Football Sunday

My kidneys are overflowing, drip drop drip drop. I’m tapping my feet, shifting weight, playing with my hair. These movements keep my brain from firing impulses to my expanding bladder, which, in turn, fire back pains of warning. T-minus five minutes, tops. Eight fans stand in front of me. This doesn’t include the dad with two young children, who will easily add another few minutes to my wait.

This was presumably the only public port-a-jon in center city Charlotte. The rest were trucked in for private parties, who charged desperate crotch-holders $5 a go. Commies. A covert police presence kept us honest and kept our urine off public buildings. It would last until a few dozen drinks wiped clean all caution and it was back into alleys, legs spread and eyes every where.

A beer company’s got this lot reserved, the one with the free toilet. Not a single car. Just a spinning prize wheel, a weak cornhole game and chatty skanks on the microphones, chirping random R&B song lyrics and inside jokes.

Blue jerseys, the insignia of Buffalo Bills, are crowded in numberless pockets among the hometown fans, who are easily outnumbered. Tailgate parties cover parking spaces typically reserved for the bankers on the weekdays. Today, there are bottles breaking, incessant yelling and hands slapping and I have to piss so damn bad, and, thank god, dad and the boys are finished. A man in cut-off shorts and a headband steps in. Five left.

And the football game will begin with raucous noise and spilled drinks on knees. Heads are turning, there is yelling and yelling and yelling, nothing in particular, just screams, a capella versions of the “Shout” song.  The black jerseys, they turn to look and whisper in their spouse’s ear, and the man in the street says that we should all hop onto I-77 North, right back up to Buffalo, something about “Dixie blood in my veins, god dammit, always”. The game will end in the away team’s favor, “our” favor, and I totally should have fucking pissed in that conspicuous crevice by the truck, and what was I thinking? I tap the gravel and touch my sides and wait and wait and there’s just a dude and two ladies in front of me and I can do this. I can and I will.

A game’s end, the rotunda fills with the elated, who high-five, reaching across railings. “BUFFALO!!” And if you’re not a fan, it’s just boisterous, drunken noise from the annoying Yanks, no manners at all, no respect and there are kids around, dammit.

Fire grills burn up charcoal, carry across the lot, sting my nose, but it’s the best, sinuses flare and I suck in cool autumn air. A girl steps out and her friend, her friend walks off with her, she was standing in line for company and why the hell would you do that? Man, ladies are strange in that regard.

Laughter at every corner, and this day is good, man, this day is fucking GREAT and damn it feels good to not be cited for public urination, trickletrickle. I tell them all this is the greatest day of my life, my friends I tell, not the pissers in line. I am walking on air. I am healing sick child of skin-related illnesses.

We will stay, long after dark falls on a victory and this won’t end anytime soon, and it’s belly laughs with sore ribs and the muscles in the back of the skull, pulling tight, and there is a line at the crevice.

Lou

My Love as a History of Light and Sound

Part One: The Third Vanished Place

Yesterday I hurt someone that I love. Loved. Still love. With words. I used words to love someone I still hurt. No. I used words to hurt someone that I still love. Loved. Someone that I love.

Albeit done in jest, these words hurt that person and today I found that out and then more words made me feel hurt too. The kind of sinking punch-in-the-stomach hurt that has loomed here in my loins since early June and crept out periodically when I thought it’d passed just to assure me that it hadn’t and won’t.

Those words that hurt were erased with one mention of said hurt; easily erasable evidence online that ironically doubles as indelible ink on the brain.

Last week my sister visited my grandmother in a nursing home. Later, my mother reminded my grandmother of my sister’s visit. My grandmother replied, “Oh, I wish I was here.”

Shakespeare was dying all summer. He died. Was dying. Sunday morning he was gone, sunk down deep in the bottom of his glass bowl. Shakespeare is dead. R.I.P. Shakespeare.

The coffee table looks naked now and the room more wide open without that tiny glass fishbowl resting in the middle with a yellow beta fish zipping around in circles fighting the blue and green checkered tabletop or red fish food lid or colorful coffee cup; anything within sight merited puffy cheeks and out with the golden chain meal armor. He got sick and didn’t recover. I fed him medicine, kept his water clean, but he wouldn’t eat and finally succumbed to whatever it is that a seemingly otherwise healthy fish dies of.

This was my fault.

Books go. Went. Will go. But every letter of every word added up from every book on that shelf is one-sixth the sum of my love. And the space where that bookshelf sits; sat; used to sit; the empty space where that bookshelf used to sit is my broken heart in the shape of four square marks in the blue-gray rug.

And those words that hurt the one that I love came from this place that is now almost gone but can never be erased because of the love that inspired those words in the first place.

I still hurt the one that I love. No. I still love the one that I hurt. With words.

And I’m sorry.

jhurls

Headphones at Low Volume

I can’t put my headphones back on now. That would imply that I was unconcerned, unmoved by the news of my co-worker’s son, who, just a few moments ago, smashed his vehicle and is heading to the hospital. We’ll later learn he was treated for minor scrapes and sore ribs, but as of now, it’s hysteria, hands over mouths and back rubbing. I stare blankly ahead, mindlessly doing what I usually do at this hour — mindless work. But I do it slowly, confused, out of respect. I still feel guilty. Should I be doing this work considering the news? Subtleties would d0 well here  — wandering eyes seeing nothing, contemplative, pondering fragile mortality. It would be enough. It would send the right messages — I care. And I do (sorta), but not enough to stop what I’m doing because, after all, I don’t know her son, never seen him, and for all I know he’s fine, so why bother stressing about his assumed injuries? This injured man is her son, and, as a mom, it is her responsibility to be overly concerned, irrationally concerned. It is not my job. As I’ve said, my job is in the mindless work field, thankyouverymuch.

Zeus

Wondering why The Niceness staff has been slacking? Well, we haven’t been. Lou and I have been working on a screenplay, and we’re almost finished. In anticipation of the start of filming our first feature film, we’ve started a Tumblr blog here: http://zeusmovie.tumblr.com/

Make sure you check us out. Follow our Tumblr Zeus blog for updates on the film. We should have a Facebook page up soon dedicated to the film as well. Hope you’re having a great summer.

Hurls and Lou

Old Poetry

My friend pointed out to me that I had three poems published on poetry.com. Though I vaguely remember ever publishing these, I’m happily surprised to read them again. Here they are in no particular order. They are about girls.

(No Title)

at once the quiet thief was heard
stumbling through
broken chain letters
as she passes over his mind
time travel to repair the broken lost words
time lost is time spent in my days wasted
who will benefit
the girl who threw away love
or the man who shrugged it off?

(E) Or Red

what is the color red?
it suits you well,
you’re heartache
in a shape
that i cannot understand,
as if it were nail
in foot, through hand.
red is tears.

silenced love is hatred
bottled, kept dark
fine wine.
thought deep drank hard
is mute witness to mine,
red is two to the head and dead.
(red is blind)

Daydream (With You, I Want To)

Clouds that change shape above
with the sun that I see in your eyes.
Breeze blowing softly on the grass at our backs,
We could touch hands for the first time
and see our lives from the clouds.
Why don’t you close your eyes for a time,
lose control with your feelings.
Take your time with this, if you want this.
Let me be your first everything,
and you’ll be my first happy love.
You could be scared and I would protect you.
You could be lonely and I would keep you company.
You could daydream and I would be there.
You could just be mine.

Morgan pointed these out to me. She read this last one, Daydream. It’s probably my least favorite. It’s strange the memories that old writings jog.

JHurls

The Smell of June in Buffalo, c/o Chile

It was about a month ago that I jubilantly loaded three fuzzy peaches into my shopping cart, only to brown bag them to ripen and find the mealy blandness unbearable. Now it’s early June in Buffalo, New York, and the fruit, the ripe fruit I should say, is just starting to appear in grocery stores. And by no means think that this fruit is from around here…most sticker tags still read ‘Chile,’ ‘California,’ or sometimes ‘Florida.’  Anyways, I am sitting here at work with a (hopefully ripe) nectarine between my palms, holding it to my nose, wondering how something as simple as a smell can take me away to another place, namely the early summers as dad began to hang the brown and rusty orange colored awning across the steel frame attached to the back of our house, fastening the heavy canvas every so many inches with zip ties. It was my job to pick up the clipped zip ties from the uneven brick patio as dad cut away the excess length while balancing on a rickety wooden ladder with pliers. Sometimes he asked me to steady the ladder as he stood on the top platform to reach the highest point of the awning frame where it met the house, but really, what was all forty-five pounds of me supposed to do if he began to topple?

Our kitchen faced out to the back yard and on that day each year when the awning went up, a tremendous cool darkness replaced the brilliant sun that previously filtered through the glass doors and through the windows over the sink. For my mother, this day must have held a special significance as well. She  always managed to slip away to the grocery store on this occasion and return with the clear plastic bags filled with the makings for submarine sandwiches and fruit: plums, watermelon, grapes, nectarines. She would wash each piece of fruit in cold water, piling their stickers of origin on the counter. The fruit dried on lengths of paper towel, leaving damp circles each time I snuck away from zip tie duty to cradle the fruit and hold it to my nose, eyes closed in the dark kitchen, in June, with a warm breeze flapping the newly hung canvas at the beginning of every summer of my childhood.

Garbage Can Etiquette

This applies to you. At some point in time, you have been both the victim and the perpetrator of transgressions such as those described below.

Let’s be honest here, no one in the office wants to smell your rotting banana peel as it ferments in your ankle-biter sized garbage can, nor do they want to inhale the residues of that same banana peel for the rest of the week because we all know that the cleaning staff (if you are lucky enough to have one) simply empties the can contents into a larger charcoal colored plastic cart on wheels, leaving your coffee dappled, banana streaked, Greek dressing and feta gunked, thin as the workday is long plastic bag pollute the office air for the remainder of the forty plus hour work week.

So, people, let us unite! With our powers combined, we can inspire a work place world that respects the right to un-sullied air quality. Be the change you want to see in the world, says Gandhi, and practice garbage can etiquette. Dispose of pungent food matter, things that stain, drip, or stick in a properly lidded, distant from the working masses garbage can that you know will be emptied at the end of each work day.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Now get back to work before your boss catches you on our blog!

A Morning E-mail From My Father, Detailing His Golf Game.

“It could have been warmer. I know, it is only the second week of May, and in southwestern New York there is a chance of snow up until the Fourth of July. But we were looking forward to our Monday night golf outing and dressed accordingly. Some sun early, some wind throughout, and dropping temperatures when the sun disappeared behind the Benham Farm in the distance. 

“Playing with Fred and Bill for the first time was interesting. They are older and silly — keepin’ it real as only experienced Hinsdale Monday Night Mudders can. We are the last foursome, and we are playing the back nine again this week for unexplained reasons. [Wife] Ann is off her game a bit, but she and I are soaking in the quite natural surroundings of the rural spring landscape that we have longed for all winter.

“I found the creek on one tee ball in the middle of the round and didn’t even swear. As we approached the 17th tee, thoughts and discussion are bittersweet.

“Golf league is almost over for another week. But we will soon be in our car with the heater on high.

“Bill smears a three wood and rolls it across the green of the long par three and up the hill. Fred misses the ponds on both the left and right side of the narrow fairway, and is way short. I hit a sweat five wood (yes, my new one) that hits and holds six feet from the cup. From the women’s tee, Ann spanks a solid tee shot just right of the dance floor. Very soon all four balls are on the putting surface, and Ann is lining up a long roller with her back toward the tee box from whence we started this next to last hole. Fred, Bill, and I are not watching her. We are staring at the giant beaver walking across the fairway!

“I missed the birdie attempt, but I saw the giant beaver.”

12:21 p.m.

The sun’s out, and I would much rather be out there somewhere, mowing a lawn or something, getting sweaty, drinking an iced tea, flirting with the idea of hopping in the car and driving out West for no particular reason but to see the big, blue Pacific Ocean, hills of green rising out of the earth’s edges, and all along the way, I’ll stop in old store fronts and buy a bottle of Coke, because out there those shops still have the glass bottles, and the clerk is an older guy with glasses and a limp, who has lived in town his whole life, and he’ll say he sees a lot of guys like me rolling through, heading somewhere real special, and he says to be safe and to get myself a full tank of gas before heading out through New Mexico because “You’ll never know when you’ll find a station out there”, and I’ll file his words away and head through Nebraska, flat Nebraska, with nothing but those long fields that you see in pictures, and with nobody around, in no hurry myself, I’ll pull off onto the shoulder on some two-lane road, get out and go sit in one of those long fields, except there’s no crops yet, only rows of dirt, and I’ll do nothing but look around, and gusts of wind will throw bits of dusty land at my face, and I’ll see some storm clouds way off and get concerned, thinking, “Was it Nebraska or Kansas that gets the tornadoes?”, and I’ll say, “Oh well, better get a move on anyway”, and my next stop will be someplace in Colorado, probably Denver because Ginsberg and Kerouac hung out there way back when, and the city will have cobblestone streets, wet with the day’s rain, and I’ll walk around when it gets dark, street lights glowing overhead, laughter spilling out of watering holes, and I’ll head back and sleep in the car with the windows down because what is there to steal? And in the morning, the desert will wait for me and I’ll remember the clerk’s words even though I won’t be going through New Mexico but Nevada, pushing the car up into 90 mph because who gives a shit about the speed limit out here in no-man’s-land? And I won’t  stop until Las Vegas, where everyone looks like a lost member of the Rat Pack, holding unlit cigarettes and saying, “You’re beautiful, truly beautiful”, and, on the singing streets, I’ll see my brother there with his wife and we’ll take to the bright casinos with the soft, round tables, and have a couple drinks, laying a few dollars down every now and again but not all concerned about the card game but more about the time, catching up, and in the morning, it’ll still be hot as hell, and once I’m on the highway, I’ll see piles of rocks in the median where grass should be and I’ll think, “You don’t see that back East”, and I won’t stop until I get to the Pacific, where the water’s bluer, or so it looks in pictures, and I’ll take to some boardwalk,  just off the beach, this is probably someplace in Oregon or Northern California, and there’s a buzz all over, young people smiling in fluorescent beach clothes and old men, shirtless, and their sagging wives, lying beneath the heat, asking me where I’m from and offering wisdom and a bite of a sandwich, and I’ll say aloud, because I just can’t keep it to myself, I’ll say, “Why, this might be the best day of my life.”

“How’s Your Face?” Charlie Yelled

Charlie was 10 years old. He was angry a lot because his Mom cooked him refried beans, and his Dad yelled too much.

Charlie was older and bigger than his fellow third graders. His favorite sport was punching them in the faces.

One day, during a math test, Classmate Kyle covered his answers so Charlie couldn’t cheat. Furious, Charlie hit Classmate Kyle in the mouth. Classmate Kyle’s lips bled through his fingers and onto his test answers.

“How’s your face?” Charlie yelled.

“MMRRPHPHMRPH,” Classmate Kyle said.

The Teacher screamed and dragged Charlie out into the hall.

“You stay right here until I’m finished finding Kyle’s teeth,” she said.

Charlie got pretty bored sitting in the vacant hall. But then, Second Grade Pat walked by on his way to the bathroom.

“What are you looking at?” Charlie said.

“What?” Second Grade Pat asked.

“I’m going to punch you now,” Charlie said.

Second Grade Pat was bummed about this news.

“Ah, man,” he said.

Charlie hit Second Grade Pat.

“How’s your face?” Charlie yelled.

“OWWWMyEYE!” Second Grade Pat said.

The principal, Mr. Artlack, was coming out of the bathroom when he saw Charlie hit Pat.

“Get to my office now, Charlie,” he said.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Fartsack,” Charlie said.

In his office, Mr. Fartsack laid down the law while Charlie sat indifferent. “If you hit any more classmates, I will suspend you, and the only learning you’ll be doing is Drinking 101 with your deadbeat dad.”

Charlie got mad, hopped from his chair and socked Mr. Fartsack in his eyeballs, then his fat nose, then his fat mouth.

“What the hell are you doing, you crazy fucker?” Mr. Fartsack screamed.

“How’s your face?” Charlie yelled.

Mr. Fartsack pinned Charlie down.

“My face is fine,” Mr. Fartsack said. “Your punches don’t hurt. You’re only a child, and I’m a grown man! Now get the hell out of my school!”

Charlie decided to walk home and watch TV. But first, he wanted some ice cream. He was getting sick of eating beans, and his Mom would surely cook him some for lunch so she could hurry back to being irresponsible.

At the grocery store, Charlie threw a nutty buddy at the Old Lady Clerk.

“I’ll take one of those,” Charlie said as the ice cream bounced off the Old Lady Clerk’s head and fell to her feet.

Because she was old and incapable of retaliating, the Old Lady Clerk just sighed and picked up the ice cream.

“That will be $1.08, please.”

Charlie didn’t have any money.

“I’m not paying,” he said. “You’ll pay. Dearly.”

Charlie then slapped the Old Lady Clerk on the cheek.

“How’s your face?” he yelled.

The Old Lady Clerk stormed off.

“I’m calling the police, young man,” Charlie heard her say.

In the jail cell, Charlie watched and listened to the Local Drunk, who paced around and talked wildly. Charlie didn’t know what the Local Drunk was saying. After a while, the Local Drunk vomited on his own shoes and fell asleep.

*   *   *   *   *

Many years later, Charlie was all grown up. He got himself a girlfriend from the local topless joint and scored an apartment in subsidised housing. In his apartment, he built an efficient meth lab. The burning chemicals made everything smell like cat pee. It reminded Charlie of his old house.

One day, the meth lab caught fire, and the whole building burned down. Charlie’s topless girlfriend died. He was sad. He loved meth.

With no home and no money, Charlie lived on the sidewalk. He made a sign that said, “HEY DICKS! GIMME SUM FOOD”. All day he watched people walk by. Most of them wore nice clothes and had their hair done up real nice. No one paid him much attention, though.

One night, a Drunk Young Man stumbled into Charlie, who slept on the sidewalk.

“What are you doing down there, you sleepy fuck?” the Drunk Young Man asked.

Charlie got up, pushed his grocery cart out of the way, and swung his scabby fist at the Drunk Young Man. Charlie missed and fell down.

“How’s your face?” he yelled, tumbling over.

But the Drunk Young Man was oblivious. His only concern was getting a hot dog from the street vendor at the corner.

“I’m drunk as balls,” the Drunk Young Man slurred. “Bye-bye, sleepy.”

The Drunk Young Man shuffled away.

A police officer, Sergeant Rip, had witnessed the whole thing and hurried over.

“Charlie, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Time to take your weekly ride down to the clink.”

In the jail cell, Charlie yelled until he was dizzy, vomited on his shoes and fell asleep.

With the ink still wet on his disorderly conduct charge, Charlie went back to the sidewalk. Later in the afternoon, an Old Man In Khakis approached Charlie and handed him a heavy box.

“It’s for you,” the Old Man in Khakis said.

Charlie grabbed the box and ripped off the top. Then, he  got up from his pile of blankets, took off his LA Raiders Starter (TM) jacket, and socked the Old Man In Khakis in the kisser. The Old Man In Khakis tumbled into the street. Cars swerved to avoid hitting him.

“How’s your face?” Charlie yelled over the car horns.

Sergeant Rip pulled up in his squad car, got out and grabbed Charlie by the hair.

“What the hell is your problem?” Sergeant Rip asked, busting Charlie’s forehead open with a nightstick. “Can’t stay out of trouble for one day, can you?”

Rip pushed Charlie’s bloody face in the police car, and an ambulance came for the Old Man In Khakis.

Sergeant Rip picked up the box and peaked inside. Nothing but rusty cans of beans.

The End

LD