"I'd Better Go" Part I

“I shouldn’t be here,” I say to the mirrored image of a man I don’t know, in a place foreign to me. Turning the faucet on the stained vanity that has crumpled beer cans hovering below the mirror, I splash icy water on my face in hopes it’ll wash away.
I dry my matted hair with my shirt before turning around to face the floor and the girl on the soggy bed. Her naked body is draped across the sheet-less mattress like a porcelain angel that had fallen and broken from atop a Christmas tree. I look at her through the red sheath across her face and see nothing I paid for, only the quiet silence pulled tightly across her deadpan features.

I hear two old women outside the red curtained window, squabbling over the price of fly ridden carp as the sun sets over the bay in Danang. I shuffle from the mirror to the open window. The night sky seemed to be melting like lava sliding into the cool sapphire sky, producing steaming clouds around one bright rock. I feel the salty breeze on my bare chest and for a fleeting moment I want her to join me at the window.

Instead I throw on my olive drab shirt and mechanically reach for my wallet.

“We agreed on $30 right?”
“No.”
“No? That’s what we’ve always agreed on.”

“Things have changed.”

I glance in the mirror and see that she has retrieved my pistol from my rut sack and has drawn its bead on me.

____________________________________________________
“He will be here soon,” I say to myself in the mirror as I smear my ruby lipstick across my lips.

“Who will be here soon?” says the nameless GI, buckling his brass belt getting up from the bed. I ignore him. The hickies on my neck feel raw, and I dabble base on them to try and hide the bruising. After putting down the compact I reach into my dented tobacco tin for a cigarette and light it before glancing at the GI through the mirror.

“Get out. He’ll be here soon.”

After the GI boy left, I fluffed the crimson pillows with plastic beads on the edges, I folded the sheets on the mattress, and I light candles to rid the room of the smell of stale sweat. Crossing the room, I opened the door and walked towards the communal showers at the end of the hall.

It was crowded with screaming infants with filthy faces, mothers and girls doubled over from exhaustion leaning against the paper thin walls. Some girls chose to keep their doors open, and as you’d pass you’d hear the grunts and groans of the men and the silence of their concubines.

I feel the oozing of bodily fluids slither between my toes as I placed each step over a leg or a foot or a child as I finally reached the bathroom. Sunlight came in through an overhead window that illuminates the dingy stains on the walls of the showers. Twisting the rusted knob, warm water trickles out of the facet, pushing back my sable hair. I try to wash it all away. Wash away the grime, the sweat of others, the cigarettes off of me. He was on his way, and I want to be fresh for him. I close my eyes and let the brown water cascade down my back, let it waterfall down my breasts, and trickle to my toes before pooling into the cracked tile drain.
Drying off in my bedroom, I find a purple vile from the vanity I’ve been saving and drop a few drops of tonic into my palm, and dabble the lavender perfume behind my ears, on my stomach, and lather it on my inner thighs.

Last week I bought an emerald sarong made of silk, with orange and white orchids sewn over the breasts. It ties at the waist, where he’ll put his hands and for a moment I’ll be a girl again, and not some undesirable.
The sun is fading against the antiqued mirror as I rub my kicking belly as though it knew he’d be here soon too.

Tonight I’ll tell him, I thought.
____________________________________

"I'd Better Go" Part II

“Corporal where are you heading?” said a private playing solitaire on his bunk.

I lace up my polished boots and tuck my trouser legs neatly into them.
“I’m going out tonight. Down on the lower east,” I answer.

Buttoning up my dress shirt, I run my hands down each starched crease, over my chevrons, and then reach for my tortoise shell comb in my right breast pocket. I spread brill cream across its teeth and then run it though my ebony hair.

“Wheeew Corp. Who you getting’ dolled up for anyway?” the private whistled.

“Well,” I smile, “let’s just say she’s above your pay grade.”

“Wanna introduce me,” he laughs.

Lifting my hand down combing, I shoot him a glance of caution.

“What’s that private? You can’t find one for yourself in this shitty mess?”

“Nah Corp. The only honey I need is Mary Jane. She don’t lie,” he cackles through exhaling a joint.

“Don’t let the Lieutenant see that shit. I’ll be back after dark.”

“I I Corp. You’ve got your escape and I’ve got mine.”

I make my way out of the outpost and into the bustling streets of D’Nang, dodging hurried locals on silver bicycles wearing domed woven hats. The steam from the heat rises like mist from the sewer grates and I dodge puddles that have gathered grayish water in the middle of the cobblestone streets.

So much commotion tonight, I thought as I reached the two storied, thatched house where she lived.

Inside I smelled the familiar odor of rose pedals and burning candles that did a poor job at masking the pungent odor of bodies squirming together. Standing in the doorway, I could see children peering through the rungs of the staircase all the way up to the second floor where the bedrooms were. They looked like caged animals, wild in thought and pensive in oppression.

Just as I was about to turn away back into the street, she showed herself at the top of the stairs, with the window light ghosting a silhouette around her petite frame. Mounting each step, the dark haired children retracted to the safety of each banister, keeping a fearful eye on my uniform. Her eyes were glued to me.
Leading him by the hand past the other rooms, I grab what I came for. Her fragile fingers clasps mine tightly, forcefully; as if she sensed I was contemplating not showing up. She pushed the red door open, and pulled me inside the humidity that is enveloped in lavender, sweat, and the lingering presence of another.
“You look beautiful,” I say with her face close to mine.

Rubbing my hands down her damp hair, I fall to my knees, press my head against her stomach, and feel the raised stitching of orange orchids over her breasts.
___________________________________________________

The D.C. Diving Bell: An Oilslick of Our Very Own...

It is a bizarre twist of fate that I would wind up back in D.C. Truly remarkable is the notion of Potomac FEVER, is it real?

I now find myself residing in a high rise luxury apartment complex that hugs the Potomac River, and overlooks the town of villains and heroes, of leaders and crooks.

I say "town" with due diligence and with particular emphasis, for if you spend a decent amount of time here in this fire breather you'll come to realize the distance between you and a goal is directly proportional to the distance between a cocktail and the extension of a business card.

And so it goes, that the sector of my young, adult life revolves around such presumptive and superficial events, like a revolving door of "hellos" and "goodbyes."

I'm not complaining or pathetically driving down an excuse for my apathy; quite the contrary. It is an observation of a truth beholden to the ever expanding knowledge that comes from getting older.

Yet who am I to say what's what and who's who?

Yet there are too many questions to be answered, and too many questions yet to be asked...

"He was a mystic too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all."-- The disillusioned Lieutenant, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

Are we this? Are we evolved animals vacant and devoid of a purpose or a reason for "being?"

It is of the local opinion, one that has some bearing because of the causal effect of the venomous D.C. environment, that we are, indeed, animals.

I am under the guise that this philosophical mindset is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Take, for instance, the common urban pigeon.

This white, gray, and spotted species of bird is without a doubt a scavenger and purely primal in its pursuit for self preservation. These monument dwellers beg for kernels of food, they swoop down for morsels of stale bread, yet these birds are a product of their environment.

Humans moved into urban areas, life got complex and crowded, and these animals adapted to the flying rats that we loathe every time their defecated material lands on our windshields.

Yet there is morality in their existence.

The common urban pigeon mates for life.

This resounding example of morality in the amoral animal kingdom gives me hope that, if we are indeed descendants of the ape, that there exists good and just standards in this cockamamie, volatile life.

Call me crass and call me cheap, but the physical and the psychological giving in the relationship between man and woman is the explanation of why we are roaming through this global experiment.

Or, as R. Buckminster Fuller would say, "this spaceship called earth."

I write these thoughts because one is compelled to in order to keep from bottle rocketing out away from what is normal and sane to a place few can rescue you from...

J

A Unique Visitor to Familar Territory

Coffee in the morning is essential to propel you into existential thoughts and dream sequences. It is the bewitching hour between groggy sleep and full alertness to greet the coming day with the rising sun.

I sit on my porch watching the spherical furnace rise above the horizon, creeping above the jagged blue mountains that start the Appalachian range. As the pink skies ignite the tranquil gray surface of Lake Lanier, I spot a visitor hopping across the brittle leaves and scratching at the ground.

The guest is a small, furry squirrel. Normally this is not uncommon here in the boonies of northeast Georgia. However this particular varmint is impressively peculiar.

He is a hue of pure white, from tail to nose.

My father has spoken of this little acorn gatherer before, however I had yet to have seen him until this morning.

He only shows himself in the wee hours of the morning when all is quiet and nothing stirs, and as I drink my morning stimuli I ponder his life. The squirrel-- let's call him Walter-- is completely unassuming to the eye save his impressive genetic mutation. Walter acts like a squirrel, he squeaks like a squirrel, he bounds and grips our oak trees like others of his kind; yet he is exterior presentation is entirely alien to others in his species.

Walter does not know this-- he is just a squirrel.

Or does he? Does Walter realize just how different he is, as he acts like others, just trying to be apart of his due part of the animal kingdom?

Does Walter experience prejudice for being different? When Walter is around other squirrels does he feel that void in the conversation that lets him know that, "hey you may be like us-- but you're not?"

I know this sounds bizarre and a bit of madness, but I think Walter is much like those who have tried throughout history to be the unassuming but shine as a diamond would in a pile of volcanic sand.

Walter may be Martin Luther King Jr. trying to live a life that others take for granted. He may be the reincarnated Edward R. Murrow, battling the tyrants of the Red Scare whilst upholding the journalistic ethics.

He could be the poor soul Job of the bible, that was stricken with disease and hardship by G-D and the devil to test his faith while just trying to live a normal life with his sons and wife.

Perhaps Walter is apart of all of us, in one aspect or another-- a physical, natural hiccup-- that displays how we are diverse, and how we are great.


Walter is an albino squirrel, and then he isn't.

An Afternoon with Ernest

The days seem longer, filled with jovial jests and peaceful mornings next to the Key’s bay. Crystal sapphire waves shimmer in small slices as the steady wind pushes across the channels filled with sailboats and fishing trawlers to the shore. The breeze cools my sunburn and the frigid beer can feels good in my hand as the perspiration runs down my arm. Days here in Key West are as uneventful as the last, yet are incomparable to others that are filled with the painstaking labors of an adult existence.

I sit writing this essay amidst mangroves, hunting egrets, and a pink strawberry sunrise in my camp chair and knitted cardigan. Today I’m traveling to a writer’s Mecca. I’m journeying to the original sportsman, the original wordsmith’s dwelling: the larger than life Mr. Ernest Hemingway. I expect a scantily furnished home with floor to ceiling French windows that open just so to let in inspiration carried on the very sea breeze I feel right now.

Above the kitchen sink, I envision a collection of various bottles the man was known to consume; tall brown ones and little fat green ones that flicker former silly evenings around the typewriter. These bottles have been proverbially casted out to sea by the Great Man, and corked inside have written the laughter of friends, the genius behind the stoic Fredric Henry and The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and the tears of a tortured mind.

When I reach the house it sits on the corner of an unassuming corner, yet it is enveloped with tropical palms that cloak it from the street view as a castle wall would from the king’s tower. Painted an emerald green with hunter green shutters to match, the two story building has rap around porches that are enclosed with wrought iron banisters.

The floor is dark wood, and I could almost hear the creaking from the old man’s weight as he shuffles his feet as he writes standing up. All around frolic and laze his famous six toed cats that he collected, that now number 47. As expected, the house hardly has furniture and feels open without the restrictions of impeding clutter. His exploits as a big game hunter and fisherman are depicted in paint and picture on the walls.

Yet where was the man’s writing room? Where did he twist and carve the stories that became his literary cannon, his mark on humanity?

I walk outside to the old annexed hayloft and I find his writing sanctuary. A kudu antelope is mounted on the eggshell blue walls along with trophy fish, paintings of distant lands, and his military rut sacks sit cluttered in the corner. His writing desk is made of mahogany and is round, and atop its surface sits his typewriter where he banged away late into the evening and early mornings A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not, and the “Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

I sat in the opening of that room for awhile imagining Ernest sitting at his desk writing to a record. I thought of his writing style, of standing up and scribbling his imagination until the writing seemed acceptable enough to sit down and type. The physical strength may have been in his knees but the genius lay in his prose. Ernest H. once said, in regards to his writing, that “wearing down 6 or 7 pencils during a writing session was a good day’s work.” He was a man casted from pig iron but cultivated by war, by journalism, by alcoholism, and by the thrill of the adventure of losing oneself completely.

If this sounds like I’m canonizing the man into a legend or biblical figure, it is for good reason. No other literary figure of the 20th century did more to re-invent the American writing style than Ernest Hemingway. When reading his works you notice his bullet sentences that are so direct, so poignant, that they rip through you like machine gun lead fired in some distant European battlefield.

Now the sun is going down on the afternoon I had with Ernest, and I feel lucky to have seen him. I feel blessed that he struggled with such passions and pitfalls to produce nothing short of literary brilliance.

Drinking a rum drink while I stare at the retreating day, another quote from The Snows of Kilimanjaro comes to mind that reminds me of Ernest:

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and it is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called Masai “Nagje Nagai,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

What were you looking for Ernest in your tortured life? Was it fame or acclaim or acceptance?

I think he was looking for an exodus to explain the raw passions he felt in his life.

And, as Ernest would say, “It’s pretty to think so…”

My Generation's Winter of Discontent

Hello my name is Jarrett and I'm a forgotten. A soul cast out by the longshoremen elders of our society that have waded out into uncertainty to troll for the hopes and aspirations of a weary nation. A nation blinded by polarized partisanship and shrouded under the veil of economic woe.

My generation reached deep into our souls, gouged at our hearts, and retrieved a sliver of our hopes and dreams in November 2008. We rallied together to highlight what is and could be JUST and GOOD and RIGHT in this God's little gamble.

Health Care. Unemployment. Innovation in energy sciences and environmental conservation. Politicians concerned more with the hard decisions of protecting and enhancing our global citizenry and making this nation greater than an AP Poll.

Now what are we? Forgotten.

TEA PARTY. GLENN BECK. SUPER MAJORITY. 10% UNEMPLOYMENT. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS.

And what am I?

A child. A grown boy thrust into the predatorial waters of adulthood without a life preserver nor a harpoon. My father, and certainly my chain smoking, scotch drinking, grit grinding deceased grandfather would read this and tell me to grow a pair. Get a job. "Make something of yourself. Stop complaining" would be uttered intermittently between inhales and prodigious gulps of spirits.

Recently I've been a Jekyll and Hyde. Dr. Jekyll got a job working as a salesman, knocking on businesses' doors in a tie and black overcoat pitching products and pocketing a meager commission and salary.

The rapturous and ravenous Hyde in me has continuously been pursuing my hidden, reserved passions of being a band manager, writer, and scholar. Like my character Buddy Jolene, I'm on a journey of self realization to both escape and purify my existence.

Philip Roth. Bad Blake. Second Wives. Norman Mailer. Smiling friends. Snorting laughter. 99x. Acrylic painting. Film Noir. A good Pinot by LA CREMA.

It is in this private madness, my cloistered sanctuary of inhibition-free habitability, that prognosticates the feeling of flying if just for a fleeting moment. Pure Freedom.

Could I possibly overcome the existence bivouacked in front of me by societal disorder and economic pitfall?

Sometimes I awake at night from the dream that I'll be just that Dr. Jekyll one day. The phantasm vision is of me in an overcoat with thinning silver hair coming home to a gray empty house. No paintings. No pictures of friends and family at barbecues and graduations. No music or records or culture.

Just a framed house devoid of all but my ethereal frame thinly shadowed on the wall with just a metronome in the background.

This is my nightmare.

When people tell you that you're being a nuisance for your views and opinions, for your music, for your writings and your voice, realize that these characteristics are what make you unique. No die was cast when the made you. There were no assembly lines. You were made with bits of the cosmos, incubated where dreams and beauty are words insufficient in describing just how wonderful you are.

My name is Jarrett and I am a forgotten, but I will make it damn hard to do so.

This is the greatest nation on earth. Let's continue to try and meet our mouth with our minds, hearts, and our capacity for human cooperation.

I beseech you.

Life on the Edge of Madness: The Perspective of a Working Class Hero

To Whom it May Concern:

Don't you hate that expression? That cold, calculated introduction to a cover letter or email for a job that probably thousands of others have written with the same disappointment. Its double talk for "hey, i've never met you nor had the opportunity to convince you to get to know my skills so lets be as impersonable as possible."

It strikes me, as someone with a drastically sideways perspective on this wretched and beautiful and illustrious crystal ball known as life, that one has to be creative and inspired with the pretty little things that invade our 9 to 5.

That is to say in difficult times there are three places people look to for solace: A Church, A bar, and their own imagination. No currency or bankruptcy or foreclosure or insurance battery can take humor and creativity and your vibrant imagination.

It is the sanctuary that has a choir singing your songs, preaching your hope and promise and love to just you. Those echoing, vaulted ceilings are made with memories and birthday wishes.

So I say this in a short and sweet message; Look inward and find strength in your passions, drives, and your imagination.

To find your passions and to drive to achieve them everyday is a life not wasted.

Mr. O