writing

The Aberrant Writer

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

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Today I purchased a hollow cement sculpture of a baby’s skull. Its eyes; empty, its surface; smooth like plaster, its smile; dead and flat.  This skull, which was so recently housed at the local antique store in my town, with a tag that noted “plant pot? candleholder?” now sits on my bookcase, staring at me with dead vacant eyes, as words spill from my fingertips and onto my computer.

I think you have to embrace your eccentric side to be creative. I embrace my idiosyncrasies and bask in the manic periods I may have, writing so fast my fingers feel as if they will fall off. I take full advantage of those periods. No subject is taboo. Writing is about exposing yourself to the world, and feeling stronger every time.

Somewhere, on the horizon, lies multiple projects that my mind is vomiting as I run, drive, breath, eat, and work. I now have to prioritize them, and work on them with a fervent zeal that would make David Koresh look like a bible salesman.

In the end I have a few hurdles to conquer, but I guess, the real question that I must ask myself is, would a clown really give me their blood?

The Night Was….

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

The night was humid.

Throw Momma From the Train is the best movie about author’s and the dilemmas writers face. It encompassed it all, from writer’s block to envy, to the shitty book that is published while you are standing their wondering, “that offal was published but mine continues to get refused.”

The night was moist.

Who hasn’t sat down at their desk, staring at their computer, wondering what the first line will be, or better yet, just waiting for something, anything to eke from their fingertips that is legible. I have sat there more than once, thinking to myself, I really need to write, only to find myself there an hour later, having a white screen facing me.

The night was dry, yet it was raining.

I have sat typing away in a fury, the words spilling forth from my fingers to keyboard, only to go back later, and wonder, what the hell was that. It sounded great in my head. I was able to visualize the scene and the characters. I could hear their dialogue, but what I wrote just doesn’t make much sense. I guess that’s why we have multiple drafts. The best is when you have checked four drafts, you hand that off to a friend to read, and they send you a text, “what does this mean?” You sit their, staring at the line on your computer screen, and you think to yourself I missed that FOUR times. Thats what friends are for, especially smart, well read friends.

Maybe the night isn’t humid. Maybe it was humid in the morning, and the night it was cold. That gives you fog. Aha, the night was foggy.

This is the kind of petty, psychotic, crap which bogs me down. I stand there, trying to think of a word, screaming the thought in my head, pacing my office sometime as if one of the other walls, which are all in close proximity to each other, might give away a clue to this conundrum. And then you erase it all and stick with your original–the night was humid.

The night was sultry.

And then there is that person. That person in your life who just flings out a word, a phrase, and you would die for it to be your original thought. Because putting it down on paper, you would die a slow death inside knowing something that great in your manuscript was not yours. Thanks for the encouragement, hopefully my mind will erase this moment like liquor does a frat boys memories of four years of college, so just keep your creative thoughts to yourself. But again, thanks for that help.

And then you wake up in the middle of the night, the only thing you have to write on is a scrap of paper, yet a whole manuscript starts vomiting from your mind. Great, thank you for this moment. I guess who can complain, take it where you can get it.

 

 

 

The Collector’s Disappointment

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

He arrived at home, and noticed the package sitting outside on the stoop, leaning against the aged red brick, with crumbling mortar barely holding its walls in place. It sat there, the white address label neatly printed in blue ink, staring at him, its brown paper wrapping beaten and abused from lengthy travels. Standing there mouth agape, he just stared at the package with a sense of trepidation. He didn’t touch it, or advance toward it, but stood paused, frozen in his step, as his heart pounded within his chest, each pulsation of quivering muscle thumping his ribs.

Bending over, he wrapped his fingers around the coarse brown paper which enveloped this package, his hands and fingers trembling as he held it out before himself at arms length, turning the package in his quaking hands to see all sides. Beads of sweat formed and rolled down his forehead, descending toward his nose, and with one quick swipe of his sleeve he smeared the moisture across his brow, leaving a glistening sheen of salt.

He stood absolutely still, a statued sentinel to forever guard whatever monument he watched over to only crumble with age and time. Eventually the stalemate was broken, and he moved toward the door of his apartment, retreating from the oppressing heat of the day, with the package securely in hand. Pulling it toward his body, he now cradled it with extreme caution, as if this box itself held the most precious and delicate life on earth and if he not be careful, it should forever become extinguished.

He thought to himself how long he had waited for this day to come. How much anticipation had been built in his head as he relished the moment which he was soon to experience. Beside himself and atwitter with anticipation, it was as if he hadn’t opened that door a hundred times, forgetting which key entered the lock to move each tumbler aside as he fumbled with key after key, a frustration and excitement building, as if a child who needs to pee, dancing his dance, waiting his turn at the public restroom. He realized that this was taking far longer than he wished, and finding the key, he entered the hallway to his building, and hurried himself down to his ramshackle door, the white paint flaking off in large strips, as if pieces of bacon taken down to fry in a cast iron pan.

Flinging open the door to the apartment, he stepped inside and with the package securely under arm pulled tight into his ribs, he whipped his head up and down the hallway, scanning for anyone who might have seen him, and satisfied that he was alone and not seen, shut the door slowly, as a loud creak from the aged hinges announced his presence with a grating irritation. The click from each lock was a satisfying sound, and placing his back against the door, he held the package out in amazement, still not believing what he held within his hand was his, was real, was tangible. He was alone with it now. Of all the people on earth, of everyone alive, he was the only person he knew to hold these in his hands.

Although the package was still wrapped, he caressed it as if he was holding the items themselves, no longer covered by the cardboard. Sitting at his kitchen table, he placed the rectangular object on the dirty and cracked formica surface and just looked at it. After a minute, and with an unsuspecting suddenness that even scared himself, he tore into the brown wrapping, throwing paper through the air, brown butterflies alighting with each tear of his fingers into the bundle’s covering.

He held them in his hand, gingerly resting them in his palm like a baby bird, fragile and scared, having fallen out of its nest. He looked at their bright colors and knew there was one more step before he was done, before his ecstasy was complete. Running into the other room he took a glass from the cabinet, but then stopped as if he was wrenched back by some unseen bungee cord attached to his back, which he pulled too far and tightened against his spine with no further give. His hand slipped to his side, as if it was no longer alive, the glass barely held by his fingertips as they scarcely gripped the lip of the cup. He hung his head and stared at the sink, deflated as he realized that his excitement had flown away like the brown paper butterflies which had drifted through the air.

Hoping against hope he picked up the receiver of the phone, and dialed zero for the operator. The strangers unaffected voice climbed through the ear piece and crawled into his ear to speak. Asking for the Ministry of Resources, the operator sighed and connected him without any pleasantries exchanged, and then without interruption another voice, a male voice, a monotone voice, came across the line, one with a deep authoritarian tone.

“Hello,” the authoritarian man said.

“I would like permission to….”

There was a long pause as he tried to form the words which might facilitate the best possible outcome in his favor.

“Well, do you have a question? You would like permission, for?”

“For an extra water ration at this moment.”

“Is this a medical emergency. If it is, you must scan a physician slip into the phone’s reader.”

“No, it is not a medical emergency.”

“Sir, you know the ration laws don’t you? Should we send literature to your residence? You know you get water every two days. Please, if you are thirsty, then have your Doctridrink.”

“Please, I just came upon something from long ago, something from my childhood. Please. All I need is a little water. Just a cup, eight ounces, that is all I am asking for, just this once.”

“Sir, there is never just a once with you people. Everyone wants more, but there isn’t more. That is why we have laws like this, so greedy people like you don’t abuse the common resources needed for all to survive. Now please, stop wasting my time.”

“But…”

The phone went silent with an abruptness before he finished his last plea, his last beg, his last remonstration. Tears welled up in his eyes as stared at the package on the table. Walking over he picked them up, their bright colors like fluorescent easter eggs all five fitting in the palm of his hand. Hot pink, electric blue, fluorescent green, lemon yellow, and bright orange capsules, all rested in his hand.

The package lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. Pictures of dinosaurs decorated the card-stock, brightly colored and poorly drawn, with a volcano erupting in the background, its hot lava spewing over the mountainside. The package boasted, “Just add water and watch the grow, 4 times their size, for hours of fun.”

Placing them on the table, he picked up his glass, and began to cry. Hanging his head over the small cup, tears dropped into the clear container, running down the smooth side. He looked at the small globule of liquid and cringed at how little it filled the glass. Cursing evaporation which would fight against him, he brought his most painful memories to the surface, each tear a memory of loss and regret, dropping into that glass, one minuscule bead of liquid at a time.

The Philosophy of Durden

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

Everybody wants to be Tyler Durden, even if it is only for a short moment of time. No person alive wouldn’t want that much confidence to well up inside them on occasion and course through their body like a surge of epinephrine, enlivening their inner powerhouse. You want to sit back and say “Fuck it” with an utter calm and coolness that even Frank Sinatra himself could not conjure. We all want the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings that fueled Tyler and gave him his cool, to truly believe the devil be damned attitude rather than a mask we wear. This cool, to look abject danger in the eye with an ambivalence and apathy, is reserved for only those with Ubach-Wiethe disease–but yet they didn’t choose that. In the End, everyone wants to have control over themselves with the fuck all attitude that Tyler Durden lived with.

As the Boeing 777-300 takes off from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, the Aerflot planes shakes uncontrollably with an extreme shudder of seat, wall, floor, and myself. This feeling–unusual in my flying experience–I wonder to myself, what would my last thoughts be if this hunk of metal dropped out of the sky like a molotov cocktail thrown off a building, bursting into a ball of flames among the trees and apartment buildings on the ground below? Would my last thoughts be of my wife and dog waiting for me at home? Would I think fondly of my family, and smile about the memories? Would I feel apathy or regret, anger or sadness, fear or confusion, denial or terror, or, would I ride that plane down to the ground, like Slim Pickens straddling that nuke down to the USSR, as he dropped the bomb on those cold war Ruskis. I wonder if in that moment, my inner Tyler Durden would materialize, and I would have some insightful pithy saying, forever etched in time, to spit in the eye of death and say “give me seconds please.” One could only hope, because, well, at that point, you can’t change the outcome.

I guess the true cool, the real hip, the James Deans, the Frank Sinatras, the Tyler Durdens, they accepted, instead of denied, moved on, instead of regretted. I think in the end, it is that acceptance of the inevitable which defines the coolest of the cool. Hell, when the world collides with Melancholia, I hope to be sitting on the lawn of some house, its verdant lawn stretching down to the crashing ocean, with my friends and family by my side, my wife and dog right next to me. Drinking the most expensive bottle of rye whisky ever made, we will sit there sipping manhattans made with ruby port, and I’ll dress in a black suit, black tie, white shirt, with dark cruiser sunglasses on, my bare feet feeling those soft, flexing blades of grass between my toes. I will watch the earth spin into oblivion with a coolness reserved only for the classic hip.

In the meantime, I will settle for plane flights with free wine served from the flight attendant’s cart. But, in the event the world spins out of control, I should stock up on whisky. I mean, you never know who might crash the party.

A Luminescent Radiance of Moonlight

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

She touched me in the waning moonlight, the room a spectral blue hue, as she ran her fingers across the muscles in my back. Her fingertips trailed across my shoulders, and I could feel the lightest touch, as if the wispiest feather blew across my back, dancing in the night’s breeze. My eyes remained shut, but my mind awoke, and a thousand jumbled thoughts ricocheted chaotic, blanketed by the hush of the night. I remained a corpse, a body lying still. No movement, feigning sleep, an unconscious state, all the while afraid to face her thoughts. And then, her voice broke the silence of the iron room, our imagined cell, shattering my sleeping charade.

“I feel empty. Like a part of me is missing. I feel torn, split in two, a fissure running through my heart,” Diana spoke with a hollow voice, all emotion torn from her throat.

I lay there, a hateful, vengeful voice inside my head, screaming at me, maligning her, and I cowered at its domineering nature. I did not say a word, I lay their in the abject silence, which tore a chasm in bed between us.

“John, please, speak to me. Yell at me. Get angry. Be sad, but for god sakes, say something. I didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t my fault. It’s not like I wanted this. For Christ’s sake, speak to me.”

Her voice cracked as her frustration oozed out. Diana’s pleading became angry yells as she commanded me to talk.

I shrugged off her touch, which had become aggressive, the light feather having blown away on a gale wind, and instead felt like a thorny bush scratching at my back, tugging at flesh and dermis. Standing up, I walked over to the window, and stared out onto the night street. I basked in the cool moonlight as my body became luminescent, a pallid blue nude, like a marble statue, pale, lifeless, cold. I did not care who would see, instead I hoped people would witness us trapped in our prison.

“It’s not your fault, but it is. You knew the consequences of your actions. You can’t ask me to forgive you, when your actions are your own. I did not put that bottle to your mouth. I did not ask you to drink,” I said.

“You don’t know. Don’t accuse me. I am looking for solace, for help. Why won’t you comfort me? I lost just as you did. It was my body, not yours. You don’t know what it feels like, to lose a piece of you.”

Her voice was shaky and accusatory. Rage built up behind her words, a fire building, ready to flashover, and consume us and all of the room in an intense inferno.

“You’re right, I don’t know what that feels like, but I can’t just turn off my emotions. I look at you and see a murderer, a person who took to the bottle, and pulled the trigger. What did you expect would happen?”

“How dare you? We are joined together. You are not allowed to treat me this way. You are supposed to love and support me, to nourish and comfort me, instead you pass condemnation. Your judgement is a death sentence for me.”

“I am not the one who passed the death sentence. I am not the one who could not control themselves, who could not show a little restraint. Only nine months. That’s all you needed, nine months, and you couldn’t even do that. Don’t you see you have a problem. It’s an addiction. The bottle has a hold on you. It comforts you more than I ever can, and controls you, pulling your strings like a puppeteer with a marionette.”

She threw herself out of bed, the covers flying into the statically charged night air, like a fluttering phantom in the pale light. Her body was milky, creamy, ivory in color, and she moved across the room like a poltergeist, angry, vengeful, ready to disturb the room. She floated like a wraith across the floor, moving in between the shadows, her pale body phosphorescent in the moonlight, and then dissolving into the stygian darkness, hidden from all sight as the murkiness swallowed her up. Moving back into the light, she approached me with a face contorted with ire and a hatred that seethed with a coal-fired furnace blazing behind her eyes.

“Who do you think you are? We both suffered this, you do not own all the sadness, all the emotion we have encountered. You don’t get to play judge and jury with me. You think you own this disaster, you think you are perfect, that you don’t make mistakes as well. We all live in this shitty world, a world where we float along in time which we have no knowledge of what is to come. Everyday we try and do what is right, while we navigate the intricacies of of chaos and disaster.”

“The difference is, I did not put the bottle to your lips. I did not force you to come to this conclusion, you came to this all yourself.”

“You sanctimonious prick. No, you didn’t put the bottle to my lips. You didn’t force me to drink, but I did. I had a moment of weakness, and as a result, I will have to live with this loss for the rest of my life. But you don’t get to tell me I was wrong. You were there, you knew what I was doing. You are as guilty as I am. Apathy is not an excuse, and does not exonerate you from any guilt. You think I am responsible for this tragedy, fine, I am, in part, but you can take the lion’s share. Your indifference toward me enabled me, and you watched the tragedy occur. It is as if you wanted me to fail. You were happy to watch this tragedy, if only to judge me, to be priggish in your smug demeanor. Well, you get to live with this. So go ahead and judge yourself.”

Walking away into the inky shadows, her luminous body, electric in the moonlight, evanesced into the inky shadows of the room. Diana was quiet, even her breathing seemed to disappear as her body became one with the dark shadows of the room, and I turned back, gazing out the window onto the quiet street.

After a few minutes I heard something behind me, a rattling of sorts, like a diamondback vibrating its tail, preparing to strike. It was a familiar sound, and I was made to hear it, as it broke the drowning silence of the room. The sound came closer to me through the abysmal darkness, as if she stuck strictly to the shadows, avoiding the pale blue beams of light.

Rattle. The sound was right behind me, and its familiarity struck a cord inside me. Ice tinkled inside the glass as she swirled the whisky around the mason jar. Sipping next to my ear, air passed her lips, causing a slurping sound to grate on my soul.

“Ahhh,” she exclaimed, as if this drink was a glass of water after she had marched through a desert.

I felt her nude body rub against mine as she upended the four fingers of whisky. Embracing me, her whisky lips met mine, and I could taste the stringent flavor of Old Grand Dad on my tongue as hers danced with mine. The perspiring mason jar drop to the floor with a hollow thud, and rolled across the wood floor, ice spilling out from its mouth. In the moonlight our two bodies intertwined, and the anger and hatred melted away into lust, bitterness transformed into passion.

As we made our way back to bed through the ethereal moonlight, a whisky soaked ice cube melted on the floor. The puddle stretched out into the cracks in the floor, breaking through our iron prison. Eventually the ice dissolved completely, leaving nothing but a stagnant puddle discoloring the golden strips. In the darkness, lightened by the luminescence, we forgot our transgressions, soaked in a whisky fog of early morning.

 

Killing Time

/ David Jester / 1 Comment

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I am killing time at the bar, waiting to interview a person for my thesis, and I sit down at the high top table with my beer, and eagerly await the tube shaped meat which is abound with lips and assholes–like my father says “everything but the squeal”–that is still being prepared. The three TVs all have extremely different programs broadcasting on their flat dull screens. To my right, Jan Michael Vincent is sitting side by side with Ernest Borgnine, soaring through the sky in AirWolf, while on the tv above the bar plays an early nineties movie with racially stereotyped characters, track suits, Fila, long earnings hanging off the men’s ears, with high and tight haircuts, their denim jackets missing sleeves worn like a vest. Behind me, the television is chock full of cartoons, Garfield cartoons. Unfortunately this is not the good eighties Garfield but the new crappy computer generated cartoon, which it pains me to even call it that. So, here I am, in this bar, waiting for tube meat of circus grade quality, drinking my beer, sitting across from the sequined torso of a dress form, with a finial in place of its head.

Productive Procrastination

/ David Jester / 1 Comment

So here I sit, at my favorite writing spot, productively procrastinating, writing in this blog. I am entrenched in my thesis work, and articles, papers, and books are strewn across the quarter sawn oak table at which I sit. As I was engrossed in my topic, writing with a speed only reserved for the manic, I had an epiphany, I have to urinate. Washing my hands, I thought about habits, all the strange habits we have, and then my mind drifted back to my writing.

I have a totem. Yes, that is right, a totem. I would not say that I am a superstitious man, but I like to hedge my bets, and if I think something is lucky, well, I will continue that practice. So I have a totem, and when I write, that object goes with me. You ask, well what is it? It is a marble. The smoothest, most perfectly round marble. It is like a beautiful gas giant floating in the universe, the ochre glass swirling around one pole, while at the opposite end of this glass planet, a glob of olive green coats the other. The equator is like white ceramic, pure as fresh driven snow. I don’t recall where or when I found this, but I remember the day I wrote a hundred pages in one sitting, with that marble in the coin pocket of my jeans, and from then on out, it comes with me to write.

Then there are omens, portents, jinxes, and I found mine. Now, I am not sure if this dull Russian ruble is bad luck, or the fact that I had purpose planned for it so long, and have not accomplished this goal, that bad luck has now attached to it. Either way, this coin is damned. I wore it in the same change pocket for weeks on end, not realizing it was there. Weeks of no inspiration, no writing, sitting, staring at a screen, white paper, pen grasped idly in hand, to no avail of any words. Like an idol that must be returned to ward off the demons loosed, I must affix this coin to the bottom of a glass at a bar I frequent–that has been the intended goal for this coin for over a year now. Maybe my mind knows that it is sheer procrastination sitting in my pocket, or maybe it is cursed. But either way the coin will make its way to its final resting place tonight.

Na Zdorovie!

A Feathered Phobia

/ David Jester / 2 Comments

Katrina frantically ran in front of the car, flailing her arms overhead as if fighting off a hostile swarm of bees. It was as if some unseen force was chasing her, pursuing her with the most malicious intent. Her screams resounded through the windows of my Cherokee, while some invisible, malevolent being assaulted her. I drove toward her through the parking lot, set atop the pink granite outcropping of rocks, which jut out into the tempestuous cold green waters of the Gulf of Maine, and she just ran away from me, down the middle of that old cracked road.

The water churned that day as it roiled against the barnacle covered ledges which stretched into the ocean, like fingers from the pinkest skinned hand. The ocean seemed at odds with the stony terra as if it tried to subdue it, bend it to its will, make it submit to the cold green deep. Frothy water shot from crevices running vertically to the ocean, as the force of waves caused spume to shoot high, like geysers of briny water issuing forth from deep within the granite. A cold breeze blew off the ocean, chilling us as we basked in the early autumn sun, as if all our worries flittered away, bit by bit, in that salted bitter air.

She ran fast, faster that I would have thought. I remember seeing her run down that road. She moved quick. My mind flashed as to why she would be running away screaming, but she did, and I could do nothing but move toward her. The firs and cedars stood on each side of the road, gnarled and wind-bent, as if they tried to reach out for her and grab her, to stop this manic episode.

We clambered across the rocks that day, leaping over deep and wide fractures in the granite ledge, the deep fissure descending to jagged boulders and cobbles below. Climbing across pink granite, we made our way to a Brobdingnagian boulder that leaned across the cliff face, creating a small cave inside. We entered this darkened hole feeling like explorers, only to come out on the other side seconds later , no danger or risk presented to us. Crossing a scree field which high tide would cover, we jumped across boulders as the water rushed in, tickling our toes, trying to devour our feet with its cold lips and frothy teeth. We made it to the other side dry, and we sat by the edge of the ocean, with our feet dangling over the edge of the sheer cliff, as water exploded below us in divine spectacle.

Seagulls flew by her as she ran, and her arms flailed around in a display of seizure activity. The grand-mal spasms of her arms were chaotic and discordant as she she ran down the road, her screams drifting in the air, seagulls flying around like bits of snow in a souvenir globe, shaken heartily by a five year old on vacation, never letting the white bits settle to the fake ground. I could do nothing but move toward her, my jeep sputtering as I idled the accelerator, barely moving down the road. I was concerned, yet puzzled by this whole event, and like a curious bystander who witnesses an event, I stared at her, my mind locked, only on this moment.

Katrina and I sat all afternoon gazing out upon the heaving ocean. We felt the rays of the sun beat down on our faces, as the chill wind of autumn cut through our clothes we enjoyed this simple pleasure of quietude. Eventually we climbed back over scree field and rock, and ventured back through our cave to the parking lot. We parted ways, as she went to the restroom and I retrieved the car. Moving the jeep to the restrooms, a flock of seagulls walked in front of me, slowly moving like a mass of plankton floating in the sea, only directed by the movement of the ways. They moved en masse and just sat there as I stopped, waiting for Katrina. She walked along the path to me, and stopped abruptly. A blood curdling scream shattered the illusion of beauty, and she ran the opposite way down the road away from me. Confused, I put the car in drive, and edged my way through the hundreds of seagulls sitting there, causing them to fly in the air, a flurry of feathers released during a pillow flight, the sky inundated by them.

She continued to run down the road with a furious speed I could not have sustained myself, and eventually sped up next to her on a straight stretch, pulling up next to her. She was screaming wildly, and babbling incoherent speech. It was as if some spectre, some furious intangible demon was on her heels, but nothing was there, nothing but air and the few seagulls still lingering in the air, hoping to find out the cause of this unreal episode. Stepping out, I calmed her down, and Katrina collapsed into my arms, sobbing and occasionally thrashing at me. She heaved violent cries, while sweat poured down her cheeks and mixed with the salty tears which cascaded down, like a faucet had been turned. She flopped into the passenger seat, and with still no explanation, we made our way down the road.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered between breaths.

“Who, me?” I said.

“John….”

“What happened?”

“Seagulls. The seagulls. Just drive. Please, just drive.”

We drove in silence for the longest time, and after we were away from that place and she had settled down, I was informed of the problem. Katrina had a phobia, a legitimate phobia of birds. So as I drove to her, I kept pushing the seagulls her way. They swarmed around her like snow around a pine tree rooted in a blizzard, and all I did was corral them toward her, as I pushed them with my jeep. I laughed so hard when she told me this, when I realized what I had inadvertently done, I could not help myself but guffaw.

Needless to say, there were no more dates after that.

 

The Recluse

/ David Jester / Leave a comment

The man never left his apartment. I swear to you, he never left his apartment. I sat on the stoop that summer, drinking gin and tonics out of a mason jar, the squeezed lime languidly floating in the clear effervescent liquid. The ice rattled as I swirled the perspiring glass around, mixing the drink. The Domino’s pizza man would arrive, and knocking at his door, would flush out my prey, the skittish animal, only to be exposed a second, before scurrying back into his dark hole. It was interesting to watch this man as the heat pounded down on me, the sun circling high above and a listless wind barely twitching a leaf with its frail blow. I sat there, knowing it would be hours before the Chinese food delivery man would arrive, to feed him his nightly meal.

I noticed the first week living in my apartment that the man was a shut in. What first drew my attention to his apartment was the television that was constantly on. Now I don’t make it a habit of peeking into neighbors windows, but it drew my attention. His television was directly in line with the front window of his apartment, and with the blinds not up, but the slats opened, I noticed it was on 24/7 and on ESPN. I found this odd for a few reasons. First of all, have you ever been somewhere and ESPN was on the television, set as a neutral programing for people to watch. I admit it is a good choice. Not offensive, easy background noise, no politics, no debates, no guns or violence, I get it. But, what becomes torturous, what grates on me, is the constant sports update, which is not so much an update, as a 7 minute long repeat the whole day, on every 15 minutes. It is hellish, because hell is repetition. Another odd thing was the television was on, constantly, every day. Now I know it seems like a stretch, but there were many hours that I was up at odd times, and always noticed the electric glow beaming through those open slats. With all that ESPN watching, one must build up an appetite.

After a while I began to notice my neighbor’s eating habits. Always pizza at lunch. Always Chinese at night. Always delivered. I just assumed breakfast was leftovers or the meat from the frozen dead corpses in his basement freezer, I don’t know. All I know is, he ordered take out everyday I was there. It was like clockwork. The kind you could set your watch to. I began to wonder if these two establishments didn’t have standing orders to deliver. I can imagine, at these fast food restaurants, the employee taking his order, again, everyday, again. What must have gone through their minds, as they wrote down his order for the thousandth time? And the delivery driver, what did they think? They never seemed to linger long enough to have a conversation. You would think that constant repetition would build up something of a rapport between them, but money exchanged hands, and they were on their way in opposite directions.

It was as if the sun would kill him. As if the world would snatch him up and devour him whole. I don’t mock him, or pick on him, but curiosity gets the best of me, makes me wonder what kind of life did he lead. You see him, and become used to this. He becomes a regular, a frequent character in your mind, but you know nothing of him, so you begin to fill in the voids. Maybe he is a shut-in with a dramatic and heightened phobia of the world. That if he stepped foot outside he would crumple into a ball of fear and anxiety. Then you wonder, could it be he is in witness protection, and so afraid for his life, that he deems it better alive and inside, then outside and possibly dead. Or, maybe, he is such a sports fanatic, he is a famous sports blogger, who is obsessed with ESPN. So many other options swirl through your mind, but in the end you are left wondering, with no answer to the mystery. But then again, thank god for characters like him, to pass the time on a hot summer day with a gin and tonic in hand.