My round robin experience

Aaron Aardvark and I sat down for the yearly performance review.

“And what can I, as a writer,” I said, preparing myself for the worst, “do to make your experience as a protagonist more enriching, more rewarding?”

Aaron heaved a heavy sigh and twisted his forehead into a mass of horizontal worry lines. “For starters,” he said, speaking each word as if a separate sentence, “get rid of that awful Fat Boy character.”

Hmm, I hadn’t thought about that possibility. But didn’t Aaron need to have a sidekick?

“I don’t need to have a sidekick,” Aaron said. “I work best on my own. You know that. I’m a loner and I don’t want to have any companions on my time trips.”

Ah, yes – but that’s good! That’s the problem with Aaron, he’s too self-centered, too much the narcissist. He needs to share the spotlight.

“Good,” I said, “then the conflict and tension in the plot are high, aren’t they?”

“But I don’t like it! And I don’t like all the nonsense about bisexual this, bisexual that. Make me straight or make me gay … but don’t keep leading me around from bedroom to bedroom.”

“But aren’t you having a good time, Aaron? Don’t you like eating Jeffrey while you’re thrusting into Cindy?”

“Oh, I guess, but a little variety, please. Cindy’s as boring as cardboard and Jeffrey, well, he’s kind of hot, I guess … I love his furry chest.”

“I knew it!” I said, reaching clarity. “No more women for you. You’re as gay as the three dollar bill.”

“And that’s another thing. You have an annoying weakness for clichés. Stop writing them!”

“Okay, we’re done here. Back to the book you go! Until the next Daily Write Round Robin, you’re in hibernation.”

“No!” Aaron said. “Don’t do that – please …”

Too late! Until February, then. Happy holidays, everyone.

We will build it

“Divorce Family Robinson,” Jake told his mentor – or should that be Mentor? “has suddenly become Suicide Family Robinson.”

“Forgiveness, tolerance, non-judgment,” said Jake’s guardian angel, “have you never listened to what I’ve taught you?”

“Oh, but I have, Savior. I have underscored that in my brain … and in my heart … every day. But he’s going to leave me, I know it, Savior … I know it.”

“Jake, my blessed child,” the guardian angel said, flapping his wings and sitting on Jake’s albinoed shoulder, naked and waiting for the lover who would never come, “you must forgive, bless, tolerate, love, and celebrate. Did I mention love? How can you build a house of my Lord, if you do not love?”

“If only I could, Savior, if only I could. But I find that now is the time to dispense with superficial forgiveness. Yes, they are blessed. Yes, they are loved. Yes, they are celebrated. But no, they are not connected to me. I will love them from afar.”

“As do I, my child,” the guardian angel said, a tear coming out of his eye.

And that tear fell onto Jake’s head, and when it did – oh, and when it did – Jake felt such a surge of love in him that, yes, he ran to his lover, he embraced that family, he kissed the sister, he hugged the niece, he tousled the nephew’s hair – and he said I love you, family, I love you … but goodbye, and forever goodbye.

At my feet

“I’ll see you in a month,” Marty said, kissed her on the cheek, and reached for the door.

“Goodbye, Marty,” Helen said, as the door shut. The keys in her left hand slid out and fell at her feet.

Helen looked out the side light as Marty walked to his Escalade, two suitcases rolling behind him, packed them in with his other things, went over to the driver’s side, sat inside, pulled out, and drove away. For a split second, Helen thought he might’ve paused as he switched gears from reverse into drive – but no. He accelerated away, and Helen watched the Cadillac roar into the distance.

Marty hadn’t looked back once.

Helen sighed. “Well, there it is.” She turned around and went into the kitchen The cat bowls were empty, so Helen filled them. How many times had she asked Marty to keep them filled? He could never remember ... except in those first months when Ben and Jerry came to live with them, gamboling across the floor and jumping over Marty’s barrel torso.

And Helen went over to the dishwasher to empty it. Full it was – from their chicken cacciatore dinner the previous night. She’d prepared the meal for him, wanting to do something special before he left. He’d said, “pretty good, thanks for making it, Helen,” before heading off to bed, their last night lying side by side, the six inches between them as wide as the Pacific Ocean.

She went to make the bed and found an undershirt under his pillow – yellow-stained at the armpits. But of course, Marty had a hairy upper body – oh, how she loved lying in his arms, cuddling in those warm moments of the sex afterglow. Well, she’d put this in the wash along with all the other clothes he’d left behind.

Helen walked back to the kitchen with a load of laundry to go in the wash. She saw the keys on the floor by the door. She dropped the clothes on the floor and stared at the keys. Helen sighed. She was so tired of the ritual. Twelve years together, and this was the fourth time he walked out the door. Three times past he’d left, whether because they fought over the direction of their closet hangers, whether because he’d had an affair, or whether he’d gone to Italy on a work assignment – and now it had become four.

Her bones ached and her blood slowed down to a frozen trickle. She just couldn’t go on doing this any longer – every two years, another goodbye, followed six weeks later by another hello ... no, she didn’t care if Dr. Schindler had recommended a month apart, just so Marty could figure out his needs ... no, she didn’t care if Marty had promised he’d come back ... no, she didn’t care if he bought her a diamond ring for Christmas just two days ago ... all she wanted was to get rid of that hole in her heart that formed, every time he threatened to leave.

Helen picked up the phone book, found the number she was seeking, and dialed it. She reached down to the floor and grabbed the keys at her feet.

“Safeguard Locks?” she said when the woman answered the phone. “Helen Clifford at 135 Chestnut Street. I’d like you to come out to change my locks.”

Up and down

I won’t get an erection for at last a year. I’m sure of it, I’m just completely certain.

So we get to Key West and check into the bed and breakfast. Honey, what was the place you picked on the Internet? Something like The Open Door? Oh, yes, dear – that was it, it’s right here on the left. Park the car, sweetheart.

This morning we got our chairs early – they said at the registration desk, it’d be a busy weekend. Bone Island was the circuit event, didn’t know about that one – two porn stars visiting from Hollywood, they said. Oh, and did we tell you when you made the reservation, it’s an all-naked weekend? Clothing is not optional. It’s forbidden.

So we sit around the pool all day long, watching one cock chase another. All afternoon. With the gray-beared muscle guys walking around the pool all afternoon, bouncing left and right,I think the Viagra supply’s dried up in Key West. How many sixty-year-old men do you know who can parade around at full mast for an hour in front of fifty pairs of critical eyes?

And then there was the lovey-dovey couple from Baltimore (that’s what I heard, they’re from Baltimore) doing blow jobs on the side of the pool. And then the four guys at the pool’s entrance, raising their swords like at a military wedding.

Sometimes a little too much of a good thing is a little too much of a good thing. I won’t get an erection for at least a year.

My mistake

“I’ll meet you over by the Atlantic House,” Geoffrey told the gang – Paul and Thomas, Frank and Bruce, Michael and Jay. He’d have just enough time to change his t-shirt into the blue skin-tight t-shirt he’d brought to bring in the 2000s at pier’s after-dinner party. And judging from the look he gave himself in the mirror ten minutes later, before going downstairs at the hotel to meet the gang, he wouldn’t spend the night alone.

Duval Street burst at the seems – shirtless twenty-year olds wearing rainbow boas and black leather boots, six-foot-tall drag queens in twelve-inch Elton John pumps and Bozo wigs, the diva parade of Cher, Liza, Barbra, Judy, and Bette – Geoffrey walked by the parade, laughing and smiling. The Atlantic House was straight in front of him. He couldn’t wait to tell the gang. And with the hundreds of men who’d be there for the countdown, surely there’d be a Mr. Right.

He walked into the place and scanned the crowds – just as he’d thought, hundreds of men dancing to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” He spotted a dozen or so Mr. Rights for the night, diagrammed out a path once he got a Corona-with-lime from the bartender. But where were Paul and Thomas, Frank and Bruce, Michael and Jay? Geoffrey looked around the pool, at the dance floor beyond, back to the entrance, over to the bar area ... no gang. He felt his heart press down on his rib cage.

Oh, surely they’d be here. He grabbed his Corona, posed it on his left hip (mostly to throw his bicep and tricep into profile – they were more impressive on the left than right) and made his way around the aforementioned path. But none of the dozen or so Mr. Rights made eye contact by the time Geoffrey had circled around.

“Ten – nine – eight – seven – six – five – four – three – two – one ...”

Geoffrey stood against the pier, his left arm crossed over his body, balancing the empty Corona-with-lime on his right hip this time. That would throw his pectorals into profile, and at least one of the Mr. Rights would pop on by. Odds were, you know. Had to be, Geoffrey thought – men were such sluts, they’d sleep with anyone at least once. And once he’d managed to get a Mr. Right in the bedroom, well ... he’d keep him, wouldn’t he?

“Happy New Year!”

Where was the gang? Geoffrey smiled and laughed, scanned his eyes left to right. All those happy couples were smooching and raising their glasses in toasts to the 2000s. Geoffrey froze his face. He walked straight to the exit – left foot first, right foot following – and straight back to the hotel on Duval Street.

No one, it seemed, inhabited the hotel. It was dead quiet, dark as a moonless night. Geoffrey heard his Prada soles on the staircase as he ascended, opened the door, and walked into the room. There stood the mirror – and Geoffrey staring into it, the blue skin-tight t-shirt. He saw the crows’ feet around his eyes, the sun-damaged skin on his biceps below the t-shirt. His hair seemed awfully dry and thin.

For some reason, Geoffrey remembered that fall day when he was five. Mom, Dad, and his big brothers had left for Grandma and Granddad’s, and they left him behind. But yes, they’d come back to pick him up.

Right and wrong

I don’t feel like talking, I don’t even want to think. I feel numbed to the five senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – nothing, all numb.

I can’t enjoy the purple and white crossbars of the lilac petals outside my window. The soprano chirping of the whippoorwills outside my window, those birds nesting in the 150-year-old oak tree outside my fourth-floor window, it goes in one ear and right out the other. I don’t hear the “Mama, Mama!” tones of their chirping. When I rub my hands across the muscular contours of my decades-long worked-out torso (the muscles fading behind the sun-blotched skin) … I feel no sense of arousal, I remember nothing of the men who’d massaged my torso, their appreciative remarks, how it excited them. And the bakery downstairs at the corner of 78th and Lexington, who cares how good the pastries smell at 5:30 in the morning? At last I think of food, how much savored the basil-infused beef tenderloin, the roasted carrots melting in my mouth, the lumpy mashed potatoes prepared for our ritual Sunday dinners by my mother with a curvy pucker on her mouth for the six of us, her eyes always softening as we ran into the dining room, taking the same seats we’d sat in for years, feeling the security of our willow-thin mother and our burly father.

I could sense those things, at least until that Monday that my father kissed my ,other on the way out the door, replaced in a heartbeat by a slit-mouthed policeman knocking on the door, muttering quietly about the accident – and my mother’s curvy pucker, soft eyes, and willowy thinness receded behind the dining table’s candles. And since the day when my husband walked out our own door that last time – this time, instead of heading toward a car crash, heading toward the arms of a younger woman with firmer breasts and suppler hips – I’ve sensed no things at all.