So, I have decided to start this again.

I have no idea why, but I'm glad I have.

I haven't had a black eye in a while. Seems like I might be overdue. Let's do this.

Cuando Nadia Me Ve

Growing up is not the problem,
forgetting is.

Garrett General

   1

   There is this small town in West Texas that died decades ago. Yet, if you have studied even a modicum of biology, it tells that even in death organisms continue to thrive. The natural processes of decomposition can turn life's dead end sign, into a community that might be more active that it ever was. This was Juniper, Texas. 

   "Theresa, get up. Seriously, last time I'm gonna say it. The store was supposed to be open fifteen minutes ago", her mother's voice rattled through Theresa's hazy, over slept mind. For a fleeting second, even with it's impatience, her mother's angry voice was not vastly different from her singing voice. 

   "We had one customer yesterday, and it was Hugh", Theresa shouted, knowing this argument would mean nothing.

   "Just because he's your little brother, doesn't mean he's any less a customer", mother's counterpoint wins. 

                                                                                   2

   There are thousands of towns across the U.S. that were settled by German immigrants. You can see it in the large "A" framed faux cottages of tourists traps. Towns that litter the Midwest and South have been bilking people out of their hard earned cash for almost a hundred years, at this point. Packed with wine stores, biergartens, and shirts reading, "Octoberfest is All Year Long". Juniper was not this place. 

   When a fender well cover comes loose it makes an unmistakable sound as it hits the tire. Blap...blap...blap...blap.....resonated throughout the cab. Taking over the loud mumbling of static and Bob Wills coming through the speakers. 

   "Fuck", yelling the most obvious thing to myself. Pulling the car over in the middle of what looked like a post-apocalyptic landscape was not in my plans today. Nor was my toolbox even close to prepared for this type of repair. "Well Robert, do you think you can deal with this fucking annoying sound for another five miles?", I questioned out loud to no one. Looking up at the sign that read: "Juniper     5", I decided I could. 

   3

   Behind closed doors, especially in desert towns, dust settles in a strange way. When a door is opened it is like you have surprised the air, and it is doing it's best to act like it's been working the whole time you were gone. The outside air pushes in and causes a swirling, that seems magical until you take a breath, and realize that it's choking your lungs. 

   Theresa did her best to make sure that as little of that dust hung around, lazily, as the day passed. If you were a frequent patron, it wouldn't be unusual to see a feather duster sticking out of her rear pocket. There was a full length mirror hanging in the back of the store where they sold cheap Wranglers, and pearl snap button shirts. One time she passed it, and saw the duster hanging out from her ass pocket. She spent the next five minutes walking passing the mirror, and pretending she was a chicken. Arms folded in a Mick Jagger-like stance and softly clucking, she walked back and forth bobbing her head and giggling. 

   At 19, and stuck in this "one horse town". She didn't even know what that meant. "One horse town"? She had always heard that expression. Yet, she had been all over Texas, and she knew that often towns like Juniper, had more horses than people. These are the thoughts that went through a young girls head, as she sat on a stool, looking out the large, single pane window, of her family's store. "Garrett General" was slightly faded, and hand painted across the window. She watched very few trucks, and people, pass by the window that morning. 

   It was the loud noise of an El Camino pulling up in front that broke her steady stream of daydreams. 

   

The Truth of the Matter

   The predictability of life had hit him hard in the last decade. Sometimes he would sit, and watch people standing in lines at food trailers. The cloudy days outside, during the last summer, seemed to accurately mirror the weather in his brain. Not a sad, rainy cloud cover, but a shade and comfort that allowed him to sit and confirm his feelings about human behavior. Counting down from 3....2...1, he could single out the person that would switch from the pressure from one foot to the other. This is not a story of boredom that would normally come with that ability. This is the story of his willingness to resolve himself to the unpredictability of something that he was even more highly skilled at predicting. 

   "Watch yourself", he would whisper into his own ear. Doing this became instinctual to him. Slightly whispering out loud. These things that he should say only in his mind, had become a habit that was ongoing since elementary school. Hoping no one could hear these whisperings, followed this same age long process. 

   "Why?", she asked, in the same whispered tone. Leaning in slightly, as if they had just shared a secret. Yet, there was no other occupants of their picnic table. In the second, literally second, between that question, and his response, he pictured this in his mind. 

   The way she hugged him as she left that evening, didn't contain any different inflection of body language, than any other friend that had left his side after a night of drinking any loud 'talking". He tried to do the same. Tried to hug her just as ordinary, and plain, as he knew she was hugging him. Yet, her hair always seemed to catch him just right. Directly in his open mouth. Softly blowing air through his slightly open lips would normally cause the hair to leave, but her long fragrant locks defied physics. Which, he noticed, is the same thing his heart defied everytime she held him close.  If even for that second. 

   "Oh, nothing. Just trying to remember something", he dismissively said. She knew this wasn't the truth because he could never remember anything. With a mind that could recite the air velocity, and speed, of a penny falling from the Empire State Building. He couldn't even remember the color of the couch sitting the living room, of her house, that they literally just left thirty minutes ago. 

   This was them. Sitting on this bench. Watching a slow moving crowd. Dreaming of what was happening, currently. 

I'm done....

with you all. Goodbye.

Truth Does Not Need Exaggeration

There was a hole in my heart, that she seems to fill perfectly. - Me



Discovering Destructive Reciprocation.

“Real sex is as much about reciprocity as it is exploration and if you need a reason to resent a man later on, just consider the guy who doesn’t believe in cunnilingus...”  

-Unknown

   The group of warehouses looked as if they had come from a black and white Pink Floyd video. Long, grey, and creating sets of parallel tin walls that you could tear apart and spray paint without any retribution. Causing damage to property had become a celebrated pastime in my early teenage years. That isn't out of the ordinary. It, at times, still isn't that far out of my range of desires. Walking through the gravel "alleyways" I would carry two six packs of empty bottles. Occasionally stopping to set the cardboard carriers down. Pull one of my mom's empty long necks from its comfortable sleeve. Take a three step hop, and throw it in a random direction. As if I was responsible for starting a revolution with no enemy. Shhhhhhhhh. The slow quiet of waiting to hear anything. The shatter of window glass. The thud of corrugated metal. If I was lucky, and the bottle didn't break, I could hear where it landed. Then, I would run and have another try with the same piece of alcoholic destruction. I was the original recycler. Fuck you and your blue bins.

   This was a time of no friends. No schoolmates. Bad acne, and worse breath. The fact that I was poor, stuttered, and lived in a trailer park afforded me the time that only the shunned youth have on their dirty little hands. I hear people talk about being a fat kid. Or a poor kid. Or the kid that peed his pants. The kid with the alcoholic parents, or worse, the drug addict parents. Try being that kid in one short, scrawny package. Some kids went to Little League. I went to the warehouses. Pitching pebbles up against an adjacent wall was "passing the time". Throwing those bottles, as hard as I could, off the two story roof, was my after school program. There were always plenty of bottles in the trailer park. Something tells me this hasn't changed in most the trailer parks that still exist.
   "My dad is gonna be mad when he catches you", she screamed at me from the other side of the dull, metal hallway.
   "WHAT!!!!", I screamed back. I've always been good at pretending I don't hear people. I still am.
   "My daddy is gonna call the cops on you", she's still screaming while death marching in my direction. This cute blond girl is B-lining towards me, and she looks like she means business. I start thinking about running, but then I realize, she is all by herself. "My daddy owns this place and he's been wondering where all these broken bottles are coming from. You're in deep shit." She is now, literally, nose to nose with me.
   "Fuck your old man. Where the fuck is he, by the way? I don't see him. I bet I can out run his old ass, and you", if you were wondering, my cussing ratio has not diminished since I was very young.
   "Well", she starts to stammer. "Well, he's at home."
   "Good. leave me alone.", I pick up my bottles and walk off. Obviously my knack for drama hasn't diminished either.
   "Why do you throw bottles all over the place?", now she's following me. Great.
   "I don't know. I just like the sound of glass breaking, I guess", I'm starting to realize how awkward my speech patterns were around that time. I don't think anything I said in my youth sounded smooth.
   "That's kinda cool. Can I try?"
   "Absolutely", I'm always willing to corrupt. She runs up next to me, and before I can utter one word of protest, she has snatched a bottle from the holder. She let's it fly. We waited, held breath, and then that beautiful sound. The smash of glass caused her to jump up and down, and shriek like an excited Japanese girl. So, the next hour was spent throwing bottles, kicking in walls, and making her father very proud.
   "So, you think you can run fast?" Obviously property destruction hasn't made her completely forget how we met. "I mean, you did say that you could outrun me and my dad."
   "I can. I'm real fast", am I the only one that is recollecting me as Forrest Gump.
   "Let's play a game", now she has my attention."I'll give you a fifteen second head start. You start running. If I catch you, you have to do anything I want." To this day I am a sucker for a good bet.
   "Let's do this. You will never catch me", and the game was off. It took my twelve year old brain about thirty seconds for things to register.

"You have to do anything I want..."

   I slowed my pace, drastically. Took a hard right into one of the dilapidated, empty offices, and boom.

   "Gotcha", she yelled as her hand grabbed my shoulder. 

   "Damn, you're fast", I pant. I'm faking this well.

   "I knew it......you're not that fast. That was easy. You better never have to outrun my dad. He's faster than me." Shit. I thought. Now, I'm glad that he's never wandered up on one of my destruction sprees. "Take off your pants", she blurts out.

   "Wait, what?" This escalated quickly.

   "You agreed. You said you'd do anything I want. Take off your pants," Seriously, this girl is not missing a beat. "Come here, I'll help you." She grabs me by the fly of my jeans. Pulling on my pants, she has taken a bit of an aggressive turn.

   "Okay, okay......I can do this." Of course I could. She hasn't backed up and it's turned into a struggle between the zipper and the waist. "I can do this!!!", I yell. Dropping my pants to the knees, I stop. I mean this is public. I have already heard the word "dad" too many times today. This is my luck.

   "You aren't getting off that easy. At least down to your ankles, and these have to come down, too", she yanks my boxers down. This is most definitely a first. Here I am. Leaned up against a cement wall, naked from the waist down. My dick literally staring this girl directly in the face. You know, as well as it can with one eye. I just typed that. "See, that's not so bad. Thirty seconds. You know the deal. She starts counting.

   "This is fucking embarrassing." She doesn't care.

   "26....25....24.....23...."

   "You are counting too slow", I fained protest. Then it happened. Here's the deal, and I'm just going to put this out there. It was fantastic. I don't know if you've ever done acid, but I found oral sex to be the sexual equivalent of opening the doors of sexual perception. I think back on it and I picture rainbows shooting out of the top of my head. Does any of that make sense? It caused a vibration to shoot up my spine like one long, warm goose bump.

   I would like to clarify something here. I think that there might be a misunderstanding. That I thought I was going to get a blowjob. That is untrue. That did not enter my young, teenage mind. The initial thought that ran through my head was that she would ask for a kiss. We would mess around. That is it. Then, dropping my pants, I thought maybe a hand job was in order. That is all. Her mouth on my cock, was the last thing I was expecting. Back to the story.

  I don't know how long she did it. Or better yet, how long I lasted. I do remember that I had manners in the form of this statement.

   "I'm done. I'm about to be done", and that's how quick it's finished in your youth. She didn't spill a drop.

   "How was that?", she was asking a question, where in the answer was obvious.

   "You had to ask that?"

   In my youth I remember the disgust that came when teenage boys discussed the idea of eating pussy. It was treated just like every other subject that involved us being sensitive to the needs of a female. The bravado and machismo that only the inexperienced can speak with utmost stupid authority. Yet, that day I realized something. If a girl was willing, and could give me that much joy, why the hell wasn't I doing the same. It was the day I learned that a certain amount of concession has to be given in order to bring happiness to someone you care about. Even if you only care about them in between the sheets. Or on a living room floor. Or against a wall in a vacant warehouse building. I never viewed give and take the same way after that.