Akron, Ohio

Akron, Ohio. Jewel of the Cuyahoga. Pride of Summit County. City of wonder and mystery. The story of Akron is the story of America: Humble beginnings, grandiose dreams, triumph, then adversity, then apocalyptic hellscape, then redemption, a new beginning, the resurgence of the indomitable Akron Spirit.

I arrive in Akron via Goodyear Blimp. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, founded in Akron in 1898, has long been synonymous with the blimp, that bewitching behemoth of the sky, that soaring conqueror of the clouds, that miracle of helium and neoprene-impregnated polyester fabric. In the days before the blimp, Goodyear and its subsidiary the Zeppelin Company were the world’s leading builders of rigid airships, and the United States’ largest airship was dubbed, what else, Akron, the USS Akronrepresenting the city of its name with pride and distinction until 1933, when inclement weather brought the Akron down into the frigid waters off the coast of New Jersey and sent all but three of the seventy-six strong crew to their deep, dark Atlantic graves.

The blimp’s captain is an Akron man, as was his father, as was his father before him. Nothing could drive his family from Akron, he says, not the collapse of the American tire industry in the 70s and 80s, not the resulting urban flight and decay, not the hordes of swarming undead that have roamed Akron since the early 90s, feasting on any remaining Akronites’ flesh, entrails, and brains. The captain takes us over scenic downtown Akron, and introduces me to the many marvels nestled within the city’s heart. There is historic Quaker Square, a mall hewn from the silos and factories of the dearly departed Quaker Oats Company. There is the storied University of Akron, the Harvard of Mid-America, home of the mighty Akron Zips. There is a Quizno’s and two Subways, home of the $5 Footlong Sub. There is the apartment of this guy Darrell, who the blimp’s captain says can hook me up with a car stereo, real cheap.

When the undead first arrived, says the blimp’s captain, they could not have come at a worse time. Factories were closing. Unemployment was soaring. The Rust Belt was rusting. And then the undead descended upon Akron, from the depths of hell, reducing the city’s already dwindling tax base in their unquenchable pursuit of flesh and brains. The blimp’s captain could only watch as friends and family were laid off by Goodyear, B.F. Goodrich, Firestone, Quaker Oats, and then eaten alive by marauding zombies in their homes, at church, at Akron Aeros minor league baseball games. We pass over the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, the Akron Zoological Park, the Rubber Bowl, the Derby Downs racetrack, the Akron Civic Theater. “John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett are performing at the Civic Theater next Saturday,” says the blimp’s captain. “I have tickets in the middle balcony.”

The blimp’s captain’s own wife and children were devoured by the undead, he tells me, during our breathtaking aerial tour of Rubber City. First they got his wife, then his son Chad, then his daughter Rosie, then little Keeley and little Micky. They left only bones. Thankfully, the so-called Akron Miracle of the early 21^st century has reversed the fortunes of many areas of the city, with the increasing prominence of new industries such as polymer research and production softening the losses of the tire giants, the beautification of downtown Akron attracting prospective residents away from the suburbs, and the National Guard keeping the hordes of undead largely confined to the neighborhoods of East Akron, Middlebury, and Goodyear Heights. “Look, the Firestone Country Club!” says the blimp’s captain. “Finest fifty-four holes of golf you’ll ever play.”

I ask the captain if we can land, so I can gaze upon the endless marvels of Akron up close, but he informs me that it is still not safe enough for the blimp to touch down within the Akron city limits. The last blimp that landed in Akron, the Spirit of Innovation, lost its entire crew to the ambushing undead in mere minutes. Still, I am certain that by the seventh or eighth edition of Johnny America’s America I will finally walk Akron’s streets, rub shoulders with its proud citizens, savor its $5 Footlong subs, and gain, at last, a street-level view of what for now can only witnessed from the sky: Akron, City of Dreams, Lord of the I-77/I-76 Interchange, Land of Helium and Progress.

Abilene, Texas

Abilene, Texas. God’s country. Where men are men, and women are women, and briscuit is briscuit.

I happen upon Abilene, one scorching summer’s day, by chance. I had intended to go to San Antonio, but apparently while leaving Dallas/Ft. Worth I had taken the wrong exit. No matter. As so many do, I fall in love with Abilene instantly: its bustling freeways, its Old West charm, its maximum-security correctional facilities.

With my hired guide still waiting for me in San Antonio, I decide to tour Abilene on my own, experience the “Real Abilene,” the Abilene they don’t show you in the glossyExperience Abilene brochures. My first stop is at Abilene’s famed Red Lobster, where Abilene fishermen have been bringing their daily catch of fresh lobster, snow crab, shrimp scampi, and garlic cheddar biscuits since the city’s founding in 1881. My server, Wendy-Lou, possesses a wealth of knowledge about Abilene’s rich history, and regales me with tale after tale of Abilene romance, intrigue, treachery, and deceit, tales such as the ballad of why Wendy-Lou’s ex-boyfriend Troy took that hoochie Doreen to prom, the ballad of why Wendy-Lou’s mama peppered their TV with two ounces of buckshot during the Cowboys-Cardinals game, and the ballad of why her coworkers Glory-Mae and Billy-Boy are no longer allowed inside the Red Lobster seafood freezer at the same time.

After sating my hunger at Red Lobster, I set my course for beautiful downtown Abilene, but unfortunately take another wrong exit and end up at the Abilene Regional Airport. No matter. Serendipitously, in the airport lobby I happen upon Abilene’s largest and most vibrant collection of fine art, a treasure trove of such contemporary masterpieces as “Untitled” by Linda Francis, “Untitled #7” by Walter Musbrook, “Shattered Dreams” by H.C. Stellenbosch, and “Puppies” by Abilene-area 4^th grader Lawanda Smith. Paris’s the Louvre may have the Mona Lisa, Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía may have Guernica, but Abilene’s Regional Airport has seven daily flights to Dallas Fort Worth International and free luggage carts. And best of all, it’s free! A can’t-miss destination for every lover of art and value.

Thanks to the expert directions of the friendly native Abileneans in the airport’s baggage claim area, I find myself on the correct path to downtown Abilene, where I encounter a West Texas wonderland of red brick buildings, retail outlets, and parking spaces. As I park my trusty Kia in front of a RadioShack, I fantasize about all the great Texans who may have parked in this very space: T. Boone Pickens, Lyndon B. Johnson, Sissy Spacek, General Sam Houston, Lee Harvey Oswald, the members of ZZ Top. I walk the streets of Abilene, for four or five minutes, but it is very hot, so I decide to leave the streets and enjoy the authentic regional cooking and central air conditioning of Abilene’s legendary restaurant Taco Bell. A glorious fusion of Mexican and Texas cuisine, or “Mex-Tex,” as it fondly called by Abilene natives, Taco Bell’s menu offers a variety of exotic, mouth-watering dishes that have been cooked over the hearths and roaring campfires of Abilene since the days of Bonnie and Clyde. Gorditas. Chalupas. Taquitos. Enchiritos. Volcano Double Beef Burritos. Crunchwrap Supremes.

I could while away endless hours eating and people-watching in the exclusive, chic environs of Taco Bell, but my parking space is limited to thirty minutes maximum, and so I bid Taco Bell adieu and finish my 7-Layer Burrito in my Kia. There is plenty more of Abilene to see, but, as my hotel reservation is for a Motel 6 just outside of San Antonio, I figure I better get headed in that direction before rush hour. No matter. I shall return to Abilene, Blossoming Rose of Texas, this captivating city that has captured my heart. I know not when, I know not how. But I shall return, as certain as the sun returns with the dawn, as certain as the tumbleweed drifts across the prairie, as certain as Texas’s lone star converts hydrogen into helium, I shall return, unless I take another wrong exit, in which case, I hear Corpus Christi and Galveston are nice.

Newark, New Jersey

The City of Love. Many cities stake this claim. Paris. Rome. Venice. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. But no city, in this humble travel writer’s mind, is more deserving of the title than that American bastion of romance, Newark, New Jersey.

Newark. Honeymoon haven. Romantic retreat. Sanctuary of sweethearts. Newark, where young lovers take moonlit rides on the picturesque New Jersey Turnpike, where infatuated couples leisurely cruise down the pristine waters of the Passaic River, where hopeless romantics gaze together at the millions of stars glittering above the famous Newark skyline. Newark: where, in the smoldering shadows of nearby Jersey City, that special someone is powerless to refuse you his or her heart.

Having no special someone of my own, I arrive in Newark hopeful that love awaits me in this dazzling city of 300,000 romantics, as love has awaited so many other visitors to its fair, seductive shores. I had a special someone, once, to whom I dedicated the first and second editions of my bestselling travel guide Johnny America’s America, but she failed me, and thus I dedicate the third edition of my book to no one.

My first stop in the City of Love is at Newark’s bustling port, one of the largest containerized ports in the world. Millions of tons of cargo are handled in the Port of Newark each year. Perhaps there is a longshorewoman there who will handle my broken heart.

In the Port of Newark I speak of love to the stevedores, the crane operators, the dock supervisors and port authority officers. I am told to leave immediately; I am in a restricted area. The port authority officers escort me to my car.

Next I visit that other stronghold of amorous bewitchment, the All Jersey Multiplex Cinema. What better place to seek love than in the dark aisles of a movie theater, a smoldering romance playing on the screen, the aphrodisiac scent of popcorn butter and Junior Mints wafting through the air. Unfortunately, the All Jersey Multiplex Cinema appears to be permanently closed, it is moldering, collapsing, and riddled with graffiti, and my only offer of love comes from an inscription etched onto an out-of-order phone booth. It seems that tonight the City of Love is playing hard to get.

Undaunted, I continue on to the glamorous Ramada Plaza Hotel just outside of the Newark International Airport. I met my ex-special someone in a Ramada hotel, during the book tour for my bestselling Johnny America’s Asia by Yak. I speak of love to the concierge, to the bellhops, to the airport shuttle drivers and the cleaning ladies. They direct me to the hotel bar, where I tell the bartender to serve me whatever the locals drink. He makes me a Manhattan.

In the hotel bar I speak of love to a 57-year-old dental hygienist from Topeka. I speak of love to a 42-year-old wastewater technician from Biloxi, and a 61-year-old senior sales associate from East Lansing. My ex-special someone is a 27-year-old Outback Steakhouse server from Rockford, Illinois. She has forever ruined Outback Steakhouse for me. I can no longer eat Walkabout Soup or a Bloomin’ Onion without being reduced to tears.

But I am strong. I do not cry in the Ramada Plaza Hotel bar. Instead, I speak of love to a 23-year-old data entry specialist from Phoenix. Her special someone, a former professional super welterweight boxer, hammers me in the jaw. When I regain consciousness, I am in Newark’s University Hospital. There is romantic fluorescent lighting. There are patients dressed only in flimsy gowns. It is a hospital for lovers.

I speak of love to the nurses and my attending physician. I am told that I suffered a concussion and need to stay overnight, for observation. Oh, what fortune, to end my journey here, in this libidinous, erotically charged hospital in the City of Love. A nurse pricks me with an IV needle, Cupid’s arrow. I am helplessly smitten. Due to memory loss resulting from my head injury I can no longer recall the nurse’s name, but I know that if I see her again I shall recognize her instantly, and those old familiar feelings will again well up inside of me. Oh, to be hospitalized once more in the glorious City of Love! Newark, this will not be the last head injury I suffer within your fair borders, this I assure you. Newark, my brain will swell within you again. This is my promise. This is my vow.

Pembroke Pines, Florida

Florida. Winter paradise. Land of the alligator, citrus, favorable tax structure. Each year millions of heat-seeking tourists flock to Florida, to Disney World in Orlando, to South Beach in Miami, to the River Garden Hebrew Home for the Aged in Jacksonville, to the Fountainview resort-style senior living community in West Palm Beach. But so often lost amid these well-known Floridian vacation destinations is a city just as deserving, if not more deserving, of full-page accolades in every Florida tourism brochure. That city is Pembroke Pines, the City Pulchritudinous, the Diamond of Broward County.

I arrive in Pembroke Pines early. There is so much to do, so much to see. My first stop is at Domino’s Pizza, where Pembroke Pines’ vibrant Italian-American community has been baking the traditional tomato-and-cheese-slathered pies of their homeland for generations. Not wanting to look like a tourist, I order in Italian. Unfortunately, my pronunciation is very bad, and the Domino’s staff is unable to understand me. Also, I do not know the Italian words for deep dish or Cinna Stix.

Next, I proceed to Pier 1, where Pembroke Pines artisans sell their lovingly handcrafted furniture, vases, soap and lotion caddies, and patchouli candles, as they have for centuries, in a buzzing, bustling setting that can rival that of any market in London, Cairo, Paris, or Marrakech. Truly, Pier 1 is marvel. Where else but in Pembroke Pines could one find such a dizzying array of chair cushions, doormats, throw pillows, table linens, and wicker barstools in one convenient location?

After leaving Pier 1, I decide to take a walk in the great outdoors to experience Pembroke Pines’ natural beauty, and what better place to walk than Pembroke Road, a.k.a. the Boulevard of Dreams, a.k.a. State Highway 824. Walking along Pembroke Road, one truly communes with nature in all its glory. The flora. The fauna. The guardrails. The overpasses. The median strips. Strolling through Pembroke Pines, it is not difficult to imagine what Adam and Eve must have felt as they leisurely sauntered through Eden. It is a place of untouched innocence, of unparalleled beauty. It is a paradise easily accessible via Florida’s Turnpike.

When the sun sets, and the day draws to a close, it is finally time to enjoy Pembroke Pines’ legendary nightlife. Pembroke Pines is famous for its exclusive restaurants, clubs, and discotheques, and thanks to some string pulling by my publisher I am granted unrestricted access to the most exclusive club of them all: BJ’s Wholesale Club. At BJ’s, Pembroke Pines’ illuminati dress to see and be seen. Levis. Dockers. Gym shorts. Sweatpants. The hottest DJs, unseen, play the most electric soft rock and smooth jazz jams, and BJ’s sizzling staff are always ready to cater to your every whim. The party goes on into the wee hours of 9 pm, and then the celebrities and socialites and hot young things of Pembroke Pines shuffle out of BJ’s and head to their tony duplexes for their much-needed beauty sleep. Meanwhile, this humble travel writer checks into the luxurious Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, which has justly earned its reputation for offering only the finest complimentary soaps, shampoos, and hand towels since 1983. Exhausted from a long day of witnessing the greatness of one of the greatest cities in America, no, one of the greatest cities in the world, I fall onto my bed, forever changed. Goodnight, Pembroke Pines, but not goodbye. We shall dance our crazy dance again—mark my words—we shall dance again.

But why do I, like so many other people, enjoy the ubiquitous genre of reality TV? In reality television, there are no real plots. Often, the characters don’t change. Only occasionally do they show glimpses of vulnerability while their misanthropic leanings, Machiavellian manipulations, addictions, compulsions, flagrant greed, and general dysfunction get overexposed in a debauched light. Do I only watch because I enjoy being a spectator to the misery of others and feeling superior to those who struggle with poor life choices?

Why do we watch, when everything including the story is subordinated to the pyrotechnic betrayals of stock characters on The Show? Andrew Foster Altschul, the founding Books Editor of The Rumpus, asks this question in his new novel, Deus Ex Machina. Altschul’s fictional reality show is a hyper-real version of “Survivor,” a place where contestants battle it out (to the death, in some cases) to stay on a distant, TV-network-owned island. The players of “The Deserted,” like many of our reality-show stars of today, are unconcerned with redemption, or character development, or improvement in any way, shape or form. They are who they are and they’re hear to outwit, outplay, and outlast. The crusty Marine sergeant, the ruthless lawyer, the gay hairdresser, the sensitive poet, all willingly play their archetypes, while they try to stay alive long enough to win the nebulous prize of Lord of the Island.

Deus Ex Machina’s main character is the show’s producer, known simply as “the producer.” Facing declining ratings, his own fatigue with the formula he created, and haunted by the fiery and violent tragedies in his past, the producer tries to hold his crew together by steadfastly clinging to an artistic vision for the show that the many youngsters he leads would describe as quaint at best, Paleolithic at worst. The producer wants to present reality as is, like a filmic chronicle of actual truth, without network intervention, without deus ex machina. “Viewers will see what it’s like to be other people. They will learn the truth of the human heart and mind,” the original process message for the pitch read. It’s because of this vision that the producer finds himself drawn to a character named Gloria Hamm, a woman who doesn’t appear to engage in the backstabbing, the gossip, and the posturing of the other stars. In fact, Gloria doesn’t appear to play the game at all. The producer’s crew thinks she’s dull and repeatedly encourages the producer to find a way to intervene and eliminate her from the game.

Miley, the producer’s nubile junior assistant, is whip-smart, loyal, and to the producer’s surprise, actually appears to admire the producer. For a good portion of the book, their relationship seems to have potential, and certainly a sexual tension that move the plot forward. The producer also has a poignant relationship with an old mentor named Armand, to whom he speaks only via phone. Armand, quite the libertine himself, is the last person the producer can commiserate with, the only other person old enough to remember what reality television was when it started, before it became a formulaic commodity. The producer’s real character bonds, along with his backstory involving his wife and a season in Benin gone horribly wrong, give the book’s outsized world a heft that makes Deus Ex Machina more than just a savage satire of an oft-criticized television genre.

Altschul’s muscular writing consistently surprises. Take this poignant passage about the contestants at the start of the book:

“Soon the dark is filled with talk of the day’s ordeals, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the perfidy of strangers, a panoply of whims and yearnings no model can predict.

But never do they talk about love.”

Or a quiet flashback that appears suddenly in the midst of a day on set, like a moment of clarity during one of the producer’s yoga sessions.

“You’re a tool,” he’d told his father once, during some adolescent argument. It was the worst thing he could think to throw at him. He’d expected a smack in the face, but the old man just coughed out a laugh.

“Now you’re getting it,” he said.

If the novel has a weakness, it’s that the hyper-real world is slightly cracked. How seriously are we to root for the producer’s artistic vision when it has been so fully compromised by previous seasons involving spectacular and violent deaths. Exactly what are the parameters of this show when the crew wants to intervene with medics for one contestant, but barely bats an eye when another is lost in a volcano. But perhaps that is the central argument of Deus Ex Machina. The evolution of reality television has caused us to lose our sense of the value of human life.

“Let’s play!” he shouts after Ashanti, the black girl whose mother makes her flatten her hair every two weeks. Ashanti touches her head the way people repeatedly touch things that hurt.

“No way!” she says. “You’re a cheater!”

“I’m not a cheater!” Oscar says. “I’m just better!”

Deshawn, the bucktoothed kid that no one plays with because he’s so quiet, walks to Oscar.

“Let’s play!” Oscar says.

Deshawn nods, and Oscar hides a coin underneath a cup and commences with the shuffling. Ashanti gradually drifts over to them. A few other kids follow, and soon, Oscar’s surrounded, and he’s shouting, “Find the coin! Bet you can’t find where it is!”

I’ve been teaching this summer program for five years now. I worked in banking for ten before I burned out, started questioning the worth of my work, didn’t like the answer I came to. My wife Tina, a cardiologist, was supportive when I decided to get my credential and teach for a fraction (and a small one, at that) of what I used to earn. Past tense. We get by on her salary. “You owe it to yourself to discover what you love,” she said as if the words were foreign, as if she were trying to convince herself. Last week at my cousin’s red egg and ginger party, when my parents and grandparents asked her how I was doing (because they never believe me when I say I’m fine), she told them that I was thinking of going back to banking. I’ve never mentioned that. Sometimes when you lie, you reveal your true desires, what’s underneath, like when the cups are shuffled and you inadvertently show the coin.

A class of fifty is a lot for one teacher to handle. This year the district gave me a partner. Her name is Ashley. She’s dark-haired, of some mysterious ethnicity. She’s two years out of college, all earnestness and enthusiasm. Her voice cracks and chirps like a broken wind instrument. She comes to school wearing pencil skirts, crisp collared blouses beneath cardigans, like she’s off to interview after class. That’s her generation, the millenials. They take it for granted that we slave to please invisible coin counters in glass towers, even as the streets crumble with neglect. Her generation, they’re practically born yuppies (at least that’s what we used to call them).

Ashley and I talk, text, coffee after class. We find moments during the school day to look into each other’s eyes like intimates. She loves children, feels very passionate about fighting to make their lives better despite the many obstacles our education system seems designed to raise. I tell her to never lose that passion, never give up, and she seems to react positively to that message. What I don’t mention is that I’ve always lacked that passion. In a few years, when she grows more comfortable with herself, when her passion is self-evident, Ashley will be a very beautiful woman. She and I are having what I call a microaffair. Her generation is appalled by adultery in a way I don’t remember being appalled by it, not that I’ve ever been ballsy enough to commit it. I’m pretty sure that if I were transported to the late-sixties, I’d vote enthusiastically for Nixon.

We’ve instructed the children to write a letter to the President. Oscar ignores the assignment, retrieves the Monopoly board from the game chest, and has begun coercing other kids to play. I stare at Ashley, who’s explaining the assignment to one of the girls. Just the thought of separating Ringleader from his latest show exhausts me. I wait for Ashley to catch my look. I help one of the girls, LaShaundra, because she’s generally docile. Meanwhile, I wait for Ashley to discipline Oscar. He’s already got four kids around him.

“LaShaundra,” I say. “Have you ever wanted to ask anything of the President?”

“My name is Karla.” She points across the room at one of the other bespectacled black girls. “She’s LaShaundra.”

I look at LaShaundra and then at Karla. The two look almost nothing alike. LaShaundra is light-skinned with curly tresses. Karla’s wearing cornrows.

“Write,” I tell her.

“Oscar!” I hear Ashley chirp. She scurries to the back of the room, where he is jumping up and down on the seat of his chair like he’s a Rich Uncle Pennybags on speed. I catch Ashley’s eye as she’s telling Oscar to sit down. I make an effort to look appreciative that she’s saved me, even though I had no intention to take any action. She smiles, like she enjoys helping me. The millenials are forever eager to help.

My eighty-five year-old grandmother calls my wife once a week to discuss their favorite topic: me. Why don’t I want to give them great-grandchildren? What is going on in that boy’s head? Why am I teaching? That’s a hopeless, poor person’s profession. Do something in life that has a chance to succeed. Let better, dumber people do the death march!

“I know, Grandma,” Tina says in Mandarin. “You’re right…Sounds stupid…Yes, we should be having children soon. We’re both so busy…Yes, I know adoption is not the real thing…We should be taking care of our own kids, not someone else’s.”

I’m lying on our chaise longue, reading, doing what I do best: nothing worthwhile.

Tina hangs up with a sigh. I smirk. “She’s at me again, huh?”

“She’s at us,” she corrects as she plops on the couch and begins fiddling with the remote to find a show to watch – no doubt one with larger houses and babies. “When you don’t do what they want, it reflects badly on me as a wife as well.”

Her snipe surprises me. More and more often, I realize that Tina is supportive in a way that suggests that support is a wifely box one checks. But when you withdraw money at the cash machine every week, and there’s half of what there used to be, checking the support box suddenly doesn’t seem so prudent. Tina’s always been a pleaser. As a Chinese guy, I’m supposed to find it charming that she speaks perfect Shanghai-nese, goes out of her way to pour tea for our elders at banquets, gets enthusiastic about extended family trips to the homeland, and basically wouldn’t mind if we move in with my parents after we have kids. When we got married, Tina did everything both families expected and more. She’s perfect for them. She loves serving others, and more importantly, she loves being told she’s great at serving others. For ten years, it was just the two of us, and we were great at serving each other. Now I’m just one of many family members she’s in service of, just like I’m one of many poorly paid, charred-to-a-husk teachers of kids who have no desire to learn what we have to teach.

I’m reading a book of depressing Richard Yates stories. The thought of turning another page makes me nauseous. The book almost puts itself down.

“Maybe I’m not turning out to be the man you married,” I say.

Tina runs a hand through her shiny hair and plays one of her shows. Another home renovation. Another nursery.

“You don’t even try to be,” she says.

“People in my generation don’t try to try,” I say, attempting to inject some levity into our conversation, the room, our lives. “It’s the journey.”

Tina rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, you don’t enjoy that either, do you?”

This afternoon’s playground time. Thank God. Randall, a guest science teacher, will demonstrate how to blow large bubbles using a tub of soapy water and twine. Outside, it’s sunny for the first time all summer, and Ashley and I prod the kids from the classroom to the playground in a sinuous single file. There’s a fence that runs three sides of the blacktop. A perfect corral for tomorrow’s animals. Once we get outside, Oscar begins a headlong sprint around the playground in circles, tagging the arms of people he wants to join his Olympic relay.

“Oscar!” I say sharply. But he pays me no mind. Soon, he’s got a train of kids doing laps. Ashley tries to block him, but Oscar just runs around her. Half the kids are whooping like they’re celebrating that their lives are officially going to turn out the way they want now that they’ve decided to follow Oscar’s goddamn train. I throw my hands up and exchange helpless looks with Ashley. Correction: I’m the one that looks helpless. She just looks determined. People her age love to look determined even though they’ve inherited an even less impressive tomorrow than they originally settled for. Randall, the old science guy, stands on the grass, grimacing behind his spectacles at the sun, dangling his impotent rope in the sud bucket. This guy has been a teacher for decades. How the hell has he not given up?

“Alright everyone!” he calls out. “Bubbles!”

Of course, just like that, Oscar leads his troops right to Randall’s bucket, and they sit cross-legged before Senor Science like they’ve discovered their deity.

Ashley sidles over to me with her hands on her hips.

“I think we’re losing them,” I say grimly.

Ashley examines me for a moment before smiling. “Are you okay? It’s a beautiful day out. All we have to do is keep them inside the fences. Randall’s got this today.”

I smile back. At Ashley, I have no trouble smiling. She’s pretty. Her teeth are perfect. She’s a product of miscegenation, which I suspect makes her genetically superior to me and consequently, mildly frightening. I don’t know what the deal is with her thirteen-year-old boy voice, but life is a puzzle. With the kids, I have to force smiles. I’m not sure I ever liked children. What made me think I’d like teaching? When I left banking, teaching seemed a way to do some good in the world. As a banker, all we were doing was trading handshakes with rich people. Anyone who wasn’t rich was irrelevant. The other bankers would joke, “What else are you going to do, teach?” Well, yeah. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! But now I realize my choice was the product of laziness. Reactionary. A conservative choice in a risky one’s clothing. One made to piss off my chief financial officer father. What a cliché! A weak one at that!

“You’re right,” I say. “How’s the roommate?” Ashley’s got a roommate who’s in a contentious relationship with a boy. Asking her about her roommate makes me feel young, hopeful and ignorant.

“Ugh, I’ve resorted to hanging out at the bar on the corner at night,” she says.

I have a series of brief and fond memories of when I used to hang out at corner bars at night. Faces of women flash before me inside dimly lit taverns, beyond rapidly emptying drinks. There seemed to be possibility at the bottom of every pint. I wonder what would happen if Ashley and I had a drink together tonight while Tina’s at the hospital. Would that violate the terms of our microaffair? You know what? Nothing would happen, because 1) I’m too old for the corner bars Ashley and her cohort frequent and 2) I’m too lazy to deal with Tina’s inevitable questions. Instead, I’ll choose the road with the widest berth. Stay home, read depressing fiction, and take occasional breaks to masturbate joylessly.

“Sounds like you’re doing the right thing,” I say.

“My friends say I should move out.”

“Yes, of course.” Unhappy? Do something about it! An option that rarely occurs to me. “Well, that’s another option.”

With his wands, Randall raises the twine from the bucket and slowly parts the loop while backpedaling, and a large, rainbow-tinted bubble rises and swoops through the air. The kids ooh and ahh and run after the globule. Though I see this experiment every year, even I have to confess to a certain sense of wonder at the bubble’s size and trajectory as Randall makes another smaller one and it bursts almost immediately. Why are some bubbles bigger than others? Why does one rise while others burst? Oscar the Future probably knows. In fact, he’s wandering behind the rest of the class, tugging on his goalie gloves like he’s about to start an imaginary World Cup match.

“I’m pretty fuzzy on my sciences,” I tell Ashley.

“So am I,” she says. She pulls out her phone, touches the screen a few times and finds a website with information about bubble-related science projects for schools. I’ve asked Tina for a smart phone for my last two birthdays. I’ve received flowers instead. “I read up on bubbles last night.”

“At the bar?”

“A bar can be a really good place to read,” she insists with a smirk. “Especially when you’re bored by the company.”

I almost say that, in that case, I should do my reading at corner bars instead of at home.

“Did you know that bubble skin is a thin layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules?” she asks.

I admit I had no idea. It’s amazing how little one needs to know to teach. I find myself identifying with the freeloading layer of water being carried along by molecules of soap.

Randall calls out for us. “Can one of you get that other bucket? We’ll show them how to merge bubbles.”

Ashley hops to action, trotting over to Randall. I feel suddenly lonely without my micromistress. I’m a married man. Ashley’s a goddamn baby. She’s too young to even be my friend on Facebook! I watch her make a large bubble. It rises to meet Randall’s, and together, they form a giant one that awes the children.

“You going to let her do you like that, man?” someone says. It’s Oscar. He’s standing next to me. His soccer gloves smell like feet.

I laugh. “Did you hear that line in a movie or something?”

“They’re making bubbles together,” he says. “Like they’re married.”

“I’m married,” I say. “She’s not.”

Oscar slapped me on the belly. “You’re not married.”

I’ve been gaining weight, and I’m chagrined at how the skin on my paunch ripples and shudders from Oscar’s slap. Now he’s softly smacking my belly with both hands like I’m a stuffed animal he’s beating.

“Hey, that’s enough,” I say with a smile, not wanting to be too harsh on Oscar the Future, but he persists.

“You’re not married,” he sings repeatedly, pivoting his head left and right while slapping my nascent fat man’s belly like we’re convivial frat brothers.

“Hey, Oscar, stop!” I say more loudly. Ashley and Randall are looking at me and I sense that both are wondering why I can’t discipline this squat kid, this ringleader, this eight year-old. This scene is reflecting poorly on me. On them as well. As I’m thinking this, Oscar runs away, making a beeline for the wide gap in the playground fence. He’s headed for the streets.

“Oscar!” I shout. To my disappointment, he doesn’t stop, and I realize that, despite the fact I haven’t engaged in any physical activity since I was a banker and had subsidized gym membership, I have to run after The Future.

“You’re not married!” Oscar yells as he runs.

I trundle after him, and after a few steps, I’m closer but already wheezing. My lower back feels like a sack of ball bearings.

“You can’t stop me!” Oscar the Future says. “I know better!”

“Come back here!” I say, suppressing a goddamnit. I grit my teeth, pick up speed, and I know I’m going to catch Oscar before he leaves the playground.

“You’re married to Ashley,” Oscar the Future says as I’m about to head him off.

I grab Oscar hard by both his smelly, gloved hands. “You think you’re better?” I shout. “You think it’s going to be so fucking easy for you? Well, it’s not! It’s not!”

Before I know it, Ashley is prying me away from Oscar and only then, do I see the boy’s frightened, reddened face. “What’s gotten into you?” Ashley asks. Out of breath, I look at her, and I see the pearls of sweat on her wrinkle-free brow. She’s been running after me all along, and she’s not even breathing hard.

“Oscar,” Ashley says with a voice that’s suddenly strong and unbroken. “Go back to Randall. Now.”

Oscar’s eyes are downcast. “Okay, Miss Ashley,” he says softly as he runs back to the group.

My partner escorts me to the classroom. My hands are clammy, I’m sweating profusely, my mouth tastes like room temperature milk. I know I’ve lost my job; I’ve made my choice. Tina will be pleased by my decision. Judging from the way Ashley’s keeping her distance as we enter the room of empty desks, I’m pretty sure our microaffair is over, if it ever existed. People in her generation know the rules, and are calloused by the shovel’s handle. When the rules are broken, do not hesitate to bury the rulebreakers, even if they’re your peers, your friends, your micromistresses.

Instead of sitting behind my desk, I choose a student’s desk. As I slide in the too-small chair, I sigh. I want to say many things to Ashley. I’ve lost my way. I can’t begin to tell you who I am anymore. You seem to know who you are, have it figured out. Can you help me?

“What happened?” she asks.

I shrug. “I should have let someone else do the death march.”

“That’s what you think we’re doing?”

“You’ll learn,” I say. “When you’re older.” I used to be a banker. They’ll always win. Without even trying. We lose. No matter how hard we try. Any little victory we enjoy only happens because the bankers let us win. Even Oscar the Future knows this.

Ashley offers me a piteous look. “I have to get back,” she says. “If I don’t get to say this later, I want to tell you that it’s been a pleasure.”

“Of course.” I stand and hold out my hand.

“Good luck.” Her voice chirps on the word “luck.” She pumps my hand. I feel something inside me warm, and the deck of my world cantilevers, and it feels like I’m backsliding down a steep hill. I try to pull her into my arms, but she wriggles away.

“Oh god, really?” she says. “You’re going to do this now?”

“I don’t get people your age,” I say. “I really don’t. All earnestness and repression.”

“What about your wife?”

Tina. Yes. Right. “This would definitely reflect badly on her as a wife,” I say.

Ashley laughs sardonically, and I can tell she’s hitting backspace on all the characteristics she thought I had. Composed, experienced teacher. Good husband. She’s ready to replace those words with others.

“You’re an old loser,” she says. “People like you are the reason we have so much to fix.”

“Grip the shovel, start digging,” I say, my voice a growl. “Show leadership, don’t give up.”

Ashley shakes her head and looks at me like I’m insane. She informs me that the principal will arrive momentarily. Like the rest of her generation, she thinks my problems are no one’s fault but my own.

Photo by Bart Boudreaux’s Photo on Picasa; used under a creative commons license

Cellstories will be republishing works of fiction and creative nonfiction from Is Greater Than two-three times a month. The first piece from our archives is Michael Zapata‘s stunning “The Night Sam Cooke Saved My Relationship with Marina Ojeda”. To read it on Cellstories, follow this link on your mobile device.

Also, if you’re in the Chicago area, be sure to check out the upcoming Joyland vs. Cellstories reading at Quimby’s Books on Tuesday, April 6 at 7pm. I’ll be reading a new short story, as will Joyland’s Brian Joseph Davis (no relation). For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

Thank you for the book you sent me for my birthday. I’ve never been much of a reader of plays, especially not those written by old white men. As I’ve told you before, I find their brand of insistent, self-inflicted suffering tough to swallow, but because I appreciate your gesture, I will not disparage the gift further.

You’ve mentioned in recent interviews that you are a “self-proclaimed futurist.” That my gratitude would appear to you in the form of a letter must seem quite obsolete to you. Written on this flat-world mash of dried cellulose pulp, rather than typed and sent via the now-hallowed institution of electronic mail (or worse, the social networking mechanisms your generation seems to worship). How “old-school” of me, to rely on the horse-and-buggy of our era, the Postal Service! What did you call me that time I visited you in college? A dinosaur?

Anyway, I am doing well up here in Portland – thank you for asking. I know how much it pains you to ask me anything. I choose not to leave the house much these days. Everything costs money and I don’t have a lot of income. I’m sorry to say, Leland, that you will get zero dollars and zero cents from me when I die. I assume this comes as no surprise to you, Mr. CEO of a Fancy Internet Company. I spend my days and nights reading and listening to 1960s rock-and-roll. Not the rock-and-roll you think of when you think of my era. You probably think of the blacks and the whites: Joplin, Hendrix, Dylan. Or the British Invasion: the Beatles and the Stones. Bet you didn’t know there were some very good Asian-American rock-and-roll bands coming out of the Chinatowns in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the sixties. Serious Lee, Lotus, Bong River X. I have no idea why more hasn’t been written about the Chong Rock Movement by our ethnic studies programs.

Now you’re rolling your eyes at me. You tire of me talking about how great we Asian-Americans are. When you were a child, you only wanted to be friends with the whites. You didn’t want to go to Chinese Saturday school. You listened to that white-tit-jiggling pop music you saw on television. In college, over my objections, you decided to study the literature of old white men. Last night, I read the play you sent me. Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne. Did you send it to me because I’m the closest version of a working class chap you know? Because you think I’m angry, like that Jimmy Porter? Because you think I’m from the same hippie-infested era you find obsolete? Maybe you’re right. I am angry. I often wonder whether I am a dinosaur. There are no teaching jobs up here, just like there were no teaching jobs in Spokane, just like there were no teaching jobs in Seattle, Eugene, and Boise. On my 70^th birthday, I had a microwaveable bowl of ramen noodles for dinner, alone.

I’m thinking about driving down to San Francisco for a visit. Would it be okay if I stayed with you for awhile? I feel that as I get older, I’d like to have some family around. You probably think this is very selfish of me, considering I abandoned your mother for another woman when you were in high school. But I’ll have you know that before she left me for that rich white poet faggot last year, Karen was the love of my life. I never did an adequate job of explaining to you why I left. I realized my mistake with your mother early on. I thought I could grit my teeth and get through it. For you. But I failed. Though my actions were not, my intentions were pure.

Perhaps you should come visit me in Portland. You’d like it here. Lots of your favorite white people. White mothers in particular. What I am about to say is not a judgment on you and your white wife and my half-white grandchildren, but I feel it is fair to note that there is a peculiar level of entitlement to the white mother, one that causes her to believe that the universe revolves around her. The other day, I was walking down by the Willamette River, doing my daily physical and mental exercises (tai chi, then a short game of chess with the black homo retiree at the park), when a white mother who was pushing a stroller, nearly ran over a homeless Chinese man. She apologized afterward, but with the white mother, only two things matter: herself and that expensive stroller.

On the topic of white mothers, I’m sorry I insisted on not attending your wedding because of your wife’s whiteness (and because, I think you would agree, she’s also a bit overweight). I’ve seen this phenomenon over and over again. Slim, sexually appealing minority men (you have my looks, son – you’re welcome) settling for beefy white women. I just don’t understand it, but I digress. The important point here is that I sincerely apologize for missing your wedding.

It is not without reservation that I plan to drive down to San Francisco to visit you. I’ve never liked San Francisco, with its rude people and expensive living. I don’t understand how you co-exist with all those yuppie whites. At least the people in Portland are somewhat down to earth. Even the dykes are friendly to you. They don’t give you attitude if you’re old or poor. In San Francisco, if you can’t afford to live there, you’re a fucking tourist. That’s the lifestyle. That’s the mantra. You have to be able to pay for your open-mindedness in that city. The fucking dykes treat you like you’re enjoying a privilege to look at the ugly tattoos on their flabby arms. If you ask me, the dykes just need a Chinese dick.

JUST KIDDING, SON! You probably don’t often hear these types of crude jokes in the genteel circles in which you run. You’re probably so offended that you’re about to crumple this flimsy letter and throw it in the trash. No, strike that! You’re probably about to delicately slide these pages into your fancy paper shredder, so evil these tree products have become. You’re so enlightened with your hybrid cars and your compostables trash bags. You look down on me. You think I’m a racist, a homophobe, a sexist. You don’t say that in your boring interviews about computer software and the World Wide Web and you’re probably afraid to say it to me directly, but I know what you think of me.

But you know what, Leland? I’ve grown softer in my old age. You’ll see. I’ve been thinking a lot about grandchildren. In the same way that many women have very specific visions about their weddings, I’ve recently realized that I have always expected to have lots and lots of grandchildren. You know what’s funny, though? Never imagined having children! You can’t exactly have one without the other! No one ever said visions were required to make sense.

On the topic of fairness, I feel it’s unfair that you hold my leaving your mother against me after all these years. I feel that when I come to stay at your place that we must hash this issue out once and for all. I don’t deserve your hatred, Leland. And you don’t deserve to have me out of your life. It is as painful for you as it is for me. The time for forgiveness is here and now.

I think about forgiveness every night before I go to sleep. As I watch the mound of bills I can’t afford to pay, as I count the number of days before I’m evicted. That’s right, Leland. You’re a smart kid. You understand what this letter has been about all along. If I don’t come to stay with you, I’ll be that homeless man getting run over by that stroller-driving mother. You see, I’m not that dinosaur in that silly play you sent me. Deep down, I’ll admit that I envy your success. I wish I had your money. Does that make you feel better? You remember this when you consider my forgiveness. You remember this when you consider the mistakes you’ve made (I don’t know what they are, but I know they exist). You remember this when you return this letter and give up your anger, son. Your dinosaur is coming to town.

Your father,

XXX

Photo by StuSeeger

This story originally appeared on Cellstories

Welcome to Value Added, a semi-monthly column named after one of the most despicable phrases in the English language. Expect capsule reviews of assorted culture I’ve been consuming, that is not necessarily timely, but is worthy of attention:

Podcast: Tank Riot
Hailing from “Tropical Madison, WI,” as they announce at the beginning of each show, Tank Riot is best described as a “geek podcast”, but without the self-satisfied smarminess that pervades many such podcasts. The three hosts are undoubtedly geeky, but have a wide array of interests: history, politics, film, technology, and yes, geek culture. Each episode focuses on a single topic or historical figure–think the History Channel as hosted by three drunk smart-asses from Madison. It’s consistently engaging stuff, and the hosts’ lack of guile is refreshing–even the prehistoric site design harkens back to a more idealistic vision of podcasting, one that was both entertaining and educational, before it was over-run by self-styled SEO experts and wannabe comedians. They’ve been at it for four years, so there’s a lot of gems in the archives, but I’d recommend starting with the Henry Kissinger, Rod Serling, or Nicola Tesla episodes. The affectionately skeptical series on conspiracy theories is a must-hear as well.

Book: Wormwood, Nevada
Though it’s being marketed as a science fiction novel, David Oppengaard’s second novel Wormwood, Nevada is more cosmically existential than fantastic. The story centers around Tyler and Anna Mayfield, a midwest couple whose newlywed glow is fading. They move to the small Nevada town of Wormwood and come face-to-face with the desolate state’s eccentric culture, from alien cultists to meth addicts. When a meteor crashes in town, the population scrambles for meaning, with some townspeople considering the meteor to be potential tourist bait, others as a sign of the end of the world. It’s a story of small-town Americana, loneliness, coming to terms with adulthood, and in a very broad sense, the inscruitability of the universe. While it’s clearly the work of a young author learning his voice, Oppegaard’s language is lyrical when called for, and the world is completely enveloping.

Movies: “For All Mankind”
This 1989 documentary of the moon landings is a refreshing counterpoint to the current documentary style, in which even PBS docs overuse gimmicks and quick cuts. There are no such gimmicks in “For All Mankind”: told entirely through stock footage and interview clips, there’s almost a zen-like quality to this collection of rarely-seen footage taken from the moon lander. There’s an affecting desolation to the the lingering footage of the moon’s surface (scored by an ambient Brian Eno soundtrack.) It would be hard to bankroll a languidly-paced documentary like this now, which is a shame–it’s meditative, beautiful work. It’s available to watch on streaming Netflix.

Music : Sleigh Bells
Described by a friend as the sound of a head exploding, blog-buzz band Sleigh Bells have hit upon one of the most unique sounds I’ve heard in a long time: alarm-siren guitars, lo-fi buzz, and blue-eyed R&B refrains compete for attention in the din, as if My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields had been tasked with remixing a Nelly Furtado single. It’s an delirious cacophony, forcing the listener to wonder where all that sounds are coming from. Remarkably, it’s only a duo, guitarist Derek Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss. The band has yet to release a full-length album. There’s no way of knowing whether the gimmick will hold up over an album, much less a career, but it’s rare and refreshing to hear something that sounds so exhilaratingly new.

WELCOME TO Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. My name is Mitch and I will be your server this morning.

For starters, can I get you anything to drink? We offer coffee, as well as four varieties of juices, as well as fine Pepsi-Cola products, as well as The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea.

What’s in The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea? My understanding is that it’s like regular iced tea, except with the added distinction of being imbued with the pioneer spirit of the inaugural moon landing, which I’m sure you’re aware captivated the minds and hearts of our entire nation in the summer of 1969.

How is iced tea imbued with the pioneer spirit of the inaugural moon landing? I believe it involves artificial flavorings, and also colorings, but I will have to check with my manager.

Okay, orange juice, then. A fine choice. Orange juice is what my ex-girlfriend Maxine liked to order. Maybe it is what she still likes to order. I have no way of knowing. She lives out East and hasn’t spoken to me in three years.

Yes, we can make sure there is no pulp in the orange juice.

I’ll have your drinks coming right up.

* * *

Welcome to Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. My name is Mitch and I will be your server this morning.

For starters, can I get you anything to drink?

Coffee-of course. Sensible. Pragmatic. What better way to get the coals burning, this early in the day? Oh sure, there will always be certain elements in the kitchen who will argue amphetamines, but these are men of tenuous moral fiber and limited discernment, men whose skillet-fried logic is not to be trusted. For my money, you can’t do any better than a good, hot cup of joe: rich and aromatic, strong and Spartan, Colombian, with sugar and/or creamer added per your preference.

I hope I’m not prying, but I can tell from the absence of fear or desperation in your drink orders that you are from out of town, and I wonder what brings you to our humble neck of the woods on this grey and barometrically unpromising morning? Just passing through. Of course, of course. Yes, I will be the first to tell you our town isn’t the ideal place to spend an afternoon, much less one’s life. We used to be known for our annual Elm Festival, but since the elms all died the festival’s sort of lost its luster. We also used to be California’s number one producer of novelty hats, but the factory closed down last April and now there are long lines of unemployed factory workers wearing beer-dispensing fedoras and remote control sombreros to protect their haggard faces from the sun. The tar pits are still there, fortunately, but unfortunately they tend to be cordoned off with police caution tape, what with the record numbers of unemployed novelty hat employees suicidally driving rented Hyundais into them. Maybe today they will be open to the public, however. One never knows. There are some brochures by the front entrance, in case you’re interested, next to the brochures for food stamps, and clinical depression, and the Hyundai rental agency.

I’ll have your coffees coming right up.

* * *

Hello, thank you for calling Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. How may I help you?

Oliver Clothesoff? You wish to know if Mr. Clothesoff is dining with us this morning? Well, let’s see-is Mr. Clothesoff about 5’7″, with a bum leg, and a facial tic, and a Stetson hat that converts decimals into fractions? No. Does Mr. Clothesoff have a receding hairline, and a skin disease, and a yellow-stained t-shirt that says, “My other ride is your Mom”? No. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe Mr. Clothesoff is here, unless of course he is one of the many slump-shouldered, willow-thin, sad-eyed octogenarians who gather in the back, by the jukebox, listening to scratchy, old-timey songs like “Tell Your Wife I’m Sorry” and “Too Lonesome to Slop the Hogs” as they stare out the window at the novelty hat-wearing indigents scouring the parking lot and surrounding environs greedily for edible weeds, animal carcasses, and spare change. Hmm. Doesn’t sound like him, does it? Well, if you leave me a number where I can reach you, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for Mr. Clothesoff, and if, by sweet serendipity, he should turn up at our restaurant, I shall corral him with great haste and inform him at once of your call.

Thank you. You are more than kind.

We value and treasure your call to Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House, and wish you a very pleasant day.

* * *

Hello, folks, here are your pulp-free orange juices. Fresh-squeezed, vitamin-rich, Floridian. No word as of yet on the pioneer spirit of the inaugural moon landing and its alleged pervasiveness throughout The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea, but rest assured that this matter is being dutifully investigated, as we speak, by Neil Armstrong’s franchise #287′s finest minds, and also the line cooks, so hopefully we should have an answer for you by the end of brunch.

Are you ready to order, or do you need some more time?

Excellent. Let’s start with the young lady. The Egg Sandwich of Tranquility, of course. An exquisite choice. And you, ma’am? The Buzz Aldrin Straight from the Griddle Combo. Would you like that with the bacon strips or the pork sausage links? The bacon strips. Certainly. A local treasure, ma’am, if I do say so myself. Like a little taste of pig heaven in every bite. And you sir, seated beneath the framed photo of Neil Armstrong riding A Horse With No Name to victory in the 1984 Belmont Stakes?

I’m sorry, but the One Small Step for Man Meal Deal has been discontinued. A matter unfortunately out of our hands. As in, mandated by Corporate. As in, lawyers arriving in the kitchen earlier this month with briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. My sincerest apologies. Perhaps you might enjoy the Cape Canaveral-Style Griddle Cakes instead? Note that they are described in our menu as being “an interstellar burst of fluffy, unforgettable flavor!”

No, sir, you are not mistaken. The One Small Step for Man Meal Deal is indeed clearly listed in the Historic Breakfasts section of our menu, alongside an eye-catching color photo of Mr. Armstrong himself enjoying said Meal Deal at Neil Armstrong’s franchise #173 in Sugar Land, Texas. But what is not clearly listed is the additional mandate from Corporate strictly prohibiting the printing of new, updated, factually accurate menus, in order to cut ink and paper costs. Which explains the Meal Deal’s rather misleading postmortem presence on the handsome laminated pages before you. So I can understand your confusion. I can understand your disappointment. I can understand why you doubtlessly consider our menu’s Historic Breakfasts section to be little more than a cruel albeit attractively illustrated page of lies. At the same time, however, until Corporate mandates candor, integrity, and truth, our hands are pretty much tied with bureaucratic red tape in regards to the whole Meal Deal issue, so Mr. A’s hearty laminated enjoyment of the now-defunct Deal alongside the gushing menu description of the Deal’s “savory sausage links, delicate buttermilk pancakes, ooey-gooey biscuits,” et al. is sadly going to have to be a lie we all must learn to swallow.

Note that the Griddle Cakes also come with a trio of eggs, as well as hash browns.

Why has the One Small Step for Man Meal Deal been discontinued? Why is anything discontinued? Why, for instance, are there no more Family Nights at the tar pits? Why do people no longer buy novelty hats? Why do our town’s birds no longer sing sweet, arresting melodies but instead fall mysteriously dead from telephone wires, power lines, and desiccated elms? Why, when I finish my shift and drag my syrup-stained self into the parking lot, am I no longer greeted by Maxine, waiting for me in her daddy’s long, grey Oldsmobile, honking her horn and waving frantically and flashing her devastating smile; but by repo men, collecting from our customers their cars, motorcycles, RVs, pants; by apocalyptic cults, urging me to repent and make tax-free donations; by the police, questioning me in regards to yet another regular customer’s Hyundai rental suicide; by the indigents, mumbling nonsense into their self-cleaning derbies, their coin-operated top hats, their Turkish fezes with the voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt emanating from somewhere near the tassels? Why, when my father wakes up in the morning, does he no longer exhibit even the slightest desire to live, so that my mother has to forcibly drag him from their bed, across the carpet, into the bathroom, into the shower, and blast him point-blank in the face with frigid water so he is mentally alert enough to accept and swallow the applesauce, mashed potatoes, and banana pudding she spoons with no small effort into his mouth; then towel him off and drag him from the shower onto the toilet so he can relieve himself with as little resulting porcelain and vinyl tile-splattering mess as possible; then wipe him, shave him, apply his deodorant, his cologne; administer his heart medication, his proton pump inhibitors, his multivitamins; clothe him, kiss him, gently tousle his hair; plead with him to snap out of it, shake it off, fight, persevere, soldier on; kiss him again, scream, cry, curse, beat against the wall, break down, give up, cry some more; then, with near-Herculean resolve, drag him across the puddle-littered vinyl, out of the bathroom, into the bedroom, and back to bed; so she can search for job openings on the internet, send out my father’s résumé, make email and phone inquiries, pound the pavement, follow leads, acquire contacts, wheel and deal, wine and dine, sweet-talk, inveigle, finagle; and, once the opportunity arises, remove the scarlet nail polish from her fingernails, remove her blush, her lipstick, her wedding ring, her jewelry, her eye shadow; scrub away any traces of designer knockoff perfume, tie her hair back into a ponytail, wrap her breasts in de-emphasizing bandages and her face with thick, non-prescription glasses; practice a firm handshake, an alpha-male gait, a deep, gravelly baritone modeled after the voice of veteran actor Jack Palance; pace back in forth in the upstairs hallway, curse, pray, cry, cry some more; and then don a man’s suit, a man’s shoes, a man’s cologne, a man’s watch, a Freudian synthetic beard purchased from a theatrical makeup supplier during its Fat Lady Has Sung Liquidation Sale; all so that she can assume my father’s identity for job interviews; in the hopes that when she finally is offered a position at a manufacturing plant or a PR firm or a defense contractor or a slaughterhouse or an adult video store or a wholesale mattress, linens, and taffeta outlet she will come home, show my father her copy of the required W-4 form with her expert forgery of my father’s signature at the bottom, beneath the indicated number of allowances, and he will rise from their bed, take my bearded, defeminized mother in his arms, and look at her once more with eyes that recognize, affectionately, this cross-dressing woman before him; this woman who now brushes his teeth for him; this woman who with synthetic hair and spirit gum becomes him; this woman who so beguilingly and effortlessly conquered him, one chance night, at Love or Heartbreak Karaoke, back in the heyday of novelty hats.

The Griddle Cakes. A fantastic alternative, sir. Thank you for your understanding.

I’ll get your orders to the kitchen lickety-split.

* * *

Hello, folks, here’s your coffee. Are you ready to order, or do you need some more time?

Wonderful. Let’s start with you, sir. Yes, the Neil Armstrong Classic. A marvelous choice, sir. You can’t go wrong with a classic. And you, ma’am? The Mission Control Special. With the fresh strawberries or the warm fruit compote and whipped topping? Ah, truly you are a woman to my heart.

If you don’t mind me asking, where are you folks headed after your brief sojourn in our fair town comes to an end? Down old Los Angeles way-of course, of course. Hollywood. Movie stars. Plastic surgeons. Tiny dogs. Yes, I’ve half a mind to go there myself one day, but as for the foreseeable future I’ve got my sights set on Assistant Manager here at Neil Armstrong’s, what with the previous Assistant Manager driving himself into the tar pits in a rented Hyundai Accent in the wee hours of Monday morning. Yes, I know, it’s very sad. This black patch on my spacesuit indicates I am still in mourning. But, admittedly, it does present certain opportunities for the rest of us, who have toiled in our pressurized spacesuits and spheroidal dome helmets and moon boots for many years without medical benefits, or salary incentives, or invitations to the Neil Armstrong’s Corporate Retreat in Plano, which I hear involves go-karting, and the limbo, and a well-stocked open bar. I realize this sounds insensitive. I realize it might rub people the wrong way. But, as the kitchen staff says, you have to break a few eggs, and beat them, and cook them at low to medium heat with onions, ham, bell peppers, mushrooms, diced tomatoes, and cheese to make an omelet.

Let’s see-I’ve worked here for six years now, since my junior year of high school. I know, I know. Even I have trouble believing it’s been that long. It seems like only yesterday I was still a busboy, clearing tables, cleaning the floor, straightening and dusting the framed photos of Neil Armstrong on the moon, in Apollo 11, jumping on an inflatable bounce house in Newark, New Jersey. Back then, my ex-girlfriend Maxine was still with me, and when my shift was over I could always count on her to be waiting for me in the parking lot, engine idling, music blasting from her open windows, the greatest soft rock hits of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s accompanied by her shrill laughter, her honking horn. Back then, before the factory shut down, before the One Small Step for Man Meal Deal was discontinued, before Maxine left me for a college classmate out East, I’d climb in her daddy’s Oldsmobile, which he called the Admiral, and which she called the Shark, and we’d gun it out of the parking lot with the Eagles or Dan Fogelberg or Captain and Tennille blaring from the speakers and drive to the tar pits, where the people of our town gathered to toss away their loose change and wish for brighter days. In those days, the tar pits were still a place of comfort, of hope, as advertised in the glossy brochures near our front entrance. People would park on nearby gravel, walk to the pits’ edge with cups full of pennies, nickels, and dimes, and feed the tar like one might feed ducks pieces of bread, the pit-feeders closing their eyes and wishing for winning lottery tickets, for big screen TVs, for renovated kitchens and four person spas. All sorts of folks came to the pits-young, old, well-off, poor, dentists and janitors and lawyers and ex-cons-and after they tossed their change and made their wishes they would spread blankets on the grass and eat picnic lunches: potato salad, cold cuts, cucumber sandwiches and ice cold lemonade. Maxine and I ate with them, feasting on Neil Armstrong leftovers compliments of my associates in the kitchen, and when our food was gone and our bellies were full we’d stroll down to the pits with the change from my tips and make our own wishes, closing our eyes, side by side, and throwing my gratuities into the tar. I don’t know what Maxine wished for-she would never tell me-but in those early days I remember asking the pits for A’s on my algebra tests, for the Giants to win the World Series, for Kurt Cobain to be resurrected, for some benevolent, deep-pocketed customer to leave me a thousand dollar tip. These wishes never came true, of course, but I was young, and hopeful, and so I kept tossing away my money, kept wishing. My first tar pit prayer to be answered-the only one, really-was the night I asked Maxine out, a beautiful starry night, when we were still just friends, and I threw away my entire day’s earnings-paper money and all-closing my eyes, entrusting my salary to the wind, wishing for Maxine to say yes. Later that night, in the back of the Shark, she did just that, again and again, and in the leather Oldsmobile interior my investment in the tar was repaid, many times over.

When our town grew sadder, and bleaker-mom-and-pops closing, Wal-Marts encroaching, novelty hat layoffs ensuring brisk business at the unemployment office-so, too, did the tar pits. People still came, but they no longer picnicked, instead tossing their currency and driving straight home, too anxious or despondent to enjoy French onion dip, carrot sticks, marmalade. They still brought cups, still threw coins, but now only pennies, or funny money-novelty coins bearing the face of Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger-nickels and dimes too valuable to waste, even-especially-on a wish. There had been Family Nights, parents bringing their children to cook s’mores and corn on the cob and beans and weenies over open fires at the edge of the tar, but the families stopped coming, kept home by second jobs and painful divorces and the opiate glow of television: American Litigators, Lewis and Clark: Miami, Who Can Drive the Fastest Backwards? Instead, the pits attracted loners, drifters, widows and widowers, wishing not for remodeled kitchens and big screen TVs but for a reversal of time: their jobs back, their wives back, their lives back.

When Maxine left for school I still visited the pits from time to time, but it wasn’t the same without her. I would take the pennies from my tips and toss them into the pitch, closing my eyes and wishing for Maxine to reappear at my side, but it didn’t feel like wishing anymore. It just felt like wasting money. Eventually, after the factory closed down, after our streets were swarmed by panhandlers and drunks and addicts wearing Panama hats that could play “Frère Jacques” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” in all twelve keys, the rest of the town reached this same realization-that wishing only made things worse-and stopped throwing away their money, started throwing away themselves. First there was the foreman from the novelty hat factory who ended a three-day meth binge with a fatal belly flop into the pits from an overlooking hill, a Christmas-caroling porkpie hat still snug on his head. Then there was his grieving wife, who hijacked the hearse during her husband’s funeral and drove him into the tar for the second time (and herself for the first, and last). Soon, like a dam of humanity bursting, there were more-young men who had lost their way, middle-aged men who had lost everything, old men who had nothing left to lose, leaping and diving and driving rented Hyundais into the pits-and the local news added a regular Suicide section to its evening broadcasts, in between Sports and the Weather. The anchors became experts at transitioning seamlessly from slam dunks and blocked field goals and wacky baseball bloopers to the self-destruction of human life, and then to warm fronts, cold fronts, five-day forecasts and barometric pressure. By this time, Maxine was long gone, had stopped answering my phone calls, stopped responding to my letters, and now when my shift at Neil Armstrong’s is done I walk outside to find no one waiting for me but the novelty hat-wearing homeless, circling me like buzzards and begging for whatever I can spare from my tips. The tar is surrounded by caution tape. The Shark rests on blocks on Maxine’s parents’ front lawn. My pennies remain in my hands, not going to the tar, not going to the homeless, not going to anyone, saved in Mason jars beneath my bed for when my wishes no longer feel like a waste.

I’ll get your orders to the kitchen lickety-split.

Lunch

WELCOME TO Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. My name is Mitch and I will be your server this afternoon.

For starters, can I get you anything to drink?

Water, of course. A shrewd choice. Especially in these times of economic turmoil. Why, just yesterday the economic turmoil was such that our air conditioning quit working and we discovered a family of four living in our ventilation system. They had been subsisting for several weeks on NutraSweet packets, lemon slices, and pancake batter, and had made bedding out of the insulation. Now, I don’t know about you, but in times like these I find it a great comfort to know that I can walk into any restaurant and be served a nice, cold, refreshing glass of water with not a penny in my pocket. I can quench my thirst, wet my whistle, satisfy my most basic biological needs with delicious fluoridated, chlorinated municipal water at no financial detriment to myself. Yes, it’s good to know that even amid our town’s complete economic collapse, in which parents attempt to sell their children on eBay, in which thieves steal wheelchairs from the elderly for the scrap metal, in which truck stop hookers add hidden fees and surcharges to even the most basic sexual acts to compensate for the rising cost of oil-based lubricant and latex, some things, thank God, will always be free.

Oh-bottled water. That will be $3.50, plus tax.

I’ll have your waters coming right up.

* * *

Hello, thank you for calling Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. How may I help you?

Amanda Hugandkiss? You wish to know if Ms. Hugandkiss is dining with us this afternoon? Well, let’s see-is Ms. Hugandkiss about fourteen years old and pregnant and prone to breaking out in tears while ordering three-cheese omelets? No. Does Ms. Hugandkiss wear garish makeup and see-through leggings and make frequent, unbecoming offers to restaurant patrons despite the sign on our front entrance that clearly says, “No Soliciting”? No. Maybe if you described Ms. Hugandkiss’s distinguishing characteristics I would better be able to assist you in your search for the woman in question. For starters, what color are her eyes? Brown. What sort of brown? For instance, my ex-girlfriend Maxine’s eyes were a warm brown, like milk chocolate, or expensive lacquer-finished wood. What sort of wood? I would posit walnut, or mahogany. The same brown one associates with unusually fertile soil-rich, earthy. The same brown that one imagines must have inspired Van Morrison to write “Brown Eyed Girl” in the months preceding the Summer of Love.

Just brown. Okay. How about her hair? Black. Maxine’s hair was also black, until she started dying it. She experimented with her hair often-both color and style-teasing it into updos, Afros, towering bouffants housing quail nests and Civil War dioramas: Antietam, Gettysburg, the March to the Sea. A simple bob-no, I don’t think Maxine ever had one of those. Oh, you mean Ms. Hugandkiss. Yes, of course. How about Ms. Hugandkiss’s skin? White. Maxine’s was brown, but not the brown of her eyes. It was dark instead of milk chocolate. It was ebony instead of walnut. Her teeth were white, though. Boy, were they ever. They were snow white, wedding white, the white you see on toothpaste commercials and promotional posters in dentist’s offices. It’s that white that sticks most firmly in my memory. Even now, whenever I get a tooth pulled, or a cavity filled, or a canal rooted, I stare at those posters as cold metal painfully probes my mouth and can’t help but think of Maxine.

But we’re not trying to find Maxine, are we? We’re trying to find Ms. Hugandkiss: eyes brown, skin white, hair black and bobbed. No, I don’t believe I see anyone like that in our restaurant. I am deeply sorry. I so wish that I could snap my fingers and say, “Yes, that’s her next to the framed portrait of Neil Armstrong competing in Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls,” and seconds later you would be able to hear Ms. Hugandkiss’s sweet voice replace mine on the telephone, but unfortunately I cannot. It is not within the scope of my abilities. However, if you leave me a number where I can reach you, perhaps she will turn up at a later time and I can notify you via the telephone, and you will hear Ms. Hugandkiss on the line, and all will again be right with the world.

Thank you. You are most accommodating. I wish you more than luck.

We value and treasure your call to Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House, and wish you a very pleasant day.

* * *

Welcome to Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. My name is Mitch and I will be your server this afternoon.

For starters, can I get you anything to drink?

How sweet is The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea? That is an excellent question. I would say that it is sweeter than unsweetened iced tea. It is sweeter than grapefruit juice, and blood, and a mouthful of dirt. But it is not as sweet as, say, a refreshing Pepsi-Cola product, or a dripping honeycomb, or the kiss of a lover who’s been chewing spearmint gum.

You’ve never kissed someone who’s been chewing spearmint gum? Why, that’s very unfortunate. You should try it as soon as possible!

You’re a priest. My apologies, Father. How very discourteous of me.

Let me then describe for you what it’s like.

My ex-girlfriend, Maxine, was a huge fan of a particular brand of spearmint gum called Professor Albert’s. Professor Albert’s was unique among gum brands in that it included short excerpts from master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in every pack. Often, when Maxine picked me up from Neil Armstrong’s, she would have just purchased a Professor Albert’s from Bergmann’s Pharmacy next door, and it became a ritual for us to open the packaging together and for Maxine to read the academic text out loud, into my ear, as the radio played a favorite soft rock hit of the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s and I ran my fingers along her skin, through her hair. I wish I could convey to you, Father, the anticipation I felt, the burning desire, as she whispered into my ear phrases like “optimal frequency displacement duration” and “extracellular matrix production in monolayers of invertebral disc cells” and “Lagrangian coherent structures and transport in two-dimensional incompressible flows with geophysical applications,” her voice low and sultry, her breath warm and fragrant, the sweet smell of spearmint wafting its way into my nostrils. No one could make bibliographic citations sound more erotic. No one could make the esoterics of academia sound sexier.

When the excerpt ended-usually mid-sentence-she would fall silent, for a long, long time, and the only sounds would be the Shark’s engine and the soft rock favorite and Maxine’s breath, warm and pulsating against my ear. Sometimes it would stay like this for an entire song, sometimes two-especially Back-to-Back Fridays, when the radio would play double helpings of The Eagles, Kansas, Elton John: “Desperado” and “Take it to the Limit,” “Tiny Dancer” and “Candle in the Wind.” And when she finally kissed me, Father, it-it’s hard to describe, but-you know how in the Bible, in the Old Testament, they refer to the Promised Land as the land of milk and honey? And, as we’ve all tasted milk, and we’ve all tasted honey, we’re aware that both, though certainly enjoyable, aren’t necessarily so earth-shattering, flavor-wise, to warrant inclusion as the Specials of the Day in Paradise? And yet, even still, we get the feeling that in the Promised Land milk transcends milk, honey transcends honey, so that after our forty years in the desert we expect to find scores of men and women in long, flowing white robes downing jugs of milk as if death-desperate with thirst, slathering their steaks and salads and latkes and lamb kebabs and faces and breasts and beards with honey, everyone emitting near-orgasmic moans of pleasure as their taste receptors are overwhelmed by stimuli more potent and electric and life-altering than we could ever begin to imagine. Well, kissing Maxine was like tasting the Promised Land. She was my milk, and my honey.

Father, I do not know what your experience with kissing was before you answered the sacred call of the cloth, but there are many different types of kisses, kissers, kissees. In films you have no doubt seen some examples-the light peck, the adolescent tongue joust, the passionate lip suction as buildings burn and aliens hover and meteors hurtle toward the Earth-but there are more, many more than Hollywood or television would lead us to believe exist. There are kisses that make you think about the past, and the future, and poetry, and soft rock, and Shakespeare. There are kisses that make you think about sex, and commitment, and philandery, and boredom, and love. There are kissers who make contracts with their lips, treaties with their tongue; kissees who accept or reject or bargain with teeth and suction and saliva. There are kisses that stop time, and pass it; preserve time, and dismantle it; abandon time, and restore it. There are kisses that make you think about neurochemistry. There are kisses that make you think about neoconservatism. There are kisses that make you think about the stock market.

Father, what I want to convey to you is not which category Maxine’s kisses fell into, because they fell into so many, but merely the fact that the sum total of all her kisses-the composite kiss, the three year accumulation of God knows how much saliva and spit and spearmint-still has the power, when recalled, to devastate me, to leave me completely incapacitated. Even now, if I accept a piece of gum from a coworker and realize too late it’s a Professor Albert’s, the memory of Maxine comes flooding back-every kiss, every soft rock favorite, every academic passage about flow cytometrics and organophosphorus acid anhydrolase and hypoxic/acidotic cardiomyocyte-and I can’t move, can’t speak, can only stand catatonically still in my pressurized spacesuit and wait for my paralysis to pass. And even when I come to, when I regain my speech, my composure, my motor functions, she still lingers, still haunts me, as long as the taste of Professor Albert’s spearmint lingers in my mouth-the taste of sweetness, and bitterness; of fondness, and regret; of milk laced with bovine growth hormone and honey artificially constructed by lab-coat wearing scientists, their bioengineered ambrosia bottled and sold in the gleaming Wal-Marts of the Promised Land at twenty percent off, with coupon, while supplies last. So when I say that Maxine’s kiss is sweeter than The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea, Father, know that it is, unquestionably it is, but also know that the aftertaste is far more bitter, and salty, and metallic, and sad.

No longer feeling like iced tea, then? Diet Pepsi. Of course. A shrewd choice. Delicious. Low-calorie. Carbonated. What more could anyone ask for?

A garnish of lemon. Of course.

I’ll have your drink coming right up.

* * *

Hello folks, here are your waters. Are you ready to order, or do you need some more time?

Wonderful. Let’s start with you, sir, in the booth seat. The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Memorial Cheese Steak, of course. A perennial favorite. And you, sir, next to the framed photo of Neil Armstrong playing Danny Zuko in a regional theater production of Grease. The same. Very good. Great minds think alike. Is there anything else I can get you?

The hostess’s phone number. I’m sorry, but that is not within the scope of my abilities. How about an appetizer instead? There is a special on the garlic bread, and both the Beer Battered O-Rings and the John Glenn Signature Cheese Sticks are exceptionally delicious.

You just want the hostess. I understand, but again, I cannot help you. The seven digits, plus area code, that you seek are sadly not in my possession. I am asked this question often, more often than you could ever imagine, and each time that I must inform my valued customers that I am unable to assist them, that, despite repeated attempts to obtain the phone numbers of the hostess, the dishwashers, the absolute fox from the Department of Health who inspects Neil Armstrong’s for code violations, I have been completely unsuccessful with my amorous inquests, it is with grave disappointment, with a dagger digging into my cold, black heart, that I let my customers down. That I fail to deliver on Neil Armstrong’s promise of 100% satisfaction, of unparalleled customer service. But, in my defense, know that my inability to relieve the fairer sex of their contact information is in no way a product of my disregard or contempt for my customers, but is rather the result of certain handicaps unfortunately inherent with employment at America’s fastest-growing space exploration-themed pancake house. For instance, my pressurized spacesuit is very inconvenient to clean, and so I often reek of weeks-old syrup and pancake batter. Also, due to staffing shortages I often have to work both the afternoon and the night shift, and so by 3 or 4 a.m. my mental acuity is so reduced that any flirtation with the dishwashers is inevitably conducted in monosyllabic, Neanderthal grunts. I do not know what methods you employ in pursuit of romantic connection, but I would posit that if you found yourself in my weighted, low gravity-compensating shoes you would discover that your available options for approaching the opposite sex would be severely limited. Your come-hither stares would be ignored, your furtive glances would go unacknowledged, your surefire pickup lines would fall flat. You could try every trick in the book, pull out all the stops-shower her with compliments, lavish her with roses, memorize the Romantics, utilize a wingman, fabricate a personal tragedy, borrow an adorable dog, achieve Swarzeneggerian musculature, pretend to be an orphan, pretend to be Italian, pretend to be French, read self-improvement manuals, romantic comedy screenplays, articles in men’s magazines with cover headings such as “Is Your Girlfriend Hot Enough?” and “101 Great Moments in Fellatio” and “How to Turn Her ‘No’ Into a ‘Yes!’”-but sooner or later you would learn what I have learned, as, presumably, has Neil Armstrong, judging from the framed photo showing him loitering alone and in full astronaut attire by the punch bowls at a NASA Alumni spring dance. Which is this: Engaging in the delicate art of seduction in a pressurized spacesuit, spheroidal dome helmet, and moon boots is about as viable as traveling through outer space in an Oldsmobile.

Yes, I will admit, my dating life has become rather barren. As of late, it’s gotten so bad that I’ve become a nearly nightly regular of the Surgeon General’s Bar and Grill. The Surgeon General’s is where our town’s most desperate and lonesome singles go to inhale secondhand smoke and guzzle overpriced beer and seek out sexual entanglement as a jukebox plays public service announcements about diabetes, exposed power lines, throat cancer. There are cigarette warning labels on the walls, and a floor-to-ceiling Hippocratic staff in the back, on which gaunt-looking strippers named after antidepressants dance. The waitresses and bargirls wear skimpy, cutoff hospital scrubs, and the many wall-mounted televisions broadcast live operating room footage of biopsies, vasectomies, colonoscopies, breast implantation. Everyone is too drunk and despondent to speak, and so we instead joylessly and artlessly make eye contact and hold up complimentary placards with pre-printed pickup lines: “Come here often?” “What’s your sign?” “If you were aspirin I would take you every four to six hours.”

Understand that none of us ever dreamed we’d end up here, night after night, reflexively raising and lowering our placards like bolo tie-wearing Texans at a cattle auction, but the other available options are even worse. There are the Russian mail-order brides, who have lived in an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken down by the river ever since their unsatisfied husbands attempted to return them via the US Mail, bound with packing tape and swathed with commemorative stamps. There is GarageSaleOfLove.com, in which enterprising and loveless venders offer dinette sets and futons and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass records in exchange for dates, or kisses, or a single conciliatory embrace. There are the truck stop hookers, who, in these tough economic times, are forced to entice customers with clearance sales, holiday giveaways, contests and raffles for free hand jobs, blow jobs, flavored prophylactics. And then, of course, there’s plain old loneliness: microwave dinner for one, calendar blank, cell phone silent, television broadcasting America’s Sexiest Data Entry Specialists with the sound off as the radio plays favorite soft rock hits of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s-”Summer Breeze,” “The Air That I Breathe,” “My Heart Will Go On.”

I’ll get your orders to the kitchen lickety-split.

* * *

Hello, Father, here is your Diet Pepsi with a garnish of lemon. Are you ready to order, or do you need some more time?

The Mama Armstrong’s World Famous Pigs in a Blanket. Of course. With the hash browns, Father? Good man. A side order you will not regret.

Is there anything else I can get you?

You wish to know about the indigent in the parking lot sorrowfully staring at you through the floor-to-ceiling window. Of course. His name is Bill. Once a coworker of my father’s. Now, like my father: unhinged, unfit, unemployed. You are currently occupying his once-favorite seat.

Bill’s story goes something like this.

Back in the good old days, when there was still Family Night at the tar pits, Bill belonged to that rare and anthropologically fascinating sub-subspecies of Homo sapiens sapiens known as the Neil Armstrong’s Regular. A creature known chiefly for its habitat of Formica tables and vinyl-covered booths and its specialized omnivorous diet of pancakes, sausage links, maple syrup, and scrambled eggs. Bill, whose job at the novelty hat factory involved applying propellers to thousands of remote control sombreros idling lazily by on a conveyor belt, had been a Neil Armstrong’s Regular ever since a rough patch of heavy drinking landed him in AA in the early Oughts, his nightly twelve-step meetings taking place in the basement of a full-service bait and tackle shop called Teach a Man to Fish located in the strip mall across the street from our restaurant. This same basement, it’s worth mentioning, also was and still is used by AA’s compulsion-busting cousins SA-Sexaholics Anonymous-and NA-Narcotics Anonymous. It’s no secret to anyone in town that a healthy percentage of our Regulars are either fishing enthusiasts or are recovering alcoholics, sex fiends, or heroin addicts.

So, Bill was a recovering alcoholic, and a Regular, and ate dinner at Neil Armstrong’s every weekday evening at precisely six o’clock. This gave him a good hour and forty-five minutes to decompress from assembly line monotony in Neil Armstrong’s syrup-scented interior until he had to walk across the street to make his 8 p.m. AA meeting beneath Teach a Man to Fish. Because so many of our Regulars were struggling with addiction-”One day at a time,” they’d often say after ordering their waters, their refreshing Pepsi-Cola products, “God grant me the serenity . . .”-our Regulars tended to be rather obsessive-compulsive with their dining habits, replacing their chemical lust for alcohol or opiates or orgasms with an equally intense but less socially stigmatized addiction to buttermilk pancakes, pork sausage links; warm, ooey-gooey biscuits. There was, for instance, Pascal, a former dopehead who always ordered the Mission Control Special with the warm fruit compote and whipped topping, every time, without fail, plus with the special instructions that the whipped topping be applied in seven discrete white dots resembling the named stars of the constellation Ursa Minor. There was Debra, a four months sober alcoholic who always ordered The Eagle Has Landed Ice Tea without the pioneer spirit of the inaugural moon landing and the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Memorial Cheese Steak without the cheese. There was Treat, a recovering sex maniac who always ordered the Cape Canaveral-Style Griddle Cakes with a side salad containing extra cucumbers but no carrots or chopped egg or romaine lettuce or baby corn, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, religious and federally observed holidays not exempt.

And then, there was Bill.

Bill’s substitute addiction, unlike those of his Neil Armstrong’s pancake and maple syrup-craving co-addicts, was not, at its root, culinary. Rather, it involved seating arrangements. Every workday, at twelve noon, during Bill’s lunch break, he would call our hostess, Patsy, and request that his favorite booth be reserved for six o’clock sharp. We don’t take reservations at Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House, never have, but there was certainly no use in telling this to Bill. Just as Bill’s brothers and sisters in AA and NA and SA attempted to maintain twelve-step homeostasis and quell their respective self-destructive urges via the familiar tang of Neil Armstrong’s fresh-squeezed orange juice, the familiar fluffiness of our buttermilk pancakes, the familiar patriotic/caffeinated buzz of The Eagle Has Landed Iced Tea, Bill sought refuge from his own dipsomaniacal demons in the familiar comforts of his favorite vinyl-covered corner booth. The same booth, Father, in which you now enjoy your ice-cold Diet Pepsi, with a garnish of lemon. Bill would make his lunch break phone call, work the rest of his shift, punch out, go home, get changed, and show up at Neil’s at six o’clock sharp; and if the booth-his booth-was occupied: Ho boy. Trouble. To his credit, he wouldn’t make a big scene or anything. He wouldn’t harangue Patsy at her hostess’s podium, wouldn’t rant and rave, wouldn’t utter that dreaded contempt-coated phrase: I’d like to speak to your manager. But he would wander the restaurant interior, zombie-like, and make small children cry as he lingered dead-eyed and sallow-faced by their restaurant-provided high chairs. He would inadvertently collide with Neil Armstrong’s servers and send bottomless coffee spilling all over their impossible-to-clean chalk-white pressurized suits. He would stagger violently into paying customers’ Formica tables while attempting to study the framed photos of Neil Armstrong with Nixon, Warhol, Cassavetes, and Sartre, and cause the Neil Armstrong Classic or the One Small Step for Man Meal Deal or the Mission Control Special with warm fruit compote and whipped topping to careen onto some recovering wino’s or fishing enthusiast’s or hardcore sex animal’s or methadone clinic outpatient’s lap. So-Patsy took Bill’s reservations. She wrote herself a note on a sticky yellow Post-It and place-saved Bill’s booth with life-size cardboard cutouts of the crew of Apollo 11 every weekday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., just to be safe. For one and a half hours the mute, immobile, corrugated, two-dimensional crew of Apollo 11 held court in Bill’s booth, delighting small children, unwittingly posing for family photo ops, staring off into the distance in disparate directions heroically, patriotically, and unblinkingly; and then at six o’clock sharp Bill strolled into Neil Armstrong’s with a smile-Hiya Patsy, what’s new?-and Patsy gave the servers the signal to remove the cardboard Neil, Buzz, and Michael Collins from Bill’s booth and then showed Bill to his seat-Right this way, Mr. Bill-and Bill politely ordered his food, ate without incident, and left his server a generous twenty-five to thirty percent tip. No wandering. No collisions. No former heroin addicts or boozehounds or sex fiends with maple syrup all over their laps. No harm. No foul. No crying children. Everybody won.

Then, the factory shut down.

I remember the last day of its operation distinctly. My father, coming home, exhaling deeply, collapsing onto the couch and not getting up. My mother, returning from her shift at Shave ‘n Save, dog-tired, oblivious, slapping at my father’s back-”Goddammit Walt, you’re lying on the remote!” I worked the late shift at Neil Armstrong’s that day and I saw men weeping into piles of golden buttermilk pancakes. I saw women, some visibly pregnant, tear at their clothes, gnash their teeth, rub hash browns all over their skin. I saw long lines of laid-off novelty hat employees congregating outside the Surgeon General’s, across the street, next door to Teach a Man to Fish, accepting free samples of prescription medication from sexy pharmaceutical reps in leather corsets and fishnet stockings who dispensed their complimentary pain-dulling pills beneath a flickering marquee announcing the “GlaxoSmithKline All-Nude Revue” in all-business sans-serif font. And I saw Bill, asleep, in his favorite booth, where he remained, peaceful and unconscious, well into the wee hours of the morning.

After the factory closed down, the mood in Neil Armstrong’s was funereal. Some female customers wore mourning veils; others solemnly gripped the stems of white lilies; almost everyone, male and female, wore black. Bill, no longer occupied with eight hours a day of assembly line work, dutifully outfitting remote control sombreros (Maximum cruising altitude of 75 feet!) with rotary propellers, spent most of his waking hours, plus many of his non-waking ones, at Neil Armstrong’s, in his favorite booth, drowning his sorrows in maple syrup and heavy country-style gravy.

“God grant me the serenity . . .” he said, tearfully, to the cardboard crew of Apollo 11 sharing his seat in solidarity.

The jukebox played “Dust in the Wind,” “Waiting ‘Round to Die,” assorted Hungarian dirges.

“Easy does it,” said Bill. “First things first. There’s no gain without pain. One day at a time.”

Soon, the Regulars started relapsing. Our dishwashers and busboys would take out the trash and find our AWOL valued customers, in flagrante delicto, out back, drunk or high or fornicating in our commercial dumpster. It is my opinion, Father, that one does not truly understand the crippling power of addiction until he sees a once upstanding and universally admired member of the community-a Boy Scoutmaster, for example, or a volunteer fire marshal, or the conductor of the local youth orchestra-passed out, in an alcoholic stupor, on a bed of rancid syrup and maggot-infested pancake batter. Until he sees a former three-time All-Conference offensive lineman once known countywide as “The Immovable Beast” sprawled in an opiate haze amid expired bacon, ancient dill pickles, congealed coleslaw; until he sees a TV weatherman and a Russian mail-order bride-cum-”full service masseuse” making uncomfortable, desperate, syrup-coated love on a dense mound of discarded sausage, their expressions pleasureless and grim. At this time we also discovered, in our dumpsters, and in our streets, and on our median strips, and in our waterways: untold thousands of novelty hats. Disgruntled former employees breaking into the factory late at night and escaping with novelty hats by the sackful; raging recession victims and shareholders burning oscillating homburgs, Name That Tune mortarboards, and AM/FM trilbies in a large bonfire in front of the local Wells Fargo bank; turbulent Santa Ana-style winds carrying the surviving merchandise all across our depressed, despondent, dead elm-riddled town. For the most part everyone suffered-shopkeepers lost their customers, real estate agents were unable to sell new homes, professional clowns performed at children’s birthday parties and were paid only in surplus cake icing-but the news channels, of course, had a never-ending field day. Plucky gel-haired reporters on location in boarded-up, hat-littered downtown, intoning solemnly about our town’s desolation and depravity and swirling funnel clouds of glow-in-the-dark fedoras. News anchors in crisp suits and tight-fitting sweaters and cleavage-revealing blouses nodding their heads empathically: “And now to Stu, for suicides and the weather.” Civic leaders appealed to the local government for assistance, but it did little good. Marches and rallies were staged with spotty attendance. Buttons and bumper stickers were passed out, then found minutes later tossed onto the curb. The mayor’s office did institute one protestor-appeasing program-a city beautification project wherein church and youth and other volunteer groups were to collect the surplus street-littering hats and deposit them in various Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul drop-off boxes located throughout our town-but after it was discovered that a colony of drug-addicted indigents were using said drop-off boxes for intravenous injections and shelter, and a growing subset of the truck stop hookers were using the boxes to clandestinely and gratuitously pursue their commercial interests, the project was scrapped, the drop-off boxes were abandoned, and our streets and sidewalks and lawns remained covered in polyester, suede, leather, and felt.

And yet through all of this-the layoffs, the outrage, the helplessness, the littering, the frustration, the growing number of ex-Regulars boozing and screwing and shooting up in St. Vincent de Paul drop-off boxes and in our restaurant’s solid waste-Bill kept coming into Neil Armstrong’s. Despite the economic hardship and the count-on-one-hand crowds at AA meetings and the neon temptations of the Surgeon General’s flickering Miller Lite and Heineken and Budweiser: King of Beers window display signs, Bill kept sitting in his beloved seat, kept devouring pancakes and pork sausage links, kept spilling his sorrows to cardboard Neil and Buzz, kept saying No to the seductions of the bottle.

My father, meanwhile, remained on our living room couch. Sleeping all day, moaning low in the night, befouling his underclothes and the upholstery unless my mother stood watch diligently with the bedpan. At first my mother was heartbreakingly tender and understanding and acquiescent. She gently tousled my father’s unwashed hair, empted the bedpan’s contents without complaint, spoke to my father only in the most hushed, loving, and non-combative of tones.

“Whenever you feel ready to discuss this, Walt, honey, dear, I’ll be right here, on the BarcaLounger, you need only to say the word  . . .”

But even the most devoted and giving and selfless of spouses has her limit. Even the kindest and truest of hearts can only take so much. My mother’s heart, for instance, could not quite take my father’s lifeless, unseemly, ripe-smelling husk remaining on our living room couch during her own parents’ announced-at-the-last-minute Easter visit from Tacoma, Washington. Could not quite take the inevitable concerned parental lines of questioning once she explained that my father would not be able to attend Easter mass, would not be able to help decorate brightly dyed hard-boiled eggs, would not be able to shake her parents’ hands or respond to external stimuli or bathe, clothe, shave, feed, or hygienically relieve himself, due to his being gripped by catatonia ever since losing his job ensuring the quality control of novelty hats. And so, after a particularly exhausting and emotionally taxing and syrup-splattering shift at Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House, I had to help my five foot nothing, 100-pound former ballerina mother carry my ex-middle-linebacker father up the precarious uncarpeted stairs to the master bedroom. The bedroom where he has remained ever since, minus brief interludes in the nearby bathroom for periodic upkeep and maintenance. To cover for my father’s conspicuous absence during my maternal grandparents’ Good Friday through Easter Monday visit, my mother said that my father was away on vacation, out East, touring the most well-tended and photogenic gravesites of the Union’s and the Confederacy’s Civil War dead. She explained that Easter season was a particularly appealing time of year for historical graveyard tourism, due to pleasant weather and festive holiday hotel discounts and the profusion of nearby large-scale reenactments of famous battles such as Shiloh and Chickamauga and the Wilderness, and explained away my father’s faintly audible low moaning by chalking it up to either the wind, residential traffic, or our home’s antiquated heating and ventilation system. There is no doubt that enduring my grandparents’ ill-timed Easter visit with a secretly deranged and motionless and incontinent husband hidden away in her bedroom was very hard on my mother. No doubt that for the entirety of her elderly parents’ four-day, three-night stay my mother’s mind and body were on Terror Alert Level Red: Severe Threat of Nervous Breakdown or Anxiety/Panic Attack. But, to her immense credit, she remained strong. She valiantly weathered our pastor’s wirelessly amplified Easter sermon on God’s Love Shining Radiantly Upon Us Even As Our Loved Ones Lose Their Livelihoods and Succumb to Vice and Propel Themselves in Rented Hyundais Into the Tar Pits. She bravely kept it together during the Prayer of Thanks at post-Mass brunch, the pastel revelry of at-home Easter egg consumption, the grandfather-suggested familial viewing of Ben-Hur on DVD with subtitles in simplified Chinese that my mother didn’t even bother trying to turn off. But, again, there is only so much a tender and true heart can take. When Easter Monday came, and my mother dropped her kiss-blowing parents off at Sacramento International, and she returned home to me finishing off the Easter vodka straight from the bottle on the now-available living room couch and to her catatonic husband still in the master bedroom, in bed, staring at the ceiling, not blinking, moaning low-she lost it. My mother screaming. Kicking. Flailing. Cursing. Taking the Lord’s name repeatedly and effusively in vain. The vodka hadn’t yet kicked in so I was thankfully able to dodge the chocolate rabbit and baby chick heads flying at me as my mother judo-chopped the leftover Easter candy. I was able to ferry the most irreplaceable of our family heirlooms and the most expensive of our audio/visual equipment to the safety of the downstairs bathroom, where I locked myself in until the sounds of living room smashing and clattering and screaming ceased. Of course, when they did finally cease, I was quite drunk. My first clue that I was quite drunk was when I tried to exit the bathroom, unsuccessfully, for ten minutes, and then realized I had been accidentally flushing the toilet instead of turning the door handle. My second clue that I was quite drunk was when I finally did turn the door handle, and open the door, and exit the bathroom; and I abruptly fell flat on my face.

One of the first things I noticed, after impact, from my worm’s-eye view prostrate on the hardwood floor, was that there was Easter chocolate everywhere. On the windows. On the bookshelves. On the family portraits. On the blinds. In some places the shards of shattered chocolate were anatomically discernable: ears on the couch, beaks on the BarcaLounger, cottontails on the coffee table, wings on the fake Persian rug. But in other places, the confectionary remains were unrecognizable. Discolorations on the floorboards. Abstract expressionism on the walls. Rorschach blots on the radiator, the curtains, the ceiling. Ugly, brown, fecal-looking smears on the Hardy Boys series, the collected works of Danielle Steel, all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

“It’s okay,” said my mother, calm, collected, resting on the chocolate-covered couch. “We can get through this. People have gotten through worse. Compare this to Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Stalingrad. Compare this to Bataan, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Darfur. See, really this is nothing. This is small potatoes. Bush league. Kids’ stuff. Compare this to Sarajevo. Compare this to Gaza, Fallujah, Rwanda, the Trail of Tears. What history tells us is that people can survive anything. That people are resilient. That people always find a way. Compare this to Kashmir. Compare this to Dachau, Terezinstadt, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. The key is to remember that things could be far, far worse. The key is to maintain a proper perspective.”

The alcohol now coursing through my bloodstream had made up fifty percent of the Easter vodka I had earlier consumed on the living room couch, before my mother started performing jujitsu on chocolate baby chicks and semi-sweet Easter bunnies. This meant that the vodka was 100-proof, at least as labeled in the United States. The clinical term for the effect the alcohol had on my eyesight was diplopia, double vision, which caused my mother to divide into two identical mothers, side by side, phasing in and out of convergence, both mothers with the same out-of-fashion clothes, the same out-of-fashion hairstyle, the same out-of-fashion facial expression of tenderness, resilience, and love. I tried to ocularly consolidate my two mothers into one, attempted unification, as with post-Berlin-Wall East and West Germany; but the vodka in my veins wouldn’t let me. I also attempted verticality, tried to raise myself several inches off the hardwood floor; but the vodka wouldn’t let me do that, either.

“What it comes down to is a choice,” said my mothers, both of them, one voice from two identical mouths. “In Column A, we have things like despair, anxiety, frustration. We have self-pity. We have surrender. We have helplessness, anger, depression, fear. And then we have Column B. Strength. Persistence. Courage and hope. Resolve, fortitude, tenacity. Love. This isn’t mix and match. It’s not build-your-own-burger; it’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s either all of one, or all of the other. Column A or Column B. Which do we choose? What do we decide? How do we live? Personally, I think the choice is really quite clear.”

The vodka was Polish. In our household it was used only for special occasions, such as holidays, birthdays, and surprise outcomes of major sporting events. I’m not actually a big vodka drinker, am more of a whiskey man, maybe the occasional rum and coke, but as the years go by and my need for therapeutic intoxication grows my palette becomes less and less discerning. For instance these days I mostly pound Miller Lite at the Surgeon General’s. Inelegant, yes, I know, Father. Vulgar. Unsophisticated. Plebeian. But, you want to know something? It still does the trick.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” said my mother. “From now on, every day, every night, we are going to let your father know that we love him, no matter what. Even if he’s like this for weeks. Even if he’s like this for months, years, decades. Forever. It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. The important thing is that he is your father, and my husband; and he is here; and he is loved.

“I admit that at first it will not be easy. It’s not going to be Happy Days. It’s not going to be Leave It To Beaver. But we’ve got to do our best. We’ve got to try. Column B. We’ve got to fight. Maybe we’ll have to do without some luxuries, until your father gets back on his feet. Cable. High speed internet. Netflix. Dining out. Daily showers. But don’t let it get you down. Don’t make your father think we are disappointed in him. That he is blamed; that he is at fault. Maybe we’ll have to sell some of the furniture. This couch might fetch more than you think. The coffee table, the BarcaLounger, the cabinets, the bureaus, our beds. EBay is a wonderful resource, for people in our situation. There is no reason he even has to know, until he’s fully recovered. It’s not like we’ll be dragging him downstairs any time soon. Plus, remember: the TV, the 5.1 surround system, the furniture-they’re all just things. Objects. Inorganic. Easily replaceable. The dining table might get us sixty or seventy. The liquor cabinet might get us forty-five.

“So maybe we’ll have to sell the house. Maybe we won’t be able to find any buyers, and the bank will foreclose, and we’ll have to move in with my parents in Tacoma. So be it. It’s not like Tacoma’s Trench Town. It’s not like Tacoma’s Kabul, Mogadishu, Port-au-Prince, Brazzaville, Tehran. Mount Rainier, for instance, is lovely. Vancouver is an easy day trip, and Seattle is only a thirty to forty minute drive. Of course, Tacoma itself is not without its own special charms. As far as accommodations, your father and I can sleep in my childhood room, which I’m pretty sure is now used for storing your grandmother’s antique push broom collection, and more likely than not your grandpa can clear out some space for you in the laundry room, or his study. It won’t be so hard to get used to the tighter living arrangements. It won’t be so hard to get used to NPR, the Home Shopping Network, C-SPAN, the Golf Channel. Compare Tacoma to Chiapas. Compare Tacoma to Siberia. It won’t be so hard to get used to bland home-cooked meals rich in fiber. It won’t be so hard to get used to the constant rains.

“See, there’s no other choice, really. We’re going to have to buck up. We’re going to have to steel ourselves. We’re going to have to grin and bear it. The key is to tell your father that we love him, every day, as often and as assertively as we can. It might not seem like he can hear us, but he can hear us. I know it. I’m sure of it. Let him know it’s OK, what he’s doing, that his catatonia is understandable. That it’s perfectly reasonable. That it’s par for the course. But also let him know, gently, that we want him back. We want him laughing again. Smiling. Talking. Singing along to the Eagles and Donna Summer and Huey Lewis and the News on the car radio. So maybe we’ll have to sell the radio. Maybe we’ll have to sell the car. Maybe he won’t be able to find another factory job, and will have to work minimum wage at KafkaBurger, or help me out over at the Shave ‘n Save, or sell bottled water and bootleg DVDs and perishable goods near busy intersections, possibly while wearing a sandwich board urging motorists to apply for adjustable interest rate loans. So what? Let him know it’s OK. Let him know it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he comes back. Let him know we just want him back.”

Three months later Bill maxed out his credit card. I was the one who swiped it. The one who read the digitized verdict-Declined. The one who bore Bill the bad news. Bill had not even been trying to find a new job, had instead been spending all day, every day, at Neil Armstrong’s, in his favorite booth, enjoying hearty portions of chicken fried steak and ooey-gooey biscuits as his relapsed AA mates wandered our parking lot-mumbling, twitching, begging, broke-and now it was finally time for Bill to face the music. The jukebox played “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” by Stevie Wonder. After that was “The Tears of a Clown.” I tried to return Bill’s credit card to him but he just kept shaking his head and saying he didn’t understand, so I explained his financial predicament, as best I could, using table salt and NutraSweet packets as visual aids. Table salt representing his credit card debt. NutraSweet packets representing his paychecks from applying propellers to novelty hats. Outside, the parking lot indigents fought desperately over the half-pecked-apart carcass of a squirrel, and inside I shook salt onto Bill’s Formica table until there was a Mount Rainier-like NaCl mound, ever growing, excess salt spilling onto the seats, the floor, the cardboard cutouts of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin. Patsy gamely kept supplying me with more shakers. The mound grew and grew and grew. The salt overflow reached Bill’s side of the table, a snow of sodium flavor enhancement all over Bill’s polyester pants, and Bill became incredibly distraught. “What about the NutraSweet?” he said, quaveringly, wiping his crystalline credit card debt off of his slacks. I took the artificial sweetener packets and ripped them in half.

Bill buried his head in his hands and wept.

After further inquiries, it soon became clear that Bill was what Neil Armstrong’s employee handbook refers to as a “non-paying guest.” Someone with no cash in his wallet, no money in his bank account, no more available lines of credit-a non-customer, a trespasser, a leech. As per Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House company policy, I informed Bill that due to his inability to pay for his meal he would need to vacate our restaurant’s premises immediately. My exact wording-right out of the employee handbook-was: “On behalf of all of us at Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House, I’m going to have to ask you to enjoy the rest of your day outside the boundaries of our commercially zoned property.” But Bill wouldn’t budge. He bunkered down in his booth. He ignored my repeated verbal instructions, wrapped his legs around the Formica table’s pedestal base, and gripped a bottle of Heinz ketchup as if it were a talisman, a ward against fifty-seven varieties of evil. He brandished a salad fork. He begged me to let him stay.

“Please,” he said. “I won’t order any more food. I won’t ask you for a thing, won’t get in the way, won’t cost you a dime. I’ll be practically invisible. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Please. Just let me stay in the booth.”

The employee handbook has a chapter entitled “The Customer Is Not Always Right.” It outlines the proper protocol for when a customer becomes verbally abusive, enters the restaurant belligerently drunk, utilizes ketchup and syrup bottles as deadly missiles, shoots indiscriminately at fellow patrons and Neil Armstrong’s staff with an illegally modified assault rifle, etc. There are helpful illustrated figures, and also charts and graphs. The protocol for when a non-paying guest refuses to voluntarily exit the restaurant is to assertively but non-combatively repeat verbal instructions for said guest to leave and to immediately notify the manager of the situation, in the event that more serious and law-enforcement-involving remedial steps need to be undertaken. As was expected of me, I repeated the appropriate verbal instructions. I spoke assertively and non-combatively. I immediately notified the manager of the situation. My response was a shining beacon of adherence to company protocol.

“I can wash the windows for you,” said Bill, undeterred, relinquishing the talismanic ketchup bottle and grasping my pressurized glove. “I can sweep the floors, empty the trash, refill the saltshakers, apply spackle, caulk, grout. I can file I-9 forms and vendors’ invoices. I can play soothing classical guitar sonatas and administer post-shift Swedish massages. I can change light bulbs, inspect for faulty wiring, perform routine maintenance on electrical equipment. I can wax. I can polish. I can buff. I can scrub the toilets in the men’s restroom to a blinding porcelain shine.”

I felt sorry for Bill. Who wouldn’t? A good man, dealt a lousy hand. But protocol is protocol. No pay, no stay. The employee handbook could not be more clear. And yes, Father, I know that the Bible tells us to treat the less fortunate with compassion. Blessed are the poor, the meek shall inherit the earth, the hungry will be filled, etc. etc. But the employee handbook tells us that non-paying guests may not perform unpaid labor in exchange for meals or shelter. It tells us to thank all employment applicants for their interest, then direct them to the nearest restaurant exit with both firmness and tact. The employee handbook tells us nothing about the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure of heart, those persecuted for seeking righteousness. It tells us to make sure our company spacesuits are always sufficiently pressurized. It tells us the customer (“See ‘The Customer Is Not Always Right,’ pp. 147-193, for exceptions”) is always right.

“I can forage for food in the parking lot,” continued Bill, relentlessly. “I can drink rainwater. I can hunt squirrels, chipmunks, deer, feral cats, dogs. I can eliminate any possibility of a rodent infestation. I can make clothing from the skins of my kills. Just let me stay. Please. Let me stay in the booth.”

Certainly, Father, in a perfect world I would have said, “Sure.” I would have said, “Absolutely, not a problem, okey-doke, why not?” But look outside, Father. Do you see a perfect world? Does a perfect world contain, for instance, Russian mail-order brides covered head to toe in postage stamps? Does a perfect world contain truck stop hookers stoking the flames of barrel fires with surplus novelty hats? Does a perfect world contain parking lots littered with empty liquor bottles and used needles and condoms and hundreds of unwanted financial advice-dispensing sombreros and toothless indigents fighting vociferously over raw squirrel they are physically unable to even chew? I would posit the answer is: Nope. So, instead, I informed Bill that per company policy the booth was for customers only. In retrospect, this is what really set Bill off.

“But I am a customer!” he cried, tightening his grip on my glove. “For over three months now, every day-breakfast, lunch, and dinner-I am a customer! For breakfast I order the Neil Armstrong Classic. For lunch I order the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Memorial Cheese Steak. For dinner I order the Mission Control Special. I order multiple beverages. I order soups, salads, extra sides. I order appetizers. I elect to try dessert. How am I not a customer?”

As per company protocol, I remained assertive. I remained assertive, but non-combative. I politely reminded Bill of his outstanding total, which did not include the gratuity, and asked him how he would like to pay-cash or credit? Bill started twitching, and frothing at the mouth. His face grew strawberry red. His ranting did not cease.

“And before that, for three years, every weekday, six o’clock sharp, I am here. Always a full entrée. Always a soft drink. Always a twenty-five to thirty percent tip. Three years, in this same booth-what more do I have to do? Tell me. Enlighten me. Do I have to drink an entire bottle of maple syrup? Do I have to shower, daily, in pancake batter? Do I have to dress like Jane Fonda in Barbarella and orally service the manager in his office during slow hours? What do I have to do? What more do you want? Tell me.”

I told Bill we accepted Visa. I told him we accepted MasterCard. Eurocard. American Express.

“Please,” he said. “I’m not too proud to beg you. I’m not too proud to plead for mercy. I’m not too proud to get down on my hands and knees and grovel before you, clutch your pressurized uniform, bow my head in supplication, weep and wail, cover myself with ashes, wear a sackcloth, gnash my teeth.”

I told him we accepted Discover. I reminded him Novus was the same thing as Discover.

“Please,” he repeated. “I am a customer.” His hand, still clutching my glove, was shaking now. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I am a customer. I am a customer. I am a customer. I am a customer.”

“Diners Club,” I told him. “Traveler’s checks. Debit bank cards. Cash.”

The jukebox played “For What It’s Worth.”

The indigents in the parking lot captured a live cocker spaniel.

Bill’s hand shook like a half-broken washing machine.

“This booth is all I have.”

Eventually, with assistance from the local authorities, we were able to extract Bill from our restaurant and ensure that any attempts at reentry would result in the filing of criminal charges carrying the penalty of imprisonment and/or heavy fines. Not my proudest moment, certainly, but 100% by the book, in terms of Neil Armstrong’s company policy. At the same time, of course, I could appreciate and understand why Bill was so reluctant to leave the familiar comforts of his beloved corner booth. Why he bit the ear of our manager. Why he clawed at the faces of police. Why he kicked and thrashed and spit and chewed to avoid losing the last source of constancy and stability he had left. I never threatened police with a salad fork, never bit anyone’s ear, but I did, for instance, walk to the tar pits every day, after work, for a year, and throw away my loose change, wishing for Maxine to speak to me again. I did keep Maxine’s pictures taped to my bedroom walls, for months after she had left me, until finally replacing her photos and sketches and etchings with posters of attractive lingerie-clad women with whom I had no emotional connection; women whom I had never spoken to, whom I had never met. I did-and do-sometimes walk over to Maxine’s parents’ house, late at night, and jimmy open the door of the Shark so I can sit in the passenger’s seat, close my eyes, and relive the old days:  Professor Albert’s spearmint fragrant in the leather interior; soft rock favorites of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s on the AM/FM radio; Maxine’s hands all over me-my chest, my shoulders, my thighs, my hair, my face, my scars, the places no one else has ever touched. But the Shark no longer actually smells like spearmint. I don’t have the key, so the radio is dead. Maxine’s hands are out East, running through somebody else’s hair, caressing somebody else’s face, tracing somebody else’s spine, exploring somebody else’s scars. And Bill is outside, as we speak, staring at you enjoying your refreshing Pepsi-Cola product in his favorite booth.

I’ll get your order to the kitchen lickety-split.

Dinner

WELCOME TO Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. My name is Mitch and I will be your server this evening.

For starters, can I get you anything to drink?

Diet Coke-no, I’m sorry, but Neil Armstrong’s only sells fine Pepsi-Cola products. Might I suggest a Diet Pepsi, or regular Pepsi, or Diet Pepsi’s closely related, ginseng-infused cousin, Diet Pepsi Max?

No. You want a Diet Coke.

Of course, I understand completely. You crave Diet Coke’s sweet tang, its cola bite. Its absence from our menu unsettles you, confuses you, frightens you. Long ago convinced of Coca-Cola’s superiority by ad saturation, by product placement, by anthropomorphic, cola-swilling bears, you find yourself in enemy territory, on unfamiliar ground, the logos garish, the slogans all wrong, the caramel coloring just a shade off. You are a stranger in a stranger in a strange land. You grasp blindly for the familiar. You curse the heavens, excoriate the saints, wonder aloud what kind of God would ever allow us to carry fine Pepsi-Cola products instead of your beloved, hallowed brand of choice.

But here’s the thing.

When Neil Armstrong’s started franchising its restaurants in the late ’70s, the brainchild of the same Dallas entrepreneur who had won the licensing rights for the Neil Armstrong Four-in-One Machine Lathe and the Neil Armstrong Practa-Matic Cordless Drill, Neil and the Board of Directors knew they were sitting on a gold mine. They struck a sweetheart deal with NASA for pressurized spacesuits. They explored synergistic tie-ins with ABC’s popular sitcom Mork & Mindy. They partnered with Dallas-Ft. Worth’s school districts to spread Neil Armstrong’s message of the importance of science education and delicious buttermilk pancakes to children. When it came time to ink a multi-million dollar beverage supply agreement, Neil Armstrong’s invited representatives from both Coca-Cola and Pepsi to visit the Pancake House’s handsome corporate office in Plano and make their sales pitches, and both soft drink giants sent their best men: young, tireless, driven, unconditionally dedicated to their companies. The men perfected Texas drawls on the flight to the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. They arrived in Plano wearing expensive designer cowboy boots and company logo-emblazoned Stetson hats. The men gave their spiels, cited their figures, displayed their pie charts, dot plots, bar graphs, and Neil and the directors listened expressionlessly, hands folded, cufflinks gleaming, as their water glasses were refilled by attractive secretaries wearing skirts made of Space Age materials. When the pitches were finished-the Coke and Pepsi men’s closing arguments alluding to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Yellow Rose of Texas, the Battle of the Alamo-the Chairman of the Board, a giant of a man, stood up from his seat next to spacesuit-wearing Neil Armstrong and addressed the soft drink men in his thick, trademark Texas twang.

“How bad yew want it?” he said. “How bad yew sonsabitches want it?”

The Coke and Pepsi men, both summa cum laude from Yale, indicated that they wanted the supply deal very badly. They presented flowcharts illustrating their passion, box-and-whisker plots corroborating their desire. But the Chairman of the Board was not appeased. He explained, in his colorful East Texan accent, that if they truly wanted the supply deal, if their desire was as strong as their flowcharts and bar graphs claimed, they would prove it to him.

“Yew boys married?” he said, and the Coke and Pepsi men said yes, they were.

“Happily married?” said the Chairman, eyebrow raised, and the beverage reps again answered in the affirmative.

The Chairman then made his offer: whoever was willing to call his wife, that moment, on the boardroom phone, and tell her he never loved her, would get the deal.

The Coke man was incredulous. Horrified. Stunned. “Surely you must be joking?” he said, but no one laughed. The directors remained expressionless. The Chairman narrowed his eyes. Neil Armstrong spit a wad of chewing tobacco onto the carpet. The Coke man took a step back, surveyed the bolo tie-wearing directors and the spacesuited Neil Armstrong with bewilderment and disgust, and shook his head.

“You’re crazy,” he said. “You’re all crazy.”

But the Pepsi man took a step forward. “Give me the phone,” he said, and the Chairman obliged.

The Pepsi man reached his young wife, Daisy, at their home in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Chairman pressed the speakerphone button, and the Board of Directors heard Daisy squeal with delight. “Why honey pie!” she said. “What a pleasant surprise!” The Pepsi man’s wife’s voice was sweet and musical, even when distorted by the speakerphone. The Board of Directors heard her tell her husband how lonesome she was for him, how she pined for him, how she counted down the hours until his return. “Howd’ya like Plano?” she said. “Are they feedin’ ya good? Is your hotel real nice? What’s Neil Armstrong really like?”

The Pepsi man, Daisy’s husband, ignored her.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “Remember that night beneath the bleachers of your old high school, when the moon was full, and the cottonwoods were shedding their seeds in the wind, and the air was electric with anticipation as I took you by the hand, and gazed deeply into your eyes, and told you, for the first time, that I loved you?”

“Why of course, sugar cakes,” said his wife, dripping sweetness over the phone line. “How could I forget?”

“Well, I was lying,” said the Pepsi man, matter-of-factly. “I didn’t love you, and I never have.”

The Pepsi man told his wife that he had married her for her family’s money. He said that their passionate, months-long courtship had been nothing but a calculated, cold-blooded charade. He said that he cherished the moments when he was not near her-the long hours at work, the business trips, the charity events for the American Heart Association and the March of Dimes-jumping at any excuse to rid himself of her, to extricate himself from their sham of a union. He said that he cheated on her. He said that he betrayed her darkest secrets to all his friends. He said that when he made love to her, when he kissed her, when he delicately stroked her hair and caressed her naked body with his fingers, his lips, his tongue, he imagined she was someone else-a lingerie model, a Hollywood actress, one of the chambermaids he routinely screwed in his hotel room on business trips-and it was only through artifice, through fantasy, that he was able to make physical intimacy with her bearable. On the speakerphone, the Board of Directors heard his young wife scream. They heard her scream, No, again and again and again. The Pepsi man continued, alphabetically listed his infidelities, detailed the depths of his deception, but all anyone could hear were his wife’s screams, saturating the phone line, exploding from the speaker. The directors kept their hands folded. Neil Armstrong chewed his chaw. The secretaries refilled glasses of water. The Pepsi man hung up the phone, the line went dead, and the Chairman extended his hand.

“Congrat’lations,” he said, and in this way the matter was settled.

So-Diet Pepsi, then? Wonderful. I knew you’d come around.

I’ll have your drink coming right up.

* * *

Hello, Father. Welcome back to Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House. Can I start you off with something to drink?

A Diet Pepsi. Of course. Ever popular tonight. Is there anything else I can get you?

You wish to know about the man who is weeping alone in the adjacent booth. Of course. He is a regular here, known to us all. As you will notice, there are two plates of the Neil Armstrong Signature Sampler on his table, one in front of him, and one in front of an empty seat. He and his wife used to eat here every Sunday evening, always ordering the Sampler, but she passed away last month from cervical cancer, and now he orders for himself and her ghost. The most curious thing, though, Father, is that he’s as happy as a clam when he comes in. He strolls to the booth, hums along to the jukebox, sits down, then orders for himself and his wife in a pleasant, singsong voice. “My wife’s running late,” he explains. “I expect she’ll arrive any minute.” As he waits for his food, he remains in high spirits. He jokes with the hostess. He makes faces at small children. He sings along with the songs he knows on the jukebox: golden oldies, Motown, anything by Sinatra. But then the food arrives-two identical platters of deep fried shrimp, golden brown chicken, and juicy, tender steak set down on his table-and he loses it. It finally hits him. He knocks over the saltshaker. He spills his beverage in his lap. He sobs into his entrée, his soup, his side of baked potato, onion rings, fries, or hash browns. The first time I felt bad for him and told him the meals were on me, had the total deducted from my paycheck, but then it happened the following week, and the week after that, and after a while his personal tragedy lost its emotional impact. It lost its novelty. It became just as sad as anything else, fading into the background, like the novelty hat-wearing indigents in the parking lot, like the Russian mail-order brides being returned to the post office across the street, like the framed photos of Neil Armstrong cradling the bodies of dead Sudanese children, tears streaming from Neil’s eyes. Now I let the man pay for both meals. He tips well. I help him stagger to the restroom, and then to his car, when it is time for him to go home.

Father, assuming that you never partook in the pleasures of the flesh prior to your ordination in the church, I would posit that it’s difficult for you to fully grasp what it’s like to lose someone who you’ve been intimate with. Someone whose head has left its imprint on your pillow, whose body has communed with your own, whose contours and topography are known to you the way mountain ranges and river basins are known to cartographers. Maxine is not dead, we were never married, but I feel like I understand, to some degree, the plight of the man in the adjacent booth. I understand his loneliness. I understand his confusion, his sadness, his denial. I understand why he can enter smiling and exit weeping: deep-fried shrimp, golden chicken, and USDA choice beef catalysts for incapacitating, heartrending misery. I understand the difficulty of facing that full plate served to an empty seat.

When Maxine left for college, out East, on scholarship, we were still quote-unquote “together.” The quintessential 21^st century long-distance relationship: multi-stamp packages, emoticon-laden instant messages, meticulously constructed mix CDs, exorbitant phone bills that greedily devoured my tips. The plan, as I saw it, was that by the time Maxine graduated with her bachelor’s in English literature I would already be well-established as a nose-to-the-grindstone, eyes-to-the-stars Assistant Manager at Neil Armstrong’s, well on my way up the company corporate ladder, so that as soon as Maxine found a job in some major metropolitan area, doing whatever it is people with degrees in English literature do, I could get transferred to the nearest Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House franchise and Maxine and I could find a cheap but attractive one bedroom apartment in a respectable part of town and local birds would sing arresting melodies at the first light of sunrise and life would be blissful and sweet. Certainly, in retrospect, the plan had its holes. Certainly, it contained a very real potential for disappointment and disaster. But at the time I wasn’t overly concerned with calculating my plan’s statistical probability of failure. At the time I wasn’t in the habit of performing cost-reward analysis on my dreams. Back then, in the Era of Good Feelings, in the silver years of novelty hats, I was unabashedly optimistic. Before the St. Vincent de Paul boxes became brothels and the Hyundai rentals became fossils, I was starry-eyed, fresh-faced, brimming with innocence and hope. Back then, as I accompanied Maxine to the airport, as I held her hand tenderly to the security line, as I tearfully watched her recede from me on an ascending escalator carrying her steadily, cruelly, and diagonally away, I was convinced, unwaveringly, completely, that love-like the love promised by the songs on Maxine’s impeccably sequenced mix CDs-would keep us together. That love would conquer all. That love would find a way.

Shows you what Yes, Lionel Richie, and Captain and Tennille know about love.

In the beginning, to their credit, Captain and Tennille et al. weren’t too far off, in terms of their advocacy of love’s adhesive properties. Long-distance love wasn’t perfect, but it seemed to beat the alternative. It seemed to beat breaking up. Maxine and I would talk on the phone daily, in the conversational windows between my shifts and her classes, and as we discussed the eccentrics in her dormitory, the eccentrics in my pancake house, the minutiae and punctilios and trivial pursuits of our lives now spent three thousand miles apart, I would close my eyes, listen to Maxine’s modulated, melodious voice, and imagine her lying beside me. My bedroom fragrant with Professor Albert’s spearmint. My mattress conforming to familiar contours. My body heated by Maxine’s radiated warmth. We talked, often for hours, Maxine describing the lifestyles of the rich and undergraduate, me describing the lifestyles of the wearers and manufacturers of novelty hats, and, for a while, at least, the sound of Maxine’s voice was enough to compensate for the conspicuousness of her corporeal absence. The parking lot, Shark-less, when I got off of work. The tar pits, eerily quiet, where I now made my one-cent wishes alone. This was the tail end of the Era of Good Feelings, when, despite my loneliness, my anxiety, my transcontinental separation from the English Lit major I loved, I was still able to conceive of Maxine and I as being essentially together, as opposed to apart-together thus meant in only the most spiritual and romantic and cosmic sense, rather than the more physical togetherness Maxine and I were accustomed to back in the silver years of novelty hats. Fingers clasped together in school hallways, supermarket aisles, back rows of movie theaters, recreationally zoned property. Lips pressed together in bedrooms, darkrooms, the geographic center of downtown, for all to see. Legs wrapped together beneath blankets, beneath the stars, on mattresses, futons, love seats, invasive California grass, backseat leather or vinyl. Bodies joined together in rapture, in ecstasy, in love-all these meanings, once in wide lexicographical use, now sadly archaic, obscure, dated, obsolete.

For a while, we tried phone sex. Please forgive me, Father, by the way, if I get too graphic for you. Feel free to stop me at any time. It is certainly not my intention to offend, embarrass, or titillate you. I keep forgetting you are a man of the cloth.

So, as I was saying, we tried phone sex . . .

Oh, and one more thing, before I continue. Quick question for you. Pop quiz. A theological conundrum that’s recently been on my mind. More specifically, has been on my mind ever since hearing a particularly soul-shattering sob story from one of the toothless indigents in the parking lot, concerning an old coworker of his and my father’s who used to install and maintain the incredibly powerful industrial saw blades used at the now-defunct novelty hat factory. So-are you ready, Father? Are you willing to put your dogmatic proficiency to the test and give this little moral quandary your best shot? OK. Here goes: According to Catholic doctrine, to the best of your knowledge, in the eyes of the Lord, post-Vatican II-is phone sex considered a sin?

Right. Of course. Sure, Father, I hear you.

But now consider the following situation.

A married couple. Married before God and family and invited guests in the Catholic Church. The couple, by pretty much anyone’s estimation, are model Catholics. They’re in the pews every Sunday; they’re tithing ten percent; they’re doing Ave Marias and Our Fathers and Glory Bes in checkout lines and during lunch breaks and after step aerobics and on public transportation. In their free time, the couple volunteer at halfway houses and soup kitchens. They donate canned goods to the victims of meteorological tragedies and sing “Holy Holy Holy” and “Salve Regina” and “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” in flowing white robes in the church choir. They abide by all ten out of ten commandments; they believe in one God and in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; and they engage in sexual intercourse only in the Church-sanctioned orifices and only with each other and always without the sinful conception-preventing aid of prophylactics. They know the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. They think Mel Gibson is misunderstood. Basically, they’re your prototypical un-canonized, suburban, working-class saints.

But then, there is an accident. Again, in the interest of not getting too graphic, Father, I’ll spare you the details, but, in short: an industrial saw blade is involved, as is lots of blood, as is a rather atypical variety of amputation, and the end result is that the male member of the couple is no longer anatomically capable of conceiving children. So, now, under Church doctrine, any sexual contact between the husband and his beloved, faithful, unbelievably supportive and comforting and understanding wife is automatically a sin. Why? Because, due to the accident, any sexual act the couple commits cannot possibly result in the creation of new life. Therefore: sin. Meaning confessions will need to be made. Meaning prayers of forgiveness will need to be offered. Meaning an extra Lincoln or Hamilton or Jackson will need to be stuffed in the collection basket, just to be safe. Well, obviously, both the husband and the wife are not too happy about this. Clearly, even after saying a few dozen Our Fathers and Ave Marias and Glory Bes and asking the Lord for guidance and grace, they find themselves in somewhat of a theological pickle. The husband and his wife are both very much still in love with each other, very much still crazy about one another-this despite the stress of the accident, the resulting emotional trauma, the remnant scars and pain and unsightly mutilation and disfigurement-but they are now severely limited in their options of physically expressing said crazy, mutilation-surviving love. Kissing is just not enough. Holding hands, tender caresses; warm, cocoon-like embraces-nice, but still: not enough. But now consider this. The husband and wife call each other up on the phone. Your standard AT&T plan, Verizon plan, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile, etc. They call each other up on the phone, in separate rooms of the house, and describe, in graphic detail, making passionate, primal, uninhibited love. They recount insertions, penetrations, frictions, lubrications. They elucidate positions, angles, engorgements, thrusts. They narrate the movement of their hands, fluttering hungrily over one another’s naked skin; of their tongues, licking and flicking each other’s nipples, navels, thighs; of their legs, kicking and dancing and bracing with each rhythmic pelvic beat, their ecstasy crescendoing to forte to fortissimo to fortississimo to fortissississimo (Italian for f-ing loud, Father), and then-just as their detailed and breathless play-by-play reaches its febrile, high-decibel, orgasmic peak-they dictate conception. The husband’s sperm, released at last, swimming millions-strong in an ovarian sea. The wife’s eggs, lying in wait, each one urging: Pick me, pick me, pick me. Over the phone the husband and wife depict fertilization, the formation of a zygote, mitosis; they describe the division of cells, the formation of a soul, the creation of human life; they are moved to tears, their skin shines with a bright, post-coital glow, they verbalize the most profound expression possible of their undying, devout, heterosexual love. But, again, no life has actually been created. Their hot-and-heavy depictions of engorgements, thrusts, strokes, eruptions, etc. have all been, essentially, for naught. So, Father, I now ask you-in this particular instance, with the model Catholic couple, with the husband debilitated by his horrifying and humiliating and manhood-compromising accident and his wife struggling desperately to reassure her husband that she still wants him and still needs him and still loves him just as much as she ever did before the factory machinery took from him what can never be returned-phone sex: is it a sin?

OK. That does seem to be the consensus, among all you boys in black.

So, anyway, Maxine and I tried phone sex, but it didn’t really work as I had hoped. For one thing, it was always way more ridiculous than erotic, as Maxine tended to adopt foreign accents, use the names of Republican U.S. senators as genital euphemisms, tell me how badly she wanted me in the voice of Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, Groucho Marx. Now don’t get me wrong-I loved Maxine’s sense of humor. I loved to hear her laugh, loved to see her face light up like a 5-year-old’s at Christmas, loved to see her white teeth shining like polished chrome inside her expansive, ear-to-ear smile. But sometimes a guy just wants his long-distance girlfriend to talk dirty to him without referring to his genitalia as “Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN).” Sometimes a guy wants his girlfriend to send him erotic instant messages without asking, “What’s the emoticon for ‘Oh, God, unh huh’ or ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah’ or ‘Ooh, baby, faster, harder’?” So, instead, I had to resort to solitary fantasy. Lying in bed, late at night, alone, imagining Maxine and me intertwined in the backseat of her daddy’s Shark. Every night, before falling asleep, after an endless day of “How may I help you?” and “Are you ready to order?” and “Would you like the fresh strawberries or the warm fruit compote with whipped topping?” I would curl up beneath my sheets, close my eyes, and conjure: the radio still on, tuned to everybody’s soft rock favorites. The smell and taste of spearmint. The goose bumps of denuded skin. The pliability of upholstered leather. I still remembered-still remember-our first time like it was yesterday. Both of us nervous. Both of us fumbling, trembling, self-conscious, artless, woefully unproficient in the necessary physical maneuvers. And yet, even still: our first time is perfect. Maxine’s body, circus-contorted in the cramped Oldsmobile interior. Her voice, strained and staccato, emitting pleasured moans, purrs, gasps. The windows fog up and the radio plays “Stuck in the Middle With You” and the upholstered leather rhythmically squeaks at a faster and faster BPM-house to trance to hardcore to grindcore to gabber (electronic music genres, Father-envision glow sticks and/or DJs with headphones on one ear and/or recreational drug use)-and then, all too soon-it’s over. And yet not over. Maxine, still draped on top of me, smelling sweetly of spearmint. The radio, still on, cash register sound effects indicating: a commercial break. This is mostly what I think of, in bed, alone, at night; this is where my mind mostly lingers. The calm after the storm. The stillness. The silence. The catching of breath. The perfect circles, traced faintly on each other’s skin. The audible heartbeats. The soft rock favorites. Maxine’s hair-previously perfectly coiffed-wild, untamed, distressed. Her diaphragm expanding and contracting. Her dark chocolate skin covered in a film of sweat. The surprise, my mouth still open and eyes still wide with amazement, that Maxine had said, Yes, had followed me into her daddy’s Oldsmobile’s backseat, had allowed me to lay her down on upholstered leather and press her chocolate skin against doors and windows and seat buckles and do things to her I had previously only seen being done on the channels that came in snowy and illicitly on my family’s living room TV. The cool-down. The quiet. Steely Dan. Hall & Oates. Harry Chapin. Boz Scaggs. The afterglow. The aftermath. “After the Gold Rush.”

The Era of Good Feelings, in retrospect, didn’t have a clear expiration date. No Black Thursday, no Pearl Harbor, no sinking of the Lusitania or the Titanic or the Maine. Rather: a lull in postal correspondence. A neglected email inbox. An abandonment of instant chats. A slow escalation of phone calls going straight to voicemail. If you held a gun to my head and asked me to give the Good Feelings an approximate time of death, I’d probably have to say mid-October. When Maxine was preparing for midterm exams, secluding herself monastically in the library, shutting out all external stimuli and communications and contact to focus on modest proposals, paradises lost, iambic pentameter. At least this is what I told myself at the time. I told myself I had to be understanding, supportive, patient. I had to appreciate that Maxine had won a scholarship to such a prestigious private institution and concede that her studies needed to be her primary concern. I told myself that Christmas break would be here before I knew it, and the Douglas firs would soon be sold out of the Surgeon General’s parking lot, and Maxine would soon be back in California, back in the Shark, back in my arms, and I wouldn’t have to conjure her body in my bedroom anymore. I wouldn’t have to play my voicemail to hear her voice. I wouldn’t have to do anything, except clock out, depressurize my spacesuit, and step into the Neil Armstrong’s parking lot, and there-where now the indigents sleep on traffic islands and aimlessly circle with shopping carts and sing “There Is a Balm in Gilead” and voraciously devour their kills-there my Maxine would be.

Christmastime came, and with it, Neil Armstrong’s own special brand of yuletide cheer. The soda fountain and cardboard Buzz Aldrin decked with boughs of holly. Framed photos of Neil Armstrong in faux fur and red polyester herding reindeer on a suburban Wichita roof. Table salt and shredded coconut dumped on a lucky customer every time “White Christmas” played on the jukebox. Nativity scenes featuring the Apollo 11 crew in place of the Three Wise Men, bearing gifts of pancakes, hash browns, and maple syrup to the infant Christ. While our town’s Christian faithful counted down the days until their Savior’s birth by sequentially opening the cardboard doors of their Advent calendars, I awaited the glory of the coming of Maxine by notching permanent marker X‘s on my photocopy of the Neil Armstrong’s shift schedule, each crossed out rectangle bringing me one calendrical inch closer to the sweet square of Maxine’s return. Those last X-ed out days, Father, were pure murder. I dropped untold trays of buttermilk pancakes, spilled untold gallons of bottomless coffee. I bungled orders and served pigs in a blanket to cardboard Neil Armstrong and routinely collided with patrons, fellow servers, our hostess Patsy, and walls. But how was I supposed to focus on drink orders, salad dressing preferences, tray equilibrium, and basic physical orientation, Father, with Maxine only days away from pulling into the parking lot in the Shark? Days away from blaring soft rock favorites as I stepped out of the restaurant interior, from playing the ostinato rhythm of Ravel’s Boléro on her car horn, from rolling her window down and flashing me her gorgeous, effulgent, spearmint-smacking smile? It is true, she had barely been communicating with me for the last two months. She had been returning only a small fraction of my phone calls, had verified her date of arrival only after my seventh or eighth interrogative email, had been completely unavailable for any online sessions of sweet, emoticon-punctuated IM-ed love (what’s the emoticon for “physically and mentally incapacitated by extreme sexual frustration”?). But that didn’t necessarily mean that she wouldn’t be excited to see me. That she wouldn’t scream as soon as I stepped into the parking lot, wouldn’t rejoicingly activate the windshield wipers and emergency flashing lights, wouldn’t blare Boléro on the car horn until I was finally snugly Christmas-wrapped in her awaiting arms.

She didn’t blare Boléro on the car horn until I was finally snugly Christmas-wrapped in her awaiting arms. Actually, she didn’t show up at all. I stepped outside, after by far the most syrup-stained and collision-filled and order-butchering shift yet, and, instead of seeing my lovely Maxine, I saw: parked Hyundais. Douglas firs decorated with tinsel and NASA ephemera. The Three Wise Men bearing breakfast to the baby Jesus in our traffic island Bethlehem. Was I disappointed? Sure. Crushed? Of course. Overcome by a strong urge to wrestle the Nativity shepherds and angels and Wise Men to the ground and bash in their plastic skulls with Buzz Aldrin’s heavy Christmas-commemorating jug of maple syrup? I would posit: Yes. But I did not wrestle shepherds or angels or the crew of Apollo 11 to the ground. I did not bash in plastic skulls with delicious Vermont harvested maple syrup. Instead, I figured: Maybe Maxine’s flight got delayed. Maybe the Shark had been having engine trouble, or Maxine’s daddy needed it for errands, or-in my feverish, punch-drunk, syrup-spilling excitement over her imminent return-I had never even told her to pick me up. Remember, Father, our communication had been very, very spotty those last two months, after the Era of Good Feelings had been superseded by the Era of Walking With Great Force Into Walls. Also, there had been all that walking with great force into walls. Who knows what I had forgotten to mention in my flurries of unanswered emails, my one-way, stream-of-consciousness postal correspondence, my rambling, unreturned voicemail messages? Who knows the neurological effects of all those resounding impacts and blackouts and concussions, my spheroidal dome helmet apparently offering little in the way of wall vs. cranium protection?

After waiting for Maxine for an hour, all the while conscientiously resisting the urge to place an inquistory phone call to her parents’ house (using Neil Armstrong’s phone for personal use: a big, bold-faced no-no in the employee handbook), I decided to walk to Maxine’s natal home in my spacesuit-spheroidal dome helmet and all-because it was very cold out, and my “civilian” clothes weren’t adequate for the two and a half mile trip. A more astute man would have waited for the bus, but I wasn’t feeling particularly astute, and I wasn’t feeling like spending another thirty minutes waiting at the nearest bus stop surrounded by local Christmas carolers singing festive holiday favorites as my mind and body burned for Maxine. On the way to Maxine’s I passed the Kentucky Fried Chicken, not yet abandoned, not yet occupied by spurned Russian mail-order brides dreaming of childhood summers in Kaliningrad while huddled together for warmth around the KFC’s out-of-service deep fryer. I passed the novelty hat factory, not yet shut down, still churning out inflatable pith helmets, exploding pillboxes, fortunetelling toques. I passed blinking Christmas lights strung on Douglas firs, rooflines, picket fences, Doric and Corinthian columns; colorfully irradiating holiday cheer and merrily sapping the power grid. I heard jingle bells. I heard a cappella renditions of “Silent Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I saw a fat man in a Santa outfit whiz by in a Volkswagen Jetta. I saw the Shark in Maxine’s driveway, the light on in her childhood bedroom, the red-ribboned Christmas wreath hung welcomingly on her front door; as I approached her house, scaled her front steps, and removed my helmet, observing my reflection in the tinted visor, making last-second adjustments to my hair. Somewhere, on another street, carolers were singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” A neighbor greeted another neighbor with, “Ho ho ho.” I held my helmet in my hands, in front of my rapidly beating heart, and exhaled a visible plume of condensation into the chilly air. My breath dissipated. I reexamined my hair. I made a mental note to visit a barber. I knocked.

When the door finally swung open I was greeted not by Maxine, but by her daddy. Her daddy had a bottle of Miller Lite in his hand and wore a crewneck sweatshirt that indicated its size in big block letters on the front. “XXL,” it said, a wonderful feature for anyone too lazy to simply check the tag. Maxine’s daddy had been a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam and was now an elementary school gym teacher at the school where I (but not Maxine) had attended, a school that in those days was called Custer but is now called Sitting Bull. In fourth grade he had discontinued dodgeball, claiming it had caused too many injuries, but those of us then in Ms. Burstyn’s class knew it was really because he had suffered a vivid ‘Nam flashback after an errant dodgeball had narrowly missed his head, causing him to spend the rest of our game curled up in a fetal position against the wall and muttering garbled nonsense about somebody named Charlie.

Maxine’s daddy had never been my number one biggest fan. I had earned a three-year string of Needs Improvements in third to fifth grade Phys Ed, and he clearly still held all those times I forgot to bring my athletic shorts or failed to climb the gym rope against me, as if he believed that a boy who couldn’t hit a three-point shot or execute an overhand volleyball serve by the age of ten would never become a man. Once Maxine and I started officially going out, my junior year, her daddy made it abundantly clear that he thought she could do better. He would, for instance, scan the local paper’s high school football coverage every Sunday and try to persuade Maxine to date whichever quarterback had the most favorable touchdown-to-interception ratio or whichever offensive lineman had the most formidable nom de guerre (“Say, Maxine, what do you think of this 350-pound senior the papers refer to as ‘The Immovable Beast?’”). Maxine’s daddy could bench-press 300 pounds, squat 475, and dead-lift 550. He could shoot the thin edge of a playing card from ninety feet away, and was trained in the rudiments of jujitsu, kung fu, and tae kwon do. He had, during the war, been given the nickname “Blood” by the men in his unit, and he once told me, during a family dinner at Outback Steakhouse, that he knew twenty-seven different ways to kill a man with his bare hands. In short: Maxine’s daddy was not the kind of guy you wanted unexpectedly happening upon you and his daughter, mid-coitus, in the backseat of his beloved Oldsmobile.

“Mitchell,” said Maxine’s daddy. “What a pleasant surprise.”

It had been nearly four months since I’d last set foot in Maxine’s house. That last time, in August, Maxine’s parents had been out on errands and I’d tried to get Maxine to sleep with me one final time before she went out East, but she said no, that’s not on the itinerary, and then she showed me the itinerary, and it said Pack and so we packed. In a perfect world, Father, my last precious moments with Maxine, in the flesh, before she set off for her first semester at Ivy-Covered U, would have been far more cinematic: rolling around passionately on a white sand beach, for example; lying together on the roof of my old elementary school, Custer/Sitting Bull, watching air traffic and shooting stars; taking one last dance to “In a Sentimental Mood” as sung by Ella Fitzgerald, crooning sultrily on the Neil Armstrong’s jukebox as our hostess, Patsy, turned the lights down low. But I think we’ve already established that we don’t live in a perfect world. Toothless indigents, postmarked brides, Hyundai rental suicides, etc. So, instead, I helped Maxine pack. Instead, the only undergarments I touched were unworn and detergent-scented and folded neatly. Instead, I accompanied Maxine to the airport and held her hand tenderly to the security line and watched her recede from me tragically up the airport escalator, en route to her bright, financially-aided future in the distant East, as I remained firmly entrenched in the declining West, side by side with her proud parents, who made no secret of resenting and detesting me.

Instead, I adhered closely to the itinerary.

“Max-ine!” screeched Maxine’s mama, also not my number one biggest fan, from somewhere inside the house.

“Nice spacesuit,” said Maxine’s daddy, finishing off the last of the Miller Lite.

“All is calm, all is bright,” sang the carolers, with voices angelic and pure.

It started to snow.

Santa whizzed by in a Geo Prizm.

Somewhere, for some reason, there were sleigh bells.

Maxine appeared, and her stricken face told all.

I have a confession to make, Father. I know this isn’t the sort of booth you usually do this kind of thing in, with the ketchup bottles and the saltshakers and the NutraSweet packets and such, but I always clam up in churches, so I guess this will have to do. Is that OK?

Wonderful. You’re a saint, Father. A real pal. God bless you. My confession is this.

There is a fleeting moment, a half second or less, when I step into the parking lot at the end of my shift and expect to see Maxine, waiting for me. I expect her honking horn, her wedding white smile. I expect the Shark: repainted, restored, with wheels. Also, I expect to find the novelty hat-wearing indigents in the parking lot gone, no longer panhandling, no longer scrounging for animal carcasses and change, for they’re at the factory, newly reopened, returning them to the workforce, to their homes, to the consumer economy. Across the street, the mail-order brides visit the post office arm in arm with their husbands, smiles on their faces, feet unbound by packing tape, and the family of four that once lived in our ventilation system walks proudly to the bank, to apply for a mortgage on their new home. At the tar pits, Hyundai after Hyundai emerges from the bubbling pitch, and the factory workers and their grieving spouses once thought long dead return their cars to the rental agency, pay a small fee for cleanup, and stroll down the street to their loved ones, whistling the melodies of soft rock favorites of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. And when the next day comes, when I’m back to work, in my pressurized spacesuit, Bill waltzes in-Hiya Patsy, what’s new?-and sits down in his favorite booth with the cardboard crew of Apollo 11 and orders the Mission Control Special; and my mother and father waltz in, literally, my father effortlessly dancing with my mother across the Neil Armstrong’s carpeting as the jukebox plays “The Blue Danube,” my parents’ eyes full of life and of love; and the man in the adjacent booth, waiting alone, about to order for his absent wife, says, “Well look at that, just in time,” and his wife sits down across from him, leans over the table for a kiss, and says, “I’ll have the Neil Armstrong Signature Sampler, with the vegetable soup, and the baked potato”; and when their food comes they savor it relishingly together, and when the jukebox plays Astor Piazzolla my parents break out into a lustful tango, and when the first ray of sunlight kisses the rejuvenated land the local birds sing arresting melodies, and life is evermore blissful and sweet.

But here’s the thing.

A man needs hope, Father, if he’s going to make it in this life, that’s for darn sure, but he also needs to stay realistic. He needs to know when to say when, when to let go, when to concede defeat, when to finally move on. Because if he doesn’t-if he’s the sort of man, who, for example, never gives up, never surrenders, never loses hope, never gives in to repeated reproofs: It’s over, please stop, how can I make myself any more clear?-well, he can be driven to do some rather regrettable things. What kinds of things? Say, like, for instance-voicemail harassment. Guilt-tripping. E-stalking. Tear duct-activating. Spotting his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend through Neil Armstrong’s floor-to-ceiling windows during summer break and running out into the parking lot in a spacesuit and moon boots to challenge him to a fight. That last one particularly regrettable since the boyfriend was a promising amateur boxer and easily settled the matter with one blow. But that is neither here nor there. What I want to say is: I feel absolutely terrible about making Maxine cry. I feel awful about automatically pegging her new man as being a bad egg, when it turns out he’s a loving brother of two Down syndrome sufferers, and a two-time Local Young Humanitarian of the Year. A young humanitarian, as it turns out, with a formidable right hook. Again-neither here nor there. What I want to say is: I’m so sorry, Father. For the pain I’ve caused. For the trouble I’ve wrought. For the suffering I’ve induced. If Maxine were still speaking to me, I’d say to her: You have my blessing. I’d say to her: Good job. Good work. Good for you! I’d say to her: When you think of me, if you think of me, think of me not as I am now-embittered, syrup-stained, alone-but as the boy you asked, one bright, balmy spring day, to pose for a portrait for your freshman art class; the boy who obliged, dutifully, and remained motionless on the school’s front lawn long after the bell indicating the start of classes had rung; the boy who noticed-after you had sketched him, considered him; after you had studied, observed, eyeballed him-that your hands shook, that your milk chocolate eyes narrowed, that your Professor Albert’s gum fell out of your mouth and onto your right ankle’s bare, beautiful, dark chocolate skin as you anxiously flipped the sketchpad over and awaited his verdict, to see what he thought, if he approved-if he liked how you saw him. I’d say to her: I did. I’d say to her: Be happy. I’d say to her: Be fruitful, and multiply. It has been three years since my last confession. Lord Jesus, please forgive me of my sins.

I’ll have your drink coming right up.

* * *

Hello, thank you for calling Neil Armstrong’s Giant Leap for Mankind Pancake House.

How may I help you?

Photo by Flickr User permanently scatterbrained

One night, at a restaurant, I think, called Paz, somewhere off of Division, I had said or done something and it hadn’t been what I’d said or done necessarily, but it had been an addendum to other things, careless, inconsiderate things – things that had grown like an appendage on an embryo. The waitress, a tall and spindly woman, came over to see if everything was alright. Marina had, or I had, I don’t remember, slammed a near-full glass down on the table and the juice, I remember it was jugo de mana, pulpy and florid, spilled on the table. Anyway, Marina said we were sorry and she was sorry and she gave the waitress a generous tip and hugged her. I’d never seen someone actually hug a waitress before. After Marina stormed off, I’m sure I thought our relationship was over.

Later that night Marina came over and although her eyes had softened, she was still angry and I felt terrible and incompetent, a satire of a younger version of myself, a Don Quixote. But I listened to her injuries and I agreed with her and knowing that I needed more (more than myself, I thought sadly at the time) I brought out a bottle of wine and put on Sam Cooke. The song Sentimental Reasons played and then Tenderness, which is basically a list of the things I should’ve done in my relationship with Marina. But it’s a good song and there’s a sweet and short and sympathetic piano that accompanies Sam Cooke’s voice, which carries multitudes of loneliness and warning. So, in Tenderness, Sam Cooke is really singing some sense.

She cried a little and smiled – a soft and sure lunette – and then slipped her hand into the crook of my arm. I told her that I was sorry and I meant it and we danced for some time in my apartment, which was on the 10^th floor of a complex and faced the Lake and, that night, we could see the luna and the firmament of the eastern horizon, which was torpid and indigo, and that meant clouds were forming and a light summer rain would follow.

And this is how it was for two more weeks – almost all we listened to at night was Sam Cooke – until she told me without anger or guilt, her eyes just beautiful, just empyrean and full of luz, that she was moving back to Mexico City. She did go, at the end of that summer, and the next time I saw her was nearly twelve years later at a market on Chicago and Rockwell, and she was with a little girl, her daughter, who had the same lunette smile, and Marina hugged me we talked about how to pick out the best avocados, something I still don’t understand. I never saw Marina again and just before my father passed away last year he told me to marry the first woman I met who was nice, really nice, to waitresses because it says more than anything else you could ever find out about a person, it really does, he said, like it was a hard won secret, like I’d be an idiot not to listen.

On their first assignment together, in South Beach, amidst gratuitous cleavage, g-strings, volleyball, Lewis and Clark spot a man exiting a Ferrari Testarossa in a clearly marked No Parking, Stopping, or Standing zone. Lewis pulls out his pad of citations, prepares to write a ticket, but Clark says, “No, let me handle this my way,” and several quick cuts later, flashes of Clark’s barreling fists, his blurred baton, his knee’s uncongenial introduction to the parking ordinance violator’s groin, the man lies on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood, high-heeled models and their European boyfriends irritatedly stepping over his motionless, prostrate body.

“There,” says Clark, walking back to Lewis and his unused citations. “He’ll never park, stop, or stand in this town again.”

“Careful cowboy,” says Lewis. “That kind of thing might play across the bay, but this is Miami Beach, where roughhousers aren’t suffered lightly.”

Then, putting on his sunglasses for dramatic effect, he adds, “Play with fire here, caballero, and you’re going to get burned,” and Clark blinks, blankly, trying hard to make it to the title sequence without punching his partner in the jaw.

Post-title sequence, Lewis and Clark drive down Ocean Drive, facilitating more shots of cleavage, hot pants, pastels. Clark grows tired of listening to chatter concerning burglaries, arsons, and domestic assaults and switches the squad car’s police scanner to 99 Jamz, and the cruiser suddenly bumps with seat-shaking bass and electronic handclaps rather than suspected felonies and misdemeanors.

“What’s this crap?” snarls Lewis, in characteristic curmudgeonly fashion.

“The Dirty South,” Clark answers. “‘Right Thurr’ by Chingy, featuring Trina and Jermaine Dupri. This, old man, is booty music.”

“Like hell it is,” says Lewis, who shuts off the radio and slams a cassette into the squad car’s tape deck. The handclaps and rolled r’s of the Dirty South are soon superseded by cheesy 80’s drum machines and rhythmically stilted raps about sexual promiscuity, and Lewis says, “Now this is booty music. 2 Live Crew. 1989. TR-808. That’s the problem with your generation, Clark. Shaking your booty to all the wrong beats, for all the wrong reasons.”

Lewis and Clark stop at a pizza shop, after fifteen minutes of trying to find legal South Beach parking, and as chart-topping Latin pop plays in the background the two cops discuss the growing menace of the Colombian traffic cartel while enjoying delicious Italian sausage on piping hot Parmesan, mozzarella, and feta.

“They come from the most lawless regions of their homeland,” says Lewis, shaking on extra seasoning. “Places where yielding is unknown, where the unsignaled turn is king, where roads are regularly blocked by ox carts, paramilitaries, cattle. They have no respect for our laws, our tow-away zones, our loading zones, our parking with permit only. The obstruction and chaos of the jungle – that is all they know.”

Clark, meanwhile, hears not a word, instead intently observing a provocatively dressed meter maid across the street bend over to make chalk marks on the tires of a Toyota Land Cruiser, her work shorts rolled up, her shirt scissored into a backless halter top.

“Is that a new city uniform?” asks Clark, his tongue hanging out, burned by the pizza’s three searing cheeses.

“No,” says Lewis. “That’s Sacagawea. And don’t even think about it, Clark – she’s dangerous. Play with her, compadre,” (again sliding on his sunglasses) “and you’re going to get burned.”

Clark excuses himself to the restroom, his partner’s dialogue and the Italian sausage causing an acute attack of indigestion, but not before Sacagawea’s eyes meet his own through the pizza shop’s floor to ceiling window, her devious stare indicating thoughts far, far more impure than parking in a loading zone, than changing lanes without signaling.

Lewis and Clark, back on the beat, patrol Washington Avenue, scanning side streets and curbsides for parking ordinance-violating Colombians. They pass an ad for the most popular program on television, Seven Underwear Models in an Elevator, the skivvy-clad stunners of Season Three staring broodingly at traffic and pedestrians from the side of a city bus, and Lewis reads the show’s tagline aloud: “Seven models. Seven pairs of underwear. One elevator. Mondays at 8 PM. Only on Fox.”

“I see they’re skewing more toward thong underwear this season,” says Clark, admiring the public transportation. “Smart. A sure ratings winner.”

Lewis and Clark continue down Washington, pass more buses plastered with TV show ads – Celebrity Crack Addiction, Marriage in Sixty Seconds or Less, Who Wants to Reinvent the Cotton Gin? – and Lewis, shaking his head, airs his displeasure.

“Reality television,” he says. “In my day, you wanted reality, you drank half a handle of bourbon, passed out beneath the Christmas tree, woke up the next morning in a Santa Claus outfit of unknown origin, hogtied with tinsel, with your whole family standing over you, telling you to get your life together. Boom – reality. Doesn’t get more real than that.”

“I’d rather get my reality from underwear models in an elevator,” says Clark. “More fast-paced. More brightly lit.”

Lewis grimaces, rolls down his window, spits in the general direction of a Seven Underwear Models in an Elevator glorifying bus.

“That’s the problem with your generation, Clark,” he says. “Always looking for the next reality. A simple Yuletide hangover is never enough.”

After Lewis cuts off the bus, gives the driver the finger, burns rubber onto a cross street, Clark, his eyes diligently scanning the periphery of the roadway, alertly spots the first evidence of the nefarious Colombians, a Hummer arrogantly entrenched in front of a No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays sign.

“Pull over,” says Clark, reaching for his gun, “I’ll teach this joker to celebrate the Lord’s Day of Rest on a Wednesday,” but Lewis, eyes twitching, body trembling, sweat pouring down his brow, refuses.

“What’s the matter with you?” says Clark to his shaking, perspiring partner. “You seen a ghost or something?”

“I don’t do No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays,” says Lewis, making a squealing turn at the next street.

“What do you mean you don’t do No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays?” says Clark.

“Let it go, Clark,” says Lewis. “Let it go.”

Later that night, still puzzling over Lewis’s bizarre reaction to the No Parking sign, Clark returns to his condo on Meridian Avenue, only to find Sacagawea writing up his Honda Civic for extending its hood into the forbidden domain of a yellow-painted curb. She wears high heels, heavy makeup, a zebra striped mini dress with a plunging neckline, and when the unissued parking tickets disappear into her briefly, tantalizingly revealed undergarments Clark completely loses his bearings and walks face first into a Tow-Away Zone sign.

“Lewis was right, you are dangerous,” says Clark as Sacagawea looms over him, exposing further gratuitous cleavage.

After an abrupt and efficient sex scene, and a commercial break, Clark holds Sacagawea in his muscular, tattooed arms and asks her where she’s been his whole life.

“Tow-away zones, mostly,” she says. “And the occasional parking lot for customers only.”

Provocatively illuminated by the streetlight spilling through the windows, Sacagawea leans to the side of the bed and retrieves Clark’s discarded police uniform, draping it over her made-for-primetime-television body and tenderly fondling the badge, the eagle at the crest, the palm tree at the center.

“I know your partner, by the way,” she says. “The one with you at the pizza place, when you were checking me out. We go way back.”

“How far back can you go?” says Clark. “What are you – twenty? Twenty one years old?”

“Nineteen,” she says. “Your partner is my father.”

Clark’s skull slams against the bed’s sturdy wrought iron headboard.

“I would’ve mentioned it before,” says Sacagawea, sheepishly, “but we moved to the foreplay-with-tire-marking-chalk stage rather quickly, and I figured any discussions involving paternity would have been inappropriate, given the context.”

Clark sits up, rubs his welt-forming head, and observes, with both desire and disorientation, his partner’s nubile teenage daughter, immaculate in the streetlight, draped in police navy blue, bringing new meaning to the phrase “The City’s Finest.” There are a number of things he’d like to say to her, a number of items he’d like to bring to the agenda, but first and foremost are two pressing and puzzling questions concerning the man who so serendipitously helped bring her into this world.

“Sacagawea,” says Clark, “if you don’t mind me asking – would your father, when you were growing up, deliver poorly conceived one-liners roughly once every seven minutes while putting his sunglasses on for dramatic effect?”

“Oh yes,” she says. “But more often than that. He practiced every morning and evening in the shower. Running water and poorly conceived one-liners were the soundtrack of my childhood.”

Clark nods. Now, pressing question number two.

“And another thing,” he says. “Does he, by any chance, have an irrational fear of No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays signs?”

“No,” says Sacagawea. “But he does have a rational fear of them. A No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays sign killed his partner.”

The next day, after more gratuitous shots of cleavage, booty shorts, sand, Clark confronts his new, requisite love interest’s incorrigible father while directing traffic at a busy, construction-ravaged intersection.

“For God’s sake, Lewis, why didn’t you tell me about your partner?” says Clark, motioning for eastbound traffic to proceed.

“You slept with my daughter, didn’t you?” says Lewis.

“Answer my question first,” says Clark.

“He was off duty,” says Lewis. “It was a Saturday. Nice day. He was walking his dog. According to the official police report, he came across a man leaving a vehicle parked in a No Parking Except Sundays and Holidays zone. Witnesses report a verbal argument, growing in volume, intensity. The man tried to rip the No Parking sign from the ground and my partner produced his badge, ordered the increasingly agitated and erratic man to stop, but in all the excitement my partner let go of the dog leash and his dog ran in the opposite direction, weaving in and out of traffic down the street. My partner turned around, called for his dog. ‘Baxter!’ the witnesses claim he yelled, ‘Baxter!’ But before he could chase down his beloved schnauzer, who used to sit between us in the squad car, eat strips of bacon from my hand, howl whenever a burglary-in-progress was reported on the police scanner, the crazed parking violator rather impressively ripped the sign out of the ground and smashed it, fatally, over my partner’s subsequently concave head.”

“Jesus,” says Clark.

“And the thing is,” says Lewis, “not a day goes by, not an hour, not a minute, when I don’t think, if only it had been a Sunday. If only it had been a holiday.”

“Yes, I slept with your daughter,” says Clark, and the screen goes black, the credits roll, a somber, baritone voice promising, next Thursday at 9/8 Central, another thrilling, heart-pounding episode of Lewis and Clark: Miami.

2.

Lewis and Clark are the unlikeliest of pals: Lewis, an observational comedian, Clark, a divorced conceptual artist raising his three children the only way he knows how: in a hollow, larger than life replica of Elvis Presley’s digestive system, made out of fiberglass.

When Lewis shows up in Elvis’s esophagus, unannounced, as is his custom, the Clark household is in disarray: the eldest child Kimberly screaming at her father, storming through the King’s gastroesophageal opening into the stomach, the middle child Marcus bleeding from the forehead after tripping over the Father of Rock-n-Roll’s fiberglass villi in the small intestine, the youngest, Sam-Sam, trying to cook a microwave pizza casserole with his father’s welding equipment.

“Don’t you hate it when your progeny, conceived out of tenderness and love, cause you nothing but pain and emotional torment,” says Lewis, to uproarious prerecorded laughter.

“I’ll tell you, Lewis,” says Clark, “parenting is certainly one wild roller coaster ride, much like my 1997 piece ‘Jackson Pollack’ in which I rode the Texas Scrambler after a county fair pie eating contest and projectile vomited abstract expressionism onto the Pepsi cup littered earth below.”

Lewis opens Clark’s unplugged refrigerator, peruses the paltry, mold-covered contents, and Sacagawea, Clark’s ex-wife, appears in Elvis’s oral cavity, to take the children to their extracurricular activities.

“Clark!” she screams, sprinting inside the esophagus and shutting off the fuel supply to Sam-Sam’s torch. “How many times do I have to tell you – don’t let Sam-Sam play with the welding equipment!”

“How else is he going to learn?” says Clark. “See – he’s wearing gloves, he’s wearing eye protection. What’s the big deal?”

“He’s in second grade!”

“Mozart composed his first symphony at eight.”

“So? A symphony doesn’t burn at six thousand degrees Fahrenheit! A symphony can’t melt off your skin!”

“Obviously you haven’t seen John Cage’s Concerto for Bassoon and Flamethrower.”

“Did you ever notice,” says Lewis, “how the whispered endearments and sweet nothings of young romance soon give way to argument, disdain, betrayal,” eliciting more riotous studio hoots and guffaws.

Sacagawea, shooing Sam-Sam away from the acetylene torch, notices, for the first time, the blood dripping down her other son’s freckled face.

“Marcus, pumpkin,” she says. “What happened to your forehead?”

“I tripped over the villi in the small intestine again,” says Marcus. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. Dad says I remind him of his performance piece ‘John Hancock’ when he bled his signature onto the guest books of several New England bed-and-breakfasts.”

“Clark!” Sacagawea screams again. “Why do you insist on living inside this godforsaken digestive system? Fiberglass is a very abrasive material! This place is a death trap!”

“Sacky,” says Clark, using the pet name she once loved, now hates, “you know that we’re making a very important political and artistic statement by defying our society’s unquestioned paradigms of ‘acceptable’ domestic habitation.”

“And?” says Sacagawea, folding her arms across her chest.

“And I can no longer afford the rent on my artist’s loft,” admits Clark.

Kimberly, hearing her mother’s voice, emerges from the stomach and launches into an anti-paternal diatribe, her sympathetic maternal audience allowing her to speak freely on the subject of her father and how he is irrevocably ruining her existence.

“Mom,” she says, “I refuse to live with Dad anymore! I’m tired of not having electricity, I’m tired of sleeping in Elvis’s rectum, and most of all I’m tired of Dad using my boyfriends for his stupid art projects!”

“What did you do this time?” says Sacagawea to Clark, awaiting his latest justification for traumatizing their daughter in the name of antiformalism.

“I really don’t see what all the fuss is about,” says Clark. “All I want to do is collect sperm samples from her ex-boyfriends, store them in the freezer aisle of a Winn-Dixie, and enter the whole mis-en-scene into a juried exhibition as ‘What Could Have Been My Grandchildren.’”

“You see, Mom!” says Kimberly. “You see!”

“Okay, Kimmy,” says her mother, “but – be honest with me – have you been having premarital sex?”

“Oh my God!” wails Kimberly, rushing back into the stomach. “I hate both of you!”

“What’s the deal with the brutal suppression of your most-yearned-for hopes and dreams?” says Lewis, the canned laughter so loud and distorted it sounds like a multiple vehicle accident.

Sacagawea regards Clark coldly, paces the esophageal lining, shuts off the oxygen tank connected, in conjunction with the fuel line, to the welding torch.

“Look, I know we have our differences,” she says to her ex-husband, “our divergent paths, our conflicting aspirations, our separate schools of thought, but this – this has to violate some basic, nonpartisan, universal law of parenting. You can’t raise children in a small intestine, Clark.”

“I sleep in the small intestine,” says Clark. “Marcus and Sam-Sam get the large.”

As Sacagawea steams, tries to refrain from switching on the oxygen and fuel tanks and welding her ex-husband into oblivion, little Sam-Sam approaches her with a blank sheet of copy paper and an ear-to-ear grin plastered on his cherubic face.

“Look Mommy,” he says, proudly, “Daddy’s helping me with my art project.”

“Sweetheart,” his mother says, “that’s just a piece of printer paper. That’s not art.”

“Not art!” growls Clark. “Have you seen what the other kids in his class are doing? Lifeless, formalist scribbles with crayon, Cray-pa, washable marker, finger paint. Representational depictions of dinosaurs, kittens, Disney characters, suns with smiling faces, little girls and boys with triangular noses and three fingers on each hand. And yet this – this so-called ‘blank’ page – which contains more truth, more significance, more resonance than anything those talentless seven year olds or their blinker-eyed hack of an art teacher could ever dream of creating – this, according to you, is not art.”

Sacagawea glares.

“What was your assignment, munchkin?” she says to Sam-Sam.

“ We’re supposed to draw the person or people we love most in the world,” he says.

“It’s titled ‘Oblivion #7,’” says Clark. “Obviously I’ll help him with the spelling.”

And as Sacagawea stares at the acid-free void of the page, “Oblivion #7,” tears forming in the corners of her eyes, Lewis says, “How come, despite our best intentions, our lives always fall victim to the most derivative and artless of human errors?” and the laughter, buoyed by hysterical applause, is deafening.

3.

For a time, my life eerily mirrored the plotlines of the popular syndicated television sitcom Lewis and Clark: The College Years. It was unsettling, uncanny. In episode three, for instance, Lewis was telemarketed by his estranged father, absent since Lewis’s infancy, his identity revealed midway into a sales pitch for Do-It-Yourself Exorcism, and within one hour my own father called me on the phone to apologize for abandoning our family in my youth and to offer limited-time-only deals on electric chairs in bulk. Quite the coincidence, I thought at the time. Another curious instance of life imitating art. But then, the next week, when Clark lost his virginity to the campus mascot, Buddy the Beaver outside, Jasmina the biology-majoring fox inside, and, that very evening, I found myself enwrapped in the tender, fuzzy embrace of our own cheerleading rodent, Musky the Muskrat, the orgasmic moans emanating from Musky’s unrodential interior muffled by an absorptive layer of shag carpeting and a giant, mouthless, flame retardant polyester muskrat head, I thought – perhaps greater forces are at play here – and was unsurprised when, moments later, we were discovered, mid-coitus, by the sousaphone section and drum line of the marching band.

At first, it was nice – my male friends were all hilarious, eccentric, multi-ethnic, spoke only in punchlines, my female friends were all attractive, stylish, promiscuous, spoke only in double entendres – but, after awhile, the novelty of constant witty repartee, spontaneous monologues, fleeting celebrity cameos, sexual innuendoes leading to no actual sex, wore thin. I would try to engage my friends in serious discussions, about globalization, immigration, the Indo-Pakistani conflict, the war in Afghanistan, the Cyprus Question, and they would reply with absurd non-sequiturs, comedic double takes, celebrity impersonations, laughter bursting from an unknown location – the drainpipes, the ventilation ducts, beneath the futon – I was never entirely certain. I would try to date female classmates, treat them chivalrously, lavish them with attention, refrain from deceit, cunning, subterfuge, but within a week, without fail, I would lose them to situational irony, to comic misunderstanding, and the unprovenanced laughter would again assail me from all sides as I found myself, once more, alone.

I quit watching Lewis and Clark, switched over to The Beast Wrangler on Animal Planet, an excitable New Zealander braving alligator infested swamps, bear inundated caves, empty swimming pools full of poisonous snakes, but, while I no longer succumbed to crumbling weekly romances or ratings-grabbing embarrassments or painful, slapstick-related injuries, I did find myself routinely inconvenienced by wildcat maulings, elephant stampedes, shark attacks at the beach, in hot tubs, at the Y. Next, tired of commutes ruined by wildebeest migration, dates ruined by boa constriction, bachelor’s parties ruined by snow leopards leaping from hollow cakes and devouring the Best Man, I tried the local news – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox – but, while the savagery of the wild abated, the savagery of humanity only escalated – drive-by shootings at every traffic circle, tragic murder-suicides in every produce section, community productions of Grease, Guys and Dolls, Godspell with casts composed entirely of convicted rapists, drug dealers, child molesters – and not a day went by where a friend didn’t perish in a gasoline fire, a professor didn’t convulse mid-Powerpoint Presentation from a terrifying foodborne illness, a classmate didn’t consume a lethal amount of anthrax slipped into a turkey Reuben sandwich, the sudden influx of sexy brunettes appearing in my dorm room with the current temperature and barometric pressure affording me little consolation.

Lewis and Clark: The College Years spawned several spin-offs – Lewis and Clark: Homicide, Lewis and Clark: Chinatown, Lewis and Clark: The College Years Bittersweetly Remembered – and Sacagawea, a popular recurring character, got her own show, Single Shoshone in the City, but, even though I appreciated my daily crises de-escalating from machete attacks, gun battles, and axe murders to mere public humiliation arising from a series of unlikely coincidences, my life fell into a tired, predictable pattern, every day spent lethargically going through the motions, as if it all had happened before, except now everyone around me was older, heavier, balder, their faces lined with a faint but detectable desperation and sadness. Lewis and Clark: The College Years went into syndication, airing at least once an evening, a double helping on Sundays, and my life really did repeat itself – friends who had died from bear attacks, cocaine cartel shootings, opiate binges, suddenly resurrected, spouting one-liners I could finish before the third word had left their lips – but, though at first I was ecstatic to see my old compatriots, old lovers, enveloping them in my arms, smothering them with kisses, overwhelmed with emotion, they never returned my affections, maintained their unshakeable sarcasm, wry, unrelenting cynicism, and I was thrown further into the depths of darkest despair.

Many nights I contemplated turning off the television for good, pondered the existential question of my remote’s on/off button, but I never had the nerve to press it, too afraid that, if my plasma flat screen remained dormant, its pixels no longer illuminated, its soothsaying of Things-to-Come silenced, my life, too, would be extinguished, falling into darkness, swallowed by the void. While watching the surprise midseason replacement hit The Day the Music Died, I, like the protagonist, was visited by the miniature ghosts of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper whenever presented with a moral dilemma, the famed rock ‘n rollers materializing on my shoulder anytime I considered cheating on my girlfriend, on my tax return, in mini golf, in gin rummy, but whenever I pondered the quandary of whether or not to turn off my TV, to risk self-annihilation for the sake of my sanity, the ethereal, deceased musicians were nowhere to be found, abandoning me when I needed them the most. What could be more moral a dilemma than this – to be, or not to be? Why wouldn’t they answer Shakespeare’s most beloved and oft-quoted question?

I searched for the answer everywhere: Television for Men, bodybuilders challenging me to fistfights, crashing helicopters into my Volvo, incinerating my neighbors with flamethrowers during backyard barbeques; Television for Women, girlfriend after girlfriend lost to anorexia, bulimia, painkiller addiction, sex trafficking, homicidal ex-husbands, crystal meth; Television for Children, terrifying costumed creatures accosting me on the street, at the supermarket, teaching me phonics, how to tie my shoelaces, how to count to ten; but I found nothing but a growing emptiness, a vacuum displacing all matter in the pit of my shriveling soul. I searched during cooking shows, reality shows, reality cooking shows, chefs struggling to make venison stroganoff or steak tartare while simultaneously traversing a ropes course, a mineshaft, a balancing beam slathered with liquid detergent, but I learned nothing, except how to make julienned fries while rock climbing, how to water ski while preparing a spicy raspberry vinaigrette. Whenever a new show premiered, White Men Shouting, Political Roller Derby, America’s Most Inadvisable Cosmetic Surgeries, I crossed my fingers, watched with bated breath, hoping my life would take on three rather than two dimensions, would feature revelations profound rather than contrived, wouldn’t be interrupted every seven minutes by complete strangers informing me about the Sales Event of the Summer, the side effects of antidepressants, the revolutionary designs of toothbrushes, the special features of the Qu’ran for Kids, but – time and time again – my dreams were crushed, obliterated, smashed to splinters by yet another tired plot device, yet another recycled premise, and I remained in the vice grip of monotony, repetitiveness, violence, cliché, falling asleep once more to the sound of lighthearted theme music, to laughter emanating from the fire detector, from the pipes.

Until I discovered Telemundo.

Telemundo, Channel Fifty One, my light, my savior, my Holy Grail. Men wearing schoolboy outfits, clown makeup, dresses; women wearing feathers, low-cut blouses, thongs; conga players appearing out of nowhere, the sun forever shining, everyone dancing to merengue, to mambo, to cha-cha-chá.

My virgin Telemundo experience was ¡Domingo Estupendo!, a craggy-faced man and buxom, fast-talking woman introducing comedy sketches, dance numbers, slow-panned shots of spectacular cleavage, and though I had no idea what anyone was saying, no idea why the men so often affected silly voices, why the exclamation points were occasionally upside down, why the women barely even attempted to cover their unwieldy, surgically enhanced breasts, I found, in my confusion, a sort of peace – came to the realization that, with the world chaotic, illogical, mad, with the meaning of life unfathomable, the intentions of God unknowable, it was pointless to waste one’s life with unanswered yearning, to wallow away precious hours with self-pity, anxiety, regret – it made a lot more sense, in the face of such existential angst, to, like the full-figured feathered women of Telemundo, smile, strut, salsa dance.

As I spoke not a word of Spanish, beyond the stereotypical ¡ay carambas! of Mexican-American cartoon characters and the regular menu items of Taco Bell, I was able, in the absence of the English language, to fashion my own realities, forge my own truths, apply my own, idealistic subtitles to the indecipherable phoneme combinations assaulting me from every direction. When old men rolled their r’s at me on the bus, gesticulated wildly, introduced me to women wearing strategically placed fruit, pied me in the face, I pretended they were conversing eloquently about the aesthetics of French New Wave cinema, the evolution of Senegalese folk music, the prose style of John Dos Passos. When the fruit-wearing women spoke to me, sultry and incoherent, booties shaking, bananas jiggling, citrus-covered hips gyrating to bus radio merengue, I pretended their dialogue was nothing less than an inspirational oratory on the existence of universal truth. Freed from the narrow constraints of American television conventions, I was finally allowed, in the colorful, kinetic universe of Telemundoland, to construct a rich, fulfilling, multilayered life, imagining myself forming deep, lasting friendships with the conga players, joining recreational soccer teams with the tabloid journalism anchors, being invited to weddings and first communions and Polynesian-themed backyard barbeques by the men in wigs, dresses, female bodysuits. I’d run into telenovela actresses at the gym, the quad, the stir fry line at the cafeteria, Intro to Computer Science, their jewelry jangling, their breasts heaving, their fists clenched mid-tearstained monologue, and I’d envision us falling in love, walking hand in hand on white sand beaches, picknicking in verdant meadows, promising to honor and cherish one another ‘til death did us part.

For the first time since Lewis and Clark: The College Years had premiered, Monday at 8 PM Eastern, followed by a very special episode of Jesus Christ, Federal Assassin, I felt unencumbered by the stringent guidelines of American sitcoms, soap operas, crime procedurals, talk shows, dramedies, instead hurled into an alien, guayabera-infested world in which nothing was certain, everything possible. When I woke up each morning, rather than dread the inevitable car chase, amnesia episode, discovery of my evil twin, I was excited, exuberant about the unfathomable Latin-tinged absurdity awaiting outside my dorm room, shirtless male pop stars and backup dancers singing, for all I knew, about the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Hawley Smoot Tariff, the Silver Purchase Act. And so, at long last, I was content, again grateful for the gift of life, no longer staring endlessly at the remote control’s on/off button, contemplating my self-eradication, as the same tired scenarios played and replayed themselves on my screen, in my dreams, in the mind-numbing predictability of another soul-crushing day. I was free to fantasize, fashion my own narratives, own plot twists, own season cliffhangers, no longer held captive by scriptwriters, advertisers, demographic research by faceless multinational corporations. My only fear, the unspeakable terror that would often keep me up at night, cause me to awake in a pool of cold sweat, sleepwalk, regain consciousness in a sand trap, tiger cage, all-you-can-eat buffet, was that, eventually, I would learn Spanish, a phrase here, a phrase there, picking up vocabulary, idioms, verb conjugations through osmosis, daily exposure, until the endless mysteries of Telemundoland revealed themselves to be banal, mundane, trite, the craggy-faced men speaking not of German Expressionism, Kantian philosophy, truth, but of puns, knock-knock jokes, desire for the women in peacock feathers; the amply endowed women expressing to me not their undying love, their unextinguishable devotion, but their enthusiasm for an exciting new brand of hand lotion; the pop singers performing not poetry, but a translation of “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John. I can only hope this day never comes to pass. I can only pray, desperately and fervently, that the men will forever cross-dress, the conga players will forever play, the fruit-wearing women will forever twist, swivel, peel themselves, as miraculously and mysteriously as in the golden, unsubtitled days of my youth.

Today the women wear mangos and papayas, the music starts, and they begin to dance.