Goodbye Fran

I said goodbye to my friend's mother today. Goodbye as in the final goodbye that is. She was in the hospital in a coma after suffering a very severe stroke. I was saddened to hear about the stroke and even more so when I learned there was no way she was going to recover from it.

Fran was 73 and quite vivacious. She wasn't the person you would expect to have been felled by a stroke. I've known several people who had strokes recently. They were not in as good shape as my friend's mother. But they all were able to snap back from it. I just figured Fran would, too.

The people sitting in the ICU waiting room looked like they should be the ones in the hospital bed, not Fran. They were old and weathered. One was wearing a body brace and using a walker due to a recent spinal compression surgery. Most were overweight and walked unsteadily due their aches and pains. These people were all contemporaries of Fran and people I had known since the 5th grade. They had aged, but Fran never seemed to age in my eyes.

She was slim and sprite. Always had a smile to greet you with and a big laugh that exposed her warmth. It wasn't her time to go, but who am I to say? In the end I guess it was.

One of my cousins is a top cancer doctor and researcher. He once said that the problem with being a doctor is that you will always fail. That's because the patient will with absolute certainty die one day. So what is the doctor's job? How long do you to try to preserve life? Who can determine when enough is enough?

I suppose we all think we can cheat death. We try to keep life going a bit longer because we know that the answers we seek will surely come tomorrow. We hope to find out if there is something better than the present, or we convince ourselves it must've been in the past. We forget that living is now, until it's not.

I was graciously invited to go into Fran's room by the family. I didn't want to intrude or impose but everyone was welcoming, especially Fran's husband, Ron. Big Ron as I knew him growing up. A large man in stature and personality. And from a kid's perspective at the time, somewhat intimidating. Fran was always a good counter to Big Ron.

I instinctively put my hand on his back and rubbed it. I told him how peaceful and at rest Fran looked. It was true. She had been in the hospital less than 24 hours so she still had color on her skin. Her eyes were not sunken into her head. I'd seen the death pallor before on ill patients who were awake and clinging to life. The open mouth, shocked eyes. You knew death was knocking. Fran was just asleep, resting peacefully. It was good to see this and I needed to tell Ron.

I think he appreciated it. He turned to me and said he suddenly felt at peace too.

The nurse walked in with her clipboard shortly after and started asking some perfunctory questions: What medications does she take? When did she take her last pill? Has she had a history of illness? Does she have cancer?

All of us in the room chuckled. We knew those questions didn't mean anything now. Fran was being kept alive on life support just so we could say goodbye. But Ron answered all the questions politely and patiently.  When the nurse asked if he had any questions she could answer Ron said yes he had only one. With his wry sense of humor he simply asked, "Why?"

My Dog Sucks

My dog is asleep on the couch next to me. He breathes or rather sighs just like a person. It's kind of interesting to think he is alive just like me. Then he kicks me with his hind legs as he stretches out. I get up and leave.

I'm asleep in my bed. My dog comes up to my room, stands next to my bed and cries. He starts out with a slow whine then moves into a loud song until I awake and pat my bed giving him the okay to jump up. He walks across the bed deftly missing my legs and lays down next to me, like a human. His breath stinks and I feel the air from his dog lungs pass over his coarse tongue and yellow teeth that held roadkill earlier that day.

I now hear a lapping sound. Check that. A slurping sound. My dog is licking his dick. He calls it cleaning. I call it lucky.

He finishes and falls asleep next to me, his leg twitching and kicking me every so often. I put my arm around him just like a human, without realizing he probably has ticks that now embed themselves into my skin. My dog sucks.

Story Slam: Sometimes Death Happens

This entry, honed down to 5 minutes, is an updated version of an earlier story I wrote a couple of years ago. I used this piece at a recent Story Slam contest where 12 of us were selected to get up and read in front of an audience of 80-90 people, 3 of which were literary agents.

I didn't win - someone else did.

I was hit by a deer.

Yes, the deer hit me. He shot out of someone's front yard, as I was driving down the road one afternoon and smacked right into the side door of my car, a large white minivan, which is now referred to as the deer magnet.

This must’ve been the stupidest deer in the world. Who doesn’t see a large white minivan?

I’ve lived here for over 20 years. I’ve heard the stories. I’ve seen the post-accident carnage, but I never experienced it firsthand. Now, I could claim a kill, and it felt good, until my eleven-year-old daughter who was in the backseat screamed: "What was that? Did you hit someone?”

"No, it was just a deer and he hit me," I said.

"You killed a deer!? A deer!? What are you gonna do?" she cried.

I wasn’t sure. At least it wasn’t a person, I thought. If it were a person I would know what to do.

I slowed the car down, and reluctantly pulled to the side of the road. Should I even be stopping? I couldn’t do anything for it. The best thing for all us at that point was for the deer to die -- quickly.

I looked down the road, but I didn't see anything at first. Perhaps, he was just stunned. Maybe he got up and ran away. Or maybe his deer friends were watching from behind a bush laughing at the motorist who stopped.

Nope. He was there, in the gutter, on his back, his leg twitching, his body quivering. Not dead, but dying -- slowly.

My heart sank. What would Joe Pesci do?

I could never bring myself to whack his little deer skull to bits with a tire iron. But, I could back up the car and do a little forward/reverse action, just to help him crossover.

No, my daughter was in the car. She’d figure out why we were going over the same bump again and again.

Rhetorically, the words slipped out of my mouth. "What should I do?"

"I don't know, you're the adult!" my daughter snapped back at me.

She was right, but I still didn't know what to do.

_______________________________________

A few weeks later, our fish died.

He was a freshwater blue gourami and joined our family six years earlier. He was a replacement for the five goldfish, which were won at a school fair by my two sons.

A word to the wise, don’t invest in a 10-gallon tank, filter, plastic plants and a castle until at least three weeks after bringing a goldfish into your home.

During that time span, each goldfish would take a turn dying in our beautifully decorated aquarium, now known as Davy Jones Locker.

And along with that died any hope of teaching the children compassion for another living thing. The boys had cheered wildly for more of the floaters.

The gourami was a second chance at redemption for the boys and my parenting skills. The gourami was thick and hearty and put those carnival fish to shame. He was surely going to live longer than 3 weeks.

And he did, but the kids were not impressed. He couldn’t be taught tricks and the only thing of interest to them was the long string of excrement that would trail out of his little fish anus.

The only other attention paid to him was when we returned home from occasional long weekends or vacations. The boys would race into the house to see the tank, only to shout out disappointedly: "He’s still alive!"

Until one day, he wasn’t. This 7-inch long fish that over the six years was once blue in color, then orange, had now turned stark white. He lay on his side at the bottom of the tank. He had struggled to die for two days, his gills gasping fruitlessly, his body sucked against the black filter.

I called the children into the room so they could see the final demise of this pet without a name. I suppose six years was not long enough to earn your own name. We had expected him to die like those before him, so we never bothered.

“Finally!” my eldest son exclaimed. The others concurred.

I told them he deserved a little more respect after all these years, and now I knew what to do. I told them we would have a proper burial in the backyard -- immediately.

The boys rolled their eyes.

"Where are you gonna bury him?" my daughter asked.

"Back by the dead tree stump."

"The neighbor's cat is gonna dig him up,” my middle son said. “He always pees there.”

"Get the shovel. We'll dig deep," I promised.

The burial site was prepared. And I gently flipped the fish into the hole. I have to admit the fish looked a little odd resting in the soil. But there he was, the white fish against the dark earth. I knew the cat would find him.

I managed to get a few words in: "Thank you fish for being part of our family. We're sorry we never named you, but we all knew who you were. You had a good, long life just like the man at the store said you would, so thanks for that, too."

 I went to cover the fish with dirt when all of a sudden his mouth opened wide and his fin flapped up and down.

"Oh my god! He's not dead," my daughter screamed. "Why are you burying him? He’s still alive."

I panicked. Thoughts of the deer struggling to survive went through my head. Should I do it right this time and just stamp on his body to finish him off? No, too many witnesses.

Quickly, I got on my knees and scooped the dirt onto the fish with my hands. The boys laughed. My daughter cried.

"I'm sorry,” I said to her. “He was just about dead. There’s nothing else we could do."

"He wasn't floating at the top like the others,” she sobbed. “He was still alive. You're a murderer! All you do is kill things!"

I looked at her helplessly. Still on my knees, with my shoulders shrugged and palms facing up, I said, "Sometimes death happens."

However You Can Get It

The 75-year old man at the start of the race was slim and fit. This was his 12th 5K this summer and only my second in a year.  He was the third person that week unsolicited to tell me how important yoga was for the body. "As you get older, stretch more and run less," he said.

When I checked out his finishing time after the race, I was convinced that someone was trying to leave me a message and that I should try out yoga on a more regular basis. When I reach 75, I hope I can run 8 minute/miles like he did.

My gym (which is not fancy, basically a local Y) offers a regular schedule of yoga classes.  I never really had an interest in attending, though. It's not that I haven't taken a few classes before, it's just that I'm not into the whole "religious" experience side of it.

"Breathe in, breathe out. Feel as if all your worldly weight is lifting out of the top of your head as you stretch forward with your arms but leave your shoulders behind." Then at the end of class, they all look around at each other and wish everyone, "Namaste".

I don't know what "namaste" really means. But if it translates into: "your callused feet that you shoved near my face during that last stretch were so nasty, don't ever come near me again," then maybe I'll say it.

Also, the whole stretching and breathing thing is hard for me to coordinate. I know it's important to breathe and I seem to do it unconsciously everyday, I just can't focus on both things at once. Especially, when there are a bunch of limber women on their stomachs who can bring the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads. Who wants to put dry, cracked skin feet onto their heads?

I'm no gymnast or contortionist. I find these women intimidating. I know they are trying to show off and prove my stretchable inadequacy, so I don't like being around them. Fortunately, my gym now offers a class called Yoga for Men. It is described as a simple approach with a focus on muscle stretching and relaxation, period. No mention of getting in touch with your inner self and tickling your ears with your toes. And it's just for men.

The class is taught my a male instructor who I actually know, so I knew if I had some questions I wouldn't be afraid to ask. Like, is it safe to do the downward facing dog in an all-male class?

Remind me not to complain about being in a class attended predominantly by women ever again. It seems Yoga for Men is an invitation for a every geriatric and overweight guy in the gym to show up in their cargo shorts, short-sleeved buttoned shirts, and tennis sneakers. Absolutely uninspiring.

It's when they pulled out the layers of mats, foam blocks and pillows from the supply closet that I grew more passionless. I watched them surround themselves with these materials as if they were building a nest. We were either going to have an all-male Lamaze class or it was going to be nap time.

But not wanting to be the odd man out, I followed suit. I fashioned my cocoon like the other idiots and waited for Dan, the male instructor to show up.

It seems Dan forgot to tell us he wouldn't be teaching the class that weekend so for 20 minutes the 9 of us sat in the room quietly, each unsure of what to do.

Finally, I sat up and said out loud, "Doesn't look like there's class. I'm packing it in." The others nodded but continued to sit there, bewildered. Perhaps, they didn't know what to do next. Or maybe they just didn't to shuffle along the hallways until their wives collected them up at the top of the hour.

As I started putting my stuff back in the closet, a cheerful voice entered the room."Hello, guys. Sorry I'm late. I just found out I was supposed to be subbing for Dan. Oops."

It was Tami, the hottest instructor at the gym. She walked in with her fire engine red yoga mat rolled up under her arm, her form-fitting black leotard that enveloped her sleek yet shapely body, her golden brown kinky locks that rested just above her shoulders, and her Ugg boots which reached just below her knees. Who cared that it was still summer and she was wearing winter boots? She was smoking!

There was an unanimous response from the room: "That's okay, Tami."

I quickly pulled out my mat, pillow, and foam block and reclaimed my spot on the floor. I wasn't going to miss a second of this. I nodded knowingly to the gentleman next to me, who took off his fishing cap and swatted down his comb over.

"Okay, let's start with some deep breathing," she said.

Breathing? Really? She spoke quietly and slowly. Like a snake charmer she entranced me. "Take deep, long, throaty breaths. Push them in and out. Force it. I want to hear your male power roar through the air." Do you know what it's like to be in a room with older men breathing that hard and trying to push air out of their mouths? It's like they were all trying to take a massive crap.

"Pull the energy out from below and turn it into expelled air. Imagine reaching down to your sex organs and thrusting the air up from that area. Release." Yes, Tami actually said 'sex organs' in the all-male class. I never knew how important breathing could be.

If she had stopped with that exercise it would've been good enough for me, but she continued. She had us perform some of the basic poses. Not that I'm anywhere near an example of what the proper pose should look like, I was light years ahead of my classmates. While I can balance on one foot and even bend my legs in a certain direction, the other guys looked like toddlers just learning to walk. They wobbled uncontrollably off their mats catching themselves before any serious collisions could occur. I wouldn't say they bending to reach their toes, but they did sort of lean forward and point to where there toes were supposed to be.

Tami had the utmost patience throughout all of this. She walked the room, observing and guiding the men as to what they were supposed to do. She rubbed their backs with an "atta boy" encouragement pat and whispered something into their ears.

That's when I realized I had it all wrong. Instead of trying to do the pose correctly, I started acting like the other guys. During the downward dog, I made sure I couldn't arch my back and thrust my butt into the air. Instead of holding an almost 90 degree angle at the hip, I kept it flat.

Tami knew I could do better. I was a bad boy. She stood behind me and reached both hands around my hips and pulled up. My butt pressed into her stomach as she gripped me. "Keep it firm," she said. "Suck in the stomach muscles." Oh, it was going to get firm I thought. Then she leaned forward near my ear and whispered: "Is that comfortable?" I nodded vigorously and received a pat on the back. I had made her happy.

Unfortunately, the next time I took the class. Dan actually showed up. You could see the look of quiet disappointment amongst the other members. Interestingly, the class seemed to have grown in size from the previous week. I guess word-of-mouth works at any age.

And while most of these guys have 20 years on me, at least we all understood the value of yoga and were willing to keep it at it. Perhaps Dan would mysteriously fall ill and need a replacement some time in the near future. Until then, I now had an answer to my question: Yes, it is safe to perform the downward dog in an all-male class.

Divorce Envy?

My wife accused me of Divorce Envy. Just because most of my friends are now divorced, she thinks that I want to get divorced, too.

She says I hang out with them too much and I must be jealous of their new lifestyle. A lifestyle which includes the freedom to meet new people and get laid.

I can tell you that nothing can be further from the truth.

Honey, I hang out with these people because I have Marriage Envy. The more I'm with my divorced friends, the more I realize their lives are hell. Amen.

I socialize with divorced people for several reasons: 1) The statistics are against me. I can't help it that more than half the marriages end in divorce. There's just more divorced people out there to be with. 2) I hate doing the couple thing. Married people are boring. 3) My divorced friends need a friend to confide in. I know, I'm a martyr. I just want to give back and be there for them, hang with them, and hear their stories from the other side.

But once the divorce proceedings are finalized and the divorcees have opened their online dating accounts, a married person is pushing their luck with the whole cry-on-my-shoulder thing.

This is what must've happened to me. I must've overstayed my welcome. "Time to come home."

Perhaps, my wife didn't appreciate my friendly advice to my newly divorced friends: "Don't get married again. This is your chance to go out and have fun. Don't even think about settling down."

I'm not being naive. I hear that type of advice offered all the time to new divorcees from both sexes. I think it makes sense. Sew those wild oats. Have crazy monkey sex on kitchen counters. Enjoy!

"So, your life is so bad?" my wife asks.

"My life? No. I'm talking about my friend's life. They're obviously coming out of something painful. Why should they try and repeat that so soon? They should go out and live a little."

"And is that what you're doing with them? Living a little?"

I may have said this before, but honesty has no place in a relationship. But living vicariously through your divorced friends does. Sure they have great pick up stories, enhanced sex lives, and erotic texts from one night stands. But they also have lawyer's bills, psychiatrist sessions, missed carpools, angry children, and lots of heavy baggage.

No. I don't want to be out there hunting for my next meal, or bagging anything with saggy tits and flabby stomachs. But I sure don't mind hearing about it from other people.

Flight 1619

Air travel sucks. Everyone knows that. But it doesn't suck when you get bumped up to First Class!

That didn't happen on this flight. But I did manage to move myself and my son up to the front of Coach which is almost like First Class.

Continental Airlines' online pre-check-in service has taken some cues from the Amazon shopping cart. As you download your boarding pass, several other offers now pop up trying to gain some extra shares of your wallet.

Do I want a rental car? No. A hotel? No. Travel insurance? No. Pre-paid meals? No. More legroom? Huh?

Are you telling me that the seat I bought sucks? And now you're giving me the opportunity to pay a little extra and get better accommodations?

Why not? For another $49 each we can get front row seating. Our feet can actually slip under the partition and touch First Class. Most importantly, we can get off the plane faster.

Flying is either all about getting on the plane or getting off of it. If you have elite status you can line up with the other 95% of passengers, board first, and try and get an overhead compartment.

It's great when getting on the plane, but if you're anywhere near the back it still sucks to get off the plane. That's why I, who no longer has any elite status, was glad to pay a little extra for the ease of leaving the plane.

In fact, I happily boarded the plane last. Sure, I had to pass by the smug First Class customers but I didn't have squeeze through the fat-ass losers who block the aisle trying to stuff their cheap, bloated luggage in the cramped overhead cabins. Why the fuck is it so hard to get your bag in there?

Arriving jostle-free at our seats in row 7, I found the extra $49 even bought us the privilege of an empty middle seat. This was going to be an easy flight and no one was going to recline into my face.

Also from my seat, I could see the DirectTV programs running in First Class. We had it too, but ours ran for only 10-minutes before asking for payment and then cutting out. That was okay. Someone had a basketball game on and since my seat was strategically situated I could see it clearly.

"Dad, give me your credit card," my son demanded.

"For what?"

"I want to watch South Park."

"Don't you want to watch the game?" He shook his head.

"I don't want to pay $6 dollars just to watch TV."

"Then give me $10 dollars for peanuts and a slice of cheese."

I gave him my credit card for the TV instead.

I was feeling good about everything until I looked across the aisle.

What was she doing there? There's no way she paid for the upgrade.

The other thing the front row of Coach is reserved for is special needs customers - the old and the slow.  And this lady was both.

She was small, frail and wrapped on some billowy garment that floated over her frame. I couldn't tell how much there was to her. She had grey hair tied back in a pony tail, thick coke-bottle glasses and a steel cane - the kind with the four-pronged footing meaning she was really going to be slow.

There was no way I was going to let her get off the plane before me. Once First Class departed she would bottleneck the whole works.

Maybe she would die during the flight. Just put the blanket all the way over her and leave her there until the cleaning crew arrived. Harsh, I know, but I paid $49 to exit fast, not to be a nice guy.

I nudged my son and told him to look across the aisle.

"What?" he asked.

"We need to exit before her no matter what happens."

He shrugged his shoulders and put his earplugs back in. It was clear I was going to have to guide him through the whole exit process.

Throughout the flight I kept looking over at her, glaring. Occasionally, she would turn her head and cough. It was one of this sick, mucous-laden coughs. She didn't even cover her mouth. Death was surely knocking on her door, but would she let him on Flight 1619?

My plan was simple. It would be a block and run. And when the plane landed, I prepped my son to have his bag ready so he could walk from his window seat straight into the aisle. Keep going, I told him, no matter what happens. He shrugged his shoulders.

As soon as the all clear bell rang, I unbuckled and stood up. I backed out of my row into the aisle essentially sticking my ass into her cough hole. She couldn't stand even if she were able to.

Then the person in the row behind her offered to get her cane down. What the fuck was that about? No one needs chivalry at this point. I had to think quick. I grabbed my son's shoulder.

"Go, go, go," I hushed as loud as I could and pushed him into the First Class cabin aisle. The plane had not begun to exit yet but he was queued up perfectly. Maybe a bit too close to some of the passengers but no one was going to tell a kid to move. And I, as his father, was situated right behind him as I should.

"Excuse me," I heard a passenger say behind me. "Could you reach this woman's cane?" I pretended to ignore the request. Maybe they weren't speaking to me?

But when the old lady poked her bony pointer finger into my thigh, I instinctively looked in her direction. Our eyes met, or at least something that was behind her aquarium-thick glasses met. She then pointed her finger up. I looked and saw the steely shaft of slowness resting in the overhead. I had no choice but to give it to her.

And I did. I took it out and rested it flat on the ground in her row. Hah! That'll slow her down, I thought. Try and pick it up now.

And she did. A black shoe crept out from under her tent-like dress and flicked the cane up into a standing position. She rested her hand on its handle and popped up ever so quickly. She grabbed her small tote back and flung it effortlessly over her shoulder. She was sprite, and I was sure she used the whole cane thing as a prop to gain sympathy and easy flight access. Very clever, old lady. Very clever. But I'm still ahead of you.

"Dad, come on," my son called. He was already at the doorway. The front had cleared out and the only thing between me and the exit was stale airplane air. I moved forward and never looked back.

Striding along in the terminal ahead of all the other suckers I looked over at my son. "That's how it's done, kid," I said. He just looked at me not caring or understanding what the big deal was. He's just a rookie, I thought. One day he'll remember how it all came down.

Just then a golf cart passed by. Sitting on the back of the vehicle facing us was the old woman. She looked at me through her thick lenses as she raced by, and I was sure a smirk managed to creep across those dry, cracked lips.

My son looked over and asked, "Why couldn't you get us a ride like that?" Sure I felt a bit defeated but I was not going to let on to it.

"One day, son. One day," I said.

We suck, yay!

By "we" I mean those of us under 60 years old. And by "suck" I mean we suck.

From this you may assume that I think 60 year olds and above are better than the rest of us. And I do. I'm not sure how much better they are now since they are old, but at one time they were surely much better than we probably ever will be.

I've come to this conclusion by taking a 20 year-old person from 1970, adding in the relevant cultural experiences they were conscious to along with the music that was being created during their lifetime by peers of the similar age bracket and have determined that the intersection of the various critical points of time had conspired to make a cooler generation than any that has followed it.

A 20-something year old in the 1970s would have experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis - the time when the world was surely going to end. They would have had parents that had lived through a just war with a clear enemy. They would have witnessed the assassination of a President, a Senator and a civil rights leader. They would have been or known someone who was either drafted, dodging or waiting to be drafted to fight a war nobody understood. They would have been experiencing free love (whatever that means), more drugs, a women's lib movement, and the end of racial segregation. They would have been witness to the space race and how American will could lift man upwards. They would have known such uncertainty, horrors and potential for good in such a brief span of time that they would have forever changed whether they wanted to or not.

And so much of this change was expressed in the music of their time. To this day, I still listen regularly to songs from this era. Even my own children listen to music from that time. My son was singing along to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" on his iPod just the other day. This music was already old when I listened to it, but for some reason it's a classic.

When I was 20 years old, I was not listening to music that preceded me by 40 years. And I certainly did not listen to my parent's music. There was something that made music developed in the 60s, experimented in the 70s and honed in the 80s so fresh. Much fresher than most of the music I hear today that comes across as manufactured and soulless (I realize that's a mass generalization, but really, there's not too much good out there).

It's the passion and purpose that this classic music conveyed that is so compelling. There were stories told by the musicians. Stories of causes, of love and conviction regarding ideals of the time. Each musician told it in their own personalized forms from the Beatles to Smokey Robinson to The Doors to the Stones to the Dead to Hendrix to Joplin to Credence to Lou Reed to The Ramones to The Clash to Bruce to U2 to REM to so many others that I will never be able to fill in all of them. The one point to make is that you still hear their music today. It's got legs. This music is heard in movies, TV ads, and my kid's iPods. It's music from a very special time. Along with cockroaches, this music could survive a nuclear holocaust.

The rest of us suck. Most of our music means very little. We had it easy growing up. We had very little to fight for, very little common pain. We weren't under threat of a military draft. Most of the dangers in in the world happened elsewhere. We just watched from afar.

The closest we've come to terror is 9/11, but perhaps an even bigger terror for us is the recent financial meltdown. This was one of the few things that affected us collectively.  It's going to be hard to make good music out of that.

I'm not sure how much longer I can listen to one-hit wonders like Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You" or should I say "Forget You"? But it is a fitting song of our generation - music about being soft and selfish.


Show me a good song, and I'll show you a good country. Until then, the nation's gone to hell. We suck.