A Marvelous Night for a Moondance

This was just the sort of thing that was always happening to him. You overlook one minor detail and look what happens! How many times had he made plans with someone only to have to back out at the last minute because of "bad timing"? He couldn't believe his luck.

He tried not to let his miscalculation ruin the excitement he was feeling. As he stood before his dresser, looking into the mirror to straighten his tie, he remembered their encounter.

He remembered the smell of her hair as they bumped heads at the newsstand. He had accidentally dropped his umbrella and bent down to pick it up. The woman behind him had seen his fumble and was bending down to fetch the umbrella as well. Smack! He had apologized, they laughed, he walked with her to Starbucks, they got some coffee, chatted, bam, bam, bam, and then they had set the date for another encounter. A more formal encounter. Dinner and a movie.

It had all been so effortless, that he didn't even think about the details. He enjoyed her company and she his, and when the time came to go their separate ways they instinctively set another date to prolong their flirtation. He was caught off guard. He didn't know that Saturday, today, would be a bad day for their next meeting.

But standing in front of the mirror like this brought it all back to him. Yes. Saturday, the 26th was a bad day. He'd even marked it on his calendar. He marked all the bad days on his calendar.

"Maybe she won't notice," he said out loud. Not notice? How could anyone not notice?! It was crystal clear. He was hideous. She was going to notice alright. She might not notice that it was him, but she was certainly going to notice this little affliction of his.

As he walked to her house for their first date he realized he'd forgotten to pick up some flowers. He noticed a beautiful bed of tulips along the driveway of a neighbor. He quickly ripped a handful from the ground and hurried on his way. What a way to start a date. First with his little monthly problem, then forgetting the flowers...what was next?

He wondered if he should've called to cancel the date. He had missed out on so many opportunities for a meaningful relationship because of his little problem, he could've just added this one to the list. But he felt there was something special about this girl. He could sense it. He wasn't going to let it slip through his fingers like the others.

He rang the doorbell to her house and gently brushed back any stray hairs. He smelled the fresh tulips in his hand. Inside he could hear someone bounding down the stairs.

The door swung open and there she was. She looked surprised. Her eyes were wide. Immediately he launched into an explanation.

"Hello Gail. It's me Tom. I'm sorry about this, um, the way I look, I didn't, you see, when we made the plans, I uh, didn't realize, ha, see I have a little problem, it's medically documented..."

"Tom," she interrupted. "You look fine. I just didn't recognize you at first."

"Really? You're not freaked out?"

"No. I knew there was something different about you. That's what interested me in the first place."

"Oh, wow, that's...I'm just shocked. Most people have a problem with this sort of thing."

"Tom, I'm a nurse. I'm used to people with maladies."

"But lycanthropy dysmorphism?"

She smiled and took the flowers.

"These are beautiful, Tom," she said. "Let me put these in water and I'll grab my coat."

Tom stood on the porch, reflecting on his good luck. Of all the people to meet by accident at a newsstand! Finally he'd found someone who understood and was accepting of his medical condition. He breathed in the night air and looked up at the full moon. This was the start of something big. His stomach growled.

"Are you hungry?" asked Gail as she closed the door behind her.

"Boy am I!" Tom said.

"I know a great Italian restaurant up the street. We'll walk. It's such a nice night."

Tom put his arm around her shoulder and breathed in her lovely fragrance. He leaned closer and she giggled. He howled into the night and swiftly grabbed her throat in his jaws, ripping through the muscles and tendons, and chomping through her spinal cord. Mists of blood decorated the door of her house. He tore a piece of flesh from her abdomen, stood up, and looked at the moon.

Damnit, he thought. This was always happening to him.

The Art of The Mix: Or Misery Loves Company

When I was 21 I moved to New Orleans to be with the girl I loved at the time. It was one of those first-loves that you swear to each other will last an eternity. Your head and heart swell to unhealthy proportions and you start writing bad poetry and don’t change the station when a sappy love song comes on the radio.

In keeping with the bad sitcom structure of the events in my life, my girlfriend Kelly and I broke up the very day I arrived in the Crescent City to be with her. The details of my arrival and subsequent dumping have burned themselves into my mind’s eye.

A few hours after my arrival in New Orleans, Kelly and I went out for dinner. She seemed disinterested at the time, but she told me she was just tired. She had just had her first day of classes at Loyola. She also said it might be the meds she was on. (She had a congenital heart murmur and was taking a form of Prozac for it.) I accepted this explanation, pre-occupied as I was with my own feelings of joy. I also kept thinking about having sex with her. It had been awhile since we’d last seen each other and I thought we always had pretty great sex after any time apart.

After dinner we took the streetcar back to Loyola. As we approached her dorm I pulled her to me and kissed her, but her mouth was closed and unresponsive. I pulled back and she just looked at me with sad eyes.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I just think...well..."

And we spent the next half-hour in front of her dorm discussing it.

We were no more.

She felt she was too young to be in such a serious relationship. Nineteen and she wanted to sow her wild oats. She was a college girl, dammit.

I instinctively said I felt the same and tried to find those corresponding feelings somewhere inside me. I said that I never imagined being so complete and happy at such a young age. I said I was just as scared.

But I was lying out my ass. I was completely happy and content. I had envisioned my future with her, little daydreams of buying a house together, our marriage at a small chapel in the south of France, vacations scuba-diving in the Caribbean, an old couple who looked strikingly like the two of us opening Christmas presents with their grandchildren. I had lived the entire span of our lives together in my head over the last several months. And now she was telling me those dreams were false?!

"You will always be my first love Dave."

That was all she could give me. A year and a half, the best years of my young life, and all I had to show for it now was that I was somebody’s "first love".

I couldn’t respond. I was utterly incapable of stating how I truly felt. I just kept nodding and agreeing with everything she said. She told me she didn't want to lose me as a friend, blah, blah, blah... I just listened and watched everything burn before me. I made it so easy for her to rip my life apart. Why couldn’t I stand up and fight this? Where had my balls gone? They had retreated deep into my body and I stood there taking it all like an obedient eunuch.

And then we hugged limply and said good-bye.

Dazed, I wandered along St. Charles Avenue, rehashing the details of our encounter. I thought of all the rebuttals I wanted to make had I not been rendered mute by the shock and surprise. I began to question the validity of our breakup. There had been no deliberation. The verdict was completely one-sided. I was unequipped to represent myself and should be given a second chance on those grounds alone.

I felt emptied. Like I'd taken the biggest shit of my life and unloaded a couple organs as well. I couldn't think. I sat trance-like on the streetcar, watching the ground flood by below me. It was hot. The air stuck to me. I felt encased in rubber. I was her first love. I would always be her first love. First implying seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths. An infinity of future lovers! I felt like curling into a ball and dying. My center was gone...

But I was not one to give up so easily. As much as she tried to distance herself from me, I just wouldn’t go. I was always stopping by her dorm or calling or emailing. I became a miserable stalker.

I used to make mix tapes for Kelly every other week. If she could hear the pain I was feeling, maybe she would feel sorry for me and take me back. So I filled those 120 minute cassettes with the songs of heartache that I surrounded myself with. I felt a strong kinship to Chris Isaak, that troubadour of the broken heart, and his songs inevitably took up more and more room on those mixes. It was hard not to put them on when they spoke so clearly how I felt.

I remember dropping off a particularly heartfelt mix tape one afternoon. Kelly and her roommate Steph sat in their dorm room watching television and doing their homework. After the requisite "what’s new?" conversations and assorted pleasantries, I reached into my book-bag and withdrew the latest sonic testament to my misery.

"Here," I said, handing the mix tape to Kelly. "I made you another mix. Just some songs I thought you might like."

Kelly looked at the tape cautiously, as if it might have been wired to explode. Her roommate snickered.

"How many Chris Isaak songs are on this one?" Steph laughed.

Kelly burst forth with a loud guffaw.

I immediately wanted to take the tape back and hurry out of the room. Even though there were only three of Chris’ songs on this mix (three of his more upbeat offerings at that), I couldn’t help but feel like a walking cliché. Even my choice of songs was predictable.

I just wanted Kelly to understand how I felt, however lame and misguided those attempts at some sort of covenant between us were. We had spent a year and a half together, both deeply in love with one another. And now she just seemed disconnected and apathetic. I’m sure it was probably the Prozac she’d been taking, but I wanted desperately for her to feel some sort of remorse for her decision to excise me from her life. Instead I became a clown to laugh at.

Not that I was unsuited for that role. I had been a buffoon my entire life. But I had always worked hard to make fun of myself before others could, so as to avoid the sting of being the butt of someone else’s jokes. If I could find the absurdity in my own bumbling actions before the rest of the world did, I could safely cloak myself in "irony" and remain aloof. But now Kelly and her roommate accomplice were helping me revisit the pain of my awkward and confused childhood, by making fun of my emotional weaknesses.

"Actually," I said, reaching for the tape in Kelly’s hands. "I didn’t put any on this time, but if you want me to I’ll gladly remake the mix and give it to you later."

I snatched the tape and put it back in my bag.

"I’m just gonna go now," I said. "You guys look kinda busy. It was good seeing you. Bye." And I rushed out of the room.

It took several more months for me to wean myself from stalking Kelly. I tried the best I could to move forward with my life. She was better at moving on than I was. One of the tricks of successfully moving forward with your life is to have new relationships, new friends and lovers, to help fill the hours of your day. This is usually a lot easier when you are beautiful, since lots of people will want to hang out with you. Kelly had this covered and had no problem moving from boyfriend to boyfriend. I didn’t have much going for me in that area but I had booze and Chris Isaak.

A Rider on the Storm

He was there, man. I saw him with mine own eyes. In the flesh. Gaunt and ghost-like, but there. The curls of his long brown hair hissed and slithered like Medusa’s serpentine bouffant. He had lost the weight that he had gained and he looked almost skeletal in his green apron. He grinned at me, coy and spectral. Asked if I’d like an Arabian Mocha Java. I told him I’d have a Grande Latte.

It was he. The poet. The singer. Mr. Mojo Risin’. Slingin’ coffee beans for the lions in the street. Start at one. Off at five. No one here gets out alive. He moved like a panther to the pot of black liquid crack behind him. He’d been up all night sipping aged Sumatra from a flask.

Wake Up!

You can’t be late for your first day. Stumble through the golden dawn to meet this carnival elephant on the labyrinth streets. Is this the room where my sister lived? C’mon baby run with me.

I felt his pain, communicated through each twitch of his neck. Where had he been hiding? I wanted to ask. While teenage tourists wrote bad poetry and defaced his Paris grave, he had been somewhere trying to forget the world and all its people.

He knew I knew his secret and we acknowledged this shared information with furtive glances. I won’t tell anyone I said with my grin. Have a nice day he said with his.

At the counter I stirred in copious amounts of sugar. My usual ritual. I looked about the Starbucks and thought, “This IS the end. My friend.” The end of our elaborate plans. Of everything that stands. We never broke on through to the other side. Some are born to sweet delight. But we are born to the endless night. And he wanted to give us one last kiss before we slipped into unconsciousness. The world had withered. Forgotten the warnings of past generations. Packaged and resold the past generations. We are all too happy to be commodities.

I took a sip of my Good Morning America. It tasted bitter, regardless of the sugar I had filled it with. It needed something more. Something sweet to help it go down. Perhaps a shot of caramel.

“Could you give me a little shot of caramel, please?” He looked at me with that same coy grin and nodded.

“I am the Lizard King,” he said. “I can do anything.”