J.S.L. Writing Portfolio

 

I'd been backpacking alone through Europe for over three weeks, and as I walked alone this time, it was through the moon lit center of Madrid, Spain.  Emerging from the subway station, I casually noticed a tall, slender woman walking with a well dressed man in a suit.  She was very beautiful, wearing bright cyan colored clothing, which was in stark contrast to her shiny black hair.  Her style would have been fashionable and understated had it not been so form fitting - especially around her gluteus.  His style was a dark pin stripped suit with slick black hair; a style that seemed to secrete wealth and prestige.  They both walked around a building corner, but after a slight moment, she popped back out alone.  Glancing at me, her expression was suddenly as though she had found something lost. 

 As she directly walked towards me, I was a little taken back and quickly felt out my wallet, camera and other important belongings.  Signs/posters were everywhere, warning of pick-pocketers.  I thought an attractive woman would be a great distraction for someone, perhaps the male she was just with, to snatch my wallet.  Her eye contact was unavoidable and accentuated by very alluring make up.  She started quickly speaking Spanish, and though I'd taken a few years of the language in high school, I was not able to comprehend the situation.  My instinct was that she wanted something.

"I...don't speak Spanish."

 "English?"  She said with an accent that slipped though an amused smile. "You speak English?" 

"Uh, yeah..."

"Where are you from?" 

"Ummm...America?"  My tone was absurdly unconfident.  I was having to think about a question that I had been asked a hundred times during my travel, and my answer still came out with the tone of a question.

"America!?  Where in America?"

"Uhh...California?"

"Really!?"  She looked and sounded as though it was the most amazing thing she'd ever heard, and it tickled me the feeling of having all the right answers.  "California!  I love California.  I have a friend in California.  Let's go fuck and suck.  Forty-five euro."

As surprised as I was with this comment, my expression didn't change because it was already in a state to laugh off something embarrassing.

"Ummm...no, I don't think so..." In my peripheral vision, I noticed another younger backpacker walk past me.  With a half joking, half sincere tone I said, "...maybe this guy wants to..."

The backpacker heard me and turned around as she was already starting to walk away.  I was surprised at how quickly he was able to assess the situation, because he then eagerly chased after her and asked for her services.  Even more surprising was that she turned him down.  In an odd way, I felt flattered.

As I looked back at the street, I suddenly realized all the single women, "waiting" for someone.  The previous night, I had strolled down this same street, and it was then as it was now; not a dark, abandoned alley, but a lively, well lit, populated street, with various street performers drawing crowds.  It had pizza parlors, souvenir shops, cafes and restaurants, all with outdoor seating...and, as I had just found out, it also had a lot of prostitutes.

While in my evening commute home from work, I was driving with my girlfriend in bumper to bumper traffic on a single lane street. Ahead of me was a dotted line of red tail lights vanishing into the horizon line.  An entire street light cycle could pass without a single car moving forward. The most frustrating part was that no one was driving in the opposite lane, which made me wonder why I worked in Santa Monica and lived in Hollywood and not vice versa.

After an hour of one word responses to my girlfriend's attempt at small talk, I decided that I should pull into a drive way on my left and U turn into the opposite direction. Perhaps, I could find a parallel street with less traffic. As I slowly started the turn, my car shook as a tow truck driving about sixty flew by me, driving on the wrong side of the road. I watched the truck drive down a few blocks and disappear into a neighboring street.

It took a moment to realize what had just happened.  I had narrowly avoided death by a few years. Had this scenario played out three or four years ago, I would have floored that U turn, and that tow truck would have rammed into my driver side door, likely killing both me and my girlfriend. Somewhere along the line, I started to view life more as a marathon and less as a race. In this particular moment, my time did not catch up to me.

December 12th, 2004. 12:34 am.

Everyday is the same; 7:30 am wake up buzzer, take a shower, have a bowl of Cracklin’ Oat Bran with orange juice, brush teeth, ride the subway for sixty minutes to the wonderful company of Key-Star Life Insurance, interact with a computer for eight hours with fifteen minute breaks every hour to socialize with a cigarette and the water cooler, take the subway back to my studio apartment, order pizza/Chinese or cook pasta, chores, pay bills, watch TV before bed with the occasional jerk-off when insomnia is starting to set in. I can write my entire day in one sentence.  Tonight, after lying in bed and staring at the ceiling for an hour, I realized my life has plagiarizer the pathetic, self sympathizing, cliché monologue of every Hollywood movie with the disgruntled, middle-aged-male-going-through-a-mid-life-crisis demographic. When scripting out my life, I didn’t foreshadow this happening for at least ten or fifteen years; which means I’m growing old too fast or started dying too young. As I roll over, the only thing that gives me comfort enough to close my eyes is reminiscing of a time when my life actually wrote new stories.

November 9th, 1995. 11:47 pm.

I’d seen the look he had in his eyes before, so I knew to stand back and watch the fireworks rather than obstruct them. The absolute biggest, obsessive, drink-five-hours-in-advance-in-anticipation-for-the-game-until-he’s-drunk-out-of-his-gourd, maniac U of M football fan, Victor just disappeared into the kitchen after witnessing players of his teams’ arch-rival OSU stroll into our friends’ frat party. I glanced at Nick and Phill and their eyes shared the same electric anticipation knowing Victor was about to take center stage. Fifteen minutes ago I had uttered the words "this party sucks", but now I felt like I was about to jump out of a plane.

“Brandon, what should we do?” Nick asked me as we grouped together. The question was barely heard before a steak knife wielding Victor came charging back, splitting through the forest of people towards the OSU football players. Phill and I instinctively followed his lead and soon found ourselves centered in the circle of monstrous football players.  Nick dodged off into another room trying to find a frat brother.

Victor boldly stared the biggest player in the eyes. "You think you're fucking tough!? CAN YOU DO THIS!?" he asked, slamming the steak knife into his own forearm and sawing away. I froze in disbelief and heard Phill’s nervous laugh while sensing the collective gasp from the horrified witnesses. The OSU football players’ expressions froze into stone cold confusion before they slowly drifted backwards. My trace was broken by what felt like warm rain drops splashing on my face and neck. It was blood spewing from Victor’s shredded forearm as he waved his fist in the air while singing word for word the U of M fight song.

He was then escorted from the party.

We decided to relocate the festivities to the empty parking lot of the Farmer Jack’s super market around the corner, getting high in a dimly lit cloud trapped in Nick’s 92’ Jeep. Nick, being the medical student, patched up Victor’s arm while he ranted a million miles per minute about what "pussies" those football players were, only stopping momentarily to do any drug on the dashboard. I stayed quiet while watching him take combinations of drugs I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

“Victor, you shouldn’t be mixing drugs like that…” Nick said while watching him crush up some Aderol his parents had a shrink prescribe to keep him on task.

“Shut up, Nick.”

“Seriously, Victor, you have to remember these are chemicals, and mixing them together might yield unpredictable reactions; which-”

“Nick, shut the fuck up!  Are you going to tattle on me again?”

“What was I suppose to do!? You were causing a scene and the cops would have shown up eventually-”

“The fucking cops weren't gonna come!  You didn't see Brandon or Phill acting like such a bitch!  It was just a bitch move! Brandon, was it not a bitch move?”

“Come on Victor, please, just chill…” I pleaded while leaning back in my seat, closing and messaging my eyes. It was clear the argument ended when I heard Victor snorting and Nick shuffling through CD’s.  Moments passed by until the sense of time got lost in the tingly, warm sensations of our high.

“Hey Brandon, I’ll give you a dollar if you lick the window…” Phill said with a chuckle as he passed me the bong we had just bought earlier that day.

“No dollar needed.  Just let me take this hit first…”

As I cradled the newborn bong in my lap, the bubbling was overtaken by the sound of the door suddenly opening. A cold breeze struck me and through the fogged windows I saw Victor running away from the car, screaming incoherently.  The only words I understood were "I can't stop it!” Everyone was shocked speechless.

The silence was finally broken by my coughing uncontrollably after realizing I had forgotten to exhale.

“What should we do?” Nick asked while all of us watch Victor dart across an open field in the distance.

“Go…after him…” I croaked out through tear filled eyes and stabbing chest pains. Nick stomped the gas peddle of the Jeep, and we zipped out of the parking lot onto an adjacent road, hoping it would lead us to the opposite side of the field and beat Victor to his unknown destination. I start to get paranoid and began hiding all the incriminating evidence, but then Phill broke into hysterical laughter.

“What just happened?” Phill squeezed out through his out bursts. Suddenly, each of our laughs were escalating the others and I begged them to stop.

“Wait! There he is!” Nick exclaimed as he swerved into another parking lot, causing the bong to tip over into my lap.

"Ugh, Nick!  Now I'm gonna smell like bong water!"

"What!?  You spilled the bong!?  Now, my car is gonna smell like bong water!"

"Well, you don't have to drive like such an idiot!"

"Do you want to drive!?  I'm always the one driving!  Don't complain unless you want to drive!"

In the distance, we watched Victor run towards the top of a staircase at the back of a parking lot. He then jumped full speed off the top step, performing what appeared to be a series of elaborate aerial assaults before landing awkwardly on a step, spraining his ankle and tumbling down the stair case landing face first into the concrete. As he gathered himself, tremendous wounds in his cheek and nose bled like a leaky faucet. We drove up to the ledge and ran down the steps to small pools of blood shining in the yellow lights from the street lamps, which trailed around a building corner.

Following the trail, we found Victor disoriented but still on task, hobbling along the sidewalk outside of a local senior citizens building. He then began banging on the windows, terrorizing the residents with obscenities. We sprinted towards Victor, but stopped a few feet behind him, realizing that we had no course of action to stop him. I swallowed hard, repulsed by the mixture of blood and sweat dripping from his body.

“We have to get him out of here…” I said while staring through the glass at a frantic care-taker screaming into a phone. Nick’s expression of disgust made it clear he didn’t want to take a step further. “I—I don’t want to touch him…”

“I’m on it!” Phill lunged but bounced right off him, tumbling to the ground. I helped him up and brainstormed a solution.

“Okay, we all have to grab him at the same time.” I heard Nick sigh. “Nick, stop complaining! Okay, Phill, get his right arm, Nick get the left.”

We hurled ourselves at Victor and I collided into his back, wrapping my arms around his stomach. We all leaned him backwards, and he slowly collapsed directly on top of me, crushing my chest while elbowing Phill and Nick in the face and head. We still clung as the struggling and screaming continued and ages went by before short breaks appeared between his surging rants. I finally felt the dead weight of Victor’s head rest on my shoulder and blood steadily seeped onto my neck.

Eventually, sirens and lights appeared in the distance and we all sighed deeply. There was the first moment of complete calm. Phill turned to me.

“Dude, you’re spooning him.”

Later, the three of us, in dirt, sweat and blood-stained clothes, huddled together leaning against the hood of the Jeep next to the ambulance that patched up Victor. The rhythmic rotation of siren lights served as enough entertainment to make the time pass. Through a pair of head lights, a figure approached.

“Wanna tell me what happened tonight?” a cop asked, but our burnt out high kept his words from penetrating and we just stared at the confused officer.

The cop then turned to Victor as the medics patched him up. “What happened here, son?”

Victor looked to the man earnestly. "Wait, don't I have the right to refuse medical attention?"

"I guess." the cop responded, baffled.

Victor lifted up his fist in the air and proclaimed, "THEN I REFUSE MEDICAL ATTENTION! TAKE ME TO JAIL!"

The wish was granted.

We sat in silence, outside the jail cell where he had to spend the night. Victor passed out because he kept removing his bandages, and in this comatose state, medics again patched him up. Victor’s mother finally arrived to relieve us of duty and thoughts of bed immediately appeared.

The next morning, while watching highlights from the U of M/OSU football game on ESPN, the apartment door swung open and in came Victor, walking like Frankenstein's monster.

“Dude, are you okay?”

Victor removed the wrapped bandages around his head, and we couldn’t help but laugh as he revealed severe swelling and deformities all over his face.

"I got fucked up last night!"

December 12th, 2004. 1:32 am.

"I got fucked up last night"…I can’t remember the last time those words stumbled out of my mouth. I roll out of bed and contemplate my insomnia cure, but then the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Brandon.”

A smile surfaces on my face.

“…Phill.”

“It’s been too long my friend; Nick and I are in the area, let’s get a beer.”

They live only 45 minutes away, but in these years of establishing self-sufficiency it seems as though our paths never cross.

“Umm…I dunno. Are you guys going be around tomorrow?” It’s late and most of the bars are closed.  Plus I have a presentation on policy management efficiency early tomorrow morning.

“Brandon! Don’t be a pussy! I’m skipping work tomorrow and Nick already called in sick for his residency.  You know Victor would have wanted it this way.”

It’s true. If Victor could only just see us now.  If Victor could only just be around.

“You're right…let’s go.”




-Dedicated to Darren Gunther (1982-2004)

Once upon a darkened hour, loneliness was but a flower
Silky with the scented power of a perfume I adored
While I pondered, reminiscing, what I felt I now was missing
Words of mine, it hurt to listen to the arguments before
"It will pass..." I shook the notion, "...and this feeling will outpour;
Live these demons nevermore.”

With a flower meant for giving, and in wine my mind was swimming
Consciousness was barely living with the thoughts of her I stored.
Suddenly, the phone was ringing, tone-deaf pitches it was singing
To my ears, which it was stinging, so much I could not ignore.
To my trouble and confusion, when I answered, what was born?
Chilling silence, nothing more.

Once again immersed in toxin, memories which I was boxed in
Claustrophobic, no escaping, watching every sin unfold.
Once again, the phone intruded; I again my thoughts eluded
This one flower that was rooted to the nights of sins before.
Welcome was this interruption, so I answered it once more...
Deafening silence, nothing more.

As the phone smothered my ear, the thoughts of her became so clear
Revealed to me that they could hear all the thoughts of her restored!
Horrid, shameful revelations; years of mischievous flirtation
Faithless acts when inhibition had been stripped to nothing more.
Fondled were the flower petals, falling to the wooden floor.
Live these petals, nevermore.

"Mocking stranger!" I demanded, "Take my secrets - leave me stranded!
My confession, you have planned it! With you is my conscience torn!"
But the silence still persisted, heightened rage that went ballistic
Then my acts were fatalistic; threw the stranger to the floor.
Piercing ears, now was the silence, as I staggered out the door
Screaming, "Let me hear no more!"

To the streets I numbly stumbled, instantly my wrath was humbled.
Crowds of people stared and mumbled scornfully as they abhorred.
Strolling by me, passing rumors, some, they jested with ill-humor
At my soul’s malignant tumor in my head their gossip bored.
Everyone knew my confessions! So to them I then implored,
"Mercy! Mercy! I have whored!"