the pill

A short in honor of those going through breakup season. 

She didn’t want to take it, but it sat in her palm. It was hard enough to puncture the silver foil, to place it in her hand. It sat there staring at her. A glass of water, and it would be done. Her friends urged her it was the right thing to do, “You don’t let things like this go on for too long”. "It's been a few years on and off, you know it's not right. ". She still wasn't sure. “It’s not something you abuse, but you don’t want it do you? It’s too risky to keep.”

She did and she didn’t…want to let it go.  Maybe that was the guilt, she wasn't sure what was guilt and what was right. 

She thought back on all of it, and he came in parts now. He had left just last night, but already he was in parts. His hands that were always chapped, always. His eyes, and this sad face that looked too old for his age. Too many lines, but always seemed to smile. It was probably because of the smoking, that he had quit now that he was out west, perhaps the west was good for something. They had fought one final fight, after it happened. An attempt to break the intimacy that was barely there. It was a slip up, a one more time thing, then a fight.  It didn’t seem explosive enough, as if they both hadn’t cared to fight anymore. She exploded wanting a response, and got nothing. He took it.  He left, she went out to get coffee, take a walk, and his things were gone, the few things he left there. He left his sunglasses, he was always leaving his sunglasses places. She wondered if he left them on purpose. 

“You might feel a little sick” they warned her "that's normal, it's a lot to let go". It was a lot to let go, she thought, it was a person. A person is a lot to let go.  She wasn’t sure she wanted it to be done with. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be done with his too tall stride and laugh, she thought at least this way she could have a piece of it when he was gone. She could maybe try and forget that the stride was somewhere else.

The pill sat in her hand, the glass of water in the other. She stuck it on her tongue, and pictured his face and she washed it down, tried to hold onto his eyes, his eyes smiling one last time, and she washed it down.

“So after this nothing?” She asked.

“You won’t remember any of it, any of him, not even his name. You’ll just wonder where you got this pair of sunglasses”.

THE ZOO
NICK, 38

You always remember what you were looking at. You don't remember what exactly was said or the syntax, or order, but you always remember what you were looking at when it hit. The reality that your life would never be the same. That you're parents weren't perfect. Ducks. I was looking at ducks. My parents took me the Zoo. In Philly they have this big pond, they're famous for it. It's in that book about a swan by the guy who wrote Charlotte's Web? No? Anyway it's huge, huge pond. And my Dad sits me there, and I'm so excited, so excited to go to the zoo with my parents, together. And I'm looking at these ducks, this duck family, with the mom and the dad with the green head I think, and these little baby ducklings,  and I think that's just like us, the three of us, together, and then he says it. That he's leaving my mother, moving back to Charlotte.  My mother doesn't say anything, she just cries, holds my hand. And it was done.  He said he'd see me in the Summers, he didn't even offer to take me with him. Like I was some consolation prize for her. "Sorry the marriage thing didn't work out, but here's this kid".  In one sentence my father managed to ruin Zoos and water fowl. And I just smiled and I said "Okay". I didn't ask any questions. I didn't ask about the work trips on the weekends, and sitting in the volvo when he ran into a friends house. I didn't want my mom to hear, or try to answer for him. I was a kid, he was my dad, and what he said I believed. Until the ducks. I went to Charlotte every other Christmas, every year she'd get me fishing equipment, and I don't fish.  He didn't get me in the Summers. The drive was too far for her, and she didn't want him to leave her alone with the baby. My mom tried to take me to the zoo, but I'd always get sick the day before. 

I don't want that for my kids, with Julie and I. I know things change, people change. I'm not saying I'm going to stay in a marriage that doesn't work. But if it does happen, if I do have to tell them, I'm going to make sure they're looking at me. 

It's the silence.

KEVIN, 36

It's the silence that kills you. The deafening silence and an idle mind. Friends stop calling because they don't know what to say, and you don't know what to say either.  So you're glad they don't. Her parents don't know how to treat me, and mine are useless. My mother keeps sending me cards.  And I hear people, I hear people saying it because I'm sure I've said it. "At least they didn't have children".  Like that's better, like I can just wipe it away with no record. No one to be accountable to. We almost did, I guess it wasn't a kid really it was an almost. We had broken up for a year, got back together. We'd only been dating six months, and I was just about to take the bar, and she didn't know what to do with her life. We weren't really solid. We just weren't ready, it just wasn't- and I wouldn't have been a good dad, not then at least, but um "Thank God!" No one to explain this to. Not that I could explain it to anyone you know? People just look at you different. I have this buddy from grade school, who I haven't told, because he looks at me, how people looked at me from before. He looks at me like me. And when he asks how I'm doing, he's genuinely asking, not asking to make himself feel supportive. There's no congratulatory empathetic pause when he asks, he just asks, and if he listens for a response it's cause he chooses to.  I'll tell him eventually, when it comes up. But it's waking up at six in the morning with no shower running, no clothes left on the bathroom floor, no half drunken french press. No sounds of the clinking, the heels in the hall.  She liked the idea of a no shoes household but we never got there, she had to see how they looked, every morning. She could have worn them with the same outfit a million times but she had to see. Like it could change. So there was the clicking. She was small but loud, always listening to music, always humming, always moving.  Sometimes it annoyed me, she'd never stay put. But it's the silence that's what does it.

Manatee Baby; Voicemail.

Left on a voicemail at 2AM.  (Not actually, but use your imagination).

I dreamt we had a baby, and it had huge blue grey manatee eyes and asked a lot of questions. And we fought sometimes, and laughed sometimes, and I got sad when you got sad. And we carried him on our backs up mountains, and on subway cars. And he had big lips and would cry  the deepest cries, cry scales,  and make noise, and keep time on a plastic drum.  And we weren't ajways happy, and we weren't always sad, and we (the manatee baby and I)  would make pancakes when you slept in, tired from work. I'd let you sleep in. Let you dream. 

And this is odd, an odd thing to wake me, an odd thing to say, to call you and say. Not because it couldn't happen, because anything could, but because someone else is dreaming of an actual baby - with real eyes, and  sadness, happiness, slings, and breakfasts, and that's hers. It's tangible, almost, it's a thought that could be real for her, a wanted day dream that she deserves to piece together to have ownership in. I don't have that. This was just an image that woke me one night, of huge manatee eyes that looked like you and me . It's been a while so I forget what your eyes look like, but they were ours I guess.  Yours and mine.  

But the truth is it woudn't work.  I wouldn't let you sleep in,  I'd need your help and wake you.

A poem (sort of).

And the world is small, and the world is big, and the world is many things in between.  And love is not what I thought it was, nor what i think it'll be. And nothing much is what it seemed, or seemed to me, when things used to rhyme, or seemed that they did... And perhaps my wants are getting closer to the want, I wanted before I wanted anything, before I really knew what it was like to want, stomach ache want, fear want, empty want, eggs and peanut butter want, and thought that someday we'd all just have. And my wants and haves are different now, different than my seems and woulds, due to could haves and shoulds. I thought I'd have a specific should but I don't. A should to hang my hat on.  There were a lot of shoulds who seemed like shouldn'ts, and shouldn'ts who seemed like shoulds, and for the most part, they were mostly good. And you wake one morning, take a bath, and realize that there wasn't one that got away, that perhaps it was you that got away, and there you are. So you get out of the tub and you dry yourself off and get dressed for your day.


(I haven't written a poem since I was a teenager, please forgive me). 

The first guy

I usually keep these things fictional but today is my Dad's Birthday. Below is my first attempt to write about the legend that is my father. 

I've been thinking a lot about my Dad. In my twenties I feel like I dated many versions of what I think my father was like in his early twenties. Tall nordic looking boys, who like to talk about Joseph Campbell, music, and drink whiskey. Boys that can talk for hours about art, and creating,  boys who can make you laugh, but hold a little darkness. Boys who do their own thing, despite yours. I imagine that's who my father was, the tall blonde, pensive, troublemaker at the end of the bar who could talk about anything. If I had met a guy like my father in my twenties, that guy would have surely destroyed me. Luckily I met the real deal later, or earlier, depending how you look at it. .

 It's a strange to realize that my father was younger than I am now, when I was born. Just six years older when after two kids he was thrown into a divorce. He was forced to grow up, and balance his emotions with that of two small people.  Sometimes he was better at balancing those emotions than others, but he tried. For a while I held up what he wasn't, what he couldn't understand about me, what I couldn't understand about him. In one of the only e-mails that my dad ever sent me he wrote: 'The key is getting to trust people as they are, and not as you want them to be' , I'm still trying to implement that one. 

So on this his birthday, I'd like to list some of the things I've learned from my father, the most beautifully strange man I know. Qualities I'd want from anyone:

Explore, don't be to precious with creativity. If you have an idea try it, make it. Making things is for the fun of it, for the process, not to please anyone else. This was done with everything from balsa wood planes, to ice cream in coffee cans, to tin foiling our entire house like a castle. (Yes, my dad tin foiled the exterior of our house like a castle.)

Find humor. Chances are you're probably taking yourself too seriously. This was true of me 87% of the time.

As a woman you should know how to cook, sew, use power tools, curse, and fix your own toilet.  Not knowing what to do with two kids on weekends, my dad decided to teach us everything. We found ourselves doing everything from going to zydeco halls to building birdhouses. The sight of old men gawking at two blonde children flinging themselves across the dance floor, is one I will never forget. Because of him I can put up my own shelves, fix my own toilet, fix my own clothes, host a hell of a dinner party, and yes my mouth does get me in trouble. 

Don't write a lot, but when you do write in CAPS.  I have only received only two e-mails from my Dad, both were gorgeous and written in all CAPITAL LETTERS. In art school when you drafted you wrote in all caps, so Dad still does. He doesn't get virtual yelling yet.

Find creativity in the little things; Whether my dad bakes a cake or fixes a garage, he does it differently. Cakes have blue icing,  garages diamond shaped windows, picture frames have poetry carved into them. He doesn't talk about these things, he does them.

Education through humiliation;This involved my father dancing at gas stations, singing the Rolling Stones really loudly anywhere, and asking me in a grocery store, and in front of my boyfriend at the time if I was a lesbian. His take on this; it was fun, and "Don't care what others think, that's their problem."

You can connect with anyone. The one time we went trick or treating with my father, we had to pull him down the street as he was talking to everyone. Candy was not plenty that year.

Never stop learning, but learn for you. Be curious.  My dad reads the dictionary, literally. His fascination with the iPad is amazing, he's pretty much going to culinary school through that thing. I think this is genetic as Google may have been the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Make space for yourself; this can be found early morning on the jersey shore, flying a kite, sitting on your porch, or watching the Eagles.

Never call when the Eagles are on. (See reasoning above.) 

Sing loudly, even if it's off key. However, your kids may eventually know the difference, and pick on your for it. 

"You were the best tree out there." My dad used to say this to me after shows whether I was in the chorus or the lead, reminding me that whatever I was doing it was important, but not too important. For the record I played an ant in college once, but never a tree. 

Listen to music. Do it, now. Stop reading this. 

Rest when you need to. Sundays on dad-weekends were notorious for fried apples, biscuits and NPR. I remember sleeping away entire weekends at my dads, because he let me. When asked why he didn't wake me 'Cause you needed it or you wouldn't have taken it".
'Ultimately marry someone who is nice to you. This seems intuitive, but a lot of people don't do it. Dad has now taken to closing phone conversations, not with "I love you" but "Okay, marry a nice guy." 

Whenever possible break patterns. 'Patterns of thought are things we hold onto to preserve our ideas and sense of self.' Whether it's the pattern of who you think you are or the route you take to get somewhere, switch it up and see how you feel.

Sometimes in art you have to go back from a place of 'not knowing shit' and 'stop trying, clear your mind of perceived thoughts, and just listen.' 

Get outside.  Whether it's to throw a foxtail, fish, fly a kite, write, or read a book; sometimes you just need air. 

"I'm not an artist I'm a guy who makes things, I can be an artist when I'm dead." Value your work, but don't take it so seriously that you become pretentious. People will stop telling and showing you things, then  you'll never make art.

Don't post everything on the internet. Keep your own artistic endeavor for yourself. (Trying at that one, Daddy, trying...)

Dear New York,

Dear New York,
I want to tell you that I wish I was there. I do.
 I'd probably be one more brooklynite soaking wet, and offering her shower, but I wish I was there with you. I'd be one more Astorian playing 'apples to apples' drinking whiskey in the dark.  One more east villager, taking shelter in other boroughs, but still I wish I was with you.  Just one more person laying claim to you. Perhaps I'd feel as helpless as I do here, watching anchors wading in water, and calling those with working phones, who seem to say "we're okay, we're here", who the day before said "we're okay, we're just waiting".   Maybe it's selfish, but I wish I was with you, for the waiting then and now.
I wish I could be in the Rockaways, or Staten Island, Dumbo, or Brooklyn Bridge Park, doing something, giving something,  instead of sitting here as people complain that it's a bit too cold.  I bite my tongue as they say "It's only like 40 blocks right? Can't they walk?" or "They get storms all the time you'd think the hospitals would be prepared".  I leave the room knowing this is said by people who can barely drive in three inches of rain.  I say nothing, because I guess I know, I no longer have claim to you. After leaving you over a year ago, I imagine I have as much claim to you as I do to my childhood weekends at the Jersey Shore.

I've wasted a lot of love letters. Retroactive love letters, sent after break ups and almost relationships. I've wasted a lot of words on things and people that didn't deserve them, and yet I don't know what to say to you. But  I'll try:

 You are the most resilient bitingly beautiful place I know, and you harbor the most amazing people in the world. People that have come from all over the world to quench their curiosity in your harbor, to get lost or be something bigger. People who are filled with humor and love and passion, people who create from days stuck inside, and days walking your streets, people who need to feel the ground under their feet, people that chose you.  You are the most beautiful place in the world. Not because of palm trees, or sea views, or cliffs, or things that mother nature should claim, not because of ancient architecture or aesthetics, not because of old world european charm, or consistency, or history but because of your pulse; your people. Your people;  they come to you with their beautiful restlessness, their need for consistent re-creation, for simultaneous anonymity and community, for simplicity,  and resilience.  Your people who move through your grooves and you in turn shape us. You give us the hope that you can literally turn a corner and everything shifts, that you can stake a claim in a city of 8 million, that you can be saved from loneliness with a smile across a subway platform, that you can recreate. A little water never hurt you, you've been through worse, and will weather worse. Perhaps if you could speak you'd tell us we we're overreacting,  that you're cool, you'll deal with it.  The lights will all come on, and you'll brush yourself off. You always do.

Miles away I wonder if the basement of 40 Jewel is flooded, if the roof at Garden Place is holding, if the vegan baker on St, Marks is  going to be able to afford repairs after his lease went up.   Is McGuinness is at a stand still as people wait for gas?  I wonder if Cup on Norman is serving coffee to those on their way to walk the bridge, and they probably are. And it's strange because miles and miles away, this is the most I've felt like and least I've felt like a New Yorker in my life.

-MO