I wiped my own tears. I force fed my twisted belly. Soothed my own nightmares.

And yet, I message my trauma that I'm there if she needs me.

I swallow against a thick throat. I wonder if this makes me better than her- for caring.

But she did not care as I was taken advantage of in my sleep.

She went outside for a smoke, so she didn't have to hear it. Or deal with it. a

The nicotine stains the purse I brought that day.

I tore it apart with a patient knife.

I remember, as I type a text to a friendship I did not kill, how I care. But she maimed me beyond repair. And while I look the same- I am not.

I berate myself for sending it. She will not care. The same as she didn't when I had spilt blood into my pants, staining them to the point of burning.

I cannot help the warring of my heart. Perhaps that makes me kinder than her. Perhaps it makes me just as sick.

Sarah Doty opened the waiting-room door and asked the seated young man if he was Eddie Xu. Eddie nodded affirmatively, and Sarah motioned for him to come into her office.

Sarah was a psychotherapist. Like all psychotherapists, her approach was eclectic; she dabbled in all the great ones: CBT, ACT, DBT, ... However, Sarah's personal favorite, her professional identity, if you will, was unconditional positive regard as espoused by Carl Rogers. Basically she listened, without judgement, and nudged her patients to keep talking, irrespective of what they said.

Sarah asked Eddie to sit in the reclining chair next to the bookshelf. Sarah sat down on a more formal chair about six feet in front of him.

Eddie immediately noticed an entire shelf of popular books on Eastern philosophy. There was an electric waterfall on the top shelf and a dreamcatcher hanging above it. Eddie began to get annoyed. He quickly shifted his position on the chair as well as his gaze.

When Sarah noticed Eddie's fidgeting, she asked if he felt comfortable.

"Yeah," Eddie lied.

After introducing herself briefly, Sarah asked Eddie what he'd like to talk about.

Eddie said, "Well... The internet. I spend so much time... Why do I spend so much time on the internet? Sometimes I just refresh my feeds over and over. I don't even like most of it. But I can't stop. I come up with plans to stop and I stick with it for a day or two. But then I'm back at it. I've done searches for help. Others write they have the same problem. But no ideas. Yesterday I went to the park, thinking I'd get outside and away. I wanted to climb a fence just to do something real. But I sat on a bench. Then I pulled out my phone again, like everyone else. I don't know how to..."

Eddie paused, not knowing what to say next.

Sarah held an open notebook in her lap. She made a quick note and then asked Eddie how his behavior made him feel.

Eddie replied, "I feel like a lab animal, like I'm programmed to do this, like everything in life is fake, like I'm fake...."

As Eddie continued, Sarah looked down at the iPhone she held at the bottom of her open notebook. She resumed browsing her Facebook feed, looking up at Eddie from time to time, nodding affirmatively as he spoke.

Clarence walked nonchalantly downtown, nothing especial to do, and while humming a tune he espied a placard between entrances to indeterminate establishments. It read:

Love Shopping? …seeking person or persons to pose in store incognito. $12 per survey.

He didn’t, particularly, love shopping, but the poster intrigued him. Was it a social experiment? A zealous competitor trying to undermine its opposition? A fraud baiting naïve-innocents with a non-fatiguing lure? But then again what was twelve bucks nowadays? A drink and a sandwich, and nothing fancy. So, how many survey’s were they talking about? Doing exactly what? His mind took a cynical bend.

He dialed the number walking. Having already paused too long, he took the call from a distance. Defensively posturing, as others might have presumed-- making a connection-- that he had been, maybe, suckered in.

He expected an automated service.

“Hello, Abott Marketing. How may I help you?” said a polite yet sultry voice of unspecified age, young but mature, or mature but youthful-- very attentive.

Now he felt a reproachful goofiness, a grown man seeking a shopping spree, not worth a dozen singles. And yet:

“Uh, yes. I’m responding to the advert posted,” he said feigning great interest, animating his tone a little extra, unnecessarily.

“What is your location?” she enunciated charmingly. Was he detecting an accent? He couldn’t quite place it. He craned his neck out from the shadow doorway he’d ducked into to better read the street sign:

“Corner of First and Boulder.”

“One moment…” and abrupt silence swept into music.

He started imagining how the face or body might match or contrast the vocal. The elevator tune raised an image of Jane Harlow, then turned a bit more Latina from Rita Hayworth to Victoria Monet, and then she was suddenly an overbearing trench with gorilla arms and low drawn hat not quite in any traditional shape, drooping and uniform grey, barely covering steely grey eyes.

“Ya’ rang?” he growled in a low hoarse whisper.

The wire went dead.

“Yeah. The… woman had me... on hold… “ he hung up and fixed his lip, emotionless.

“Ya’d be waitin’ a long time, heh, heh?” the cavalier sniggered at the dummy.

He had been taken in, a robocall, after all; and this was strange “personal” service.

Just how far was this farce going to evolve?

He kept a poker face. It was well-tanned apeman’s turn to make a false move.

She had everything going for her, skin deep. She presented gloriously on the stage as the designated beauty from her state. Her buttocks were firm and tented the bikini bottom just so. Her breasts were just so...healthy! Hanging perfectly at attention. Her waist was flat, the perfect connection between her upper and lower body.

Her legs were shapely, sinewy, and begging for the highest skirts possible. Her feet were lovely, like a child's. Her hands were porcelain. Her arms were cantilevers of poetry.

Her face would one day launch a thousand ships. While most noses are noticed immediately on a face, it's the attractive ones that are visited last, and she had impish upturned nose, on the perfect side of retroussé.

Her gait was a strut. Smooth and beckoning to follow, even into the gates of Hell, if she so ventured. As she walked, all of her parts syncopated in an interesting embellishment of her beauty.

This was the quintessential woman, skin deep. Who would care what was underneath?

While it's true the beautiful who walk among us compete in a fake competition for the eyes, age is the great equalizer. And while it's also true that beautiful people may be just as beautiful beyond skin deep and beyond, we train the beautiful to stay beautiful as long as they can, with fake adulation earned in fake contests.

She won the contest.

Deemed the most beautiful. In external appearance that belies the truth. And in twenty years, she'll catch up to everyone else on life's stage.

_______________________________

The pretty, young thing was an appetizer

Favored over a plain woman--no surprise there

But as they both got older

Similar wrinkles consoled her

For age was the ultimate equalizer

Seven years of the same pills.

I feel like I've been sat on a slowly rusting swing,

until I'm flush with cold mulch and the birds are picking at me.

I have been decaying for seven years. I am not sure if that is medical,

or just who I am.

But I am trying to learn.

I cut my doses. I feel it on the fifth day.

I feel the anxiety, as familiar and unknown as a godmother's gift on your birthday.

I bite my lip, and try to ration the hallucinations as just that.

But I drift on the roads when it's dark, and the light burns me in the day.

I force myself to not react- to not do anything I wouldn't with the pills.

But I've never been good at sense, as I was as destructive with them as without.

I shake, and I'm pale, and I wake most mornings drenched in sweat shivering with bile in my mouth. I smile around it all, and force food through clattering teeth to satiate the masses.

I try not to dwell. Try not to even allow a conscious thought to linger, because it will make me sick. I am as dizzy as a drunk with none of the fun. With just the reminder of my condition.

I do not cry about it. I do not ache. I feel so sickly, that I cannot rationalize emotion.

Perhaps that is best. My emotions have never made sense.

Maybe on the eighth year they will.

I should’ve known seeing you that afternoon wasa sign of the times to come. Like a bird’s wispy sermons at the peak of dawn.

You made my day.

Your hugs, always lukewarm; your hands caressing my back with a tenderness that spoke of unspoken love and overbearing loss. In your arms, infinity felt infinitesimal, thoughts blank. In your arms, I felt like I could breathe again.

You made my day.

I still remember.

Weathered asphalt, permeating with the smell of fresh rain; somehow, the light would glint off the road, and rainbows always coalesce along one of the walkways in its direct intersection. Devoutly, I saw it as a reminder that nature sprouts its roots to even the most gravelly, rugged places, like a rose rising betwixt the crevasses of man's cementation.

Head east, and every step past that led to steep, brick stairs in triplet, before leading to the apartment complex's main door. I used to tell my father all the time - I didn't know how to speak what was on my mind at the time - "the floor looks kinda old", to which he'd explain you'd been living here for over 20 years... It was only when I grew up did I observe & absorb enough to know almost every complex is built out of brick & concrete. Insipid. Yet, the patterns from the brick layering were always able to swaddle my eyes from the other things going on around the block. Nonetheless.

Ringing your bell and hearing your voice leap with a gaiety I could never get used to... I loved it. I loved every moment.

You used to tell me there was something different about me from the rest of the family, that I was special, level-headed, and cerebral. That you believed there was more to me than I let others see. You were the first to tell me to strive for a legacy, to leave something behind when my fleeting trial in this world had run its course. I hold that lesson close to my heart to this day. You were as selfless as you were strong and independent. And it sicks me that it was only after I saw you on that hospital bed, with the gurney disheveled and your eyes so red they seemed to cry blood, did I realize all those years I spent falling to my knees in defeat should have been spent uplifting you in your time of peril.

Your last hug was a glacial reminder of my own inadequacy. I was too weak. I've always been afraid that I'd never become the man evoked in phantasmagoria. That "Golden Child"; the one to uplift millions doing what I love best, all while nesting a future family. And, honestly, I'm far from it. A caricature, if anything. Yet, Grandma, without you, I wouldn't have learned the value of taking every day one step at a time, and speaking to souls one breath at a time.

Losing you tears at my soul every single day.

But I know your love for me was as certain as it was unconditional. A son should never have to bury his mother. A son's son should never have to watch his father replace the moon at the hilltop as he picks up a shovel at the brink of night. It should never be that way. But a face can tell the tragic novella of one's life better than words can... as can an autopsy.

So I always think back to that afternoon, where, after almost three years of purgatory, I got to see you again. Your last words, once bringing a smile to my face, now only sending a rush down my spine and a churning my stomach.

You made my day.

You made my day.

You made my day.

Hm...

I'm stuck for a loop.

I write, fervently seizing the moment like a gladiator descrying victory unveil in the most opportune moment to strike.

But somewhere along the way, I stop. The flickers of the pen cease, a ballpoint voyager crusading through the flux of ink with seeking strokes of desperation coming to a crossroads. I falter to its wispy sermons, the pen; a cattleman to the thoughts. The instrument used to muse spirit into the reprisal of word is the same instrument used to consume the all-looming despair in insouciance, until life is one daily dose of a placebo - growing indifferent to what I write not due to its contents, but because there's better out there.

This is when I dissipate into the husk of obscurity, as a neural response to the nigh infinite mental affliction of my own sub-doing. Soon after, I lose traction, cease to gain momentum, and, ultimately, fall short of expectation.

But perhaps, therein lies the paradox: the pen, that relentless cattleman of thought, must also be the architect of its own liberation. For it is not in the perfection of the stroke, nor in the unbroken momentum of the hand, that true creation is found, but in the very act of wrestling with the void, of teetering on the precipice between brilliance and despair.

To falter is to be human; to rise, divine. The cessation of the ink's flow is not a failure, but a necessary breath—a pause in the symphony where the next note awaits its birth. The indifference you feel is but a shadow, a specter born of comparison, that fades when faced with the light of self-acceptance.

I say this to say: write not to conquer, but to explore. Let the pen wander through the unknown, tracing the contours of your soul, where the greatest work lies not in what is perfected but in what is revealed. Embrace it, for it is the flow of thought that matters more. All that rise must fall. It is only when you rise back up again that you realize you’ve never truly fallen to begin with.

I don’t know how I got to 22.

Or rather: I don’t know how I’ve gotten so close to 23.

It’s like I blinked once and suddenly transmogrified from a helpless boy, vicariously searching for his nonpariel in the trove of his idyllic life, to a man with real issues and even realer responsibilities. There’s no longer the time to explore the horizon when the ship should’ve sailed years ago. Up until this point ,  I’ve indulged in a life of impetuous consternation, shunned to a brooding discomfort by the same devices I muddled through.

Conversing with others no longer feels productive. Instead, it’s turned into a game of “are they being disingenuous?”, and I’ve always gotta be the host… I used to believe the ideal weekend for me was smoking a few blunts and hopping on the game with the boys. Now, it all feels like we’re scraping time away from the clocks of our mortality, utilizing the already sparse free time we have to “have fun” when the fun’s become restricted in intervals and moments.

Abstinence is to subsistence as eating is to drink water, and a pleasure that is no longer ephemeral becomes an addiction. It’s an easy lesson to learn whilst difficult to evoke without some sort of internal backlash.

It’s as though I’ve been running in place, trying to reconcile the boy who once believed in endless horizons with the man who now feels the weight of every passing second.

Will they ever thread the distance?

Of this one thing I’m most certain: Hell is suburbia.

Green grass lawns manicured and mowed into illusionary perfection, stand in defense to these cookie-cutter, monoliths.

Ordinary flowers surround these monoliths, congregating in impeccably planted rows beneath the sills of double hung, front windows complete with simulated divide, whilst HOA compliant, composite, Lily-white, picket fences stand at attention, guarding facade after facade — in hell.

Sidewalks are little more than an afterthought here (in hell). A slipshod courtesy of quick-dry cement poured only for appearance’s sake.

The welcoming front walks gently ushering you in from street to home have given way to stamped, concrete paths leading from asphalt driveways off of standard issue, double-car garages. These faux stone passageways of course are lined with the usual flowers. Pansies, petunias, maybe a smattering of alyssum or flox to fill in the blank spaces for good measure — all of them debutantes clamoring for best in show.

Royal purple, demure pink and snowy white flowers lie low to the ground, patiently awaiting their inevitable conclusion by some kids playing in the front yard as their mother stares absently into the void hissing a curt warning,

“Mind the flowers, please.”

This sets off a chain reaction, and without missing a beat, one of her brood of brats does the unthinkable as he accidentally tramples a small patch of pick-me pansies and petunias.

It always starts with a lip quiver.

Then the sniveling.

Little Johnny, or Stone, or whatever the year they were spawned dictated they “should be” named according to the latest edition of Parents Magazine, predictably amps up as a last defense against the very predictable shift in tone from his reptilian mother. Just moments before, her voice, a barely audible, hiss has transformed to one of despair and complete disgust.

“God dammit! I told YOU to MIND the FLOWERS! And instead of listening to me, you’ve ruined them. You’ve … you’ve killed them. Look at them, they’re DEAD now and all because you just can never pay attention to me, can you?”

His sniveling gives way to tears.

Little Johnny, or Stone, or whatever the brat’s name is, begins making a sincere attempt at remorse for their transgression against his mother’s pick-me pansies and petunias: herbicide. Pansy slaughter in the first degree — an assault on their mother’s precious, pick-mes, resulting in a slight, albeit significant, tear in her false facade and carefully crafted, fragile psyche.

Vacant eyes paired with a sadistic grin spread across her face.

“WHY are YOU crying? Don’t cry. STOP crying. This is NOTHING to cry about. Please stop crying. Mommy’s upset enough as it is right now. I don’t need YOUR crying on top of ALL of this,” she says motioning to dearly departed pick-mes.

Little Johnny, or whoever the fuck, has his mother to thank for for what comes next: full on, ugly crying. Tears start rolling down his tiny, reddened face, followed by the beginnings of snot bubbling from the tip of his nose as he makes odd, strangling sounds before wailing out,

“But you said I KILLED THEM!!! I didn’t mean to KILL your flowers MOMMY. I’m sorry… I’m … sorry. I’m … so …sorry. I’m sorry I KILLED YOUR FLOWERS! I didn’t …mean to .. do it.”

Locking her dead eye stare on Little Johnny, “They’re pansies and petunias,” she says coldly.

Right on cue.

In an effort to patch and smooth any discernible cracks in her veneer, Mommy Dearest first clenches her jaw, then pats her overly highlighted, blonde hair into place and smooths her slacks before putting on a grand show.

She sweeps in, expertly, pulling her little monster to her chest. A cunning performance all her own, complete with the sweep of her little sinner’s hair from their leaking and reddened face: the world is her stage.

Her tone softens.

“There. There. It’s no big deal. Mommy can get some new ones when we go shopping later today. You can even help me pick them out. Would you like that? Would you like to be my little helper?”

A very well rehearsed smile cracks across her plastic face revealing straight and overly whitened teeth as Little Johnny Herbicider’s sobs begin to subside and he nods,

“Yes, Mommy.”

Another rehearsed and fluorescent smile, splits across her face,

“It’s okay. I forgive you Johnny.”

Bravo. You’ve salvaged your makeshift reputation as Suburban Super Mom.

Hell is suburbia, and Little Johnny is so fucked.

____________________________

I’ve always marveled at these facades. Paths of stone pavers (stamped concrete) edged by the delicate, white lace of alyssum or bright and cheerful, creeping flox, polka dotted with perfectly placed pink and purple pansies and petunias smiling up at you, inviting you inside ...

I was 29 years old with a toddler when I bought my first home in the suburbs. A tangible sign that I too had made it.

I was 33 with two kids when I lost that home, like so many others, in 2008. I felt like a complete failure. An embarrassment. I was deeply ashamed, but still set my sites on having it all again as a way to soothe my bruised ego.

It would be another 3 years before my sons father and I would move back out to the suburbs. I was more vested in the dream at this point. I didn’t just want a house, I wanted a home. I wanted everything to be just right, but at no surprise to myself, I leaned very quickly (again) I would never manage to truly fit in with your average, suburban super mom because I don’t play their games very well.

They had manicured lawns with perfectly planted flowers done by landscapers, where I did my own landscaping complete with wildflowers and what I’d planned on being an eventual, lawn-free zone. They drove Mercedes and had Prada bags they’d bought on credit cards they opened in their husband’s names, and I had a KIA and whatever treasure of a handbag I’d thrifted at Savers. They drank wine and popped pills from sun up to sun down, and I made artisan loaves of bread and tried my hand at cheese making for fun between volunteering at my kids school and taking care of my home and working part time.

I was good with it mostly, or so I thought.

There’s this first line of defense meant to disarm you out in the burbs. It comes in the form of direct eye contact, a big fluorescent smile, and accentuated wave from across the street, with the well-intentioned promise of grabbing coffee or having drinks sometime. This of course matches the expansive green lawns, beautiful landscaping, and one of four to six model homes they’ve picked out and embellished with upgrades to give the home ”some character.” All this alongside nice cars and nice clothes in a neighborhood with good schools for your children.

Then you start to take it all in, taking note of things like walkways that lead from the driveway to your home instead of having one from the drive and one from the sidewalk. Or how the houses are set farther back and further apart than you’re used to, but not in the quaint way you see in rural, Main Street communities across America. You begin to realize the status quo isn’t in diversity, but in force-fed homogenization.

You soon realize this is all set up to keep people apart, even when they’re together because keeping up with the Jones is exhausting for some, and soul crushing for others.

Day drinking, pill popping and shopping addictions fueled by credit cards secretly put in their husbands’ names is as unfortunately common as their husbands having not so secret affairs and drinking problems — which then usually triggers revenge affairs, sometimes immediately followed by divorce, but more often is followed with reconciliation. At least until Mommy Dearest can find another man to support her lifestyle with the kids.

Nobody dares talk about this either. You’re not supposed to talk about such banal things. It’s seen as impolite and vulnerable. Sure, the PTA bunch will gossip about it, especially if you’re not one of them, but they don’t really talk about these things in any meaningful way that shows any sort of compassion. You’re just expected to get (more) therapeutic Botox or lip filler, retreat back to your cookie-cutter monoliths, uncork a bottle of wine, wash it down with a Xanax or two, and set out to die a slow and unremarkable death that manifests it’s emptiness in things like passive aggressive behaviors or narcissism.

No thank you.

I have found this to be true no matter where I’ve lived. I’ve lived in suburbs of Chicago, the greater Portland, Oregon metro area, the Northshore of Boston — suburbs are suburbs, and suburban moms of school age children are a creature all their own. You can either play the game, or you can’t.

But know this, whether or not you play the game matters not, because Hell is suburbia and Little Johnny is still so fucked.

A.B.K. ~ ©️08/31/2024

I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm laying in bed, writing on my phone

but it all seems fake; a glorious oversimplification of life

none of it seems real

Except, maybe, this.

Unsure, I second guess every step

every sentence stem

every choice in plot.

The one thing I do know is that I love stories.

While writing I think of myths from long ago. I wonder what happened to the mermaid cursed to roam the sea or the daughter who lost everything. I wonder if I'm the villain. I think I wouldn't mind it. There's a sense of freedom to the notion of doing what you want, but I'm not. I'm still that shy little thing that can't stand up for itself. I'm the weird little miscreant; the one everyone likes. I'm always laughing while dying on the inside, hoping someone sees the mask, wanting someone to notice I'm in pain but not daring to break the mold.