure I had heard correctly.

"If you would speak," Frankenstein continued. "Just say a word. Your name. Yes. Let's start with your name."

Like a man enjoying the sound of his own truth, Frankenstein rambled on. Mrs. Martha Castrate played her part by shaking her head back and fourth, as if the thought of zapping a few volts or a few hundred volts or GOD a few thousand volts would hurt her more then me.

And although bullshit clogged Frankenstein's self-convincing voice, for a moment he fooled me. And Fear tackled me. A giant hand squeezed my testicles. Thunderbolts jetted throughout my body. What next passed through my body wasn't electricity but a shiver so deep my ass jumped. My sudden movement jolted Frankenstein & Martha Castrate, and visibly startled, they jumped also. Right then I dredged up from the depths of my bowels a calming thought: God, what a lark. What a chuckle. Chuckle.

Chuckle. For a moment, the bastard almost had me. I had almost spoken. What a fool...both him and I. The State had long ago banned, like lobotomies, electroshock treatments as a viable form of therapy.

Idiots, I wanted to shout. Instead I smiled. Inwardly, of course.

But it is mid-summer, and nights and dreams and Shakespeare awaited. Which is to say: From there on I ignored THEM completely.

All this transpired hours ago. The dark has washed away the sun. Red is the color of the evening. Why red again? Because the Castrate twins were red-faced when they left.

But enough of THEM. Where did I leave off? Yes. All those years of insanity washed away in a mere second. Vanished. The fear. The frightened little man. The worried-about-uttering-thewrong-remark little man. Vanished. The guilt. The all-consuming guilt. Vanished. I savored the evaporation of the guilt most of all, savored it like a child upending a Coke bottle, a wide-eyed child watching in anticipation as the last drop rolls along the

inside of the bottle, catches at the bottle's neck for a brief moment before falling what seems like forever to the eagerly outstretched tongue...the tongue already awash in sweetness, yet darting in to savor this delicious last drop.

But was this cleansing accomplished in a mere second? As the past entries indicate: NO! The cleansing took a lifetime. But Father Time only afforded me a second to savor the victory. The bank clock kitty-corner from the Capitol flashed 5 to the hour.

Time for court. So I upturned the Coke can and let the last drop sweeten my tongue. Like candy, I thought, just like candy.

"Let's go to court."

Hesitancy swam in Christie's eyes. I held my arm out. Still she hesitated.

"Let's go yank their chain," I gaily announced.

"Fine mister," she replied and hooked her arm through mine.

"James," I admonished, "My students call me James."

"Like, I'm not your student," she replied.

"Today, my dear girl, we both are."

As if the thought appealed to her, a mischievous grin swam across her lips. We walked up the Capitol's granite steps and spun through the revolving door leading inside and danced the half step, the jig instigated by Christie, in and around the several groups of tourists who were listening to their respective tour guides who were all petite young women decked out in a blouse and skirt the colors of the State of Winnemac: drab blue. The tourists: Republican Macintosh apple pies from middle Winnemac, passed us glares that chastised: WE SHOULD BE ASHAMED. Jigging backwards, we imitated, mocking them all the way out the opposite door. From here we danced down the accordion granite steps toward the courthouse. The BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY smiled down upon us. How do I know this? Simple. She was in my head.

Dancing with one hand held out toward the paler-than-white-bluediamond sky.

Go figure.

Behind us the grand BRASSY JAZZY GOLDEN LADY hurled sparkling sun darts our way. The sun darts emitted little static bolts of energy. The energy energized me and I strolled, danced, and flouted through tarnish-bronzed and finger-smudged glass doors into City Hall. People of many ilk crowded the marble floor. But they were mere ants. A gung-ho righteousness coursed through my veins. We would march into the courtroom, face a fatherly figure in a black robe, and in 5 minutes flat march out, Christie vindicated.

Wrong-go-buster-marching-bastard-hippie-against-thewar-in-the-sixties-because-we-learned-and-fine-tuned-the-systemhere-so-you-can't-win! We the State wins! We the City Wins! Or as my old man put it: You can't fight City Hall, son.

Oh they, the good Police Chief and the ex-hippie Mayor, had

stacked the deck so that even my old man whose soul believed in truth, justice and the American way would squawk; and my old man never squeaked at the face of authority in his life. In short, I, who hadn't garnered so much as a parking ticket in 20 years, was in for a civics lesson. And lesson number one was: You're in Zenith, home to the witch-hunting Senator McCarthy, anomaly liberalism, and hark-the-herald-angels sing...arbitrators!

Arbitrators, I outrageously thought, upon learning that Christie was to see such a creature. Baseball players enter arbitration, ditto for football players, but a hooker ticketed for loitering? Jesus Christ Almighty!

Much to Christie's dismay, who obviously had more hands-on experience in such matters than myself, I, a mite too vigorously, expressed this outrage to a little mouse of a man seated smugly behind a desk. "Court. You ever hear of court? A fatherly figure wearing a black robe. The Constitution and court. They both hold hands. Jefferson. Adams. Franklin. The founding fathers. The guarantee of one's day in court. Court. Court. A gavel. Damn man, wake up. We want to go to court, not negotiate a salary dispute!"

As I completed this rather lengthy tirade, I triumphantly jutted my chin out. Ah but let me tell you something brother about bureaucratic smugness: SHIT! The little bastard had heard it all over the years and had stored away in his pea-green, plexiglass brain the correct answers for such situations. Ah yes. Response number E50I60: Sneer. He did. And such a pitiful sneer at that.

His flamingo pink lips crinkled up, then twitched as if strutting.

The words didn't so much flow as jut. "You listen here. I don't take this kind of talk. You can't swear at me. I am an official of the court. You understand?"

"Swear?" I questioned, my stiff chin dripping to my chest.

"Damn. You said the word DAMN!" He flattened his palms on the desk and pushed up and glared down upon me until all I saw was a giant red mucus eye. "In CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT, DAMN IS A CUSS WORD!" I stared in amazement through these brand new grandiose eyes that had carried me this far. Not frightened. No. I sat somewhere beyond frightened. But yes, Mother amazement touched her curious probing finger upon me. Father flabbergasted followed along. I mean a giant red eye resembling a stop sign glared at me as if I had just committed, (and I had but failed to realize it then,) some unspeakable sin and was now condemned as: An Enemy Of The People.

"Damn is a swear word?" I uttered.

"Darn right," the huge, red, stop-sign eye sternly replied.

Christie, the injured party, had been shunted aside during our little exchange. I grabbed a quick glance at her. She sat demurely, hands in her lap, eyes downcast. The little-girl-lost

look, I thought, and wondered if it was an act, one that she had sharpened to perfection. I had told her we were both students today. So it was my day to learn, not Christie's. Wave the flag, boys. The professor is back in school. Take a seat, students. Keep your mouth shut. And if you intend to question authority, remember to raise your hand first. And I almost did, just to yank the guy's chain a little more, but resisted. A mean, considering my pumpedup state of mind, feat. But resist I did.

"I guess it is a swear word," I admitted, admittedly a bit feebly, "I apologize. We all suffer lapses. What do you say? Let's wipe an eraser across the old blackboard and begin anew."

Haughty. Puffed like a blow fish. The red stop sign eye gauged my intent. The bureaucrat in him scoffed at his victory.

The red eye dimmed, burning down down down to a grayish smirk.

"Here's the way it is," he stated. "Judges don't have time for streetwalkers. She pleads guilty and pays a fine. You got it?"

"No," I replied, calmly, serene, for as corny as it sounds truth was my sword.

"You're wasting our time."

"A judge, we want to see a judge."

"You deaf? You pay a fine. If you see a judge you pay a larger fine. Get it? It's less expensive for everyone this way.

Get it?"

"No," I softly responded.

"Are you dumb also. She's guilty." He picked up a file and waved it in my face as if waving the Yankee flag at a K.K.K. meeting. "This is her fourth arrest. It's all in here. She knows the routine. Who the hell are you? Huh! Who the hell are you?

Huh!" Futile to argue a fool. I shrugged my shoulders. "Nobody," I stated. "We want a judge."

My statement finite, he retreated from the smug victory of only moments earlier, to anger. The red eyes glared at Christie; the stop sign was about to return. But she still played the hapless waif and stared at her hands.

"Well young lady," he admonished. "What do you have to say for yourself? Huh! Speak up!"

Would she continue to play the hapless waif? I couldn't chance this and cut off all possible avenues of response by leaning forward to within inches of him and the seething red stop sign eyes.

"Go fuck yourself," I whispered. "Fuck," I repeated in case the ass had missed it. "Fuck. A swear word. Now fuck can be found on page 459 of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Fuck means: To couple. To swear in anger. To stick a broomstick so far up a bureaucrat's ass it sprouts from his mouth. Fuck. Well you get the idea. Now I want a judge not some asshole in a suit. Today.

Tomorrow. Next week. Month. Year. Whenever. Now without uttering a word, pick up the pen laying there and assign us a court date. Ah, ah, not a word. Just write. You know how to write, don't you?"

Stone. No, marble. Marble from Rome's finest quarry stiffened his body. But without further protest he did as instructed. The moment he finished, Christie quickly scooped up the paper and we left. The bureaucrat's parting words followed us out: I HOPE THE JUDGE HANGS HER FUCKING BUTT-FUCKED ASS. I HOPE HE RAMS HIS PRICK SO DEEP HER TONSILS TICKLE! When we threaded the stairs out to fresh air and warmth, we didn't just place feet on the sidewalk; no, we exploded on the sidewalk. Christie, as if punctured by a hatpin, deflated inward, bursting in laughter. As if they had never witnessed a young girl laugh, people gawked at her. Admittedly, she cackled and cawed...scaring a few elderly biddies...but hey, laughter is laughter.

"Did'ja hear his mouth? Gad, like a sewer," she managed.

"Those who preach the loudest...," I said, "Uh, huh?" she replied. "Sure, whatever. Wow! I loved it. Oh wow did we yank his chain. Like, I never seen a white man so angry." She slapped her thigh. "Hot, like damn."

"Glad you enjoyed the show," I replied. "How about coffee?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?" She vigorously responded, head bobbing. "Sure. We'll tilt a cup of coffee, mister James fucking professor." She clapped her hands together. "I WOULD LOVE COFFEE!" That said, the giggles grabbed her again. She laughed all the way up the street. I spotted an outdoor cafe and pointed at a chair. "Sit." "Yes sir, mister James fucking professor. Aye, Aye, captain sir, captain sir."

Yes indeed mister James fucking professor, I thought, laughing myself.

"Aye, aye, captain sir, captain sir?"

"The Dead Poet's Society," she said and shook in laughter, "I, like, loved that movie. But it was just like the movie. Damn!"

"Aye aye captain Christie," I mimicked, and "Eyes eyes."

"And eyes eyes to you captain fucking James professor."

"And you," I said, "Miss Christie."

Mimicking a lady in the royal court she stood and curtsied.

"Coffee? Lady Christie."

"Yes, James. Coffee would be nice. Black. No sugar."

A few minutes later the waitress returned with the coffee.

Gaiety shone from both our eyes. Its initial discharge not so much a memory, but resting. I looked fully at her, appreciating the soft yet to be harnessed vibrancy erupting from her. A light breeze swirled, gently stroking my neck, and softly tugging Christie's hair. Lost in the celebration was the paper the

bureaucrat had flung at us. I asked her about it and the court date. She took it from her pocket, examined it for a moment, then handed it over.

"Like 2 weeks," she replied. "Still won't get to no judge.

Like just another too tight-pants-squeezed-dick-in-a-suit."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, it's the way. They yank you around until you pay a fine. Ain't nothing else."

"Never?"

"Shit no. Like you gets to play the game James. Just a game.

Pay up. 50 dollars. I know a girl. Sally. Like had a judge she balled regular once a week. Didn't do any good. Like she argued and yelled and screamed. Went 5 times to city hall. She saw a man in a suit 5 times. The last one said straight off: You earn the fucking money fucking and you got to pay a tax. This is the tax.

Shut up and pay up. Like she paid."

"You knew this all along?"

"Sure."

"Some system."

"Hey, like James. Like wow, I'm sorry. I." "Christie," I said, "You misconstrue. The system. My comprehension and hands-on experience is..has been extremely limited. I. I pay taxes, house, etc. What do I know? I am just a man who has traveled 5 miles over the speed limit for too long. I learned today. And any day you learn is a good day. So in 2 weeks we will bring an attorney along. Let's shake the tree a little more and see if apples or oranges fall out. You game, huh?"

"Yes sir, captain James fucking professor, I am game."

"Aye Aye, lady Christie."

Once again the giggles grabbed her. After a second, they petered out, and she said she had to leave. To say I wasn't saddened by her sudden departure would be a lie. I had hoped to spend the afternoon with her. Learn as much about her as possible...and in the process this new me. I suppose she read the disappointment in my face.

"I have class."

"Where?"

"Zenith Area Technical College. Like I am studying for my G.E.D.," She said, "Want, like, to carry my books sir captain captain sir?"

"Go study."

"Yes sir, sir captain, captain sir."

She stood and kissed my cheek. "I didn't throw your card away. Like kinda I lied. I will call you."

"No," I responded, "I expect a few changes. Let's meet at Steep & Brew tomorrow. Noon. I'll carry your books."

She smiled. She nodded. She walked away. A few feet up the

sidewalk she spun and stared at me.

"Thank you, mister James," she called out, "for treating me like a person."

Sure, I nodded, sure.

This remembrance, as I sit here on the crapper, brings the same nod now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: NO ENTRY DATES FOR JULY 5-6.

ENTRY DATE: JULY 7.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: DOES TIME REALLY FLY? OR IS IT STOLEN BY...

Before I write another sentence, before traveling another second, I want to say here and now that I underestimated Frankenstein. He, who is the devil incarnate himself, filched time from me. At first I wasn't aware of how much time was lost. I awoke aware time, days of time, had vanished. I lay, head in a fog, and dimly wondered through the cluttered cobwebs of my mind: How many days were the lights out? 1? 2? 3? After a few disoriented moments, I noticed darkness outside the window. Was it Midnight? Or 7 p.m? Or 3 in the morning? So I listened for the sparrows. Silent. I searched the darkness at the door and anticipated the eyeball. Empty space there. Right then I noticed a chill in the room. Cut right to the bone. Such a chill. The body doesn't tremble or quiver, at least not on the outside. But on the inside, such a cold empty feeling, stark naked loneliness...as if years of humanity were sieved away. Gone. Then for a moment I thought I was just dreaming, or recalling a dream. That I would come full awake. That everything would be the same. Then I remembered. The nurse. The electrodes glued to the shaved spots on my scalp. And I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

It was some time later by the pile of newspapers stacked up to the right of the door that I learned how many days I had lost.

3. 3 days! The discovery numbed me so I slumped against the wall and cried like a baby.

Some time later yet I gathered, rallied really, my resolve and went to the bathroom and chose a pencil. The color? Black. No explanation necessary.

Where did I leave off 3 days ago? At first I drew a blank, and had to reread my last entries. Yes. Christie and I at the cafe, laughing about the bureaucrat drone at the courthouse. Such a heart-freeing moment, a moment that confirmed for all time my sanity.

Enough!

I say enough!

LET ME GO! I couldn't go on writing. I am sorry. I, my emotions overtook

me. My mind is willing, the nimble fingers unwilling. So I just sat for a while: a bleak human being on a toilet.

Yes, on a toilet.

Enough!

As I look at the colored pencil in my hand, I see it as the enemy. Or is time the enemy? Unsure. But sure of this. I will not triumph. The powers that be will triumph. Martha. Doctor Stratten; yes, Doctor Frankenstein. The thought of defeat, although crushing, also serves to hasten my mind; and the mind hastened, the fingers follow. I feel this resolve is temporary, so fingers let us not meander further. Let's return to the story. I lingered at the cafe sitting at an outside table long after Christie had departed. I nursed the coffee in the cup, thinking about sanity. I had regained my sanity after years of stifling repression by both society and Martha; and also to be truthful an inner need to be accepted. But the question was: WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS NEWFOUND SANITY? MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY had touched her blessed finger to my forehead, yes, but she had failed to leave an instruction manual.

I thought: THINK. Think was the ticket. I was a thinker. Or had been. The office seemed the logical place to go. Why? A fish belongs in water. I was like the proverbial fish: A creature of habit and its habitat. My sanctuary was my office. My gaze would meander Lake Sparrow and from the riding waves chart my course.

By the time I had traversed Mother's Path and reached my office, reveling as my shoes glided over the grass, I was sure of one thing: I had made it to the other side and my life would never be the same.

Unfortunately, examining this newfound awareness further wasn't on the agenda. The Police Chief casually sat on a chair, legs crossed. As at the cocktail party at Bruce's, the uniform fascinated me. Why? I can't say. Perhaps at the party I had for a millisecond recaptured the child in me, and had now recaptured that child in me for good and for all time. Whatever the reason, the uniform sure gave off an air of authority, especially the brass buttons and the gold bars anchoring both shoulder blades. He stood the moment I entered and greeted me by name. He wasn't a tall man by any means, rather short really...about 5'4, and a 100 and 20 pounds. But he carried the shortness well...for what were inches to the Chief of Police?

Although I knew him, cocktail parties and small town and such, we weren't friends by any stretch of the imagination. And he most certainly had never visited me in my office before that day.

And his presence truly perplexed me. As we shook hands and I circled the desk to sit, the gold bars again held a youthful interest, and I wondered out loud how they would look on me. While

sitting down on the chair and resting my hands on the desk, I followed that with, "Is that a strange remark?"

Befitting his smallish frame, he had delicate hands and they folded prayer fashion in his lap. He stared across the desk at me, the epitome of assurance. Not smug. Smugness lay beneath such a uniform. Just simple assurance. The same assurance the big city Irish cop on the beat had while walking around his neighborhood.

He protected the shopkeepers. The housewives. The children. In short he protected his kingdom. And he expected the peasants to bow down before him and offer justly deserved reverence.

"Not at all James," he said, his voice soft...not unlike a priest's in the confessional. He nodded, a slow up-and-down motion. "The uniform. The child in us loves uniforms."

"Yes. The child in us," I agreed. "The forgotten child."

"Forgotten?"

"A pun. A figure of speech."

"Yes, James, I understood. Is this why you verbally attacked a member of the court this afternoon?"

"Just dive right in, huh?"

"I am as uncomfortable as you."

At the moment I could only clasp my hands together and stare wide-eyed in befuddlement.

"I am also befuddled," he said, his hands still resting in his lap. "I know you and your wife well. Bruce, a professor here, is about to become a member of the police board."

"Bruce! A member of the police board?" I echoed.

"Yes," he replied, "a reward for supporting the Mayor."

"Amazing," I uttered. And thought: Would this allow Bruce to carry a gun? Would the gun hold a single bullet, like Sheriff Fife, in the imaginary town of Mayberry? I snickered at the thought.

"You snicker," he commented. "You could serve your community also. Instead yesterday you bring a 16 year old hooker to a fundraiser for the Mayor. Then today you corner a member of the court and harass him. Why? Why would you do such things?"

"You came here for this?"

"Yes. We are friends."

All good things carry perks. Especially sanity. And I quickly learned right there that the perk sanity carried was the ability to remove the filter between the brain and the mouth. In retrospect I had removed the filter, the formalities, while dealing with the bureaucrat drone in the courthouse. But I had done so without realizing. I did so again, and this time with full realization. Point being: I, and probably for the first conscious time in my entire life, spoke what my mind held.

"No. We are not friends. We barely know each other. I am, in all honesty, unsure if I like you. I am also unsure if I dislike

you. So what are you doing here?"

"You harassed an officer of the court."

"Hang me upside down by my toes and skin me alive. The guy is an asshole."

"He, by the book, performed his duties."

"The book," I intoned, raising my eyebrows. "The book? The only book I know on civil liberties is by Thomas Jefferson. And this idiot had obviously failed to read Jefferson."

"Are you a lawyer, James?"

"No. But I know under the constitution a defendant is entitled to see a judge not an arbitrator."

He said, steady and even, "James, your disdain is unjustified. Arbitrators keep the property taxes down. Arbitrators free up precious court time for judges to deal with vandals, shoplifters. Scum! They do a thankless job. You should appreciate them."

Until then our discussion had bordered on almost friendly...or 2 people arguing the different injustices of life.

But here I laughed out loud. I couldn't help myself. The laugher rolled out of my belly and out of my mouth. Needless to say the Chief stiffened, glaring at me. Such a glare you wouldn't believe.

His face tightened so taut that the skin there thinned until it seemed the cheek-bones surely would burst through the skin. A disgusting image.

"Calm down Chief," I counseled. "Take it easy. Be cool, as the kids say."

The serene hands knitted the air. "Cool. I am cool. It's you who are uncool. Act your age. She's a 16-year-old hooker. You're not doing her any favors. She needs to be off the street. Not encouraged to continue fu......sleeping with every john waving a 5 dollar bill."

"Right. And herding her and dozens like her before an arbitrator who fines them 50 dollars then tosses them back on the street is a big help. Yes indeed. Big help. If you feel so paternalistic dance her before a judge and get her some help. Off the streets. A foster home."

"My job is to clean the garbage up, not sanitize it."

"Tell me Chief," I, thinking about what Nelson had said about him, asked. "are the rumors true? Do you personally toddle on down to the station and book every girl arrested on loitering charges?

You fondle them, huh? Even fuck a few, huh?"

If I had previously rattled his cage, I fully expected him to explode. But my words had the opposite effect. Imagine a monarch butterfly alighting atop a rose. Such were his hands to his lap.

The facile skin followed and relaxed and the mouth smiled.

"James, James, James," he whispered. "What's happened? Using such profanity. I will leave now. You think about what I said."

"What's the matter, Chief," I taunted to his back, "The word fuck bother you?"

But the door closed leaving me alone.

I am unable to write further. I feel obligated to add that this inability is not due to unclarity of thought; for as loath as I am to admit such, my thoughts, their clarity, are unquestionable.

And this frightens me. Yes, I am afraid, more afraid than I have ever been in my entire life.

ENTRY DATE: WHO CARES! THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: IS ILLUSION FREEDOM? OR FREEDOM AN ILLUSION? They are coming for me again. Learned this earlier. They will eradicate what remains of MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S garden for sure this time.

But I forge ahead of the story...a failing, an often repeated failing.

So first an admission. A painful admission. I am going societal sane. MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY'S garden is dying.

Where once lush flowers bloomed forming a beautiful floral reef between sanity and insanity, gaping holes now appear...exposing wants and desires thought to be dormant and dead. Over the past several days I found myself longing for the familiar: The house, colleagues, Martha. But I have struggled and struggled mightily.

Am I winning? No. To be honest, victory is unforeseeable. Defeat is imminent.

The above stated, it is day. Instead of sitting on the crapper like a man hiding from the police, I am proudly, while I write, standing by the window. The sun shines brightly outside.

The lake. Yes the lake. The wonderful beautiful lake. The sparrows. Yes the born free sparrows. They sing as I write. I imagine they sing a requiem for me...for my soon-to-be-erased sanity. Perhaps I imagine too much. Perhaps not. I am using a dark blue pencil. I chose blue because it is a blue day.

Let me say right off that this is the end of the Journal. A heaviness, a a...

Never mind. Time is short. I want to write, before I forget, or am whisked away, about the 3 people who visited me today, visited before noon; and a final visit by Christie is expected...I can only hope she arrives before, well, before the day wears out for me. In any case, I shall begin with Martha. She visited shortly after breakfast. And at long last she found the courage to visit alone. Doctor Stratten was probably busy recharging the zipper-zapper...thus zipping an end to my sanity. Poor dear Martha. Have I uttered this before? No, probably not. Yes,

probably so. Poor dear Martha. She entered the room with all the tepidness and nervousness of a virgin bride on her wedding night.

And as always, was meticulously power-dressed in black. But her demeanor betrayed the clothes. She sat toying with a loose thread on her skirt. She toyed at the thread for a few minutes. The silence finally got to her, and she proceeded to explain, "James, how I hate loose threads."

As if I cared. Loose threads. Perhaps she saw as much in my face because she followed with, "Oh, James. How can I reach you?"

I stared blankly at her. She lowered her head and studied the loose thread...an act of such total defeat, I almost spoke. I almost told her that everything was alright. I no longer felt betrayed, as she felt the betrayer. It was alright. Good.

Everything was good. Perhaps I would have spoken? But she continued speaking, addressing the thread more than me.

"I have tried so, James. I am so tired. So very tired. I wonder whether I took the correct action by institutionalizing you. I suppose I could lay the blame on Frank and Beth and Bruce.

You know they came to visit me that day. They were concerned about your mental state. Before you arrived at home, we spent several hours discussing you. Beth explained your behavior at Steep & Brew. Frank mentioned that he had noticed you were acting strange at the party. Bruce had spoken to the Police Chief. They really are your friends. They care about you. They feared that you were suffering a nervous breakdown. The only alternative was to let you sink further into this breakdown or sign a petition to commit you for observation. The petition required 3 signatures. Don't hate them. They did what was best for you. In your time of need they did the difficult. And I did the right thing. And dear you did, do need help. Perhaps I am to blame. I know that I am overbearing at times. And meticulous, God, I am meticulous. I need this.

Otherwise life's order disintegrates. As for overbearing. Yes. But I don't require this. You? You, James, were so so apathetic about so many aspects concerning our life. One of us had to take charge.

The burden fell on my shoulders. A burden I would gladly relinquish. Oh, James, open your eyes and see. I am reaching out, trying to reach you. Give me. Give me. Give us a chance. All I ask James is for you to meet me halfway. But no, instead you sit there in utter silence. Yet you breathe and your eyes see. See me. So this burden stays with me. So James, James, I have reached 2 decisions. After today Christie will no longer be allowed to visit you. I had hoped that perhaps she would assist in your recovery.

She's a nice kid. A lot like me when I was her age. I don't dislike her. At first, yes. But you have to understand that she threatened my way of life. My sense of order. My home. I defended this as best I could. Perhaps in my zeal I went overboard. Who knows? If so I suppose I did what any woman would do. Do to save

her, our life together. I am sorry if I acted zealously. I want you to know that Doctor Stratten opposed Christie's visit. Yes, he did. But I persevered against his resistance and won out. Now I'm not so sure. Sorry love. I must follow life's order. Dr. Stratten believes the continual presence of Christie is detrimental to your recovery. He believes continued electroshock treatments will increase the chances of your recovery. I, I...unless you indicate otherwise, I am left with no other options. Oh, James, please.

Please say something. Give me a clue as to how to proceed. Please James!"

To be unmoved by her monologue would place me somewhere on the other side of human. She aroused me, and probably for the first time since I had met her many years ago at the rally against the war. But she aroused me toward her and away from her. At the same time I longed to leap up and hold her in my arms and whisper soothing comforting words...after all she was my wife. Yet I was also aghast at the aspect that today would be Christie's last visit and wanted to scream out: No! But honesty chained me from the former and desperation from the latter. I honestly couldn't comfort her because to do so would convey pity love, and pity was no reason to love a woman, and out of desperation I couldn't shout out: No! I need Christie. Because to do so would only confirm Martha's suspicions concerning Christie...which were conveyed via Dr. Stratten/Frankenstein.

So summoning up all my willpower...and fighting the cold dread I had felt after awaking from the first electroshock treatment...I squatted silent, blank-faced, as if I hadn't heard a word she had spoken.

The thread broke and she, to utilize a shopworn writer's phrase, stood and woodenly departed. Oh, she knocked on the door, of course, and the nurse came and took her and the insufferable chair away.

Time of the essence aside, further elaboration regarding my feelings at the moment are pointless. Martha had spoken. Or more aptly Dr. Stratten had spoken. The sentence pronounced, all I, an unwitting participant...and here I go explaining my feelings...can do is comply. So I will move on to the second visitor who arrived moments after Martha had departed. When the nurse rattled the key in the lock, I thought it was Christie and immediately grew dismayed and further depressed. If she was visiting now then even these words would fail to reach her hands. But, and much to my surprise, the visitor turned out to be Professor Nelson. At seeing him enter, shock covered my face. So much so I almost cried out.

But the nurse stood at his side, placing the insufferable chair down. Behind her lay an open door to freedom, and I so desperately wanted to lunge out the door to freedom...my legs pumping up and down, the wind searing my face, and a 4-lane highway leading to? I

lingered too long and the chance slipped away. The door shut and only Nelson and I remained in the room.

The tell-tale signs, and I knew them well from when my father bing'ed for weeks at a time, were evident. The bilious red nose.

The saggy bags under the eyes. And the eyes themselves were depressed. Lifeless. I guessed he blamed himself for my recent incarceration. I wanted to reach out and comfort him, thank him.

But I stood my ground, or such as it was, squatted my ground, and stared at him.

Standing on principle or etiquette was never Nelson's strong suit...which in the past I considered to be a failing, but now knew otherwise. So I wasn't surprised when he bypassed the chair and hunkered down on the floor. Ditto for the flask deftly removed from the inside pocket of the stained camel-hair blazer. After unscrewing the cap, he offered the flask to me. I sat, motionless.

"Okay Jimmie," he sighed and took a long hard swallow. "I can't tell you how sorry I am to see you here. I tried to warn you. You can't beat these people. You're only choice is to hide behind books and research. Stay out of sight as much as possible.

I learned this the hard way. But I didn't have a wife, and nobody really cared about me. Who was I? A crusty old drunk who happened to be a professor. They only had to wait a few years and I'd either die or retire. But you? God, I wish...I wish I had warned you something worse would happen. Warned you! Goddamn it Jimmie.

If you're playing deaf and dumb stop. Stop it. Now. Give them what they want, then when you are out of harm's way, quietly slip away.

Do it Jimmie. Carpe Diem. Seize the moment while you can.

Otherwise they will change you as sure as the sun sets and rises.

Jimmie? I implore you. Jimmie? Jimmie, don't do this. They will pound away at you day and night, relentlessly." He leaned forward and stared deep in my unblinking gaze and yelled, "YOU CANNOT WIN, JIMMIE!" His closeness, and the force in the voice rang like bells in my ears. 'For Whom The Bells Toll,' I thought while hypnotically holding his eyes, 'THEY TOLL FOR THEE AND FOR...'

Nelson, I screamed silently, I cannot give way. Inside I know this, know even if I lose I win. I wish I could tell you this. For your sake.

And maybe I did. Perhaps through some telekinetic connection my silent simple statement reached him. Or perhaps he read the words in my eyes. I believe the latter was the case if only because of his response. Like a downed fighter, he pushed up on wobbly stick legs. The effort tired him and for support leaned against the wall. He upturned the flask and drained it, his adams apple bobbing as the scotch worked its way down. Twice he pulled the bottle away as a coughing spasm overtook him. But the moment the spasm ended, he returned the flask to his lips. It took a good

long while to empty the flask. When finished, he turned the flask upside down, then placed it in the pocket of his blazer. He offered up a drunken lopsided smile.

"Did you look up the word nigger, Jimmie? No, probably not, what with events moving as fast as they were concerning you. Well Jimmie, any one can be a nigger. Nigger. Such a slur. Probably the most vilified word in the English language. The mere mention of the word sends shudders down the spine. Call a black man a nigger and the face contorts, displaying a collage of centuries of indignation, sorrow, pain, anger, and hatred...not necessarily in that order. Now, you take a white man and hurl the word nigger at him. The face displays nothing: no sorrow, no pain, no hatred, no joy, no love. You see, Jimmie, there's absolutely no comprehension in the white man's eyes. He doesn't understand that he, a white man, can be a nigger. Yes, we can all be a nigger. White and black. Frank never understood that. Good day Jimmie and God be with you."

Another shopworn writer's phrase must be utilized here. He spun on his heel. And he did. And pounded on the door and barked, "Open this door. Hurry up!"

The nurse came and out he and the chair went. I assumed to visit the Alice he had mentioned long ago in my office.

To linger. To offer up a few words or comments. No. The above recorded text speaks for itself. I must remind myself: Time is of the essence. Fortunately the recital of the next visitor who was actually the first visitor of the day is brief. The visitor? A she. MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY. She saw fit to anoint me again.

And perhaps for the final time. Fatalism? Yes. This fatalism is, like my entire life, joined at the hip with Martha. But this moment, this sentence, this paragraph belongs to the MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY. I awoke, I came awake greeted by the sunrise.

The beautiful spacious sky. The amber waves of the sun's brilliance...its purple majesty melting for as far as far can see.

After a fourscore plus of sunrises and sunsets for the first time in my life I gazed and appreciated. I appreciated. And I will never forget you. No matter what happens. For somewhere in the lighted avenues of my mind where life's neat rows of vapor lights glow, one LIGHT will burn brighter then all the others...and it will before dimming, illuminate freedom.

MS. BLESSED VIRGIN OF SANITY, I thank you.

Must hurry onward, if only because the day wears, and in doing so time threatens, as if a parking meter thirsting for a penny now worth a quarter, to expire. As I reread yesterday's entry, I see that I had left off with the Police Chief leaving the office. So to continue.

Is it necessary to continue? What does it matter? The answer: To me it matters.

So to continue. Count yourself lucky if you are fortunate enough to be in an office overlooking a body of water, or standing on a beach, late in the afternoon when the sun is settling into its final resting place for the evening. And if you are alone, then lady luck has smiled twice upon you. I was, and did. The Police Chief? I shed his presence the moment he closed the door behind him. I stood alone at the window watching the sun about to sizzle away. Yet, I wasn't lonely; quite the contrary. Life's remnants surrounded me. So I returned to examining this newfound freedom. The crossroads facing me. The decision to turn left or right. I thought: clear sailing loomed ahead, yes, clear waters...yet uncharted water. Although I could see clearly, I could see clearly unfortunately so. A blue horizon lay ahead. But behind me lay smoldering shattered ruins. A life of quiet desperation which included a wife who wanted to go to Europe to rekindle a love that never had been.

I thought: There was no more Martha and me. I couldn't return to the staid life as a husband and a professor. I could no more live the bright shining life of mediocrity. I could no more live a lie.

I would somehow explain this to Martha. I would somehow make her understand.

Of course, there was Christie. After Christie's trial, well, after...a blur. Maybe move back to Chicago and spend a few weeks visiting my Ma. Then maybe fly down to Guatemala. Or Ecuador. Walk on a beach. And think. Or give in and not think.

I

A word from the editors: The reader may or may not recognize the literary origins of the State and Town where the story unfolds. We did so straight away. But the author who created this fictitious State and Town, Sinclair Lewis, is long dead. We can only surmise that the author of this novel was a fan of Sinclair Lewis. We also recognized the actual location where the story is set...but concerning this matter, we will leave well enough alone. The ending is rather vague. We can only assume that the attendants came for James before he could finish the last sentence. Therefore we envision the following scenario: The keys rattle in the lock, he hastily shoves what he has written behind the toilet. Christie visits only to find him gone and goes to the bathroom and finds the last entry in the diary.

Or write your own ending.

A final note: We at the 'BADLANDS PRESS' wish to dedicate our contribution to this work to our Grandmothers and Mothers.

Bewitches both. Thanks Gram. Thanks Mom.