I Dare You To.

Tony was the best at dares. Someone said, I dare you to eat 40 hot dogs in 24 hours. And you know what? Tony did. He didn't hesitate. He bought 40 hot dogs and ate them all in a single day. He didn't ask questions. He didn't think about it. He just said, Alright.

That's the kind of guy Tony was. Sometimes, it got him into trouble. But it always seemed like Tony knew what Tony was doing, no matter what the circumstances. If Tony were a superhero, I think the dare would be his Kryptonite. I mean, what if someone said, I dare you to tell me all your weaknesses. Tony would tell this someone his weaknesses, because he was dared. What if someone said, I dare you not to save the woman on top of that burning building, I bet Tony wouldn't save that woman. That woman would die. That woman would scream, But why won't you save me Tony! And Tony would scream back, Because I was dared not to!

So maybe Tony would be a villain. A villain I miss. It's not very often that someone misses a villain. But I miss Tony.

Today, at the diner, a customer couldn't decide between an omelet or buckwheat pancakes. So I said, I dare you to order an omelet. And the customer ordered buckwheat pancakes instead!

Things are so unpredictable when you toss a dare into the equation.

But they weren't for Tony.

Erasmus Jimenez

I went and bought a Pepsi at the corner store today before I went to work. Belle Star has Coke as her soda provider, which I refuse to drink.

The young man at the counter there said, "you're in here quite a bit, sir. Mind if I ask you your name?"

For some reason, I told him my name was Erasmus. What an odd thing to do. I guess I didn't want him to know my real name.

Have you ever read, or heard, someone explain the idea that the word, "dog", isn't a dog, it is only a word that represents the idea of a dog? The word "dog" isn't actually a physical dog. The word "tree" isn't actually a physical tree. No matter what, they are still just words.

I felt kind of bad about telling the man that my name is Erasmus, and then I thought, hey I'm just as much an Erasmus as I am a Curt, in certain senses. "Curt" is just a word, right? Not really my essence. If I told enough people I was Erasmus, wouldn't I be more Erasmus than Curt? Maybe escaping my Curt existence through such semantic shenanigans is a valuable exercise. Maybe every time I go to the corner store to buy a Pepsi, I can make a transformation into Erasmus Jimenez--whoever he may be. Maybe I'll develop him as a whole separate entity, let Erasmus Jimenez be somebody totally different, a man who represents my dark side, or maybe the opposite. Heck, maybe I'll start a fictional blog and write it from the perspective of Erasmus Jimenez! I've heard that there is such a thing as "blog fiction". Why not hop on that train?

What would be a good name for that blog?

I bet Erasmus Jimenez builds model airplanes. And eats lots of hot pockets!

Before I started delivering papers, I had a job as a clerk at a gas station for a little while.

One morning, I was working with another cashier, and our manager told us he would give twenty dollars to whoever could get more names from customers.

I got one name.

The other guy got like thirty.

I had just gotten out of prison. I felt like a creep.

"Hi, my name is Curt, and I'm a middle-aged convicted felon! What's your name???"

Who wants to be that guy?

Condition

Things should have been. But they are this way instead. They were talking about the past and how great things were and how they wheedled from one occurrence to another. This brought them joy and severe sadness. But they did this still because maybe, they hoped, in talking about the past, the present wouldn't seem so unforgiving. Sometimes, knowing that this is how it is isn't enough. And now, what I want. To feel the wind behind my eyes and in my chest and in the inside of my bones. How do I say this? I want you to know. Sometimes, things are too great so that they become overwhelming.

Stay with me.

Once, Dad beat me. I was young and he must have felt terrible. But there is something to this, an understanding. I said, Who do you think you are? I said, Who are you, Carl Jimenez? I don't know why I said these things. But the look in his eyes. There was fear. He hated me for asking the questions he must have asked himself everyday. Who are you? How I cried. And then I couldn't even cry. The sound of his belt against my body. Over and over again. Until he collapsed. I don't know why I'm telling you this now. But I do know that it matters.

Soon enough, they ran out of things to talk about because the past is finite. They'd talked about everything they'd shared.

And the only thing left to do was to go on and live.

The past. The future! The past.

A week feels like an arbitrary thing. Seven days. Why seven? Why not name every day of a thirty day month? Why a month?

I mean, I know if you are going to acknowledge the passing of time, you are going to have units of measurement. It's fine, the week is how we do it, and seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years and whatever. The reason why I bring this all up, is that this week was crazy and so today I bought a bottle of Glenlivet to celebrate the ending of this particular week. This week is over, and I'm drinking delicious Scotch that I absolutely cannot afford. F**k yeah.

There was the Regrette situation. And spending way too much time with Belle Star. There were the Pirates, who might just manage to be terrible forever.

Seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years and decades and centuries and millenia. Wild.

I wonder if Belle Star ever lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about time. About how it keeps moving. About how easy it is to waste it. About how wonderful it is when you are able to fill your own with something beautiful.

Fifty hours a week is a lot of time to spend anchored to a sink. If I could do anything I wanted for a living, to do anything I wanted for fifty hours, what would I do? Maybe I could be a playwright. Maybe I could dramatize the human situation.

Maybe I could distill Scotch. Maybe I should save my money and take a trip to Scotland.

Who would watch the dogs?

The Deuce Nuis-ance

Regrette. She wasn't difficult to train. But...

There are a few things she's been doing lately that's been worrying me. I'll give you a for instance. Regrette, like Warden, does not go to the bathroom in the apartment. However, in the past few days, she's dropped a deuce on the bathroom floor! Regrette! I say, Why? I've taken her on long walks. She's gone #1, several times, but...

she drops it like it's hot on the bathroom floor. I guess it could be worse. I mean, it's not really a problem to clean up, more of a nuisance. But...

she's also eating some of the house plants. And gnawing on grass. After she's eaten these things, she throws up. She usually throws up outside, but...

still, what does it mean? Maybe she's experiencing some changes? She hasn't barked all week, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not like her.

I know I'm probably overreacting. A dog will do what a dog will do, I guess.

Hin und Her

There was a German man whom I befriended in prison. His name was Gerd. He liked to hang out with me because I was willing to talk slowly so he could understand what I was saying. I liked to hang out with him, because he was willing to hang out with me.

I just thought of him because I was thinking of the phrase "back and forth", and I remembered a conversation we once had about why in English we say "back and forth" but in German they say the equivalent as "forth and back". Hin und her.

In Germany, they go forward first, and then backwards.

In English, we go back and then forwards. Why do you think that is?

I thought about how this week I have failed to post on two separate days, Sunday and Thursday. I thought, that's okay, that's justified, I've been out living and gathering fodder. I've been working extra, too, which is nice because I can use the money. It's summer, it's almost embarrassing to have such a boring life that you have time to blog every day.

Forth and back. Now back and forth.

I helped Ronny finish planting his garden. What a thing, to plant a garden! It is beautiful, magic even, how seeds become plants, and then the plants grow and grow. I thought, I have traveled this same journey, from just a seed to something else entirely. "I am like you, tree!" I said to a tree. I was on a walk later with Warden and Regrette and said the same to them. "You were once just an egg and sperm, Regrette, and now you are a giant dog, and you too Warden! It's like magic!"

A little girl, maybe four or five years old, heard me saying this to my dogs. "Magic!" the little girl repeated, in an almost too adorable way, and right then and there I could have burst out crying. At times like that, when I am so full of happiness and everything, I wonder how I can ever be sad.

Hin und Her. The next day, Belle Star abused me verbally all day, and I scraped other people's garbage into trash cans, which is what I do for a living. I got home and didn't have the emotional energy to eat, or blog, or vacuum my filthy one-windowed basement apartment.

"People just poop, and flush, and think that it disappears," I said to Belle Star angrily at one point. "No matter what it is, somewhere down the line, somebody has to clean it up."

Gerd was kind of like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, gentle but not very smart, but also large and capable of horrible things. I'm not sure what he did to end up in prison, but I know that he would not speak of it for anything, and got angry if pushed. I half-jokingly thought to myself at times about Gerd and I buying a farm someday when we got out of the joint, and living off the fat of the land. He had tattoos all over his arms and back, including one of the Town Musicians of Bremen, Bremen being the town in Germany where he was from. He got the tattoo when he was 13.

I'm no George Milton, if you want to know the truth.

Gerd was very upset about the idea that English speakers said "back and forth". "It's negative," he said. I tried to change my speaking habits and said "forth and back" whenever I was around him. It seemed like a little thing to me. It never stopped sounding awkward.

I worked fifty hours this week because one of the other dish washers was on vacation. Fifty hours is a lot of time to spend washing dishes. Every once in a while I would get to mop up some vomit on the overnight shift when one of the drunks would get sick after the bars closed. Belle Star said she wouldn't tolerate any whining from me because she has to work eighty hours a week just to keep the place from going under. "You want me to make it happen Jimenez," she said, "the whole staff'll throw you a goddamn pity party at the end of the week, but right now I'm up to my a** with bulls**t, and just shut up and scrub the f**kin' dishes, k?." I wrote that quote down verbatim because I thought it was a good one. When she asked what I was writing, I changed the subject and told her about how in Germany they say hin und her. She responded with a horrible joke about how she performs fellatio. I don't know if I should tell you that in the blog, but it happened, so I will. That's my work life, for worse or for better.

I wonder where Gerd is now. He got out a couple years before me. I bet he moved back to Germany where they do things in the right order.

Her und hin. He's right, it just sounds wrong.

Birds.

I am aware of the birds. You forget about things like the birds when you're cooped up in a building. Especially if that building is a prison. Sometimes, in this building that was a building called a prison, I could see something moving across the sky through the windows. Darting. But I never thought, There goes a bird. No. I thought, I am inside. I am not outside. I thought, The sky looks delicious. I thought, I want to lick the window. I thought, I must be going crazy. But I never thought, There goes a bird. Despite all evidence suggesting that what had darted from the left side of the window to the right, was a bird. Not once, in my twenty years in prison, did I acknowledge the existence of the bird.

And now the bird comes back to me, suddenly, it seems. It is outside my window. A nest. And small, pink transparent things with no blood feathers sprouted yet from too soft flesh. No talons. Beaks and blathering. The birds wake me up and I want to touch them. But I heard once, from Mom, when I was young and still unaware of how time passed and what a year really meant, that if you touched an egg in a nest, or a bird that had just broken free from the shell, the mother would not return. The mother would smell the stranger. Even if that stranger was a small boy. The mother would know that the small boy would grow up to become a young man. And soon after that, a man. And a man, even the kindest man, harbors a meanness in him, whether he likes it or not, that only hurts and exists for hurting. Purely. So I will not touch the birds outside my window.

Once, I found a chick on my deck. I was 10. I understood that time passed, but passed slowly. And so I was naive. I watched the chick, but did not touch it. How it cried. I saw that it had fallen far from a branch that hung above our deck. But I can't touch you, I said to the chick. And it cried. Your mom will come and take you back to the nest, I said. But then there was the storm. And I watched from the kitchen window and I knew that the chick's mom would come and save her baby. But she never came and the chick died. And still, I refused to touch it. Even after the flies had landed on its tiny eyes and filled its dead head with buzzing.

Today, though, the hummingbirds came to see me. I mean. I've never seen a hummingbird, except in text books. And what I'm trying to say is that it's strange to meet something that occupies space. Full space so close to you. And maybe you don't know what I mean. But the hummingbirds. They came. I saw one this morning. Its feathers like rainbowed oil. It's prominent beak. And before I could say, A hummingbird, it had flown away. And then, outside the library, I saw another. And I watched it dance for a while. And I was happy.

Belle Star told me to crack eggs. She said, Curt! Crack these eggs! Hurry up! She said, Worry about the dishes later, crack the eggs! Scramble the eggs. Omelets, these f***ing people want omelets today! Everyone in this f***king town wants omelets today! And so I cracked the eggs and I scrambled them and I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't know why I'm telling you any of this, really, but I am. And maybe you are reading this and shaking your head and maybe you are reading this because deep down you understand. You understand the nature of thoughts and how terribly sad some thoughts are, even if they are full of happiness. Or how some thoughts make no sense. And manage to be most logical. I wanted to swim in the eggs. I wanted to be slimy. Covered in egg whites and egg yolks.

I like to think that when I was released from prison, I emerged from an egg. I like to think that I was covered in albumen. I like to think that someone in the building that was a building called a prison, that I like to imagine was an egg, saw me through a window darting into Guy's car and mistook me, for a second, for a bird. Mom was not waiting for me. I had become a man, and not even a kind one, since she'd last seen me. My head was buzzing because sunlight occupies a much different space outside than it does inside. A full space that I was not yet used to and my eyes, how they burned.

I know nothing about birds.
Save for drawing them quickly.

Manhood

When I was 14 years old, one night my Dad made me go to bed at 7:30 and told me that the next morning I would start on the path to manhood.

The next morning, he woke me up at 4:30 am, told me to put on jeans and a sweatshirt, and dropped me off in a field with 15 other confused teenagers.

For the next two weeks, we detasseled corn for $1.50 an hour. It was my first job. It was over before I had time to ponder any existential questions about the meaning of work, over before the repetition of waking up at the crack of dawn could start eating away at my soul. These lessons would come later. The detasseling season is a thankfully short one.

Corn is itchy, and in the morning very wet with dew. You walk down endless rows of corn pulling tassels from the corn stalks and dropping them to the ground. After your clothes become drenched, you ride in the back of a pickup to the next field. If you're a pitifully thin Curt Jimenez, you shiver, and close your eyes, and dream of a future filled with fast cars and baseball. Miles away from the endless rows of corn tassels, and the supervisors telling you to work faster and don't miss any damn stalks, you worthless pieces of excrement.

I laugh now, because I thought of this first job the other day, and thought of how I never asked why. Why detassel corn? What is it all about? I guess I never really knew until I looked up the answer just now. It's about hybridization, if you want to know the truth.

On my second day on the job, I asked the supervisor if they needed any extra help. I told him that Tony wasn't as worthless as I was, that he would probably be the best worker he'd ever had. Tony rode his bike over to our house the next morning and we rode out to the fields.

He was a damn good worker. The bosses let him alone, which meant something. He was quiet, but everyone was quiet. We were young and cold and tired.

"Mr. Jimenez," Tony told my dad on the ride home, "that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever been a part of." He didn't come back.

When I bought a brand new baseball mitt with my summer earnings, I was disappointed when Tony proved to still be a much better fielder than me with his old hand-me-down glove that was barely holding itself together. "Good thing you worked so hard for that new glove, Curt!" he said, after I made a particularly egregious error. "It looks real pretty on you!"

In honor of these odd memories, I bought some sweet corn this morning from a local farmers market, and roasted it with some jalapenos. I shaved the kernels off the cob and threw them in the food processor. I threw in a lot of black pepper. I made Roasted Corn and Jalapeno Butter.

It was spicy. It burned the tip of my tongue, the roof of my mouth, the back of my throat. It was forgivingly sweet, though, too, and it was the perfect butter for today. A good way to get your day going. With some pain.

Socks

Someone mentioned Father's Day at the diner. Someone said, It's Father's Day tomorrow, right? Someone else said, All day tomorrow. I wonder if Dad expects me to do something for him. Does he expect that I'll call him? Does he expect me to come over and cook him dinner or take him out? Sometimes, I wonder how he'd react if he found out about this blog. I bet he wouldn't say anything. Maybe he'd say, I came across something the other day...Maybe, but probably not. I used to get him socks. Socks for his birthday and for Christmas and for Father's Day. Plain white socks. Once, I got him a shirt, but he wore it once, to try it on. But the socks. I always knew he'd wear the socks. So that's all I got him. I wonder if he remembers.

On "Purpose"

I opened up my Blogger page today, and zoned in on something like I found interesting, and something I'm surprised I never thought about before.

Betterbutterblog. Better butter.

Am I making better butter now than I was way back when I started the BBB? I don't know. It's probably a question I should put some thought into. I guess it's hard because I enjoy all my butters so much, even the disappointing ones. They have something to teach too, you know? If you've never faced adversity, how will you handle it when it finally comes? That's why I'm almost happy when a butter comes out a little screwed up, like when I made Bourbon Mint Butter last week. I was a little embarrassed, which is why I haven't said anything about it until now. But I wasn't upset. I was glad I tried.

Too much bourbon, I guess. It didn't blend.

Homes once told me that as a young man, he used to sit around and wait for exciting things to happen. He said he would just sit in his room and imagine doing fun things with fun people, expecting at any moment that somebody would knock on the door and say, come on Homes, let's go, get on my motorcycle. Then, when nothing happened, when nobody showed up, he would get angry and go out by himself and do terrible, destructive things. It was an endless cycle, Curt, he said. It's why I'm here, Curt, he said, referring to prison.

He said Curt, you have to engage the world, you have to go to it. Great things are out there but they don't come and find you, you have to find them, he said.

Now I'm old, he said, and I'm in here, and I guess I'm not so concerned with finding those great things. I burned my bulb out real fast, 120 watts, he said.

I just remembered him telling me all that, just now.

Better butter. Is it a means or an end?

Direction

I made pancakes. Banana and walnut pancakes. Pancakes are not hard to make. Pancakes should always taste wonderful. I mashed the banana into the batter. I chopped the walnuts and folded them into the batter. I put the batter into a skillet. I watched for the bubbles in the batter. I flipped. Golden brown. Beautiful delicious. So what does Belle Star do wrong? Maybe there is no baking powder in her batter. Or, no eggs. Maybe she doesn't use milk, but water. Or, just vegetable oil. A good pancake is a good meal. A bad pancake triggers Murphy's Law. When I was a kid, I thought of all the directions I could go. I thought, If I make a right turn here, I may lead an entirely different life than if I make a left turn. If I stop and wait for five more minutes, this or that could happen instead of not waiting at all. I thought of these other Curt Jimenez' and in prison I thought of a Curt Jimenez outside of prison. Married. A father. Leading a normal life. What I'm trying to say is that a bad pancake can lead someone in an entirely different direction than a good pancake.

I want to help Belle Star with her pancakes. But there are too many variables in life. You see, what if the pancakes she makes are from a family recipe handed down from generation to generation? What if Belle Star had a husband that loved her pancakes and what if he died unexpectedly? What if Belle Star loves the pancakes she makes and believes wholeheartedly that they are delicious?

Sometimes, when I can't fall asleep, I whisper all the variables in my life into my pillow. And the pillow listens to everything I have to say. The pillow holds my head. The pillow knows which way I will turn and knows that when I leave, I will return. Sometimes, I think it would be nice to be a pillow. To listen to all the variables in someone's life. To listen to the sound of happiness and desire, loneliness and fear, and listen and only listen. Listening is a beautiful thing that I think too many people forget about. There is a difference between listening and hearing. Hearing is getting to know someone. Listening is understanding someone.

It was a cold day. But it was sunny. My best friend and I were driving. His dog sat between us in his father's pick-up. We stopped by the side of the road. His dog ran out into a field. My best friend said, Could you imagine? He took off his shoes. He stepped out into the snow. He followed his dog, barefoot. I watched from the truck. I watched how he took his steps. Deliberately. When he returned, he said, I can't feel anything. He rubbed his hands on his feet. I watched. I wanted to rub his feet too. Then we waited for his dog. But his dog didn't come back. And so we listened. We opened the windows and listened. And we listened to our own breaths. And our fears. And our hopes. And to the things we wanted to say to each other but never would. We listened to everything. And then my best friend drove away and he told me how his feet felt. Dead. He said, dead. And I understood what he meant.

Back then, we didn't need a pillow. And pancakes were always delicious.

Follow-up Pies

For an old man, Ronny sure has a lot of energy. Where does it come from?

Want to know what the resolution to our little misunderstanding was? I guess I don't really know. He just called me up out of the blue yesterday, and that was that. I was happy to have him back in my life, so I didn't ask questions.

Today, we owed the dog lady a cherry pie. I said, Ronny do you bake?, and he said, Curt, would you believe I once won best pie at the Tippecanoe County Fair.

I figured he might have been stretching the truth a little bit. But regardless, when I got off work, he came over to the apartment and we baked and baked. We made six pies. He kept saying, Curt, this kitchen is too small, I can't work like this. And he kept hollering out instructions and I kept doing what he told me. Roll this, chop that.

I told him I was going to stop using quotation marks in the blog for a little bit. I said, I just want to see what it's like, you know?

He said, Curt, writers write, and bakers bake, the only thing that matters is if it tastes good.

I said, that makes sense.

Six pies. Five pies after Regrette pawed one off the counter and Warden took a big old bite. When Ronny hit Regrette I almost lost my cool. He said, Curt, your dogs will never calm down if you don't let them know who's boss.

I took a deep breath and said, Ronny, my dogs are just fine and please don't ever hit them again, thank you.

He said, if you don't use quotation marks, how will you know who is talking?

I said, people are smart. They can figure it out.

The pies, they were kind of not good, if you want to know the truth.

Cherries

Ronnie called. He asked if I wanted to go on an adventure. I said, Sure. We went for a walk and when I asked where we were going, he said, You'll see. He had a basket in his hand. We stopped at the base of a tree. I looked up. There were cherries. So many cherries. A cherry tree by a chain link fence in a neighborhood. There were dogs on the other side of the chain link fence. A pit bull and a long-haired chihuahua and a collie. All barking. Ronnie said, Curt, I'll hold the basket, you climb the tree. I didn't ask questions. I started climbing. I don't know when I last climbed a tree. Not since I was very young. Eight? Nine? I climbed higher and higher. I picked cherries. I tossed them into Ronnie's basket. A woman approached Ronnie. She asked what was going on. She said that the tree was technically a part of her property. Ronnie said, Sorry. He said, We were just picking cherries. We'll make you a cherry pie. She said, Ok. She said, Next time you come around to pick cherries, just check with me so that I can put my dogs in the house. She said, I've gotten threats. She said, People have threatened to poison my dogs and my dogs are my life. I stood still in the tree and listened to the whole thing. I ate a cherry and listened. I spit out the pit and listened. And then, when she left, I stepped forward. The branch sagged beneath my weight. I groped to find a branch. My hands sought something. Anything. I found only air and leaves and cherries. I fell. I hit the ground. I looked up into the cherry tree. Ronnie was above me. He said, Curt! Curt! You alright? I nodded. But I didn't really know what was happening. Then I thought, I fell from a tree. I thought, I am not a young man anymore. And I felt the pain trembling through my body. And I picked myself up and stretched. I said, I'm ready. Ronnie said, For what? I said, For more adventure.

People Deserve Delicious Pancakes

There are certain things Belle Star makes pretty well. She can make eggs in several different styles. Her omelettes are more than adequate. She understands over-easy.

Her home fries are great. She takes her time, and gets them nice and crispy.

Her French toast is a personal favorite. She uses Italian bread from a local bakery. It drives her nuts when I call it "Texas toast".

But her pancakes are terrible. Shouldn't every diner have decent pancakes? If a regular hears someone who doesn't know better considering to order pancakes, they wait until Belle Star is out of earshot and talk up the French toast.

This morning, I worked up the courage to say something to her about it. Did she know they were bad? Would she be interested in changing? My new motto, I've decided, is:

Curt Jimenez, nothing to lose. You only live once!!

So why accept the discomfort everyone feels with respect to anything pancakey at Belle Star's diner? Why not do something about it?

I waited until someone said something nice to Belle Star. A regular named Bert always tells Belle she is "looking fine". After that ritual took place, I sidled up next to her and smiled.

"Where'd you learn how to make your pancakes, Belle?" I asked her, as nicely as I could.

She was holding a fork.

"How do you think this would feel shoved up your a**hole, Curt?" she responded.

They're not sweet enough, not salty enough. The syrup she keeps on hand is horrible too.

I'm not going to push it today. This is an important matter, and it needs resolution. I will devise a plan.

This will be my new crusade.

Excuses

You end up in prison because of a failed excuse.

Whether you like it or not.

It was an accident. Drugs were involved. You weren't really you. You don't remember what happened. The gun ended up in your hands, somehow. You didn't mean to hurt anyone. You wish that you could go back in time. These things wouldn't have happened if.

If you didn't find the gun. If you didn't take the drugs. If your friend wasn't there beside you. If it wasn't dark out. If there hadn't been that sound. The sound of something unfamiliar. Fear. The trigger. How your hand shook. How you dropped the gun. What the sound of blood sounds like, exactly, exiting from someone you love. It was the weather. The full moon. There were things on your mind. You panicked.

In prison, you wake up when you are awoken. You eat when you are fed. You sleep when the lights go off. There are no excuses. No.

I couldn't do it because...
I'm sorry, it's just that...
Maybe...
You wouldn't believe what happened...
I'm so sorry, but...
It's not my fault...
I was busy...
I couldn't because...

No. These words don't exist in prison.

There is no excuse for my best friend's death. I did it. I killed him. It was me. And it kills me. It hurts me. And I have to deal with it. I don't want to deal with it and sometimes, I don't know if I can. But I do.

I learned the hard way.

An excuse just doesn't cut it.

An Explanation

Sometimes, I think
I feel
too much.

I think
too much, sometimes,
I feel.

Too much,
I feel
I think,
sometimes.

Little Fish

I caught one, Curt.

He caught one. It had seemed so impossible only moments before.

I caught one!

I knew I couldn't do it. Just another thing on the long lists of things I couldn't do, and never would be able to do. Back then, a kid my age didn't know what self-esteem was, and nobody went out of there way to help you if you didn't have any.

But Tony had caught one. We were canoeing, and drinking beer, doing some other things that had us in a state. Somehow I capsized us, and we were both in the water, and there were thousands of tiny little fish.

And we sat there, fully clothed but fully submerged, trying to catch tiny little fish with our bare hands. It was the obvious thing to do. And we must have sat there for an hour, maybe more.

A rudderless seventeen year old Curt Jimenez and his best friend Tony, who at that time still had dreams of marrying, having kids, fixing cars for a living. Being able to afford decent beer, not the piss we were drinking then. He was still breathing, then. There was still life behind his eyes.

So many of those days have disappeared in my memory. Why is that day, that moment, so burned into my brain?

I caught one, Curt.

And once he had that first one, he let it go, and caught another one. And another.

It's easy Curt, like this.

And he tried to show me. Held his cupped hands under the water--like he was scooping out a little to drink--and he waited. And a fish would swim in and in an instant his hands would close, and he would have himself another fish.

It's easy Curt! Like a Venus fly trap! Just gotta be a little quicker!

I remember how angry I got that day. My cigarettes were soaked. It was hot, and getting hotter.

Tony was still my best friend, my only friend, really. But spending time with him wasn't like it used to be. We were still so close, but things were getting more serious. Real life was lingering boldly on both our horizons. And I knew then--knew intensely--that somehow Tony was going to have a good, happy, successful future. And he would grow away from me, I would be abandoned, the world repulsed by my propensity to failure.

I was wrong about Tony's future.

I got one Curt!

Of course he got one. He always got one.

Hiding

Not many people stopped by the diner. Bet it was because it was so nice out. The regulars were gone shortly after nine. Belle Star and I talked a bit after I'd washed all the dishes. She said, "What do you do?"
"I work here," I said, "I wash the dishes."
"No," she said, "I mean, what do you do in your spare time?"
"I go on walks with my dogs. I read. And, I make butter."
"That sounds nice," she said.
"What do you do in your spare time?"
"Not much," she said. "I hide."
"Hide?"
"Things get complicated," she said, "and sometimes, it's best to just wait and hide."

I didn't understand what she meant but I nodded and then we didn't talk for a long time. She looked out the window. She looked like she might cry and crying makes me uncomfortable.

"Belle," I said, "can I leave early today?"
"Sure Curt."

When I got home, I went for a walk with the dogs, read, and made some butter. And it was nice. Then, I called Ronny, but he didn't answer. I called him again and left a voice message. I said, Hey Ronny, it's Curt. What do you call a chess player who throws a fit whenever his opponent makes a move? Give up? A queen!

Flux

The phone rang. It was Ronny. It was early.

"Bloody hell, Curt!" he said, in a horrible British accent. "Fancy a game of chess and a cup a' joe?"

I agreed to meet him. When I found him seated behind a new board he had just bought, he immediately told me a joke he was pretty excited about. He said he had made it up.

Q. What did the one kangaroo say to the other kangaroo when they were playing chess?

A. Checkmate! (emphasis on the mate)

He told me this one a minute later:

Q. What is a snake's favorite game?
A. Chesssssssss

Ronny is kind of corny.

But, we played some chess. Again, it was kind of bad. Not only is Ronny not very good, but he is pretty prone to distraction. Today it was text messaging. Ronny has a cell phone, and it kept beeping, and he would punch numbers for a minute or two and then wait for the next beep.

After I had him beat in a second game, I was a little upset and I said, "Ronny! What the heck? Are you hanging out with me or your stupid cell phone?"

And then Ronny was upset. He grabbed his board and said "guess I'll see you later Curt," really dejectedly and left me sitting there nursing my coffee mug. People stared at us through the ordeal, and I wondered what they were thinking. Whatever. I guess I don't really care what they think, but I was kind of enjoying this new friendship.

Now what? This whole scenario is very strange. Ronny seemed like a stable enough guy. Is it me?

Maybe it's me.

I should get him a card, or something.

Coat

I will sleep like a dead man.
I will dream of nothing. This does not mean that I will not have dreamt.
I will dream of nothing and how it is like a coat in a closet I've almost forgotten about. Not the closet, but the coat. Nothing is like wearing this coat and remembering that the reason why you've almost forgotten about the coat is because it makes you look bad. The coat looks good on the hanger. It looks good in the closet. But it does not look on you and for this reason, and this reason alone, you keep it hidden and almost forgotten. That is nothing. I will dream of nothing. I will dream of a coat.

Warrant

A knock.
The police.
Dogs, barking, jumping.
Frantic.
Heart pounding.
Curt Jimenez, frantic.
Two large dogs.

Police, agitated.
A warrant.
An arrest warrant!
Not my name.
DeVantre Davis.
Phew.

I'm not DeVantre Davis.

You have I.D., sir?

One second!

Shut the door.
A desperate search.
A misplaced wallet.
Where is it?
I cleaned the apartment! Where is my wallet?
Dogs, barking, still.
Police, impatient, growing more so.
Who is Devantre Davis? And where is he? Why do they think he lives here?
A piece of mail. Grab a piece of mail.

See! (pointing) Curt Jimenez, I'm Curt Jimenez!

Mr. Jimenez, where is your I.D.!?

It's here, I know it's here, I cleaned the apartment, I had it, it's in my wallet, it's a bi-fold, I don't have any credit cards, I'm sorry about the dogs, what did this man do??? I'm Curt Jimenez, I did something once, but it's been a long, long time ago now!

They believe me, finally. Or they say they do. They let me go. They feel sorry for me. They apologize.

I apologize.

Phew.

Baby

Things are in order, finally. It took me a while, but I got everything out of their boxes and put away in the apartment. I started cleaning. Vacuumed the floors. Wiped off the kitchen counters. Cleaned the bathroom. I even cleaned behind the toilet. The apartment became my apartment. My apartment. Curt G. Jimenez's apartment.

The sun came out. I went on a walk without the dogs. My walk. A walk just for Curt G. Jimenez. I walked in the cemetery. The light was severe. Strange shadows. Trees striped with sunlight. I came across a headstone that read: Baby. That's it. Baby. It was Baby's headstone. Just Baby. Baby. And it was both the saddest and most beautiful thing I'd seen in a long while because no one knew Baby but Baby's mother and father and that must have been long ago. Mom and Dad were somewhere else because Baby was alone on a plot for a grown man or woman. Baby was tiny. Baby was cold in earth. Just think, Baby's mom must have wept and cried out Baby. Baby. My Baby, when Baby still had skin over Baby's eyes, before the earth took Baby's skin, then organs, as its own, and left Baby's bones for the worms and the clay to cling onto.

When I got home. To my apartment. The smell of cleanliness overwhelmed me. I wished that I could pour all the liquid in the spray bottles over me. Baptize me with all-purpose cleaner. Cleanse me. Wash me. Make me clean. And pure. Baby.

hmmm

I'm drunk.
It's late, I'm drunk, I need to blog, what do I say?
This blog has changed my life. Maybe it's kept me straight. If you read it, I love you for reading it. BBB forever.

Orders

Look busy / Drink coffee in moderation / Think about your favorite number because this will make you look busy / Come up with a bad joke / Come up with a dirty joke / Walk like you have somewhere to go / Think about butter / Take your dogs on a long walk / Do not slip into nostalgia / Look at the ground / Look at the trees / But do not become nostalgic / Do not talk to strangers / Pretend you are someone you've never met but will meet in the future / Long for something sweet to eat / Think of cake / Take a deep breath / Read a few sentences from a book / Read a few more sentences from another book / Take a nap / Anticipate, something / Prepare / Think of washing the dishes / Take a shower / Open the windows / Listen / Sit / Get the mail / Look at the phone / Laugh at the jokes you came up with earlier / Feel your chin / Become tired / Drink a tall glass of water / Use the bathroom / Put on a new pair of socks / Pace / Deliver a speech to no one / Wait for an answer / Move.

You Fill Up My Senses

When I woke up this morning, there was an unusual intensity to my perceptions.

My senses were on fire.

Back in my younger days, I occasionally used psychedelic drugs. In a way, that's how I felt. Colors were beautiful and vivid, sounds were deeper and brighter. When I reached out to pet Warden, I didn't want to stop. He was so soft!

And then I had to go to work.

And work was great! I mean, my state of being made everything okay. I worked extra hard, and when I got caught up, I closed my eyes, and just listened.

I heard the sounds of silverware being brilliantly clanged together. I heard inane conversations, but with the melodic rise and fall in the voices, the words didn't matter. It was like hearing a symphony.

When Belle Star said, "Jimenez, if you got some good s**t you better f**kin' share it!", I just kept my eyes closed and smiled. I might have been swaying a little.

There were songs coming from Belle Star's little radio, songs that I had always thought were kind of terrible but today they soothed me, excited me, filled me with the passion that the singers must have felt when they were singing their songs.

I asked Raymond to describe the most beautiful moment he had ever experienced.

"Curt," he said, "I drove through Ohio once."

"Ohio is beautiful," I said.

"Yes, well, it's very flat out there. I was actually driving east, coming home. I had driven through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana. Lots of fields, lots of soybeans and corn. Beautiful, but kind of samey, you know?"

I knew. I told him so.

"But I had just driven past Columbus, I had stopped and gotten a sandwich. It wasn't a good sandwich, but I ate it. Tuna, I think."

It might sound cheesy, but his attention to detail made me feel like I was in the passenger seat.

"I was out of the suburbs and surrounded by fields again," he continued, "when something leaped out of the landscape, something huge and beautiful."

I thought he might be talking about the giant basket. He was.

When I asked Belle Star about her most beautiful moment, she responded with a sexual story that I will not revisit here. It was a bit of a buzz kill.

I wondered if the world would present itself to me like this for the rest of my days. I wondered if everything I experienced were always this intense, if I would get used to it. Maybe then it wouldn't seem so intense anymore. Maybe I would take it for granted. I wondered if all my life I'd been seeing less in the world than there really was. In spite of myself--in spite of the pure joy that had filled up my day until this point--I started to feel a little down. I followed those thoughts around in my head until I was jarred back to reality by Belle Star.

"Your getting backed up you f**kstick," she said. "And I was just thinking about giving you a raise. Hope you weren't fantasizing about me, you goddamn psychopath!"

I turned back to the three bowl sink. The burned oats at the bottom of the first pot looked vividly brown and disgusting. I picked up my scrubby and went back to work.

Lost

The rain doesn't bother me. It used to, but a lot of things used to bother me that don't anymore. The rain urges me to change my plans, but never for the worse. So I am inside. So I will read. And I will make butter and clean the apartment. So I will do these things instead of going outside. Going to the library. Or going for a walk with the dogs. I will do things inside and let the rain do what it's supposed to do outside.

But then I think: rain is only water and water is only water.

So I step outside with the umbrella and go for a walk. I walk to the library. And the rain keeps coming and now there is thunder. The man approaches me, soaked, with Coca-Cola in his hand. He has no umbrella, just plaid shirt and jeans. Just boots and a look on his face that tells me he's not there anymore. He says, "Where's the grocery store that used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken?"

I don't know and I tell him so. I tell him that there's a grocery store down the street, but that it's big, that if it were a Kentucky Fried Chicken, it would have been the biggest one I'd ever seen, had I seen it before it became a grocery store.

"I'm lost," he says. "I went out, but my friends are at the grocery store. I don't know how to find my way back."

I don't know what to tell him, so I don't tell him anything. I think, Maybe I should give him my umbrella.

But, I dont think he knows that it's even raining. He turns away. He shuffles in his boots. I notice that they are untied. For some reason, I know that I will carry this image with me for a very long time. Someone will ask, What does it mean to be lost? And I will know.

The rain comes down even harder. There is lightning. A wind that topples my umbrella. I am wet.

But the rain does not bother me anymore.

Semantics

Ronny asked me if I wanted to go get a drink.

I told him I would.

He took me to this bar that he said was his favorite. There were lots of trophy heads hanging on the walls, deers and such, and a few men playing darts. Lots of storytelling and swearing.

At the bar, there was a couple having an argument.

The man said he was agnostic.

The woman said she was an atheist.

The man said he didn't believe he could know if there was a God or not, and therefore he was an agnostic.

He said, "agnostic means, 'I do not know'".

She said she didn't believe in anything, therefore she was an atheist.

She asked him, "do you believe in God?"

He said, "no."

She said, "You're an atheist."

He said, and his voice was rising now, "there is sooo much arrogance in knowing!!"

She said, "You're an atheist! Why won't you admit it?"

"Because it makes me uncomfortable! I am confident that I know that I do not know. Even that might be too much knowing for me. Therefore I am an agnostic!"

Things were heating up now. Those people who weren't playing darts before were putting coins into machines now, because they were uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable. The discussion was inane, and it clearly wasn't going anywhere, and I tried to distract myself, too. I'm not sure Ronny was even aware of the conversation. He was nursing his Miller High Life.

All this concern over whether one was this thing or that thing got me thinking, though.

"Ronny," I said to Ronny, "why do people concern themselves so much with labels? Why do I have to be this thing or that thing? Why can't I just be Curt, plain and simple?"

"Are people labeling you, Curt?"

"Well I mean, not really, but everybody likes to have an answer when somebody asks them who they are, what they do." I struggled to express what I was trying to say.

"Hmm," said Ronny.

"Why do I feel embarrassed when I have to introduce myself as 'Curt Jimenez, Dishwasher'?"

Ronny said, "huh."

"I'm content most of the time," I continued, "but sometimes I wish I could tell people I was something I wasn't. And that doesn't make sense to me."

It was getting even harder to ignore the arguing couple. They were still debating semantics. Was their argument really that reducible? Was there a depth to it I didn't understand?

People are stubborn. People like to be right. Maybe that was the gist of it.

What is the difference between an agnostic and an atheist? I asked myself. An agnostic doesn't believe in a God, but doesn't that make him an atheist? Are they not the same thing? What the heck am I?

I noticed Ronny was now flirting with a woman who I recognized as the Hot Grandma I had once encountered at a Goodwill store. This is the shirt she was wearing.

You notice a lot of funny things once you start paying attention.

When somebody played Bad Romance on the jukebox, I told Ronny I had to go.

And I went.

To the dance floor.