Two Stories About Music (A Spitz Mix: part 1)

CAT SCRATCH FEVER: Ted Nugent

I gently nudged the Dame, trying to determine if she was sleeping. It was 3am, so I had every reason to believe she was. If you've ever tried to wake up somebody in the midst of a sound slumber, you know it's a tricky thing to pull off without being an asshole. It requires a lot of poking and prodding, and you better have a damn good explanation, something in the realm of "There's a dude standing next to our bed and I think he has a cleaver."

She finally stirred, her face still buried in a pillow, and turned just enough to give me the stink eye. She communicated so much unmitigated rage with just one pupil, it would've made Medusa herself jump to her feet and do a slow-to-fast clap.

"What the hell is wrong?" she murmured sleepily.

"Would you look at this?" I asked, lifting my leg and placing it next to her on the bed. "Does it look serious?"

She examined my inner thigh, which contained a small but deep wound. "What happened?" she asked with a yawn, showing none of the requisite horror and/or concern I'd been expecting.

"I don't want to alarm you," I said, unable to stop my voice from shaking. "But I might have Cat Scratch Fever."

KEEP ON READIN', UNLESS YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE ME SECOND GUESS OUR RELATIONSHIP

Let's back up:

I have a problem with cats. I can't keep my damn hands off them. Doesn't matter if it's a housecat or something that's been living in the crawl space behind a dumpster, I'll instinctively reach out and try to pet it. Of course, sometimes touching a strange animal is not the best idea. If I was thinking clearly, I might occasionally pause and take a closer look. "Hmmm," I might wonder. "That cat appears to have a very large and oozing rash covering most of its body. Perhaps I should let it pass." Or even, "Y'know, what I originally thought was purring may in fact be a growl. And I now see that it may not be a red tabby at all but just an ordinary alley cat covered in dried blood. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure anymore if that's a cat or a small raccoon. I believe I shall back away slowly."

Up to this point, my history of fondling unfamiliar cats hadn't resulted in any genuine emergencies. Sure, I'd had the occasional flea outbreak after petting a kitty that everybody within earshot tried to warn me was "fucking filthy." But despite being as selective with cats as Freddie Mercury was with male roadies, I had a mostly clean medical record.

Until tonight.

Because of the warm weather, I'd taken to writing on the front porch, usually at night. I liked the solitude of starting my work day at midnight or later. I could really focus knowing that the rest of the world was asleep and there'd be no phone calls or drop-ins or interruptions of any kind. My only visitor at that hour was a cat - a Maine Coon, I'm pretty sure - who belonged to the neighbors next door. It was an "outside cat" - meaning, it ate what it killed and it kept its distance from people. But for some reason, it liked me. Every night, it'd crawl onto my lap and doze while I tapped away at my laptop. We had a pretty good arrangement for awhile.

It's probably my fault that things went sour. I was going through a dry spell with my writing, which tends to make me irritable, and I decided I was in no mood to be some cat's flesh cushion. I'm not a jerk - well, not to animals, anyway - so I tried to be subtle about it. I straightened my legs and pushed out with my crotch, trying to create a slide effect. But the cat didn't take the hint. Instead, it dug its claws into my leg, hanging to my thigh like Harold Lloyd on a giant clock.

Normally, a minor flesh wound like this would've been a minor inconvenience. But it was late and I was tired and the sight of my own blood makes me irrational and panicky. Also, nobody should be allowed to use WebMD if they're alone in a dark room, typing with one hand and trying to stop the bleeding with the other. Because you're gonna discover diseases you never knew existed. Like Cat Scratch Fever, which is apparently something you can actually get.

Did I have any of the symptoms? Sure. Do you know how easy it is to give yourself a psychosomatic fever, headache and chills? What else was there? Backache? "Wait for it... aaaaaand there it is." Malaise? Seriously, malaise? Did they mean like sluggish and tired? Who doesn't have malaise at 3am? The only symptom I didn't technically have yet was convulsions, and I figured it was only a matter of time.

"We need to go to the emergency room," I told the Dame, studying my cat-gash like I thought it might start bubbling with foam at any moment.

"Did you say Cat Scratch Fever?" She asked again. "As in the song?"

"Song? What song? I'm talking about bacteria, woman! This is a potentially life-threatening infection. I don't-"

"The Ted Nugent song," she interrupted me. She was suddenly very awake, and seemed to find the whole thing terribly amusing. "You know the one I'm talking about..." She started singing, miming the guitar part. "Cat scratch fever, duh-duh-duh, cat scratch fever, duh-duh-"

"Yes, yes, I understand. You gonna serenade me all night or can we try to get to the hospital before my lymph nodes swell up to the size of cantaloupes?"



They weren't any more sympathetic at the ER. When I hinted at my condition to the nurses, they sneered at me like I'd claimed to have stigmata. After a ridiculously long wait, especially for somebody so clearly on the brink of death, a doctor examined my injury - or "graze" as he so flippantly called it - and didn't even consider the most likely prognosis until I brought it to his attention.

"Isn't that a rock and roll song?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"That's what I was telling him," the Dame agreed, not helping matters.

He smiled, pushing my leg away. "How did it go again?"

The Dame reminded him, and they both sang the guitar riff. She made rock horns and shouted "The Nuuuuuuge," and the doctor laughed, which wasn't behavior befitting a medical professional. I was growing tired of this. My body was overrun with bacterium and neither of them seemed to care.

"Listen, doc, if you could just write me a prescription for ciprofloxacin or doxycycline, I'll be on my way."

He narrowed his eyes at me and sighed. "WebMD, right? Worst thing that's ever happened to hypochondria. How about this: I'll give you two asprin and a prescription to calm the hell down."

That should've been the end of it, but the Dame couldn't keep her big trap shut, and soon all of my friends and family knew about my brief affliction with Cat Scratch Fever. I received "get well" cards and flowers, emergency Cat Scratch Fever medical kits (which, in addition to sutures, bandages and antibacterial ointment, also contained a cassingle of Nugent's hit), and more annoying phone calls than I care to remember.

"You may have been misdiagnosed," one friend told me, her voice heavy with concern. "Are you absolutely certain you don't have the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu?"

You can all just go to hell!

* * *



GIGANTIC: The Pixies

If you're planning to have casual sex with somebody you met just a few hours ago, it's always a good idea to ask them a few simple questions before jumping into the sack. I'm not talking about STDs and condoms and blah blah blah, though that's not a bad idea either. I mean questions like, has she recently dumped a boyfriend? And is the boyfriend aware that they're no longer dating? Is he the jealous type, or at least jealous enough to spy on her all night and wait until she picks up some guy at a concert and then follow them back to her place and wait outside for the most inopportune moment to burst in and tearfully request that she give their relationship another chance?

If nothing else, try not to take off your clothes in a stranger's apartment without making sure that all of the doors are locked. Because you just never know.

During my freshmen year of college, I wasn't too discriminating when it came to sex partners. If she had all of her original limbs and didn't make a yucky face when she looked at me, I could be talked into just about anything. On the night in question, I was only attracted to this woman - whose name I can't recall anymore - because she had a tattoo of Mayor McCheese on her left calf. At the time, it struck me as hilarious and I told her so repeatedly, which I guess she found charming. But in hindsight, I think she misunderstood my compliments. When I said her tattoo was funny, I meant funny at her expense. Funny as in, "Wow, that's going to stop being cool in... three, two, one, and now."

After drinking just enough to forget that we had absolutely nothing in common, we went back to her dorm room. There was some kissing, and hands were definitely in some places. She did that thing where she unbuckled my belt and pulled it out of the pant loop in one swoop. I wasn't really prepared for that, so it sent me spiraling across the room like a yo-yo. It was embarrassing but also kinda hot, so I asked if she'd do it again just so I could brace myself and actually enjoy it this time. But we'd reached that point in l'amour when putting on clothes could be misinterpreted as rejection, so I soldiered on.

I'm not sure how long we'd been having sex when her boyfriend walked in. Or ex-boyfriend, it wasn't clear. When she noticed him standing next to the bed, looking down at us with a dejected expression he'd obviously been practicing for most of the night, she immediately jumped out of bed and covered herself with the blanket. It wasn't the kind of modesty you'd expect from people who still see each other naked on a regular basis. But then again, she was crying and hiding her face in her hands and muttering, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," which isn't something a sane person says to an ex-lover who has just broken into their bedroom. A more reasonable response would've been, "Yo, dude, are you brain damaged? What part of 'we're over' did you not understand? Get the fuck out of here!"

But I had other things to worry about. Ol' what's-her-name had absconded with the only available blanket, leaving me with naught but a hand to conceal my nudity, which is impossible to do and still look cool and casual. When I'm nervous, I need pockets. But when you're naked and sans accoutrements, you just kinda stand there awkwardly and try to look like you're still in control of the situation, which you're very obviously not. It's hard not to feel like a cartoon animal that's just been exposed in the shower. When you've been reduced to that level of humiliation, you might as well go all out and exit stage left on your tippy-toes, creating a sound like the high-pitched plinking of a piano.

Luckily, neither of them paid much attention to me. They were busy arguing, and crying, and screaming words like "Why, why, why?" I probably could've slipped out without being noticed, but I couldn't locate my pants. Had she thrown them across the room like she'd done with my belt? And if so, in what direction? I hadn't bothered to make a mental note of where my clothing was being hurled, and that's kinda how I like my sex. Like a hurricane, I want to wait until the next morning to assess the damage. ("Did I break that lamp or did you? Really? How did you get your leg up there? Oh, right, right. Wow, that was just crazy.") Only a sock was within easy reach, and I couldn't make the long trek back to my dorm wearing just a sock - even a strategically-placed sock - without attracting some unwanted attention.

Just as I was eyeing her My Pretty Pony backpack and wondering if it could pass for pants - and then wondering if I'd really slept with somebody who owned a My Pretty Pony backup, even if she meant it ironically - a familiar melody spilled from her stereo that seemed weirdly fortuitous.

"Gigantic, gigantic, gigantic
Our big big love"

It struck me as the funniest thing I'd ever heard in my entire life. I was suddenly doubled over with laughter, rolling around her bed and punching at the pillows like I'd just been given a hit of nitrous oxide. It might've been the inevitable release of so much built-up tension - it's uncomfortable enough being in the middle of two fighting lovers, but especially so if you're buck ass naked and still have a condom hanging from your rapidly shrinking member like a deflated birthday balloon. But even with so many valid reasons to feel chagrined, there was something about that particular Pixies song that made everything okay.

Have you ever listened to a song and thought, "This artist understands me in ways that nobody ever has before?" I can't claim to know what Kim Deal was singing about in "Gigantic." But for those five minutes, it might as well have been about me. In a truly bizarre bit of synchronicity, the Pixies knew just what I needed to hear at that exact moment.

When you're naked and a door bursts open and a guy you've never seen before storms in and starts shouting and pointing and accusing things that should already be kinda obvious, it's natural to feel a little vulnerable. Under that kind of stress, an erection is like the controlled explosion of a building demolition. It's gonna collapse within a matter of seconds. There'll be nothing left but a cloud of dust and debris. And that makes it difficult to assert yourself. It's not really possible to stand up to an intruder and say, "Just what the hell is going on here? I think you need to leave, man." Because all he has to do is let his gaze drift down to that hole in the ground you used to call a penis and blammo, you've lost all credibility.

But then you hear Kim Deal in the background, singing "Gigantic, gigantic, our big big love," and it's like she's standing behind you, giving you a pep-talk when you need it the most. And really, how often does that happen? When can you expect a friend, much less a musician you've never met, to magically appear when you're having a bad penis day and start chanting, "Don't worry about them! Your dick is gigantic! Yaaah! Go penis go! It's huuuuge! Big, big love! Woo-hooooo!" Or words to that effect.



She wasn't in any way correct, of course, which is what made it so funny. And that's why I started laughing and laughing and laughing; so loudly that even the woman with the tattoo of Mayor McCheese on her calf and her maybe ex-boyfriend stopped fighting to stare at me. I like to think that I defused the tension and made them realize just how silly they were being, but honestly, they probably stared because a naked laughing man is not something you see every day.

I still listen to the Pixies, and I still think Surfer Rosa is their best album. But I can't hear "Gigantic" without having a Pavlovian response. The moment Kim starts singing, "What a gas it was to see him," my hand instinctively drops to my crotch... just in case.

(To read two more stories about music, go here.)

Memories of Punctuation

PART ONE: The Comma

My introduction to the tyranny of grammar came from an unlikely place. In my senior year of high school, I wrote a semi-fictional short story for my girlfriend. It was about us, or at least a couple that vaguely resembled us, if we were ten years older, considerably more well-read and regulars at fashionable Manhattan bars. It was a piece of crap, not to mention a total rip-off of Woody Allen. But I'd cast her in the Annie Hall role, so I thought she'd look past the obvious plagiarisms and appreciate the sentiment.

In the weeks leading up to graduation, I gave her the story as a parting gift. Although I didn't say it explicitly, I liked to think that the underlying message of my story was "We're both going to college and won't be seeing each other as much anymore, but I hope this story will make you over-romanticize our brief relationship, and maybe when we're both home for our respective holiday breaks you'll consider having sex with me again in the parking lot behind the gym, like that one time after Homecoming." It was all subtext, but you don't need an MFA in teenage-boy-lit to read between the lines.

A few days later, she returned the story, now covered in red ink. She had taken the liberty of correcting my grammatical errors, which were numerous. Her biggest grievance, as she reminded me on almost every page, was my glaring overuse of commas.

KEEP ON READIN', AND I'LL KEEP ON OVERESTIMATING YOUR INTEREST IN MY PERSONAL LIFE

"It's distracting," she told me. "It's like you put a speed bump in every sentence. Just when I was starting to enjoy it, I'd come crashing to a stop."

I was more stunned than offended. How could I have been so misunderstood? She wasn't wrong about my sloppiness with commas. I used commas like an IRA terrorist uses Molotov cocktails. I just threw 'em in the general direction of my target and hoped for the best. But that was hardly the point. It was about passion. I'd slaved over that story all semester, locking myself in my room every night and blaring the Replacements' "Answering Machine" until I'd worked myself into the perfect sentimental froth to write romantic gibberish about our two-to-three month courtship. I'd ripped out my heart and handed it to her, and how did she repay me? By grading my story with the cold stolidity of a Scantron machine.

Needless to say, that was the end of us.

But it wasn't the end of condemnation for my love affair with commas. When I went to college, I expected it to be an intellectual circle jerk. I wanted English professors to tell me that my fiction was Chaucher-esque, even if they didn't entirely believe it. While the faculty did have an enthusiasm for language that was sorely lacking in my high school teachers, they also had a frustrating tendency to nit-pick about grammar. They had the hearts of poets and the brains of forensic criminologists.

I suppose I should've been thankful. My lackadaisical relationship with punctuation had been allowed to fester for too long. I was the first to admit that I had a problem with exclamation points. But that was Stan Lee's fault. As a kid, I was fanatical about Marvel Comics, and at least some of my early education in writing came from reading Spider-Man and The Hulk and X-Men. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but like an immigrant who learns English by watching game shows, it eventually came back to bite me in the ass. I didn't realize until I was 19 that exclamation points should be reserved for very special occasions, like when somebody is shouting. And just as pot leads to heroin, casual punctuation abuse can spiral into something more serious. It wasn't long before I was dabbling in double or even triple exclamation points. A sentence looked naked without them.

But while I gladly checked myself into exclamation point rehab, I was reluctant to sit through their sermonizing when it came to my other grammatical sins. I tried to read Strunk and goddamn White, I really did. But "The Elements of Style" always struck me as a cross between a calculus textbook and the New Testament, but without any of the sexiness. "Do this, don't do that, put statements in positive form or God will be angry, blah blah blah." As a college student, there was no quicker way to ruin writing for me than reducing language to a math equation.



Strunk and White saved most of their venom for commas. Stalin didn't have this many rules. "Commas (I'm paraphrasing) can separate independent clauses when they're joined by 'and', 'but', 'for', 'or', 'nor', 'so', 'yet', or after introductory clauses and phrases, but not to separate the subject from the verb or between the two verbs or verb phrases in a compound predicate." Oooookay. Isn't it necessary when teaching English to speak the fucking English language? It might've been easier if they phrased their cockamamie bylaws in ways I could understand. "A comma has as good a chance of getting together with an independent clause as a gay couple has of getting hitched in Texas." Now that I could follow.

Maybe I was being too sensitive, but it struck me as linguistic bigotry. S&W were never hatin' on apostrophes or question marks. Parenthesis barely got a mention, even though they're the grammar equivalent of muttering under your breath. But White, and to lesser extent Strunk (I really feel like he was the "bottom" of that twosome), had such a seething hatred for commas that they sometimes sounded like Ed Meese trying to describe what was so awful about bukkake.

I can pinpoint exactly where I went wrong (or right, depending on your point of view). I didn't have the best education in high school. In the 9th grade, I was struggling to understand the basics of grammar, and I couldn't trust the textbooks we'd been assigned, which were written in the 50s and seemed to believe that all language had the potential to be used for communist brainwashing, so the less you knew about it the better.

I learned enough to get by, but commas remained a mystery to me. The textbooks offered only vague explanations: "A separation of ideas or of elements within the structure of a sentence." I'd try to wrap my head around it by finding any metaphor that even slightly applied. "So a comma," I wondered aloud, "is like the dude at a party who introduces two people he thinks should hook up, but then he chaperones them all night, sitting between them on the couch because he's not sure if he can trust them to be alone just yet, because the guy is kinda handsy. Oh, wait, no, no, no, a comma is like Nepal, a tiny country stuck between India and China, and it's their job to... to... well, be oppressed, I guess. Shit, that doesn't work either. Fuck me."

I might've given up on commas entirely, were it not for a teacher who let an actual nugget of information slip when he wasn't paying attention.

"A comma is when you pause to take a breath," he told me.

It was a revelation, and for a teenager with a flair for theatrics, the worst advice anybody's ever given me. To my young mind, taking a breath meant pausing for dramatic effect. Every time a writer hesitated, I reasoned, they must be preparing to say something of earth-shattering significance. It was a more subtle form of exclamation points. Any hack could build tension with ellipses, but a comma seemed somehow more... mysterious.

"You're exhausting your sentences," my college professors scolded me. "It's like you're writing with a stutter. Unless you intend this to be read aloud by Bob Newhart, it just doesn't work."

So I did what any reasonable person who was spending fifty thousand dollars of his parents' money to learn what he should've been taught in high school would do. I ignored my teachers and added more commas. Was I just being a smart-ass? Most certainly. But I was also rebelling against the language police, defending my independence from grammar's fascist regime. Sure, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but I felt like a modern day Patrick Henry, albeit with a more confused idea of what constitutes oppression.

"Give me, the liberty to, take my, time with a, sentence or, give, me,,, death."

Higher education never was able to help me kick the comma habit. It took my grandfather to make me see the light. And he really didn't have much to do with it either. It was his typewriter. He owned one of those classic Smith-Corona models; the kind that could be cleaned with a hose and hasn't been modern since cars still came with a hand-crank. But he refused to throw it away, even when it started to fall apart. His typewriter was missing several keys, including the L, the number 8, and in an unfortunate coincidence, the comma.

I learned this the hard way during a family vacation at my grandparents' Florida home. His rusty typewriter called out to me with its siren song. Whenever I sat down next to it, I was seduced by the illusion that I was in a filthy hotel room in the bad part of town, banging away at a dusty keyboard, my fingers stained with ink, a cigarette dangling from my lips, the light from a neon sign just outside the window illuminating my face in a puke orange glow.

But the dream went sour when I discovered the absent comma key. At first, my brain refused to accept it. I instinctively tapped at the empty hole where the comma key should be, like an amputee scratching a phantom limb. Before long I had improvised a makeshift replacement: a sharpie marker which made every comma look like a tumor. I eventually gave up and went cold turkey, and let me tell you, it's exactly as bad as the junkies claim. Commas, smack, same difference. I got the shakes and a fever and I sweated through several layers of ironic iron-on t-shirts. I tried using a semicolon instead, but it felt like cheating. After the simplicity of commas, a semicolon just looked top heavy and, well, a little slutty.

And then at some point, everything changed. I remember looking at one of my typewritten pages and laughing, and suddenly having a deeper appreciation for my grandfather. He loved writing letters, and I wasn't the first one in the family to notice that his letters read like manifestos. They were just one long sentence that dragged on and on and on and on. For the longest time, I thought he was going senile. But now it made so much sense; in a world without commas, everybody sounds like a Kaczynski.



But none of that mattered anymore. I'd stumbled onto a freedom unlike anything I'd ever known before. I was like one of those people who goes off the grid and realizes just how much the conveniences of the modern world are a crutch. Commas had been slowing me down, gumming up the works. My sentences had places to go, people to see. They weren't gonna waste all day at a grammar tea party. I wanted to track down my old high school English teacher and tell him exactly what I thought of his precious rules. "Hey, old man, I don't have time for your commas anymore. You think a sentence needs to breathe? I'll breathe when I'm dead!"

(Yes, I know that makes no sense. But neither does harassing a teacher who tried to be helpful twenty years ago. Just go with me on this, okay?)

I spent most of my early 20s in a comma-free existence, convinced that I was following in Kurt Vonnegut's footsteps by filling my stories with very, very short and concise sentences. Why say in one sentence what you can say in six? It just gives your ideas more impact, I thought. And so it goes. But then one day an editor from a glossy magazine called me and said, "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. If you can rewrite this article and make me believe it wasn't written by a post-grad asshole who jerks off to Finnegans Wake and still thinks ignoring punctuation passes for clever, I'll bump you up to 20 cents a word."

Of course I said yes. I'm a writer, and that means my entire belief system is for sale to the highest bidder. Does that make me a whore? I guess it does. But I don't really care. You hear me world? I don't care!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn.

Lions and Tigers and Sasquatch, Oh My!

It's amazing how quickly your entire world can change. One minute you're living in a peaceful small town in Northern California, where nobody locks their doors and the sound of children's laughter can be heard on every block. And the next thing you know, you're barricading the doors and painting the windows black and you can't even venture outside to get the morning paper without worrying that you'll end up in the lower intestine of a carnivorous feline, who's been hiding behind the tree in your front lawn and waiting for the chance to leap on you and sink his fangs into your soft, pink flesh.

I'm not usually the kind of guy to be easily alarmed. Truth be told, when a neighbor informed me that a mountain lion was seen in downtown Sonoma, my first reaction was a hearty guffaw. With all due respect to the people who live in this town, they aren't the most reliable witnesses. The majority of them work in the wine industry, and because you can't make great wine without tasting it occasionally (i.e. every other bottle), they tend to be drunk by noon. So when they say something like, "Holy crap, I saw a guy with a head growing out of his chest," they've probably just seen a parent carrying their child in a baby backpack. Similarly, when they start screaming, "Mountain lions are on the loose," it's not unreasonable to think they might've seen a kitten, or a relative who hasn't shaved in a few days, or a high school production of Cats. You never know. When your zinfandel has 2% blood, the mind has a way of playing tricks on you.

KEEP ON READIN'! OR, BARRING THAT, JUST HOLD ME AND WHISPER SWEET PROMISES IN MY EAR.

But after the first lion "sighting" in early June, the story refused to go away. It seemed like every week there were more reports of lions wandering dangerously close to Sonoma's residential district. The bike path was soon covered in signs warning visitors not to walk alone, and never at dawn or dusk. Even more disturbingly, small pets began disappearing. A cat or dog left unattended in a back yard for more than a few minutes would invariably go missing, and nobody wondered why. Even I got nervous when a mountain lion was spotted loitering in the parking lot of a popular steak joint, just a few blocks from downtown.

"That couldn't be a more obvious message," I told a group of friends, finally giving in to the paranoia. "They might as well have taken out a billboard ad. A lion was spotted at a steak restaurant? They're basically telling us, 'We're hungry and we want meat.' We either pay them off with dumpsters full of raw t-bones, or they're gonna pick us off one by one!"

My newfound fear of lions wasn't completely illogical. After all, the lions had only left the mountains out of necessity. Sonoma - actually, much of Northern California - endured a severe drought this summer. The lack of water meant less vegetation, so the deer came closer to town looking for food. And where the deer went, the lions followed. When the deer's numbers dropped significantly, the lions had little choice but to make a meal of whatever happened to be nearby - which, up to this point, consisted mostly of poodles. Or, as I'd taken to calling them, appetizers.

Hindsight is always 20-20, and I can now see a very distinct line between my "pre-lion" and "post-lion" period. In my pre-lion life, I'd say to the Dame, "I'm gonna take a power walk in the park," and she'd say, "Don't play your iPod so damn loud," and I'd know she was just worried I might blow out my eardrums. But in my post-lion existence, when she says, "Don't play your iPod so damn loud," what she's really saying is, "You need to be alert for lion attacks."

It's actually exhilarating. It makes everything seem somehow more important. In my old, bromidic life, I could say to the Dame, "I'm gonna run to the store and pick up some Tylenol" and not give it a second thought. But in a world where lions seemingly lurked around every corner, I was second guessing every decision. "How important is aspirin? Is it worth having my entrails slowly devoured by a remorseless eating machine?" The answer, more often than not, was, "Y'know, I think I can live with this headache after all."

My brother laughed when I told him about the lion epidemic in Sonoma. "Sounds like a good thing," he insisted. "Maybe it'll make that town a little less complacent."

I'd never thought of myself or anybody in Sonoma as complacent before, but now I wondered if he knew something we didn't. It did seem like every weekend Sonoma was packed with revelers, gorging themselves on food and wine in a never-ending gastronomic orgy. Perhaps the threat of a lion goring - a Sodom & Gomorrah buzz kill, if you will - was exactly what this town needed. Too much bacchanalian excess had made us soft and weak. We needed to break out of the rut of gluttony or face certain extinction, and the lions were just here to give us a gentle shove in the right direction.

If nothing else, one could argue that it was evolution in action. If you're one of the unlucky few who got singled out as dinner by the local lion contingent, maybe it was just nature's way of thinning the herd. Not good news for you, sure, but probably best for the species.

I raised this theory over cocktails to a small gaggle of my writing cohorts, and they all agreed it had merit. We had to rise to the challenge of the lions' reign of terror and start living again, really living. Of course, there's a big difference between a hypothetical discussion about hand-to-paw combat and putting one's bravado to the test. In the safety of a dark bar, our courage seemed indisputable. But in reality, we didn't have the combined strength or "real world" smarts to change the tire on a car, much less throw down with a predatory mammal.

"See, the trick to fighting a lion is intimidation," somebody announced to the group. "You gotta look big. Growl and wave your hands around and jump up and down. Make it look like you're not afraid."

"What do you mean, wave your hands around?" Another flabby writer asked. "You mean like jazz hands?"

"It doesn't have to be that choreographed, but yeah, that'll work. If it helps, imagine you're doing an Al Jolson impersonation."

"So you have to sing Mammy?"



"Well, I don't know if-"

"'I'd walk a million miles/ for one of your smiles/ my Maaaaaaammy.' That sorta thing?"

"Again, the lyrics aren't important. You just need to-"

"You're telling us lions are racists?"

"No, I-"

"Dude, you're missing the point. Lions aren't racists. That's why the song repels them."

"No, guys, seriously, the song isn't-"

"I wouldn't do it. I don't care if a lion is going to rip me open like a sock puppet, I'm not reducing myself to an antiquated cultural stereotype. Not gonna happen."

We were idiots, clearly. Or at least trying to avoid a scary topic by turning it into a joke. Whatever. It didn't change the fact that the closest any of us had ever been to a lion was a zoo or a Disney film. We didn't really want to consider what we'd do if cornered by a lion, because the outcome wouldn't likely be feel-good enough to necessitate an Elton John soundtrack. But unlike my writing brethren, I didn't want to run away and hide from the fear. I wanted to embrace it, to let the panic wash over me, seeping into my pores with its grim reminder of mortality, until my testicles retreated into my body like a frightened turtle.

I remembered something my sister-in-law told me. She was a flight attendant for United during 9/11, and she told me how the pilot had taken her aside and explained how terrorists had hijacked planes and flown them into the World Trade Center. He said to her (and I'm paraphrasing), "I need you to protect the cockpit by any means necessary." She didn't have access to a weapon, so she looked for anything that happened to be nearby - a pencil or a broken shard from a beer bottle - that might help her fight off a terrorist.

That's what flashed through my mind whenever I ventured more than a few yards from the safety of home. I instinctively glanced at the ground, scanning for a stick or projectile weapon large or pointy enough to take out the eye of a lion. But in my more rational moments, I doubted if I had the chutzpah to follow through with it. If prison is a metaphor for life, I'm not the new inmate who shivs the skinhead to prove how hard he is. I'm the inmate who gets ass-raped by the skinhead in his cell without offering even a whimper in resistance. What chance did I really have in a one-on-one brawl with a lion? Did I think I'd be like the gladiators who fought lions in the Roman coliseums? Actually, that's a bad example. I'm pretty sure they all got slaughtered. But isn't there an old myth about Hercules beating the Nemean Lion? I seem to remember that from college. Even if my memory isn't clouded from too much cheap weed, I probably shouldn't make any major life decisions based on the exploits of a fictional and totally ripped Greek hero. One more breakfast burrito and I won't be able to look down and see my own penis anymore, so I'm not exactly in the same league as Hercules when it comes to lion wrestling.



The tension reached a boiling point - maybe not for the rest of Sonoma, but at least for me - and then I left Sonoma and spent most of July in Northern Michigan with my family. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of anticipating a lion mauling. But then I heard about the Bigfoot sightings.

"So have you seen a Sasquatch yet?" I asked my mother, after throwing my luggage into the guest bedroom.

"What in the world are you talking about?" She asked, trying to sound amused by my latest conspiracy ramblings.

I told her about the Bigfoot expedition planned in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, following reports that a Yeti-like creature had been sighted in eastern Marquette County. And then I explained why I was convinced, despite our safe distance from the Bigfoot "hot spots" of the U.P., that Sasquatch, or something Sasquatch-esque, would make the journey across the Mackinac Bridge and end up smack dab outside our family cottage.

"You're just being silly," she laughed at me. "There's no such thing as a Bigfoot."

I knew she was right, but after a long summer of being on high alert for lion attacks, I was beginning to crave the endorphin rush. My paranoia was foreplay, and now I needed a release. I needed to be face to face with nature's horrible wrath, even if the consequences would be less than pleasant. And if I couldn't get that satisfaction from a real lion, than Sasquatch would work just as well.

The only problem was, how to find one.

"So who wants to go camping?" I offered during every family gathering.

I could see them whispering, looking at me with worried expressions. "I don't think that's a good idea," they'd tell me. "Do you even know how to make a campfire, or set up a tent?"

I didn't, but I wasn't ready to give up so easily. So I waited, and watched, convinced that my patience would be rewarded...

(Okay, I'm gonna be honest with you people. I don't have an ending for this story. I started writing it in June, and then the Sasquatch thing happened, and before I knew it, I'd written myself into a literary hole. I just assumed if I waited long enough, there'd be another lion sighting or somebody would get eaten or there'd be some "new peg," as we like to say in my line of work. Instead, the lion menace - if it ever really was a real menace - quickly become old news. Most people don't even remember it anymore. "Lion? What lion?" they ask me with blank stares. "Oh wait, I know what you're talking about. Was that this year? I thought it happened last summer."

That's no way to end a story. There's never been a great work of literature that ended with the sentence: "And then we just forgot about the whole thing."

I think the Bigfoot seque is where I went wrong. I was so certain that I'd stumbled onto the perfect thematic thru-line, linking the (admittedly brief) hysteria over mountain lions with my weird obsession for Sasquatch. But now I see why this may've been a mistake. I should've saved the Yeti bit for another post, or at least bothered to do some actual research. Then again, who has the time for that? Nobody is paying me for this goddamn blog, and I can barely muster the energy to write just one post per week anymore.

Well, the summer's almost over, so I suppose I better do something with this essay before it becomes completely irrelevant. Because I don't have a real ending, I invite you to pick either of these two fictional endings:

a) I learn that a good friend has been slaughtered by a mountain lion, and fly back to Sonoma for the funeral. Consumed with grief and blind rage, I convince some locals to form a vigilante mob and hunt down the murderous feline. We catch it after a lengthy chase, and for some reason I decide that it'd be a good idea to cut out the beast's still beating heart and hold it over my head while screaming, "Ego sum hominus indomitus!" I find out later that the rest of the mob thought this was over the top and a little tacky, and only a few of them picked up on the reference to Braveheart. It only gets worse when, in the weeks following the lion slaughter, I realize just how much I miss living in fear. So I begin spreading rumors about Sasquatch sightings, and when nobody believes me, I streak through downtown Sonoma in a lazy imitation of the Yeti. Weirdly, I actually fool the locals for a few minutes, and then I'm arrested for indecent exposure and public intoxication. As I'm sitting in jail, feeling very foolish about how far I've fallen, it occurs to me that I've learned two very important lessons today. One, there's a good reason why animals and humans, with very few exceptions, can't coexist. And two, I should definitely consider getting a full-body wax.

b) I decide to take that camping trip to Michigan's U.P. after all, and somehow (the details are sketchy) I end up being kidnapped by Sasquatch and a mountain lion, who are apparently in cahoots. They take me to their cave hideout, and though I'm sure they intend to eat me, they actually give me a surprisingly well-informed lecture about something vaguely scholarly - like, I don't know, let's say global warming. And I'm like, "Wow, this is so ironic. You guys are not what I expected at all. And not just because you both have the ability to speak, which is kinda weird too, but because you're not the wild and savage beasts that everybody seems to think you are." And they're like, "Oh my goodness, no. Every time we come down from the mountains or the Upper Peninsula, you silly humans assume we mean you harm. But we want only to educate you about environmental issues and art." And then I'm like, "Yeah, like I was saying, it's totally ironic." And they're like, "Yes, we get it. Enough already with that word. Jesus, a guy spends four years in college and suddenly everything is ironic. Would it kill you to come up with an original observation that doesn't involve irony or, god forbid, post-modernism. Wait, you're not going to blog about this, are you?" And then I wake up and I'm back in my bed, and I think, "I guess it was all just a dream... or was it?")

Sail On

My brother and I flipped the boat, because flipping the boat is what we do.

It's been a summer tradition for us almost as long as we've been sailing. And by "we" I mean, of course, my brother. I don't sail. I'm just a passenger, and I'm perfectly content with this inactive role. I've learned a few basic sailing terms over the years - "luffing" and "starboard tack" and "gybe" - but those are just for my own protection. My brother, while entirely harmless on dry land, turns into Moe Howard when we're out on the lake. I've learned the hard way that when he shouts "hard-alee" it means the boat is changing directions and I need to duck immediately or get pimp-slapped by the boom - a bit of vaudeville theater he finds endlessly amusing.



It's a small boat - a two-seater Sunfish - so it doesn't take much to capsize. One strong gust of wind and it's on its back quicker than a Florida middle school teacher after a shot of Jäger. Back when we were teenagers, we had our boat-dumping act down to a science. My brother - who, it should be mentioned, taught sailing for several years during college - was so good that he could flip a boat and then get it righted again without ever getting wet. It had something to do with climbing across the boat as it went under, like a lumberjack in a log rolling contest, and then pulling down hard on the centerboard. For my part, my only job was to jump when he said jump, and then float in the water while he did his thing.

KEEP ON READIN'! IT'D DO WONDERS FOR MY SELF-ESTEEM

We didn't do it just for our own amusement. We were usually showing off. I knew a dunk was about to happen when my brother looked at me and muttered, "You wanna freak these guys out?" That was code for, "There's another boat nearby. Let's trick them into thinking we're in trouble, and then show these bitches how it's done."

Again, the "we" in this sentence could be misleading. I was not in any way a vital part of the nautical medicine show. I was not the Robin to my brother's Batman. I was Alfred, standing near the back and saying, "Very good, sir. May I get you some tea?"

My brother enjoyed teasing me about my inability to be a productive member of his aquatic kingdom. "What would you do if I fell out of the boat right now?" he liked to ask me.

My answer was always the same. I'd jump in after him. This made him howl in protest, and he'd remind me that the boat would likely continue on without us, eventually disappearing into Lake Michigan. Wouldn't I at least try to steer it back to shore?

"No," I'd tell him. "You jump, I jump." I wasn't trying to be cute. I was deathly serious. The captain goes down with the ship, and there was no fucking way I was the captain. He sometimes tried to test me, pretending to make a dive for the water. But I always called his bluff. In his gut, he knew that I'd sacrifice the boat, which had given us almost three decades of cherished summer memories, before I'd even consider trying to figure out what a rudder does.

But that didn't mean I was completely uninvolved. There were certain theatrics required in recreating a realistic boating accident and inspiring genuine panic from the terrified onlookers. It wasn't just a matter of catching the right wind and letting gravity do the rest. It needed drama. Sometimes a well-placed scream would do the trick. When we really wanted to sell it, we'd cook up an elaborate backstory. It began with some in-fighting; we'd yell a few insults at each other when another boater was within earshot. And before long, it devolved into a full-on slugfest, with exaggerated punching and wild gestures that even the sunbathers watching from the beach couldn't miss.

But even at our cruelest, we never cried out for help. That would've been wrong. We didn't want to take advantage of any good samaritans. And we sure as hell didn't want any of them calling the Coast Guard before we revealed the punchline. We just wanted to make them feel like idiots. We wanted to look at them and say, "Wait, you thought we didn't mean to capsize? Oh man, that is priceless! Hahahahahaha! No, no, it's cool, we're just messing around."

Sometimes out intentions were less innocent. Our "accidents" were often conveniently timed with the passing of a boat filled with college girls clad in skimpy bikinis. They were easy enough to scare, especially as most of them were drunk and their idea of sailing began and ended with turning the ignition key. When my brother saved our vessel from certain tragedy, like some tanned Houdini, the girls would burst into applause, giving him a standing ovation and rewarding his efforts with catcalls and crude (if much appreciated) compliments about his ass.

We never discussed it, but I think we always hoped it would lead to something. After performing our stunt show for dozens of seafaring coeds, it never resulted in one of them saying, "Hey, how would you boys like to come aboard and let us treat you to a leisurely afternoon of beer and handjobs?" Not once.

It may've been my fault. I was, for all intents and purposes, my brother's wingman. I could've made more of a fuss. I could've said, "Wow, did you see what that guy just did? Pretty amazing, huh? And I'm not just saying that because I'm his older brother. You think I could do the same thing? I've been on boats my entire life, and my only discernable skills are wearing a lifejacket and floating in the lake like an aborted fetus in a jar of formaldehyde. I know what I'm talking about. That shit is hard."



I do find it curious that my brother became such a sailing enthusiast and I never developed even a modicum of interest in it. Sailing is in our blood. Our parents were sailors - actually, we try to avoid using that word. "Sailor" sounds a little too much like a character in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Nobody in my family has ever worn a navy cap at a jaunty angle, and we've never performed in a synchronized dance number. We're the verb, never the noun. To "sail" means that you own a boat; to be "a sailor" means that you're in a Village People tribute act.

The first person to introduce our family to sailing was my father. He loved it, or rather, he wanted to love it. He actually hated everything about sailing. But he didn't discover that until after he'd spent our savings on a boat, big enough for all four of us and even a few guests. He was determined to make our weekends on Lake Michigan a meaningful and joyous family experience. But after we'd get just a few yards off shore, he'd fall apart. He didn't understand how a boat worked. It confused and frustrated him. He didn't know the difference between windward and leeward, a mainsheet and a jib, and it made the vein on his forehead throb angrily. But the rage was soon replaced with abject fear. He was convinced that something terrible was going to happen, probably due to his utter incompetence, and we would end up sinking to our watery graves.

Also - and I never really understood why this happened - a day on our boat meant that we were probably going to see our father's balls. Or at least one of them. I don't think he meant to expose himself, but invariably he'd wear shorts that rode up just a little too high, and one ball would come squeezing out of the side, like a children's birthday balloon that'd been blown up by an asthmatic. It was hypnotic. We didn't want to look at it, but we couldn't look away. Even cries of "Dad, we can see your balls" didn't make it go away. He never listened to us and tucked his stray ball back into his shorts, like any reasonable person might do. His attention was fixed on the sea, wondering if there was something he could do to stop all that water from flooding over the bow.

Out of necessity, my mother learned the basics of operating a boat. And my brother is convinced that he also learned how to sail because of the trauma of those childhood boat journeys. I believe I didn't learn how to sail for the very same reason. On an unconscious level, he wanted to save our father. I just wanted off the boat. My every memory of sailing involves my father screaming, "Where's the cleat? I don't even know what a goddamn cleat looks like! Oh my sweet lord, we're all going to die!!" And then a few hours later, when we'd docked the boat and managed to get my dad enough oxygen so he'd stop hyperventilating, we'd be sitting in our backyard and he'd be sipping on a beer and he'd look at the family with a big smile and say, "Today was fun, don't you think?" No dad, it was not fun. It was pretty fucking traumatic. I couldn't help but associate sailing with being ten years old and well on my way to a peptic ulcer.

But I learned to love it again when my brother became the sailor (ugh, there's that word again) that my father never became. It was comforting to know that he was in control, and that I could jump off the boat and abandon him in an emergency. It was a freedom that I didn't have in my everyday life; the ability to stand up at any moment and announce, "I'm outta here," and then just fling myself into the abyss, watching as everything drifts out of view.

When my brother took up sailing, my parents decided that they didn't need to be the mariners of the family anymore. So they retired and became our audience. They even joined a nearby yacht club so we'd have beachfront access. It was an ironically-named organization, given that none of the members had ever set foot on a yacht. They were mostly tourists from Chicago or Detroit who spent their summers in lakeside cottages and hosted potlucks while wearing captain's hats and drink cocktails with names like "Hold The Tonic". They did sail occasionally, and like us, they sailed Sunfishes. But they preferred to wait until the wind was at its most dangerous, and their frontal lobes had been soaked in enough $3 scotch to permanently impair their "fight or flee" response.

Even with so much competition, we still managed to be the black sheep of the yacht club. We were the ones terrorizing the waters with our immature antics, like pirates more prone to self-effacing tomfoolery than plundering and rape. It wasn't enough just to catch a strong breeze and ride it out. We wanted adventure. We wanted to sail dangerously close to the kayakers, who would curse at us like senior citizens protecting their lawns. We coaxed our younger cousins onto the boat with us and delighted them with increasingly ill-advised stunts, which usually meant throwing me overboard and running me down at frightening speeds. I'm surprised sometimes that I still have all of my original teeth.

We also plotted trips to Gull Island, a once idyllic oasis that was now infested with seagulls, who launched their white crap at visitors like Japanese kamikaze bombers. But the journey was daunting. At the start of every summer, my brother hopefully surmised that it'd take us "an hour or so" to get to the island. By early July, he estimated that it would require "most of the morning," and by August it became "a weekend trip." I never understood how an island could get further and further away in just a few months, but I suppose it has something to do with global warming.

In recent years, I'm more aware than ever of these missed opportunities. We still take the boat out every summer, and we still laugh like the retarded adolescents we were at 16. But we don't capsize nearly as often as we used to. The old girl is showing signs of age, and it's shocking that she's endured so much abuse by our hands and still comes back for more. She still sails with the best of them, but she isn't the prettiest girl at the prom. She's covered in scratches and rust and loose screws. She has been compared (mostly by me) to a cross between an aging Nevada prostitute and Redd Foxx's pickup truck. I wonder why she hasn't just crumbled under us by now, her earthly remains sinking into the sea like a self-inflicted Viking funeral.

And our boat isn't the only one getting older. Sailing - or, as the case may be with me, sitting - takes a little more effort than it used to, and the aches and bruises incurred by dragging my thirtysomething body onto a Sunfish - which, I never noticed before, has a lot of sharp edges - just reminds me yet again that I'm not a fucking kid anymore. And I don't need that wake-up call. Not now, anyway. Maybe when I'm 50. Right now I want to enjoy the illusion that the best is still in front of me.

I've always been more of a floater anyway. Sailing is all well and fine, but there's nothing quite like diving off of a moving sailboat and just letting your body go limp. I don't know why I like it so much. Sometimes, as I'm bobbing in the water, I catch myself thinking, "Well, if I have to go now, this would be the perfect time to have a heart attack." Is that weird? It sounds weird, doesn't it? Maybe these kind of dark thoughts only occur to people who've lost a parent to a heart attack. It's something you think about all the time. It's not like cancer, which you can see coming. You have to constantly anticipate a heart attack, looking for it around every corner. For the rest of your life, you're gonna live with the question: "Can I afford to die right here, right now?"

When my father died, my mom found him in the kitchen. He was lying on the floor, reaching for the phone, a half-eaten sandwich on the table. I don't even want to think about what kind of mess was involved. From what little I've read on the subject, your body pretty much lets go when you die. Piss and shit and every other bodily fluid that isn't needed anymore makes a run for the exit. But if you die in water, there's no danger that you'll be discovered lying face down in a pool of your filth. Everything just... washes away.

I've had countless girlfriends tell me that I love water because I'm a Pisces. But I think I love water because it's the cleanest way to die.



"You wanna freak these guys out?"

I look up at my brother. I haven't really been paying attention. We've been out on the lake for only a few minutes, and already my mind is wandering. Our last conversation was about whether the timing was right for Teddy to take his inaugural trip on the Good Ship Lollispitz. Apparently not. When I suggested it, my brother glared at me like I'd just asked for permission to wag my penis at his son.

"Freak who out?" I finally ask.

My brother gestures towards the shore a half-mile away, where a small smattering of boats are just barely visible. We've heard rumors that a race was planned today. It was the only reason we'd come out so early. The last time the yacht club sponsored an actual sailing contest was almost ten years ago, and we were beginning to worry that the new generation of summer tourists lack a fighting spirit. Sure, they have an enthusiasm for alcoholic beverages to match their forefathers, but it takes a certain special something to aim a 13-foot fiberglass dagger into hostile waters while mixing yourself another gimlet.

As we get closer, we both have the same horrifying realization. Those tiny boats in the distance, chasing each other in tight circles? They're... well, not much bigger than they appear. They aren't even real boats. They're motorized and miniature toys, controlled by their owners from the relative safety of the beach. This isn't a race, it's a facade! It's gathering of nerd hobbyists who have about as much to do with actual sailing as a ComiCon attendee has to do with space travel.

I look back at my brother and notice a wicked grin on his face. We exchange smiles and I perch on the edge of the boat, ready to make a leap into the chilly Michigan waters. But he waves me back, indicating that he has no intention of capsizing. He has something else in mind.

The wind has been manic depressive all morning, shifting between strong gusts and miserable sighs, like a bipolar patient off his meds. But as if some divine presence has decided to intervene on our behalf, we suddenly catch a breeze that sends us flying across the lake like we've been flung from a catapult. There's no stopping us.

We hear screams echoing from the beach. "You're too close," they yell at us, waving their arms frantically. "Too close!"

My brother doesn't flinch. He just stares at his target. Like me, he's curious to see if we'll actually go through with it.

"Say when," he offers without looking at me.

I say nothing. I assume we'll change tack at the last possible second, but I don't want to be the one to chicken out first. Too much is at stake. It feels like this is a pivotal moment. We're at a crossroads, stuck between the immaturity of our youth and some boring future of responsible adulthood. And like Otter said in Animal House, a situation like this absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

"Say when," my brother says again, the panic rising in his voice. The screams from the beach are now almost deafening. The boats flee in every direction, like tiny Japanese businessmen in a Godzilla movie.

"Just a little more," I whisper, so excited I can't even blink. "A liiiiiittle more."

Would You Consider Being a Character in My Next Novel?

I'm not sure if you remember me - actually, I'm almost positive you don't - but I remember you. How could I forgot? You were the day manager at a small self-storage place in Glendale, and when I came in one afternoon to pay the rent on my storage unit, you decided that we needed to be friends. I was resistant at first; I didn't really need more friends, much less a friend in his early-to-mid 80s who sold cardboard boxes for a living. I didn't imagine we'd have much to talk about. I tried to tune you out as you rambled on and on, but my ears perked up when you mentioned your screenplay. When you live in LA, nine out of every ten people you meet in an average day are writing a screenplay. But yours seemed like something special.

It was about zombies, you told me, and though it was a long way from being finished, it was already well over 800 pages.

I don't care all that much about zombies or zombie movies, but it was obvious that you cared. A lot. You knew everything there was to know about the zombie genre, and you had strong opinions about it. You explained that a zombie can only be killed by severe head trauma or decapitation, and they're typically afraid of bright lights and fire but do not, despite the arrogant claims of some zombie scholars, eat human brains, and the very idea of such stupidity made you very, very angry.

KEEP ON READIN' WHYDON'TCHA?

Another thing that made you angry were writers who thumb their noses at zombie traditions. Why, you wondered aloud, do so many modern storytellers ignore the voodoo roots of zombism? And what's up with these arty-farty horror flicks where zombies can run? You just didn't get it. It made you want to spit. In fact, you used those exact words: "It makes me want to spit how some people are so sloppy with the facts. Zombies cannot run. Their flesh is decaying. Their calf muscles are mush." Marathon running zombies were, you assured me, enough to shame George Romero. And coincidentally, you may have met George Romero once but you weren't sure because he seemed a little too young and you didn't think Romero was hispanic.

Then you told me about your zombie screenplay, and oh my goodness, even for a novice I was impressed. A cast of almost 3000 zombies, some created by radiation poisoning, some by voodoo curses, some just kicked out of heaven by an indifferent god. It had political metaphors piled upon social satire mixed with plenty of Fulci-esque gore. You told me it was an epic, and at 800 pages and counting, how could it be anything but? I agreed with you that Charleston Heston in his prime would've been perfect for the lead, though I wasn't sure which of the two-dozen plus non-zombie speaking roles you were referring to.

I was just starting to enjoy your surreal enthusiasm for zombies when you dropped another bomb on me. "I hope I'm actually able to finish the damn thing," you muttered, almost like an afterthought. "I have Alzheimer's and it's been getting pretty bad lately."

And that's when I realized you were so much more than just another Hollywood hack with dreams bigger than his talents. Suddenly you were a tragic figure, determined to finish the Great American Zombie Movie before running out of time. No wonder your script was 800 pages. You probably woke up every morning with no memory of what you'd written the day before, and you invariably wrote the same few scenes again and again and again. You could've been the greatest undiscovered zombie screenwriter of your generation, but because you were lost in the endless maze of your own treasonous brain, the world would likely never know.

I've tried writing about you before, but I can't ever seem to get it right. Sometimes your story just seems too much like a rip-off of Memento. I've only ever managed to get four chapters into a novel before the self-doubt sets in. Does the world need another book about writers writing? I've only read a handful that pulled it off. Chabon's Wonder Boys and King's Misery. Oh, and maybe that one by Nabokov about the poet, what's it called again? Pale Fire? What am I going to say about a tortured author that Nabokov forgot to mention? Been there, done that, right?



Then again, Nabokov never wrote about an author with a zombie obsession, did he? Hmmm. Maybe there's hope for you yet. I mean, not with the Alzheimer's thing. That's pretty much incurable. Sorry, didn't mean to get your hopes up. But as a character in my next novel, you just might find a way to live forever yet.

* * *

I don't know why I noticed you, but ever since I did, I can't get you out of my head. You probably have a name, but to me you'll always be Smoking Guy On The Side Of The Highway. At least in appearance, you looked like anybody else I've ever seen loitering near a major interstate. Your armpits were stained yellow with sweat and you had the unmistakable hygiene of somebody who spends a lot of time in gas station bathrooms. But there was also something different about you. You didn't have the hangdog expression of so many highway wanderers. You know, the one that announces to the world, "I don't want to blow a trucker for food money, but I haven't completely ruled it out." But you didn't have that same quiet desperation. You were an anomaly, possessing something that even those of us with cars couldn't claim. If I had to describe you in a word, based solely on my first impression, I'd call you... content.

You were so intriguing that I took the next exit and did a u-turn, just for the chance to pass you a second time. But I still couldn't figure you out. You weren't hitchhiking, and you didn't seem to be waiting for a friend to pick you up. You paid no attention to the cars that charged past, sometimes dangerously close. You might as well have been alone in your living room, relaxing with your thoughts. You weren't going anywhere or waiting to go anywhere. You were exactly where you wanted and needed to be at that exact moment, sitting Native American style on the median between the two roads and casually smoking a cigarette.

I thought about you for the rest of my road trip, trying to come up with possible explanations. Maybe you were an ex-smoker who still needed the occasional nicotine fix to steady his nerves, so you snuck out here to smoke in peace, where nobody would point an accusatory finger at you and make you feel like a failure. Or maybe it was something less obvious. Maybe your life was a mess; your kids were flunking out of daycare and your wife screamed at you every time you invited over some buds to watch 80s Roller-Rama on ESPN Classic and your job in the Wal-Mart warehouse wasn't nearly as creatively fulfilling as you'd hoped. But out here on the highway, you were able to forget. This was your refuge from the world, where you could escape from it all and enjoy a few cigs and let the white noise of traffic drown out everything until it just faded, faded, faded away...

There's something about hiding in plain full that I find really fascinating. I'm sure the reality isn't so great, but it's perfect fodder for fiction. Y'know, how it's impossible to be truly alone anymore, with all the constant stimulus that surrounds us every day, and sometimes you have to look for air bubbles of sanity wherever you can find them, even if it's in the midst of chaos. But I wouldn't come right out and say as much in my novel. It'd be subtext. It'd be implied by the character's actions. And then when I did an interview and they asked me what inspired that particular chapter, the one with the guy smoking next to a highway, I'd tell them about you and how I'd seen you on that hot summer day in the south suburbs of Chicago and how I knew instantly that I wanted to write about you.

But I don't want to give you the wrong idea. Please don't read this and think I'm gonna base an entire character on you. Because that's probably not gonna happen. I'd feel terrible if you told all your friends about this and they read the book and said, "Wow, this is really about you?" And then you'd have to say, "Well, no, not all of it. Just the part where he smokes next to a highway." And they'd look a little confused and say, "Oh... well, I... I guess that's still cool." I don't want them to think you're an idiot, so maybe it'd be best if we kept this our secret. I'll send you the book when it's finished and you can skip ahead to the paragraph about you and think, "Yeah, I remember that, it was a good day" and you'll always know that at least one small part of your life has been immortalized forever, even if it's not the part you might've necessarily picked.



* * *

I don't even know you - you're the Dame's friend, or rather, the ex-wife of a friend that the Dame hasn't seen in many, many years - but I've heard about you. And frankly, I'm dismayed that nobody thought to write about you before.

Here's what I know, and correct me if I'm confused on any of the details. You performed as a "character" for Disney World during the late 80s and early 90s. In layman's terms, this means you dressed like a talking animal and wandered around a theme park for 12-hour days, shaking the hands of children and posing for photographs. As I understand it, you need to be very, very small to fit into those costumes, and while you're not technically a midget, you're just short enough - somewhere in the five foot whatever range - to make you a valued employee in the Disney family.

You played several characters, everything from Jiminy Cricket to Tigger. But your reputation was built on Donald Duck. When you put on that ridiculously large head, you became an anatidae with a speech impediment. And you could charm the pants off anybody; a crowd of awe-struck prepubescents or a bus filled with constipated senior citizens, it didn't matter. They'd fall in love with you instantly. All of your co-workers said you were a star - granted, a star confined to the cramped obscurity of a polyester and foam costume, but a star nonetheless.

And then tragedy struck.

As I heard it, you were just finishing another exhausting day and counting the minutes before your shift ended when you were attacked by a roving gang of underage hoodlums. They grabbed you, carried you through the park, and threw you into the food court pond. If it wasn't for your gigantic duck head, which acted as a flotation device, you might've drowned. But you didn't, and the Disney corporation rewarded you for your tenacity - and for your unwillingness to file a lawsuit - by giving you an undisclosed settlement and job security for life.

For all I know, you don't want me writing about any of this. But maybe you'll consent to let me create a character that's "loosely based" on your experiences. Say, a guy (see, it's different already!) who dresses like Goofy at Disney World and after being beaten senseless by some teenage ruffians, he develops a nervous tick, not unlike the flashbacks common in Vietnam vets. He's mostly able to suppress it, and he can go to work and be the lovable pooch he's paid to portray. But every once in a while, something inside him snaps and he goes to his bad place. Maybe he's posing for a photo with a group of schoolkids and suddenly he grabs one of them by the throat and screams, "Look at me like that again and I'll snap your fucking neck like kindling!" He's a good guy at heart and he sincerely loves children, but he just can't control his paranoia. It comes bursting out of him at the worst possible moments. "What're you doing with your hands? You reaching for a blade, aren't you? You tryin' to cut me? Well, not if I cut you first, bitch!"

But maybe that's too cheap a gag. Y'know, the more I think about it, maybe you're not the person I should be writing about. Yeah, it's really funny and tragic that you were assaulted while wearing a Disney costume - I mean, not "ha ha" funny, but... you know what I mean - but the question that keeps coming back to me is, why you? Those thugs were at a Disney theme park, and they had their pick of dozens of colorful characters. They could've gone after dogs, rodents and at least seven different types of dwarf. If they really wanted to stick it to The Man, why not grab Mickey and make an example of him? Why single out the duck dressed like a gay sailor?

It's too easy to say, "Oh, they were just a bunch of drunk frat guys out for a good time." I think their reasons went deeper than that. I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I like to believe they were sober, and they honestly thought they doing something honorable. Think about it; they picked up a mutant talking duck and carried him to the nearest large body of water. They weren't trying to attack Donald, they were liberating him. They knew he was living a lie, forced into an unnatural existence as a corporate shill for Disney. So they decided to help him cast off the shackles of oppression and return to his natural habitat. Sounds to me like the bravery of some very, very confused Peta activists.

Oh man, this stuff writes itself. Nobody is gonna believe this actually sorta kinda happened. I mean, I don't know if Peta had a hand in it, but that's what makes it fiction, right?



* * *

It was 1999, and the Dame and I were living in a miserably small bungalow apartment in Burbank. We were young(ish) and poor and dizzy from an emotional whirlwind that flip-flopped between seething hatred for LA and an almost incapacitating self-doubt. You were a possum, and you gave us the only genuine (if fleeting) moment of happiness we'd experienced in almost a year.

We were awake at midnight, plotting our escape from southern California over a late dinner of Australian wine and Hot Pockets. We heard noises outside, the distinctive pitter-patter of feet on our front stoop that we assumed belonged to teenagers, probably terrorizing the neighbors for whippet money. But when we cracked open our door and peeked outside, we weren't accosted by acne-faced droogs intent on rape with a Beethoven soundtrack. Instead, we saw you, an abnormally small marsupial who had ventured a little too far down from the mountains, and somehow stumbled upon our home - a miracle, really, given the sad conformity of every apartment on our street. We were just another pimple in the vast landscape of Burbank's oily rump.

You didn't notice us right away. You were sniffing at our hedges, unaware that we were standing just a few feet away, gazing at you with the unconditional affection of a parent watching a child take its first steps. It took a full six minutes before you finally turned in our direction, and even then it took a few seconds to register in your tiny brain.

When it sunk in that you were being watched, you did a double-take with the exaggerated theatrics of a Looney Tunes cartoon. You were so startled by us that you almost fell ass backwards onto the sidewalk, and emitted a squeak that sounded like the air being stomped out of a balloon.

But then - and this is the part that really melted our hearts - you clumsily tried to salvage what remained of your dignity. You'd barely recovered from the shock before you were easing into an absurdly relaxed pose, trying to appear like you'd never lost your composure and giving us a nonchalant nod as if to say, "I totally expected to see you there just now."

I've never seen an animal be so self-conscious before. We tried not to laugh, but couldn't help ourselves. It never occurred to us that you could feel an emotion like embarrassment. We wanted to reassure you, but didn't know the possum translation for "It's cool, dude." You eventually slinked away, and to nobody's surprise, you never visited us again. We always hoped you'd come back - we even gave you a name, Chevy, because you reminded us of Chevy Chase - but deep down, we knew we'd seen the last of you.

I told the Dame I was going to write about you, but it's been almost ten years and I still haven't done it. It may be because a possum isn't the best protagonist for a novel. Even a short story would be a stretch. No offense, Chevy, but you just don't have enough fictional meat on your bones to carry an entire narrative arc. But someday I'll find a way to tell your story, even if you're just a minor character that doesn't have much to do with the plot. Because I think we can all see something of ourselves in you; the socially awkward possum who invariably makes an ass of himself, only to run away and hide in the animal kingdom equivalent of a nightclub bathroom, slapping himself in the face and muttering, "Stupid, stupid, how could you be so stupid?"

I didn't mean to laugh at you, Chevy. And someday, when I finally find the right words to write about you, you'll understand that my laughter was meant more in empathy than mockery. Assuming you're one of those possums who can read, but I'm guessing not, huh?