Last night I started watching television with my wife. Wicked was on. I didn’t really have an interest in it but knowing Francie had read the book I figured what the hell? We were watching the opening scene when a friend called her. I paused the program for about 5 minutes until I realized this was a long rambling social call.
As a result, I decided to write something. Having read Hemingway recently I kept thinking about his assertion that putting down on paper 'one true sentence’ will lead to better writing writing. I searched for one true sentence but such things do not come easy. I gazed out my window and watched for a few minutes as the day faded into the night. It was at that point that I found my true sentence. I will post it below.
After writing a couple of paragraphs I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Too short for a blog post and too wordy for Facebook I thought. But I didn’t want to stash it in the 'I wrote this' file with a date and an odd title. If I had done that, it would have been filed in 2025->Writings->7 Abril 2025 Evening Walk. My final decision was to post it along with a twilight picture on Facebook.
Damn if it didn’t get some of the finest responses. So, I think we can draw two things from this. First, there is something to Papa's one true sentence idea. Second, inspiration comes in many forms including trying to avoid a normal and mundane telephone conversation. Grab inspiration where you can.
***
Often I walk in the last blue moments of the evening. This is that hour where light is mostly a memory painted across a western horizon so pale as to be nigh on imperceptible. My steps still fall one after another but slower than they did five years ago. And fall so much slower than they did fifty years ago.
But it doesn’t matter. I walk because I have always loved to see the world as it is, as it was, as it is becoming. In those two miles I circuit I observe stone and glass. I see decay and endeavor. I see impatience, love, indifference, anger and sometimes angelic peace.
My evening walks are a time for reflection. They are often a meditation where I empty my mind using the rote rhythm of my steps as my mantra. Walking down the narrow sidewalks of this old city forges a connection with the world around me. In the changing landscape I observe and in the people I pass I witness the subtle transitions of life. Forty minutes of contemplation, where the past intertwines with the present usually refreshes my spirits. Life flows on with me for now. And in the joy and madness of the city streets I am reminded of the fragile beauty of our world.
Go outside. Talk a walk if you can. At the very minimum inhale the late evening air and savor the moment where day becomes night.
Unexpected things happen. Cars skid on wet roads. Ice dams break. Buildings collapse without apparent reason. A tsunami wave rushes down a channel flooding farms, fields and towns. Snow falls in June or September killing buds in the former and dusting blood red roses with white in the latter. As you reach over to move your mouse while working late and on a deadline, your elbow brushes inadvertently against your project partner’s fully clothed breast. She laughs. Then she leans in and kisses you.
For a moment the world stands still. You are uncertain what to do or say next.
Pulling back in surprise you look at her, neither too long nor too short a glance. You are trying to gauge her feelings and understand what just happened. Was the kiss meant seriously? Perhaps you lean in for another kiss, embracing the unexpected. Or perhaps you chuckle quietly and suggest a study break to figure out what just happened.
Following the kiss, surprise, excitement, and a hint of awkwardness mingle together. Your heart races uncertain if it should slow down to a normal rate or stay pulsing for whatever comes next. Your mind struggles to catch up. You feel so many things in so few seconds. Exhilaration, curiosity and maybe a little trepidation take hold. Your mind keeps asking, “What just happened?” Some first kisses are like that.
In reality most first kisses are predictable. Often their meaning can be gleaned from the context. Some kisses are as formal as sending a thank you note. Many first kisses are simply the punctuation mark at the end of a date. Leaving an evening with a quick kiss near the doorway or upon exiting a car is almost a prerequisite. It says this night is over and no more than that. Such first kisses are often the only kiss.
Where the first kiss happens may reveal much more about its meaning. The first kiss could come outside someone's house, after a movie, or in a parking lot. A first kiss in a public place may be nothing more than an enhanced handshake. However, a first kiss taking place in a quiet isolated space can be the mark of growing intimacy.
First kisses often fade from our memories.
Last kisses are different. Last kisses can linger over years, over decades, over the span of a life.
Last kisses can have a profound emotional impact. They can carry the weight of finality. Their memory may trigger deep sadness or bring a wry smile. They can be the markers of life before or of life after. Sometimes a last kiss marks the end of the most significant chapter in one’s life.
A last kiss can carry within it, within two pairs of lips touching-regret, nostalgia, sadness, betrayal, longing and the deepest sorrow imaginable. Those lips joining one last time can leave an indelible impression resonating long after the kiss itself has faded. The thing is one or both of the people touching lip to lip may not know this is it, this is the last kiss.
It is possible that in the days and weeks leading up to a last kiss, there may be tension in the air. Each party in the relationship may have some unspoken sense that something has changed, and not for the better. Words choked back and lingering glances say something is wrong, something is troubling. But when the last kiss comes it is often a surprise.
It's the unpredictability of a last kiss that makes it so poignant and haunting. First kisses, carry the promise of beginnings. Last kisses arrive without warning, catching us unprepared for their enduring significance. The moment might only be recognized for its finality in hindsight, leaving echoes of what was and what might have been.
Max & Sam
Mid-March nights in the Midwest are bleak and cold. Daytime temperatures may top the freezing mark, but nights will be much colder. Sudden brief showers scatter a few snowflakes about. Breath still steams in streetlamp light. Clapping your hands together for warmth brings a soft patting sound from your soft leather gloves. This was the kind of night Samantha, Sam to everyone, was heading out into.
This cold weekend was a break for Sam. She told Max, her boyfriend of almost a year that being home for more than a few hours was intolerable. There were reasons, real reasons she needed to get away and be gone. Between the darkness of emotions at work and her parents’ unrelenting judgment of her situation Sam needed some air, some distance.
Currently Sam’s days are spent working at a home for troubled kids. These were abused kids. These were tough kids who acted out in violent and sometimes devastatingly tragic ways. Her job was to make sure nobody’s lid blew. She also made sure people got to lessons and mealtimes, that the kids observed reasonably acceptable hygiene, and that nobody did something they could not come back from. The job was tough and emotionally draining. Sam’s job was hard to turn off in her head when her shift ended.
The country was in recession. Times were tough. For a young woman with a degree in general humanities with a minor in public service studies, nobody was hiring. Department stores weren’t giving her a second look. The state wasn’t looking for workers. Sam basically had to take the first job that was offered. The only jobs out there for her were as aides in social work or quasi-social work settings.
Sam lived with her parents, but that wasn't ideal. Still the rent was free, and what she could afford. In addition they let her use one of the family’s cars to drive to and from work. But the price for free rent, free room and board and free use of the car was unending lectures on her poor life choices from both of her parents.
Her parents had repeatedly told her during her college career that she would be unemployable with her degree. Each of them took her aside at various points over the last five years urging to change her major. They urged her to take accounting and general business courses but she flatly refused. She was committed to a plan, a nebulous plan. In the end, even Sam couldn't verbalize the goals of that plan to herself.
On this cold March Friday Sam got home from work at about 6:45. She shepherded the kids, her kids, to dinner and back to the cottage. The night staff came in at 6:00 and Sam did not linger. She had packed her overnight bag the night before and made arrangements for her mother to drop her off at the Amoco station. This was the bus pickup here in this sprawling suburban village.
Her mother knew Sam was traveling to see Max. She was okay with that. Sam’s mom would also be happy for a weekend without fighting, without walking on eggshells. Sam’s mom had no illusions about what would happen this weekend. She put Sam on the pill at 15 because the girl was precocious. To Sam’s mom Max was tolerable. He wasn’t a drunk or a druggie and Max was pursuing a decent degree in engineering. If anything Sam’s mom that Max might be too normal for Sam. Maybe he would be a good influence on Sam, she thought. Maybe if her daughter got laid some of the anger would fade.
As always the bus ride took about seventy minutes on mostly freeway roads. Sam just pushed the seat back and listened to the large bus tires go zing, zing, zing as big old beast rolled on. There were three small town stops between Sam’s home and the college campus. Passing the first one Sam wondered why they even swung by these stops where almost nobody ever got on or off. Sam didn’t pack headphones and forgot her book. So she just stared out the window and got mentally lost, almost hypnotized, watching the lights across the dark fields appear and then fade.
Sam was jolted back into focus when the bus made the arcing turn off the freeway and rolled down the that ridiculous high offramp bridge down to the streets of her destination. Gears were grinding and the comfort of the freeway ride was replaced with jumps and jolts and the rocking of the bus as it hit potholes and twisted through narrow turns on neighborhood streets. A few minutes later the bus rolled into the station and about half the passengers disembarked. Sam just had a backpack filled with two nights’ necessities so the creaking and banging of the doors beneath the bus were irrelevant to her.
Sam didn't have to look far to see Max waiting. When he saw Sam Max dropped his cigarette, crushed it out and came over and gave her a very comforting hug. It was almost nine thirty when Sam and Max walked together, his arm around her shoulders, back to his room. Sam had grabbed a sandwich back home, washing it down with Diet Coke before heading out. Max ate in the cafeteria during the 5-7 dinner hours. Max was a four year dorm rat. The prospect of buying and cooking food frightened him.
Max was a year younger than Sam. They had met in the fall of the previous year when she punched meal tickets in the dorm’s cafeteria. Little daily conversations and jokes led to a date. A date led to drinks, then sex, and finally to their almost year-long relationship.
This was Max's last semester. He would graduate in May if his team could get their shit together and finish their capstone project for Design Day. Prima Donnas all. But all the drama of his team and the pressure of the design project fell away because Sam was here. Max was hoping he would get a job close to Sam and that maybe they could take next steps.
The walk back to Max’s dorm was long and quite cold. But there was no snow or rain and the stars were out. Max kept his arm around Sam the whole way back. Feeling her soft warm body next to his made Max forget about all the pressures and tensions of this last term. In addition to the project he had more job interviews scheduled for the end of next week. But with Sam’s black hair and piercing blue eyes beside him there was no world but them, there was no time but now.
Max’s roommate had taken the early bus back to the city. It was probably the same bus Sam rode here on, a turnaround trip. Max pulled his arm from around Sam to get out his key. As soon as the lock clicked open Sam pushed into the room while Max turned around to lock the lock. Turning back into the room Max saw Sam’s jeans were already on the floor and she was wiggling her way out of her soft white panties. Before Max could kick off his shoes Sam was naked and on his lower bunk with her legs open and a sly smile on her face.
Max and Sam made intense love on that narrow bed. It was so rigorous that Sam’s kicks upward pushed the top bunk off two of the short metal posts that connected foot ends of the two beds. The upper bunk half collapsed on them and they rolled apart laughing. Max quite naked jumped out of bed and set things aright and then crawled back in. They finished their lovemaking in a quieter, more tender way. When they were done their bodies remained pressed close together. Sam usually talked after sex but tonight she was quiet, contemplative.
To break the odd silence, Max asked Sam if she wanted to grab a beer at the French Outpost. The Outpost was a campus bar that served French fries, beignets, Monte Cristo sandwiches and Belgian beers in bottles with French labels. Sam nodded an assent and mouthed an almost imperceptible, “Yes.” They dressed quickly and with a short stop in the dorm's respective men's and women’s bathrooms they departed for the bar.
The Outpost was about half way between the bus station and Max’s room. On a Friday night approaching eleven it was pretty crowded and busy but a couple left one of the booths just as Max and Sam arrived. They snagged the table and flagged a waiter down to get an order in before the kitchen closed. Sam wanted a pint of Guinness and Sam asked for some poutine and a glass of the house red. With the exception of expressing surprise at getting a table so easily and placing her order Sam remained quiet. Max wondered if he had done something wrong. This was the longest Sam had been around him and not said anything.
The drinks arrived quickly and the poutine soon after. The waiter gave them two small plates and placed the poutine between them. It was a house specialty and meant to be shared. Sam continued to be quiet. Normally between bites they would talk about what they had done during the week, what friends they had seen or talked to, and how fucked up the world was. But Sam’s silence continued. Oh she nodded as Max talked. She moved her head up or sideways answering yes or no when Max asked her direct questions. But mostly she was silent.
Drinks finished and the food eaten, the waiter brought them their bill to move them along. Got to turnover those tables on a busy Friday night. Just like that they walked back to the dorm, in the cold, under a star-filled sky, in silence. After another quick trip to their respective bathrooms to brush their teeth they rested side-by-side in Max’s bed. Sam wore one of Max’s t-shirts and nothing else. Max wore only a rake’s smile. They made love again.
They lay there on the bed the sheets and blankets wrapped around them in the disorganized fashion of passion’s recent embraces. A soft fleece blanket was pulled up over their now naked bodies. Max’s arm rested behind Sam’s shoulders. Small speakers played soft music punctuated by the random clanging of the dorm’s old steam radiators. Max had lit an incense cone in the little carved Buddha that sat atop his dresser.
Max decided to gently probe the silence. "So what’s up? You are quiet as you have ever been since I have known you. I don’t think you have ever gone through a whole evening with so few words since we met back when you were saying,“Meal ticket please.”
Sam shifted slightly and her now bare shoulder moved a little further up against Max. Her head turned just slightly further away from him. It appeared she was looking at the flat white ceiling when she began, " Do you ever wonder what you will be thinking 40 years from now? I mean when you are sixty two and looking back at your life? Do you think you will feel like you have made the right choices so far? Are there things you should change, or we should change?”
Max pulled his head up to look directly at Sam’s face and eyes. He was concerned about whatever was troubling her. Max wasn’t concerned about the two of them. He was pretty sure in his mind at least, that their relationship was rock solid.
Max responded, "Sam what’s up? Where is this coming from? I mean I do think about what happens next. I am hoping one of these interviews I am doing will pan out. It is a tough job market. But I got the grades and I had an excellent internship last summer so I feel I will be okay. I am pretty sure the chair of my department will write me a favorable letter. But what I will be thinking 40 years from now? No, I am not focused on that at all. I picked my career path long ago, probably in 5th grade when Ms. Deavers my math teacher told me I had an engineer's mind. Since then, I have been focused on exactly what I am doing now. Are your parents getting to you? Is it your job? I mean some of the histories of those kids that you have hinted at are pretty dark, scary even. Do you want to do something else?”
Sam settled back and turned her face toward Max smiling a little bit. "Max you and I are so different. I have never known what I wanted to be. I guess I was just hoping the wind would carry me someplace good. I don’t know what is going on. I like my work. I think helping kids is really my calling or some part of it. Don’t know if I want to be a care assistant forever. Maybe it is just the constant questions from my folks and their frustration with me being at the house. Max this isn’t about you, I really do love you."
Max looked at Sam with all the gentleness and understanding his heart contained, " And I love you too."
Sam shifted her position again but Max was okay with it. Sam dropped her naked leg between his unclothed limbs and her toes rubbed his. She continued, "I just don’t know what I will do about where I am living because at the rate I am going I will be a prisoner in that house for a long time. Max quickly answered, "We’ll figure it out."
Sam at that moment slid her hand down Max’s torso and whispered, "I guess we will." The conversation stopped there. Bodies shifted and the night became the joyous thing nights are supposed to be. Sam never returned to the topic the next day. For that day they did the normal things you do at the edge of a campus. You scan through used vinyl. You eat at Taco Bell. You walk through the campus’s memorial gardens. Sam seemed much like her self to Max. She talked, she laughed, she told a joke or two.
On Sunday morning they went out for brunch and drank fancy coffee drinks while reading a fat newspaper. On that Sunday evening, under a clear sky, Sam and Max walked together back to the bus.
Max and Sam waited for thirty minutes in an old converted DQ for her ride. The bus to the city and its suburbs was late. They made small talk. In particular, they remembered when the station was a Dairy Queen and how this particular Sunday night run always ran late. At different moments each of them got up and stared out the window into the blackness scanning for the bus's lights. Eventually it arrived and Sam boarded her backpack slung over her left shoulder.
A few minutes after the Trailways bus pulled away rolling partway over the curb cut, belching diesel fumes and grinding gears, Max lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he shook involuntarily from the chill air. He had waved goodbye even though he couldn’t see Sam through the bus's tinted windows. He stood unmoving staring at the bus’s running lights as they faded into the distance on the way to the interstate. Inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, he began his ‘brisk’ walk to his room.
After Sam boarded the bus home Max heard from her only once. He had called and written but her parents said she was not in and there were no return posts. It almost killed Max. His heart ached and he was wracked with self-doubt. Things seemed so right, so perfect. Had he done something wrong? Had he missed a sign that Sam needed help?
No call ever came. Her parents clearly started screening his calls because they never answered when he rang and eventually he gave up.
Some months later Max received a postcard from New Mexico. It was the only communication after that cold March night. The postcard didn’t say much. Sam wrote she hoped Max was well. She said she would call when she got settled somewhere. The. Front of the post card was simply a picture of a large cactus in the desert. There were no words that said move on. Eventually e did. There was nothing that signaled it was over. It was.
It was only many months after Sam ghosted him that Max really moved on. He had taken a job a state south of where he had grown up. He liked his work and they liked him. Sam one Thursday night met Trisha in the grocery store checkout lane. She was blonde, short and cute. They joked about what was in each other’s cart and the tabloid headlines near the register. On a whim Max asked her out.
One date led to another. It took a couple of years but they eventually married and had kids. For a time they were happy. But then they weren’t. Max divorced Trisha when he discovered she was sleeping with one of the Cub Scout Den’s dads. Trisha hadn’t asked for much in the settlement. He kept the house and they shared custody equally. She remarried to that Cub Scout guy, a doctor. Max didn’t have to sell the house because he could afford the monthly nut. He did well at the engineering firm. He had became a very young partner. Twice burned by relationships Max was now taking time away from dating and intimacy.
What the Last Kiss Hid
Pulling into the driveway, Max jumped out of the car and walked in through the side door. He set his briefcase on the desk next to his laptop. The man knew he would work through the weekend. Hey the Lexus and this four thousand square foot home on an acre lot would not pay for themselves. Dropping his jacket at the end of the couch Max took off his tie, kicked off his wingtips and poured himself a drink from one of five single malts in the liquor cabinet. As he glanced around he wondered if this was where he was meant to be, if these were the things he was supposed to have. He hummed a few bars of Talking Heads Burning Down the House. Max knew it was the right band but the wrong song.
The house was quiet. The kids were at Trisha’s for the weekend. They would return late Sunday night. Next week was his week to be the cook, the scullery maid, the drill instructor, the school taxi and the hockey dad. Luckily both boys are on the same team this year. Trish was handling transport to this Saturday’s practice and Sunday’s game.
Max would start this weekend like he had started most dad only weekends over the past month. He clicked through the menus on his smart TV until he reached YouTube. He then worked his way to a Ted talk title called The Future is Waiting for Us to Care. Care's female speaker was dressed in a stylish professional suit. She had written a book with the same title and it had bubbled around just off the best seller lists for a few months. Her credentials were her book, her MSW degree and teaching at a California school. The talk focused on how our methods of caring for at-risk children have failed and what she saw as the path forward. Drink in hand Max settled in and watched the video from start to end. The speaker was Samantha Hargraves. Sam. His Sam.
One of Max's college friends who remembered Max and Sam as a couple sent Max the URL. There was nothing in the email that suggested who the speaker was. Instead, it said simply that it was a meaningful talk and Max should watch it. Max was gobsmacked when he opened the URL at work and saw that the speaker was an older but still beautiful Sam. He googled her name and the book's name. Each had its own short Wiki page.
According to her Wiki Sam almost immediately after ghosting Max drifted west to where some relatives lived. She got a job in the public system of adolescent care in Colorado. While she worked in the system, she completed her Master of Social Work at the University of Denver. Judging by the dates in the post she headed west almost immediately after that last weekend they spent together. Sam's book came out two years ago and the Ted talk was a little over a year old. According to the Wiki Sam had never married. Currently she is splitting her time between being an instructor in a social work program, writing and lecturing.
Max settled in to watch the talk as he had done many times. His mind reeled from seeing her. Sam was older but she still had the various habits and tics that made her who she was. Her right hand reached up twice in the video to move her hair. It was the same casual motion as when they were together. As he watched she brushed her now shorter hair back. Her half laugh with which she often punctuated her sentences back at university showed up a couple of times when she expressed her hope for change in the child welfare system.
After the first couple of viewings Max searched Google for personal details about Sam. He found her email at the school where she taught. Using a dubious ‘search someone free site' he came up with a possible phone number. He had used several of those sites and was pretty sure of her home address.
But he did not write to her. Max did email her. Nor did he call her. Max instead remembered the weeks and months following the last kiss at the bus station. He remembered how in those weeks and months his thoughts crashed from side to side in his brain and his guts were in perpetual knots. Max had only gotten through those last months of school because of his drive to be an ‘engineer’ with a capital E.
And Max remembered the last kiss, a kiss he did not know would be the final punctuation mark in the Sam and Max story. Yes he kept returning to that kiss at the bus station. That night Max carried Sam’s backpack to the depot for her. Max set it beside her as she dug around in her purse for a bit to find the return portion of her ticket. When she grabbed the printed ticket she held it up with a look that said. "Viola."
Sam had then wrapped her arms around Max and kissed him long and deep. As Max recalled, the clinch and the kiss lasted for what seemed like a minute. He remembered her perfume's vanilla scent. He remembered the moisture on her lips. The kiss that ended with Sam promising to see Max next weekend. When they separated Sam looked away. The kiss seemed passionate but Max knew it was lacking something. The kiss had all the physical components of passion but Max sensed it was emotionally empty. The last kiss at the bus station was long but Sam seemed distracted and almost absent.
The moment of that kiss encapsulated their past intensity. Max realized in retrospect that the kiss also heralded their inevitable separation. Clearly Sam knew it then but Max didn't. Sam had hidden well the finality of their last kiss. She had hidden well the death of their relationship.
Max clicked the TV off and took a long sip of the peaty amber liquid in his glass. He would need food before he downed any more Scotch. He rose and walked to the refrigerator, opened it and stared into the middle distance.
Max’s mind kept returning to the bus station. Instead of kissing the younger Sam, his mind turned to the professional Sam from the Ted talk. His mind stripped out the background of the rigid plastic seats and lockers at the bus station. In his mind he created a neutral space with a kiss that lingered. It seemed to be all that mattered. But even in this phantom space the kiss, while filled with warmth and familiarity, also contained an off note marking the silent acknowledgment that their paths were diverging.
Max long ago realized that sometimes goodbyes aren't spoken and last kisses aren’t announced. He also knew goodbyes often linger in the space between a touch and a downward glance. The kiss at the bus depot had profound weight, more poignant than words can convey. In spite of his recent focus on the video, Max had quietly accepted the change that occurred so long ago. Tonight would be the last time he watched that video.
A single perfect paragraph, this is what I long to create.Imagine an hour (or three) spent at the keyboard crafting the exquisite first seven lines of a short story.My verb tenses will all be right.I want the various plurals to be proper.In essence what I want is to create something which is without glaring error. When I am done, I will have left words and punctuation so precise the reader is completely drawn in and captured by the narrative. I want the words in that first paragraph to be so good that any reader would know what follows will just blow them away.
But.
But I will never write such a paragraph. Why? Because I was a fuck up in grade school and high school. Sometimes I can mine a vein of memory or experience to open up a quite interesting premise, but the mechanics of my writing just drives readers away. Probably the only grammar that has stuck with me is what I learned in my 3 years of high school Latin. I remember the nominative and the ablative, I remember the pluperfect. So what? If I had have paid more attention to my seventh and eight grade English instructors I would be a writing threat. Sadly, the style and structure with which the ancient Romans captured their thoughts do not translate well to the modern rules of writing.
Note well I have read perfect paragraphs and pages of perfect paragraphs strung together. Ken Kesey’s first page or two of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, just perfect. The last paragraph of The Remains of the Dayis so unbelievable in perfection. I think the latter is in many ways more perfect for it pulls together a hundred threads of thought and feeling that were loose throughout the narrative and ties them all up with a big bright bow of crisp carefully selected words.
Yeah, I want to write a perfect paragraph.
Here is what I believe is an example of several perfect paragraphs strung together. These are the first three paragraphs of James Hiltion's Goodbye Mr. Chips.
When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape. It was like that for Chips as the autumn term progressed and the days shortened till it was actually dark enough to light the gas before call-over. For Chips, like some old sea captain, still measured time by the signals of the past; and well he might, for he lived at Mrs. Wickett's, just across the road from the School. He had been there more than a decade, ever since he finally gave up his mastership; and it was Brookfield far more than Greenwich time that both he and his landlady kept. "Mrs. Wickett," Chips would sing out, in that jerky, high-pitched voice that had still a good deal of sprightliness in it, "you might bring me a cup of tea before prep, will you?"
When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep, and lights-out. Chips always wound up the clock after that last bell; then he put the wire guard in front of the fire, turned out the gas, and carried a detective novel to bed. Rarely did he read more than a page of it before sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming.
He was getting on in years (but not ill, of course); indeed, as Doctor Merivale said, there was really nothing the matter with him. "My dear fellow, you're fitter than I am," Merivale would say, sipping a glass of sherry when he called every fortnight or so. "You're past the age when people get these horrible diseases; you're one of the few lucky ones who're going to die a really natural death. That is, of course, if you die at all. You're such a remarkable old boy that one never knows." But when Chips had a cold or when east winds roared over the fenlands, Merivale would sometimes take Mrs. Wickett aside in the lobby and whisper: "Look after him, you know. His chest... it puts a strain on his heart. Nothing really wrong with him— only anno domini, but that's the most fatal complaint of all, in the end."
When I attended the Michigan State Universe in the mid-1970s the world was a different place. We still had hope in the future. We still held the notion dear that we as a people were evolving toward a nation where gender and race would no longer be limiting conditions. We fully believed that literature’s best moments were still ahead. Clearly this was evidenced by the high quality shown by the writers of letters to Penthousemagazine.
On one occasion several of my fellow MSU students and I pursued a public reading of one of these great works of art. We did this on a warm and sunny fall afternoon in the public lounge area of our dormitory. Our simple goal was to promote this uniquely evolving form of great literature. We just didn’t understand how the Pulitzer literary prize committee failed to acknowledge the talent of these great writers year after year.
On one sunny Saturday afternoon we picked a story at random from the September 1976 issue of Penthouse magazine. The particular topic involved was stacks assignation. Penthouse letters had a number of recurring themes, trysts with a friend’s fiancée’ (or mother), couplings in elevators, and finally encounters with persons with differing personal attributes.
Letters on library stacks assignations were particularly interesting to us because we undergraduates were for the most part were barred from the research stacks. At the Michigan State Universe undergraduates were expressly forbidden to be in the ‘research stacks’, the place where scholarly journals and quarterly publications were all neatly arranged in university bound color coded volumes. Titles like The University of Alberta Journal of Hydrological Data Assessment were arranged neatly in row after row floor after floor. Only serious scholars were allowed to wander there among that mixture of thickly bound material and dust, each title having its own unique smell.
Because of the serious reverence for the knowledge in these books very few undergraduate students got there. (There was a back way in but that is for a different story). Master and doctoral degree candidates were allowed to roam these oft vacant realms. Decrepit professors could cruise up and down these aisles. Their numbers were sparse and the stacks remained very quiet day after day, week after week. A pencil left on the floor in an aisle separating journals could remain there untouched for days.
It was the near vacant nature of the storage space for these learned treatises that gave rise to the stack assignation stories. These stories followed a pattern. First, the narrator would specify why they would be in the stacks, always stated to be a deep and scholarly interest. Next the teller of the tale (always a male) would find out that someone else was in the nearly deserted area. Given it was Penthouse the writer would find a comely member of the opposite sex lingering between the rows of books. Of course, the person discovered would be observed doing something suggestive. I won’t dwell on the wild variations of the suggestive activities but assume it something like leaning over a sorting cart in a short skirt exposing lace fringed silk undergarments. Invariably this would lead to a discussion of gymnastic sex worthy of the pliable nature of Olga Korbut’s limbs.
Well, there we were in our mixed gender, mixed race group, sitting around the western lounge of Mayo Hall. As I have said we decided to promote public awareness of this great literary form through a public reading. We would accomplish this by handing around an open Penthouse neatly concealed in another mass market publication like Time. Each of the 12 or so of us would read a single paragraph out loud continuing to hand the magazine to the person to our right until the letter concluded.
The first people to read got off relatively unscathed in the endeavor. The first two or three paragraph of these letters, and they were long missives, were ones describing the writer’s work assignment, the locale of the action within the rows of dusty cobweb covered books, and the pink silk underwear of the soon to be member of Olympic fornication squad.
Readers four through ten got the yeoman’s task of reading the descriptions of the sexual athleticism of the writer and his brave cohort. Readers four through ten also got to use the wild and varied adjectives and adverbs contained in the tale. Moist, sweaty and wildly are about the safest of those words to recount here. These determined orators also got to use the action verbs like thrust, and all its variants, voicing them in stage voices that would have made Sir John Gielgud proud. Hand gestures would accompany the narration, mostly staging directions (although sometimes they would be graphic representations of particularly difficult to understand maneuvers outlined in the text of the letter).
I did mention that this was a public reading. I did mention this was in a ground floor lounge of a dormitory. What I did not mention was that this ground floor’s suites of rooms had been occupied that year by a bunch of clean-shaven, short haired young men whose purpose, at that moment in their collective lives, was to proselytize to the world at large what they believed was the proper route to salvation. To those who went to university in the 1970s these were the gents who stood out on the corners in center campus handing out small green copies of their sacred religious texts one day a term. These were folks who did not drink, dance or smoke. They also did not believe in having sex standing up because it could lead to dancing.
Now as reader seven was in a grave and serious tone describing a sexual maneuver that had about the same difficulty as a gymnast performing a double salto tucked with two full twists, a stranger approached the circle unnoticed by most. The listeners were really engaged in listening to the reading, enrapt perhaps. The telling had captured their late teen/early twenties minds. Their heart rates were elevated and there may have been stirrings in their loins. The listeners were hanging on every word that was spoken with faster and shorter breaths.
At this moment, when the narrator was describing two people hanging nude from what must have been an industrial grade light fixture, a young clean-cut gentleman continued his approach from the monasterial region of the dormitory. The reader having seen the approaching stranger stopped his reading midsentence and closed the Time magazine thus hiding the Penthouse and its racy cover. The excited listeners looked confused but then they saw the approaching stranger too.
Coming to a halt dead center in the half circle of literary enthusiasts, this gentleman (let us call him Barry) produced a religious text from under his arm. Barry opened his sacred book and asked if the listeners if they would mind if he read what he believed were the holy words related directly to what he saw as a universal plan of salvation. All twelve pairs of eyes focused on the floor. Indistinct mummers were heard but there was no overt or unambiguous refusal to Barry’s proposal. Taking this as acquiescence, Barry spoke with passion. As he spoke the blood that had been pooling in specific places among the twelve listeners dissipated. Pulses slowed and breathing returned to regular rates. Barry’s stump speech was short and sweet, maybe 3 minutes maximum. At the end he gently closed his book, thanked the listeners and walked off with a strong steady stride away heading for the lounge of the east side.
When Barry was gone the then reader, who had quietly closed the Time/Penthouse combination left the magazines closed. Giggles came gently at first. Then came sheepish and guilty laughter. Then people began falling out of their chairs with guttural laughter and flushed red faces. I think Barry’s departing comment that the part that burns most in hell is the part that you sin with struck a chord with us.
We did not return to our public promotion of literary talent on this particular day. Maybe it was shame, maybe it was guilt, but we just didn't pick up where we left off. Instead, we wandered on to other activities like campus movies and cruising through the local downtown looking for posters to decorate our rooms. Some people might have picked up incense or market spice tea. Others wandered down to the river to feed the ducks.
Penthouse’s letters never received the literary plaudits we felt they truly deserved. I think we can only blame ourselves for not further promoting public awareness through additional public readings.
Out walking on a dark cloud filled night. ‘Tis a dark evening where the human made lights play against the sky’s innate blackness. Electricity, burning tungsten and neon gift wildly generated auras and stray light beams to these post twilight hours. Distant glows of yellows and oranges create a colorful edging to this November night’s inkiness. Up close these colors hawk gas at $1.85 a gallon and 32-ounce fountain drinks for 99 cents. Here a mile distant from the source of these bright beacons there can be seen a colorful filigree at the edge of night’s blanket.
Cold air tonight is chilled by the moisture that wants to find its way to earth. No rain or snow yet. Still, the sky is pregnant with the threat of one or the other or maybe a mixture of both. Snow does not draw the heat away from a walking body as fast as a cold rain does. Snow would be preferable to a pedestrian like myself, but to root for snow is to give winter an early and unnecessary acceptance.
Looking up at the twisted branches of trees an eye can capture the oddest of images. Bare trees reveal oddities that when leaves are bushed out are impossible to discern. On one tree I saw tonight a branch held the shape of a capital U. The branch several inches thick and ran parallel to the ground. The tree limb dropped down two feet traveled two feet and then rose two feet. A perfect U. No clue as to the why of such a thing, but it stood out against the sky washed pale by the streetlamps of my neighborhood.
Sometimes there is no why. Sometimes there is just the experience. Life might have no why if you take the most nihilistic stance, but there are experiences aplenty for each of us.
February is relentlessly dark in this northern town. Grey skies intermittently spit snow. Arctic cold fronts spew horribly strong winds with bitterly numbing temperatures. In this cold city you need to know where the warm places are. This taproom was one of the warmest and most welcoming.
Situated in a middle of the block, on a thoroughfare not yet totally gentrified, stands the Bedford Arms Ballroom. “Ballroom” is a misnomer, the place was a tavern of the highest order plain and simple. Three stories tall the first two floors of this public house are spacious. The Ballroom was often so crowded with bodies one would never notice the cold once inside.
Interlaced bricks precisely aligned face forward. The façade is elegant. Traditional Ontario yellow bricks line up row upon row. Even viewed from across the busy thoroughfare which abuts the Bedford, you can clearly see the tap was constructed in the mid-1800s. An elegant dowager the Bedford is a clear presence on a street that had grown to become one of the city’s main thoroughfares.
Dark grey smoked windows face the street bearing the stylized name, “Bedford Arms.” Emblazoned on the glass and writ large each letter of the name is crafted with all the curlicues and extra strokes needed to show a real connection to the gilded age. Smell of beer poured, stored and soaked from spills into the oak floors mingle with the scents of stews and curries. The place carries itself with a frayed elegance and joie de vivre.
The Bedford stays busy. 14 taps of microbrews bring in the crowds. 10 pool tables, up a half flight of stairs behind the bar in a space edged with an ornate wood railing, also help. But maybe it is the plentiful co-eds from the university across the avenue who act as honey for the prowling men beasts that keep the place so lively. Maybe all of the above coupled with the pub’s good and fairly priced food is why the public rooms are most always packed. Two dollars and some change still buy a cup of decent meaty chili here.
Wearing their workday suits, ties loosed, the duo had talked out all their business and most of their small talk at the bar. Feet on the rail among the bustle and boisterousness of a Thursday night student bar night, their conversation had gone one for better than an hour. Around them and appreciated by them as eye candy, groups of twenty-somethings women from the university hung in the front rooms. This place is nothing if not a meat market. In fashions de jour with au courant styled coifs the youth quipped and parried. These sexually charged bar denizens ran their well-polished lines and stratagems on members of the opposite sex (mostly). Each and every one of them was doing their best to not be alone in the sheets of a frigid student flat come morning light.
Watching the goings on, and occasionally affixing a label to one of the cons being played out by some studly young man on some buxom lass, the pair had talked through all their business. Settling up for their bar tab, they had consumed a couple flights of microbrews and some bruschetta, the two ordered some very old scotch neat and carried it back to a very small room.
Having been around so long the taproom had been tweaked many times over the years. In the back a warren of small rooms had been added to allow for small groups to conduct their private business in a quieter environment. They picked one of the smallest rooms probably because the chairs were soft and were almost certainly calling their names. A small gas fireplace was in the center of the room. The fire within was warm and welcoming.
Tonight’s evening was clearly near an end. They sat in those overstuffed chairs and enjoyed their drinks. Last call was imminent but probably didn’t matter. Contrary to a student’s routine of drinking the good booze first and then shifting to the cheap shit (when taste wasn’t important but the buzz was), these two old friends were drinking the superior stuff at the end. Good scotch was their dessert.
The room in which they found themselves had flocked dark wallpaper; it was a small cozy space. You could barely hear the clack of pool balls from the adjoining suite. Sipping Lagavulin and savoring the smoky peat taste of the Islay they both seemed to be looking away from the current moment into a point miles beyond. He had always loved these moments spent at the end of a day with a dear friend. It was one of the true joys of growing older.
All night despite the jokes and jibes the older man had sensed an undercurrent of discomfort in his friend and colleague. The older man had tried to fathom out what was the concern hidden in the background. Years before when he had first started out in the trade his boss had offered a maxim about what caused things to get troubled, to go sideways as it were. “Booze, babes or bets, these cause all our troubles.” The older man had adapted his old Cro-Magnon’s master’s sexist term “babes” into a gender-neutral noun. Still, the adage seemed to hold true even in this much changed world. Looking at his younger friend he sensed one of these might be in play. Troubling him was the absence of clues from which to make a guess as to which one exactly. In the public room the conversation was strictly tied to the business at hand. Maybe now that they were out of the public eye, something would shake loose.
When the liquor was seeping into their systems the darkened room’s flickering fireplace light had the effect he had hoped for. His younger friend had finally let go. The younger man had held his turmoil tight within a gripped hand. How did the phrase float out? “Have you ever been tempted?” or was it “You have been married for a long time was there ever a time you felt that it wasn’t enough.” Both meant the same thing.
Right now, the person sitting in the other chair was on a boundary line. He was trying to decide if putting a pinky, a mere pinky, on the “other” side of the border was going to be a problem. Was it going to be the marital equivalent of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand or was it somehow permissible by the unwritten rules of social convention? To the entire outside world, the younger man and his wife had a most stable loving relationship.
Hearing his younger friend’s query, the older man clearly understood what was in play. His friend was conducting a risk assessment. The experienced mentor knew that for some that stroll outside the garden wall was a one way walk into a completely different world. Consequences could follow that would be really, really quite serious. Some poor souls merely opened the gate and the whole shebang just came tumbling down. On the other hand, some people just floated over the fence and back keeping their mouths shut and never being discovered.
The older man had been to that border himself but he didn’t talk about it much. He knew both the costs and the reasons for being there at the edge. Sometimes salt loses its flavor. Sometimes the light dims in the world two people occupy. Sometimes the joint ride that is marriage becomes so repetitive that your soul seems to be weighed down. Some have described the emotional state they moved you to the edge as drowning.
He knew well other things can turn a head. Sometimes it is just that sparks fly when you move into the orbit of a firebrand. Sometimes it is just fucking bug lust when both of you know it is wrong. Hell, maybe that other person will know a new trick that when executed will cross your eyes and cause the beads of perspiration to roll. A well-placed tongue has been known to make that solid edge of accepted life downright porous.
To craft a response to his friend wasn’t easy. No two cases are alike. Each dalliance carries the promise of joy, but all carry with them the seeds of potential destruction.
He looked at the face in the chair beside him, “You know these lives we live are built on sand nothing more and nothing less. Our worlds are quite fragile things really. Our day to day life is gossamer illusion. From the day they teach us to keep score we build worlds that we share with others stacking expected experiences on each other brick upon brick. We move forward checking the “to dos” off a master list, job, marriage, car, kids, vacation home and so on.”
“Still those who share our path, be it spouse or a child, they are never really part of us. While not us they are woven into our lives like part of a fine silk brocade. But pierce that fine illusion with a harsh action or pull on a silk thread with some jagged reality and it all falls apart. What remains is not very pretty. In that we are dealing with human beings there isn’t physical wreckage on the ground, instead there is pain, deep dark pain.”
He continued, “Somewhere long ago you realized that you had a soul. You became aware that you wanted to craft something out of the time you have between the forceps and the stone. Maybe the path was easy for you at first, or so it seemed. But one day you opened your eyes and you realized that some part of your soul had been caged. And suddenly you also realized that the time flying by was no longer your friend. Right then you knew something had to change and mentally you began to walk to the edge of your known world. Suddenly there is danger. Suddenly there is passion. Suddenly everything is hard to understand or contain. Scary isn’t it?”
Stopping he sipped the old ancient scotch whiskey. He needed to decide where to take this next. What words would be the right words in this situation? His experience wouldn’t be everyone’s experience. His choices would not be the right choices for two out of three people. Looking into the fire through the amber whisky in his glass he knew why this place would always be part of his memories. It gave you space to think.
Resting the whisky on the chairs arm he began to speak again. “I have reached that point in my life where stoicism makes sense to me. Trust me I still would love to have the taste of new pussy on my tongue. Hell, I am sure there is someone out there that could fuck these old bones in a way that would send shivers to places I have forgotten I have. Also, I have heard there is no longer hair down there. But to what end? Life is very short all in all and the choices we make don’t make a bit of difference in the grand cosmic scheme of things. I am almost certain that humanity will die out and we will leave this third rock from the sun quite barren, perhaps sooner than later.”
“What I am saying is that all we have is our actions to measure our worth against. It might not mean much in the end but it is something. Who we have treated ill means something to our souls. What goals we have chased also means something in the end. I guess what I am saying is that you have to look inside and see who you really are. You then got to consider the cost of your next step to your soul.”’
His friend looked at him in a questioning manner. The question even in this dark light was clear, what have you done in this situation? Again, the old man’s answer had to be carefully crafted and offered.
A little more whiskey would be needed before he spoke. Had it been any other friend he might have lied. But they had seen too much together. They had worked hard together. They had cried together. They had opened their souls to each other. This one required truth but a careful truth.
“Did you ever listen to Dylan while you were at university?” He posed the question without making eye contact. “Bobby Dylan was a whole bunch of things to a whole bunch of people but at the very minimum he was an amazing poet. So many of his words are like little totally on-point haiku. If you listen carefully you can work ‘em around in your mind. One lyric that always has stayed with me was from his song Dirge. The words go, ‘I went out on Lower Broadway and I felt that place within, that hollow place where martyrs weep and angels play with sin.’ Having an affair is something that. An affair can leave ashes and carnage all over the place. The aftermath can be a hollow place of weeping when the sin of the angel is discovered”
Stroking his near empty glass, he continued, “But oh there are times when our bodies and minds ache for something. Even if everything in our lives seems fine things just happen. From out of nowhere unexpected and unanticipated sparks arise. Suddenly there comes electricity, compulsion, desire, passion and those most basic urges. In fever heat these drive us to moments where despite our logical brain screaming “no, no, no,” we cross the line. Our better angels are almost inexorably drawn to “play with sin”. It can come on like a gale from out of nowhere washing over us causing turmoil and danger only to be gone a few moments later. On the other hand, it can be a sustained blow that we cannot resist or avoid.”
The gas fireplace’s glow gave him focus. The warmth was comforting. He mused a bit and then realized that his glass was empty. He spied a side table and he walked over to it and put the glass down. Returning to his chair he rested on the arm and looked at his friend. His friend’s head was pointed down gazing into the fire. The light in the room flickered golden.
Quietly he spoke, “No matter what you do here you are not the first to travel this path. But please know there are consequences. If you are discovered you marriage, your life, your finances and the lives of you children and spouse will be about as upset as any apple cart can be. You, if found out, will never be able to put the world you live in now back together.”
He gazed at his friend. Well he actually gazed at his friend’s hairline because that head had remained fixed forward looking far and away into the light. It had barely moved the entire time he was speaking. The older man straightened up a bit and let a little air escape over his lips. He in the softest of tones proceeded, “But even if you are not discovered and you do everything right in carrying on this assignation there are consequences. I mean even assuming there are no stray scents or hairs to give you away you will be changed. Even if there are no photos ever taken your personality will be amended. One can only hope you will never run into mutual friends of your spouse leaving the place of your tryst. But even if the affair is short lived and never discovered there will be a change in you, in your soul or heart.”
“Keith Richard has the lyric for this one, ‘faith has been broken; it is a dull aching pain’. His friend shifted in the chair but the speaker did not dare make eye contact because he did not want to chance that his friend might be able to see what was churning in his own soul right now. “You will be different when it is done. You may have longing and loss. The flame that you fanned may leave an empty space in your soul that will forever change your relationship with those around you. Melancholy is close but it is not the right word.”
He looked down and then said, “You may feel dirty afterward, like you have gotten away with something and it may nag at you for years. But then again, maybe not. For some people a clandestine coupling is a release, a satisfaction of a need or a culmination that acts a reaffirmation of who they are. If both parties know the rules this is possible. Hell, maybe you will even find your true soul mate although I doubt that. I am not sure there are any real soul mates.”
Having looked over at his empty glass and feeling the glow of the scotch fading he contemplated one more drink and then decided against it. “My friend the path you are travelling is well worn ground. Think about what you get out of this carefully. Weigh the risks. The path you take is yours alone.” With that he grew quiet and his mind wandered to a place where the scent of Opium perfume mixed with the aroma one smells in passionate moments. In his mind’s eye the autumn light threw a warm glow on the naked full form of a beautiful woman not his wife. There in that image she was clutching a sheet so as to cover most of her form save her right breast. Catching his gaze, she smiled at him. And just as quickly the image was gone.
His friend never returned to the subject that night or at any point after. As that evening wound down there were no follow up questions. Instead they talked a little bit more about banal things such as the likelihood of getting a cab at this hour and whether the snow might have stopped. But no real conversation followed his soliloquy. And with that last call having now passed the lights came up and they shuffled to the entranceway and departed.
On the ride home that night he would return to the image of the woman in the sheets more than once. And when the melancholy began to fill his heart, he would look out the cab window and let the street scenes distract him.
