He flies into town, late, rents a room in the neighbourhood, meets her first thing in the morning, holds her, remembers how her mother looked, same dark eyes, same dark curl on the top of her head. Every six months, he catches milestones: crawling, walking, first words, kindergarten, high school. Same room, same turquoise couch, same breakfast snacks. Years. Back and forth. He becomes an intermittent constant.At home, he cleans out the extra room, installs a Murphy Bed, hangs her favorite poster. He investigates the local university, uses it as a lure she won’t resist.
We drank Prosecco on the number 31, escaping the confetti blizzard, the plastic champagne flute cheap between my lips but the ring heavy on my finger, while my parents returned to their hotel and we continued on the early bus—Who gets married at eight in the morning?—and some passengers clucked and said Cheers, but most looked out to the felt-clad streets where stony-faced bankers marched to the rain, then we chugged up a small mountain on a train, and still in my wedding dress with the matching red patent shoes, I whispered footsteps in snow strewn with autumn leaves, and later, after we thawed our bodies in steaming water and fucked in the bathtub, bones squeezed between ceramic and lobster-pink skin, I hid the bruises beneath an evening gown, and we toasted again, ate pizza and lit candles jammed into green glass bottles while I picked at wax cascades with manicured nails never knowing when this day, this love, this marriage, would end.
There is a bony woman measuring things on the playground. She has a long tape measure that hooks in place. One end hugs the edge of a railroad tie bordering the perimeter of the wood chips. She measures the circumference of the area. She measures by the slide, the length of the monkey bars, the distance from climbing pyramid to swing set, and writes the numbers down in a three-ring notebook. The kids pay her no mind. They screech and race each other to the swings and climb up ladders and hang upside down. The woman deposits the tape measure into the sag of her bag and flips the notebook closed. She is silent and slow as she walks up the street, disappearing past vinyl houses.
When he was a child, my dad lost two fingers working at the matchbox factory and declared three as his lucky number. He owned three of every shirt, prayed three times a day, and went to the Lygon casino on the third of each month. He ate ramen with three chopsticks, and sticky dots of broth sprayed across the table, onto his Tim Winton novels. We liked the crunch of Cajun grilled corn. We toothpicked kernels from between our teeth, and threw the cobs at each other's heads. Pretended to have seizures on the floor. On the drive to the convenience store after his AA meeting, he played Fleetwood Mac and The Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan’s voice pulsed through the speakers. He checked himself in the visor mirror and his smile vanished. “I look like a blobfish,” he said. But our faces shared the same geometry. The sunset pinked the clouds, the West Gate Bridge speared the skyline. He bought me rice crackers, and when the cashier wasn’t looking, I tucked a Reese’s peanut butter cup under my windbreaker. I ate at home in the shrine room. The pedestal fan blasted, and I leaned my forehead against the Maitreya statue to be kissed by the coolness of its marble. Dad kicked me out to pray, but I pressed my ear to the door, trying to hear his wishes, trying to become his god.
Owls hoot to each other across dusking hills—the medieval whorehouses in Genoa are rediscovering electricity—news of masts spotted earlier on the horizon has circled back to them, which they’d divined already, for the seagulls took off from the harbor walls hours before—still, the whores step out onto their balconies, float up to the blanched rooftops, hoot to each other through rising stalks of stars swaying in the dark grange of night—they’re dreaming of sleeping in silk dresses, bathing in gold florins, myrrh and musk, tracing with inward eyes the moonlit-draped, rudder-furrowed wakes of phosphorous, the billowing sash of earth’s shadow smothering stars, burgeoning sails and masts growing ever-taller, getting closer, buzzing, buzzing, shriller than the summoning bells behind their locked doors, until they get so close those suave ladies glean that most precious secret all those learned scribes and bishops are too afraid to whisper—the world is round.
The below-ground swimming pool in our neighbor Robbie Garvin’s backyard was ready. Robbie’s father, the beneficiary of a large insurance settlement, wasted no time improving the Garvins' status in the neighborhood. I heard my parents talking about it; they used terms like ‘not above board’ and ‘possible fraud,’ which I knew nothing about. The pool was heated and had a diving board – enough said.Robbie let on at school that he would throw a start-of-summer pool party on the first Saturday after school was out. He bragged that there would be unlimited food and drink and bikini-clad girls from our junior high. I was beyond stoked for the party.Saturday came. The early summer sun was beating down at noon when I arrived at the pool. The only girls were two eight-year-old neighbors splashing in the shallow end. No food in sight, just a six-pack of store-brand soda. Robbie and two pals started a cannonball contest off the diving board, scaring the little girls from the pool. I sat poolside, drinking warm pop. A sign on the shed where Robbie’s dad kept the pool equipment read: WE DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET—PLEASE DON’T PEE IN OUR POOL. I finished the soda and slipped into the shallow end, lazily back-floating with my eyes closed. As Robbie and the others cannonballed into the heated, chlorinated water, I added to the warmth, letting twelve ounces of fizzy cola stream from my young loins, imagining Robbie and his buddies swimming in our toilet.
Last night I dreamt we were lobsters. I was tucked behind a rock, hiding from the cod swimming overhead. The bright blue of your claw caught my attention; one in two million, deliciously unique.“You’re new here,” I rasped.“Lobsters can’t talk,” you replied.Your antenna twitched in my direction. I crouched in my shadowed crevice, waiting for the light to cease filtering to the ocean floor, for you to come and make me yours.But first, you had to prove yourself—fight your way to dominance.The reigning champion of our rocky oasis charged, his brown-green a stark contrast to your brilliant blue. My antennae twitched at the scent of him. But biology cannot overcome destiny, even for lobsters. I waited—wanting, wishing.You danced him across the ocean floor, kicking rocks with graceful sweeps of your uropods. His crusher claw came down on your abdomen; you bucked, curling your central tail fin to scoot away. He attempted another strike; you ripped through his rostrum, took his beady eye with your massive pincher claw.Your victory was decisive, his retreat swift.I was inundated with the scent of urine released from the sacs along your face. My antennule soaking up the smell of you, pleopods quivering in answer to your dominance. The neurons of my cardiac ganglion fired, heartbeat racing in anticipation of your tiny feelers running over my carapace.Finally—finally—you made your way to me among the rocks. We ran our bodies together, sharing pheromones laced with hope and promises of forever.Then you were gone. And I was alone, as always.Our offspring were many. They all grew to resemble you—perfect, miniature replicas of shining lapis-blue, with searching eyes and a drive to leave.Maybe tonight we’ll be swans, and you’ll stay.
I was doing my damnedest to hide in a mountain of gold coins in the vaults of Gringotts. I was properly concealed, buried in all those glittery riches, all but my rock-hard arousal, which was like the mast of a mostly sunken ship sticking out of a sea of wealth. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about Harry, his hairy treasure trail, his hot, wet mouth and warm goblet of fire. I moaned beneath the mound of resplendent wizards’ gold, panting within the riches of witches, which brought on the unwanted attention of a little ugly goblin. He wanted to put me out of my delicious agony, eat me up like Doritos, which bear the same triangular shape as the teeth that approached me in the mouth of a squat, bobble-head monster.I fell back onto the mound of gold, the creature falling with me. We got down and dirty in the riches of witches. And bitches, it was wonderful…how I made it with a goblin. Holding hands, we left the vault behind, our pockets stuffed with doubloons and diamonds. I brought the little guy home and, side-stepping my Hogwarts LEGO set that spread out like a Minecraft palace across the floorboards, led him to my bed.At that point I got desperate, realizing that I finally outdid myself, had too many damn Butterbeers, because, boner or no, I couldn’t hold back a dire piss that needed to be taken. I grabbed my magic wand --3 inches long, made of “wood,” a phoenix feather tucked in my bush-- and said the magic word: Riddikulus!Sometimes a piss feels as good as fellatio.Like a champ, Shorty took it right in the mouth. I found myself in awe, wishing I could dispel my issues as easily as the wastes that pass through me umpteen times a day. If only life were that easy. Gosh, wouldn’t that be magic?
First, he’s packed and put on ice like a seabass. Then he’s put in a state of vitrification and becomes a non-crystalline amorphous solid like a beetle trapped in glass. Seeing him during this time is like visiting someone in a coma, except I can’t touch him because there’s a risk of shattering. For one month a year, his body is reheated and drained of all preservation liquid. This is when the science happens and I find out what it means for him to have donated his still-living body to science. There are educational posters about it on all the walls. They describe the process beautifully, using metaphors about butterflies to great effect. My mother and I visit him daily during the month. We watch specialists poke at him, inject him with diseases, and test him with trial-stage medications. One experiment goes wrong and he loses a foot. In exchange for his body, we’re paid generously. We can afford organic groceries now. My dad also receives a retirement fund and a promise that if he dies before his term is up, our family will get a payout. This happens in about 35% of cases.I’ll be forty when he’s warm again and when I imagine our reunion we’re looking at each other with similarly lined faces. His doctor tells me to be thankful, the facility says we should be proud, and after several years his body helps them find a cure. His sacrifice is for you they say, and so I wear my gratefulness as best I can and when the doctor turns away I touch my father's fingers. They’re soft, like the inside of a slipper, and when I leave I feel his handprint on me and bring it home where all the pieces left behind live.
It’s late afternoon, day five million of this insatiable year, and I’m melting into an overstuffed chair, doing whatever I’m doing on my computer—checking email, collecting fun facts about my father’s mortality, finding new things to be ashamed of—when suddenly I hear a sound like a leaking balloon and I glance up and there he is, the dog I’ve married into owning, lying belly up on the couch, looking like he was dropped from a helicopter and landed comfortably on his back. Paws to the sky, tongue lolling from his mouth. He’s taking me in with upside-down eyes, waiting to see if I’m going to move in the direction of the door that leads to squirrels or the door that leads to the box full of the matzoh he’s recently developed a taste for. I’m not. I’m not even his real dog dad. I’m just a sad guy in a big chair, looking at a dog over the top of the computer I’m too often looking into, thus the neck pain, the ache behind my eyes, between my lungs. I shut the computer, though, and as I do, the dog cocks his head, angling for a better view of my feet. He’s got one front paw folded, the other extended, like young Travolta. He’s half asleep but looking to dance. He’s ready if I am.
