I'm sorry but this city is just going to be uninhabitable for a very long time. Imagine all those 17th century bodies floating around in that murky basin of filth and grime right now...put a nail in it. It's all over.

Jack Stansfield walks into his afternoon writing workshop with the space-measured pace of a marathon runner sacrificing distance for speed. He touches the knob of the old wooden door and draws back, like someone sneezed on it. The moment of revulsion passes into the annals of feelings past and he grabs the wobbling knob and turns. He wipes his hand on the seat of his pleated khakis and walks into the classroom

Earlier that day, Jack held his weekly house cleaning session consisting of collecting the piles of old clothes he never wore (already stashed in various hiding spots around the house), unopened junk mail, empty boxes, and trash bags, throwing them all in a pile on his back deck because he didn’t feel like making the journey to the back alley to put it all in the dumpster. After the mock cleaning, he lounged on the couch and began reading the latest Martin Amis novel. He made it to page twenty-two when he realized that his creative writing class started in less than fifteen minutes. He sighed and bent the book so it lay open on the table. He had four shelves full of books, spines all broken under the will of a master reader. He put two gray socks on, his brown loafers, wrinkled khakis, and his traditional denim jacket. He stopped by the hallway mirror to fix his hair and thought better, preferring its unkept look. Lately he felt that he must allow his exterior to decay to allow his interior to foster—like breaking the spines of books; his body would either fall in line or fall apart.

He had a five-minute walk from house to classroom and he left with seven minutes till class time. He kicked cut grass from the sidewalk and crossed the street at the crosswalk that forced all oncoming traffic to yield to pedestrians of the college, the community’s major lifeblood of revenue. But this summer had been dedicated to letting him flower inside. He had sworn this after Andrea had left two months ago, as he was grading student finals—his busiest time of the year.

The first time he saw her he knew she was too good for him, which was why he hard to have her. She was standing at the bar, a college bar that looked the same as any other college bar. When he thinks back on those days compared to these days, the bars all seem to blend into the same background with different players and background music like a weekend satire television show. She was waiting in line for a drink, an empty beer bottle in one fist and a half-smoked Newport in the other. She blew out smoke and scanned the room with her eyes, her attention skipping over the crowd like wave crests. On the third time around the room, and ever closer to the bartender, he caught her eye; she doubled back to him and she was caught. There was so much sexual desire in the way he was looking at her that at first she was taken aback, but after letting her eyes wander his body she found his posture relaxed and non-aggressive enough to encourage flirtation. Their gaze-lock was broken by the bartender’s question and through course of the transaction she had completely forgotten about him, sitting alone in the corner, drinking a 7&7 and following her with his eyes as she walked away from the bar. She might have forgotten him, but he knew that for that one moment he had her. There was a connection. He thought about getting up to follow her out, but didn’t feel the strength to play the game of tempting her away from her friends for some one on one. He was pretty sure he could but it didn’t feel right somehow. He let her dissolve back into the crowd. He finished his drink, left the glass on the table, slung his jacket over his arm, and sauntered out into the north Ohio night. That was in winter.

The next time he saw her was in the spring. There was a campus concert, a festival dedicated to the students or, as Jack believed at the time, the students who contributed most to the economics of the campus—the white males. At the time it was a well-known truth that white males were the ones who pulled the crank that kept the madness of the modern world moving. This was after the civil rights movement and the door to hippie peace and freedom had been opened at Woodstock and slammed shut at Altamont; after the sugar and gas crises; after the embassy takeover; after the cyanide filled aspirin craze; after the icy space shuttle O rings and the ‘one eye blew this way, the other that way’ jokes; their affair began during glasnost and shattered in the age of no controlling legal authority.

The biggest band on campus was playing, I’m Okay You’re Okay was their name, and it was loud and he was quite drunk. He was standing in line for the portable toilets that smelled like urine baked inside a football helmet at 400 degrees for twelve hours. He happened to look over just as he was about to go in, and saw her. She was wearing a stone washed denim coat. He was surprised to find her looking at him as well. He was about to say something, stupid probably; one of those cheesy come-on lines that all the guys in his freshman dorm swore to if the girl was drunk enough. The ignorant phrase he was about to utter was cut short by a loud thunk, a sloppy sound, followed by high pitch laughter. A pledge for a campus fraternity had gone into the portable toilet that Jack was about to enter and some of the active members had snuck up behind it and overturned it with him inside. The door was face down so the kid was trapped inside; a murky brown liquid seeped out the upper vents and he could hear the kid’s wails of disgust from inside the plastic waste vessel. He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was the kind of laughter that isn’t due to the act being cosmically funny, but more a kind of better you than me laughter, the self-gratifying guffaw that only compassion with relief it’s not you can bring.

He had forgotten all about her, lost in personal hysterics, when his eyes went out searching for someone to share the experience with now that it had been personally digested. Their eyes locked and for just a moment the laughter stopped inside him, and he imagined in her as well. Baby gaze, eye sex, and exchange of microphotons at invisible levels of hue. She giggled. He giggled. She laughed, holding her stomach. He closed one eye and convulsed in laughter. She pointed at the face down portable toilet and they both lost it. He wandered over to her as natural as if they’d known each other for years, put his arm around her shoulder and they laughed for many minutes. It was a laughter he had not experienced since, branded with the humor of a satisfying moment draped in the wonder of newfound lust and mystery that only an open and attractive stranger can bring.


His mind came back to the task at hand, workshop—the only place where writers are taken seriously outside board meetings in publishing houses. “The workshop is the last bastion of free writing without marketing influence left in the modern age outside a private diary.” Jack expressed these sentiments in the foreword to his first book of poems, Touching the Surface Below: Poems for a Forgotten Generation. He thanked his students for, “Keeping me on my toes and realizing that good writing is 99% revision and 1% inspiration.”

Simina’s story “Indian with A Dot, Not A Feather,” is up today. I’d like to begin by saying that on an entertainment level, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I like the main character, Raja. The ruthlessness she was forced to use after her father’s death gives her a very nice source of conflict. But I found the reaction to her sister’s dead baby to be a bit extreme. Why would she commit suicide suddenly after finding the boy dead in his crib? This woman sacrificed her entire life to provide stability for her family; it doesn’t make sense to me. What do you guys think? Well, I agree with you about the extremity of her reaction, but I think that the situation of her nephew’s death is the right time to show some sort of change. What kind of change do you see as appropriate here? Something smaller. It seems that in short stories, less is more. It’s the small changes that seem gargantuan. I remember one story by Raymond Carver where two couples are sitting around a dinner table drinking and one husband is getting continually more jealous about his wife’s ex-husband the more he drinks. And it’s that little change that makes the story so believable and in turn affects the reader so much more. What do you think? Well, I’m not sure what kind of reaction this character warrants because I’d like to know a little more about her. We don’t get much of her feelings about her father. The control issue is the primary conflict with this character because when her nephew dies she loses the illusion of control, but the suicide is so over exaggerated that it kind of overshadows this realization and leaves the reader feeling cheated, but I definitely like this character and I think she should be worked with. Now see, I kinda disagree with you. I was left wondering what exactly the relationship with her nephew was based on, because on page three it says she cares very deeply for this kid, but we don’t see it any time in the story. Just because the author says it, doesn’t mean it’s so. I mean, I hate to bring up that cliché phrase from our 200-level courses but show us, don’t tell. And that’s just it, man. The whole thing was cliché to me. I’m so sick of reading stories about minorities like they’re still so challenged. I have no sympathy for this character at all. People die all the time. She’s a bitch to her family. She refuses to have sex with that guy on page seven. She wouldn’t even call him back after their date. It seems that fact she was Indian with a dot was just thrown in there to give her some kind of sympathy from the reader. I don’t buy it and I’m sick of reading stories like it, no offense, Simina. It’s not your fault the literary community has fallen so in love with bullshit multicultural idealism that it’s forgotten about quality literature.

Jack takes control before Simina’s feelings get hurt. He has to separate the derogatory from the literary. Unfortunately for Simina, the class deflates into an exchange of views on multicultural literary theory and her story fades into the background focus of the day’s discussion.


When Jack awakes after nine hours and twelve minutes of sleep, his hair is mussed and matted to the contours of a rented Serta mattress. After two cups of coffee and a stale cinnamon roll he leaves for an English department meeting. He walks in late as usual and is greeted by his smiling comrades. Jack is the only member of the committee that has not yet received tenure but he knows his time is approaching. This is a problem that had been plaguing him for some time, how long to remain a mere lecturer without any stability. It has kept him awake at night, scratching the hives on his neck that come from worry and excess caffeine. He cares for his students but he also has a publishing career to think about, and Andrea’s absence only serves as catalyst for the outgrowth of misery the darkness under his eyes has become. Ballast shifts from one side to the other and the line between work and writing grows as thin as the one separating Modern and Post-Modern art. They’re only a war apart.

Jack’s first poem was published in a magazine specializing in gay poetry. Jack had impure thoughts about a man once, his friend actually, during a late night beer drinking venture that led him to the edge of a blackout. But he is not gay. He remembers very little about the drunken fantasy. The poem has nothing to do with homosexuality; it is a five-line stanzaic celebrating the ending of an addiction. At the time, Jack had recently quit smoking and his withdrawal had inspired him to write the poem. He owns only one copy of this magazine entitled Quorum and it lays dog-eared and mite-eaten in a box in the dank basement of his monthly rented home. The poem goes like this:

Moving Anthills
Nothing really matters

as much as when we drop
ground up ground onto the ground

and find progress bigger
piles of dirt to step over.

At the time, Jack was amazed a homosexual would find worth in his words; he was amazed that anyone did for that matter. During this period of his writing, Jack toyed with words the way a teenage girl plays with a penis for the first time, flicking it around and not really committed to grabbing it with both hands and working it to a frenzy.

Sitting in the meeting, Jack felt like a skeleton from the anatomy lab hung on a wire and pulled from a higher position somewhere in the Administration building. Departmental notes were taken and Jack said yes and no and stated his opinion about mechanical things completely unrelated to the English language as it is experienced by those who grab it with both hands and yank until they’re sticky with viscous syllables.

Leaving the meeting, he felt like a man slipping away from the operating table still under the effects of anesthesia. He tried to shake the beauracratic load from his mind as he stood at the urinal outside his workshop. It was summer and workshops ran every day for four weeks.



Back at home, Jack sat in his favorite chair and exchanged his loafers for plaid padded slippers while he cogitated the idea of his phantom ex-girlfriend. Everywhere he looked there were trinkets and knickknacks that reminded him of Andrea. The Elvis ashtray that now holds peanut shells; had to have it. The Elton John fleckled gold oversized sunglasses placed on the face of a ceramic Home Interiors basset hound; she had to have them both. All these things were necessities she couldn’t live without, but couldn’t take with her when she left seven months ago.

And when she finally left, he couldn’t remember why he loved her, only that he didn’t want her to go. He had forgotten the late night after shower phone calls where she lay wet and naked on her flannel sheets, letting the air-dry her young female body as they talked holes in the night. He had forgotten the way she hid behind her hair when she was embarrassed, tousled brown strands hiding her emotions like a tight beaded curtain hides a roomful of pot smokers; and how sexually inexperienced she was when they met. She had kissed two boys before him and wouldn’t let him proceed as fast as he would have liked to; he loved her even more for that, for making it something special, something sacred. It was an idea she had gotten from medieval philosophy, an old romance story of King Arthur’s knights, that the sexual act was the sacramentalization of love. The first night he went past the kisses and covered her nippled breasts with saliva, she went home caked with his scent and told him later on the phone that she loved it, that she wished she could bottle it and wear it every day. And he loved her for that, too. But all that slipped away the day she said goodbye as she stood in her faded jeans with the knees ripped out and the Guess patch torn off the back right pocket. She had a gym bag strapped over her arm, it was small and couldn’t possibly have held all her belongings—just the sacred ones. He realized later that everything she left was associated with him in some way. Everything she took was hers alone: seventeen pairs of jeans, thirty six shirts, nine sweaters, several pairs of socks, shoes, belts, jewelry, tampons, makeup, hair care products, smelly soap from the bath store, four purses, her tennis racket, workout video tapes, and inside that small gym bag she had a framed picture of her mother and father, her Bible, and a copy of twelfth century romances with the story about the sacramentalization of love ripped out and left on the coffee table as the only reason why she was leaving.

There are times when Jack writes lines that make him think—what a good boy am I—but this self praise always gives way to the fleeting reminder of his failure to please this one person who ever meant anything to him. It is a pain that fuels the pipe dream of touching masses through words because words are little masks that make him seem whole, connecting his pain with some kind of human expression. And despite this vision of a spider web of syllables connecting the thoughts of every human being on the planet, he still lives with the fear that his words are nothing more than randomly arranged ink spots on bleached fiber. He has always needed an audience.

The human eye can see a candle flame from as far away as ten miles in complete darkness. Andrea was that flame and his desire to reach masses of people through written words was the darkness that made her light visible from so far away. He pictured thousands of flames burning from exposure to his own. But in the process of this cerebral fire burning ceremony he did not tend to her, the only actual flame in his life. She stood in stasis, surrounded by blue flame and the glass cover he held her in became thick with smoke until her vision was blotted out entirely and only the darkness remained. Her wick nubbed and the wax hardened over him where he remains to this day, preserved and protected until moments like this scratch away the wax and leave him open to his own harsh inner feelings and inadequacies.

During the next few weeks, Jack Stansfield learns he is being considered for the position of Academic Advisor for Creative Writing. In the fall, he would sit and listen to scheduling problems and general complaints about the program. His workload would be increased ten-fold and there has still been no mention of tenure. Jack has put on five pounds in the last two weeks and he is getting half as much sleep as usual. He hasn’t written a word since the beginning of summer term. He is now standing in front of his favorite urinal with his spraying penis in one hand and the thumb and first finger of the other is rubbing his eyelids. He hears a voice behind him, the head of the English Department coming out of the stall. Jack I need to speak with you, can we meet sometime today?

Jack walks into the chair’s office and sits down. He sets his small Styrofoam cup of coffee on the desk and leans back into the chair. Jack, thanks for coming. Just wanted to let you know that the tenure board will be meeting in a couple of weeks to discuss your future here. And Jack, it’s come to our attention that you graduated with a Masters Degree from here in ’87. Now there’s a policy at this University, Jack, which denies tenure to anyone graduating with a degree from this institution. Now you’ve got my vote. You know that. But the Provost is like a goddam rock when it comes to things like this. Would you like something to drink, Jack? Anyway, he’s a goddam bastard when it comes to things like this, just between you and me, of course. And he told me he’s not moving on this issue. Not even for you. Just wanted to let you know. Also, word is there’s another candidate being considered for the poetry position. He's an MFA from Georgetown, an African-American, Jack. You know we don't have one on staff and the University requires…Well, I’m sure everything will turn out fine. Are you sure I can’t get you anything? No? Alright Jack, I’ll have my secretary call you with any news.


In the following weeks, whiskey shots turn into beard stubble and Jack misses two of his last three workshops. The students call and leave worried messages in the Creative Writing office. He sits at his computer for hours. He begins with the word processing screen and ends every time with the screen saver. He moves the mouse deliberately to cancel the moving space picture only to return to a blank screen with a blinking cursor. The flashing vertical line is hypnotizing. It breaks him down with every pass. He looks at the invitation he received in the mail; Ecru Vellum Bristol with a gold foil sticker seal—Andrea’s wedding. After twelve years of marriageless monogamy, she found a job in another city and fell in love with a man on her lunch hour; a man who might wear Brooks Brothers suits and say things like, damn right on, and I’ll need that report by three, no excuses. Jack leaves his desk chair and doesn’t return.

He tries writing with a pen, a pencil, a marker, stubbed crayons with the tips rubbed raw and the paper flaking off. Nothing works. He’s barren. The words have been squeezed from his brain and leaked out his ears onto the floor of the Chair’s office. They might still be there on the carpet in a puddle of dried ooze that smells like a used dictionary.

Students and stories. Words and the mouths that speak them. In sleep he sees dotted lines and a word processor with a white cotton sheet of paper and his name, Jack Stansfield, at the top. A clean sheet, waiting to be rubbed with keystrokes. And on the other side of the dotted lines, foreign manuscripts with strange names. Stories that need his input. His advice. Students stories or Jack's stories. Andrea’s wedding or Jack’s stories. Andrea’s wedding or students stories. The choices are mesmerizing. He could sit all day and consider the options. In fact, he does.

Jack goes out of the house only to get the mail. He survives on the canned rations that have occupied the back of his food shelf for the last five years. Cream of celery, bacon bean, and Spam jelly are stuck to the kitchen sink. There are bread crusts lying under the trash bag in the garbage can. Jack cries during a Purina cat chow commercial because the people look so happy as if feeling good is something tangible, something you can buy in a can. It is all too much. Jack has nothing left but sobs for his world.

After brooding in his own misery for many days, Jack attempts writing about it. As a writer he has trained his eyes and ears to scent out and hunt down any human activity that could provide nuggets and frameworks for stories and poems. More often than not, it was easier to train his academic eyes on someone else as a character study—but this time he tried it on himself and came up void. He would sometimes open a file on a character and type the words: This character is the type of person that would: and fill in the blanks. He would do this for several pages until a character appeared with conflicts, problems, and always, always at the center a corpuscle of hope and compassion that united the character with the secret cause of universal suffering in the human reader. These words bounced against Jack’s brain like a racquetball tossed out of the past and volleyed back again. His professor in college spoke these exact words and attributed them to James Joyce, and Jack once believed they were divine, gold, and he also believed back then that at the rocky heart of every story, fiction or fanciful truth, is also a grain of true gold. He believed this for as long as he could keep it in mind, but eventually it became buried under reject letters, cancelled checks, shredded first drafts, empty roller fine ink pens, clipped fingernails stained black from shaking up ink jet cartridges to get that one last page out, and used ideas—useless to anyone but him and his ruminations about the world.

Here’s what Jack believes about the world and his place in it: the world is a horrible place. Life is something that should not have been. It hurts to watch cheetahs rip open the bellies of gazelles. It hurts to watch the nightly news with stories of teenage mothers that kill their babies and the rest of the horrors and wonders that come with the information age. There really isn’t a place in this world for such a deep thinker as he; no place for such an aching heart and the blood it bleeds for the poor, the suffering, the wounded, and misrepresented. He was going to reach them all with his words, his stories, his simple philosophy of life, which is—worthless, he now thinks. Everything he’s ever written is meaningless in her absence. He feels like a hollowed out pumpkin with fire bright candles in his eyes, staring at the seedy-moss innards that have just been ripped out and set in front of him. Somewhere in that ganglia of failure are the words he needs to express this loss, but he can’t see past the bleeding flame to grasp their order and the desire to do so echoes around his hollow head and submerges in the quicksand of his stomach; he’s staring at the pages of the ripped out twelfth-century novel she left when she left.


He lies in bed for a day. He lies on the couch for two. He musters the courage to step outside and finds it to be a pleasant day. The words have stopped coming. Phil Ochs shot himself because the words stopped coming. He walks to his mailbox. No mail. It's only 9:30 in the morning. He lightly kicks a milkweed by the steps with his padded slipper. He thinks about his life. He compares it to his neighbor's garden hose, full of holes but wound up and still hanging around. He remembers his first workshop, the faces of new writers—no, not new but open; they were open to things that weren’t right in front of their faces or inside their own heads. He was going to be great, but he wasn’t. He was going to be the model teacher who inspired greatness with respect instead of mediocre reactions bred of pity. He was supposed to sound his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world instead of whispering it to drunken bums asleep beside dumpsters filled with library books. He wanted so bad to be the Everyman, the he referred to on daytime talk shows, congressional hearings, faculty lunchrooms and benefit dinners. And the classes never really mattered to him—at all. The students’ stories were never quite good enough for him to even read; his written comments generally rambled into an obscure diatribe on aesthetics and left the bolts of the story completely. In his mind, as the milkweed waved an obscene salutation, he was an utter failure in every sense of the word. He had failed as a writer; his book wasn’t even in the top thousand. He had failed as a teacher; none of his students went beyond filling in the alphabet bubbles on semester evaluations with written words of praise. And he had failed as a lover; his one light having left and a binding apathy prevented him from asking the question that might have made her stop before she opened that car door and was sucked into that familiar black hole that so many bar stool residents have preached about over a hundred dollar liquor tab. And now he feels like discharged semen in a wad of toilet paper, something that could have been but never was.


Jack Stansfield walks into his last 4:30 workshop with the discombobulated stagger of a town drunk on the run from Child Support. He has no folders, papers, pens or preconceived notions about what he will say to his five students. He only feels the enormous weight of burnt wax and bookbinding leaking from the holes in his shredded shoulders. He is less than a man. He is a kite on a string that has been released from the Creative Writing office window. He is every one at one point or another.

These are things he wishes he could say. Sometimes the narrator breaks down. Sometimes past and future tenses mingle in a story and it doesn’t mean anything more than the author forgot the original plan. Sometimes characters don't speak with perfect quotation marks inside white bubbles surrounded by black lines that hold the words close in. Sometimes targets get switched in mid-firing and the shooter can only watch the bullet go the wrong way. Sometimes the person in front of the room is only hiding behind a podium. Sometimes they’re only dipshits in penny loafers but sometimes they are human beings that have been up all night crying. Sometimes they just miss the people they pushed away. Sometimes a story doesn't come together in the end. Sometimes fiction doesn't mean lie and sometimes people typing words into keyboards or putting ink on a page are only talking to themselves. Sometimes, what we wish to become is less than what we already are.


Jack Stansfield leaves his last workshop with the glass that held the melting wax in shards. That crystal harp meant to sound the strings of redemption shattered and the little heart rock is exposed to the harsh open air. He pays no attention to his surroundings. He doesn’t look back, and if he did he might see a wax trail, shredded bookbindings blowing across the cactus green campus lawn. He thinks about the return address on the Ecru announcement on his desk at home. The rock almost glitters in the bare Ohio atmosphere. There are two things dancing in his mind and drilling at his rocky heart, and in the end they are both the same thing—Pyrite. Fool’s Gold.

The Night Mary Beth Jacksey Told Her Father that Jesus was a Coward

—That's it—the preacher said as he slammed his palm on the dinner table causing the antique crystal vase in the china cabinet to rattle and the dog to bark. Every member of the room, except Mary Beth's newest boyfriend, immediately looked at the vase and prayed it wouldn't fall. It had been in the preacher's family for generations. He was neurotic about it. The preacher, after checking the vase and seeing it unharmed, looked at his daughter with a calm eye—I will not have that kind of talk in this house. Please take this person you've brought with you and leave—Mary Beth's newest boyfriend was a greasy-headed mop top with a pimple under his left nostril and a barb wire tattoo that wrapped around his right bicep. His best friend told him it was, bitchin.

Mary Beth recoiled from her father's verbal front—Oh Daddy, don’t take it personal. I just mean that if Jesus really cared about the suffering of other people, then why didn't he stay here on earth and suffer with them? Wasn't it a bit idealistic for him to assume that because he suffered one day of intense agony, it would make up for the billions of people that had been killed already? Not to mention the billions that were eventually slaughtered in his name?—She sat back, assured that her father had no comeback for this recently acquired Philosophy 301 supposition. She had got an A. The whole time in class, she was giving her father the mental finger. Every word she read was a possible bullet to fire into the heart of her father's faith.

The preacher's face grew red as the ass curve of a rose petal. He threw his napkin on the table, scooted his chair back, and turned to walk away, tripping over the dog that always lay at his feet waiting for an edible handout—son of a bitch—he landed face down on the wooden floor. Restrained laughter hung in the air like wet smoke. He collected himself and left the room as diligently as he fell.

Mary Beth looked at her mother, who was already looking at Mary Beth—You know how your father is, Mary Beth. It's best just to let him have his say without arguing, like I do—As she looked at her namesake, Mary Beth's face contorted into the campus friendly feminist arguing pose—Mother do you have any idea how completely submissive you sound right now? I am so sick of daddy telling me that the world is his way only and everyone else is going to hell—She paused and added—I don't even believe in hell—Her mother looked down at her lap and said in a hushed tone, like she didn't want anyone to hear, maybe not even herself—Now I have to go repair what you've done—She pushed her chair back, got up, grabbed her dishes and pushed her chair back in. She turned to walk up the steps, stopping to empty her plate in the trash and rinse it in the sink. The dog began barking again.

Mary Beth asked her newest boyfriend what he would like to do next. He was not concerned with the present moment. His mind was on later tonight and the panties Mary Beth might or might not be wearing—Do you want to see something funny—He shook his head yes, not hearing what she asked him. Mary Beth's dog was a miniature collie named Rain. When someone would repeatedly smack his butt fast and hard, he would take off running around the house, barking and yipping his way through his own personal maze of ass slaps and close calls with the furniture. The preacher abhorred such behavior and forbade anyone to participate in the dog's psychological ass slapping disorder. But Mary Beth was upset with her father and had no remorse about trying his nerves.

She smacked the dog’s ass with multiple slaps and being used to the drill, he rocketed away, barking and yipping. There were different patterns he ran. Sometimes it was the figure eight; sometimes he opted for the straight circle. But this particular time, it was a Euclidean nightmare. He attempted to run the infamous, two-dimensional dodecahedron in between the living room, kitchen, and dining room. He was unsuccessful. With one lap left to complete the twelve-face geometrical Holy Grail, he was determined to avoid the ass slap. He juked left under the table, became ensnared in the long lace tablecloth, and bolted out directly into the china cabinet. The vase tipped left. Then right. Wobbling on its base like a top. It fell in an arch, drawn out like an Olympic diver. The dog, sensing an impending disaster, ran from the room just as the vase crashed. He wasn't seen for the rest of the night.


Mary Beth's mother ascended the stairs with the knowledge that she was the bridge builder, the pontiff, tonight. Her husband bridged the gap between God and people, but she bridged the gap between her husband and the family he estranged at God's expense. She entered the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands covering his face. There was a half-empty rocks glass of Alka-Seltzer on the nightstand. The preacher was crying.

She went to him and held him. She knew that Mary Beth didn't hate Jesus and she knew Mary Beth didn't hate her father either. She thought that her daughter was just confused right now and that was okay because Mary Beth's mother had a great reservoir of patience. Her husband's bridges were strong, but his wife's patience was the water that flowed underneath them, always warm and always moving. She knew her husband had a rough day. He had been pushed to his breaking point. She could do more for her husband by just holding him. She hoped Mary Beth would eventually learn this art. A high decibel crash of breaking glass destroyed their healing embrace. The preacher's head jerked up towards the door—Oh don't tell me. Son of bitch. SON OF A BITCH—He ran out of the room and down the stairs.

Mary Beth's mother stared at the rocks glass. She picked it up and finished the rest of the Alka-Seltzer. She put the glass back on the nightstand and listened patiently to the rising voices as they echoed off the hallways and doors of the house. She would wait for the voices to settle before going downstairs to patch whatever rip had been made. She lay back against the pillow, thought of her own mother, and listened to the voices fence each other into the night.

The Night Mary Elizabeth Burnt Her Mother's Moses Cookies

—Mary Elizabeth, do you mean to tell me that the whole time you've been dating this boy you've neglected to mention that he's not Jewish? And suddenly after all this time, you tell us that not only is he a Gentile, but he's a Christian minister as well—Mary Elizabeth looked at her fifty-year old mother with her twenty-four year old eyes—Mom, he's a wonderful man. I don't care what you say about him. He will be here in a half-hour and so help me, you'd better not do anything to ruin this—Her mother’s jaw clenched—I told your Father that we never should have given you a Christian name—Her mother turned her back, which infuriated Mary Elizabeth. She turned her own back to her mother and left the room, smacking the doorframe on her way out.


Later that evening, at the dinner table, just after Mary Elizabeth had announced her engagement to her boyfriend who was not only not a Jew, but a Christian minister as well, her father grabbed her and her fiancé's hand with tears in his eyes—You have both made me so happy. All I ever wanted was for my daughter to marry a nice man. One that would love her, and take care of her—And her father smiled a wicked smirk—And take these bills off my back. She's like a full time payment—He looked to the young man—I hope you know how to swindle your congregation young man. She's a regular down payment weekly—Mary Elizabeth smiled at her father because she loved him. It was that simple. She looked at her mother and her mother was looking away.

Her mother bent down to pet the cat, mumbling incohesively. She took her hand away from the feline, swiveled forcefully in her chair and banged her shoe on the table leg. She did not reply when asked if she was alright. Her mother got up from the table and went into the kitchen. Her father called after her—Where are you going, you haven't even finished your meal yet—Mary Elizabeth's mother called back from the kitchen—I have to put my cookies in the oven so they'll be ready for dessert—Mary Elizabeth's mother often made cookies during Hanukkah. The family called them her Moses cookies.

Mary Elizabeth got up and followed her mother into the kitchen—Mom, why can't you be happy for me? Why do you always have to spoil everything—Her mother had her back turned as she was sliding an aluminum tray of blobby dough into the oven. She refused to answer her daughter—So help me mother, if you don't speak to me now then I don't want you to have ANY PART OF MY WEDDING—Her mother whipped around and stared at her daughter with horror—You would do that, wouldn't you? On top of everything else, you would just cut your own mother off. What did I birth? What did I do to deserve such a hateful child—Mary Elizabeth had heard enough—YOU ARE NOT WELCOME AT MY WEDDING MOTHER—She tore open the back door and ran into the night, leaving a hole in her mother's home that remained even after the door had been shut.

Mary Elizabeth's mother ran sobbing, back into the dining room where her husband and her daughter’s fiancé had been listening in disbelief to the argument raging in the kitchen—She hates me. She hates me. Her own mother—Her husband asked the fiancé if he would please excuse them. He took his wife upstairs and held her as she sobbed. They fell asleep only to be woken by the smell of smoke. The Moses cookies were blackened. They looked as if they had been hit by raining fire from one of the ten plagues of Egypt. For years, her mother blamed Mary Elizabeth for the burning of her famous Moses Hanukkah cookies.


The Day the Preacher Understood the Shame of Jesus

The Preacher shuffled up to the pulpit. He was wearing a white silk robe. He had no pants or undergarments on underneath. He arranged his Bible and poured himself a glass of water from a crystal pitcher, a gift from the Women’s Auxiliary. He cleared his throat and addressed the congregation—Ladies and Gentlemen, God is angry. God is upset. He has given us laws to live by. Simple laws, yet so many of us seem to fall prey to temptation and sin—His erection was beginning to stir underneath the robe—For so long God has been patient with us, and I ask why Oh Lord. Why do you have such precious patience with us Heathens? What did we possibly do to deserve this infinite gift of your attention and salvation? That you would send your only begotten Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our wicked and sinful ways and yet we still refuse to give them up, Oh Lord I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY WE HAVE FALLEN INTO THE DEVIL’S HANDS—He grabbed himself down there as he spoke. Oh God, give me strength not to do this. Please. I can’t continue doing this. It started off innocently. A scratch. An adjustment. But then he got worked up. Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke of the infinite love of God by sending Jesus. It was the same speech every week, just different words. He took hold at a moment of great passion. One moment he was damning the Devil and the next he was jerking for Jesus.

He continued with his one-handed sermon—We are living in the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. Whores on every street corner. Porno directors without scruples. Why, even the institution of God has become corrupted by the Devil’s seed—Oh God, please no. Don’t let me do this in your home. I can’t stop, it feels too good. This had been going on for about six months. The Preacher rationalized it by believing that his acts of Holy Masturbation were a covenant between himself and Jesus, something sacred only both of them knew. But there was someone else who knew. The Preacher glanced at his wife, sitting in the front row with a decent viewing angle behind the podium.

The Preacher realized, with horror, that his wife was watching him. They both remained frozen. He stopped speaking. The congregation became uneasy. Murmurs rose to a cacophonous roar. His wife stood up and ran into the Preacher’s office, behind the pulpit stage. His jaw locked. His tongue wouldn’t work. He turned to run after her, but his robe caught on a broken piece of lamination from the ply wood pulpit. The robe tore off and there he was, his back to the congregation, bare ass exposed, looking up to the wooden crucified Christ that hung on the wall highlighted by track lighting. He fell to his knees and raised his arms to the wooden idol as if to say—Why have you forsaken me Lord—The congregation was disgusted. They rose in rotting masses and filed languidly into the receiving room. Some took their offering out of the collection plate on the way out.


The Preacher lay on the couch in his office with his head in his wife’s lap. She was stroking the locks of hair that lay across his forehead. She was completely calm. He was staring at the ceiling as if waiting for a bush to grow out and light itself on fire, telling him he was redeemed. His wife looked at him like he was a child—You know, sometimes you’re like that damn vase you love so much. So fragile. Sometimes that’s what I see you as, a human crystal vase. Something that needs to be guarded against falling and breaking—The Preacher turned his gaze from the ceiling to his wife—You know that vase has been in my family for generations, Mary Elizabeth. It was the only thing left standing after my family was raided by Indians on their voyage west. And that was only because my mother was using it as bedpan for fear of peeing in nature—His family had actually been robbed by other white settlers, but the story sounded more in tune with American History when he told it this way.

His wife continued to look at him with pity—Well, all I have to say about this incident is that you’ll recover. Apologize to the people that decide to come next week and they’ll forgive you. They are Christians, after all—The Preacher’s lips pursed because he doubted his own congregation’s ability not to judge and to forgive, particularly since he judged every person he saw at every opportunity he had. He also held very little forgiveness in his heart. His wife gently pushed his head off her lap, got up, strung her purse over her shoulder and began to leave. She turned around and looked at him, still lying on the couch—Make sure you’re home in time for dinner tonight. Mary Beth is bringing her new boyfriend. And please be cordial—The Preacher shifted on the couch and closed his eyes—Is this the kid with the barbwire tattoo? The one that doesn’t go to church—His wife nodded her head—I know, I’d like to say something to her too, but I’d feel just like my mother. Mary Beth will learn. She just needs time—She opened the door and left. The Preacher rolled over, facing the back of the couch. Shuddering violently, he wrapped his arms around himself and began to cry.

Michael Yon's post makes me proud to be an American again and I agree with Antimedia and Michelle Malkin that if there is an award for War Bloggers, Michael Yon should win it--hands down, for his Gates of Fire post, no more discussion, let him begin his acceptance speech now.

This post took me three days to read, simply because I'm not used to reading anything at length online, but I stuck with it and my goodness was it worth it!

The story of the Deuce Four combat unit and the casualties and victories they took in the course of anti-terrorist operations is riveting, compelling, utterly terrible, and totally human.

I was outraged by what he tells us about the terrorist douche they captured, who had wounded two US soldiers:

The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.

That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.

That was in December.

About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe's case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.

I can't imagine the restraint it must take not to unholster your side arm and shoot these pricks while they lie cuffed on their stomachs. It would almost seem better to err on the side of caution and remove a likely terrorist than take the risk that some jackass judge is going to have a moment of weak logic and let them go back into the thick of it all.

And then you get to this section, which is is stark contrast to the hatred that our media in this country tell us is meeting our soldiers on every street corner in Iraq:

Iraqi Army and Police commanders were in a fury that LTC Kurilla had been shot. Some blamed his men, while others blamed the terrorists, although blame alone could not compete with disbelief. Kurilla had gone on missions every single day for almost a year. Talking with people downtown. Interfacing with shop owners. Conferencing with doctors. Drinking tea with Iraqi citizens in their homes. Meeting proud mothers with new babies. It's important to interact and take the pulse of a city in a war where there is no "behind the lines," no safe areas. It's even dangerous on the bases here.

In order for leaders of Kurilla's rank to know the pulse of the Iraqi people, they must make direct contact. There's a risk in that. But its men like Kurilla who can make this work. Even and especially in places like Mosul, where it takes a special penchant for fighting. A passion for the cause of freedom. A true and abiding understanding of both its value and its costs. An unwavering conviction that, in the end, we will win.

And Yon offers a final lesson:

Iraqi Army and Police officers see many Americans as too soft, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorists. The Iraqis who seethe over the shooting of Kurilla know that the cunning fury of Jihadists is congenite. Three months of air-conditioned reflection will not transform terrorists into citizens...there was much discussion about the "ethics" of war, and contention about why we afford top-notch medical treatment to terrorists. The treatment terrorists get here is better and more expensive than what many Americans or Europeans can get.

"That's the difference between the terrorists and us," Chaplain Wilson kept saying. "Don't you understand? That's the difference."

Michael Yon is an outstanding telescope but these soldiers are the blazing stars that make the instrument useful.

I can't wait until the Fall rolls in. It's the best time of year and there are few places more beautiful than Ohio in the Fall. The death of the leaves on the trees is one of the most stunning swan songs in nature and I'll make sure to get some pictures.

But there are drawbacks as well to living here where the four seasons prevail and just to prove that you people in the warmer zones of the country are pusses, here are some photos from the ice storm we had on Christmas Eve last year.

Here's to a mild winter...

No, not between science and religion or between creationism versus evolution but between CAR and ROBOT.

I bought a Transformer for my son today, which is a 5-year old recommended age toy (he's 2 years, 3 months old). I use to love Transformers when I was a kid and my boy is insane-obsessed about cars (my fear is that he's going to grow up and be a NASCAR driver).

So, I picked up this little police car that transforms into a robot. You should have seen his little face light up when I showed him the package. "Oh-Pen. Oh-Pen," he said, waving his arms around and handing me back the package.

I tore through the package, feeling for more than a moment like it was my toy and I couldn't wait to play with it. Finally, I got it out of the package and the excitement ended...for a moment.

Hot damn, my fingers are nimble nowadays. Twenty years of playing video games have numbed my fine touch because it took me a good five minutes to get the thing transformed into a robot and I had to look at the instructions to do it. How in the hell do they expect a five-year-old to do this?

But I got it done, very proud of myself and when I went to hand it to him, he screwed up his face and started screaming "Cah. Cah. Fix it, Da-eee. Broke. Make it car, peese."

I said, "No, buddy. It's not broke. It's a robot...but he changes into a car."

He obviously didn't get it. So I resorted to 80s marketing.

I said, "Buddy, it's more than meets the eye. It's a robot who changes into a car."

That didn't work either and we have just another boring car who won't see his robot form for many years, I fear.

But now I have to new threat to resort to if he doesn't mind--"Do you want Daddy to change your car into a robot?"

You've got to know which buttons to press and be willing to press them as long as they work.

So the great debate has begun and I believe it will be proven that it is impossible to win a debate with a stubborn two year old (he gets it from his old man).

Is it car or is it a robot?

...then we don't have much at all.

"Maybe the chickens will come home to roost in '06 [and '08]" was a comment posted on Tony Pierce's recent blog entry and I have a feeling that a lot of people on both the left and right are wondering this exact thing.

But since when does our country hinge on maybe?

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of Andrew Jackson and segregation. They no longer dress up in white sheets (except maybe Robert Byrd) and turn fire hoses and German Shepherds on black school kids trying to get equal voting rights.

And the Republican Party is no longer the Party of Lincoln, the party that barely held the last best hope for mankind together so that it didn't perish from the face of the Earth.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that both parties were being run from the same corporate bank account. This statement isn't just pissing in the wind because corporate entities (meaning companies as well as "Non-Profit" religous entities and special interest groups) have taken control of our political process and are not going to let go until we excise them with ruthless and effective measures.

No one can question the integrity of the American citizen. Our culture may have become extremely pussified since the counter-culture of the 60s let thoughts of love and peace overshadow the need to duck when someone throws a sucker punch at us but the blood of the patriot still flows in every person's veins in this country and one need look no further than the national momentum of solidarity that followed the 9/11 attacks as proof.

But as we learned, this solidarity through struggle doesn't last long and breaks apart very soon like The Friendship is about to in the Big Brother house (I still can't believe that bitch Jennifer stabbed Kaysar in the back like that).

In the year 1913, at the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, surviving veterans of that war camped out for a three-day celebration that saw Confederates breaking bread and sharing stories with their once sworn Yankee enemies. The highlight of the event was a recreation of General Pickett's tragic charge that led to the massacre of his entire division by Union soldiers behind a well-fortified, low stone wall.

After three days of comraderie, 50 years after three days of the tragic murder of 43,000 Americans by other Americans (compare this to the numbers coming out of Iraq after two years of fighting), the veterans were fellow citizens again. And when the rebels began the charge and began yelling the rebel yell for the first time in that hallowed ground since the original massacre, the Union soldiers threw down their arms, jumped over the stone wall, and ran to embrace their brothers from the south.

Just thinking of these old men in their ragged uniforms with 50-year-old bullet holes, running to embrace each other on the field where they lost their youths makes my spine tingle and tears threaten even now...

I believe that we can still have that camraderie even when you, as my fellow citizen, insult the President I voted for and who I think has done light years better than his predecessor who brought shame and disgrace to our nation and allowed a very dangerous enemy to take form and amass the means to murder three thousand of our fellow countrymen.

But I refuse to hinge my future upon maybe.

Men and women of honor take control of their circles of influence and effect positive change by acting from a center of integrity toward those around them.

Justice begins at home and flows from the way we talk to and the things we think about the face in the mirror in the morning. If we can't be civil to that person then how in God's name do we expect to create a civil society.

How can we be shocked to find the world in the state it is today when we are so fragmented inside our own minds, hearts, and spirits that most of us wouldn't run to hug ourselves if we saw our shadow walking alone across a deserted street?

My mother used to say begin by cleaning up your own backyard before you tell other people how to make their lawn greener and cleaner. This is still good advice in any situation.

A Hat Tip and Much Respect to Tony Pierce.