Starbucks Moment

I like to see the preppy people in Starbuck's while I sip my hot chocolate.

I'm supposed to be at work but went downtown instead.

It rained all day yesterday but now the sky is cloudless. The air is nippy but I walked through the famed Savannah squares in short sleeves and liked the sunshine against my skin.

A gaunt man with a shaved head and a garish black eye patch drinks coffee and talks of politics with a friend. I know he is gay, but couldn't tell you why.
Knowing this makes me feel absurdly wise.

A homeless man dressed too warm in dirty clothes, flecks of things in his beard is huddled in a fetal position in a chair. He seems asleep although his eyes are wide open. He is unobtrusive, nearly invisible. I think that's why they let him stay here.

I read the New York Times: Bush's speech, King Kong, and football. I take a casual interest in all of these things.

I look up and see a beautiful girl with straight, long, dark hair and crystal skin standing in line. I try not to watch her too obviously, but am glad to be here to see her.

Christmas carols are playing but I don't feel their spirit yet.

I am content.

I feel better in this moment than I have in a long time.

Maybe it's because the hot chocolate is so good and I'm skipping work and know I won't get caught.

Thoughts While Star-Gazing

I like to lose myself in the night sky sometimes, but don't do it much anymore. I'm afraid people would think it was weird to see a thirty-year old man in the yard, lying on his back in the middle of the night. I think I'd like to move to the country so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

I like to think about how big everything is. I think of how small I am in comparison. I know every one of those stars is really a giant ball of energy as bright as the sun, but they are so far away, that to me, they are only a pinpoint of light. It awes me to think those stars are so distant that their very light is sometimes hundreds or thousands of years old by the time it meets my eye because light travels only so fast. Seeing the light of the stars is like looking backward in time.

I try to count the stars sometimes just as I did when I was young, but it's just as impossible now as it was then. There are so many stars and who knows how many have planets circling around them just as ours does? And of those planets, what good reason is there to think that some of them are not the home of self-aware beings like me who are looking up into their own sky just as I am in that very moment and being filled with the same awe as myself by the vastness of the Universe and the smallness of themselves?

I think there must be some-odd millions of galaxies in the Universe, all filled with millions of stars, and there must be millions of worlds like mine circling those stars. Our star, the sun, is just another one. I don't believe it's cosmically special in any way. It's just another star floating in the Universe, and the Earth is just an ordinary world going around and around that star.

I am just another human being inhabiting this world. There are six billion other creatures like me. They breathe and eat and inhabit space just like me. I want to think I'm special, but I'm really just one of the many, not really so much smarter or superior in any other way than anyone else.

I compare the Universe to a mighty desert full of sand. The world I live on is like a grain of that sand. I am like an atom within that grain of sand, nothing more and nothing less.

But I don't like to think of myself as insignificant. It might be accurate and objective to do so, but something in me rails against the thought. So I change gears to suit myself. Then, I realize that while I am one of many, I am also unique. No one has a fingerprint quite like mine, or a signature, or a personality that's exactly like mine. In that sense, I am special. In my own way, I matter because I'm just a little bit different than anything or anyone else in the Universe. The same could be said of our world, our sun, and our place in the galaxy.

The way I feel when I look at the stars is a bit of a paradox to me. To see that everything is so large and I am so small should crush my ego with the truth of my own insignificance. If I can't believe I am so important that the Universe exists for my amusement and observation, which I don't, then why should I have ambition? Why should I live in a morally upright manner? Why should I try to help others when it would be easier to worry only about myself? Should I do so to please God? Or to please others? Or to avoid the punishment of those who enforce the law?

I have no easy answer for that question. But for reasons that are not quite logical to me, looking at the stars and thinking large thoughts of the Universe and the nature of God does not lead me to believe that because I am so insignificant, nothing really matters. Instead, I am inspired. I feel that though I am little more than an atom of a grain of sand within the gigantic desert of the Universe, I will strive to rise above my intrinsic insignificance. I will fill my mind with all the knowledge it can hold. I will mold my talents to their full potential. I will not follow the law because it is the law, but will do what is right for the sake of its rightness. In all my actions and thoughts, I will strive to be as large as I am able.

These are the thoughts that come to me when I gaze into the sky on a clear night. I tend to forget them after a time and let the mundane aspects of daily existence dominate my mind. I know my time as an atom in the grain of sand called Earth is finite and comically short in the universal scheme, but before that time is ended, I will strive with all the energy within my small being to move a little closer to the stars.

Mama

Today, I am at Mama's house. I am sitting in her chair at her kitchen table and writing about what she meant to me. Next to me and my writer's pad is a check.

Pay to the order of Marcus Howard, it reads. My name is written in her handwriting and her sprawling signature is in the bottom left-hand corner. The check is written for the amount of fifty-thousand dollars. I do not understand how Mama could have saved so much money, nor why she would want to give it to me. I must have been the worst disappointment in all of her life and yet she has done this for me.

No one could deserve to have Mama's money less than me. I am filled with shame. It is the shame that causes me to write today.

I was never much of a writer until I went to prison. A man has plenty of time to write in prison. Plenty of time to contemplate his deeds and plenty of time to take responsibility for his actions and his life. Most of my cellmates did not take advantage of this time. They were too busy running games and hustles or worrying about what the Man was up to.

If it weren't for Mama, maybe I would have been among them. But because of her influence, I could not reconcile participating in such petty activities. If Mama had been in prison, she would have spent her time praying to her God and searching for self-understanding. It would have been a slap in Mama's face if I had not spent my time as she would have. To Mama's disappointment, I have never been much of a praying man. But a man can search for enlightenment in other ways I've come to believe. In prison, my pen flowed across the pages of thousands of yellow writing tablets in search of this.

In spite of this, true enlightenment eluded me. It was not until today, standing over Mama's gravestone in the cemetery, that a sliver of it was discovered. It was a simple headstone identical to a hundred others around it. Someone had placed fresh flowers next to it recently. This did not surprise me. Mama formed many friendships in her life. She was a beloved woman. I felt ashamed that I had come today without an offering to her. In my haste to be by her side again, no thoughts of a gift for her had come to me.

Grace Bessie Howard, her headstone read. A Humble and Devoted Servant of God.

It was a fitting enough epitaph. Mama was certainly a devoted servant of God and humble in her way. But when I thought about my Mama, the word humble did not leap into my mind. She was proud and dignified. She walked with her head held high, a sense of purpose in her every movement. She was a large black woman, six-feet tall, big boned, with two giant bosoms pushing forward in front of her. But she moved with a powerful grace that was often intimidating to others.

Mama always meant business.

She must have seemed a hard and strict woman to all who knew her, and she was. One disobeyed Mama at their own peril and to disrespect her was unthinkable. But Mama was also compassionate and selfless. She radiated love and beauty to me when the rest of my world was a hateful, ugly place.

Mama was not my mother in the biological sense of the word. She did not come into my life at all until after I was eight years old. In the time before Mama, I had no idea of where I fit into this world except as a constant vessel of anger, fear, and destruction. I was an alien with no mother or father, with no one who viewed me as anything but a disturbed child who had to be dealt with. My mother was only fifteen when I was born. I have no idea to this day who my father might have been. After two years of neglectful treatment, the state took custody of me. My mother must have been ill-equipped to meet my needs and apparently had little interest in becoming so.

The records I've read about this period of my life indicate that an investigator found me screaming and emaciated, with a severe case of diaper rash as I had not been changed or fed in over a day. My infant body was covered in infected flea bites and I had been left lying unattended on the floor while my mother was away somewhere living her life.

The next six years of my life was a hazy carousel of foster homes. My behavior was wildly disruptive and violent for a child so young. When I was four years old, I became angry with a foster parent who whipped me with a switch for biting her natural child. To get revenge, I took her prized parakeet from its cage and ripped its head off while she screamed in futile protest. That was my final day at that placement. In another placement, I tried to burn the bed of a couple while they slept. Earlier that day, the man of the house had called me into that same room and fondled my genitals on that same bed, cautioning me to never tell his wife.

That night, I waited for them to go to bed and some extra time to let them get to sleep before I stole the man's cigarette lighter and went to burn them. Luckily for both of them, the woman was a light sleeper and she woke just as the first flames began to move up the sheet at the foot of their bed. She leaped up and smothered the flame and then beat me with a belt for it. The man took his turn as well when he saw what I'd done. They beat me until the backs of my legs were bruised and welted, but I gave neither one the satisfaction of my tears. I only glared at them with hateful eyes while they did their worse.

When the man had exhausted himself, I stared him down until he flinched, obviously afraid of a seven-year old.

"Bet you'll think twice before you touch another boy's dick, won't you, you motherfucker!" I said to him.

His wife glared suspiciously at him just like I'd hoped she would while he looked sheepish and angry, unable to meet her eyes. Then the couple herded me into their car and dropped me off at the police station that night.

The state tried to institutionalize me after that incident, but there was no bed-space and limited resources, so they found another home for me, neglecting to tell the new foster-mother about my penchant for bed burning. Another year passed before I finally met Mama.

It happened at church. My foster-mother at the time was a young woman who told me to call her Ms. Macy. She was very kind, but completely unprepared and utterly horrified by the innocent-looking monster the state was paying her to tend. On the previous day, I had decided to dump the contents of her kitchen trashcan all over her shiny, tile floor and then proceeded to stomp on it until it was so much stinking mush. Ms. Macy had only left me unattended for a moment to speak with a neighbor and had been as horrified by my actions as I'd intended when she returned.

"Why did you do this?" she asked, seeming genuinely curious beneath her anger.

This question was somewhat of a revelation to me. It had never occurred to me to think about why I did the things I did before. I had to ponder the question a moment before I realized the answer.

"Because I'm bad," I said.

"Yes," she agreed. "You are very bad. But I'm taking you to church tomorrow and see if we can help you to be better."

Then she cleaned up the mess I'd made herself, obviously trying not to retch as she did so. Before she was halfway through, I felt something like shame for the first time in my life. I bent over and helped her pick up the mess.

The next day, she'd dressed me in hand-me-down church clothes from the Salvation Army and took me against my will. In truth, my resistance was only half-hearted. I was curious to see this place that my newest foster-mother believed was going to magically transform me from a bad boy to a good one.

The church service was long and boring to me and there seemed to be no way to comfortably sit in the pew. I fidgeted and wiggled all through the sermon while Ms. Macy held me as still as she was able with a restraining arm around my shoulders. Those around me eyed me curiously while they prayed and sang and Amen-ed to the words of the greasy-haired reverend standing in front of us pounding on a Bible. I kept waiting for Goodness to magically settle on me, chasing the Badness forever away. But it didn't seem to be happening. Even as the sermon drew to a close, I felt as angry and bad as ever.

Then the Reverend began to call for lost souls to come to the front and repent before God. He begged them to come rededicate their lives to the "Lawd Gawd Almighty in his infinite merciful power."

That's when Ms. Macy had taken me by the hand to the front. She got me halfway there when I saw the reverend staring at me with the hungriest expression I'd ever seen.

Somewhere in my travels, I'd heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf and the same Bad Wolf in the stories of the Three Little Pigs. I'd always thought of myself as the wolf in those stories, but now I saw that that wasn't true at all. Here was the real Big, Bad Wolf in the flesh. He smiled and leered at me as I came toward him, showing his too white, pearly teeth in a mockery of kindness. I knew his real purpose was to rip my body apart with those teeth and to devour me. It was his eyes that revealed his true nature. Those hungry, eager eyes, feigning compassion, but wanting to destroy me as I had wished to destroy others during the short, angry years of my life.

As Ms. Macy half dragged me down the aisle with an iron grip on my hand, I knew that it was all a trick. When she'd seen what I had done with the trash on her previously clean kitchen floor, she had only pretended to not be very angry. She had not brought me to church to make me good, she had brought me to feed to this Reverend. Maybe others could be forgiven for their sins as he had said, but not me. I was far too Bad for that. I could not be forgiven. I could only be ripped apart by the Reverend's gaping jaws, my body torn asunder and my flesh eaten by the congregation.

As I neared the leering Reverend, I became more and more certain that this was the fate that awaited me. I began to scream and struggle with all of my strength against Ms. Macy's grip. She must have been very determined because it took all of the adrenaline-fueled strength in my young body to break free of her. It was only when I bit the hand that held me that she finally relented. Shrieking, I turned and darted down the middle aisle toward the door at the back of the church as fast as my small feet could carry me.

As I passed the last row of pews and believing I would make it to the salvation of the sunlight streaming under the doors, I was swooped up effortlessly by one giant arm and my face was pressed against two mammoth bosoms. I tried to shriek and pound against this new enemy, but I was held too tightly. My arms were secured in a mighty grip. My face was held too tightly against a massive chest to scream. All I could do was to be held.

"I've got you, child! No one is going to hurt you as long as I've got you. You'll always be safe with me." These were Mama's first words to me, and they were ones to be proven true.

Mama knew Ms. Macy and when the Reverend quickly dismissed the congregation after the chaos I had created, she spoke to her.

"Is this your child, Ms. Macy?" she asked.

"I'm fostering him, Ms. Howard. That boy's got the devil in him. That's why I brought him. I thought it might help if the Reverend said a prayer over him."

"He's got the devil in him, alright," Mama answered. "But there ain't no prayer the Reverend can say to get it out of him. You let me take him home with me, you hear? It might take a tolerable long time, but I'll get the devil out of him directly. You'll see."

"Well I don't know, Ms. Howard. I'd be happy to let you have him. But I don't know how the Defacs would feel about it. It might not be legal. I might get into trouble for it, you know?"

"Oh don't worry about that. I know how to deal with those people," Mama said. "This child's too much of a handful for you, sweet thing. You let me handle him and I'll make a fine, strapping good boy of him, you hear?"

Ms. Macy hesitated and looked at Mama for awhile. But she knew there was no choice but to do what Mama said. Mama was hard to disobey.

"Okay," she agreed, finally. "I'll bring his things to you and just call me and let me know if there's any paperwork, okay?"

Mama smiled and looked down at me.

"You say goodbye to Ms. Macy, alright sonny boy? She's been real sweet to you, I bet."

"Bye," I said to her. "I'm sorry about your trash and I'm sorry about today too. I just thought you were going to feed me to the Reverend. He looked like he was real hungry."

The two women exchanged puzzled expressions and laughed at that. Then I went home with Mama and stayed right there with her until after I turned seventeen and broke Mama's heart. That was the day I was sent to prison.


Mama didn't change me overnight.

She made me go to school everyday. She didn't care how much I screamed and complained or how many temper tantrums I might throw. I went to school and when I came home I did my homework. She sat beside me until it was done. I attended a school for behavior disordered children and Mama was determined to get me into a regular classroom. My teachers thought she was being unrealistic, but Mama never relented.

One day I suffered a setback. I was sent home from school for fighting. It was a minor incident as incidents with me went. A kid had pushed me on the playground and I had busted his nose.

When I got home, Mama embarrassed me. She'd called the child's mother and made me apologize to him. I did it in a barely audible voice and then I had turned my rage on her.

Mama was an artist. She made her living carving all kinds of porcelain figures that she sold to souvenir shops around the country. It was a profession she'd learned from her mother, she said. There was a room in her house she used as a workshop. She worked at a single desk with a lamp and the tools she needed. The walls were lined with shelves that held hundreds of Mama's delicate creations. Most were of children in various poses: children praying, children fishing, children reading, children playing, children with their parents. Sweet looking children and mean looking children. White children and black children, Hispanic children and Asian children. Mama's imagination seemed to know no bounds when it came to creating children.

The figures in her workshop would have brought wonder to any child, even a child whose childhood had been as severely stunted as mine. I spent hours in the room with Mama from the beginning, sitting beside her, watching her work. She let me help her sometimes, asking me to retrieve something for her or to bring her a drink. I liked to do things for Mama. It made me feel valuable.

But on the day Mama embarrassed me, I decided it was time to move on. I didn't talk back to Mama. I'd tried it before and it never served a useful purpose. She wouldn't argue. She simply stated things were a certain way and that's how they were. It was up to me to learn to live with it.

But I knew Mama's weakness. After bedtime, I waited until Mama started snoring in the other room. Then, I went into her workshop and began to destroy her creations. One by one, I took each figurine and slammed it against the floor, feeling an evil euphoria flow through me with every crash. I had made my way through about ten of them before I heard Mama's footsteps coming down the hall. Knowing my time was limited now, I began jerking down the shelves and stomping on the figurines that didn't break when they hit the floor. By the time, Mama arrived, over half of the beautiful figurines she had so painstakingly created lay in ruins on the floor.

I turned to her, expecting rage, prepared for the worst. Knowing what the figurines meant to her, I expected another late night trip to the police station. But there was no anger on Mama's face that night. Tears streamed from her eyes and she regarded me with nothing but sadness and compassion.

She came to me as I glared defiantly at her, ready to fight if she laid her hands on me. And she did. But it was not to punish me, but to hug me; to hold me against her bosom exactly as she had on that first day on the back church pew. My anger evaporated as she held me, replaced by a well of emotion I had not dreamed could have existed inside of me.

I wept against her. My tears started with a stream, but then grew to an ocean as all the despair I had disguised as anger for so long flowed out of me. I do not know how long we stood in that room of broken figurines. Time seemed to lose its meaning as she held me tight against her. At last, I pulled away from her, feeling slightly embarrassed by my outburst, but also refreshed. I looked closely at Mama to see if she might be hiding something from me.

"You're not mad?" I asked her.

"No, child, I ain't mad," she said. "They were just things. I loved those things. I put my time and energy into making those things real and that made me love them. But still...they were just things and you're my boy. I love you more than all those things put together. Do you know that?"

I was unable to answer. All I could do was nod with a lump in my throat and stare up at her in wonder.

"But you've got some cleaning up to do, you know it? Go get the broom out of the kitchen and sweep this mess up. I'm going back to bed. You about scared the life out of me with that racket you made, you hear?"

"Sorry, Mama," I mumbled.

She just shook her head at me and gave me one last hug before heading back to bed. I swept that room until there wasn't a shard of broken porcelain to be found.

When I finally went to bed that night, I lay there for awhile before going to sleep thinking about Mama with wonder. It made no sense to me that she had not been angry at what I had done. But she hadn't. It was a miracle and I couldn't help but smile about it. Before I drifted off that night, I realized that I loved my Mama. I also realized that I had never loved another human being in all my life before that night.

I turned a corner after that. Anger no longer paralyzed me. Much of it was purged from my soul by Mama's steady, uncompromising love. The hate that had clogged my heart and mind for so long had been flushed away, leaving room for better and brighter emotions.

I began to listen in school rather than to look for fights. My teachers noticed and were amazed by the change within me. They tried to take credit for it. They tried to say my change came about because of their wonderful, effective program. But their program had nothing to do with it. It was all because of Mama.

When the next school year started, I left the school for behavior-disordered children and attended a regular high school. The new school was intimidating at first, but I adjusted quickly. I became an honor student and developed a new-found sense of self-esteem. I went out for the junior-high football team and discovered I was a natural athlete.

Football was a perfect outlet for the aggression that still simmered within me. The coaches quickly recognized how fast and strong I was for my age and placed me at running back. I loved the sport. It filled a hole in my heart as no other activity ever had. Nothing brought me more joy than running around and over anyone who tried to bring me down. The sheer physicality of the game thrilled me as nothing else ever had in my young life. I was a star from the beginning and basked in the popularity it brought to me.

I felt reborn during this stage of my life. I was still far from the perfect child, but through football and Mama's loving discipline, I learned to channel the swirling, raw emotions that still existed within me into academic and athletic pursuits rather than to allow them to make me their slave.

I advanced through junior high and into high school excelling in every endeavor I pursued. Mama was so proud of me she could hardly contain herself from gushing over me in front of anyone who would listen. By the time I was sixteen, letters from college football recruiters came pouring into Mama's mailbox. Teachers and peers alike idolized me. The Bad Boy had transformed into the Golden Boy.

But it was all too much for me. My ego became too large. I began to feel I could do no wrong, like I was bulletproof and above the rules that governed lesser mortals. In spite of Mama's best efforts, she lost her hold on me. I began to stay out with friends into all hours of the night walking the streets, drinking, smoking marijuana, and looking for available females.

Mama had no illusions about my activities and she chastised me at every opportunity. Why would I endanger my bright future in the pursuit of such mindless, frivolous, destructive activities, she asked me. How could I put everything I had gained in my life on the line for so little?

She appealed to me with all of her passion and love, with tears in her eyes on many late nights when I came stumbling in at nearly dawn. But I could not be instructed. I had grown too big for that. I was just having some fun, I told her. I knew what I was doing. But Mama knew better. "You're going to break my heart if you don't stop this," she told me. "You think just because you're a football star and an honor student, you're indestructible. But you're not, and all of this will come crashing down on top of you if you don't come to your senses."

"Don't worry, Mama," I would say. "I've got it all under control."

But I was wrong and she was right.

It happened during the summer after my junior year in high school. I had only turned seventeen a month before. It was just past two in the morning on a Saturday night and I was cruising through town with a thug from the neighborhood named Roderick. I wasn't the best of friends with Roderick, but I felt a kinship with him. If it hadn't been for Mama, he would have been me. I was sure of that. Roderick loved violence and seemed to have no concern at for his personal safety. He was reckless and profane and seemed to be hell-bent on finding an early death for himself.

Mama had only seen him once. He had come to her house two weeks before and knocked on the door to ask for me. He drove into her drive with his radio blaring, his gold wheel rims gleaming and a joint between his teeth. He'd had the good sense to dispose of the joint before knocking on the door, but Mama smelled it on his breath in an instant.

"Get Marcus," he'd told her when she answered the door.

"Excuse me, young man?" Mama had exclaimed, staring him down.

Roderick did not understand what he was up against. He was unaccustomed to being questioned.

"Did I stutter, old woman? Get Marcus out here," I said.

Fire blazed in Mama's eyes while I watched, half-amused from the recliner in the den, curious to see the outcome of this clash of wills.

"Boy," Mama said in measured tones. "You'd best take your dope breath off my front stoop and get on. You ain't nothing but bad news for my boy and I ain't about to stand by and watch you bring him down. So you need to get before I call the police and let them know they need to see what kind of goodies they can find in that niggerized thing you drive. You understand?"

My heart skipped a beat to hear Mama talk to Roderick like that. I was pretty sure he wasn't above murder and I was scared for her. But I shouldn't have been. Mama never had a problem holding her own.

Roderick's face puffed with anger and if he'd been carrying a gun, he might have shot Mama on the spot. But she just stared him down like he was nothing but a petulant little child who needed a good whippin'.

"Fuck you, bitch! I'll kill you. You don't know who you're fuckin' with! " Roderick finally bellowed. But his words held no force. Mama had cowed him. He turned around, got back in his pimped out Oldsmobile and peeled tires backing out.

Mama shut the door and sat beside me quietly for awhile letting herself settle down.

"That boy's bad poison," she finally told me. "You stay away from him, Marcus. You hear?"

"Yes ma'am," I answered.

But I didn't.

That night, I sat beside Roderick in the same pimped out Oldsmobile listening to rap music with the most profane lyrics a human mind could think of. I understood the anger that made that music and so did he. That was one thing we had in common. We'd been driving aimlessly around town, drinking malt liquor and smoking weed for several hours when he pulled into an all night convenience store on a whim.

The parking lot was empty except for a single beat up Thunderbird which must have belonged to the cashier. I saw him through the window, a fat, bearded man, with tattoos on his arm, sitting on a stool and reading a magazine. Roderick turned off the engine and sat there for just a minute with a gleam in his eye.

He looked at me and grinned like he'd just gotten laid.

"Hold on, jock, I just gotta piss," he said. Jock was his name for me. I could never tell if he said it affectionately or derisively. I never asked him.

"What's up with you?" I said. He laughed. "Nothin' jock. Like I said, I just gotta piss." He winked at me, got out and closed the door.

I watched him get out and walk inside the store. He was wearing a baggy t-shirt and as he walked into the store, the wind blew the back of it up just enough for me to see the gun poking out of the back of his pants. My heart started beating double-time and sweat beaded on my forehead. I knew what was coming, but felt helpless to do anything but watch it happen.

Roderick walked matter-of-factly to the register and pulled the gun on the attendant. The fat man stood up so fast he knocked the stool over. He jerked open the register and handed Roderick all the money without a hint of resistance. But Roderick shot him anyway. The first slug hit him in the chest and knocked him against the back wall. Cartons of cigarettes fell off the wall on top of him. I could no longer see the man from my vantage point in the car, but Roderick leaned over the counter and emptied the gun into the man with five more quick shots. Then he came out of the store holding the cash and came to my side of the car grinning just like he had when he'd walked in.

"Get the fuck over and drive!" he said. "The cops'll be here quick!"

I felt helpless to do anything but obey him. All I could think about was how Mama had been so right. I was nothing but a fool. If I could get out of this, I told myself, I would walk the straight and narrow the rest of my life.

"I thought you said you just had to take a piss," I said.

"Well I didn't know how you'd take it if I told you the truth," he said.

"You might have just fucked up my whole life, you know that?" I said, as I pulled the Olds onto the road and hit the gas.

"Sorry, jock," he said. I glanced over at him and he looked genuinely sorry. I just shook my head and drove. I went straight to Mama's house and stopped the car on the street in front. I got out and left Roderick without a word. We hadn't been chased or heard any sirens at all. I dared to hope I'd gotten away.

But I was wrong.

The next morning, policemen knocked on the door before seven A.M. Mama was already up and opened the door for them, completely unaware of the trouble I'd gotten myself into the night before. I climbed out of bed, bleary-eyed and hung-over and went to meet them. They arrested me on the spot, hand-cuffed me and took me away in the back of their police car. I tried not to look at Mama while it happened. But her sobs of anguish were daggers to my heart.

I was convicted of armed robbery and accessory to murder and sentenced to twenty-five years with the possibility of parole after twelve. I was lucky. Roderick was given the death penalty. The expression on his face suggested he was happy to have it. I wasn't surprised. If not for Mama, he would have been me.

The judge was a distinguished looking white-haired man who'd tried to pierce my heart with his final words before the bailiff took me away to prison.

"Son," he'd said to me, taking his glasses off and looking me in the eye. "People in this community had high hopes for you and you've let them down. You've let yourself down. You've let this good woman who is your mother down, and you've let all of society down. You're going to have a good, long time to think about your mistakes now, and it's my hope that you'll emerge a better man. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

His words were nothing to me. "No, sir," I said.

But then I turned and looked at Mama. She was weeping silently, her hands clasped in front of her. I had seen her cry before, but there was a difference this time. This time, I had done more than make her cry. I had broken her. I'd used her love for myself and then turned it into a weapon to stab her in the heart. Twenty-five years wasn't a long enough sentence for such a crime as that. Tears of my own began to course down my face as I turned away from her.

"I'm sorry, Mama," I tried to say as they took me away. But my mouth would not form the words.

For five years, Mama wrote me almost everyday and came to see me every weekend. All of my life, she had encouraged me to take responsibilities for my actions, but now she did the opposite.

"It's my fault," I insisted, when I spoke to her. "You warned me. You're going to throw everything you worked for away," you told me. "Stay away from Roderick."

"That's nonsense," she would answer. "You didn't rob anyone. You didn't kill anyone. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person."

"That's a lot of wrongs, don't you think?" I would say.

Mama had nothing to say to that. She was a broken woman after I went to prison. Her health gradually but steadily declined and it came as no great shock to me when the prison chaplain came to my cell one evening to tell me she had died.

"Heart failure," he said.

"I know," I told him. "I'm the one who made it fail."

After twelve years of being a mostly model prisoner, I was paroled. I went to Mama's grave and stood there staring at her headstone and the fresh flowers next to it. I wept for her as I had not been able to in prison. I thought hard about Mama. It occurred to me as I stood there how little I really knew of Mama's life. I had never met her parents. I had never known another member of her family. She had never had a male companion of any sort during my life. She had dedicated herself to me with the same single-minded dedication she had given to creating her porcelain figures of children. I wondered why it had never occurred to me to ask her more about her life. It saddened me to think that as much as she loved me and I had loved her, that she would remain forever an enigma.

As I thought these things, I heard footsteps approaching and looked up to see Mama walking towards me. I took a step back and felt chills run down my spine. It made sense to me though. Mama had come back as a ghost to make sure I stayed on the straight and narrow after serving my time in prison.

But as she came closer, walking slowly between the headstones, I began to see that this might not be Mama at all. She was shorter and slimmer. Her bosoms were much smaller. But she walked with the same purpose and pride as Mama always had.

"You must be Marcus," she said when she came into earshot.

"Yes," I answered, still not entirely ready to abandon the idea that I was seeing Mama's ghost.

"I thought so," she said. She came to stand beside me and we were silent for a respectful moment, looking down at Mama's grave.

"You never met me," she said, "but I'm your Mama's sister, Charity. She and I didn't meet each other until we were grown and we never made the time to really get to know each other until you went away."

I stared at her, shocked and searching her face for the truth. She seemed to be sincere and there was certainly enough of a family resemblance to back her up.

"I got word you were free today and I already went by her house, but you weren't there. I had a feeling I'd find you here. I thought about where I might go in your shoes."

I nodded.

"Your mama asked me to tell you some things about her. Some things she never told you. She had a rough childhood just like you. She grew up on the street and in foster homes without much love or affection until she was a teenager. That's when she was finally adopted by a good woman who taught her how to make those porcelain figurines she loved so much. But Mama was still head-strong and wild even after that. She got pregnant when she was seventeen and wasn't up to raising the baby boy God gave her. She neglected it, got hooked on drugs, and the baby was taken away. Something happened after that though.

"She made up her mind to start living right and get her child back. She dedicated herself to God and made a good life for herself. But she never found that child even though she looked far and wide for it. But then God brought you to her one day in church. She knew you were a gift and she gave you all the love she had in her soul."

Mama's sister paused after that and studied me. I was speechless, but knew her words rung true.

"She wanted me to let you know you never disappointed her. Her last words to me were to tell you she believed in you and she always would even when she looked down on you in Heaven."

Fresh tears came into my eyes. They were liberating tears just like the night she held me after I destroyed her figurines.

"She also wanted me to give you this," Charity said. She handed me the check and I took it from her. Seeing the amount, the force of Mama's love even after her death overwhelmed me.

We studied each other for a timeless moment with Mama's headstone between us.

"Well I have to be going," Mama's sister finally said. "But I'll stay in touch, okay?"

"Okay," I answered. She hugged me quickly and walked away. When she was out of sight, the idea that I had encountered Mama's ghost came back to me. I could not completely shake the feeling.

I stayed by Mama's side in the cemetery until the sun set below the trees in the distance.

At last, I left, determined to honor Mama's love for the rest of my life: to live with purpose in my walk and love in my heart.

An Ant in the Grass

I'm lying on my stomach in the grass in the middle of the day. It's warm outside and it feels good to be stretched out here in my backyard like this. My wife is mad at me right now. I would be upset about it, but I've gotten desensitized to her anger. It's a pretty constant thing, especially since she found out she was pregnant about a month ago. I guess she doesn't really want to be a mother yet. I don't think she wants to be a wife either, but she thought she did until after we'd been married a year. But maybe it's not that she doesn't want to be a wife; maybe it's more that she doesn't want to be my wife. I think that's probably closer to the truth.

Sometimes I think things will get better once the baby comes. Maybe we'll bond over taking care of another human being that's a part of both of us. But probably it will just make matters worse. Probably it will make us both feel more claustrophobic and sick of each other. Yeah, I imagine I'll be divorced before too long. That sucks because I'm still in love with her...at least I think I am. Then again, there are times like these when I just want to avoid her for as long as possible.

I hear her open the sliding glass door on the porch. I don't look, but I can feel her glaring at me.

"Hey!" she yells. "You need to get in here and pick up your damn clothes you left scattered all over the living room."

I don't respond at all. It's too comfortable stretched out here on the grass to be worried about stuff she's talking about. She stands out there waiting on me for a couple of minutes and then yells again.

"You're an asshole, you know that? I can't believe I married such an asshole!" She goes back in and slams the door shut. I figure I'll go in and try to make up with her in a little while, but right now I don't feel like it.

I haven't lain out here on the grass like this since I was a little kid probably. The grass is nice and cool on my belly and the sun is warm on my back. I let my eyes wander across the yard and spy an ant. It's just a single ant crawling through the dirt under the grass of my lawn. I watch it crawling and think about what the world must look like from its perspective. My mind wanders. It seems a lot simpler to think about that ant than the business at hand.

Maybe that ant thinks I'm a storm cloud blown in by a weather system that only ants can perceive. Maybe there are ant weather-men dedicating their lives to predicting the movements of we unpredictable humans. They have a good idea when one is just passing through or if one is going to take it upon himself to stomp a hole right in the middle of the bed they spent thousands and thousands of ant-hours creating.

Then again, maybe it's not like that at all. Maybe ants are more the superstitious type. Maybe they think we're gods passing through their world portending doom or boon, probably more the former than the latter. Maybe they're building monuments to us and making sacrifices, praying for our favor, hoping we'll spare them their pitiful lives so many of us snuff out so carelessly. Their efforts are in vain of course. We humans are completely oblivious to these ants' efforts to appease us. Frankly, we find the very concept ridiculous. The ants would be better served spending their energy doing typical ant things: building, mating, or eating instead of serving indifferent gods.

As the ant crawls under a blade of grass and I lose sight of it, it occurs to me that I'm probably a bit like those ants at this moment; spending my energy pondering how ants perceive humans instead of focusing on improving my existence in some way. But maybe my current interest in this lone ant is improving my existence in some way that I can't quite understand. Maybe if I study it awhile longer, I will understand how. But then again, maybe I'm still just too comfortable lying out here in the sun and unwilling to face my wife's wrath.

The ant reappears on the other side of a blade of grass and I pull myself forward a few feet to see it better. Perhaps the ant perceives my yard as a tropical jungle. Maybe he's an adolescent venturing out into the world beyond his bed for the first time in his life. He's feeling bold, independent, and courageous. He's living his ant-life to the fullest and is poised for adventure.

It occurs to me that I could provide some adventure. I could bring a mighty wind-storm with a single hard exhalation and send him flying several ant-miles through the jungle. I could scrape out a little pit for him to fall into and watch him struggle to emerge from it, or I could bury him alive with a pinch of dirt and watch him test his might to dig himself free.

The ant scurries along, unmindful of my contemplations of his fate and I decide to leave him be. He'll find enough adventure without my concoctions. I lose track of time as my eyes follow him along his journey. I am envious of this insect who is free to roam where he wishes without the responsibilities of a higher life form such as myself.

At some point, I realize that my wife has stepped out on the porch again and that she's been watching me for some time. Reluctantly, I force my eyes to leave my friend, the ant, and turn towards her.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Watching an ant," I tell her.

Her expression is slightly amused and slightly angry still. She's always thought I was a little off-kilter, but it's not a quality she entirely dislikes in me.

"You're a moron!" she declares matter of factly. But the anger is gone from her voice now. "Please come in and pick up your clothes and wash the dishes you left in the sink for me too. I'm not your maid, you know?"

She caught a little of the fury again in that last line, but still, it's nothing serious. I know that if I step inside now that it's likely I won't be picking up clothes or cleaning for a while. We'll be adding more clothes to the floor and going to the bedroom to make up. I know how this works. We've repeated the scene many times.

The image of the queen-ant mating with a mass of workers plants itself in my mind. Doesn't she sting them to death when they've done their manly duty? I think she does. I should look it up to be sure.

I turn over on my back and see a clear blue sky above me. Maybe I am an ant to something up there. Maybe there's some thing lying in its yard right now just observing me for no productive reason. Maybe it could pinch me to nothing between its thumb and fore-finger with hardly a conscious thought.

"Are you coming in?" she calls. She's almost begging now. But I don't budge. I just keep lying on my back and staring at the sky. From the corner of my eye, I can see her standing on the porch with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot just the slightest bit against the concrete. She's more anxious than angry now. I think about getting in my car and embarking on some great adventure into the unknown just like my friend, the ant.

Then I jerk my leg in pain and look down at my calf, expecting to see the fingers of some monolithic giant. But instead, there is the ant bearing down on my skin with its tiny mandibles. I leap up and wipe him away, sorry to hurt him in spite of the pain he's caused me. I hope I haven't killed it.

I feel my pocket for car keys and for a moment I'm torn: The road or my wife? But it's a decision I've really already made. I walk past her glaring face to my car, ignoring her plaintive questions of my intentions. I climb in, place the key into the ignition, and pull out on the highway. In my rearview mirror, I see her chasing after me, screaming my name. She is hysterical. I wonder how she knows I'm not just going to the store and coming back. But she always did have a way of reading my mind. It upsets me to see her in such a state, but I can't be moved now. The world is waiting for me. I just hope no giant unseen force will decide on a whim to thump me away before I finally find my destiny.

I look behind me one final time and see her standing at the edge of the driveway, hunched over with her hands on her knees. She lifts her head and screams at me. Her face is a desolate mask of tear-stained fury.

She's too far away to hear now, but I can read her lips. "You selfish son of a bitch!" is what she's saying. I think it's probably true, but I'm glad I won't have to hear her calling me names ever again. For a moment, tears well in my eyes, but I bite them back and focus on the road in front of me. My calf is itching where the ant bit me, but it's a good itch. I turn the radio up and smile and don't even bother to scratch it.

Out of the Black

Five years had passed, and it still didn't seem quite real to him. It was more like reading about it happening to someone else. Even with the proof of it in front of him, he still could not fully conceive of it. Yet here it was, the tragic reality of his life.

Big, cold raindrops fell against him, beating down the sandy road beside her plot where he'd parked. The weather seemed to share his mood. Above him, dark, menacing clouds had gathered all day, and finally seemed poised for action. He knew the storm was almost on him, but he wasn't ready to leave his mother yet. It had taken him five years to come here, and simple weather wasn't going to drive him away. He wasn't leaving until he'd done what he had to do. He wasn't even quite sure what that was yet. But he was determined to stand here until he knew.

He was dressed all in black, as was his habit in recent times. Even though it was summer, and the day had been unbearably humid, he wore a long sleeve skin-tight black shirt and black jeans that clung to his thin waist so tightly they were painful. He looked like a haunted figure standing in a cemetery with the beginnings of a storm raging about him. He guessed that wasn't far from the truth.

The storm intensified. A boom of thunder closely followed a jagged flash of lightning. The wind rose to a gale and rain assaulted him in sheets. He could barely keep his eyes open against it, and was quickly soaked to the bone. Still, he made no move to shelter. A truth had struck him today: a true epiphany. He was determined to let it run its course.

He stared at his mother's grave, and remembered his life with her. Ever since her death, he'd tried to judge the nature of that life. He'd never reached a firm verdict. He'd always loved her even when he was sure he hated her. Even after her death, he could never settle on one or the other.

He remembered accompanying her one summer as she toured with a traveling theatre corps. She was performing as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. It was a fitting role for her. He had the insight to see that now, but at ten years old, he'd only been thrilled to watch her perform in strange cities on many stages in front of crowds of people. He loved to see her on stage. Her passion and her talent were obvious, and the audience never failed to feel it with him.

He remembered walking into her dressing room one particular night as she prepared for her part.

She stood in front of the mirror holding her lustrous, raven hair on top of her head in the way she would soon wear it on the stage. She was unclothed except for a brightly colored serape wrapped around her hips. The beauty of her long, luxurious body dazzled him. He watched her in rapt wonder. This was his mother, the person around whom his world revolved. He adored her with all his heart. He held his breath, not wanting her to be aware of his presence only because he wished the moment to last as long as it could. He froze it in his mind and it forever remained the image of her that came to him most readily. He remembered their conversation.

"Sam! You scared me," she said, when she noticed him in her mirror. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Just for a second. I didn't want to distract you."

She laughed. "Yes, I probably would have been distracted by a boy as handsome as you!"

Sam blushed.

"Do you get nervous before you go out there?" he asked her.

"Do I seem nervous?"

"No. I just think I would be scared if it was me."

"I get scared too, honey. But that's what makes it so great. If I stopped being scared, I would quit and become...I don't know...a policeman... or a janitor or something."

He laughed, picturing his glamorous mother chasing robbers and emptying trashcans.

"You wouldn't do either of those things, Mom. You're too pretty for that."

"You might be surprised. Pretty can be tough sometimes."

"You look even prettier than usual tonight, Mom."

"Thank you, my darling." She stood and knelt in front of him, holding his chin in her hands. "You're the sweetest boy any mother could ever want." She kissed him lightly on the lips. "Your mother is really going to wow them tonight. This is my favorite role and scared or not, I love to act. I live for it. Can you tell?"

"Yes, Mom. I really can." He remembered feeling sad about that, but didn't understand why he would.

A few moments later, he'd been in the crowd, waiting to watch his mother perform. This was always the time when he'd fantasize about his father coming to claim him at last. He thought of how he'd be a handsome, garrulous man wearing an expensive suit, and how they would sit together and enjoy his mother's performance. Afterward, the three of them would go to a quiet restaurant, and he would explain how his absence in Sam's life was all an easily forgivable misunderstanding. It was a persistent fantasy that Sam imagined in many settings. To his distress, it continued even into his adolescence.

That summer, he'd sat by his mother's friend, Lindsay, at every play. He liked Lindsay, but was also ashamed of her. She wasn't glamorous like his mother. Her skin was pasty with lots of blemishes on her face. She always wore wrinkled dresses or skirts, and while she wasn't quite fat, she was frumpy. That was the word his mother had used for her once, and he'd instantly adopted it in his mind. 'Here comes Frumpy Lindsay,' he'd think whenever he saw her. He hated to think that most people around them assumed she was his mother. She was probably too young for it in any case being only twenty-six, but people didn't know that. He hoped they could look at him and somehow know it was the glamorous woman on-stage that was his mother and not Frumpy Lindsay.

But Lindsay loved his mother as much as he did. "My fan-club," his mother often called them. Lindsay loved him too, and she was easier to talk to than his mother. Lindsay really listened when he talked to her, and she knew how to be funny. That's why his mother liked her so much. When they were together, they'd laugh all the time, especially if his mother was drinking as she usually was. Sometimes Sam thought Lindsay was the only person who could make his mother laugh at all.

Lindsey always reached for his hand when his mother came on-stage. He would have been bothered by most people doing that, but with Lindsay it was okay. He even liked to hold her hand.

He remembered watching his mother's character descend gradually into madness that night as the play progressed. She was trying to be someone she wasn't because she couldn't accept who she was. In the end, the villain Stanley delivered the final brutal blow to her already battered self-esteem, and insanity ensued. Sam was horrified. She personified madness so thoroughly on the stage that Sam was sure his mother could not recover even after the play had ended.

When it was done, and the characters had bowed to the crowd, he could not be contained from rushing back into her dressing room. He ran, nearly frantic with terror in the certainty that she would no longer recognize him.

"Mama! Are you okay?" he asked, as he found her removing her makeup and winding down. He jumped in her lap and hugged her.

"Sam! You can't burst in here like this," she said.

She pushed him out of her lap.

"Sorry, Mom. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He looked at the floor as he spoke. He knew he had annoyed her and hated himself for it.

"Why wouldn't I be okay? Haven't I asked you to knock before you come in, Sam?"

"Yes, Mom. I'm sorry." The idea that she'd somehow lost her mind in the middle of her role seemed too ridiculous to mention now.

"Can I try to make it up to you? I'll pour you a glass of wine when we get back to the room. I bet you need one after that show. I'll pour myself some Kool-Aid too so we can both have a drink."

His mother laughed and Sam was pleased.

"No, honey. Mommy's going out with some friends. Lindsay's been kind enough to agree to keep you though. I'm sure you and she will have a good time until I get back.

"What? No, Mom! I don't want to stay with Frumpy Lindsay! I want to be with you!"

"Hush, Sam. Quit acting so childish, and don't call her that. She might hear you. Now go find her and let me finish getting out of costume."

He stood in front of her for another moment seething with anger while she ignored him, continuing to remove her make-up. He thought of a hundred mean things to say to her that sometimes later he wish he'd said, but in the end, he'd held his tongue. He'd learned there was no use saying mean things to his mother. Whatever he might tell her, she could say something meaner back to him, and words didn't hurt her the way they hurt him.

With his head down, in total defeat, he opened the door to leave her dressing room. To his surprise, Lindsay was standing there.

"Oh. Hey Lindsay," he said.

"Don't you mean Frumpy Lindsay?" she asked him. She said it like she was joking, but Sam thought he saw hurt in her eyes too.

He started to deny he'd said any such thing, but then thought better of it.

"I'm sorry," he said, almost in a whisper. "I was mad at Mother. I'm really, really sorry."

She smiled at him. "Don't worry about it, Sam. I am kind of frumpy anyway. It's kind of a funny name if you really think about it. You call me Frumpy Lindsay and I'll call you Sullen Sam. How about that?"

"No, it's not a funny name. I shouldn't have called you that."

She ruffled his hair, took his hand and led him away. He never thought of her as Frumpy Lindsay again.

That night, in Lindsay's hotel room, she'd talked to a friend on the phone for the better part of two hours while Sam watched TV. They seemed to be having a boyfriend/girlfriend conversation even though Sam knew the voice on the other end of the line was female. Finally, she'd gotten off the phone and she'd broken out the Monopoly game. He tried to get in the mood to play.

"Why does my mother always leave me while she goes out and gets drunk?" he asked.

Lindsay sighed. "That's just what she likes to do and you're too young for it."

"I know, but she just always ignores me and does what she wants."

"I know it feels that way sometimes, Sam, but your mother really loves you."

"Do you think she's a good mother?"

"Why would you ask me something like that, Sam?"

"Because I see how other mothers are to their kids at my school, and they are not like my mother. They are more attentive or something, and most of those kids have fathers too."

"But none of those mothers can act like your mother did tonight, and I bet none of them are as pretty as she is either."

"You're right," Sam admitted.

They played until very late and Sam went to sleep where he was. His mother never showed. In the morning, he woke up tucked into bed with no memory of how he got there. Lindsay was already awake in the other bed.

"Where's my mother?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "But we're going to go find her."

He could tell by her tone that she was angry. He'd never seen her that way before.

"She didn't call or anything?"

"Nope."

Soon, they were standing in front of his mother's hotel room with Lindsay knocking on the door.

"Just a minute," came her pained voice on the other end.

She came to the door. Her face was pale. Her eyes were blood-shot and her hair was a tangled, beaten bird's nest. She was wearing a ratty looking t-shirt and panties. She looked too exhausted to speak.

"Sorry," she managed to croak. "Things got a little out of hand last night."

"I can see that," Lindsay said.

"Are you okay, Mama?" He only called her Mama when he was really worried about her.

"Yeah, I'll be okay...I just need some more sleep."

"I'm leaving him with you, Sarah," Lindsay said.

"Can you please keep him just another couple of hours, Lindsay? I would really appreciate it."

"No, Sarah. I can't. I need to get back home. I have plans today. And you should have called last night. It was irresponsible for you not to."

"I'm too sick to argue with you right now, Lindsay. But please take him for a little longer...I have...company."

She mouthed the last three words, but Sam wasn't dumb. He read her lips. Before she could stop him, he squirted past her into the room.

A man was sleeping in her bed. Only his head was poking above the covers. Sam stared down on him. He felt suddenly, insanely angry.

'This man wasn't his father,' he thought. 'This man was in his mother's room and wasn't his father.' It seemed like a sacrilege to him.

"Who are you?" he asked in a loud voice.

The man's eyes sprung open, and he stared at Sam in an expression of horror.

"What are you doing, kid?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that," Sam answered.

"Sam," came his mother's voice, more irritated than he'd ever heard her before. "That man is a guest. Leave him alone and let him get his wits about him."

Sam felt like an angry watchdog with an intruder in his sights, but he obeyed his mother.

"Who's this kid, Sarah? You didn't tell me you had a kid with you."

"It's my son. I guess I should have told you. I didn't expect him to make an appearance this early."

The man looked simultaneously irritated and afraid. Sam felt the sudden urge to guffaw hysterically in spite of his anger.

"Somebody throw me my boxers over there, will you?"

His mother did, and the realization that the man was nude beneath the covers heightened his fury. It was all he could do not to attack him.

The man regarded Sam suspiciously. "He doesn't bite, does he?" he asked.

"Not that I know of," she answered.

"Well I'm going to get going."

The man got out of bed in his boxers, dressed quickly in his jeans and shirt beside the bed, and left without saying good-bye to anyone.

When he left, Sam realized Lindsay was gone too. He'd wanted to get away from her and back to his mother, but now that she was gone, and his mother was in her present condition, he wondered who would look after him. A moment later, he realized that no one would. He was on his own. He was frightened for a moment, but pushed it out of his mind.

He looked at his mother, thinking she would scold him, but she was in no condition to do so. She rushed into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard her retching, and wished he could help her.

The bathroom door was unlocked. He walked in and found her kneeling over the toilet, sweat pouring down her face. He thought of the beautiful lady who had graced the stage last night compared to the sick woman he saw now. He poured her a glass of water. She took it gratefully and sipped it.

"I'm sorry you're seeing me this way," she said.

"It's okay, Mama. I just want you to feel better."

"You're the best son a mother could ever ask for," she said.

Then she was sick again, and Sam did his best to make her better.

In the cemetery, the rain had slackened a bit. It couldn't have kept up its initial fury for long. He was cold and shivering, drenched as he was.

He hadn't realized his mother was an alcoholic then, but later he did know. He tried to remember the moment he first realized it, but couldn't. He'd only known that his job in life was to try to make her feel better. It became a maddening, frustrating job, but he'd never shied from it.

Making her feel better was his job until the night her car ran off the Samuel Thomas Bridge.

It wasn't like she hadn't sought help. She went to rehab twice. Once when he was twelve, and again soon after he'd turned fourteen. He thought the second time had taken. It seemed she finally recognized the extent of her problem and was taking charge of her life without relying on alcohol, or whatever other substance she could get her hands on.

He remembered the day she'd picked him up from Lindsay's after leaving the center for the second time. She was quiet and subdued, a rare state for her. She told Sam she felt like she had been a poor mother for a very long time, and she didn't know if he could ever forgive her, but she'd given up alcohol for good. She wasn't going to ever drink another drop of it. She said she wanted to be the mother that he deserved her to be.

Sam had grown cynical by then, but he wanted to believe her.

"Okay, Mom. I love you," he told her.

For some reason, that had made her cry. When they got home, he brought her a box of Kleenexes, and sat beside her on the couch while she wept her heart out.

She kept her promise not to drink for almost two whole years as far as he could tell, but he also thought she missed it. Her jobs made matters worse. She had to be performing in some form or another. It was all she could do. She was in a successful band that did the club circuit in the city where they lived. Sometimes she sang and other times she played the keyboard. She was talented at both, but it didn't seem to arouse her passion the way acting did. She asked Sam to set a curfew for her. So he said in a mock, fatherly tone that she had best be home by one A.M. every night she had a gig or else. He really had no idea what the else would have been.

But there was no need to think of an else. She faithfully kept her son's stated curfew for nearly two years. Sam was proud of her. They became closer during those two years than they had in his previous thirteen.

But his mother's demons were vicious ones who were bound to return no longer how long she managed to deny them.

In the end, they got the best of her.

She missed her curfew for the first time soon after he'd turned fifteen. He'd waited for her, watching the clock as it turned to 1:15, 1:30, and then two o'clock before drifting to sleep. In the morning, he went into the living room and found her making a big breakfast for both of them.

"How many eggs do you want?" she asked.

He didn't answer, but he looked at her closely. She seemed awfully chipper to have been out late drinking. He sat down and waited for his breakfast. Neither of them mentioned her missed curfew and he hoped it was an isolated incident.

But it wasn't.

She began staying out late every night after her gigs. He wondered if she was dating someone, but she never spoke of it. He never saw her drunk or hung-over, but he could smell the alcohol in her pores sometimes and saw the occasional empty liquor bottle in the trashcan outside. He became disgusted with her. After a month, he finally confronted her.

"Mom, are you drinking again?" he asked her before she left for her latest gig.

She sighed. "I'll tell you the truth, Sam. I'm having just a couple of drinks with the band after gigs. Just a couple of drinks and that's all. I never get drunk. I'm done with that. Alcohol doesn't get the best of me any more. I just have a good time with the guys and that's it."

"You were doing so well for so long, Mom. I just want things to be good for you. Good for us. I just don't know if you're really able to have a couple of drinks and that's it. Wouldn't it be better if you had none at all?"

She smiled and touched his hand. "You're the most parental fifteen-year old child on the planet. Do you know that?"

"Yeah, Mom, I guess. I think you know why I am that way."

"I do. Trust me, Sam. It's going to be okay this time. I promise. I love you."

"I love you too, Mom."

Everything was okay for two months after that. Then they were never okay again.

It was Lindsay who told him the news. His mother hadn't come home the night before, but he hadn't been terribly worried about it. He assumed she'd spent the night with someone, which she sometimes did. He was at school in the final period of the day when he was called out of class to the principal's office. He knew right away that something was wrong just by the look on the principal's face. Feeling his heart pounding, he followed him to his office. Lindsay was waiting there. She was crying, and when she saw Sam, she hugged him so tightly he was suffocated against her breasts. She tried to speak, but could not seem to find her voice. He knew something had happened to his mother, and expected the worst.

When she finally released him, she found her voice enough to whisper in his ear.

"Sarah's car ran off the bridge last night, and they found her body this morning. I'm so sorry, Sam. I love you like you're my own son."

Her words struck him like a shotgun blast. He stared at her suspiciously. He wondered if she could be making it up as some insane experiment. But another part of him knew better. Another part of him had been expecting news like this for a long time. He felt suddenly dizzy and managed to slump in a chair, managing not to collapse on the floor.

'Was she drinking,' he wondered. Then he felt ashamed for thinking such an accusatory thing so soon.

Lindsay read his mind.

"I don't know if she was drinking. She wasn't alone, Sam. A man was with her. Right now, they don't even know who was driving..."

She gave him more details, but he could no longer listen. He sat with his head in his hands, too shocked to even cry. Lindsay took him to her house where he climbed into her bed and went to sleep. He couldn't face the world again until the next morning.

He stayed out of school for a week. He learned that his mother and the man she was with were both legally drunk at the time her car ran off the bridge. It was unclear who had been driving. His mother's body and the man's were found floating in the water. The car was found afterward by divers at the bottom of the river. His mother and her companion had survived the crash and attempted to swim to safety, but drowned in the attempt. There was no clear cause discovered for the accident. It appeared the driver had either gone to sleep at the wheel or had been incredibly careless.

They had crashed through the guardrail at sixty miles an hour with no sign of skid-marks beforehand. No other vehicles appeared to have been involved and no one came forward as a witness. That was it. That was all the police ever knew about what happened to his mother that night. Sam did not think more information would have been much of a comfort anyway.

She had been drinking. That was the dagger to his heart. She was too weak to keep her promise to him. He took it as evidence she loved alcohol more than she loved him. He felt utterly furious with her. Why couldn't she quit? Was he really so poor of a son? He had to conclude that he was.

After her funeral, he moved in with Lindsay and her girlfriend. They went out of their way to make him feel at home, and to give him room to grieve. But he rejected them. As time passed, he became more and more withdrawn. His world seemed dark and hopeless. His grades dropped. He began skipping school sometimes just to wander about downtown, and spending hours alone in his room doing nothing but listening to loud music and writing dark, barely comprehensible poetry that he never showed to anyone. Lindsay let it go for several months before she confronted him.

"Sam," she told him one evening, walking into his room uninvited and taking his music out of his ears. "It's time to stop wallowing in your grief. It's time to start living again. Can you get that?"

But Sam didn't get it.

"Why should I?" he said. He turned his back to her, put his ear-buds back in, and turned the music up. He felt her standing behind him for several minutes before she finally left without another word.

There was a clique at school who dressed in black, listened to weird, dark music, starved themselves, avoided sunlight, and generally gloried in misery. Some of them liked to slice their arms with razors on occasion just to feel the pain. Pain on the outside relieved the pain on the inside, they claimed. He was simultaneously contemptuous and in awe of these. Contemptuous because he found their reasons for misery to be shallow in comparison to his. None could claim a mother who had drunk herself to death before she was forty, but awe because try as he might, he could never fathom the concept of taking a blade to his own flesh.

But he had no interest in emulating these kids. He wasn't interested in participating in a fad or dressing a certain way to fit in. He'd always been responsible and mature beyond his years. His job had been to encourage his mother to remember her priorities, to guide her down the right path. He'd felt responsible for her, but he failed at that responsibility, and now she was gone. He felt lost and purposeless without her.

He thought of his mother lying dead in a grave, her body decomposing, all of her features distorted by the process of death. She'd been a person of limitless energy, never happy unless she was on a stage performing. She was just like those rock stars who lived like wildfires, destined to burn out at an early age. But now she was gone and her death was grieved by many. Hundreds of people he'd never heard of called or wrote him to offer their respects. But he lacked the energy to respond to them. He felt unplugged from his source. Their relationship, like everything in her life, had been tumultuous, but without her, Sam could see nothing but darkness.

The only solution he could see was to embrace that darkness. It was the only thing that offered him comfort. He stayed in his room with candles burning with just enough light to let him read and write. He ate just enough to stay alive. He socialized with no one. He thought about death all the time. He wondered what it would be like to die: to be no more. All living things died and so would he. Death was the great equalizer. No one was better than anyone else once they were dead. All of the things people thought were so important would utterly cease to matter in death. He had no confidence that an afterlife existed. He hoped it didn't. He would rather be no more than have to toil through the trials of something else.

He thought of ways he could kill himself. Even in his small, dark room where he existed alone there were ways the deed could be done. He could fashion a noose from his sheet and hang himself from the clothes rack in his closet. He could easily get sleeping pills from someone at school and do the deed. He could have gotten a kitchen knife and slit his wrists vertically, making sure he cut the artery so he'd bleed out nice and fast, or he could do it slowly and painfully, simply refusing to eat, and letting his body waste away from simple neglect.

That was the way that appealed to him the most. He thought of how he'd be interested in watching himself wither away in front of his eyes, of how he'd watch his own deterioration with a clinical detachment, mastering his body's desire to live in spite of the pointlessness of it. He'd simply become weaker and weaker until he ceased to be.

One day, he decided to do it.

He didn't go to school that day, the next day, or the day after that. He stayed home and nursed his hunger pangs. They were worse than he expected, but he did not give in to them. By the end of the third day, he found himself already too weak to stand for more than a couple of minutes. He was surprised by how little time the process took. He would have gone on longer if Lindsay had not intervened.

She generally left him alone, and Sam sometimes thought she'd forgotten about him completely. But apparently she hadn't. He kept his door locked at all times, but she opened it with a key he hadn't known existed. He was lying there in the dark, brooding over the sensations hunger created in his body. She switched the lights on, and glared at him while he closed his eyes against the sudden invasion of brightness.

"Sam, you've crossed a line," she told him. "You've always been a good kid, and I know you're having a hard time, but if you're going to live here, you're going to have to follow a couple of simple rules."

Sam looked at her dully. She'd never so much as mentioned rules before. She'd simply let him live here and left him to his own devices, believing him to be a self-sufficient, smart, responsible kid. He was shocked by this sudden change of policy, but also instantly defiant.

"I don't follow any rules but my own," he said.

"I know, Sam, but your rules are self-destructive, and so I'm changing them."

"No, you're not." Sam crawled under the covers to escape the intrusive light, and waited for her to leave. He had said all he intended to say.

"If you don't eat tomorrow and go to school, you have to leave, Sam. I mean it. Don't doubt it."

She left his room, but left the light on. Eventually, he forced himself to get up and turn it off. This exertion left him exhausted in his weakened state. He'd never taken Lindsay for the passive-aggressive type.

He thought about leaving here. He'd have nowhere else to go, but the thought of starving to death in a deserted alley somewhere appealed to his sense of martyrdom. At the same time, he'd hate to have to be out amongst unsavory street people, and the sunlight would probably kill him. He sighed, and decided he'd just go to school tomorrow to pacify her. He might as well eat too.

For some reason, once he got to school, he decided to pay attention in class. His grades improved and he quit starving himself. But he maintained his interest in death and darkness. He was offended when others labeled him Gothic or Emo. He didn't hang around with those kids. They didn't take it as seriously as he did. In his own mind, he called it the Dark Philosophy. He'd moved past his constant fixation on death and concentrated instead on philosophers who shared his pessimistic view of existence.

The thoughts of philosophers like Nietzche, Ayn Rand, and Schopenhauer filled his mind. At school, everyone avoided him, intimidated by his black clothes, and dour demeanor. He also had a biting tongue made all the more effective by the fact that he rarely used it. He had his mother to thank for that. He was perceived as dark and dangerous by students and teachers alike, and ridiculous rumors floated about concerning him. He supposedly ate raw rats and snakes. He was obsessed with becoming a vampire. He was interested in necrophilia; all sorts of things that did not have the slightest basis in fact. He was studious and silent at home and school and graduated near the top of his class in spite of his utter contempt for his school and all those who attended it.

Lindsay attended his graduation, and afterward they went home and drank a glass of wine together. It was the first time in his entire life that Sam consumed an alcoholic beverage. He approached it with some superstitious fear, considering what this liquid had done to his mother. He coughed a little taking the first cautious sip, which caused Lindsay to break into hysterical laughter. He'd laughed too, and it felt odd to him. He couldn't remember when he'd laughed last. Then he remembered that was why his mother had always loved Lindsay. She could make her laugh like no one else.

They had one glass and then two more. Sam's head was pleasantly buzzing for the first time in his life, and he finally understood what his mother's attraction to this substance had been. He and Lindsay were really talking for the first time since he'd moved in with her. He realized he was happy for the first time since his mother's death.

"You know, I have to confess that I was kind of excited when you first came to live with me," she told him. "You're the closest thing I'll ever have to a son, and I've always loved you like you were. Besides that, I always thought you were a cool kid. I never believed your mother appreciated you like she should have. I know how you loved her, and I hope saying that doesn't offend you, but that's how I've always felt."

"I'm not offended," he told her. "I have mixed feelings about her myself sometimes. I loved her though. It seemed like almost everyone did. I tried to love her more than anyone so she would see me as being the most special. Do you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean, Sam. Sarah had that affect on people. Everyone wanted to prove they loved her the most. I know I did."

Thinking about his mother combined with the affects of the wine made him feel like crying, and he didn't want to cry. He was enjoying this talk with Lindsay. Now that it was happening, he realized it was long overdue. She was a great gift he should have treasured rather than allowing himself to flounder in self absorbed misery as he had for the better part of three years.

"I'm sorry I've been such poor company all this time," he told her. "I don't know what's been wrong with me."

Lindsey touched his hand.

"Don't apologize, Sam. But honestly, I underestimated how her death would affect you. I didn't know you would become so sad for so long. You know, you are your mother's son after all. It would be unnatural if you didn't have a bit of a flair for the dramatic. Do you know what I mean?"

Sam laughed. A flair for the dramatic. He'd dedicated his life to darkness and she called it a flair for the dramatic. But maybe she was right. Maybe that's all it really was.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean, but I'm willing to think about it."

"You should. I really liked the old Sam, you know? The one who used to beat me at Monopoly all the time."

"I don't think that Sam will ever see the light of day again."

"He will if new Sam ever lets him," she said.

"Old Sam was young and naive. New Sam isn't. New Sam understands the hypocrisy and meaninglessness of everything. New Sam knows all we're doing is biding our time here till we die. New Sam knows there's no grand meaning of life and no intrinsic one either like the existentialists would have you believe. We're all just here frolicking purposelessly about until we die."

He'd never told Lindsay his hypothesis on life before and he thought she'd be shocked by it. But she laughed instead.

"That's one way to look at it," she said. "Do you want some more wine?"

"I might as well. Maybe it will hasten my death."

She laughed again and he smiled in spite of himself.

"So if life is so meaningless, why do you even bother to study about how meaningless it is? What's the point?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. Have to do something till I die, I guess."

"Exactly," Lindsay said as she poured him more wine and winked at him.

"That's cryptic."

"Isn't it though?"

Sam smiled, thinking again about how odd it felt on his face. "You crack me up, Lindsay. You know that?"

"Well I'm glad."

Sam laughed at that harder than he meant to because of the wine.

They drank two bottles of wine together and talked like they had never talked in all the time he'd lived with her. He thanked her for allowing him to stay with her and for putting up with his strange death-obsessed ways. Sometime in the conversation, Lindsay mentioned what must have been on her mind since they'd sat down.

"I know you've been offered a scholarship, Sam," she said. "I want you to go to college. Are you? I've been saving myself for it, and I can give you a little help as well."

Sam had not thought about college at all and his first instinct was to say, Hell, no. But then he realized that he did want to go. He had no idea what kind of career he wanted. He'd always believed careers were pointless things that made people slaves to money. But he did want to continue his studies of philosophy and meet others who maybe weren't so entrenched in the sheep-minded ignorance as those at the school he'd just managed to leave.

"I might as well," he said.

"Thank you," she answered.

She stood and hugged him, and he endured it.


He started college that Fall, living in a dorm on-campus. He continued his own studies of the "Dark Philosophy," which freaked out his assigned roommate enough that the kid moved out a month into the first semester. He was disappointed in college in many ways. He had no interest in the party scene, and found that his own studies had elevated him far above the average student in his classes.

He went to class. He came back to the dorm and studied. He ate alone, and passed his time writing his poetry and reading as he always had. He felt no need for a social life, friends, or girls. The semester passed and the next one began.

Sam got bored.

He'd heard about a club called The Void that catered to Gothic types. He certainly didn't consider himself a "type" of anything, but decided to check it out due to sheer boredom.

The club was very dark and became increasingly crowded as the night progressed. The music pumping through the speakers was so loud that conversation was impossible. Iridescent lights flashed around the club giving everything an eerie psychedelic glow, creating unnatural shadows, and a sense of disorientation.

Sam sat at a barstool sipping a beer he hadn't been carded for, and watching people dance to booming house music; some of them doing crazy acrobatic moves that seemed inspired by Cirque Soleil. Almost everyone was dressed in black and wore all manner of piercings. Many couples were making out in the couches around the dance floor, some doing everything but having sex. Sam saw pills being exchanged between several people, and deduced that Ecstasy was likely the drug of choice here.

This wasn't his scene. He decided to leave as soon as he finished his beer. But before he did, a feminine voice called to him.

"Hey," she said. "I know you."

A familiar looking girl with bright, auburn hair, a nose ring and an eyebrow-piercing sat next to him. She was wearing a black body suit that fit her athletic body with enticing snugness. She was smiling and very pretty. It took him a moment to place her. Then he realized she was in his Philosophy 101 class. She sat in the front of the class. She asked questions often and always seemed very perky. Sam thought she might be a cheerleader or some other peppy thing. She always wore fashionable skirts or blouses, nothing like her current attire. He had to admit he liked this version better.

"Philosophy 101 with Mr. Loudtree. You're the kid who sits in the back wearing all black that everyone's afraid of."

"That's me," he answered. "I bite the heads off bats, worship the devil, and have sex with the dead."

"What?" she asked. It was hard to hear over the loud music. Sam figured it was for the best.

"I'm Sam," he said. "Nice to meet you."

"Julia. Nice to meet you too. Are you by yourself?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

"That's cool. Are you having fun?"

"No. I was about to leave."

"You want to hang out with me and my friends for awhile?"

He didn't want to be a charity case. It felt like she was making the offer out of pity. But then again, he also felt the need to prove to her he wasn't a serial killer or something. He usually wouldn't care, but Julia was good-looking and friendly, and in spite of himself, he wanted her to think well of him.

"Okay. I'll stick around for a little while."

"Good!" She sounded genuinely pleased. "How many times have you been here?"

"First time."

"Really? I didn't think I'd seen you here before. We come in here pretty often. This is about the most happening club around here for this scene. I always have fun here."

"Looks pretty happening," he said, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

But she ignored it if she noticed. "Where do you usually go out to?" she asked.

He considered lying, but thought better of it. "I don't usually go out at all."

"Why not? Don't you get bored?"

"It's just not my thing. I have been getting bored lately though. Thought I should see what's going on tonight."

"So what do you think of it?"

"I don't know. It's not really my scene."

"You dress like it's your scene. Or are you more of a Johnny Cash man-in-black type?"

"Maybe old Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails songs."

She laughed. "You're funny, Sam. So what's up with the garb anyway?"

Sam thought about what to tell her. He wanted to be honest. "It's my statement about the pointlessness of life I guess you'd say."

She laughed again. "That's deep."

"What about you?" he asked. "You're dressed in the color of night yourself."

"Yeah. I like to dress this way and come out to a place like this sometimes. It suits my darker nature I guess you'd say. I'm not hardcore like you though."

"I'm not hardcore. I just take my convictions seriously."

"Unlike the rest of us shallow, sheeple types, huh? You ever think it might be nice to just relax and have a good time?"

"No," he said seriously.

Julia laughed like he'd said something hilarious. "You really crack me up, dude. Come meet my friends."

She took his hand and he followed her dutifully to the other side of the club where her friends were congregating.

"Hey guys, this is my friend, Sam," she announced. "He's in my Philosophy class."

"What's up, Plato? I'm Kevin," one of the guys in the circle said.

Sam shook his hand without comment on his lame joke. He felt horrified with himself to be enjoying interacting with other people so much. After the introductions, Julia's friends went back to their own thing, and he'd thought Julia would drift away from him to hang out with them, but she stayed beside him asking him questions and telling him about herself. Her curiosity about him was disconcerting and made him feel self-conscious. At the same time, he had to admit that he enjoyed it.

They had one drink after another, alternating paying for each round of them. Gradually, they moved closer to one another. At some point, they migrated to the quietest corner of the club where they could hear each other better. Julia told him about being a star athlete and a top student in high school, but also feeling that all the superficial high school popularity stuff was a lot of bullshit. She told her about her parents divorcing when she was twelve and how she'd felt so devastated about it. Even now she had to convince herself it wasn't her fault sometimes. She'd done her share of drugs and drinking in her life, and people were shocked sometimes to discover she had such a wild side.

Sam tried to skirt the subject of his mother's death, but she asked probing questions. He told her about touring with her acting corps during summers and of her constant problems with drinking. He told her about her car wreck and about what a kind person Lindsay was. He told her about never knowing who his father was and how he didn't know how he'd ever find out now that his mother was gone.

He told her about the fantasy he'd concocted of who his father might be. He was a famous concert pianist. He lived alone in a luxurious loft in SoHo in New York City. He was a confirmed bachelor, but a hell of a nice guy. After the initial shock of finding out he had a nearly grown son, they would become great friends. His father would be as interested in Philosophy as he was, and they would discuss and debate the subject for hours. He'd also teach Sam to play the piano and whatever musical instrument he desired to learn. Soon Sam himself would be playing like a maestro.

"Sounds like you thought through that quite a bit," Julia said.

"Yeah, it's really corny," he answered. "I never told anyone about that before. How many beers have I had tonight anyway?"

She leaned forward, almost touching her face to his and took his hands in hers. "It's not corny, Sam," she said. "It's really cool."

Sam suddenly felt the electricity between them. He realized she wanted him to kiss her. He did, very softly at first. She put her hands on his face, and kissed him back more fervently. He was suddenly oblivious of everything around him except the feel of her kiss. He lost himself in it. He thought his heart would beat out of his chest. When they finally broke it, he was helplessly in love with her.

"You're so sweet," Julia told him. "People see you and think you're dangerous and hateful, but you're just a pussy cat, aren't you?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know." He only wanted to kiss her again, and he did. It was just as good as the first one, but when he pulled away, she seemed suddenly anxious. He watched her struggle for something to say.

"There you are!" one of her friends called to her. "Hey Julia, I didn't know where you had gone. We're about to leave. Are you coming with us?" she asked, giving Sam a skeptical glance.

"Yeah, I'm coming," she said. "Give me just a minute."

"Okay, we'll be in the parking lot."

Before she left, Julia kissed him a third time. Sam thought he would explode where he sat.

"I've got to go, Sam. I really enjoyed getting to know you tonight. I'll see you in class, okay?"

"Okay," he answered helplessly. She touched his hand a final time and walked away. He watched her go, hoping for a final glance back from her, but she didn't give him one.

Sam sat at the table for a few minutes by himself processing the events of the night. It had certainly been more than he'd expected. Finally, he left and drove back to the dorm. He felt completely sober by the time he was in his bed. All he could think about was Julia and the rapture of kissing her. He shook his head in wonder at how all his studies and convictions concerning the meaninglessness and desolation of existence had evaporated the moment his lips had touched hers.

'Maybe I'm just a sheeple after all,' he thought. He smiled because he didn't care. Not as long as got to kiss Julia again. He went to sleep and dreamed of her.

He obsessed about her all weekend, kicking himself because he hadn't asked for her phone number. 'She didn't offer,' an annoying part of his brain reminded him. But he ignored it. He didn't see her again until he went to class on Monday. His heart skipped a beat when he saw her in her usual seat wearing a conservative aqua skirt as he entered the classroom. Class was about to start and his desk was across the room from her in the back. He'd have to wait until after class to speak to her.

He ordinarily found Mr. Loudtree to be an interesting lecturer, but today he seemed to drone on and on while he watched the clock move with agonizing slowness. Class finally ended and he waited at the door for her to come out.

When she smiled at him, his heart melted all over again.

"Hey, Sam," she said. "How was your weekend?"

"Good. What about yours?"

"It was fine."

An awkward silence lapsed between them.

"What are you doing the rest of the day?" he asked.

"I don't know yet. Probably rest up to go out tonight."

"Really? Where are you going?"

"Not sure yet. Maybe The Void again or maybe just to shoot some pool somewhere. What are your plans?"

"I don't know. Just going to play the day by ear I guess."

"Sounds good."

"Umm, hey, would you like to get together again sometime?"

"Sure, that sounds good. Did you have something in mind?"

"Not really. I figured we could just hang out sometime. Maybe some place quieter than The Void, you know?"

"Yeah, that place is hella loud. I like it though."

He looked at her expectantly, hoping she would offer him her phone number without him asking.

"Oh, here's my number," she said. She scrawled it on a piece of notebook paper and handed it to him.

"Thanks," he said.

"See you around," she said as she walked away.

Sam held the paper with her phone number on it as if it were a sacred object. He wondered how long he should wait to call her. He thought his head would literally explode if he waited very long at all.

He held out until 7:30 that night. He dialed her number with a trembling finger.

To his disappointment, the call went to her voicemail. He considered just hanging up and calling later, but decided he might as well leave a message.

"Hey Julia," he said. "This is Sam. Just wanted to see what you were up to. Call me back when you get a chance." He left his number. "Okay, talk to you later," he finished.

He disconnected, horrified by how lame his message would probably sound to her. He tried to keep busy the rest of the night, trying not to listen to his silent phone. He tried to read some Schopenhauer, but he couldn't concentrate. He switched to Nietzsche with the same result. Thoreau didn't work either. Finally, he left the room and walked around campus checking his cell phone for missed calls periodically. Lindsay had insisted he have the damn thing, and maybe it was finally going to prove useful. He finally fell into a restless sleep around midnight thinking of a thousand plausible reasons why she might not have returned his call.

He went to class the next day, and saw that she was there again as always in her usual seat. He sighed and waited for class to end again. When it did, he waited for her once more.

"Hey, Sam," she said. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," he answered. "Did you get my message last night?"

"Yeah, I got it, but it wasn't until this morning. I crashed at Jason's apartment. He had a party and I drank a little much."

"I see. Well, if you're not too busy today, maybe I could take you out to dinner."

It seemed that she was about to decline the offer, but then she said, "Okay, Sam. Come pick me up about seven, okay?" She told him where she lived.

Sam got to her apartment at five minutes till seven dressed in his customary black and driving the 1999 Toyota Corolla that was a hand-me-down from Lindsay.

'This is my first date,' he thought. 'How lame is that?'

He knocked on her door and waited. No one came. He knocked again with the same result. He waited for ten minutes wondering what to do. Maybe something unexpected had come up, but at least she could have called him. He called her on his cell-phone and listened to it ring. Her voicemail came on and he hung up.

In utter defeat, he went back to his car and drove back to his dorm. He sat in the dark, wishing he could disappear from the face of the Earth. He thought she had liked him at The Void. He had talked to her like he had to almost no one since his mother died, and he thought their kiss was magical. But apparently, it had meant nothing to her. She was a party girl looking to have a good time, and he had thought it was something more. He felt so stupid and humiliated. But in spite of these thoughts, he still held out hope deep in his mind. Perhaps she would have some explanation that would make forgiving her easy. Maybe she really did like him, but was just afraid of being involved with him for some reason. Maybe her friends had judged him a weirdo because of the way he dressed, and the fact that he was such a loner, and she'd let them influence her.

More than anything, he just wanted an explanation. Was that too much to ask, he wondered? He felt horrible, and wanted to do nothing but go to sleep and forget about it. So he did.

The next morning, the sound of his cell phone ringing woke him. 'She's calling me,' he thought, feeling his heart leap with hope. He answered it without looking at the caller ID.

"Hello?" he said.

"Sam, what's up? Are you awake?"

He recognized Lindsay's voice and felt disappointment crash over him.

"Yeah, I'm awake, Lindsay. Just waking up actually."

"Don't sound so happy to hear from me. What are you up to these days?"

"Just the usual. Studying a lot."

"Sounds exciting, Sam. Don't tell me you just sit in your room and study all the time."

"Not all the time. I go outside to eat when I'm hungry, and then there's the time I spend sleeping."

"No need to be a smart-ass. Waiting for you to call is sort of like waiting for Godot, you know, Sam? I get worried about you sometimes."

"Why, Lindsay? There's no reason to worry about me. I'm fine."

"I know how you get. You sit in your room with your Philosophy books and ruminate about death and how much life sucks and all of that. I hate thinking of you doing that. I want you to get out and enjoy life."

'Enjoy life?' Sam thought. 'I enjoyed life for about three minutes the other night and now I'm catching Hell for it. No thanks, Lindsay!'

"I do enjoy life," he said. "What's not to enjoy?" He stopped himself and took a deep breath. There was no need to pass his misery to Lindsey. "Hey...I'm sorry," he said. "I'm in kind of a bad mood. I'll tell you about it later. I just don't feel like talking about it right now. I'll be okay, though. Thanks for calling, Lindsay."

"Okay, Sam, but I want to hear about it when you're ready to talk. Seriously, whatever is bothering you isn't going to get any better if you just sit in your room and obsess about it. You're in college. You should enjoy it."

"Okay. I'll try." He just wanted to get off the phone with her and to be left alone.

"I love you. Call me back later, okay?"

"I will."

He hung up the phone and immediately checked to see if he'd missed a call from Julia while he was talking to Lindsay. He hadn't.

The day passed and he resisted the urge to try to call her again. He felt like he had to see her. He had to talk to her just to understand why she was being this way to him. He didn't take Lindsay's advice. He sat in his room trying to read his books again. He couldn't sleep and didn't feel like eating. He remembered his entire conversation with Julia that night at The Void and relived their kisses a hundred times. He felt totally miserable and heart-broken, and had no idea how to move past it.

At ten o'clock, he decided he couldn't endure his state of mind for another moment. He left his room and drove out to The Void.

He drank three beers sitting at the same barstool he had the week before when he saw her come in with her friends. All day he'd obsessed about her, but now that she was here, he felt frozen in place. He finished his beer and drank another, scanning the club every few minutes to make sure she was still there. He didn't want to speak to her, and yet at the same time, that was all he wanted to do. He felt paralyzed and the only thing to do was to keep drinking.

Soon, he realized he was drunk. This wasn't the pleasant buzz he'd experienced the night after his graduation or the ecstatic feeling he'd had the night he'd met Julia here. This was a roaring, uncontrollable flood coursing through his brain.

She finally spotted him on the barstool. Their eyes met, and Sam felt caught in some shameful act for a moment. Was he some kind of psycho stalker, he wondered? Had he been too blinded by his obsession to realize it?

She came toward him, and it took willpower for him not to bolt out of the club before she reached him. Her gait was unsteady, and when she stood in front of him, he saw that her eyes were glazed and unfocused. He recognized that she was in an altered state that was likely the result of a stronger drug than alcohol.

"Julia...," he said, and before he could say more, she straddled him on the barstool and kissed him with such force it seemed she was trying to swallow him whole. He didn't know what to do but kiss her back.

When she was done kissing him, she took him by the hand onto the dance floor. He was drunk enough to feel the rhythm of the house music and the flashing lights, and to let himself dance. They gyrated together and she pressed her body against his shamelessly. He felt himself respond, and was too drunk to be self-conscious about it. He didn't know how long they kissed and fondled one another on the dance-floor. It seemed like hours, and at once like no time at all had passed. It was ecstasy. Nothing mattered but Julia. Touching her, kissing her, desiring her. They were both bathed in sweat when she whispered to him that she needed another drink and led him off the dance floor.

He bought them both a rum and Coke, and he watched as she poured it down her throat in three swallows. He took a sip of his, and the thought of his mother driving off a bridge came unbidden into his brain. He set it aside and felt suddenly sober. He was drunk on Julia. He wanted nothing else.

She wrapped her arms around him, nibbled his ear, and ran her lips down the side of his neck. He broke out in a thousand glorious goose bumps.

"Take me to your place," she whispered.

They were the most wonderful words he had ever heard. He took her hand and led her out of the club.

Fifteen minutes later, they were in his dorm-room. He'd planned to make love to her slowly and passionately, but as soon as he locked the door behind them, she jerked off his clothes. He did her the same favor, and then she took him inside of her. It was the most rapturous feeling he had ever known, and it didn't last for long. But they did it twice more before she passed out beside him, snoring and exhausted.

"I love you, Julia," he whispered to her. But she gave no sign that she heard.

He slept naked beside her and fell into a deep, alcohol-induced stupor. When he became conscious around noon the following day, he found himself alone. His mouth felt full of cotton, and his head ached abominably. He realized he was hung-over for the first time in his life. A note with her handwriting sat on the table beside his bed. He read it.

Sam,
Last night was really fun, but I have to leave now. I had some things to do this morning. You're a sweet guy, but I don't think we want the same things. If I see you at the club, maybe we can hook up again sometime, but I'm not looking for anything beyond that right now. I hope you understand.
Julia

He dropped the note on the floor and put his head in his hands. He felt beaten and foolish. How could she have done what they did last night and act like it meant nothing, he wondered. How could she have talked to him so intimately about her life and listened so intently about his if she didn't care? He didn't understand. He didn't know if he could accept such a thing.

He found his phone and called her. To his surprise, she answered on the second ring.

"Hey," he said. "It's Sam."

"Hey Sam."

"Julia, why can't we see each other outside of The Void?"

"I thought I explained that in my note, Sam. Didn't you read it?"

"Yeah, I read it."

"So what's your deal?"

"You just...make me feel like maybe everything's not so meaningless after all, you know? I just...want to be with you."

"I'm sorry, Sam. That's not what I want right now. Can't you get that?"

"You seemed like you wanted it last night."

"That was just a party thing. I'm sorry you misunderstood. I'm sorry you got the wrong impression."

He felt himself getting angry. He thought of calling her names he'd regret later.

"I thought I was the most screwed up of the two of us," he said. "But I don't think so now. Guess I'll talk to you later."

"Okay then. Bye. See you in class."

She hung up abruptly and he held the phone to his ear without disconnecting for several seconds. He knew there was nothing else to be done. He sat the phone down and stood. He felt horrible, but did not think he could sit alone in his room for another second. Before he'd met Julia, he would have been content to be here and ruminate about death and the pointless exercise of life. But now he was no longer willing to do that. He wasn't sure if it was a positive change in him or not.

He dressed in black in spite of the oppressive humidity of the day because that was all he owned. Then he got in his car and drove. He wasn't sure where he was going at first, but once he got on the Interstate he knew. He thought about his life a lot while he drove. He thought about his mother, Julia, and Lindsay. He tried to understand why people did the things they did. He also tried to understand himself. After his mother's death, he hadn't questioned the rightness or wrongness of withdrawing into himself the way he had. He saw now that it was all an attempt to shelter himself from facing his mother's death. It had been an act of self defense that had gone on for far too long.

Something about his experience with Julia had awakened him from all of that. She'd made him feel foolish and naive, but in spite of that, he could not honestly tell himself he wished it hadn't happened. Even now, it was all a sacred event in his mind although he had no wish to repeat it without a sense of commitment from her that he knew he would never get.

He thought he'd settled everything with himself until he reached his mother's gravestone.

By then, the humid day had turned stormy and his emotions did the same. He had never been here alone before. He realized now that he'd never before had the courage.

******************************************************************************

The rain ended and the sun came out again. It felt good against him now, cooled by the deluge as he was. He smiled to himself as he went back to his car and peeled his saturated shirt from his body. It was already tight before it was soaked and now it clung to him like a second skin. When he'd tossed it aside, he called Lindsay as he drove out of the cemetery.

"Sam?" she said, sounding worried. A phone call from him was a rare event, he realized, and it was natural she should suspect the worst. .

"Hey Lindsey," he said.

"What's up with you?" she countered.

"Nothing much. I was just in the neighborhood and wondered if you were in the mood for a game of Monopoly."

She didn't respond right away, and Sam wondered for a moment if he'd said something wrong. When she spoke, he could tell she was fighting back tears.

"Sure, Sam, come on over. It's been awhile."

Sam thought she wanted to tell him something, and he waited to see if she would. Finally, she laughed. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic," she said. "Just like your mother."

Sam laughed too.

*****************************************************************************

On Monday, he went to class wearing a new pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He felt odd in his new clothes, but figured it was about time he changed his style. Dr. Loudtree was giving an exam today. He hoped he was adequately prepared.

He breezed through the test, and smiled when he came to the last question.

Do you support or oppose Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of pessimism? Give valid reasons for your support or opposition.

'Schopenhauer's theory of pessimism is, in my opinion, an accurate perception of human nature, he wrote. But if one does not examine it closely, one may be inclined to believe it is a very negative and dysfunctional way of living one's life. However, close examination reveals that within Schopenhauer's pessimism, the seeds of self-realization and, yes, happiness, can be found. Schopenhauer believed all living creatures were subjects to the Will. The Will is the force of our desires: our desire for food, power, sex, and even love. The Will's demands can never be fully quenched, and thus we are all doomed to an unsatisfying existence as we attempt to feed a hunger that cannot be sated.

If one understands only this part of his philosophy, then they must agree that it is pessimistic and dysfunctional. For even if it is true that we are all doomed to live ultimately sad and unsatisfying lives, is one really better served in knowing he/she is doomed?

But Schopenhauer does not stop here. He suggests that we can only attain happiness by quelling our desires, and this is possible only by transcending them through examination of the arts and music, for he believes these are the only things in our existence that stand apart from the Will. But I would suggest that he is shortsighted in naming only these. I would suggest that all things in life might be examined in the same transcendent way. Although we cannot escape Schopenhauer's Will and the suffering that comes with it, we can step back and see the beauty and the joy in our tragic lives, and thus understand that the tragedy itself is a beautiful thing to behold.'

He read through his answer, and hoped it was not too over the top. He shrugged, and decided he liked it. Lindsay did say he had a flair for the dramatic after all. He stood up, and turned his paper in. Coincidentally, Julia finished at the same time. They walked out of the classroom together.

"How'd you do?" she asked him.

"Okay, I think. How about you?"

"Not bad, but I hate that guy Schopenhauer. He's so...negative."

Sam said nothing as they left the building and stood outside for a moment.

"Anyway, what's up with the garb-switch, Sam?" she asked him.

"Nothing. I was just over the black all the time. Decided to join the sheeple I guess you'd say."

"Yeah? That's cool. My friends and I are going out to The Void tonight in case you want to meet us there."

"Oh yeah? I'll have to pass. I've got some plans tonight," he told her.

She looked at him closely and seemed on the verge of telling him something. But then she shrugged. "Oh well, I'll see you around then."

She walked away from him, and he stood in the sunlight and saw the college campus with fresh eyes. He had plans, he'd told her. Now he just had to decide what they were.