Eulogy

This blog prospered and faltered, found its second and third winds, had an existential crisis, and now, is dead.

But it was a devout buddhist, and since it was a good blog, it has now become a new blog.

zacharyaaronk.tumblr for stories, poems, and works in progress

When Love Is New

All day long, Mike and me, sitting and waiting for it, here, in the playground behind the senior center. The same dome shaped jungle-gym we had run to the first time he had hid from the sirens, and the same rusty yellow swings we had chilled at the first time we had tripped. Our spot, and all those first times, and tonight maybe the first time, the one every teenager spends his school times dreaming about.

Ali was my best friend and I’d been in love with her for months but I felt like I was in sixth grade again, getting ready for my first dance and maybe oh boy my first kiss. The girls at one house, the guys at another. Everybody getting excited and ready until finally you come and grow up together.

They were both at Ashley’s house now, doing their hair, and probably their nails, and whatever else it was they did while we were here waiting for them. Waiting for it. We weren’t meeting them until eight but what else did you expect us to do besides sit there and wait for the sun to set. When it was dark we could have a fire and we had the rack from Mike’s brother and a tent for him and Ashley and one for Ali and me…

The first time for both Mike and Ashley, and for me, but it wasn’t new for Ali. I didn’t mind though. I thought it would probably be better that way, if at least one of us knew how this thing was supposed to go. I think I even loved her more because of it, because she had loved and had been where I wanted so badly to go. Tonight.

We had found this sweet little clearing about a quarter mile from the back of the playground, all hidden by trees and shit, and once you got down the path you could yell and holler and scream all the shit you wanted without anyone hearing. Plenty of room for a fire and tents and beer, and there wasn’t anything else in the world we needed.

Just like an American pie fucking movie. But I didn’t think about any of that shit then. Did we have condoms were the cops going to come what if it rained how would it feel and how would she look is what I was thinking man and you can bet that was enough for a sixteen year old boy to think about.

Mike and I had been sitting in those playground swings for nearly a year before they finally showed up. We’d been there for so long my ass was starting to hurt and I’d almost broken my neck half a dozen times swinging my head around trying to see if it was them who were pulling into our lot. Finally we saw that cherry-red sedan of our dreams and Mike looked at me and said, “They’re here.” We both knew it was time and I thought about the sandy ground beneath my shoes and the cold rust of the swing set and the girl coming towards me and I tried to remember how it felt to be a child for the last time in my life.

And I don’t think I’d ever been more excited than when I saw that they were there but goddammit if we weren’t going to play it suave for them. We stayed on the swings and waited until they had parked and took the sleeping bags from their trunk and started walking towards us. I could almost feel the sun sinking lower behind them as they came closer, its final youthful rays descending brilliantly behind them, all smiles and radiance.

Finally we stood to meet them and I did my best to act like I hardly cared when she smiled at me and I knew for sure right then how I felt about her and what tonight was about. I don’t think I’ve ever tried so hard to keep it down I was so ready for it.

“Hey guys,” Ali said, smiling, and with her soft russet hair cascading over her shoulder I almost lost it again. “We didn’t make you wait too long, did we?”

“Are you kidding? We were about to leave.”

“You lie!” Her voice was a choir, her laugh a hymn.

“It’s true,” Mike said. “Jonah was all set to go without you. I had to hold him back.”

Ali laughed again (sweet melody) and pouted, her hands on her hips like the cutest thing you’d ever seen and looked me deep into the eyes.

“But you wouldn’t have left me, would you Mike,” Ashley said. “All alone in the woods with no one to protect me,” she finished, laughing through her last words.

“Darling, not a chance,” he answered; winking at me so that Ashley started and slapped his arm.

It was almost dark now and I took my tent and bag in one arm and Ali in the other and the four of us headed down the path. Ali and me took the lead with Mike and Ashley following, the smell of evening pines thickly shrouding our secret walk. When we finally reached the clearing I felt like I could have been skipping I was so light headed.

“We should get the tents up before it’s too dark,” I said to Ali.

“Yeah. Get the fire going, too,” Mike said.

“We should have brought a refrigerator,” Ashley said brightly. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”

“A refrigerator in the woods, darling?”

Everyone laughed appreciatively and Ashley protested. “A cooler! I meant a cooler!”

“Well, warm beer works just as well, I guess.”

Ali fixed her eyes on mine again and my chest was going badoomp badoomp badoomp.

“I heard it’s supposed to be a full moon tonight,” I said.

“How romantic.”

I may have finally passed out then but I can’t really be sure. The last thing I remember seeing is the first star in the sky and her smiling beneath it looking at me beautiful beautiful.

.................................................................................................

“We’re going to grab some blankets from the tent.”

My heart is beating so fast it’s like a woodpecker in heat. I stand with difficulty but its dark and I’m so excited I don’t care about anything else. Mike and Ashley still sitting there, dancing in and out of the light and smiles from all around the fire. It doesn’t matter what anyone says and nobody speaks because everyone’s thinking the same thing. About fucking time.

Growing up I had always thought that sixteen was the year to do it. The prime of my life, the coming of age, the license to drive, the not too soon and the still early enough to be cool. A man, without all the failings and handicaps of adulthood. And who doesn’t wish they were sixteen again? For the promise of ripeness and beauty and young love?

“Don’t stay up for us if you guys want to go to bed, or whatever...”

Best friends for years and I’m in love. She too, I think when she grabs my hand and squeezes tightly, her fingers sliding smoothly between my own like buttered apple pie and our palms clinging together and breathing deeply.

We walk hand in hand away from the light of the fire and unzip the canvas door and collapse inside. Laying beside her there I can feel her skin and her hair against my own, and in that moment they smell the way you wished everything was all of the time, from that instant until eternity a fading memory, the way you wished everything could be.

“Yes”.

Afterwards, sitting beside her in the cold with blankets and friends around us and my fire celebrating, and I’ve never been so happy. This is the happy that you see in the end of teen romance movies. The happy that doesn’t really exist until all of a sudden it does and then all of a sudden it doesn’t again. Just a taste that first time, but the taste is more than enough to keep you searching for the rest of your life at least.

.................................................................................................

It’s been almost four years since our first time. Almost four years since my first time, the little slut. Four years since we’ve been friends and about two days since the last time we fucked.

We don’t talk much anymore. We go to different colleges for most of the year and its only now in the summer that I ever see her. Now that I’m home it’s not as easy as saying, “Sorry Ali, but I have class right now. Why don’t you try fucking skyping yourself?” She only lives two streets away.

So it’s summer now and we’re together again. Every time I drive past the senior center and the crabgrass lot where the swings used to be, and every time I smell her Paul Malls on my pillowcase it gets me. And every time it does it’s like I’m waiting for something big to happen, something real fucking big to just fucking go off with sparks and bangs and cheers but every time it’s just that knocking, just that knocking, just that mother fucking knocking like she’s here right now and I wish she wasn’t.

“Hi. Are you ready?”

Give me a minute, for chrissake.

“Mike and Ashley said they would wait to order until we got there, but I didn’t want to make them wait for us again.”

Now wouldn’t that be a tragedy if we were late for fucking Casa Labullshit.

“We could probably still make dessert if you wanted… And I think we should, Ashley was really looking forward to this.”

Fuck off.

“Our first night all back home from school and you want to sit here and watch TV. You haven’t seen either of them since Christmas.”

Fuck off again.

“If you really don’t want to go out tonight that’s fine but I don’t understand why you can’t suck it up for one night. It’s Mike and Ashley. It’s not like they’re some random friends from high school.”

What do you know about friends from high school.

“Well. I guess I’ll see you later then. You’re sure you’re all right? Fine. Call me later.”

I wasn’t going to call her later. Of course I wouldn’t fucking call her. Because I know now that that taste- that fleeting fucking taste- isn’t real. That bullshit manifestation of juvenile lust being precisely and only fucking that. And the problem is that once you’ve tasted it there’s no way you can just stop looking for it. And so you go back, again and again, and you say, Man, I know I dropped it here, it was right fucking here, but of course you know it’s already gone. And of course you know you’ll never be done with it.

January 13th Holden Massachusetts

Soundlessly, with all the roar of a dog whistle, settling on the thin green pines, threading needle through snowflake like ornaments eleven months too soon. Steadily, purposely, falling falling, drifting from snowman cookie frosting clouds, sprinkling frosted blades and frozen needles. Gathering and waiting on swollen pines and sleeping windowsills, where creeping eyelids rest to widen and then smile and cheer at the brown ice slush filled roads and pristine playgrounds twinkling in morning joy. Playtime rapiers hanging from rooftops, snow filled arena, and racetrack ample canvas for morning imaginations, while snowplows struggle and snowballs battle and every father lover child thinks snow day.

.................................................................................................................................................

It’s still dark and the vaguely morning sky flashbulbs with swirling storms of snowflakes swept up in the steady beam of dual halogen bulbs. Heaving fiercely beneath their glow, the curved yellow plow growling in search of asphalt and the icy slush and browning snow that resists its passage.

The front windshield wipers squeak and fidget beneath the whitewashing weight of the sky and Sean McLaughlin slows with every turn and squints through the glass, trying to separate the pavement from the sidewalk. He’s been out since ten the night before, and his cab is littered with empty styrofoam dunkin donuts cups and some hand warmers, plus a large metal thermos from Christine on Christmas two weeks before. The heater works only sometimes and so he keeps a seasoned wool blanket stretched tight over his lap that fills the cab with the smell of dog hair and salt from the winters before when Sammy would ride with him. Back before the arthritis and dysplasia had resigned her to the rug by the stove, back when it was for both of them younger days.

Yesterday was Christine’s birthday and they had spent the night at home in front of the TV watching the snow. When his phone had rung just before the late night news she had turned to him and said, “Go. You need the overtime.”

Storms had always been too early or too late for Sean. Either they did not know how to keep time or they plain did not care.

Now he is alone in the dark of his cab with the thermos from her and a broken heater, an old smelly blanket, and a wish for spring and the overtime check. And all the while the flakes all surrounding and falling dispassionately around him.

.................................................................................................................................................

Laying in bed still, the comforter down around my knees, a glass of water on the bedside table, and the clock blinking noontime.

“You car is completely snowed in. I don’t think you’re going to make that meeting.”

Water running in the kitchen down the stairs, cupboards swinging and clacking shut, and porcelain on the countertop.

“How do you like your coffee?” she calls again.

Lifting the shade the window is half covered in frost and peering over the top I can see only snow and snow everywhere. It covers my car up past the license plate and hides the mailbox post in what seems to me as marshmallow fluff. The road is indistinguishable from the lawn and I know that I’m going anywhere.

First snow day of the New Year, I think, and I call back, “A little bit of sugar, thanks.”

I don’t actually have a meeting but I hadn’t been planning on dinner and breakfast. The room smells like last night, like alcohol and flesh and frosty mornings. But at least the sheets are soft and warm, as white as the fluff outside the window and I think now about the coffee brewing in the kitchen and the woman I barely know behind it.

Now she comes back to the bedroom and places two snow-white mugs on the bedside table. She squints at the brightness beyond the window and climbs in beside me, smiling more brilliantly than anything I’ve seen in a long time. Snow day, I think again.

.................................................................................................................................................

I’m awake now but I don’t move in my blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon is what they’re called like I’m hibernating and I keep my eyes pressed tight together. I feel the cold shape of the spoon under my pillow and squeeze it tightly its supposed to bring the snow day I can’t hear the news downstairs maybe they already know its cancelled they said they would call us to say for sure I hope they did I hope they did. I open one eye and my room is too bright for the morning maybe its lunch time already maybe mom let me sleep because no school today! I can’t wait any more I jump out of bed run to the window tear the blinds and my heart explodes. Winter wonderland its like that Rudolph movie we watched on Christmas at Auntie Chris’s and there’s even more coming down right now and they look like the flakes we make in art class with white tissue paper and scissors and no ones are the same because they’re all unique like us Mrs. Stangle says. After I have breakfast I can go sledding once I have my snow pants and boots on Mom said I could yesterday and a snow fort to keep the girls out and hot cocoa for lunch and I’m smiling with ears it’s a snow day!

Yesterday

First story for comp class. Expect weekly additions...

When you are lonely everything makes sense. There is no confusion, and you can look at the winter’s sky and find the little dipper as if it were the only grouping between the earth and the moon. There are of course other ways to be sure, but none of them are as easy as being lonely.

So when I woke early and found that I was alone in my roommate’s bed and that my own bed across the room was empty also, I knew immediately that I was in love with her. There were scattered papers and empty PBR cans on the desks by the radiator and cool white sunlight sliding in through the open window and I was in love again. Only that, and the hole in my head.

I was still naked except for my boxers so I kept my roommate’s comforter wrapped around my shoulders as I searched for more clothes. It was very cold with the window open and the splintered floorboards felt like icy sandpaper on my bare feet and I didn’t want to stay in the room just then. I wanted to catch her before she left so I grabbed my jacket and headed for the stairs. My head was still splitting besides and I felt like some fresh air.

It was just after eight then and her train was leaving at eleven I thought so I could probably see her still. She had to go to the city this morning and that was why she was gone when I woke up. And I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was walking to really but it didn’t bother me then. When you love someone sometimes you just need to do things and that’s all.

Her dorm was across the campus from mine and I was glad I had my jacket. It was even colder outside than it had been in my beer-stained room. Apparently it had snowed last night. The criss-crossing walkways were all sloppy with ice and slush so I made my way diagonally through the quad and snowy grass. The snow was fresh and forgiving and it was fun to walk without thinking and to know there were tracks to follow. I continued along, watching my feet sink into the snow so that I didn’t hear her at first when I came to one of the plowed paths again and she called out my name.

She was walking along the walkway opposite to the one I had just come to. I waited for her as she finished walking its length, then down another connecting our two paths and then finally over to where I was standing. Her ivory-gold skin looked strangely pale against the snowy backdrop and her long brown hair was completely hidden beneath a ribbed grey hat. A long woolen scarf that she had knitted herself covered her neck and chin and she smiled at me from beneath her layers. She looked older than I remembered but that may have been the cold.

“What time do you leave?” I asked her.

“I’m on my way to the station now,” she said. “Last night was fun.”

“I enjoyed myself.”

“Me too.”

“And Dan gets in today,” I said. “I’ll wash his sheets for him. You get back on Monday?”

“Yes. In the afternoon sometime.” There was a pause, and then she added “I’ll give you a call when I’m back.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Good.”

After a moment I looked at my phone and she said she had better be going. We hugged goodbye then and I watched her follow the walkways back to where she had been going before and off towards the temporary parking lot, where I knew her cab would be waiting. Another person leaving another building as she passed by called and caught up with her, and I could hear their laughter echoing as I turned to walk back home.

The way back to my dorm was easier the second time through, and I didn’t feel the headache so much or even the cold of the empty quad anymore. The world outside seemed stunning with freshly fallen flakes and it reminded me now of a snow globe breaking open in the street where you can’t tell the unique from the plastic. It was still close to freezing but yesterday’s grey had been blown away during the night, and the spidery cloud of my breath and the sharp blue air were refreshing and clear.

The weather seemed to me then like winter’s answer to those warm sun showers on sticky summer days. Where no one really minds that it’s raining, even if they pretend to.

When I got back to my room I shut the door and took off my clothes again. I moved over to the bed and lay back down and closed my eyes. I wasn’t finished with last night yet.

Stand By Me

Your face is a salty teardrop. Not the graceful slow rolling down the side of your cheek kind but the blotchy and swollen hiccuping on your breath that is only sometimes fun to see on grade-schoolers. And I don't think that you are the prettiest thing I have ever seen when you say oh hey with your sunglasses pushed up to keep your hair from getting wet when you walk back from the showers and you smile at me just a little.

So when you see me singing when I see you it's only because lately I've grown tired of always whistling, just so we're clear.

Thoughts from Indoors

My spine itches.

The top

................ver

.......................te

............................brae.

I try to scratch it but all I can reach

is my skin.

It's like I am wearing a plaster cast

and it protects me so I can heal, I guess.

But beneath the organ and tissue and blood,

I itch.

Scraps

I've developed an unfortunate habit of starting stories and never finishing them. That's why I never have anything to post anymore. I still read everyone else's blogs though and I'm afraid the relationship is becoming a bit one sided. I feel like the blog world equivalent of a voyeur. But not as unwanted, I hope. So these are a few things I've written since at school, maybe some day they'll go somewhere.

DeLong sat by the window and counted the number of times the miniature raisin buzzed into the glass square. It was now half past seven and was, admittedly, becoming rather difficult to follow its movements between the shadows of the windowpane and the queasy pale of the light from the storefront below. It was an hour earlier when the last of the toyhouse people had replaced their teacups and with much politeness and fussing, had taken their overdue leaves. When the evening wind had swept the last of the offending diminutives out of sight, DeLong retired to the pale green folding chair. The padded foam beneath his posterior and buttocks had long since failed to lend any support to his knobby frame; its function now limited to as much an ornamental purpose as a mulish one.

DeLong sat by the window and tried not to think about the last time he had swept the floor. It was not a particularly difficult task for DeLong; he was always forgetting to sweep the floor.

"I miss having the woods to walk into and just get lost in."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Nothing.

My roommate moved out yesterday. No kidding. I came back to the room and his clothes and books were all thrown out in the hallway and he was gone. I didn’t think anything of it then because it was pretty late and I had had a thing or two to drink, but when I woke up the next morning and saw his stained, empty bed I knew he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do with all his things lying in the hall though so I called his phone. I must’ve still been drunk then because I could hear it ringing like it was in the room somewhere even though I knew he wasn’t. Anyways, it was starting to give me a headache so I hung up and moved my chair so I couldn’t see the mess outside the door. I didn’t sit down though, but closed the door and lay back down on my bed. I wasn’t finished with last night.

You could tell she was into it though. I mean, when you’ve been with enough girls you sort of get to knowing when a girl’s feeling it or not, and when she’s just a good dancer or something. And believe me, this girl was feeling it. I mean obviously not the whole time. It’s damn hard to hold a girl’s attention the whole time the two of you are dancing, especially if she’s a real looker. I used to play baseball with a kid who could do it, but he never gave up the trick. You’d just ask him about it and he’d throw you some line about listening and really caring. Believe me, I care a helluva lot. But most nights that isn’t enough to get you back with the girl you really want. And it definitely never helped me get girls back the way he did. Not that he did it as much as other guys. I never understood that. When you got a trick as clean as that and you’re not getting it every night, well that just seems like a shame and a waste to me. This girl was definitely into it though. Trust me, you can count on that. Sometimes you can just tell.