Overcoat

I find it somehow ironic that we met in the winding-down of fall. Days getting shorter and leaves gasping their last photosynthetic breaths, the precursor to winter and to us. Slowly the cold overtook us. 

Everything was so beautiful in the beginning. Every day was coffee, conversation, and cigarettes. Lying face to face listening to your favorite record in its entirety just to build up the courage to spill our guts to each other. 

But it just kept getting colder. 

My black, woolen pea-coat was a staple of those days. I found it on sale last year. A tremendous deal. Perfect construction. A veritable blanket against the harsh winter. 

But you never seemed to get as cold as I did. You never seemed to feel it. I found that hard to believe. At times I found you hard to believe, as I should have. 

Thirty degrees outside, you need your jacket. You'll freeze to death. When you first put it on after feeling the frost-bitten fingers of winter inching up your neck, caressing not-so-softly your ears and nose, how wonderful is that coat? 

But it is not temporary. It is not something affixed to your skin or even to your first layer of clothing. No matter the material, the cost, the time, the care, or the labor put forth in the construction, that coat will not last. It may make it through two, maybe even three winters, but eventually holes will form (which I mean, you can cover with patches but then other holes will show up and you'll need more patches and then one of the patches might fall off and you'll need another patch or a hole might even show up in one of those oh-so-sturdy patches that you spent an entire five dollars on and then you've got a patch covering up a patch and eventually the jacket isn't a jacket anymore) or you'll lose it in some tragic, larger than life accident and you will need another coat because winter is a sure thing. 

But October was still warm and so were we. An unnaturally warm October if I remember correctly. Late nights spent on my porch plotting out our course for the future. Summer in a far away country, unrestricted by the troubles of home. Weekends spent lazily laying out our lives to each other. Recounting memories explained in detail for the sake of understanding each other just a little better. 

November and December were different. As the cold came, I seemed to need my coat more than you needed me. I felt less in your embrace than I did in the covering of my arms from its sleeves. Sure there were those fleeting moments. But how did they compare to the countless nights I spent driving to whatever party you were frequenting to resolve an argument only to find you drunk and passed out? 

Or New Years. 

It was frigid. And I had left my coat at home. We hadn't been speaking. You were God-knows-where and I was alone at a party. The question on every lip was where is she? Is everything OK? I didn't know. I couldn't. Where had I left my jacket? Where were you? It all culminated with frantic phone calls placed from the inside of my car in the driveway of my home. Words shoved in between panicked breaths begging for two minutes with you only to be ignored. 

The difficulty with outerwear is that if you take it off, and sometimes you have to, is that winter is still there. It twists up your spine and leaves you shaking. 

You were an overcoat. Stitched together to hold off the cold, but you didn't make it through the winter. 

Every Line I Don't Want to Write

Is it possible to have a mid-life crisis at twenty-four? Maybe this is the middle of my life. I have always joked that I will be dead by thirty-seven. That it is, "all downhill from there, right?". What if I'm right? 

Sleepless nights and stupid fights. 

Those have been my weeks, and I feel old. I feel older than I should. Especially when you are so young. Are we already an old married couple? The kind you feel bad for at supermarkets? That thirty-five to forty year old couple sifting through twenty percent off deli meat, laden with preservatives to preserve their children. I hope not. I never wanted to be that. 

This seems difficult, but doable. 

You have been studying for exams. I am worrying about numbers at a shoe store. Worry that neither one of us can relate to. 

How could you possibly care about the amount of Special Brand Natural Beeswax that I sell? "In order to best protect your investment, I suggest using this every few weeks to remove scuffs and scratches as well as protect from rain and stains."

How could I remember clearly what it was like to cram for Honors United States History? Especially since I was never in the Honors program. "William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States of America got stuck in a bath tub." Will this be on the test?

College feels so far away from me. Those three semesters at community college. Wasting my time and my parents money. I knew instantly that it was not where I belonged, but you need a degree to be successful. You need a degree to support your family. You need a degree. You need a degree. You need a degree. You need a degree. 

By the time you get yours (and of course you'll get one, you need it) I will most likely be in a factory or running my own shoe store, or I'll be exactly where I'm at right now, but tonight I am at home, and you are out with your friends. Celebrating the end of finals. I am celebrating that I have tomorrow off. My one day off a month. 

I thought by this time I would be married with a job that I loved. Something I really found fulfilling, but what no one tells you is that nothing is fulfilling. The most fulfilling thing in my life right now is opening a pack of cigarettes and seeing them all lined up, a row of seven, a row of six, a row of seven. Perfect and beautiful. 

You keep telling me to quit. 

"You know that's killing you, right?"

"Yeah, thirty-seven, that's the goal."

I know you wish I wouldn't joke like that. I am starting to worry that it isn't a joke. 

I keep saying, "I'll go back next semester." "I'll go back next year." What is there to go back to? A business degree and a cubicle? 

"A steady income to support your family" 

A degree. You need a degree. 

But I'm still on the couch. You're still out with your friends. There's still nothing on this god damned television. 

At least there's you. 

Something to hold on to. Something to keep me afloat amidst all of this. Throughout all the fighting, those I love you's kept surfacing. They kept me above the surface. You kept me alive. 

So here I am. On the couch. You'll come home and fall asleep next to me. Tomorrow we'll go waste our money on commercialized caffeine and I'll smoke cigarettes and you'll tell me to quit and I'll say I'm going back to school next Spring and you'll say "oh, bullshit" and we'll laugh and both know you're right. 

A Month Ago

A month ago, you told me you were happy. I know I am not making this up. You were sitting in my bed. You were wearing that shirt I hated so much, the one with that actress that I could never remember the name of on it. God, that shirt was hideous. But you told me, you looked me in the eye and said that you were happy.

A month ago things were fine. We still talked.We still laid in bed together wishing our youth away, wishing we were older or that we were somewhere else. We still loved each other. But that night. Something did feel different. When you said- I couldn't and still can't quite put my finger on what it was about the way you said,

"I am happy"

"I do love you"

I am.

I do.

I believed you. Where are you now?

Floating by me in shopping malls. Hair swirling near your shoulders - who would have ever thought it would get that long again?

Showing up at my apartment, crying to me about how your love for my best friend is unrequited. Telling me of your new venture into sculpture and how you only make ashtrays because that's all you need.

Passing by me on roads we now share separately because you're finally driving again.

How strange it is now. We still say I love you, it's just not to each other.

Somehow, some one new comes along, for both of us.

But a month ago, I loved you. You loved me. It is almost funny the way it just fades. Fades into something else. Into someone else.

Do you now crave his attention the way I crave hers?

It is all so unfathomable. It is as if we are all just part of some theater troupe, traveling the city, putting on our desperate show for everyone to see. Hoping they will enjoy it enough to toss us some change and validate what we do to ourselves, to each other.

But still I wonder, what happened? What fault was there in the intricacies of the inner workings of our intellects that led to our demise?

I have since tried to wonder not where we went wrong, but where we went right. Sifting through the failures to find some grain of goodness that you refuse to believe existed. There was something there but now that something is with him, for me it is with her.

So we will say I love you.

To him.

To her.

Bradford Pears

When I was younger, there was a Bradford Pear Tree that stood outside of my home. These trees are not so suitable for climbing, but against my mother's wishes I climbed it anyway. I could never make it to the very top of those branches. When I was old enough to climb that tree, I was too heavy for the topmost branches. They were too thin and I was too heavy.

I could make it about three quarters up the limbs. I could never reach the top.

Too thin.

Too heavy.

One night, lightning split the tree and it fell. I would never reach the top. The top and the rest of the tree hit the ground and was soon hauled away. Stuffed into the back of some nondescript truck with the other victims of that storm. Branches that 24 hours previously waved and swayed in the wind, whose branches played host to a multitude of children, but no more.

Too thin.

Too heavy.

Coke

The first thing you need to learn about anything, the first thing that your parents should teach you is that love isn't real. It's a chemical reaction in your brain. I say that to say this:

A few months ago I met someone.

A girl.

My brain started. My pupils dilated. My palms got sweaty. My breathing became quicker as did my heart rate, all the sure fire signs of love. Love at first sight.

Love is not real. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain.

She was tall. Brunette. Gorgeous. Quiet. We didn't say much. At least not to each other. A few of us were smoking cigarettes in my friend's apartment's sun-room, getting ash all over, well, everything until somewhere close to four o'clock in the morning.

My ride leaves and I'm stranded with this beautiful girl in her bed.

This is not my forte. I'm good at holding hands, paying for dinner, meeting parents. I am not good at this. I didn't sleep with her that night. I kept going over there until we did.

In the process the chemicals in my brain told me I was in love. I tried to ignore it. I was getting laid, but she was quiet. I knew there was more to her than her bird tattoos on her calves or her septum piercing or her long brown hair. I knew there was something beneath her skin.

There were chemicals that regulated her breathing and her heart rate. Chemicals that told her she was not in love with me. I told her I wasn't looking for anything more.

But I was. And I did. My chemicals and her chemicals didn't agree.

This is not a love story because love isn't real. Love is a chemical reaction.

I chased though. I wanted it to be love. I wanted it to be real. I had never been with someone like her. I had been with girls you could bring home to meet your mother. But she was so different.

One night, in that sun-room I came to know so well, I watched her do a line of coke off a silver tray.

And then two lines off a book of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

 Four through a hundred dollar bill.

A few bumps in the bathroom.

Off her desk when she woke up.

I watched her begin the slow, steady degradation of her life. I tried to distance myself. It didn't work.

We made love while she was high. We went to dinner while she was high. We watched movies while she was high. She met my parents while she was high.

She couldn't do anything without it. She couldn't be around me, or anyone, without it.

She was adding chemicals to parallel mine. Elevated mood. Dilated pupils. Increased heart rate. It was all there. Her chemicals matched up with mine. True love it would seem. Finally.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

You can't believe it. You can't trust it. Because those chemicals can stop reacting, and those "feelings" can and will pack their bags and leave just as quickly as they arrived. Turns out you can't trust coke either.

Because one day she sobered up and she left.

Beer

On my 21^st birthday, my parents gave me a six-pack of beer. It came out of nowhere. I never would’ve thought they’d buy me beer. You see they were Christian folks, good upstanding citizens, members of the PTA and all that crap. So when they got me beer for my birthday I didn’t have a damn clue what to do. I guess it would’ve been different if they’d gotten it for me as a joke, a gag gift, but that was all they fucking got me. Beer.

            Now, I’d drank before. I didn’t buy into religion and all that bullshit the way they did. Jesus turned water into wine didn’t he? Then why the hell am I not allowed to have a couple brews? So I took it. What was I supposed to do? Not accept the one gift they got me? That would’ve gone over great. My mother is all kinds of strange about gift giving see? So I had to take it. I didn’t have a choice.

            Two months later and now I’m lookin’ at the last goddamned bottle. Having a staring contest with the son of a bitch. I could drink it, but by now I’m half full of gin. Saturday night and I’m sittin alone in my apartment drinking gin and attempting to steal cable from my neighbors. All I can get is Wheel of Fortune. Jesus, who watches this shit anymore? Me, I guess, on a Saturday night, drunk and alone, staring at the last of the beer my parents got me for my birthday.

            I’d gone easy on the first one. I wanted to savor it, the first beer of my 21^st year, all that sappy, romantic bullshit. But the next couple I drank after my girl left me. I’d already had a few but I got two or three out of the pack my parents got me too. I mean what the hell, my girl just walked out on me, might as well drink myself to sleep and forget about her. After this incident I was left with just the one.           

            Since my 21^st I’d been keeping a lot more alcohol around my place. And why shouldn’t I? I’m allowed to, but for some reason I wouldn’t drink the beer my parents got me. After the first one, I probably went through two cases of my own and two pints of scotch before I drank those other three. Well, that was between Mary and myself, but she’s gone now. All I’ve got left is this last bottle.

            She was there when they gave me the beer. My parents took us out to a real fancy restaurant. It was the first time they were meeting her. Big fucking deal and all that. That night was the last time I really remember being happy. All of us dressed up going out on the town. Now that was a way to spend a night. Not like this. Not sitting on my couch staring at a beer while watching fucking Chuck Woolery spin that goddamned wheel on the tube.

            I thought about givin Mary a ring tonight. See if she’d want to come over and have a drink, maybe even take me back. She drives me up the fucking wall, but damn it if I don’t love her. It probably wouldn’t do any good though; she was always stubborn. Probably wouldn’t pick up the goddamned phone. Too busy layin some other guy or painting her toenails. She was always this way.

            I break my staring contest with the last of my beer, feeling as if I’ve come out of some sort of coma. I’m damn near about to pick up the phone when I think, what’s the fucking point? So I light another cigarette, take a couple drags, put it out, and crack open the last of that beer. 

Brian Stansford

We are the last two men on earth.

Brian Stansford and I.

I hate Brian. Of course my life ends up like this.

I hated Brian before this whole "end of the world" fiasco. We worked together in an office. We were both salesmen. We sold ink cartridges. An awful profession, honestly. Brian and myself worked next to each other. He didn't shower much. He was easily the size of a manatee. He constantly snacked and chewed far too loudly. He was a thorn in my side. So of course it's him that I'm stuck with.

Everything is so desolate. The buildings that weren't demolished or burned down are completely empty. The streets are blackened and stained. Most of the street lamps have burned out. Empty shells of cars are everywhere.

The decadence of man in decay.

We stay in my house. Brian talks in his sleep and smells worse than ever, even though the shower system I've set up works just fine. He rarely moves from the bed in my guest room. Just lays in there watching television.

Now that the entire human race is gone, Brian has come to think of himself as a sort of philosopher. He keeps coming up with these ideas. These rules for life. Reasons why it all happened. I think he's mad. He sounds more like Manson than Nietzsche.

I get away from him during the day as much as I can. I wander around. I go inside buildings and try to find supermarkets. Supermarkets that still have non-perishables. I look for other survivors. So far, there's no one. It's eerie honestly. The world is empty. There are no bodies. There are no survivors, save Brian and myself. I never thought the end of the world would happen like this. Nor did I think I would be stuck in it with Brian.

When I am around the house, I work on this helicopter I found. I've always been fairly skilled with my hands and used to work on cars with my dad when I was younger. Helicopters and cars aren't quite the same though so it's taking me a while. Once it's finished, I'm going to use it to widen my search for food and other humans.

Lately though, I haven't been finding food. We collected most of it within the couple of months, and there's no way out of the city since all the roads are covered with pieces of buildings or stacks of cars. Our stockpile is starting to run low. There's only a few cans left. We tried to start a garden, but neither Brian nor myself have much of a green thumb.

Once the food runs out I'll be left with two options as far as my sustenance goes. I can either starve to death, or I can eat Brian Stansford. The idea of ingesting that pitiful excuse for a human is horrifying. He's disgusting. I can't imagine he would taste any sort of good. The food's running out though, and I still need another month or two before the helicopter is ready to fly, or before I'm ready to fly it for that matter. I don't have a damn clue how that thing works.

Tonight was the night. I rooted around in the closet till I found one of the guns we kept for hunting (which neither of us ever had much success with), walked upstairs to the room where he was watching old episodes of Gilligan's Island, told him I was sorry, and put a bullet through his head.

This proved to be a great deal messier than I had imagined.

I barbecued him though, and I'm chewing as loud as I can.