One day at the hermitage

I knew the way I'd live

Be'd the same as the orphanage

That leaked me from its sieve

Herd 'em up and tally ho!

Do the counts and tuck 'em in

The quiet ones are always slow

The louder ones all live in sin

I fell through the system's crack

And failed to assimilate my way back in

To society's stack of pack-rat flak

But live lonely waiting death again

I look into the mirror and say, "Hah!"

"Hah!," it says back.

My left brain says "2 + 2 = 4," and my right brain—it's left brain—says, "4 = 2 + 2," because mirrors are commutative.

My left brain and my right switch places.

All it took was turning on the light.

"Are you Dennis, Devil?" I ask.

"Devil, Dennis you are!" the mirror replies commutatively.

The pair of us, paired, pared...

"We few lived evil, we few," the mirror offers.

"Devil Dennis, deified, sinned, lived," I respond.

I deliver top spot, reviled.

Deliver top spot, reviled I.

Lights out! and there's only one Dennis left, but which?

I am one of the beautiful people. I feel pretty. People admire me. People want to be by me. They want to be me. It's the nature of us beautiful people. I am unique. There is no one else who looks like me.

I was a late blossom, but when I did...just Wow! Stunning. The focus of all in the room.

I look about me smugly and proud. Hubris isn't necessarily a bad thing.

But when I look about me, I see the light. I appraise those around me in shadow, with snark and disdain, because I am surrounded by dirt. And we're all in the same pot. And the worms will eat all of us eventually.

I slipped on some ice on the cement today. Ice, of course, is frozen water, or H2O below 32ºF (0ºC). At this temperature, the water molecules lose energy and slow down; they self-assemble into a hexagonally-structured crystal lattice, forming a solid state of slick substrate above which floats a thin layer of liquid water from the friction pressure of my foot lowering the melting point.

Liquid layer, it turned out, had hydrogen bonds less tightly bound, moving freely enough to become an excellent lubricant, reducing the friction between my foot and the ice, making it slippery.

It’s all chemistry, after all, which is harder to understand than the pain of a suddenly dislodged coccyx at its sacral attachment. (You don’t need to look to the heavens to see stars; they are all around us, kept in a crystal lattice themselves—one of potential energy in search of the right kinesis.)

Of foot.

And while my right foot can garner Oscar chatter, it landed my ass very kinetically onto the cement below.

Ah, chemistry.

Beware! If you go too deep into chemistry, you're suddenly doing physics.

F = M x A

The mass was my ass. What a difference one tiny, little letter makes, especially when you accelerate it. The terminal velocity of a human in a stable, ass-to-cement position is around 120 mph (193 km/h). This speed is reached when the force of drag from air resistance equals the force of gravity acting on the person, resulting in constant speed.

But this is incorrect.

The terminal velocity when my ass hit the ground was 0. Sudden and terminally stopped. My irresistible ass met the immovable ground.

That’s when I realized, if you do phsyics deep enough, it’s all math, or in my case, calculus where I met my fate at t=0. Yet, standards of rigor have evolved over—dare I invoke it?—time. Calculus, originally founded on ill-defined infinitesimals, transitioned to the modern, more rigorous formalism reliant on limits.

And I met mine. I’ve got the X-ray to prove it, so buzz off, Gödel! And come on in, Euler.

Euler’s Identity, for those who missed that class, is

e^ix = cos x + isin x

Bear with me. Hear me out.

Euler’s identity states that when Euler's number (e) is raised to the power of imaginary pi (iπ), the result, when added to 1, equals 0. Pretty scary when you think about it. I didn’t. I was in a hurry. Down I went. I was the one who went down. Euler is the one who pulled the rug out.

I was the “1”; but my ass stopped moving at “0”.

And seeing the stars, I realized that if you do math deep enough, the physics becomes metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that explores what is hubristic “first principles” of things, such as the abstract concepts of being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.

And nothing explores being, substance, cause, and space like falling on your ass. (The knowledge of the knowing and time it takes to know—truly know—comes with the stars.)

Time, from ambulation to inertness, from motion to frozen in time like water frozen into ice, can be reverse-extrapolated to t = 0; however, the opposite of extrapolation is miscalculation. Look it up.

There are quantum effects that emerge at Planck lengths and Planck time, miscalculated or otherwise, both of which become evident when one hits the ground sitting. (Alternatively, hits the sitting grounded.)

Thus, deep math is quantum physics. In math, though, wrong assumptions cannot occur beyond what is provable or unprovable; but in quantum physics we are deluded into thinking we have a choice. Prior to slipping on my ass, I walked in a probability field.

When I fell on my ass, I was in a definite field: The field of pain.

And that, my friends, was definite! With the collapse of my ass, so collapsed my probability field, and with it, my sacrococcygeal ligament. And as we all know…

…the hip bone’s connected to the thigh gone…

…and on and on. You realize the interconnectedness when you remember that all pain is perceived in the brain. Acute pain engenders anger; chronic pain engenders depression.

But there is hope.

The stars—like hip bones to thigh bones—are the result of somatosensory neurons connected to the occipital lobe; and when the descending pain modulation pathway fails and, counterintuitively, amplifies the pain, deep quantum engenders religion.

And this is when I found religion. Does that sound irrational? or just complex?

Thus, reads the postulate, “More people, in these troubled times, should fall on their asses.” (You can quote me on that!)

This was it.

“Here we go,” ol’ man Templet mumbled inarticulately. Everyone leaned in.

He anticipated drawing in his last breath in his beautiful death and delivering it back out with the weight of a fleeing soul. You only get so many breaths, and his last one was in sight. A beautiful end to a beautiful story. The Templet obituary would be the one everyone would want: a painless and peaceful death—who could ask for more? He couldn’t have scripted it any better.

His cue would wait just a moment, however, for he gave one last perusal of his surrounding family with their strangley silent tears and melodramatically quivering lips, some genuine, but most staged.

Tally time: one brother, one wife, two daughters, one missing son-in-law, one dead son-in-law, one son only half-there. Six Templets, counting himself, and two others.

Ol’ man William Templet paused at each—certainly the final moment could wait—for one more eyeful of each of them. One more stomach-ful of each.

The elderly brother soon to follow him into the unknown, but he had himself mentally departed already. Two daughters, neither with husbands any longer. The wife who stood inert, no longer able to participate in the morbid vigil for a man who had sewn her doubts for the reaping forty years earlier.

The grim reaping.

There were mistakes, sure. One son-in-law of whom he had never approved, and he was proven right by the painful explosion that shattered that marriage and an entire family. Or did he drive him off? Another son-in-law of whom he did approve—but he was proven a fool when the suicide happened. His widow was his feckless, reckless youngest—Suzanne—was it her fault she didn’t have a clue? If it was, was that his fault in raising her the way he did?

Or in anything else he might have, done?

Tally time:

--one unhappy wife,

--one divorced, unhappy daughter,

--one ne’er-do-well son,

--one brother lost in dementia, and

--one clueless, licentious widowed daughter, his youngest.'

His youngest, Suzanne.

He had done his best with Suzanne. She had become an hysteric about forty years ago—as Suzy—when still a mere child. He remembered how it was a change that had come over her in only a couple of months when she was a teenager. He still remembered the Sweet Sixteen party when she screamed at all of her friends to leave. She was defiant, had an answer for everything. The child who knew more than her parents.

What’s done was done, he realized, in the wisdom of his impending death; he realized that he had ended up trudging on with only the tools he had at the time.

When Suzanne was older, he had pinned all of his hopes on her husband in the marriage had pushed for. Too hard? He fantasized that man helping her navigate her astray life, but then he had navigated himself to the end of his own.

The old, dying man felt the draw of that same vacuum, and it was seductive, indeed.

The abyss. His own world was now flat, and he was moving toward his own finite horizon. Toward the edge.

He snorted a laugh, which to his audience sounded like a cough, prompting raised eyebrows and a few open mouths of concern. Concern for what? They knew the deal. They knew what was happening here. He could start hemorrhaging out of his eyeballs and why would it matter now?

He wondered if he only got so many laughed allotted in life. If so, was that his last one?

This was it.

After his eyes finished their sweep, the Templet passing-in-review complete, he privately reaffirmed his love for each one of them whether they wanted it or not; whether he meant it or not; even to his son, with whom he had estranged himself, then reconciled, all because of a son’s weakness and certainly not a father’s weakness. Had David’s drug abuse been his fault, like Suzanne’s fate?

He thought not. He did what he had to do with the tools he had at the time.

Would he have done things differently? Sure, now that he paged through the last part of his book—the index of his life, the final tally—any item available for reconsideration by just remembering it. It would take just a reminisce for a brief revisit to his life in review. But no re-dos. You trudge on with the tools you have at the time, and this time, on his deathbed, the tools were final: one hammer and six nails to shut his coffin for jettison into the abyss.

His life. How'd he do?

Were his couple of billion heartbeats tabulated somewhere in the great eternity’s actuary table of life along with the tallied daughters, sons-in-law, wife, brother, and biological son? Had he lived enough, trading one hour’s less sleep here and two hours’ less sleep there for three more hours of living? Or three more dollars? Did he break even? He would soon find out: the afterlife, if there really were one.

Or nothing? The joke on us—his entire life story and sentience negated into irrelevance by oblivion?

Templet chose to believe the afterlife version. Had to be. Better be. If not, he would strain to sense his oblivion just to resent it, fighting a paradox, contradicting oblivion itself; his anger would prove so powerful as to shatter the constraints by which oblivion imprisons one’s worth, fate, destiny, and intrinsic importance to self. And, of course, to the ones hovering over him in his final hour.

Go with the afterlife, he thought, because believing the alternative would muster infidel feelings that would be hard to defend in that afterlife.

The afterlife.

Would it be Heaven, perfect happiness, camaraderie with those who went before him? All his dreams come true? Where one dead son-in-law lived, the other reglued a family, and where even David could be brought back into the fold, whole? Where whatever happened to Suzy to make her so hysterical and live as only a half-personality, had not?

Where every facet of every relationship beamed beautifully and perfectly? Angels, seraphim, cherubim, and God Almighty himself, and Jesus and Moses and Mother Mary? That would be nice.

Wings would be cool.

But he realized such was his childhood afterlife version, little Willie Templet’s religion of rules and Heaven and Hell, reward and punishment, as taught to him by Nuns in grade school. He had grown up, and so had his religion.

His religion, he protested, arguing as a grown man, was an adult version. Not little Willie’s, but Ol’ man William Templet’s. A rational construct that only a Supreme Being could create. Sure, he could have some ideas, such as communion on a holy, supranatural, and fulfilling level with everyone who’s ever existed.

Ever?

His version also placed it outside of time, since ever would be ridiculous. It wouldn’t be with everyone who’s ever existed, but everyone who has existed, exists, and would ever exist. What a presence! And in having an adult faith in a supreme being, he realized that however sensibly wonderful he thought his destination, that the limits of human understanding—within the capabilities of that 3-pound brain—would only be a scratch on the ultimate reality. He knew he would be blown away by this next reality.

Yes. And finally whole enough to grasp it. Well beyond the three pounds of brain.

He smiled. He would soon be with all of his loves—the ones who ever lived or live now—many at his bedside, maybe—and the ones who will ever live—great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and on. His massive tree planted on the day he was born, whose branches were all made up of umbilical cords, all reeled them back in for self-nonself and all-else consolidation.

He could only imagine.

He did one more sweep of the gallery and then smiled. One more smile wouldn’t affect his lifetime tally of smiles. Even if you’re allotted only so many, there must be plenty room for more.

Everyone stood, but not because it was standing-room-only. Now, he felt the recession of time and space that could only be filled by his last breath. The last one on his list of breaths. He drew it in; it failed to return out. The weight of a fleeing soul would find another way to exit.

He passed a sudden, unbridled torrent of colonic gas. Everyone knew it was his last word. Some thought it was befitting.

The silent tears became noisy. The end of a chapter can be just as sorrowful as the loss of the one who creates the ellipsis…the next chapter would follow without him.

A sobering reminder of one’s own mortality is a moving experience. Hands squeezed others’ hands. Quivering became soft cries. They all sought the eyes of each other, sweeping the circle as he had done just a moment earlier. But there was no cacophony or din from them, for his had been a good death. Diginified. A very nice death, indeed. And it didn’t get out of control, for not much would change in their lives.

For life, after all, was for the living, who now were thinking about bequeaths, inheritance, and hand-me-downs.

This was it, William Templet thought as his last thought before he died. He had lived as the man who knew everything better than everyone else—the man who had an answer for everything.

Except for now.

Now what happens? he asked himself. One last time he looked at his family hovering in dutiful vigil, even as he closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, his mind’s eye, his childhood religion smacked him hard. There stood the pearly gates, very high and firmly shut and secured by a very large, solid gold lock, its key hanging from a gold chain on the white-robed man standing behind the dais between him and his afterlife.

Wow, he thought, as a sentiment he had always had, has had, and ever will have.

Wow.

He eyed the keeper of the gates. Who would speak first? Certainly, it wasn’t his place to. He would wait. He laughed at the concept of waiting in a place outside of time. He laughed out loud.

“That’s number 674,843,” the man said, adding an entry to the open book that sat on his dais.

“Excuse me?”

“That was your 674,843rd laugh, although I really should add it to the 1,642 chuckles. Do you care, really? I mean at this point, we really stop counting and tally it all up, even though you only get so many.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I do not understand.”

“For the man who knows everything better than everyone else? The man who has an answer for everything?” The man turned some pages on the book on his dais. “Mr. Templet—Mr. William Templet—you have laughed 674,842 laughs, guffaws, and hoots in your lifetime. Fewer chuckles and hardly any chortles, although I’ve always found that to be splitting hairs. Or splitting haws, I should say.” He laughed at his own joke.

“How many laughs does that make for you?” he asked the shining man, hoping to engage with him on a level playing field of parlance.

“Oh, you don’t want to know,” the man answered. Both shot each other a droll grin, as if rehearsed. “My, my, look at the snickers. You were very snarky, Mr. Templet.”

The man fingered a glowing gold ribbon that sat deep within the packed pages of the book and used it to open to that section. “Ah,” he said, “eructations.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eructations. Nothing? Don’t know that word? How ’bout belches?”

“Oh, yes, belches.”

“24, 205 eruct—er—belches.”

“You’ve counted my belches?”

The shining man looked back down at the book, eyeing some more shining ribbons of different colors. He methodically flipped them one by one, pausing at each. Finally, one section caught his attention. “Yes, belches,” he answered, then looked back up at Templet. “Oh, I have everything here,” he added. “Heartbeats, blinks—"

“How many blinks, exactly?” Templet’s sarcasm didn’t resonate as obviously as he had meant it.

“Little more than half a billion, each eye.”

“Each eye?” The ineffective sarcasm missed its mark again.

“504, 576,342, left eye. 504, 575, 622, right eye.”

“They’re different? Are you sure your data are correct? Shouldn’t they be the same?”

“We count winks as blinks. You obviously are a right-eyed winker.”

“Of course,” Templet said, “that would explain it.” He was confused, feeling denied the mysteries of the universe by such superficiality. “This is all so very silly, isn’t it?” He watched the shining man page through the book again and grew impatient. “And this all means what?” he asked, with a touch of a demanding tone included.

“You mean, besides your winks being exactly 720?”

“Yes.”

“In due time, Mr. Templet, in due time. Now, sneezes, ejaculations…”

“Ejaculations?”

“Of course."

“Am I to understand we’re going to tally all of my bodily functions?”

”Of course.”

“When do we get to the important things?"

“The important things?”

“Yes! The good deeds…the…”

“The sins, sir?” The man’s demeanor changed. “Oh, don’t you worry. In good time. Funny you should ask.”

“Sure,” Templet replied. He didn’t like the glowing man’s different expression. It was an unfriendly one, a judging one.

“So, yes,” he continued. “Ejaculations—orgasms. It says here…4,209.”

“Wow,” Templet whispered to himself.

“Oh, don’t be so proud. It’s actually much less than average. Famously less, actually.”

Templet lowered his voice to a whisper. “My wife and I had…issues,” he said quietly.

“Everyone has issues, Mr. Templet. And you surely had yours. Incidentally, we’re not counting masturbation. Otherwise, it’d be quite a different number, wouldn’t it? No, we shan’t add them. But, you’re right-handed, are you?”

“Meaning what?”

“You’re a right-eyed winker and, like your winks, you’re a right-handed wanker! But relax, ’cause we don’t put much weight on self-pleasuring.”

“Thank God.”

“Don’t thank God. It’s not that He approves; it’s just a don’t-ask, don’t-tell thing. But although we don’t put much weight on it, we still count each and every time.”

“O.K., so how many masturbations…if you must?”

“And I must. Well,” the shining man said, focusing on a line in the book, “it’s a footnote here, um…Whoa!”

“Yeah, I get it, more than my ejaculations.”

“Your official ejaculations, that is. And way more,” he paused, “that is.”

“Of course, as you say, my…official…those things.”

“Ejaculations,” the shining man repeated.

“Yeah, those. Thanks.”

Whose afterlife was this? Templet wondered.

This fit nowhere in any version of an afterlife in anyone’s religion—the children’s version or the adult version. No one’s. This was a Monty Python version. William Templet’s face fell. He appeared a bit dejected.

“Don’t fret, William. Can I call you William?”

“Sure.”

“Your maturation was higher than average. That’s something to be proud of, I suppose.”

“In what way?” Templet asked. “What’s average maturation? How much higher was mine?”

“The average maturation, of course, is the median between an Oxford-educated gentleman majoring in Philosophy and a transient, boorish sheetrock drywall worker.”

Templet gulped. “My first job was hanging drywall,” he said guiltily.

“You see, William, how far you’ve come? I mean, you didn’t go to Oxford—not even Harvard.”

“Princeton? Does Princeton count?”

“Really?”

“O.K., I was accepted there.”

“Really?”

“O.K., I applied there. Doesn’t that count?”

“Hmm,” the man said sadly, “not as much as Harvard. In fact, I think you’re probably closer to drywall installation than Oxford on the grand scheme of things. And, let’s see, you didn’t even do that well in hanging sheetrock, either…only 6200 square yards.”

“If you’re counting, and of course—”

“Oh, I am.”

“It was a summer job,” Templet blurted. “So long ago. It was to help my daughter pay for her abortion—uh-oh, is that a problem?”

“Abortion? Hmm…no, that’s not a problem—well, wait, what I mean is that it’s not your biggest problem. I do say, you two must have been very close. The daughter who could confide anything.”

“Yes, we were close.”

“Close.”

“Yeah, like I said…close.” He realized his mistake right away.

If something like the exact number of orgasms was well documented, certainly the number of abortions—whose exact number was probably more than the one he knew of—wouldn’t be a secret, either.

“Does that make me a bad person?” he asked the shining man.

“No, not that, because according to our records, the number of abortions she had was the number zero.' He smiled at him. "She didn’t have any abortions, William.”

“She didn’t? Oh, thank God—” The man waved his finger. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

“No, and her lies didn’t make you a bad person—more like a chump. She used that money for a breast enlargement.”

“I thought she looked different by the time we got to beach weather.”

“You liked them, didn’t you!”

“So…” Templet said, “that little tramp.”

“She also used the money for her gas and cigarettes and to buy her cocaine. She was never pregnant, though. Surely you knew that, didn’t you?”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Do you want to know how many times she had sex?”

“Not really,” Templet answered, but he knew the jig was up. “She’s my daughter, sir. I really don’t think the confidant stuff goes that far—that personal."

“Personal? That's funny. Nice try, William. Gee, forty-three years ago, from May 3 to June 22, why…she had sex as many times as you, and that—Mr. Templet—is a very curious thing. That—Mr. Templet—is what makes you a bad person. She was only sixteen.”

“So, you’re saying I’m a bad person for my daughter having sex when she was sixteen?”

“With you, yes.”

Truth be told, William Templet had been waiting for this shoe to drop. A single shoe from an amputated man who didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“William,” the shining man said, “on your deathbed you had wondered how she got like she did. You forgave yourself with the explanation that you did what you did with the tools that you had. Tsk, tsk, William. This isn’t good, sir. And I haven’t even gotten to the others who were so attentive to your final moments on Earth. You wondered about them, as well. That was quite a collection of human beings you screwed up. How’d you put it—the best you could manage with the tools you had at the time. You used some tools! You re-wired all their brains. It's going to take generations —for things to rewire correctly. They all came into the world perfect, and by the time you left yours, your actions had run up quite a tally. Shall I tally them up for you? You know…as you said, the important things?”

“No. Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother, really.”

“I guess that’ll send me where I need to go?” he said.

“Yes, William. All….from the man who knew everything better than everyone else. The man who had an answer for everything.” The shining man stroked his long, white beard as he fixed his gaze intensely on Templet. “And by my tally, you’re going there for the 3,493rd time. Better luck next time, William. I'm sure the 3,494th'll be the charm."

They were lovers. It had sounded so romantic, alone overnight on his sailboat. Anchored for the night, all was cozy in the cabin, replete with a wide bunk of silk sheets.

He was a generous lover, but he wasn't working alone: the subtle rocking and list made for rhythmic sways and lurches that were magical.

That was before the sudden storm.

Sometimes even seasoned sailors are taken by surprise. Sometimes anchor chains snap. Sometimes two people are left hanging on a buoy in choppy waters.

At night.

Now, the rocking and list made for rhythmic sways and lurches that were not magical, but lethal.

It was a small buoy, and each of them held on desperately. Hand-over-hand—his hands over hers, hers over his—panic meant there was neither patience nor room for two of one’s hands to secure attachment.

If there had been just one of them—just her, she realized—she could drape over the top of it and rest.

Rest.

She needed rest. This was too hard, too exhausting. And much too crowded. It was two people trying to save themselves with a one-girl buoy. She felt guilt for an instant in thinking like this. After all, he had been her lover. The one? Who knew?

Any life-saving effective grasp proved elusive, their hands in a hand-stacking game where there could only be one winner. Was he a winner?

Was he the one? she wondered again. Again, who knew?

She would never know, because he lost his grasp after a particularly hostile wave flipped them—buoy and all—landing it back upright, bobbing, but without him.

She couldn't see anything in the dark, but she suspected where his pleading, receding hand might be. She could splash at it, perhaps aimlessly, for purchase, but that would mean holding onto the buoy with just one hand—a tentative struggle at best. And a waste of a whole lifetime's opportunity.

Her conscience made her consider it, but her instinct for survival had her consider it for too long a time to be opportune.

Existential struggles between conscience and instinct take time. Instinct makes snap judgments based on stress and fear of a consortium of conspiring dangers; conscience makes determinations more slowly. Instinct requires adrenaline; conscience requires guilt to buoy the sense of right and wrong.

That was a decade, a husband, and two children ago: after the tragedy, new shores meant new horizons and a new life. She saved herself—for another and for others. Yet, to this day, she often has a private, secret, and darkly sinking feeling, well below the surface where a storm still rages in her.

He was destitute, without hope, and a loser at life. He drove off the only woman who had ever taken an interest in him. But he still knew the world existed, with or without him. because there were those who were trying to contact him. But everything landed in his email's junk folder.

Yet, maybe...just maybe someone cared. Maybe someone was reaching out to him.

But probably not, he sighed. He was still bitter about that Nigerian prince who had what was left of his saving. He would miss his mortgage payment. And what he had learned from over half a million dollars in student debt was that it didn't matter whether he was here or not.

Not.

He contemplated it. Everything pointed to his ending it all. He was at the breaking point. If he were to suffer just one more reason to leave this Earth, be given just one more indication he should do it now, he wouldn't be able to resist. He'd hit critical mass in suicidal ideation. What would be that last thing? he wondered.

He opened his email's trash bin, and the very first one he saw, the most recent one—as if it were a direct response to his question—he read:

Complimentary cremation discount offer.

Of course, it was meant to be marketing an estate-planning strategy. But it made even more sense for him to—as the offer read—take advantage of this smart opportunity because, even better, there was no interest nor any payment due for 12 months.

It was a time-sensitive offer, he realized.

Systolic pumping

Explodes each carefree moment

To distribute life

With a beat here and one there

To my parts everywhere

.

I am flush with life

One stroke at a time, in time

Until the final

Feeds my brain its farewell

And resignation as well

THE BUNT

In the VIP room, I said the wrong thing to her, as is always my fatal flaw in all of my come-ons. But she misunderstood me. Thank God! I mean, I don't know what she thought she heard, but I wasn't into diagramming sentences. And what she thought she had heard was the right thing, apparently.

She told me I was a great kisser.

I thought about baseball. She was a great pitcher, with never a wrong thing said, especially that compliment. Compliments come few and far between, so when a pitcher throws one, I swing, I connect, and I scramble. So there I was, safe at first base.

STEALING SECOND BASE

This distraction allowed me to cop an outside feel. I surveyed the bases, and I assessed the weak links in the field. I kneaded her breasts like a hungry baker with dough. She liked it. She allowed the steal.

THIRD BASE

Emboldened, I wondered if I was moving too fast. But then, after all, she was a sex-worker. Her bust was full, and so were her lips. I synchronized my "great" kissing with my handwork. It was great teamwork.

My fingerprints were all over her skin, everywhere—so much that if there were any foul play (foul balls?), I'd be a person-of-interest, for sure.

Ten fingers. One tongue. The rest of my team was playing ball like a well-oiled machine. Ten fingerprints, ten simultaneous moans. She had been in control, but somewhere she dropped the ball. Her error, my opportunity. I didn't want just a popup, so I thought about baseball. Guys, you know what I mean. Just baseball.

I dropped my pants.

HOME

It was a great line drive, but she rejected my play. I had gotten greedy and dared too much. But then another man peaked in. It was my wingman. He wanted in. He would catch the ball for her, to throw me out. I should have traded him when I had the chance!

He had heard what I had told her to get her out into her bullpen, so he repeated it. The very thing she had misunderstood.

This time, she heard it right.

She became enraged. She threw him out. And as if to seal the rejection, she dropped her pants, too. I scored!

While I knew what she had heard—correctly—from my wingman, which was his unintended sacrifice, I must figure out what she thought she had heard from me—incorrectly. No team motto is worth its salt if it doesn't drive the runs home.

Italics is the typographic equivalent of underlining. Detalics is the typographic equivalent of undermining. Normally, italics is a slanted (to the right) cursive font of calligraphic handwriting, first used by Aldus Manutius and his press in Venice in 1500. Alternatively, detalics is slanted to the left.

It is a subtle distinction, as opposed to life and death, which are, respectively, underlined to the right and to the left.

I feel that nothing I do is important, nor worth underlining. I live my life in detail. I live leaning to the left. Does that sound sinister?

My biggest fear in life is that there will be—understood in a goes-without-sayingvsort of way—an embarrassing, deprecatory, and/or shameless exposure of me, relegated to that most feared of typographic sentinels.

What is that? you ask.

That sentinel can be affixed to my name. It is like a bullet that goes through both sides of my head, ending up outside, to the right. (Thus, like italics, it—and bullets, in general—lean to the right.)

And that typographic mortal blow is the asterisk.

I have an asterisk next to my name as if it is following me, and it is, because it follows my name.

It could be worse.

I could be followed by a footnote, with a full haranguing diatribe encased forever in posterity. A philippic of venom. A tirade a dozen invectives more than a full rant. (1 rant + 12 invectives = 1 rant.)

I block my entire legacy to change the font, style, and point-size. But that's not good enough. After blocking it again, I [CMD+X] it. Poof! There goes the Garamond. Poof! There goes the bold! The italics! The detalics!

But somewhere there is a remnant of it all—of me in detalics—written in cursive. In a notebook. One with coffee stains on it and perhaps even some squashed bug foolish enough to worm its way in between some pages further compressed by the coffee mug itself.

That bug is me.

Better that I not be an open book. Better that I be glyphicked in byzantine scribblings that only a cypher on the other side of the world can de-cipher. Reverse the tilt from left to right. De-talic the detalics until the sinister decays in reverse from maladroit to adroit. I long to be a droit. I long to be italicized, my asterisk plucked away and my footnotes whitewashed like weatherworn graffiti.