Flaccidly it hangs between my legs like a broken arm. I can feel her heart beating in her legs as I run my trembling fingers up and down the inside of her thighs. Her skin is pale and her pubic hair is neatly trimmed. I kiss her neck and it smells like springtime, like damp clothes soaking up the sun, now lightly speckled with the sour bitterness of my bad breath. With every touch my muscles cringe and tense up. I want to curl into a ball and hide. I want to feel like I’m alive and I do in one sense, but I am always stricken with some certain feeling of inefficiency, a feeling like something is missing. Something is missing! I want to be erect, but there is no response when she touches me. I know it feels good… it does, but still it just flops around like a raw hot dog. There is no arousal, but still I want to be within her. I feel around for that familiar spot, the one she told me to touch. “Yeah right there, that’s where it feels the best,” she whispers in my ear from time to time. She is wet and beginning to moan a bit. Slowly I work on each region of her aching body. I gradually ease my way down her breast and belly kissing every inch of skin, as if she is a jig saw puzzle that needs the warm press of my lips to keep from coming apart. Her naked body is a stack of envelopes that I must gently seal one at a time. And she is quiet, but I can sense that she is still yearning for what she jokingly refers to as my "rad boner,” which is currently more like a broken pendulum on a grandfather clock. I feel outdated, tattered and tarnished, on the verge of collapse. She begs in silence for me to feel her, for me to be a part of her thrusting steadily, slowly, and then faster to match the palpitation of our insides. And like dew-covered Salpiglossis leaves each small skin fold that I touch is more velvety and moist than the last. Still I am soft and rubbery. What is wrong? Why am I suddenly so nervous? This has never happened before! Or has it? Perhaps I am thinking too much. It seems as though I am always preoccupied with other thoughts; it’s so difficult to separate my thoughts and just become one with the moment. It’s so hard to concentrate; perhaps that is the problem. Why is it so tough to let go of ones past and move on? The heartache and loneliness sits atop my head like a collection of darkening cumulus clouds that want to produce rain. They wait patiently, but it never comes… nothing comes.

I remember when I was a young boy growing up my father and I would always conjure up silly games to play and ridiculous scenarios to keep from drowning in the repetitious day. He would alternate between clichéd phrases and life lessons often times mixing them up and forgetting how they actually went; “Remember Ben… you regret all of the choices you never make.” What does that even mean? I mean obviously I realize that you can’t leave things undecided, but I am fairly sure that he meant to say something else, oh whatever. I realize now that it didn’t matter what he said; his words were merely attempts to guide me and be the father that he never was, the father he never became. These sayings, so to speak, still echo in my head when I reflect upon the events that led up to his departure. In between his nonsensical utterances we would fill the hours, minutes, seconds with creating and destroying, which seemed to be the foundation of much of our relationship… build and then burn, raised on being razed. And he said to me once, “don’t burn the bridges you build.” Well, why burn a bridge when you can blow it up I thought; explosions are always more exciting. My dad always threatened to take me to the local burn ward in response to my (failed) attempts at detonating homemade bombs in the backyard (AKA model rocket engines rubber-banded to M-80’s and Black Cats strapped to the old oak tree). Our relationship has become more and more explosive over the years, and sometimes I foreshadow the end of it… BOOM! And these memories will be the only remaining artifacts of my childhood, the burnt leftovers, the little pieces of cardboard covered in sulfur, the only proof that we existed! I recall this one time when we built hats out of my gray Construx pieces; I was missing several of the connectors and straight away beams so we were forced to improvise using other household objects. After finishing our crown masterpiece, complete with a cube of cheese dangling from one of the scotch-tape-reinforced tentacle-like protrusions, we snapped a picture and then unsnapped the pieces. My mother sold the remnants at a moving sale we had a few summers later.

Grayslake with the simple slogan “A NICE PLACE TO LIVE,” quickly became our next stop on the road to success or highly anticipated financial stability, which never really came, at least when we were all together. I am the eldest of three children. We are each 4 years apart, both in age and association; it was very difficult to relate to one another growing up. As the years passed I would grow to become “the different one,” which I was indifferent about for the most part. During my punk rock stage I loved being considered different; I mean that’s what being punk rock meant, right? Well, that and the music thing and general rebellion… oh and anarchy of course. Nowadays I’m not so sure I enjoy the tone that comes with the being-different-territory. My sister Alex grew to earn the title of “the smart one.” I would often scream, “If she’s so damn smart then why is she such an idiot?” Clearly a well-formulated argument, the type that would later spur my interest in law and philosophy. And no matter what type of argument I came up with it never held up in “Allison Court” (that was the street we lived on). My youngest sister was Mary. In conversation, between my parents and their friends, Mary’s name would often be attached to a disclaimer like: “she’s such a bright kid, if only she would apply herself instead of all that makeup.” In short she focused more on how many guys she could score with rather than what kind of scores she received on her schoolwork; “a very cunning little slut,” as my mother once mouthed in a drunken state. Mother often began drinking in the early afternoon and carried through to the evening, charging like a bison. Always filled with sheer motivation and boasting with conviction my mother would not give up until her goal was met. In many cases, usually twenty-four beers in each, utter inebriation was the end to which her means fulfilled. My father would return from his 9 to 5 stranglehold to do paperwork and sometimes play with my sisters and I; it was rare that he ever took interest in his beloved drunken wife.

Before my mother met my father she was working for a low-rate savings and loan company on the southeast side of Milwaukee. She was a 19 year-old woman all alone in the slums of the city with little money, few possessions, and a key to a rented run-down third story flat. Her stepfather had thrown her out into the street just days after her 18th birthday. It was spring of 1974, 7 years before I was brought into this mess and my father was beginning school at the University of Milwaukee. After meeting with several guidance counselors he decided to major in Criminology; he now sells drugs… pharmaceuticals to be specific. Glaxo-Smith-Kline is the latest revision to what used to be referred to as Burroughs Wellcome, a rather welcoming title for a now multi-billion-dollar, drug-peddling, track-covering, conglomerate whore composed of some of the largest and most unethical Pharmaceutical companies worldwide. I find myself continually asking him, “Why, despite having the technology to measure the side effects of drugs using computer simulators rather than living species, does your company continue to test on animals?” Silence stumbles around and I emphasize, “Why is that?” He argues that the animals are actually quite necessary in many testings and that my arguments are mere exaggerations predicated on the fact that I just enjoy arguing and then he quickly changes the topic. He’s probably right; how would I know? I’m not a doctor. And besides rodents are so similar to humans anyway I guess it only follows that we perform tests on them. Apparently, when I get cancer one day, which will undoubtedly happen according to my father, I will be happy that we do not have a universalized health care system, but I object as I continue to buy generic medications and dream of Canada.

My mother came from the east side of the city; my father was from the west. While they were within six bus stops from one another they lived in two completely different worlds. My father’s family was well off. My mother’s family was quite poor. He received a drum set for his 10th birthday from his parents; my mother received a large hematoma on her face from her stepfather’s hand for not doing the dishes… on her 7th birthday. While my mother was busy changing her younger sisters diapers and getting beer bottles thrown at her my father was busy perfecting paradiddles on his practice pads and marching off to see Buddy Rich, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right, and so on…

“Of course I did! It was love at first sight,” my mother once explained when I asked her if she actually ever loved my father. She would insist that he was different in the beginning; he was no longer the man she married. On the phone he would tell us not to listen to her “stories.” On weekends, when it was time to go to our father’s, he would try to explain the problems of their marriage on the car ride to his place, always making sure that we understood that things were better this way; “You kids know that this is what’s best for all of us, right?” And we would nod in that way that you do when your 5th grade teacher asks if you understand how to find the circumference of a circle. I know it has something to do with that silly, step-stool-looking symbol. The words/ideas that were forced into our heads by our parents were becoming more and more like mathematical equations, but yet like philosophy often implies there was no certainty, proving was often no more than restating… Pi = 3.1415926… things just are… But why damnit? Because some male WASP says so or at least that’s what my middle school history books would have implied. I searched through my father’s boxes of pharmacological literature hoping to find an explanation, an assertion of a chemical imbalance within each of them, or within us, or between them and us kids, something indicating why they split-up and why it was so painful for us to watch like Siamese twins being surgically disjoined from one another. And we were never allowed to counter argue anything that was said or done; all we ever really wanted our piece of the Pi. Maybe all of this was inevitable. It’s like Patsy Cline once said “What a crazy world we’re living in. True love has no chance to win.”

I recall an incident shortly before my mother filed for divorce. Something happened involving a window screen and a finger in the eye. I think a corn meal abrasion was what my father referred to it as... something to do with baking muffins? There was an argument, an outburst of anger and frustration. A dish was thrown by my mother as my father attempted to forcibly gain control of her flailing arms. Their yelling accompanied by my enraged shrieks and both of my sisters crying hysterically combined to create a car collision in the kitchen. Classic word combos like “Fuck-You” and “Go-to-Hell” were thrown about like rice at a wedding, but with the intent of hurting rather than engaging in celebration. In the end it was a corneal abrasion and a bruise that signed the papers and they each got half of what little we had. And father would arbitrarily return in the middle of the night to steal back random objects like the giant bronzed map of the world that he got as an award for being the top sales rep. in his division in ’91. It hung above our living-room couch; a constant reminder that we were all lost. I wish we could’ve used that stupid map to lead us to salvation or some magical place that would have instantly fixed all of our problems upon arrival.

They look so happy in their faded wedding photo, my father clad in an all white leisure suit and my mother in a pearl gown with soft blue sequenced flowers. Together they are lighting a tall ivory glowing cylinder; it looks like a burning marbleized silo and just like inflamed crackling grains they will diminish into nothing more than memories of what was. Of course they don’t know this yet and when I look into their eyes I see the world and all the pain and suffering is blanketed by their happiness. I am truly convinced for a short moment that true love is real. This 5x7 piece of chemically-treated paper is pretty convincing. So what happened? Sometimes I like to imagine what it was like for them when they first met. Was it like it was when I met the woman I knew I would end up marrying, or should I say the woman I thought I would marry? As much as I hate taking any type of fatalistic perspective on life perhaps there is a vague blueprint, only it’s sketched on tracing paper in pencil, so we can make necessary changes as we draw along the lines of life. Maybe there is a love at first sight and maybe not, either way their love, which I have never doubted completely but continue to question, is long over, much like my engagement. I am now 25 years old and there marriage ended 13 years ago.

My sister, “the slut” is about to get out of reform school in Bend, OR, which she was sent to nearly 2 years ago for reasons way beyond “slutting it up,” as one of my students once said alluding to the promiscuity of a fellow classmate. Shortly after the divorce Mary began smoking cigarettes and drinking; by the age of 14 she was smoking pot; by the age of 15 she was taking part in doctor checkups with the neighbor boys and stealing makeup and other supplies to further entice the boys into becoming regular patients. After awhile she began stealing from our mother’s “rainy day fund;” a mason jar filled with all denominations of coins and later stray blonde hairs, which tipped us off as to who the pilfer was. For some reason despite both our parents having dark hair Mary was born with blonde hair, which has slowly turned, along with her innocence, into something darker. Alex is currently working on her undergrad degree in Marketing at Eastern Illinois, where she has a different boyfriend every time I talk to her. She manages to sustain a 3.8 GPA while juggling boys, booze and the Holy Spirit… Amen! I graduated a year ago and began substitute teaching shortly after I realized that my degree in English, Photojournalism & Philosophy was about as useful as receiving a #1 teacher certificate from one of my students, which would be a nice incentive for working my ass off for a lousy $75 a day. Nonetheless I enjoy where I am and what I am doing at the moment.

My mother once said to me “just be happy with what you do and proud of who you are.” As simple and hackneyed as those words are I have held onto them like a childhood promise. As for my mother, well she moved to Kenosha Wisconsin about a year ago, where she currently lives with our cat Charlie, a vast collection of lifetime movies, numerous issues of the Grape Vine and several editions of the twelve-step program. She works 30 minutes away in North Chicago, Illinois at the Great Lakes Naval Base, where she serves the sailors alongside my old friend Ethan. Coincidently, I think my mother has become closer friends with Ethan than I am; every time I return home she tells me about another incident that recently took place at work and how funny Ethan is and then she digresses on one of her rants about how much she is bleeding and she asks me why menopause has not yet kicked in, as if I have an answer. “Do you still talk to Ethan… oh he is such a nice boy. You know the other day…” and I begin to space out and then I remember how far my mother really has come, how long it’s been since she sipped from the neck of a Bartles and James or the mouth of an Old Style. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder whether she is actually better off sober; she has replaced her addiction to alcohol with a newfound spiritual addiction, which is not bad, but even an addiction to Jesus Christ can be dangerous for Gods sake. She obsesses over that middle-eastern/white guy like she’s the virgin, hah! Honestly, how could any conception be immaculate? Conception is messy! Whatever… It’s true she doesn’t toss as many dishes across the room, but then again she was more interesting back then or perhaps better said that everything was more interesting back then, much more interesting.

I prefer teaching K-3rd because the children are so incredibly intrigued by everything and their level of charisma is more intense than the arguments my parents had and much more enjoyable to observe. My father has become more devoutly religious since remarrying much like AA has made my mother. He seems to almost advocate the beliefs of a born again Christian, yet he insists that he has always been a “spiritual individual,” whatever the hell that means. He attends church every Sunday and he gives decent amounts of money to the church and voluntarily teaches a CCD class and rocks the bongos for the lord in the church choir and travels into the “slums” to feed the “lesser privileged” with other members of the church. Eating should not be a privilege! Wouldn’t it make more sense to just call them privilege-less? Sometimes he tells me I’m going to hell for abandoning my catholic roots and I wonder if those are the same roots that anchor many of the trees in the South. You know the ones that religious zealots would use to hang black people from… oh wait, silly me, god probably told them to do that. Is any of this beneficence really more than making ourselves feel better about the bad things that we have done throughout our lives; does making ham sandwiches for “poor people” override the coke addiction you won’t ever admit to having? And I used to wonder how my father would have so much energy after working all day to give me airplane rides on the flats of his feet and shoot hoops for hours on end in later years. Okay, so this is where I get preachy about how much I hate people who are preachy. According to the scriptures one should merely accept out of faith, belief; dogmatically, we should subscribe to the existence of god and the infallibility of the pope and the “truth” that “we are all god’s children,” we are all the same and we all have a place reserved in “his kingdom,” except anyone who is not catholic and so long as we live without question and follow the bible from beginning to end, blah, blah, blah. All the same… who? Kingdom… what? And this will happen when and by the hands of whom? Okay, so this is an explicit exaggeration, but still many (my parents included) believe that if we acknowledge our sins and repent a man in a glowing white bathrobe and a great white beard will save us… Billy Gibbons, the lead-man for ZZ-Top going down to the lobby to get his continental breakfast after a long night of rockin’ out, huh? Anyway, my father will be saved and I will be left to attend business meetings, probably for a pharmaceutical company, in the bowels of hell with all the other hedonistic heathens. It only seems right; he always tells me his job is hell and that I am headed there if I don’t start going to church, so…

It has been over 30 years now since my father began as an entry-level sales associate; he is probably making in the upward of about $150K/yr, or about 10 times what I currently bring in. He enjoys spending his free time watching Steve Smith and Louie Belson instructional drum-technique videos, trying to convince me to attend drum clinics and car shows with him, complaining about his back problems, and hiding behind the curtained confessional booth. He is a good man though, for the most part; he means well, as does my mother. I would set them up on a date had they not been divorced. They would make a good couple or they would have if circumstances were different, but different how? Maybe if they had never had children things would have worked out, but probably not.

My mother got pregnant with me shortly after their wedding and things were really great for several years, just my mom and dad and me and then Alex came along and then just four short years later another condom broke and Mary began her nine month excursion beneath my mother’s belly. Later on when I learned that we were a triad of accidents I made myself feel better with the thought of my penis becoming large later in life. The fascination with having a penis that could bust through condoms quickly subsided at the age of sixteen when my girlfriend Chloe had to have her first of three abortions. Anyway, everything was enjoyable in the beginning and then the drinking and arguments ensued. It all makes sense now why my mother bought all her dishware and kitchenware (in general) from K-Mart. One night when I was about eight a yelling match broke out in the hallway between the “family” room and the “living” room, ironically enough. Mother and father we’re up to there usual routine. My mother’s lightly freckled face flinched and angrily contorted in a fit of disdain; flecks of saliva hit my father’s cheek as he spasmodically raised and lowered his arms like a crazy flagman at the end of the race track… again a collision of two cars in the kitchen. And as if trying to pry each parent from their respective automobiles I came between them with a serrated butter knife, only I wasn’t saving anyone from anything, but rather threatening to kill the next person who yelled. In my fit of hysteria I collapsed lunging the blade toward my father’s rib cage, but nothing happened. Daddy sloppily scooped me off the floor like an undercooked egg, sunny-side up. I was so thankful that I had not actually hurt anyone and I figured it must have been “my angel” that saved the day and not the fact that the knife was purchased in a package of generic cutlery for under five dollars; Thank God for shitty blue-light specials!

So there we are pretty much up to date. My sisters and I still visit our father on holidays and occasionally I’ll drop by to give the old man a hug and complain about the money I had to spend on getting my driver side power window fixed again. "The damn thing continues to fall in my door; it’s already been fixed twice.” Sometimes I’ll mention school and the utter disrespect that I received from the class of sixth graders a week ago, “this one kid called me an asshole, right to my face.” Do you think I’m an asshole? Don’t answer that, I think to myself. I usually act as though I have a lot to discuss with him and convince him that we should talk over food, so I can get a free meal. When he has finished eating - I always finish first because I have little to say in actuality - we shake hands, sometimes exchange a small hug, and bid one another fair well until next time. I always include “take care dad” as a gesture of endearment… it makes me feel better for all the “sins” I have committed. From the restaurant I usually venture toward Kenosha to visit the mom (a two for one special). She is usually feeling lonely and upset with some injustice that has recently taken place within her workplace. I usually interject to say something like, “What do you expect mom? You have to deal with sea men on a daily basis… it’s not exactly the most enjoyable job.” She half laughs and continues her bellowing bluster. And I appreciate the time we spend together, I really do, but her complaining gets old quick. Still I pretend to take great interest in her stories and concern in her self-diagnosed ailments. Not to shed light on her actual arthritis condition, but “one would think that the woman is dying of cancer and lives in Canada,” as my father once said. Her cupboards are filled with all sorts of vitamins, nutritional supplements, herbal oils, extracts, “natural” remedy books from the home shopping network, medications, capsules with hieroglyphic-like markings on them, mouth and nasal sprays, ointments, creams, drops for every body part and region, liquid this and that, orange powdered crap to put in your water to help you crap, suppositories, laxatives, colonics, vaporized molecules of rainbow precipitation, sunshine drops, and a numerous assortment of other bullshit that she has never opened and hopefully never will. Her refrigerator/freezer is overstocked with all sorts of foods that she will never cook, diet sodas and carbonated water, cranberry juice (for those untimely & unwanted infections), V8 juice, which “will help with your bowel problems,” not to mention a vast array of batteries (for all the electronics she can’t afford) in the crisper, as well as additional suppositories, just in case you missed the assortment of wax vessels in the cupboard. I don’t know why they are in the fridge; I suppose to keep them from getting too soft. “An interesting woman she is,” my pal Ethan once said. What an understatement!

I am usually the center of attention within my group of friends, not because I am that intriguing or brilliant, but because of the stories of my family, the tales of paranoia, instances of hilarity, fits of aggression, and overall absurdity. Just last week I was out for burritos with Ethan and our mutual friend Will when I was reminded of a particular instance many years ago when my mother made tacos for dinner; she loved cooking up “traditional Mexican dishes.” It was one of the last nights that I remember us all together. As the man behind the register read me back my order, “avocado, beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, cilantro… the words began to mesh together and I zoned out for a moment missing my mother and my father, and the idea of family, and the happy times we shared. “For here or to go… sir… excuse me sir!” The growing intensity of his voice stole me from my daze; “Oh sorry,” I said with a smirk, “It’s been a long day… it’s for here.” After leaving the register Will noticed that I looked a bit upset and asked if I was all right. “Yeah I’m fine,” I responded. Isn’t that what we all say? In an attempt to quickly disguise the truth that perhaps I was not fine, I told them that I was just reflecting on a funny story. “A funny story eh?” Ethan questioned. “Yeah well, I… I was just thinking about my family that’s all; I guess I miss them. Anyway…” I replied, as I jumped into a childhood story. So, my mother stormed into my bedroom one afternoon when I was 15, enraged and distraught because of the smell that emanated from under my door. The scent of a burning match head quickly filled the hallway upstairs; it was nothing more than the smell of sulfur, but she exclaimed that it smelled like marijuana. “I know what that smell is Ben,” she said, “Don’t lie to me!” Well, naturally I began laughing, which further exacerbated the situation. She figured my outburst of chuckling, which rapidly spread among my friends, was due to the fact that we were all high as kites. “You are all stoned off your asses!” She said glaring intensely into my eyes as if they would become instantly bloodshot if she stared hard enough. The funny thing was that this was one of the few times that we were actually completely sober. Yet, we were being accused of being baked. In actuality the smoke was from a model rocket engine that we ignited on the roof outside my window; the wind had picked up and sent shrapnel from the engine sailing into my room. After convincing herself that the clipping of cardboard was actually part of the “spliff” that we had been smoking, she phoned my dad at his new house and explained the situation. He immediately dropped mowing the grass in order to detain his son, who had been “smoking the grass.” When he arrived all my friends had left. My mother sent them home threatening that she was going to “get to the bottom of this” and “find out who the drug dealer in the neighborhood” was. In actuality my friend Matt always bought pot from the mayor’s son. Worthy of deeming classic.

After about an hour and a half of interrogating me about “the pot” and how regularly I was using, my father snatched a hair from my head. “Ouch! What the hell was that?” I exclaimed. “We’ll see if you’re telling the truth young man,” he answered. “I will have them run this for me at the lab down at work.” Now I may not have been the brightest kid, that was Alex’s job, but I knew damn well that there was no lab where he worked, especially for testing a hair follicle for THC. The man does the majority of his deals over fucking awesome blossoms at TGI Fridays or over-priced burgers at Bennigans if he’s working in the downtown district of Chicago; He takes doctors out to lunch in order to sell them on the newest product… a clever means to an end like drinking (see also: trying to forget), or GHB (see also: getting laid), or Catholicism (see also: being saved), or the pinch and roll method (see also: relieving an itch). It’s kind of like Barry Goldwater said during the 1964 presidential election campaign, “Extremis malis extrema remedia," i.e. "extreme maladies for extreme ills." Sometimes desperate times really do call for desperate measures; Goldwater lost by a landslide that year to Lyndon B. Johnson. Perhaps he should’ve taken more desperate measures. I suppose those childhood days were desperate times (to us) or at least we convinced ourselves they were; it’s a nice scapegoat to fall back on.

As I reflect back on my father’s numerous threats, which were never very convincing, I wonder how he got to where he is now… at the top of his game. Sometimes I think my father must be a genius for being able to convince others so easily, a natural orator. Then again it seems more feasible that these doctors are nothing more than fools disguised as brilliant men. It all comes down to book smarts versus street smarts, most commonly referred to as common sense. It used to be said that if you could get people to believe what you said then you would be the richest, most powerful man in all the land. Convince the world that the evil before their eyes doesn’t really exist and then sell them some more drugs to take away any of the discomfort of this wonderful world. Everything has been narrowed down to a chemical imbalance; if you’re sad take 1 purple tablet every day, if you’re bipolar then take this orange one twice daily, if your kids are hyper sling shot 3 of these red suckers into their mouths every day, and if the anxiety gets to you then simply ingest 4 yellow smiley face ovals every day for the rest of your sad, pathetic facade you call life. It’s as simple as rudimentary beat... 1, 2, 3 and usually 4 for good measures. Keep feeding the robots more pills to eradicate the excruciating pain brought about by typhoid bacillus caused by the contamination of our water sources from improper dumping (ironically) by pharmaceutical plants… and just keep telling yourself that everything will be okay. But we are too weak to do it on our own, so we need another medicine for that, or perhaps what we need is more interaction with other human forms. It’s as simple as touch or mere recognition. A smile would be nice placed right here. Look at me when I am next to you at the red light and when I pass you on the street, when we are waiting for the train to pass, when we are waiting for the pain to pass… Or when we are waiting for the train to arrive and I see you and I wonder where you’re headed and if you notice me looking. Perhaps you wonder the same. And I think to myself when life is all smashed together like some strange assortment of pills in a mortar, the perfect amalgamation, it’s then that we are the furthest from one another. Maybe we just need to realize that all we really need is someone at our side, someone to tell us that everything is going to be alright, everything is going to be just fine…