“Is Josh here?” she asks.

“No, he’s at work. Should be back around six,” I say, hoping this will end the conversation.

“He’s such a little gayboy,” she continues. “He’s all, like, ‘Ooo, I gotta go to work. Ooo, I gotta make all this money so I can go to college.’”

“Well,” I say, “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

I begin to close the door but she quickly interjects, “Did you know I got raped last night?”

“Oh, god, no,” I say, suddenly feeling guilty about having tried to rush her away. “Please, come in.”

It is very unlike me to invite an emotionally damaged neighbor into my house, especially if I am home alone and she is crying rape. But she looks like hell, and I can tell that something really did happen. For a moment, I am flattered that this troubled adolescent has singled me out as her trusted confidante. But why shouldn’t she? I teach ethics, after all. No doubt my years of studying humanity’s greatest moral theorists have left me with an air of integrity that even the most passing of acquaintances cannot help but notice. I feel as wise and respected as a village elder until she steps inside my house and proclaims incredulously, “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it yet. I told Helen and Chris. And Thomas and Pat. Plus that guy at the gas station with those weird, like, pimples or whatever on his nose.”

I am baffled by the scope of Brianna’s publicity campaign but remind myself that the trauma of rape must bring about some pretty inexplicable reactions. If spreading the word to as many caring souls as possible is what Brianna needs in order to begin her healing process, then I vow to be immaculately receptive.

At least that’s what I tell myself. In practice, I find it nearly impossible to honor this vow the moment Brianna starts telling her story. “It was a nigger, you know,” she says. “Too bad, huh?”

The N-word always gets my dander up, but it’s the “Too bad, huh?” that really weirds me out. As if it wouldn’t have been too bad to be raped by someone whose racial profile matched her own. I want her to leave in the worst way, but she has closed the door behind herself, and there is now a sense of finality to her arrival.

Brianna tells me she was coming home from a party around one in the morning. She was pretty drunk and “all made-up real nice.” I have seen Brianna’s version of “made-up real nice” and can not help but wonder if she thinks “nice” is synonymous with “slutty.” I feel pretty bad about my current line of thinking, because I hate it when defense attorneys assert that the rape victim’s manner of dress was the cause of the rape. It bothers the hell out of me that I can be so judgmental at a time like this, so I try my hardest just to be quiet and listen to the story.

Brianna goes on to relay a truly horrifying account. She is walking home from the light rail station when her assailant strikes up a conversation. When they reach Burbank High School, he grabs her by the hair and drags her into the dark and sound-proof hallways. He cuts her clothes off with a knife, forces himself upon her, then threatens to stab her if she looks at him.

I want to say something profound, something that will make the pain go away, but I am dumbfounded by the sheer brutality of her ordeal, and all that comes out is the most redundant question imaginable.

“Did you call the cops?” I ask.

“Shit, yeah!” she exclaims. “Soon as he was done doin’ his little business, I ran to the store all naked and I was like, ‘Please, you gotta let me use the phone.’ You shoulda seen it. The guy in the store was so totally checkin’ me out.”

I detect a tone of pride in her voice. Evidently, the conversation Brianna wants to have is all about how hot she is, but I am unprepared to deal with the possibility that someone could be flattered by a store clerk’s ogling only moments after being raped at knifepoint, so I proceed with the conversation I want.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that on top of everything else,” I say. “That’s terrible.”

“What is?” she asks, confused. She is genuinely incapable of finding anything regrettable in a post-rape ogling.

I marvel at Brianna’s shallowness. And yet I cannot revel unconditionally in my feeling of superiority, because, for the first time since I opened the door, I feel the stirrings of a genuinely sympathetic emotion. The rape was bad, but what really saddens me is the depth of Brianna’s need to be desired.

“So, what’d the cops do?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

“They took me to the hospital and asked me a buncha questions,” she responds, adding proudly, “They were checkin’ me out, too.”

“Do they think they’ll catch the guy?” I ask.

“Well, they took some sperm outa my cooch and ran some tests on it,” she explains, “but I’m not sure it’ll work, cuz I just got done with two other guys, and both of their stuff was in me, too.”

As a father, I cannot imagine how I would feel if a daughter of mine had gone through such hell, so I ask Brianna how her dad is taking all this.

“Alright,” she says. “He came and picked me up at the hospital after it was all done.”

“How long did that take?” I ask.

“About four hours,” she responds. I am baffled, because Brianna and her father both live right across the street, less than five minutes from the hospital. Ronny seems like a nice enough guy, so why wouldn’t he want to be with his daughter as soon as possible?

“He knew there’d be cops there,” Brianna explains. “And ever since he done his time, he don’t want nothin’ to do with no cops.”

Neighbors have told me that Ronny served time, but I never asked why. It’s none of my business, and, frankly, I don’t want to know. I am perfectly happy assuming that all of my neighbors are evildoers and that the crimes of any given one of them won’t have any effect on the paranoid way I live my life.

The next question I ask is designed to foster idol chat, but Brianna mishears it in a way that leads to a much more revealing conversation than I am willing to have. “How’s he holding up now?” I ask.

“He didn’t hold nobody up,” she responds, defensively. “He fucked someone who called the cops on him. Big deal. I mean, yeah, she was young and all, but she was askin’ for it, so what’s she complainin’ about?”

I try not to jump to any conclusions about Ronny, but knowing that Ronny has raped someone else’s under-aged daughter makes me wonder what he has done to his own. I suddenly understand how Brianna could be flattered by the store clerk ogling her, how her life may have led her to view the inappropriate sexual advances of men as an affirmation of her worth. I feel sick to my stomach.

“I… I’m… sorry,” I stammer awkwardly, “I wasn’t asking what he did. I was just asking how he’s coping with what happened to you.”

“Fine, I guess,” she shrugs nonchalantly. “I’m just pissed it was a nigger. I don’t mind it when white guys rape me, but a nigger’s gotta ask. Shit, if he’da just asked I’da prob’ly given it to him. I’m not a racist, ya know. I just don’t like niggers.”

Somehow, this assurance that she is not a racist fails to convince me. I see fewer and fewer reasons to continue this conversation, especially considering that my importance as a member of Brianna’s moral support team is less than that of the anonymous pimply-nosed guy at the gas station.

“Well,” I say, “Josh’ll be back around six. I’ll let him know you stopped by.”

I gesture toward the door, but Brianna is not ready to leave yet. “Hey, what’re them little statues you got up there?” she asks, pointing to the high shelf where I keep my Buddha collection. “Are they like some kinda little gods or somethin’?”

“No, they’re Buddhas,” I explain.

“Oh, that’s cool,” she concedes. “Of course, I believe in the one true God.”

“Whatever works,” I say.

“I’m a Christian,” she explains.

“So I gather,” I say.

“My dad’s church kinda sucks, though,” she continues. “I mean, it’s okay. Like, some of the guys are pretty cool. But some of ‘em I think are really faggots. Like this one guy, I showed him my titties, and he was, like, ‘Whatever,’ and I was like, all, ‘Whatsa matter with you, ya fuckin’ gayboy?!’”

“That sounds very frustrating,” I say in the most patronizing voice I can muster. This requires no bravery on my part, since I’m pretty sure Brianna can’t detect my condescension.

“But then some of ‘em are really cool,” she goes on. “Like the two that fucked me just before I got raped. I told the cops I didn’t wanna get them in trouble if their cum showed up in the tests. Actually, one of ‘em did it mostly in my mouth, so he’s probably okay. But, still, I don’t want either one of ‘em to get in trouble, cuz we go to the same church and all.”

“Makes sense,” I say, settling back into my computer chair. It is evident that Brianna is not going to leave any time soon, and I lack the heart to actively evict her. The talk about religion makes me think of how zealously my down-home Protestant mother tried to imbue her children with a reckless, tearful sympathy for the unfortunate. She would be so disappointed in me now, but I just can’t summon the compassion to comfort Brianna unreservedly. Heart-to-heart conversation seems impossible, and a supportive hug would almost certainly be taken the wrong way. As guilty as it makes me feel, the only thing I can think to do is resume my work as if Brianna were not even in the room. For the next half hour she raves about all the cute guys who think she’s hot and fantasizes that Josh is sexually pursuing her. I peck away at the keyboard, occasionally punctuating her monologue with grunts of simulated acknowledgment.

Of course, this is the worst thing I could do, because being ignored is probably what has made her so needy in the first place. The more I want her to leave, the more she craves my approval. Eventually, I get tired of feigning sympathy and stop nodding altogether. Her reaction is to fill my personal space as quickly as possible. “Hey,” she exclaims, drawing uncomfortably close, “I been thinkin’ about becomin’ a Buddhist myself.”

She presses her pubis against the back of my chair and pretends that she is straining to look at the statues. I suddenly realize just how desperate she is for a tangible sign of my approval and worry that if I do not find a way out of this soon, it will end in great discomfort.

“Maybe you could take me to your little Buddhist church sometime,” she asks suggestively.

I freeze like a cat in traffic. I know disaster is upon me, but I have no idea how to prevent it. Time stands still, as I lift my eyes to the upper shelf and both of us now gaze on the many forms of the Awakened One. What must this moment mean to Brianna? Is it religious? Is it sexual? Is there a difference to her? Is there a difference to me? Maybe we could end this moment amicably if we could only agree that the Buddha’s not her kind of sex, and she’s not my kind of religion. Pure and simple. No judgments. Maybe the answer to this crisis is as simple as each of us being who we are.

And that’s when the solution hits me: I’m a teacher. That’s what I do. I teach. And teaching is the only way I can be true to myself and still give her the sign of approval she wants. I am nearly twice this girl’s age—an authority figure—and it’s time to start acting like it.

“Do you really want to go to my church?” I ask placing my hand on her shoulder.

“Yes,” she says, clearly happy to be touched.

“Alright,” I say, “But you gotta do a little homework first.”

I go to my bookshelf and pull down a biography of the Buddha. It is a picture book, designed to be read to children at bedtime. I hand it to her and tell her that it will give her a basic idea of what Buddhism is about. She looks surprised but not put off by the gesture. After all, I have given her something. Even if it is not something she wants, it is still a sign of my approval.

She sits on the couch and reads in silence for a few minutes then closes the book and says, “Ya know what I still don’t understand? How come all of a sudden he didn’t want me lookin’ at him? I mean, I already seen what he looked like. It wasn’t like makin’ me look away was gonna keep me from bein’ able to identify him to the police or nothin’.”

I have been on this planet much longer than Brianna. For good or for ill, I have far greater insights into the workings of depraved minds. I am qualified to teach her on this subject.

“He wasn’t afraid of being identified,” I tell her. “He was a afraid you might be stronger than him. Sex is a very powerful thing, Brianna. If you look a man in the eyes during that moment, you’re his equal—maybe even better.”

She stops for a moment and thinks.

“All the same,” she adds, “I’m glad I looked away.”

“It was the best thing you could do under the circumstances,” I say, patting her on the shoulder. “Smart move.”

I offer Brianna more books, but she respectfully declines. This is not her kind of religion, and that’s all right.

“I swear,” she says, as she crosses the street headed back to her own home, “you shoulda seen the way that guy at the store was checkin’ me out. He had a boner as big as a baseball bat.”

“You’re a hottie,” I assure her, closing the door and returning to my workspace. I am glad to see her go, and I mean that in a good way. Why feel guilty about sending such a misplaced visitor on her way? Brianna is simply not my kind of sex, and that, too, has got to be all right.

When you type on a manual typewriter, there is this demand from the iron creature that you’d better goddamn well mean what you see, by George, because this is going to require a significant portion of your upper body strength to pound these letters into the paper. Isn’t there something to the finality, the authority that seems to come with a manual typewriter and those computer keyboards with similar action? POW! POW! “Now it’s there for ALL ETERNITY! My words belong to the ages! I am a part of the universe and here is my prrof!”

Er, proof. Heh-heh. (Ahem.)

And you get a bit of smell, a funky inky odor that only a typewriter has. This is a heavy-duty machine, expected to be pounded without restraint or regret, yet operating with many small moving parts. Those parts have to work perfectly one million billion times over the life of the machine. Naturally, there’s the smell of lubrication. Oil and ink. God, something about that is romantic. Stinky, but romantic. I guess it’s similar to the sense of nostalgia that old-time newspaper folk get when they smell a fresh newspaper. That printer’s ink has some weird quality that a good handful of individuals like. It is, like all smells, evocative. And you have to respect that.

The hum of an electric typewriter before you type is something special as well. It’s as if the machine is a creature, standing before you, saying “Come on. You have something to say. Say it. Let’s go. I’m ready.” And then you pounce! on! the! keys! and you’re off, that hum encouraging you the whole way. Each ding! of the bell another notch on your belt, each letter a step closer to the end of your story or column or political manifesto. Every sound is a sound of encouragement — except that dreaded backspace sound, which means you did something wrong. It’s not nearly as bad as the silence that comes when you hit the wall, when you can’t think of what to type next. Especially if you’re using an electric. “Come on!” it seems to say. “Come on, let’s GO!” Its impatient hummmmm adding to the tension of writing that simple silence does not immediately provide. There’s an urgency in that hum once you’ve broken the streak of minute after minute of recording your thoughts, basically serving as stenographer to your mad mind, rushing those arms across the fresh onion paper, forever marking them in your words. You want so badly to break that silence (or hum) so that you can feel accomplished again, like you’re producing, like you’re getting something done, even if it’s crap, because ultimately, that’s the satisfaction a typewriter provides: physical feedback. Sound, touch, sight. Nearly every sense, in a way, challenged to detect whether or not you’re fulfilling an obligation or adding something artistic or important to the universe.

And as much as I love computers and everything they have to offer, I will always have a warm place in my heart for these hulking, oily beasts. You can kill a man with a typewriter, but you can break his heart with what you type.

A few years ago, I was a mere assistant, happy to simply be a part of a bigger machine, a team that seemed like it was engineered to win. Every time. We won seventy straight games, blowing away the previous record by twenty-three. We pulled in five straight national championships along with tons of awards. Our team was populated with gods.

And coached by a man who never felt the sting of defeat in five years. Someone who seemed immortal.

But it was amazing the day that an NFL team came calling, asking the Coach if he’d be interested in coaching them. “I have no desire to leave this city,” he said. They took that to mean the interview was over. He elaborated, and they understood that what he wanted was a pro team in our little bitty city. And that’s how the Tallahassee Gladiators were born.

The deal was that he would be bound to a ten-year contract, but that the team would also be obligated to build a stadium in town as well as covering all fees associated with moving the franchise. The city of Houston hated us forevermore, but we didn’t care. We had an NFL franchise and they no longer did (for the second time).

The Coach (whose contract with the pro team wouldn’t start until the team was in town for a full year) asked nearly all of us at the University to join his staff with the Gladiators and nearly all said yes. I did immediately, seeing a lucrative future in the pros, and maybe using it as a stepping-stone to a head coaching job for myself. All-in-all, a bright future.

(Let me get this straight, though: this isn’t a story that will descend into “then it all went to shit” like so many others do. I’m not setting a stage just to bring you down about me being brought down. I’m simply telling my story. So don’t go looking for a kicker or anything. Just relax your sphincters, people.)

After a season of roughness in Tallahassee (only one win for the Glads), we came in and turned things around, drafting some of our finest players from the University and made the city proud. The Coach, they’d say, could work miracles. And I was one of the believers. Everything he touched turned to gold. His only loss as a head coach came against the Bears in year one with the Glads, the lone blemish on an otherwise otherworldly pristine record.

But then the Universoty team fell like a brick. Despite being populated with superstar players recruited by the Coach, the team lost six games, dropping off the rankings entirely. The interim coach seemed to have been given the best team that humanity could recruit and he screwed up the bloody team.

So the University, wise as it is, fired the sorry SOB. But they came begging, asking the Coach to recommend a replacement. “Somebody who knows the players,” they said. “Somebody who knows the system,” they said. “Somebody GOOD,” they howled.

And that’s how I got hired in my first head coaching job. I returned to the University (which allowed me to take a hike in pay without having to move)and decided to offer up a new version of the Coach’s venerable and successful Power Offense combined with my own dream of a Power Defense. We were going to return to glory.

“The thing is,” he said, exhaling the smoke,”I really *am* misunderstood. It’s not just a cliché.” I nodded. “They think of me and images of ‘evil’ come to mind.” Puff. “Extraordinary, really.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s my looks.”

His looks were nothing unusual. He was neither ugly nor particularly attractive. In fact, you could say he was nondescript and rather *average*.

“Sounds like you’re using that as an excuse. Your looks are not an issue.”

He smiled, almost as if he’d been caught. “Yeah, sure. I guess.”

“Maybe instead, they don’t like what you’ve done. You know, your record?”

“Aw,” came the disappointed reply. “No fair. I haven’t done anything!”

“Precisely. Your apparent ‘evil’ comes from your utter lack of trying. You never engage anyone in anything of any import, you cannot be stirred to positive action unless your immediate wants are threatened, and you can be too easily scared into doing nothing.” I drew a sharp breath. “You’re ‘evil’ because you’re self-paralyzed. A do-nothing.”

“Come onnnn…,” he said. He was whining now. Not endearing, and one of his more ‘evil’ aspects. “Why do you want to pick on me?”

“That’s another thing. You never blame yourself for your screwups and consequently come off as a perpetual victim. But you’re not a victim, nor have you ever really been.”

“But they keep saying–”

“I don’t care what they say!” I was surprised to find myself raising my voice, as was he. We sat silent, sort of staring at each other for a few seconds before he dropped his head and crushed out his cigarette, which by now has burned into a little grey mushroom.

“But does all this make me evil?” he innocently asked.

I sighed. “No. Evil doesn’t exist. Evil is a human construct which less responsible human beings rely on as the reason their lives aren’t what they wanted. What most people refer to evil is a combination of human frailties.” I motioned for him to give me a cigarette. He complied. “Frailties like greed, selfishness, fear, self-centeredness, and, often, mental illness. You combine these frailties, each taken to a dramatic degree, and you’ve got your historical evil. Hitler, Stalin, Manson, what have you…”

“Dracula?”

I cleared my throat.

“IF Dracula existed, sure.”

“Dracula *did* exist,” he said smugly. “Vlad the Imp–”

“Vlad Ţepeş, yes, I know. Son of the devil, blah blah. Yes, Vlad Ţepeş was a Wallachian prince who was *mentally ill*.”

He seemed impressed by my trivia mastery. But his self-absorption returned him to his favorite topic rather quickly: “Would you consider *me* ‘mentally ill?’”

I paused. Maybe I did.

“Well, ‘mentally ill’ might be a tad harsh to describe *you*, but I’d say you certainly have issues.”

He sighed, almost in defeat. “Maybe I am nuts…”

“Oh for the love of all that is supposedly holy,” I burst out. “Are we doing *this* now? The pity thing?”

“What pity thing?”

“The thing you always do when you’re criticized. ‘Oh, poor me. Oh, me oh my. Whatever hsall I do with my wretched self?’” I mocked. “*That* pity thing.” I lit my cigarette.

He reached in his pocket for another cigarette and held it in his lips for a few seconds, not wanting to even look at me. I took it as a sign that our conversation was over, but he seemed to have a look about him that he didn’t want it to end, just that he had been unable to come up with a rebuttal to my criticism. Which is typically him. He can’t stand criticism, but he’s not too bright and a bit slow on the uptake.

“We done?” I asked.

He sighed. “I don’t know…” Another pause. “Maybe.”

“Well, until I hear from you further, you know where I stand. You’re not the worst reature on this earth, but you have a lot to learn about how life really works. You’re livign in your dreamworld, content to pursue mad fantasies that will never happen. You will never be rich, you will never be famous, and you will never be a good-looking rock star/Hall of Fame athlete.” I drew a puff from the cigarette in my mouth. Exhale. “You’re better than your worst assessment of yourself, but you’re not as capable as you think in your best dreams. You need a hard, cold dose of reality, kid.”

I knew he didn’t want to hear this. He has been avoiding hearing this sort of thing all of his life. But at least I think it started to get to him.

Usually criticism causes the criticized to react one of two ways: either they resist it fully or they take it into consideration and decide to work on improving themselves. I couldn’t trust that he would follow the latter strategy, since he never had before. He normally would take in teh criticism, get a little self-doubt, but he’d eventualy just let the anger cool. I could not tell you where he was headed this time.

My first Marriage, 1994—I begin having suffocation dreams. Still in denial, I assume it’s because I’m married to someone who makes me feel like I’m drowning. I get a divorce, but the dreams continue.

Chapel Hill, NC, Spring, 1996—Linda and I share a bed for the first time. She rates the experience kindly, assuring me that the noise is steady enough for her to sleep through. Given that I do not sleep in an iron lung, I can only assume that the steady noise she refers to is, indeed, snoring.

University of South Florida, Fall, 1996—I work as an adjunct instructor in comparative religion, teaching upwards of 200 students per term, nearly three times the load of an ordinary professor. My mentor, Drew, has been doing this for over a decade. He is a hard-nose, caffeine-addicted Christian Scientist and informs me that, if I ever want to get used to the seventy-hour workweeks, I must relinquish my mistaken idea that the human body needs sleep. Since I am not sleeping much anyway, I readily adopt his mind-over-matter philosophy and frequently boast that the dark gray circles around my eyes are a triumph of my will.

Around That Time—I am no longer convinced that the suffocation dreams are actually dreams. In them, I am always lying in whatever bed or couch my real life happens to have placed me in. It’s bad enough that I stop breathing; what really sucks is that I am aware that I have stopped breathing. I panic and try to get Linda’s attention. If she could budge me, I might wake up and resume normal breathing. But when I try to moan, nothing comes out. And when I try to move, I am paralyzed. Eventually I awaken gasping for breath and feeling like a truck just ran me over. My muscles ache, and I have no idea how I’m going to get through another day without having had any rest.

A Year and a Half Later—I no longer see how anyone could live happily by Drew’s no-sleep philosophy when I—its staunchest advocate—would gladly sacrifice a testicle for a half-decent catnap.

New Port Richey, FL, 1997—I drop by Drew’s home at ten in the morning. His wife tells me he’s still asleep and rarely gets up before ten thirty. Given his boasts of “no more than three hours a night,” I comment on how amazing it is that he doesn’t go to bed until after the sun comes up. She laughs dismissively, explaining that he usually goes to bed around one. This means he usually gets nine and a half hours of sleep per night—a full ninety minutes more than the prescribed eight hours. I feel seriously duped and am suddenly sorry for all the times I laughed at those poor, trusting saps who modeled their entire moral life on the advice of Jimmy Swaggart.

Seminole Heights, Tampa, FL, 1999—The neighbor across the back alley is driving me nuts. He’s a repo man and is often pursued by the people whose cars he just took. Gunshots are frequently fired, and I feel I must stay awake for the kids’ sake. I have no idea how my sleeplessness will protect them from stray bullets, so I occupy my mind with more satisfying matters—like fantasies about the savage fury I plan to unleash on this asshole in the morning.

Seminole Heights, Spring, 2000—My fantasy life takes a nosedive as the repo man’s wife shoots herself in the head during one of their many heated disputes. She dies, and the anti-gun tirade that I have been planning for months suddenly seems moot. My new, more modest fantasy is that the death of his wife will inspire the repo man to lay down his arms. Amazingly, I am way off base with this hope, and the late-nate gunfights continue unabated, along with my insomnia.

Shortly Thereafter—Linda reports that my snoring is no longer steady. It is a cacophonous series of irregular snorts and choking sounds that crescendo into a desperate gasp and is followed by up to a half a minute of breathless silence. The effect of this news on my already flagging sexual self-esteem is incalculable.

Seattle, WA, 2001—Linda gets a job on the far opposite corner of the country. Our Florida house is in foreclosure, and our ruined credit severely limits our Seattle housing prospects. We wind up in the ghetto next door to a hardcore alcoholic named Crystal who reeks of cigarettes, whiskey, and—for reasons I care not to speculate—human excrement. Not surprisingly, she is unemployed. And, since I work online, I am always at home whenever she needs company. She visits frequently, and, despite a formidable beer belly, tells me ad nauseum how people can’t get over how thin she manages to stay. She rubs her hips suggestively as she tells me this, and I get the distinct impression that she wants more from me than I am willing to give. Crystal is thirty–five but looks fifty, and this is the only thing we have in common.

September 11, 2001—Seattle is a miserable place. It’s not so bad that it rains everyday. What sucks is the overcast. I’m from Florida, I need sunshine. This endless succession of gray, low-pressure days makes me want to stay in bed. And that’s exactly what I do. I work enough to collect my paycheck, I take care of the kids’ transportation needs, but, other than that, I wish I were unconscious. Which is insane, since sleep doesn’t refresh me. It makes things worse. And it doesn’t help that a small band of heavily funded religious lunatics just knocked down the World Trade Center, killing 3,000 people to prove a point that they never actually articulate. The world is full of crazies, and I am not the least of them.

October, 2001—Crystal’s daughter, Brittany, bangs on our door, desperately begging us to let her in. Crystal is hot on her heels and stinking drunk. We let Brittany in but close the door on Crystal. Brittany explains that her mom has gone berserk and is trying to kill her. We call Brittany’s grandmother, Maureen, but Maureen sounds just as drunk as Crystal and tells us to leave her alone. We call the police, and Brittany is taken into custody.

The Next Day—Crystal is livid and begins a campaign of relentless harassment. As it turns out, she has a very long history of legal problems, and this most recent incident has spawned state authorities to remove Brittany from her custody indefinitely. In true alcoholic fashion, Crystal refuses to examine herself and instead blames me for ruining her life. Brittany is the lynchpin in Crystal’s steady inflow of welfare, and Crystal tells me that if I ruin that for her she is going to take my children away from me the way I took her child away from her. She says she will go to their schools, where I am not around to protect them, and she will take them and I will never see them again. This does not bode well for my sleep.

The Following Months—I have gone certifiably insane. I sleep on the living room rug with my shoes on, always prepared to defend. I keep a bat by the door and have begun to scope out places where I might be able to hide Crystal’s body if I had to. There’s a tape recorder by the front door and another attached to the phone. I need to build my case. I need evidence that this woman is dangerous. I forbid the kids to sleep in their own rooms, as Crystal might break through their windows in the middle of the night. I believe I am protecting them, but in the back of my mind, I know they are more scared of me than of Crystal.

December, 2001—Our oldest boy, Josh, can’t take it any more. He goes back to Florida to live with his biological dad.

January, 2002—Our middle boy, Zack, follows suit, moving in with his biological mom for the first time in his life. My heart is aching, because I have always been his rock, but now I am weak. And crazy. And tired beyond belief.

New Port Richey, FL, 2002—I begin the healing process. To Linda’s chagrin, I insist that we move back to Florida to reunite with our children—and the sunshine. If there is a way to get better, I’m determined to find it. Oddly, it never occurs to me to get a sleep test. My bouts with insomnia aren’t all that frequent, and I usually sleep a full eight hours per night. True, I wake up feeling worse than when I went to bed, but I assume this is due to a general depression and do not know that poor sleep itself can be the cause of such depression. I go to a general practitioner who prescribes Lexapro. He’s got an entire closet full of samples, a fact that suggests he has a healthy financial relationship with its manufacturers, but I am so desperate for a fix that I try it.

Three months later—My penis no longer works. Lexapro has taken away the depression and replaced it with extreme lethargy and impotence.

Somewhere Around That Time—Linda gets online and learns about apnea—a disease that restricts breathing during sleep. This decreases the production of seratonin, causing depression, and limits the flow of oxygen through the body, causing the body to feel exhausted in the morning. I get a sleep test and receive scientific proof that my suffocation dreams are more than mere dreams after all. Now that I have a name for my problem, I am filled with hope that a solution is at hand.

Immediately Thereafter—There are two types of machines that help apneacs breathe properly at night. Sleep lab techs conduct experiments that prove conclusively that the more common type won’t work for me. But there is hope that the more specialized type will help. I don’t have insurance, but I am so desperate for a fix that I readily pay the $700 it costs to get one. I try diligently for a month to make it work, but it won’t. The clinic techs tell me I’m just not giving it a fair chance. I need to relax and get used to having a mask on my face. This is bullshit, because I am not at all bothered by the mask. The kids call me Darth Vader, and it is a source of great amusement for us all. Sometimes I even fall asleep in it. But never for long, because it forces air in when I’m trying to breathe out and vice versa. It makes me gasp more desperately than ever before, and I am deeply saddened to know that the cure for my disease only intensifies the symptoms.

Shortly Thereafter—I try a new drug. It’s called Wellbutrin, and it has the opposite effect of Lexapro. Sleep is no longer a problem because I am now too wired to even attempt it. My penis works again, but what does that matter when I hate everyone so much that I am incapable of giving anyone the kind of admiration it takes to fuel a fantasy? I snap at people for the most infinitesimal offenses, coming to believe, for example, that the use of clichés is justifiable cause for homicide. God protect the next person who bids me to “have a good one” or unthinkingly asks, “Hot enough for ya?” It will only be hot enough for me when I am burning in Hell for having slaughtered your unoriginal ass right here in the Piggly Wiggly, right in front of the fat-faced little grandchildren that your bumper sticker so inanely beckons me to ask you about. I’m on Wellbutrin, mother fucker! It’s never hot enough for me!

About Two Months Later—I find myself lying on the staircase, drooling and blabbering incoherently. I have had a Wellbutrin breakdown and don’t know how long I’ve been laying there. Linda’s new job is in California, and she’s gone all but a few days a month. This leaves me as the sole caregiver of our children—a precarious position for a man who thinks he may have crapped himself but lacks the mental capacity to find out.

The Next Day—I decide to heal myself without the aid of drugs. I am grateful to Drew for introducing me to the idea of the mind’s curative powers, but I disagree with his assertions that the material conditions of our lives our mere illusions. My lack of seratonin is real. I might never be able to change that. But what I can change is how I deal with it.

Epilogue: It would be so cool if I could tell a story that Drew would approve of. It would be so cool if I could say that I used the power of my mind as a medical cure. But the fact is that I used it to chill out and wait until technology caught up with me. There is a new kind of sleep machine, and, much to my delight, it works for me. I sleep well every night. Maybe not perfectly, but enough to get through the next day in relatively good spirits. There is still much healing to be done. I’ve yet to convince Linda that the change is real—that it’s going to last. And I can still see a lingering caution in my children’s eyes. But they are young and open to change. And even though they remember a dad who used to sleep with a baseball bat, they prefer to see the other things. And this is all I ask for. Don’t see me as perfect, boys. See me as someone who loves you. I am your Darth Vader. I am your father. And when the mask comes off, there is still something good there. Maybe even something loveable.

In light of the uncertainty our mother’s behavior casts on my own genetically inherited mental capacities, I prefer to believe it was the grief, and not some hard-wired intellectual deficiency, that made our mom refer to the deceased solely by his clown name. If she had been in her right mind, she would have recalled how zealously she had guarded the flamboyant performer’s secret identity and how clueless we were to the possibility that Bill the Clown might have some connection to the man we knew as “Uncle Bill”—our grandmother’s retired and comparatively mild-mannered neighbor. Never mind that the only place we ever saw Bill the Clown was in Uncle Bill’s home or that Uncle Bill always disappeared just before Bill the Clown showed up. Mom had behaved as if clowns were dignitaries from an otherworldly realm, so, as far as we were concerned, there was no reason to believe that Bill the Clown and Uncle Bill were members of the same species, let alone the same person. The two looked nothing alike.

Needless to say, the funeral was disappointing. Teary faces surrounded my brother and me as we made our way to the open casket. I tried desperately to ignore these grim portents and hoped against all hope that we still might be in for a faceful of boutonniere water or an endless stream of baggy-pants clowns all pouring out of the same tiny coffin. But the only content of that casket was our honorary uncle, looking older and more tired than ever before.
This was our first exposure to a dead body, but it would not be our last. We grew up in New Port Richey, Florida’s consummate retirement town, so there was never any shortage of funerals to attend. Like many young people, we lacked proper respect for death, but not because it wasn’t real to us. On the contrary, it was mundane.
Once, in junior high, some friends and I found a body in the park. We planned to poke it with a stick to find out if it was dead or alive, but fear overcame us. Maybe kids in other towns would have chickened out because they couldn’t handle the prospect of their first terrifying gaze into the face of death. But we had a much greater fear. We were afraid the guy might still be alive. A corpse was something New Port Richey kids could deal with, but disturbing the slumber of an angry drunk still seemed pretty dangerous. In the end, we got one of our moms to do the poking for us and were relieved to find that, even though the drunk was alive, he was far too wasted to retaliate.
A few years later, when I was fourteen, my grandfather died, and I found myself still unable to respond to death with an appropriate sense of gravity. Grandma had sent a friend to pull us out of church so that we could all be with the body before it got carted off to the morgue. We sobbed hysterically for a few minutes, but as soon as the paramedics took the body, we had no idea what to do. My brother, a big fan of all-you-can-eat dining establishments, proposed that the best way to honor Grandpa would be to follow through with his plan to have lunch at Fanny’s Buffet, where—he reminded us— “Sundays are ‘Roast Beef Madness.’” The idea got nixed, but our dad agreed that sticking with a previously-made plan was the best way to go and, in accordance with his own custom, broke out the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.
But as strange as those reactions were, mine was even stranger. That evening, just after the sun went down, I found myself in front of the home of Alicia Holmes. She was a good friend of my sister, Kim, and was famous for her precocious libido. I had always pretended to be repulsed by Alicia’s desperate quest for male attention but secretly prayed for more of her exhibitionist offerings. She used to crawl into my bed and lavish me with kisses, but I always pretended to sleep right through them so that I could later deny any complicity. I wanted desperately to feel better than someone and believed that, as long as I never openly consented to Alicia’s advances, I could claim moral superiority over this sex-crazed weirdo.
But all that changed the day my grandfather died. My brother and my father may have wanted to stick with previously-made plans, but I wanted a change. I wanted to become a man, and Alicia seemed like the most likely accomplice. I paced back and forth in front of her house, rehearsing the lines I would use to evoke a sympathetic response. “I just thought you might want to know that Kim’s grandfather died today,” I’d say, feigning altruism. “Oh, my God!” she’d gasp, stepping out onto the porch with me. “She’s pretty shook up,” I’d lie. “Might need a friend to help her get through it.”
It was the smarmiest plan I’ve ever concocted, but, fortunately, it never came to fruition because I wasn’t brave enough to knock on the Holmes’ door after dark. The fact is I wasn’t ready for manhood. Not only was I incapable of the kind of intimacy I had hoped to achieve with Alicia, I had no idea why I had hoped to achieve it on that particular night, of all nights. Why had my grandfather’s passing awakened such intense carnal ambition? What was the connection?
The answer to that mystery came nearly five years later and coincided with my first real understanding of how formidable death actually is. I was a freshman at the University of South Florida, still living with my parents in New Port Richey but feeling incredibly cosmopolitan about attending classes in Tampa. On this particular night, my friend Alan, my brother Jim, and I were driving home from the Student Union after a screening of “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask.” Our stars were rising as we sped past the farmlands of State Road 54, recounting all those sex jokes and chuckling as if we knew what we were talking about. We soared above the rabble of our small town past, feeling just as urbane as Woody Allen—but twenty-five years younger. As far as we knew, we were immortal.
Then, suddenly we saw it. A single headlight shining from a ditch. A motorcyclist had miscalculated a hairpin turn and was writhing on the shoulder. I screeched to a halt and ran to see if I could help, all the while thinking Don’t stop! Don’t help! Pretend you didn’t see I! I felt the same way I had felt that day in the park. Terrified that this man was still alive and selfishly preferring he were dead.
By the time I reached him, his writhing had diminished. His body lay front down but his face looked toward the sky. His neck had twisted, and he was clearly on his way out. Suddenly, inexplicably, I wanted him to live. He was young, only a few years older than we were, and the randomness of his fate struck me as an unfathomably cold incongruity. Every eulogy I had ever heard contained some sort of reassurance that the deceased had “lived a full life,” but this man’s passing could not be so easily dismissed. I sped to the nearest pay phone and called for help, but by the time I returned, it was too late. The guy was gone, and a crowd of bucolic locals had gathered, beers in hand, to watch the show.
Alan, Jim, and I drove back to New Port Richey and, echoing reactions to my grandfather’s death, decided to stick with a previously-made plan. We spent the entire weekend together, which is what we always did. But it was different this time. We barely spoke and never laughed. We had, at long lost, grown beyond our retirement-town upbringing and entered a weird new world where death is for people of all ages. I passed Alicia’s house without the slightest simmering of lust and, for the first time, understood why my grandfather’s death had driven me to her doorstop like a dog in heat nearly five years before. I had always believed that death was for the elderly, but Grandpa’s passing had hit a little too close to home. So, to assure myself that I was fine, I turned my mind toward sex, because sex is for the young.
The weekend gave way to a new workweek, normal speech resumed, and we all settled into our new adult lives with a strange mixture of sadness and a sense of just how precious life really is. Three weeks later, I lost my virginity and, again, found myself speechless. I didn’t feel as big as I thought I would, but I didn’t mind the smallness because with it came a sense of being part of something much bigger than myself. I fell asleep on a rusting playset in my parents’ back yard, staring at the stars and wondering just how overrated immortality really is. Maybe the highest goal isn’t living forever, after all. Maybe it’s living fully while you’re here. Maybe it’s being part of it all.
The next day, I returned home from work to find my mother in full clown regalia.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, a bit freaked out.
“I’m a clown!” she proclaimed with unbridled pride.
“Why?” I asked, incredulously.
“Because clowns fill children’s hearts with joy,” she said, defensively. “And that’s something.”
In previous years, I would have made fun of her wish, but now I found it strangely admirable.
“You’re rights,” I said, kissing her grease-painted face. “That is something.”

When you’re born, it isn’t mentioned. It’s not you, and as everyone knows, you are the star of your own birth. Therefore it does not show up. But at the time you don’t care. Soon enough, when you’re a kid, you’re aware of it. You know it’s there. “There,” however, seems to escape you. But you know it’s “there.” You watch movies and television shows and everyone talks about it. That’s where all “those people” are: those talented, deserving creative types. Those geniuses. Those artists.

Even if you don’t find yourself thinking much about it, you are never quite unaware of its existence. You live literally all the way across the country, and yet, it still shows up from time to time, in stories, ideas, song lyrics. Like it should. It becomes a character in the story, not just the location. In fact, it begins to transcend mere “location.” It stars in a movie. It is the focus of song after song. But you still don’t bother to lift your head up to see the details, to notice the art of that place. You’re too deeply entrenched in snowballs and comebacks. You’re too busy living the life of a child. Just like the adults you meet on your way to your own adulthood, you don’t have time to ponder the surroundings in a place that doesn’t physically surround you, not when you have your own locations, your own characters, your own plots to worry about. You’re too busy, at ages six and seven, writing the first few chapters of your autobiography to concern yourself over the merits of some place that, for all practical intents, need only remain a distant, fading ghost.

You know it, though; you’re very familiar with it as an idea, at least. It’s big, expansive, full of people, hustle, bustle, anger, crime, heat, cold, passion, purpose. In short, it’s life. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted to experience, good or bad, even when it’s hundreds of miles away. It’s sex, drugs, rock and roll, literature, pain, poetry, and prose. It stares at you through the culture you’re raised in, even after the specter of its existence haunts your parents who claim they’re moving you away from such horrible influence, because you just never know what will happen to you, and, after all, you know, it’s safer in the country. Which, as it turns out, it isn’t.

You sit in your country residence, pining away with your dreams, and there it is again: sitting there, as much a destination of your life as it is a destination of geography. It’s where you actually think you need to go to do the things you think you want to do. It becomes a sort of myth of a myth: always two steps out of reach, so much so that you begin to not reach as hard. You decide it’s a “one day” sort of thing; maybe, when you’re older, possibly, who knows, perhaps, we’ll see, if you’re good.

You pretend you’re there. Your friend pretends he is where he wants to go, and you realize that you certainly don’t want to go to That Place. You want to go where you’ve always wanted to go, a place you’ve actually been twice. You’ve given it cursory little glancing blows, popping in as a mere tourist, seeing only a couple of things you were specifically shuttled to and from as a fifth-grader. Oh look, golly gosh, holy smokes, what’s that, can we, should we, we’re going to, oh boy! And eighteen months later, when your uncle offers to take you and your cousins to see it, you act like a little professional know-it-all, directing a thirty-year-old man and his nephews around this place you barely know and have no real right to direct anyone around. But you do it anyway, because, for a few brief minutes, you got to walk on her streets, smell her smells, and see what she had to offer. Before they scooted you back on the bus.

And then, once more, you were separated. And it hurt. And you weren’t really sure why it hurt.

So you return to that world where you have little more than your dreams, and you got distracted. You forgot that there was this place, these people, this culture you had to go be apart of. You were too busy chasing after people who wanted almost nothing to do with you and had even less to offer you. Instead of making plans to accomplish something, you were wrapped up in comic book dreams, imaginary radio empires, and a fictional world surrounded by nonfiction. You had deliberately stuck yourself in the middle of nothing. But, the whole time, she was waiting. Staring down at you like the sun: always there, warming you, always affecting what you do, but you don’t have to be fully conscious of its presence for it to affect you.

Until that one day, when a few words drift across your ears. The words are an invitation. You can go. You can be there. You can see it all over again. And so you begin to plot, plan, scheme, dream. And you can taste it, it’s so real. Before long, you’re on your way, riding far above it all in an airplane. Your companions are too tired to stay awake, but you’re wired on that fact, that you’re almost there. You’re almost back there. The anticipation keeps you awake, even if the caffeine cannot.

And then you land. And then you’re there. You are in the thick of the legend, breathing the air, basking in its glow. And you begin to realize, after making your way to the center of it all. You belong. You belong to those skyscrapers. You belong to those streets, those restaurants, those voices, that world. You feel a sense of balance you’ve rarely felt, a sense of connection to something that dared greet your ancestors for centuries. Something that gave you a sense of possibility, of success, of fulfillment of dreams. You finally get it. The connection is real, because you feel like you’ve finally found a place you can comfortably call home. And it’s real, no longer that ghost. Your home is New York.

And then all is right with the world.

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