Eulogy

My dad was my favorite person.

On some nights when I was about 19, trying to go to sleep at his apartment where he was nice enough to let me be his roommate rent-free, he would stay up and talk to me about the cosmos. These penny-philosophy lessons taught me more about myself and my place in the universe, about a perspective that made sense to me, then any interaction I’ve ever had.

Because my dad was a thinker.

You knew that maybe only after knowing him for a while, I don’t know. He was quiet about it (like he was about most things). He had a deep, solid, way of looking at things. He wasn’t easily swayed, but he would change his mind if he saw the logic in it. He was DEEPLY RATIONAL, slow to anger (glacial even?), and not very outwardly emotional. He had a quiet way about him. And he was displeased with something he would indicate it ever so slightly, because he didn’t want to weigh in. Didn’t want to tip the scales. He let you be your own man, even though all I ever wanted to do was to please him. To be like him. I emulate him now because he is my role model, what I want to be.

My dad was a mystery. 

He kept his thoughts mostly to himself. He was a master at saying something profound in as few words as possible. But whenever something big would happen in my life I would want to tell him right away, both for the approval I hoped he would give, and to find out what his reaction would be. I got good at predicting his reactions, but he would still surprise me.

My dad had a funny sense of humor.

Fried rices at The China. Or, “Let’s went”. Classic. We would talk on the phone and find something funny and just laugh out loud at a joke that if you explain it it makes no sense. I remember one time when we still lived in Manhattan. My dad had been working on this puzzle which was made of two horseshoes linked by a chain with a metal ring in the middle, in such a way that the ring was too small to pull off the horseshoes. It’s a little puzzle and you’ve probably seen it before. Anyway, after about two weeks or so of fiddling with it on his chair in the living room in the evenings, he concluded to us “It’s a prank. There is no solution. It’s more like a statement about futility.” Anyway. Another week passed and then one day my mom, Gen, and I heard screaming from the living room. Some commotion with my dad making these terrible loud noises in the other room. So we rush over to the doorway holding each others hands afraid to go in, and my dad is standing there in front of us with the ring off the thing, in one hand, and the horseshoes in the other hand, laughing with tears streaming down his face. It took us a moment to understand what was happening, to register what we were seeing, and then tentatively start to laugh with him. Before that moment I don’t think my sister or I had ever seen my dad laugh before. 

My dad loved BG.

I think living here was more his speed. He loved to fly kites in the fields by the stadium, and he brought his business with him. He employed me and got me a company truck (a chevy S10), he let me get away with some crazy hours so I could sleep in, sometimes not coming in until lunch. He really started opening up here in Ohio. I got to know him, and I think other people did too. He invented gadgets with the intention of making it rich, he did line dancing, he worked on his business, but he was always looking for the thing that would take him to the next level. Something that would really knock it out of the park. I don’t think it really bothered him too much that nothing really took off, and I don’t think he ever really gave up trying. He just put it on the back burner. I know he loves Pat, and the house they have in Defiance is awesome. But I think BG is kind of like that too. He didn’t really give up on it, he just put it aside for later. I have to say, if you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m sorry, but it makes sense to me, because I think I do the same thing nowadays, too.

My dad was a do-er.

He really never quit. He kept doing his business until maybe a year ago, because he loved doing it, and was doing line dancing with Pat until maybe a bit before that, and playing cards with Pat and their friends in Defiance until recently. He always looked and felt young. He had good genes, I guess, but also took care of himself making home cooked food and being active. He wasn’t hyper, just a slow burner. He kept doing the things he loved because he loved doing them. A good lesson in there somewhere too, if I had to guess *wink wink*.

My dad never complained.

I mean I can’t remember a complaint coming from my dad. Not ever. In my 20’s I had a certain, shall we say, Derelict Chiq fashion sense. I would show up to work with a mop of hair, ragged courduroy’s, and a beat up stained T-shirt. I don’t think it was really I was trying to be an asshole, probably I just didn’t really enjoy doing laundry. Anyway, one day he asked me “Do you have to look like a homeless person all the time?” That was the closest I think my dad ever got to complaining about my appearance or anything else to me. Or the time he arrived in Philly after driving 10 hours with Pinky to come into Gen’s living room and Gen asks about Pinky’s new boyfriend, to which my dad chirps in “Yea, Pinky. Tell Gen about Sandy!” (pause) If you know what’s what, that’s my dad’s way of saying he had been hearing about Sandy for the last 10 hours.

I will miss my Dad.

I’ll miss talking to him on the phone. And laughing at jokes only we understand. I’ll miss talking to him about the universe and our place in it. I’ll miss bouncing the big ideas off him, like when I asked him at the hospital “Hey Dad, I think I’m going to ask Stacy whether or not she wants to marry me”, to which he responded “Good idea.”

But somehow, I know I’ll never run out of learning new things BECAUSE of my dad.

He’s not really gone.

Because we all remember him. He had an impact on all our lives. And the ripples from his life are still bouncing among us no matter that the body that housed the one who created them is gone. In its place is the shape of my dad, maintained by all that knew him and loved him, as I did.

And even though it sucks that he won’t pick up my calls, and I can’t ask him for advice, I can’t see if I can get him to laugh at something. 

I am grateful. I am grateful that he had such an impact on me, and taught me how to think, and how to react to conflict. 

I am grateful also that in the end he didn’t suffer or have a prolonged death. I’m grateful that he died intact and with dignity. From talking to him this year I could sense a certain change in his thoughts. He didn’t like being retired. He didn’t like that his friend (Gene?) with alzheimers didn’t recognize him let alone his own wife. I don’t think he was mad, just frustrated maybe. But he wouldn’t let on, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t have wanted any special treatment. No extra phone-calls or “I love you”’s. He would have wanted things to go on as before. Because, as someone close to my dad put it to me,

         “Your dad only adds to a situation, he never subtracts. And that’s not something you can usually say about a person.”

         Not a bad role model to have, if a bit ambitious. But I am my father’s son, so I guess I will make do.

Wild Nothing CH2-CH3

CH2
Waking up. Going outside. I see the bike is gone, frustrating but not unexpected. I was bound to skip up at some point. Oh well, new agenda. Step 1: get bike back. Ok what do I need? I guess I should brush my teeth and get dressed for the day. Sigh. I was going to relax today, maybe try to catch up on some work, maybe play some Gwent on my PS4, see if my buddies wanted to play Rocket League.  Maybe play some piano, or read, if I'm lucky. I brush my teeth as I'm thinking. Why do I never have time to read? Too much things going on, never the long spanse of boredom to just spend my time, existing. Get the back of the teeth. That's good, now the tongue, push the bristles at a 45-degree angle to get under the gums. Ok that's good. Let's get dressed and go.

I walk out the door and start jogging unhurriedly down the street, whispering, staring at the ground as it passes under my feet.

CH3
The young man showed up in an Uber after a light lunch at a local diner, got out of the car and thanked the driver. The location was an old sprawling but fairly well kept junkyard-slash-machine body shop out one of the highways outside the perimeter about 25 minutes from his house. After thanking the driver, he closed the door and watched with his hands in his pockets as the car drove past him, before he started walking casually across the street. He walked to the corner of the machine shop and around the building through the gate which was open and into the area behind the shop which was used as a sort of overflow parking lot adjacent to the junkyard. The large bay doors of the machine shop were open and there were about 8 to 10 people working inside. The man could see several of them but they hadn't noticed him, which was for the best, obviously.

He walked up to his bike which was in exactly the condition he had left it in the night before, albeit perhaps a bit dustier. He threw his right leg around the back of the bike in a bopping motion and landing on the custom seat sitting straight up with perfect balance as to not tip the bike on the uneven pavement. It was at this moment that something happened inside the building.

"Who the fuck is that on the ride Shelby brought last night?" One of the men inside, a head shaved-tattooed slightly hispanic very hard looking man named Hector, but referred by everyone in the shop as simply Caba, which was slang for "Head" in Spanish.

Caba didn't even need to motion as he headed out the bay doors into the hot Atlanta summer air outside, because as his determined strides brought him within a few feet of the young man, who was still sitting bestride his motorcycle, the rest of Caba's crew fanned out and encircled the two men. If some of the men knew that the started and power in the Ducati was maybe just fast enough for a skilled driver to bust out of the human fence before one or more of them could drag him off the bike, they didn't show it.

"What the fuck, homie, are you trying to get messed up?" Caba with an audible sigh and a slouch of his shoulders, as the young man climbed off the still unstarted Ducati. It was worth a shot, anyway, he thought to himself.

"Look," he said to the group, "I get you don't understand the mistake you've made, so I'm just going to take my bike home, ok?"

Incredulous, but also getting angry, Caba spat "Look homie, you loco! I don't know what you mean your bike but you'd better get gone before you make me mess you up for wasting my time."

"This is my bike, I'm taking it." The youth said. Not taking a stance. Standing almost sad, head slightly tilted downward in an act not of complete submission, but of deference. As if ashamed and asking for forgiveness.

"Ok whatever you want, bro," Caba said. "Andre knock this fool out."

At which a truly monstrous image of a human being stepped forward with gleeful sadistic determination, he walked towards the youth casually, relishing the upcoming moment of fear registering on his face and the subsequent pain and finally humiliation that was now about to incur at his grimy, grease stained hands. Because even though he clumsily helped about the shop, this was what he was really here for, in a few more steps he would be able to sate his cruel need for inflicting torment on others.

"You're dead," The young man said, not pointing but almost with a flick of a finger but not quite raising his arm.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the advancing brute dropped to the concrete banging his head, hard, on the pavement with a dull thwack, like a 280 lb meat-bag puppet cut from it's strings.

At the same moment several things happened. About half the people enclosing the young man turned and fled, about half of those left backed away, cautiously withdrawing due to a mixture of fear, responsibility, and disbelief. The remaining quarter except one neither moved more seemed to register the event, but stood transfixed as they evaluated the situation with total focus and concentration. The youth among this group, and the others were at the youth's mistaken estimation his primary concern. The exception was Caba himself who, although the youth mistook it for flight, dropped to one knee with his elbow reaching around his back as he pulled his firearm from the belt behind his back, whipped around his bun and opened fire.

Caba shot a quick succession of five shots out of his 10-shot magazine. At the shooting range he would practice this movement repeatedly working on precision and speed. He always aimed for the head and typically got 4 of 5 shots lethal at this close a range, hence his name, "Caba".

Three of the bullets stopped mid-air a few centimeters from the young man's head, as the other two passed just outside the silhouette of the youth's body. At this point as the bullets fell to the floor and the remaining bystanders decided they had had enough and it was time to go, decided to flee.

"I can't believe you just did that," the youth said, "like seriously what the fuck man. Somebody says 'you're dead' and points to a guy and the guy drops dead so you decide to SHOOT at this person? Like I have no fucking idea what to do with you right now I'm so mad."

"..." Caba, realizing for the first time, as the reality of the situation he was in settled into his consciousness, like a square wheel turning, began to feel an emotion he had pushed down, fought, ignored, but no longer could keep out: fear.

"Your fucking arm is off," The youth said.

Incredulously, questioning, Caba looked at the youth. As nothing happened he began to back away and look around as if expecting a bird to fly at his head or perhaps a sniper shot to end his life.

"Uh," Raising his hand and pointing, "I SAID, your FUCKING arm is OFF!"

At the same moment, Caba's arm was ripped form his body by an unseen force, and flung across the lot to hit the wall with a splat and land in a bloody stump in the gravel by the corner of the lot.

Blood spurting everywhere, Caba began to scream "AhhhH!" as no sound he had ever uttered before. The few bystanders who had withdrawn to a safe distance to watch nearly puked, they had stayed to be able to provide a detailed report come the time that they would have to explain the events of the day, or possibly face a painful or deadly punishment by an upset family interrogator. At some point you just have to say enough is enough. In unison, they also turned away from their viewing spots around corners, and behind cars, and vacated the premises.

As Caba lay there, screaming, holding the blood pouring stump that used to be his arm, the youth began apparently talking to himself.

"Do you think that's lethal?" The young man asked, seemingly to himself.

"Probably, in all likelihood," Responded a deep voice from the thin air slightly up and over the right shoulder of the youth.

Speaking again to Caba, "You have a hole punched through your head."

As the brains, and most of the facial features for that matter, of the shop boss formerly known as Caba exploded out the back of Caba's head to splatter in a Pollack-type pattern across the brand new black and red paint job of a GT-3000 Turbo the shop had brought in last week, and with nobody left around to see, a shape began to materialize. Huge, bulking, with a massive torso ending in goat legs, bent back the way knees can't go, with a deep red leather skin, massive neck muscles, human but overly large facial features except the very large pointy ears and gigantic shiny black bull horns protruding from the forehead of the Jinni.

"That was a joke stupid. Let's go" said the boy, as he got on his bike, started the engine, and idled over the gravel parking lot, screeching peeled away down the road.

Wild Nothing CH1

CH1
It was a sweet ride. Black paint, matte finish, gun metal trimmings no chrome anywhere. Gorgeous. With a 1500cc engine the Ducati X1500L was technically not even road legal in this state, and for good reason, and with the smaller frame and tight turn radius made this the most agile, quick, powerful, most devastatingly fast unstable but tantalizingly sexy dangerous bikes on the market. Even with the dense Atlanta traffic and totally cringe-in-fear worthy fleet of Chevy 1250 turbo 2015 armored speed cruisers that the Atlanta PD had monitoring the highway, in a chase situation the driver of this bike would be there one moment and a few moments later, gone, after the banshee scream of the engine erupted and faded into the distance.

The Thief wondered if the owner knew just how fast a ride this was, despite the estimable $89,000 price tag. At this point it hardly mattered. In a few minutes, the Thief thought, it would be his. With the practiced art and training of a true professional, he lived the bike onto a rack with wheels. As he rolled the bike out of the outdoor concrete stairwell corridor, he gave a thought to the likelihood of someone hearing him when the rig clanked off the curb of the apartment complex onto the driveway. Most people never even pay mind to the sounds happening outside their apartment. They hear the everyday noise and it enters their perception but leaves unnoticed, unregistered. Even a paranoid Beta male, upon hearing a noise and associating his brand new ride and becoming apprehensive, or anyone for that matter, would tend to momentarily deliberate action before making to move outdoors to investigate. In any case, then the Thief would be gone.

The Thief rolled the Ducati in its rig specially designed and hand made pneumonic tracks of the ramp of his wide cab pick up truck, closed the tailgate with a satisfying clap, and got into the drivers seat, started up the engine, and drove away. In less than an hour he will have dropped off the bike at a fence, the Marcatti family who was big enough to handle this kind of score, but not too big that the Thief had no interests in direct or indirect dealings with their business associations. There were some entities in life that were just too big to deal with, and in his professional opinion, some syndicates which were more trouble than they were worth. A nice finders fee and delivery fee and the freelance thief would be out of the picture. He was home free.

the dream

We were there to rob the place, the four of us. Each with our different set of skills. It was large, the place, like a museum, but it should be mostly empty this time of night.

We got separated and I went with one of them.

We walked through the hallway looking, trying to complete our portion of the mission.

We heard voices ahead, and looked to each other alarmedly. We looked around the corner and saw several patrons and some workers milling about and in conversation. It looked like the hour before an opera when people are starting to show up.

"Let's go," we said to ourselves.

As we tried to get through the gate we were stopped.

"Don't you need to help us get this working?" The security guard said as he pointed to a malfunctioning gate.

"Oh right, well I don't have my equipment," said my partner.

"What, is he new?" The guard asked me.

"Yea, I know right," I said mockingly.

My partner pushed the buttons on the key pad. After a few minutes he had it working and went through to the other side, because that was his skill.

Alarmed, I tried to follow. I was dressed in a white t-shirt for sleeping and the guards stopped me.

"You don't even have your key card pass," they said, pointing to my chest where it was meant to hang.

"But I HAVE to get in there!" I explained, whining.

"Why don't you just go right around to the side where the keypad is?" They asked, bewildered.

"Oh right," I said, moving away so they wouldn't ask if I was new, too.

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***Later, you and I are given a special key from a butler after doing a good deed...***

I took your hand and started walking down the lawn. Happiness filled my heart as the key given to me by the smiling man behind the door jingled and stuck in my left pocket.

"One more thing about me in this place, don't be scared, but I can fly."

"I'm not scared," Stacy said.

"We may get a couple stares, but people here are mostly used to it," I said, as our feet left the ground.

You held on to me tightly as we soared into the air, gathering speed and elevation.

We veered off to the left, swooping past an old brick and stone archway, grey with years and unuse.

As we flew higher the city of NY in the other world came into view. It was dusk and the lights of the buildings were coming on. We flew over the water and I looked around to get my bearings. It had been a long time and much had changed.

"Let's see if we can get higher so I can see where we need to go. The house where we are going is at Long Island Sound."

You smiled at me and held me tighter.

"This is amazing, Sal", you said.

Old ships like pirate frigates were docked against the piers. We soared past them all. We moved closer to the city on our right and shot forward with speed, the wind zipping through our hair. I started feeling apprehensive because still nothing looked familiar.

"This place does that..." I said to myself.

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Let's try the other side of the island," I said out loud. "Let's get some altitude and see if we can fly over it."

From the sky, the city was beautiful. The ships, made of wood with sails creaking in the water, dried behind us as we sped ahead. The buildings below were old, brick, tall, majestic, of various types and styles, but none familiar. It was the city, clearly that I remembered, but none of the familiar landmarks were there.

We came down to the top of some buildings and almost got caught up in an archway, we zoomed lower and did a barrel roll with my arms around you and you laughed, carefree. We saw water, foggy, impressioned between the buildings ahead, bust barely seen. 

Some young people were walking nearby and I shouted to them, starting to lose hope. They were walking down stairs on the side of the building, against the street below, a few of them apart. I shouted to them as they looked unalarmedly up at us floating by. 

"Excuse me, is Long Island Sound near here?"

"Yes, that's it just there," a young lady said.

"Thanks!" I said with renewed excitement. I took your hand and we descended towards the water we had seen. We were almost home. More questions you would have soon, but for now I just needed to get back to that special place. It was very exciting. We were close.

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As we approached the water we saw lights. We took some altitude and I tried to determine which lights were the house. Directly below us I saw some promising lights.

"I think that's it!" I exclaimed, hopeful.

I wanted to nose-dive, but you wouldn't let us. You had learned how to fly, in a short amount of time, but would still need my hand for a while longer. So I righted myself w/ feet downwards and we descended slowly with your facing in front and me with my arms wrapped around you.

But as we approached the lights below, I noticed something strange.

"Something is wrong," I said.

The lights were pinpricks on a large group of lily pads. It wasn't an island and we were still too close to the buildings of the shore. I felt myself waking up. The vividity of the dream was breaking up, fading.

"Not yet, please," I said to myself.

With renewed fervor I grabbed your hand and shot out towards the sound, over the water, frantically searching.

With vivid clarity the boats and small islands in front of us shot into view and behind us.

"We are going to make it," I said to myself.

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Then, as a ship passed to the left, I saw it.

"That's it! That's it!" I said. I was overjoyed. 

The house was rectangular on the sides with a cylindrical entryway with a flattened front. The lights were on and welcoming. I started crying tears of joy.

For a moment I panicked but I still had the key in my left pocket.

Trembling I looked inside the tall window near the door and saw my familiar painting/clock facing the entry way.

I took the key from my pocket and placed in into the lock. It fit perfectly. And brought back the memories of the place. I turned the lock and with a satisfying click the door swung open. I rushed inside to go look around but was dashed by emotion, as I saw the first "playroom" of decorated blue walls and unimaginable childhood wonder, I was overcome with emotion and fell to the ground weeping on my back with my arm covering my face.

"Thank you, thank you," I told you. "Thank you for helping me find it."

-THE END