Pop Stories

2001-09-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

thursday, may twenty-fifth, two-thousand

the three of us grabbed a log and rotated it so we could watch the sun touch the pacific. dave found a stick to pack his pipe, he looked like an old man. dave was almost a punk, he didn't like the music, but he liked the scene. the attitude. he swore off any movie made in hollywood with a rare exception. he didn't do much shopping that didn't include organically grown junk. we had called him coffee dave to distinguish him from the other daves we spoke about. reason being he talked about all the different coffees, where they came from, what beanery they were roasted in, and the name of the driver who delivered them to the store. he could tell, just by sticking his nose in a bag, what kind of bean it was.

luke left early the next morning, dave later that afternoon. both were heading to their respective homes. to celebrate/send off we decided to smoke, luke and i sharing a cigar, dave with his old man pipe. where they were going after they visited mom and dad was something i could never get an answer to. any time i asked, i would hear any one or two of the various places there were thinking of landing. dave in kansas or bellingham. luke, just somewhere else.

we spoke of the coming summer. what a year had done. did it do much? had spending nine months together taught us anything other than patience?

watching the burning globe reflect itself off the sand kept three guys quite for a good fifteen minutes. the silence was broken by an old biker walking by, saying in his raspy, "one too many smokes" voice, "those things'll give you boys cancer." we all kind of laughed and said "yeah, we know."

i was a little bit more upset than the two. school had been out for a month, dave was living with me, luke still at the school. i was staying there for another three months, and my two closest friends were going to the other end of the world. planning on going to school in september, i'd end up close to dave again. maybe he'd know what happened to luke, then the three of us could stay close.
when i got home, a note from another friend from school, she dropped by to say goodbye on her way out of town, left her email address and phone number. that note disappeared shortly after i saw it.

morning came, and they left. that day, friday, i made the decision to move home and put in my two weeks. i didn't get into the school, i
haven't heard from either of them. through a friend, who is a friend of daves friend, i hear that he's in sweden or something. luke, gone. it didn't end like it was supposed to.

2001-08-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

unfold inside me

as she put her arms around me, and we stumbled to get our steps synchronized, i knew it wouldn't last. we were happy. happy enough for me to warm her with my overcoat while we walked down the streets of midnight city. our shows had become staples in our week. music gave life to an otherwise monotonous love. her diary was no longer filled with undefined days. we completed each other, yet all the time we tried to keep it from each other. her hands, folded just below my ribs, felt comfortable, poised to take a piece from my side at any moment. the words we shared wouldn't have filled a hallmark card. our best times were spent in silence, no words. phone calls consisted of my reading to her out of the book we picked up just before the show last friday or saturday.

it must have been september. or, perhaps, my memory has invented an appropriate weather for the occasion

"we brothers and sisters were so happy at home. i remember christmases when we all gathered. who could then have believed that life would ever become so torn asunder--"

now the words and the subdued voice come back to me--thirty years later--as her daughter writes the same epitaph upon her childhood
life.****

while my physical library grew, our conversation diminished into words written by dag hammerskjöld or c. s. lewis. growing up together created a different level of friendship. after countless trips with her brother, my sister and our mothers, we had a deeply rooted problem: we didn't know each other. now, almost twenty two years into our knowledge of each other, we stood waiting for the light to let us cross the street. i knew i wanted to spend the rest of my time with her hands so close to my heart. she let go as i opened the door to our record store. splitting up among the small group of kids looking for mint pink floyd on vinyl, we joined our group. a group with the mindset to not stop looking until they found exactly what they've been searching for since their freshman year, or earlier. heads bowed, fingers flipping, eyes looking, minds cataloging, we become workers.

as always, i go straight to the seven inchers, she to the end of the full length lp's. my search takes considerably less time, so i join her at the beginning of the alphabet and meet somewhere in the middle. neither of us have to retrace the steps of the other, she knows my tastes. after a very productive, fruitful search, we leave. i want to memorize the lyrics before i hear the music, so i give her the keys. i read to her lyrics now, not books:

were i to see you there, you would have to be nowhere. your eyes the move my heart, touching me piecing me apart. empty mind and icy hands, in your presence i can hardly stand. your stares they ease my mind and bridge the gap between space and time. autumn winds begin to blow, tales of life grow dusty and old, you'll never know how much you mean, but even seasons interweave. ever true, my thoughts resound, my life then ends when you're around**

the light turned yellow, then red from the breaklights showed tears on her face as i looked up for the first time since she started the car. knowing what was on her mind, i hoped it was the song i read. we had to end it. our longest conversation
began knowing it was our last. she pulled into a taco stand parking lot as they turned off the open sign. she sat crying while i fumbled in thedark for reasons. the words from the song started the end. taco sign flickered off now, the closers had finished and unlocked the front door to open it then close and lock it for the night. she choked back the last few tears and started into all the problems with us. i didn't want our final words to end. in order to keep the goodbye silence away, i told her about dreams i had of her. how, when i was running (in my dreams) away from the angry people, she was always in front of me until the moment i awoke after falling off the rooftop of some small-city building, i quoted john lennon. told her i wanted to be an old man sitting on a porch with her next to me in our bench swing. sometimes waving at cars that drive through our neighborhood. this can't be the end, not with me thinking so clear. i didn't want to say the words, but i wanted her to say yes. i had thought of ways to ask this question. times of hope. to save our perfection, completeness, i needed to say, or ask the few words. without a single syllable from my lips, she turned in her seat, looked at me and i knew she would tell me what i wanted to hear. she didn't need me to ask, didn't want me to. turning the key to start the engine again. it purred into reverse. then forward. the road was empty now. the light, red. i looked at her, reached over and put her hand under mine. green, twenty-five miles per hour. soon all the lights that glowed red turned into a wave of green. our talking never stopped. i still read to her, but i've little use for a phone. we started again without having to hear obvious answers to unspoken questions.

2001-08-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

dear so and so

i am listening to some music right now that makes me think of you. it's not a situation we were in and this was playing, it's just the artist, who you probably wouldn't know, has a way of saying things just how i think them. songs about great loss, pain, love.

they say "idle hands are the devil's workshop." well, i find things to do, writing you is one. but my take on that saying is more or less idle minds are the devil's workshop. this is because every time i have a moment to stop, think, and relax, you come to mind. when i stay busy i don't. sitting here, with nothing to do but listen to music, each aspect of you/us comes back to me. so i flip open my wallet, where, your once crumpled, photograph now rests, and look at how happy we were.

i could ask myself what happened, but i did that, and it only caused more tears. i had to cry, because i knew i drove you away with my drinking. i want you to know i've been seeing someone that will help me with that. sometimes i thank you. i needed a wake up. you had every right to leave me.

i'm glad you're happy in maine. i hope that being there can make you as happy as you made me. it's still cold here in seattle, the snow is not going to come, though the sky looks like it's about to dump something on us.

the other day i ran into dan and betty, they are going to have a baby in october, betty was glowing. i could tell they tried to avoid bringing you up, i'm sure they would have said hello, but they were afraid to talk about you with me.

i would come out just to see you dancing freely by the sunset. like the sun you shone brightly. we spent hours by the curbside. telling stories under street lights, how your words would amaze me. now those days are gone, slowly they slipped away. now those days are gone, slowly. i still go out by the old house, where i met you after summer. where are you now? you're with another. i am sitting by the curbside, where we'd hang out under street lights. how those times still are with me. now those days are gone, slowly slipped away. now those days are gone, slowly.

i miss you, i won't lie. i cry myself to sleep. i don't know if it's because i miss you, or because i messed up. i think it might be a mixture of both. i'm just glad it didn't end in a big mess. well, i think i'm done.

2001-08-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

childhood

until i was almost five i lived in apartments not far from where i live now. these were not the kind stacked one on another, they were laid out side by side. next to me was a separation with a path that led behind them, where it looks like they might be two stories, but it's just the foundation. mine were gray. my cousin's, who lived six away on the other side of the separation, were a different gray. all of the different sections were different grays. some had decks with stairs, some had decks without, we had no stairs. my cousins had no deck. instead they had a patio on the side with a path to the back. we spent most of our days playing back there. even though we weren't supposed to. one day kevin, the older boy who lived between us, drew a box with a diagonal line from each corner to the bottom, so it cut the box into two triangles and one of those \_/ kinds of shapes. he then drew two eyes inside the middle shape and told us it was a ghost and it would get us if we went back there. it scared me for weeks. until someone washed it off. probably our old, mean, german land lord named george. i think he ate kids. he didn't want us climbing trees. or doing anything fun. so he had to eat kids.

2001-08-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

the perfect hideout

i was walking through the park when i noticed a little boy sitting on the bench, so i went up to him and said "hey little boy, why are you just sitting here?" he said to me "i am sitting because i am tired" “tired of what?” i inquired, he told me that he was tired of running from the girls, who, were now arguing over who was chasing him first, he said it was Tiffany, but Kim thought that she was the first one. i knew this was quite the ordeal for the little boy, so i told him not to worry, i have had similar experiences. i told him i would distract the little chasers while he made is escape into the boys bathroom. i went over and asked the girls what the fight was about, and as they proceeded to explain what the boy had just told me, he got up and ran to the bathroom.

2001-08-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

dear lu.

he watched as the cloud lifted from her mouth. it was strange seeing her smoke. she'd been thought of as a good girl, and this turned his view of her into puddles of melted snow. "when had she started?" purity shaken off with each flick. "it's time to let go. she's sixteen now." he accepted the onslaught of boys with a gracious smile, makeup with a laugh. a tear formed on his cheek now seeing his little girl on the corner, waiting for the bus. it hit him harder than most can imagine. a father's love lasts, his princess doesn't.

in the weeks to come, walls were built, mostly by him. he could never know when or how much his daughter's growing up would affect him. now that she has, he can't look at her the same. "she won't even talk to me."

he used to sing to her songs of love written from a daddy to a child. he wrote many of them. he stopped around the time her mother left for a job reporting at a small news paper in the midwest. he forced himself to forget where exactly. until that day, six years ago, music was how he communicated. he kept a scrapbook of magazine and newspaper clippings, advertising and reporting on the shows, pictures his soon-to-be wife took of him with his buddies pouring everything into that beat up old guitar. he had things to live for, to sing about.

looking at an old picture of his wife "i used to write songs for you." they only dated for three months. maybe more would have stopped the heartache ten years down the road, but then he wouldn't have lucy.

now he sits across from the only thing his wife left at the small room table, she never looks up from her plate of instant dinner. "why can't she look at me?" thinking, then aloud "how was you day, Lu?" "okay." one word can carry so much weight. no communication made meals together grow further apart.

at night she would close herself in her room with her headphones on. he would peek in to watch her lying on the bed. she wouldn't turn, but knew he was there. growing to hate those headphones made him mad. "the thing that brought us laughter as stopped me from knowing her."

morning; she's out the door before he's out of the shower. he sits alone at the same table he did the night before, this time a bit more comfortable, but a lot more unhappy. he cries into his bowl of luke warm oatmeal, praying to, one day, get her back. he sits down with a pen and paper and writes a note to give her sometime.

dear lu,

we haven't talked in over three months. we live in the same small apartment, yet i've avoided you. it's not because i don't love you, i don't know how to show you that i do love you. we used to share music, new we hardly share a house. lu, i'll never stop loving you. i will never stop looking in on you. i need help raising you. let me know what i need to do.

dad

folds in the envelope tell her it was written some time ago, and has been kept in many pockets. as she reads the barely legible letter, the same tears that her father cries at night get caught on her lips before they drop onto and smear the ink.

days pass, the letter goes from her pillow, where she found it after school, to her binder, backpack, and back to the bed where she reads it over and over before falling asleep. "how do i respond to this?" it sits on her nightstand where it's right under her lamp so it's the last thing she sees before going to sleep.

after many weeks of thinking, she decides her best bet would be to write a letter back, just a few words. she sits at her desk and starts writing, no good, into the trash. starting over, hesitating, continuing. wad, throw, write. wad, throw, write. wad, throw.

too many thoughts built over the years. how can you write about such long times of anguish? days went be, paper everywhere. her school work was failing.

he opened his scrapbook, like he does every monday night. flips through the pictures of him with different big name musicians, to the last few pages dedicated to his ex-wife and daughter. there, next to the last picture taken of him with lucy, is a piece of paper top folded and taped with "dad" delicately written in small letters. careful not to tear, he takes it off, cautiously opens it up, afraid of the words on the inside, and reads;

i love you,

lu