We Must Find the Strength

It was hard not to cry in front of my sister. Still, as angry and disgusted and genuinely sad as I was, I managed it. It wasn’t my father’s words that pulled at my emotions; I’ve seen and heard enough nonsense from that man during my life that his juvenile declarations cause me none but the most passing of anxieties.

What bothered me was the effect it had on my mother. For all her nagging, for all her rigid discipline and obsessive catalogue of often-pointless chores, she didn’t deserve that kind of pain.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she gasped, her beautiful face contorted by sobs. Black drops of moisture flowed down from her eyes and left twin trails of charcoal on her cheeks. “After all these years.”

“You made me do this,” came my father’s reply. He was surveying the bedroom as coolly as if he were trying to determine what to watch on television that evening.

“No,” my mother gritted in reply. “This was your decision.”

My sister, meanwhile, was sitting hysterical between the couple who’d just been unilaterally split after seventeen years of marriage.

I really don’t think that my mother, even with all the frustration she’d been harboring and all the bitterness she was giving vent to, seriously expected my father to take her up on her suggestion that he leave.

She was calm when she came downstairs to get Pie, saying that my sister was needed for a talk they were having. It was only a few minutes later that a seven-year-old girl’s shriek of anguish and disbelief summoned Thomas and me from the first floor to see what had happened.

“It’s okay,” my father was saying as he stroked Pie’s back. “Mommy and Daddy both still love you. I’m going to be nearby, too, so I can visit all the time.”

My mother was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her head in her hands, looking like a person in total shock. She’s a strong and often august person, a woman whose hard chilliness can sometimes make her seem completely emotionless, and for those reasons her rare show of distress was unnerving.

The last time I’d seen her so distraught was when her mother died six years ago.

I’m actually of the opinion, along with Beautiful Cousin, that divorce would be a good thing for Our Family. Both of my parents have faults that would test the patience of most reasonable people, but my father, with a decades-long addiction to prescription medication, a persistent tendency to drunkenness, a history of physical and verbal abuse toward his children, an innately selfish character, and an unstable personality marked by hubristic highs and suicidal lows, is undoubtedly the more trying of the two.

The current marital crisis has its roots in these long-term factors, which have been enhanced in recent months by my father’s business successes and his most elaborate affected identity yet.

Ever since I can remember, my father has assumed stereotypical personalities and reworked himself to fit their confines. When I was a small child, he was the slick salesman; when we moved to rural Beautiful Town, he was a country man; now, in Southern State, he’s decided to be a biker.

He and my mother purchased their motorcycles years ago for recreational riding, but in recent months he’s taken this persona to the limit, attiring himself in leather, indulging in absurd tattoos (include a Confederate flag emblazoned with the term “Infidel,” which he explains is a reference to Muslim savagery), spouting off racist and chauvinistic babble, and generally conducting himself like a perfect ass.

The hollowness of this particular charade is revealed in the wild discrepancy between our economic status and that of his new “friends;” they’re as often as not thunderstruck when they come here, yet he maddeningly continues to denigrate himself by imitating their behavior and pretending to be their social equal.

This new trend has coincided with the explosive success and expansion of his company to make him intolerable. My father’s patterns are predictable: when wanting for money, he is humble and either subordinate to or resentful of my mother; when buttressed by a plentiful income, he grows increasingly arrogant and cocksure.

My mother, shattered, spent last night bewailing her own weakness.

“I feel like a baby,” she blubbered on as Beautiful Cousin and I wiped her face, patted her back, and stroked her hair. “I can’t stop crying. It just hurts so bad.”

Then she doubled up and seized herself as if she were about to implode.

“Mom, it’s okay,” I comforted her. “Really it is. The day is going to come when you’ll see this as a blessing.”

“BB, you don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve been with him since I was nineteen years old. I don’t even know how to be with anyone else.”

“But you can do so much better than him,” Beautiful Cousin chimed in. “Marie, you’re beautiful, especially for your age.”

My mother nodded, acknowledgement without pride of the glaring fact that her striking appearance remains unblemished as she approaches forty. She is without exaggeration one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen, but her ruthlessly straightforward nature makes her too practical for vanity.

All the same, she won’t deny the obvious; there’s a reason that men have marveled for years at my father’s good fortune.

“Plus, you have a great career,” I added. “And a great personality. You’ve achieved so much.”

She shook her head.

“Your father makes me feel like I have a terrible personality,” she lamented. “He says I’m no fun at all. I’m sorry, but I don’t want his biker friends hanging out at our house and sleeping in tents on our lawn. Am I wrong for that?”

“No,” I assured her. “Not at all. We don’t know those people.”

“Exactly,” my mother said. “And I don’t know what they would do to my little girl.”

My father behaved in an infuriatingly cavalier manner during all of this.

In much the same way that he used to laugh uproariously while his children sat in bed at seven o’clock, punished for imaginary crimes, he strutted about the kitchen calling cheerfully for one of our dogs while my mother attempted to regain her composure in the basement.

“Mom,” I counseled. “All of this has been going on for years. Do you really want to be with a man who treats you this way? Do you really want to have to continue to monitor his medication and deal with him humiliating you?”

That question opened a fresh wound; just Sunday evening, he informed the attendees of our Labor Day party that he was leaving my mother. She only learned of it when one kind couple came up to her and said that they were there if she needed anything.

“He made our business public,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe he did that. You just don’t do that.”

He’s gotten worse in other ways, too; just yesterday he promised to “knock [me] the fuck out” if I didn’t speak to him in a more respectful manner.

“If you ever hit me again, I’ll have you taken out of here,” was my immediate retort. “So fuck you. Get up and punch me. It would make my day to have you arrested.”

They’re gone right now, off taking a drive so they can speak in private. When they return, we’re to have a family discussion. My earnest hope is that this discussion ends with my father’s departure, for now he seems to be doubling back on his vow to move out.

If that’s the case, it would mean that his announcement to my sister, and the resulting torment it caused her, was nothing more than a ploy to strike at my mother.

I just want him to leave.

The Decision That Was Made for Me

I have once again stayed too long away from my blog, but it has been for a good reason that led me to a major decision.

Due to some extremely unusual circumstances, I will not be returning to Major University for the Fall semester. I tried, after conditions became apparent for what they were, to work out a way that I might commence classes in the Goldlands, but in recent days it has grown obvious that attempting to do so would be difficult at best and would likely end in my having to pull out before the end of the term anyway.

Let me assuage any fears regarding my health now: I am perfectly fine, as are all my family members. The factors behind this development aren't bad. They're just odd.

I got a taste of exactly how true that was when, after assurances of confidentiality on his part, I explained to Major University's dean of academics the justification behind my needing to either take a semester off or schedule my final exams for earlier than normal.

"Wow," he breathed, clearly at a loss of what to say. "I literally have never heard that before."

"I know," I sighed. "I know."

"And you wouldn't be able to go to your professors to ask if you could take your exams early..."

"Exactly. What would I tell them?"

"Right. Well, um...wow."

I haven't officially withdrawn from classes yet, but I'm in the process of finalizing my choice. Major University makes a distinction between those who drop out and those who take gap semesters, and I want to ensure that my intentions, of utilizing a temporary leave from college, are understood.

In the meantime my internship at Major University has ended, my bookstore job is still there, and I'm soon to start searching for a second place of employment.

I agonized over how to handle a delicate and somewhat bizarre happening and despaired that taking a semester off from school would be horribly irresponsible, but now that, after weeks of internal debate, the decision has finally been made, I feel at peace with it. I'm happy even. I find myself looking forward to Fall without college, Fall without midterms, Fall without tuition and loans.

This autumn will be the first since I was four years old that I won't be enrolled in school. That's bound to be weird.

There are certain considerations I've made regarding this, things I'm determined to do. First of all, I will find a second job and I will work a great deal. A money-making opportunity like this must be exploited. Second, I will maintain the vibrant social life that has made the last year and a half of my life such a joy. That will likely mean heading to Major University for weekend bashes, so I may not be wholly absent from campus.

Other than that, I'm taking things one day at a time and doing the best I can with that.

Captain Vanilla and the Great Adventure Part I

The following is the first part of my short story, Captain Vanilla and the Great Adventure, which follows the journey of a nineteen-year-old boy on an unusual and unlikely odyssey.

I am posting it here as a trial entry; if reader response is positive enough, I will continue to upload the various parts. If there is not sufficient interest, I will refrain from adding any more of the story to this blog and will take no offense.

I hope you enjoy and I look forward to hearing opinions.


Early afternoon sunlight poured in through the classroom windows, illuminating the copper hair of a young female instructor who stared with an anxious look at an orange-haired boy.

"Vanilla, I think you should stay."

He paused, then looked toward the door, from which he could hear the echoes of laughter as the other students left for the end of the semester.

He turned back to his professor.

"No, I don't think so," he replied, brushing a long lock away from his freckled face. "I don't think I can."

"Vanilla," she said, her brown eyes looking into his bright green ones. "I know it's been hard. I know it's been difficult. But the first year is trying for many people."

The boy turned away and did not answer.

His professor had worried about him all this year, concerned for the quiet student who spoke little and seemed to drift into a different world from the others. Often, during tests or while giving lecture, she'd circled the room to find him doodling in the margins of his notebook, fantastic images of flying ships and huge lizard birds.

For all his brightness, though, she sensed in him a loneliness she didn't know how to alleviate. It was improper at the university level for her to inquire into her pupils' personal lives, but still, she wondered.

"I miss my family," he said finally. His eyes moved to the floor as he said it. "And my friends, from before. This place is not for me. It doesn't make me happy."

"But Vanilla, what will you do outside of here?" she asked. "You're an intelligent young man, someone I know could go far. You're nineteen years old. Where else would you be?"

"Anywhere," he answered immediately, his pretty face turning into a sad smile. "I'm sorry, Professor. I have to go now."

He swung his green backpack over his shoulder and hurried from the room, leaving her standing alone, as worried as before.

He dashed through the gardens outside, fighting the urge to cry.

"Vani!" a girl's voice called.

He turned around to see Stacy, a smiling brunette from his music class.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Home," he said, and ran off.

During the bus ride back to his apartment, he stared out the window. Paris was such a beautiful city in the summertime.

When he arrived home, he sat at the kitchen table munching on a candy cane. The apartment was his alone, a luxurious, wood-paneled affair complete with a chef who came every other day, a gift from wealthy parents.

The sun dipped lower beneath the horizon as he ate and read, until one moment he looked up and the silhouettes of the city's tallest buildings were laid out on his living room floor.

He called his sister, who was studying far away, and reached her voice mail.

"Hey, sis," he whispered into the receiver. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say or why he wanted to talk to her. "I miss you. Call me."

After the sky had darkened to black, he turned on the shower. He'd meant to get in and out, wash his hair and be done with it, but the shower was his thinking spot, where he went when something was bothering him, and subconsciously he'd been drawn there that night.

Why was he like this? It was something he wondered often.

He'd just made a major life decision, the decision to drop out of college after one year, and he didn't even know why. Was it something to do with everyone else, the way their interests seemed to diverge from his so sharply, the way they spent all of their free time in nightclubs when all he longed for was a field filled with daisies? Was it that his chosen field, architecture, didn't really inspire him but that he didn't know how to quantify what did?

How do you tell the world that the things you love the most are blue skies and bright flowers, and chocolates and sugar cubes and warm blankets on cold days? What did any of that mean?

He got out of the shower and pulled on some underwear. Before he went to bed, he wiped the fog off of the bathroom mirror and stared at himself in the glass. Who was he, anyway? Who was this person with tiny shoulders and long orange hair and a smooth face that had never known a razor? It was almost like he'd been trapped in a child's body, never to grow up.

It would have bothered him if it weren't such a lovely thought.

As he walked into his room, he stared at the stuffed pink rabbit that sat on his dresser.

"What are we going to do now, Lapin?" he asked.

The bunny didn't answer.

He climbed into bed and fell asleep straightaway.

His dreams were always magical, but that night they were truly marvelous.

He was flying upward through a green sky, passing through fluffy clouds that were so realistic he could feel the cool moisture coming off of them. Next to him, soaring in the air, was a black-haired boy about his own age who waved over at him.

The boy yelled something, but Vanilla couldn't make out what it was.

"I can't hear you!" he shouted back.

The boy cupped his hand to his hear and shrugged. For some reason, it made both of them laugh.

Vanilla's head smacked against something hard, and his vision went black.

He was in bed again, his sleep disturbed by the sounds of morning. Birds chirped in the gray predawn light, and tree branches blew back and forth in the wind. The noises were oddly loud, though. Had he left a window open before turning in?

Without warning, a draft of freezing water doused his face, waking him as he gasped and sputtered.

He jumped out of bed, and his bare foot came down on a wet wooden board.

Where Have You Been, BB?

I would like to apologize for my prolonged absence from the blogosphere. I had a very legitimate reason for being away, but it is not one I feel would be proper to discuss here.

I will resume regular entries within the next few days but will first post the inaugural installment of Captain Vanilla and the Great Adventure, a short story I'm working on. A late Hair Update will be arriving soon as well.

I am eager to catch up on everyone's blogs and get back into the groove of my own. Thanks for waiting for me while I was gone.

When Life Is Awesome

“Wow, it looks like they parked my car really close to the one in front of it,” I mused as I strode down a street in Mountain Town.

It was just after five o’clock on Friday afternoon, and, fresh from my shift at Mountain Town Used Book Store, I was headed to the auto shop where my car had been detained for the better part of three days.

Those three days had left me antsy.

It’s not that I mind the half-hour walks to the bookstore, or even the blistering sun as it coats Mountain Town with its summer blanket of heat and humidity. Those things I can deal with, even enjoy. What got to me was the feeling of being trapped.

In a rural area with no public transportation to speak of, possession of an automobile is imperative.

“It’s funny to me how people in the Goldlands think of a twenty-minute drive to see a friend as being a big deal,” Laquesha said to me during one of her frequent visits to my house.

“I know,” I said. “It’s a completely different set of standards. Living out here gives you a new conception of distance.”

Given my car’s age-—it’s but a year younger than Thomas—-it has handed me only trifling maintenance problems. The check-engine light first came on in 2008, two years after I bought the vehicle, and I was able to successfully ignore the warning until last summer, when a torque-converter switch absolutely had to be fixed.

That same summer during annual inspection, I was told that my car would pass muster but that its brakes would soon need attending to. I rode those things for a year straight without once getting them looked at, and I take some perverse pride in the fact that by the time I rolled into the repair shop for my 2010 inspection, the pads were worn down to the metal.

It’s not that I’m irresponsible, just that I’m a college student, which by occupational definition makes me poor. I have to figure out ways to stretch money very far.

So when two months ago my Oldsmobile started shaking at lower speeds, I paid it no mind. As the shaking grew worse, I found myself dreading the beginning of my morning commute, the part when I’d be stuck in the 25-mile-per-hour zone that surrounds Mountain Town. So long as I could get above 40 miles per hour, I’d be alright.

Even in my complacent denial, however, I noted that the speed I needed to attain to escape the vehicular spasms was slowly climbing. About a week ago it had risen to 50 miles per hour, and then one afternoon on the highway heading home my car abruptly started to violently convulse. My speedometer read 75 miles per hour.

I went up and down, slowed and accelerated, but nothing I did stopped the tremors, which by that time had grown so bad that the vehicle rumbled even at a complete stop.

I called out of work the next day and took my car to Mountain Town Auto Shop, where a mechanic informed me that I needed new spark plugs and that the parts and labor would cost me $300.00.

Mountain Town Auto is the kind of small-town establishment that has a near monopoly on car repairs and uses that advantage to exact shameless prices from its customers. The last time I went there, to get new brake pads and have a window replaced, the employees resealed my door panels with scotch tape and left my back window hanging loose.

I doubt anyone was too happy when my father in essence forced them to mend these errors for free, which is why at first I assumed that the sight greeting me last Friday was evidence of an intentional act.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered when I reached the parking lot. “Is this serious?”

I looked over at the shop office, which was cravenly empty, and started fuming as I whipped out my cell phone to dial my mother.

“Listen,” I said to her. “I need you to come down here and pick me up. Bring a camera.”

“Why?” she asked. "I'm sitting out back by the pool."

"Because," I said. "They parked a car on my car."

"Well, can you drive it home?"

"Mom," I explained. "There is literally a car on top of my car!"

What had appeared to be only an unseemly close distance between cars from far away was in fact the joining of two automobiles, with one's trunk sitting astride the other's hood.

Just as I started to really get into my complaining, a police officer drove up and pulled into the parking lot.

"Oh, good, there's a cop here," I told my mother, turning to the man as he got out of his cruiser. "Hey! You're going to be my witness!"

As if on command, he produced a digital camera and started snapping pictures of the scene.

"How long have you been here?" he asked. His tone did not suggest anything, but I was curious.

"I got here a few seconds before you did," I told him. "Why?"

It dimly occurred to some corner of my brain that he may not have stopped just because he saw me standing there looking exasperated.

"Well, there was an accident here," he replied.

"Wait, what happened?" I inquired.

"An eighteen-wheeler ran through the stop sign and hit several cars."

I stared at him.

"Are you saying that an eighteen-wheeler hit my car?" I asked. "In the parking lot of the repair shop where I literally just got it fixed?"

He nodded.

My reaction probably wasn't what he expected.

"That's awesome," I responded, breaking into laughter. "I mean, really. That's kind of amazing."

The big truck had actually struck the car in front of mine, sending it, totaled, flying into my hood.

"How long ago did this happen?" I wanted to know.

"About five minutes ago," he answered.

"That's great," I said, reflecting on the fact that I'd stayed after at work a quarter hour later than normal. "If I'd been here five minutes earlier, I could have gotten my car and left."

"Yes," he said, looking at me as if I were missing something. "But you also would have been in the car."

"Ah," I noted, suddenly realizing what he was getting at. "True."

My mother was vaguely surprised and my father furious--the truck driver had tried to run--but all things told the actual damage done was surprisingly minimal. The car in front of me absorbed most of the impact, so other than a dent and a scratch, both on the hood, my own vehicle was still completely drivable.

All the same, though, what are the odds?

Just a day in the life of BB.

The Routine

I hope you'll excuse the length of this post, but it's my first regular one (i.e., not a Selected Entries or Hair Update) in quite a while.

There is something about obligation that daunts me. Almost any job, no matter how much I enjoy it and no matter how pleasant, soon becomes a chore, and I find myself when at work counting the time to be home and when home dreading the time I have left until I must return to work.

The weirdest thing about this is that it applies even to occupations I should like.

I have been under the employ of Major University for the last two months, performing public relations work that both utilizes my unique skills as a reporter and further prepares me, through the conferral of additional media credentials, to enter the journalism field upon graduation. Despite this, and for no real reason, I soon found that the three-day work weeks dragged, with each Wednesday afternoon seeming to come later than the last.

So I moved to shorten my time in the office even further. Reasoning that three hours on the road for a four-hour work day was impractical, I requested and was granted permission from my supervisor to work from home on Wednesdays, thus shaving my actual work week down to two days.

Still, though, the five days of free time seemed to whiz by, often without my having accomplished anything meaningul, and before I knew it it was Monday morning again and I was headed back to the Godlands. Even though my work week had and weekend had reversed positions, I still felt I didn't have enough time off.

The solution, as it paradoxically turned out, was to find another job.



The Mountain Town Bookstore is a magical place filled with old and exotic tomes, a repository of the interesting and unusual that I've been visiting since I was a boy of seventeen in 2005 and to which a good chunck of my paycheck from Major University went.

One day several weeks ago, I noticed that the usual assistant was absent from her post.

"Is Lesbian Girl still working here?" I asked.

"Oh, no," said Book Woman, the female part to the husband-and-wife team who own the shop. "She went off to school in Tiny State."

"Well, are you hiring?" I inquired.

It seemed that she hadn't thought of this before.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess we are. Come back and talk to Book Man about it."

I returned several days later for an interview that was much briefer and informal than I'd expected.

"So, you'll be here until about...what, late August?" Book Man forwarded the most prying inquiry he would come up with.

"Yeah, late August or early September," I replied.

He smiled mischievously.

"Then you'll have to leave us to get back on the football team, right?"

He'd combined a punch at my stature with the assumption that I was in high school. I at least had to admire his audacity.

"You got it," I laughed. "I couldn't miss football practice."

He guffawed with me and then it was settled: I was hired.

"Now what do you think you're going to need in terms of money?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.

I froze.

Was it a trick question? If I gave an amount too high they might not want to take me on, but if I guessed too low from what they were thinking I'd be underpaid. I quickly reviewed my state's minimum wage in my head. Maybe I could get them up from that, to $9.00 or $10.00 an hour.

I reached out a tentative hand.

"What were you thinking?" I asked.

"We were thinking like $12.00 an hour," he said. "I mean, if that's okay with you. Do you think that would be enough?"

I almost cracked up, thinking he was making another joke.

For one dangerous second I hovered on the edge of outright laughter before realizing just in time that Book Man was completely serious.

"Yes," I said, suppressing the exclamation of "Are you for real!?!" that was firing in my head. "That sounds fine."

"Alright then," he said. "You can start next week."

"Awesome," I said. "One more thing, though: do we get a discount on the books?"

His face broke into a grin.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "It's 35% off."

"Awesome," I replied. "I just don't know how I'm going to get through the day. There's so many books I know I'll want to read."

"Well, you could just sit down and read them," he said.

"On the clock?" I asked, not comprehending.

"Why not?"

Just when I was thinking that the job couldn't get any better, I asked a question whose answer I'd need for budgeting purposes.

"Are you guys going to withhold my first paycheck for a week?"

Book Woman looked at me like I was crazy.

"We're paying you in cash," she said. "All of this is under the table."

In my mind, I was doing cartwheels.

All the same, it took me some time to adjust to the level of informality and relaxation at the store. After a few days I did become accustomed to Book Woman going out on coffee and cookie runs and grabbing me a free soda along the way. I also adapted to the couple's friends coming in and expecting me to join in their lengthy chats instead of doing the sorting and online databasing that I'm supposedly being paid for.

The other day when Book Woman, whom I told I'm trying out for American Idol, insisted I sing for her and a patron, I obliged them.

"That was beautiful," they both said, clapping as I finished an original song.

"Thanks," I answered.

The job at Mountain Town Bookstore is still a job, but in terms of pay, atmosphere, responsibilities, and perks, it's easily the best one I've ever had. In addition to taking home $120.00 cash a week for ten hours of very easy work, I've gotten plenty of complimentary drinks, a free book, and had my employee discount upped to 40% one day just because Book Woman felt like it.

My new schedule makes the weeks go pretty quickly.

On Mondays and Tuesdays I spend eight hours doing public relations at Major University, where, on Tuesday afternoons, I perform an act that some could construe as being slightly dishonest. I cherish my Wednesdays "working from home," but don't actually have any real desire to work from home. Once I leave Major University on Tuesday I want my weekend to be uninterrupted until the following Monday.

In that vein, I spend the last few hours of my Tuesday shift hammering out more stories than I usually would. Some of these go to my supervisor before I leave, but others get forwarded to my e-mail account, to be forwarded back to the school on Wednesday morning.

This means that all "working from home" really constitutes is logging into my e-mail for about five minutes to send off articles that my boss thinks I've been writing and editing all morning but that were actually completed the previous day.

I should probably feel guilty about this but don't. My view is that the same amount of work is being completed, just in a condensed amount of time.

Wednesdays I wake up at seven or eight (something that was difficult this morning) to start my five-day-a-week track routine, which consists of running 1,500 meters interspersed with calisthenics and 450 punishing crunches.

That probably sounds more impressive then it is; I only actually do 150 of those at the field. I then do another 150 immediately after getting home and another 150 after lunch. Today I may add 150 more after dinner, which would bring the total to 600 a day. I'll have to ask Black Boy, who has basically served as my coach, the pros and cons of doing them spaced out as opposed to all at once.

This is all very exerting and takes its toll on the scale; when I left the house this morning, I weighed 130lbs. When I returned about an hour later, even after having eaten breakfast, I weighed 128lbs.

This is not a bad thing according to Black Boy, who has noted my weakness in one core area of the regimen.

"You eat so damn much," he said, watching me munch through chips and sweets.

"I know," I said sheepishly, shifting my body so that the open bag of crisps at least wasn't facing him. "But at least--"

"Like, more than any one person could ever actually need to eat," he continued. "Spaghetti, popcorn, steak, chips. I mean, seriously."

Black Boy says that track members are supposed to eat six small meals a day, something I've just not been able to do.

"Look, you're going to lose weight," he said. "It just happens. I lost forty pounds when I started."

"Dude, I can't lose forty pounds," I objected.

"You're not going to lose forty pounds," he said. "I was overweight. You'll probably lose like ten or something, and then it will start to show in muscle. If I were small like you, I'd be cut up."

Our compromise is that I'm eating more normally-portioned breakfasts and lunches but not giving up my larger dinners and extravagantly unhealthy junk-food Fridays.

"Sorry," I said. "But life just wouldn't be worth living without that."

After track, I spend Wednesdays archiving journals, editing or adding to a short story I'm working on, surfing blogs, and reading the backlog of books I've acquired from Mountain Town Bookshop (one of these, Pirate Coast, about the Barbary Wars, is quaintly racist but enjoyably adventurous nonetheless).

Thursdays and Fridays I do track in the mornings before working from noon to five o'clock at Mountain Town Bookstore, and then Saturdays and Sundays, in between the usual literary activities, I try to make plans with friends.

On July 4th I went out with Laquesha, the Norwegian, and the Norwegian's friend to a local restaurant, where we toasted "the independence of the United States of America" and I climbed atop our table to open the umbrella.

My schedule is full enough to keep me busy without precluding spontaneous social plans.

I'm rather enjoying it.

Selected Entries: September, 2003

In September of 2003 I was fifteen years old and at the start of my Sophomore Year of high school. The entries displayed here are not wholly pleasant, but nor was the time in which they were written. As I aim to make my blog an accurate reflection of my current life, so should the Selected Entries Sections provide a fair and full view into the eras from which they are pulled. In this month I dealt with indignities at home and relished the arrival of Hurricane Isabel, which got me out of school.

September 1, 2003

Something terrible happened on the night of the thirteenth of August. It all began after we had finished eating our crabs.

We were beginning to pick them up, and Dad told me to get the remaining bag of crabs out of the refrigerator. I adhered to this request and retrieved the crabs. My hands still slippery with the crabs that I had that night previously eaten, I was unable to untie the knot that bound the bag of crabs. I asked my father to please open the knot while I cleaned up the table.

I hadn’t spoken to him at all (or, barely at all) but his response came, “No, I won’t. You’re so pathetic, you can’t even open a bag of crabs.”

To which I responded, “My hands are slippery and I can’t get the stupid knot, so that makes me pathetic, right?”

“Yes, it does,” my father answered.

I opened the knot with some difficulty, but first, in anger, I threw the bag of crabs down on the table before my father and said, “No, you do it.”

My father said, “No, you do it!” and I screamed even louder, “No, you do it!”

At this he gritted his teeth, his face reddened, and he said imposingly (or so he thought), “No, you fucking do it!”

“Why are you grunting?” I questioned aloofly and apathetically, although with an undeniable (and deliberate) trace of angered, annoyed impatience in my voice. My father turned, but did not answer, and after I finally undid the knot, he complemented once more on the pathetic nature of my personality.

I was, after several moments of this undaunted idiocy, moved to say, “Oh, I’m going to fail at life because I couldn’t open a bag of crabs, right?”

“Yes,” my father said. “Because it shows a failing attitude.”

To my annoyance, and to my growing anger, he continued.

“If you can’t do something right away you give up and walk away.”

Finally, my anger could no longer be abated, and I said austerely, “Like you walked away from college, right?”

That didn’t go over too well with him. He called me an asshole and began advancing on me. I don’t remember much of what he said, but he shoved me quite hard. In an instant I had lost myself in a fury that overtook me. I was screaming at my father. I threw my hands up into the air and shouted, “I do not need to be shoved!”

My father said something stupid like, “Yeah, big guy, then maybe you need to go to bed.”

And he continued to push me, forcing me back into the hallway as I yelled at him, even saying, “I said get off me!”

He turned me, pushed me forward toward the stairs, and told me to get to bed. I had barely gotten up there and I was pondering over my own rage when I heard the adults talking downstairs.

One of my grandparents (my grandparents Hick Family were spending the night on this particular evening) saying that they would clean up the mess in my absence, but my father said, “No, I’ll make BB do that.”

Then, “BB, get your ass down here!”


September 2, 2003

So, I was forced through the humiliation of then cleaning the floor.

As I did this, my father was continually instigating things to provoke me. He said, for example, “And you can get that grand (thousand dollars) from someone else; I’m done.”

I was sure.

“The closest that you’ll ever get to Russia is a book.”

Finally having had enough, I exclaimed, “Are you done trying to provoke me?”

He laughed and said, “Oh, are you gonna do something, big guy? You wanna go?”

I was horrified in my revulsion and disgust.

He is so appallingly absorbed with being the alpha male that he was attempting to provoke his fifteen-year-old son into a fight! The primitive animal! He partly redeemed himself later that evening when he allowed me out of my room to see Mars. We made up later that night.

I really need God to help me.


September 18, 2003

School was spectacular today. I wish that we could be dismissed at 11:25 every day.

I had one of the most relaxing Biology lessons I’ve ever sat through, the thirty-six minutes whirling by in no time at all, despite the unadulterated bore of a photosynthesis computer presentation.

Second-period Business Law went by similarly fast, the mod including a relaxed trip to the computer writing lab. I have two projects due, one on the War of 1812, the other on the Supreme Court, but I have sufficient time to complete both.

Third mod was the largest at just under an hour, which bothered me not too much at all, as third mod today happened to be Chorus. Given that I had been expecting a full day of school, today was quite a pleasant surprise. Chorus was soul-filled and cleansing, beautiful and empoweringly joyful.

We sang for the overwhelming majority of the class, performing early on with my favorite Chorus song, “There’s a New Song Down in Bethlehem” and concluding with the same song later in the mod. I love to sing it, and today, with an air of festivity spreading like wildfire, the Chorus was soulful, passionate, and strong. I relaxed. I finally relaxed. I had fun.

Fourth-mod Geometry was a fun drawing activity.

September 19, 2003

The day was over, seemingly before it began.

On the bus home, Lacrosse Boy and some other football player sat in one seat, while Military Boy and I sat in another. This other boy sits with me on the days that Military Boy and I eat lunch together. Walking home with him accompanying us was surreal. It was as if the school world and home world had merged.

Lacrosse Boy came to my house after school, and he talked about how Military Boy had just been walking through Andrea.

I laughed and said, “Yeah, does Military Boy even know about that?”

“No,” Lacrosse Boy said. “I never told him.”

Lacrosse Boy laughed once more and we both agreed that we would be socially humiliated (if not socially ruined) should anyone ever know that we were both citizens and rulers of the Aria. Lacrosse Boy was not only a noble, but also King of Atricia and Czar of the entire country.

We played Risk on the computer upstairs and then decided to go outside and play in the hurricane. It was so much fun. First Twin was so wet that he looked like he’d just gotten out of the pool. He kept making us all laugh by acting like he was a shaggy dog. He would shake his hair and make it fly everywhere.

It was in the midst of Hurricane Isabel that the Umbrella Game was created. One of us would go out about thirty feet in front of the others and release a small purple umbrella for the others to chase and catch. We would race around after it, and several times it took a while to catch it.

First Twin rode down a hill using a towel and a skateboard. First Twin was also briefly lifted off of his feet. Lacrosse Boy was there to bear witness. I fell on the wet ground, was blown across the grass, and was blown into a fence. It was fun. The hurricane was so fun.