Charlie: a short story

It wasn't until my seven-year old grandson Nicky was using the leaf blower to puff out my cheeks that I decided to make the jump.

Three hours of monkeying with the damn thing, and I was just about to put the finishing touches on it. The blower, not my grandson. He was my cheerleader. To some old farts like me, a kid of seven yelling "Yay Grampa! You fix that! Fix that like a boss!" might have driven them batshit. It was music to my ears, and it made me all sorts of Hallmark-lifetime special on the inside.
Each time he'd come up with a new cheer, I'd put on what May always calls my "super serious face". I'd furrow my brow deep, so the wrinkles in my forehead grew cavernous. My eyes would narrow, and my mouth would compress to a tiny line beneath my slightly sagging cheeks. I ain't gonna tell ya how old I am, because there's a few things a man can keep to himself. I'd been to the war, and I wasn't no spring chicken - I can say that much. Anyway, I had to put on a good show of things. Nicky's always looked up to me, the little snotball, and I loved him to death. I couldn't let something like a dad-blasted leaf blower get the better of me with him around. So I took him seriously as I could, and pretended like he was the one driving me on. That damn blower had to be fixed.

In my defense, I hadn't been the one to break it, either. Katrina did it. People always say "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and it's true. I'd just hate to see the sonofabitch that pissed off that hurricane. That damn leaf blower was the only thing left of the garage where my son had caught my addiction to engine grease. May said I was nuts to try to pull it out of that wreck, let alone put it back together. Just move on, she said. How're you supposed to tell your wife that a leaf blower means more to you than money, time, and effort? You'd sound like a proper nutjob, if you ask me. I just told her it had to be done, put on my "serious face", and told her it had to be done. She threw her hands in the air as if tossing confetti onto some poor bloke behind her and walked away. She was mad a bit, I was mad a bit, then we went for one of our long walks and everything was ok again.
"Grampa?"
I looked over from the blower to see Nicky making what he must have thought was a proper "serious face". Don't laugh, Charlie, I thought, if you do, it'll crush the boy. "What is it, kiddo?"
Nicky took a deep breath and held it. When he started to turn red, I figured he'd just about pop. Sure enough, what he said came out all in a rush, like someone had pushed fast-forward on my old VCR. "Thatblower'sspecialtoyouisn'titcauseyouspentsolongonitandIwannaknowwhysitsospecial?"
I blinked, then started guffawing. Not laughing, not chuckling, but letting loose fit to bust a gut. That boy is just too damn sharp for his own good. My own wife of 40 years can't pick up on something that gets me riled up, but that boy knew right away. Wiping tears from my eyes, I set the blower down and picked him up with my grease-stained hands. I set him on my knee, thinking that I'd catch holy hell from his ma about it, then looked him in the eye.
"You bet it is, slugger. You want to know why?" The look he gave me clearly said, Duh Grampa, I already asked that. I shrugged. "This leaf blower's the last thing left of our old house where your daddy grew up. I figure if I fix it, maybe I can fix him and me."
This made Nicky's eyes go all misty, and I had to bite my tongue from doing the same. Damned if little kids don't hit that spot right in my gut that just makes me turn into a blubbering idiot.
"B... but Grampa... why is Daddy so mad at you?"

I thought back. I couldn't tell him the truth, not at this age. How can you explain to a child what terminal cancer is? "Sick" don't cover it, no sir not at all. "Sick" isn't waking up every morning thinking that you're on borrowed time every moment you spend next to your wife. "Sick" isn't having your skin a perpetual shade of green from all the gosh-darn chemicals and radiations that are floating around in your beat up old hide. "Sick" you get better from. Worse, "Sick" doesn't make your only boy avoid you because he's scared to death of death and can't tell an old man he loves him.
"I don't think even he knows that, kiddo. Don't worry about it too much, son. Daddy still loves Grampa, and things will work out all right in the end." He looked at his shoes, a picture-perfect little sad boy right out of Norman Rockwell.
Damned if I don't hate sad silence. That's what gets me the most about this damn cancer. People don't yell, "Hey Charlie!" anymore, or offer to buy me beers on Vet's day. The cancer had turned it all into sour-smelling pity. You really can smell it on people. All the "How are you feeling, Charlie?" and "Are the treatments going well, Charlie?" stink to high heaven of sympathy, and I can't stand it. Smelling something like that come off of my little Nicky was just too much. I had to do something, so I pulled an old trick out of my hat.
"Hey slugger," I said as my hand found his mop of blond hair, "how's about we fire this thing up and you make Grampa look funny?"
His head snapped up immediately. Nothing like the promise of mischief to put a fire in a boy's eyes. "Whatcha mean, Grampa? How can the blower make you look funny?"
I grinned in spite of myself. "I'll show ya. Let me start up the blower, and then we'll go over yonder so your Gramma don't see us being straight-up fools, kay?"
Nicky nodded furiously. He was as eager as me to get his mind off his father. Not that his father was mean, or bad to him. I'd have striped that bastard raw if he hurt my grandson - police badge or not. No, Sam was just stubborn and macho to the core (much like his old man), so he didn't want to admit that I was dying. I was just playing at it to piss him off, he said. Couldn't stop thinking about myself, he said.

Picking up the blower and walking out the garage door, I motioned for Nicky to follow me. I hoped he didn't see the way I clenched my dentures at the pain in my gut, but I couldn't help it. Cancer can be like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants, only it's my gut instead of ants, and a hot poker instead of a magnifying glass. Bad as it was, walking outside took the pain out of me right quick.
It was the one of those storybook days, the kind where the princess has found the prince and they ride off into the sunset. The sun had gone all gatorade orange and was shimmery around the edges, like the end of one of those old westerns I like so much. Scept I was no Clint Eastwood, and that damn blower was no six-shooter. Still, it was the kind of summer evening that I hadn't known the Midwest was capable of till after the hurricane.
We worked our way around the back of the garage, where the roof and deck blocked the windows from the house. May'd probably have burst my eardrums if she caught me teaching Nicky the kind of shenanigans I had in mind. I set the blower on the ground butt-first once we were out of sight of the house, and commenced pulling at the cord.
Not pulling the cord, mind you. Pulling AT it. Pulling the cord implies a measure of success. For a good five minutes I yanked that sucker up and down with not so much as a sputter. I was about to swear up a storm and kick the damn thing to hell, grandson or no grandson, when Nicky reminded me I was a dumbass with a simple question.
"Grampa, does it have gas?"
Does it have gas. I'd seen more in my lifetime than probably you or your family has, let me tell you, but that boy was still sharper than me in seven years than all of mine. All that work on the damn thing and I hadn't bothered to fill it up.
Ten minutes later (I'd had a bit of a spell hoofing it back into the garage and getting the gas can down) and the damn thing was finally puttering out behind the house again. Nicky was crouched on his haunches, tilting the thing up towards my bent-over face. I looked him squarely in the eye.
"No matter what Grampa looks like, you can't laugh, understand?" He nodded. I was born with an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic, so I counted down with my fingers. One. Two. ....... One. This drew a giggle from Nicky, but he quickly stifled it. It was now or never.
Three.
Nicky pulled the handle, and a gust of dirty, smelly air caught me full in the face. After thirty-seven years, I heard Lt. Michael's voice again. Let's go you apes! You want to live forever? My cheeks flattened against my aging head, flapping around like the jowls on Droopy Dog. I heard Nicky gasp, then watched the fascinating process of how he tried to stifle a laugh. He won somehow, his tiny eyebrows clenched in concentration, but I could see the smile beating at his defenses. Acting purely on instinct, I opened my mouth as wide as I could, letting my whole gob blow open like a parachute. I moved my head from side to side, flattening one cheek while the other puffed out obscenely, my teeth standing out like the false things they already were. May always said that the treatments could take my teeth, but not my smile from me.
It was too much for poor Nicky. He collapsed, laughing fit to burst, and the blower died. For a moment I still felt the wind through my
(uniform)
hair, and then it hit me. I had to take one more jump.

* * *

Two days later, May was cooking dinner, and I asked her the question.
"Dear heart," I said in as simple a tone as I could, "Love of my life, are you going to burn my steak again?"
That wasn't the question, but I felt it had to be asked. One old-fashioned slap later, and May and I were sitting at our oak dinner table with our old silverware and settling into a steak that any chef would consider a travesty, but what May called "decently cooked."
"Charlie Johnson, I don't know who taught you to talk to a lady like that, but I'll have you sleeping on that couch if you sass me one more time before we're done eating." May is older than me by a bit, but that didn't keep those gorgeous grey eyes of hers from lighting up like a firestorm when she got her dander up. Even though her hair was mostly gray and thin now, she still tossed it over her shoulder in that frustrated gesture I liked so much. Gray and thin it might be, but that woman will be beautiful till the day I die.
"May, when was the last time you felt free? I mean really free, as if nothing else in the world mattered just then."
She blinked, nonplussed. "Charlie, what an odd question. What do you mean by all that?"
I shrugged. "Just tell me, if you can. It's something I was wondering about the other day."
"We-ell.... I suppose it was that last trip we took up north to ride those snow machines. I felt like I could go anywhere and do anything on that thing, loud beast that it was."
Smiling, I shook my head. "You always had the grease gene as much as I did, May. I love you for it."
She smiled the kind of smile a young girl smiles when asked if she likes you back, but said nothing for a while. She appeared to be enjoying her ribeye, but I wasn't really sure how a woman would enjoy the taste of leather. When she finally spoke up, she asked what I thought she would.
"How about you, Charlie? When was the last time your worries just flew away?"
I thought for a bit even though the answer had come to me while my grandson flapped my face about with a leaf blower. It wouldn't do to let May think I was brooding, or she'd try to poke me one in the ribs. God, how that got me going sometimes. After what felt like the right amount of time, I pointed towards the ceiling.
"You remember when Sammy graduated his police academy, May?"
Her eyes widened a bit, but she smiled. "You always said you felt best when you were jumping out of a plane. God's mercy, but you're crazy as a bedbug if that's what you're referring to."
Laughing, I pushed my plate back. My appetite wasn't what it once was with all the treatments, and leather made my gut give an angry turn sometimes. "You know me better than anything, sweetheart. You can blame the 101st for getting me to like it. Once someone yells at me to do something, I'm either gonna hate it or love it. Jumping out of a plane just happened to be something I grew to love."
Smiling with her eyes, May looked out the window into the evening. Summer nights round here are pretty as can be, especially when the fireflies are out on our porch like they were that night. Little horny lightbugs, flashing their come-ons into the darkness. Mating displays can be pretty sometimes, I guess. It was another while before she spoke up again.
"Charlie... what brought this up? You can't seriously be thinking of taking another jump. We haven't got the money, and you're in no shape to fly anywhere, let alone jump out of a plane at tens of thousands of feet."
I stood up, feeling something in me bend the wrong way as I did so, and grimaced. The pain never leaves you be, you know. It's worse than a shark with the scent of blood. Sharks will bump you a few times, then get you in their teeth and finish things. Pain is a kitten. A vicious, body-tearing kitten, playing with you between its paws. It'll bat you around, throw you in the air, and wreck you wholesale just for the hell of it before it ends you. And when it takes you down, you'll still feel every damn thing. I hissed a bit through my teeth, seeing the concern on my wife's face, and that only made things worse.
Perhaps I mentioned that my sense of the dramatic gets me in trouble. It did this time, too.
"May Parker Johnson, I have a right to do what I please. I'm dying, and if I say that I want to jump out of a plane like I used to back in the war, I will jump out of a plane like I used to back in the war. You don't know what it's like, May. To leap out into that big open sky with a grin on your face and get your laugh stolen by the wind. To have that wind puff out your cheeks like... like your grandson is hosing your face with a leaf blower. For those few seconds while I fall I could do anything, and nothing scares me. Not those damn Nazis, not cancer, and not the fact that my only boy is too stupid to tell me he loves me before I keel over and die.
"For those few seconds, I could be God Himself."
May hates it when I blaspheme, and normally she would have scolded me. Instead she burst into tears, and my rant died deader than a doornail in no time at all. I walked around the table, wincing as I did so, and pulled her into my arms. She cried like that for a while, holding me as close as she used to before the cancer, and I didn't care that it hurt like a bitch. If a man can't hold his wife when she's crying, he ain't no kind of man.
Finally she wiped her eyes and looked at me. "Where will we get the money? Who the hell would take a patient with cancer up in a plane for a jump anyway?"
I held her close for a bit more, biting my lip against my gut. She couldn't see it, so I could do it. I finally let her go back a ways, and held her face between my dry old leathery palms. I kissed her forehead, then slowly eased back into my chair at the table. Knife and fork in shaky hands, I tried to choke down a few more bites of burnt cow for her sake.
Mumbling through the ruined beef, I said, "You know who would, and you know how I'd do it. Just like the old days."

Later that night, we slept in the same bed for the first time in two years. I'd insisted on my own bed once the night sweats and vomiting fits hit, because I couldn't bear to see what it did to the woman I loved. I still think it's a gift from god that the night before I jumped those were absent, and I was able to hold my wife close one more time. Told her I loved her, and that I would always miss her. Told her to take care of my boy and my grandson, and that she'd do well to find someone else to pass the time with, since she still had those killer thighs and that laugh to drive a man crazy. She didn't say a word, just snuggled up against me. I think she cried.

* * *

My attic is a gosh-darn nightmare. Not only do I hate spiders, but the dust plays hell with my lungs. Still, I knew that if May saw what I was looking for, she'd call the cops on me, or worse, my son. Before dawn broke (she's always been an early riser), I woke myself up and slipped into some old rags. That attic staircase is unbelievably loud, but somehow I managed to pull it down from the ceiling outside our bedroom without waking her.
Ten minutes later and I was killing myself trying to stifle the sneezes. Each time I pushed one down I felt a piece of me protest, like a sack filled with too many things. I could swear parts of me bulged out. Where was that damn....
There. It was under a stack of photo albums, which didn't make any sense. They should have rolled off the crazy thing, but there they were, perched and wobbly as if they were about to drop and just didn't want to. I felt like it could have been me on that old army pack.
Forty years, and it still fit. I'd grown a belly after the war, too much beer and baseball, but it had gone the way of the dodo after my second round of chemo. Couldn't keep anything down. As the straps came over my shoulders, I could hear my lieutenant again.
Come on, maggots! You think Jerry's gonna wait for you to grow a pair? Out the door, and don't get dead! Even under fire, Lt. Michael had called us names. Goddam it, get some fire on those Krauts! Useless turds, I'll shoot you myself if you don't get a heave-ho! When he died, the unit broke up. We weren't sent to new positions or anything like that, but he was the glue that kept us together. We'd been through hell and back a few times already, so command decided we were done anyhow, and that was that. Most of my old mates were dead these days, but there were a few left. Men who would just laugh to see me wearing my old fatigues, or offer to buy me a beer. Men who wouldn't ask, "How do you feel, Charlie?"
A few I could count on like in the old days.
* * *

"Well if it isn't old double-ugly hisself. Charlie Johnson, back from the dead and looking like he could just whup my wrinkled old ass!"
Laughing so hard it hurt, I grabbed the bald, skinny man in front of me by the forearm. "Chuck Finley, you son of a gun, you look younger than the Devil! I still hate you for being the one of us who got to be Chuck and not Charlie."
There we were, two old men wheezing at each other in an aircraft hanger like a couple of kids with asthma problems. Grinning like idiots, the lot of us. Chuck truly didn't look that old to me, you know. He may have had a few more liver spots on his skin than me, and a lot more flesh around the middle, but he didn't look old. He looked like I didn't feel - alive. Finley was the squad clown before I was transferred in, always cracking wise and pushing insubordination with Lt. Michael. After I showed up, it seemed to make him more of himself. The two of us would spout dirty jokes before every practice drop, scream or laugh on the way down (he did the screaming, I swear to you), and keep everyone's spirits up in the mud.
Right now he was pulling me over to a little desk in front of his beat up old Piper aircraft. It was right in the way of the props, so I guessed he hadn't done any flying lately.
"What brings you round these parts, Charlie? Your place is what, a hundred miles away? Not that I was eager to see your ugly mug again, but spill - why you here?"
I lifted up my battered old pack and slammed it on the table. There was a silence as Finley digested what I'd fed him, and his eyes narrowed.
"I don't know what you mean by bringing your old chute into my shop old man, but you best not be thinking what I think you're thinking."
Lifting my hand up, I held it in front of his face. I had the shakes pretty bad from the walk to the hangar, and he could see it. I set my hand down on the table with a dull thud, and grimaced. "I'm dying, Chuck. You must have heard."
He shook his head. "Yeah, I heard, but I didn't believe it. You were our good luck charm, Charlie. Old double-ugly could never die, and would laugh the Devil hisself in the face when the time came. Why you bringing that old chute out here now?"
It didn't take me any time at all to reply. "So I could laugh the Devil hisself in the face, friend. I ain't going out like no cripple, no sir. I intend to go out of this world the way I want, the time I want, and that's now. You remember what Donner used to say?"
Chuck hung his head a bit, then said, "Yeah, I remember. Black bastard used to say it every damn day in the war. 'I ain't gonna be a slave to no man.' What's that got to do with your old ass?"
My hand was still shaking. I grabbed it with its twin to still the shakes, then spat, "This pain is making me a slave, Chuck. Donner and me, we think the same way. I have to do something, I have to be free again. When I'm jumping, I am."
Chuck was still mad. "That old chute may not even open, do you realize that? I'll probably be arrested for just taking you up in the freaking plane, let alone letting you jump with a chtue that old!"
"So you'll get arrested. What are they going to do, put an old vet like you in the pen? I highly doubt that. Hell, old Frank worked for the damn DA for a few years, he'd bail you out. I have to do this."
"The hell you do. That pretty wife of yours is going to be heartbroken. She'll die alone, your boy will be right about you, and those beautiful grandkids of yours you always send me pictures of will cry their little eyes out."
"You don't know that. For all you know, the chute could open and I could be fine. I could die in a bed of this damn cancer, cursing you the whole time."
"Charlie.... Charles, this is crazy. You can't do it. I won't do it."
"Charles Finley, this is the last request a dying man will ever make of you. If you won't do it for me, just think of that time when I took a bullet for you. I didn't hesitate then, and damn you if you hesitate now. I need this."
Sometimes when two men talk, things get too close to the way women do it, and we know it, and that makes us stupid. So for a moment, we didn't say nothing at all. That silence stretched, and stretched, and stretched, but didn't break. After a while, Finley looked me in the eye, and I saw his old piss and vinegar at work.
"If I do this for you - if I take you up one last time and let you jump out my plane with that old chute, I get first dibs on your wife."
I still had the tears in my eyes from laughing when we boarded the Piper.
* * *
Chuck is yelling to me over the radio. "We're at ten thousand, Charlie! Before you jump, I want to check your chute!"
I'm about to shake my head, but I realize he can't see me. "No way, old man! I packed this thing myself when we got home."
He laughs at me, loud and long. "I remember camp, you old fart. The way you pack a chute you're lucky that thing fits you." Finley rambles on a bit more, but my mind is elsewhere. I always get like this before a drop. Spacey, out to lunch, whatever they call it. I'm thinking about how good it will feel to be free again.
Finally I snap back to reality. Chuck is yelling, "Hey! Dumbass! Get that door open before I change my mind!" There should be some dramatic speech, I think. He should try to stop me at the last minute. Instead, I see that he's laughing. His eyes are all bright and shiny, the way they were when he'd curse nonsense at the Krauts, calling them sausage-lovers and stop-sign stealers. He's his old self, and so am I. I'm back, and he can see it too, so he gives me a thumbs up, just like we did in the old days, and I'm out the door.

It's called "free falling" for a reason. The laugh builds in my ruined gut, bubbles up to my scarred and irradiated lungs, and spills out of me like a kid busting through a gate at an amusement park. I can see the ground, but it's so far away... it's miles and miles down, and I'm flying like people only dream about. Old bones or not, I twist and flip, spreading my arms and legs so I can face up and look at the sky for a moment. The sun is bright, the clouds are puffy, and all I can think about is that God must have it pretty nice if he can see what I can see. Still laughing, I flip back over to see the ground getting bigger, but I don't care. All my motions are automatic, and I don't feel them. My legs are gone, my hands are gone, my pain is gone. My worries don't exist. No man but me is in control of my destiny right now, and I'm drunk on it, reeling back and forth in the wind. For these few seconds, I'm myself again, and, I'm free.

I'm still laughing as I pull the cord.

St. Patrick's day: why you have to speak up

Something about St. Patty's always gets to me. Every single one I've celebrated has been an amazing time, with one glaring error. It's like Murphy's Law, but it applies only to a specific holiday, and only once.

The day started off great. My boss, Mitch, was sick, and needed some company at the doc's, so I caught a ride into town and cashed my paycheck with him after his appointment. I've only been out to Jackson with him once this entire season, and we had been hoping to hang out more, so it was a good chance to unwind and let our beards down. We got some amazing sushi (I still can't believe Jackson's sushi is this good, it's a damn valley in the mountains) and picked up prescriptions at the local drug store. I also bought ingredients to make chianti braised beef with rigatoni, so I'm stoked for that.

Evening on St. Patty's (after a glorious nap in which I dreamt my friends Chris and Matt were putting silly-putty in slingshots and shooting people with it) kicked off pretty well with some Jameson and Guinness (a trend which continued through the night.) What really got things going was when the live music showed up.

Max Hay is amazing. He is, bar none, the most entertaining solo performer I've seen. He knew all the old irish favorites like Whiskey in the Jar and Moonshiner, but he could rip out Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, and Gaelic Storm like he was born to it. He even played a fast-kicking version of one of my favorite old Jim Croce tunes, which was awesome. Even better, he was calling all the staff by name, taking shots with us, and interacting with the crowd in a great way. If not for the one thing, I could have watched that all night.

For those of you who've been witness to drunken idiots before, things tend to go a certain way. Guys like to get drunk, swear a lot, tell jokes that only they think are funny (I'm certainly guilty of that one even when sober) and kick around. Usually after about two hours of this the alcohol works its magic and people leave. It's when they come back that it's a problem.

My roommate is an alcoholic. Usually he just sits in his room, drinks straight whiskey from the bottle, and keeps to himiself. He's full of loud opinions, angry rants about how there aren't any drugs up here to do, and stories of his life in Detroit, Alaska, and everywhere else he was an addict. I'd dismissed him as harmless for the most part; when he got drunk and angry, I'd tell him to STFU and go home. If he was belligerent in our room, I'd leave, and he'd just sit in his bed and get more drunk until he passed out.

Yesterday he'd had half a bottle of whiskey by about 3:00 in the afternoon. So, of course, he decided it would be a good idea to go to the bar. I got back from Jackson around that time, and was completely exhausted from Wednesday's snowmobile ride. I proceeded to take aforementioned nap, then get up for some dinner and head to the bar to celebrate someone else being Irish. What do I find when I'm there? My roommate, of course. Drunk as a skunk that's replaced its own blood with pure alcohol.

My roommate has told me many times about how he blacks out. Once he's drunk, he won't remember a damn thing he said or did, period. After about three weeks of telling me this, he finally admitted that he "might have a problem with alcohol, but AA is for pussies and god-lovers."

I could already tell he was blackout drunk. He had no idea what he was saying from one minute to another, you could barely understand his speech, and he would have crazy outbursts for no reason. Suffice to say, they sent him packing. That should have been the end of it. If I had been in my room reading or playing video games like I usually do on my days off, he then would have been my problem.

But hey, it's a holiday, and there's live music, so screw him, right?

Halfway through the evening, just before the music started, he came back for more liquor (he'd drunk the last of his bottle of whiskey and most of his beer.) I was sitting at a table with two male employees and one female housekeeper, a girl about my age. My roommate proceeded to sit down next to the girl and pester her, completely unintelligible. When she continued her conversation as if he wasn't there, he started playing with her ponytail and pulling on her hair. She got up, moved a seat over, and tried to ignore him. Noticing what was going on, one of our bartenders came over and put water in front of my roommate, then left to get a manager.

You kind of had to be there to get this. Here my roommate sits, acting like a child and demanding booze and attention, when out of the blue someone just puts a glass of water in front of him. It was funny to most of us. When we laughed, his expression changed from childlike glee and petulance to some kind of drunken, bruce-bannerish rage. He started dropping f-bombs and n-bombs all over the place, got up, and went outside for a smoke.

Again, we all thought "problem solved."

I got up to chat with some people, and walked out to the front desk (empty-handed and mostly clear headed) to talk with the girl working the night shift. We were joking around about how many times I got my sled stuck (twice) and how many times I fell off the damn thing (once for no reason while parked) when my roommate appeared from behind me like a drunken dracula. He slurred several phrases about how much people where we work suck, are hillbillies, and how he was going to go home. He turned to leave, and I thought that he'd finally just give it a rest.

Then he turns to the girl out of the blue, looks her up and down, and says "Nice nipples." Then he laughs, high-pitched and loudly. I tell him to get the hell out of there right damn now, and he stumbles away.

How the hell do you handle that kind of thing? I'd have taken a swing at the guy, A) I don't need an assault charge and B) I'm not getting my ass fired for a piece of trash like him. The girl was horrified, red-faced, and almost ready to die of embarassment.

For about sixty seconds, both of us just stood there in silence. We tried to talk about it at first, but nothing was exactly easy to bring up. She mentioned that he always stopped by her desk in the afternoons to bug her, and she'd warned him off before.

The level of shock I'd felt began to bleed away. He was the worst I'd seen him since the first time he drank himself into unconsciousness in our room, after threatening me, telling me never to tell a black man to kill you because you don't have anything left to live for, and then hawking a loogie onto his bed. He'd crossed a line, but we could take care of it in the morning.

Of course, that's what I was thinking when he walked back in. I'd locked the room when I left, and he didn't have a key. He swore at me a few times until I gave him the key, then threatened to lock me out. I told him to do it; I'd sleep at my bosses' cabin on the floor and get a new key from the manager in the morning. He laughed, called me a few names, then turned to leave again.

Then he turned around, with deliberate care, looked the girl up and down, and said again, "nice nipples." He laughed the same damn high-pitched, child-like laughter, and ran out the door. If he hadn't, I probably would have hit him as hard as I could. The poor girl at the desk looked not just embarassed, but hurt.

His ass is getting fired as I type this. The second time he came back to harass the desk girl, two other employees heard him.

How the hell are you supposed to handle something like that?

What's worse: he'd established a pattern of behavior before this that I KNEW would get him in trouble. Rather than tell a manager or someone else how he would sit under his covers and spout racist slurs while drinking himself asleep, I just let things slide. Who wants to be a tattle-tale? I figured as long as I was the only one he got pissed at and treated like shit, who cared?

It's only now that I realize that this is exactly the type of thinking people who suffer abuse go through. I was not abused - the worst thing that happened to me is that I'd get sick when he'd stand near me because he smelled like rotten food and alcohol and tobacco. He'd threaten me, tell me I should try mescaline, and talk about how he hoped the Japanese nuclear reactors went critical and caused acid rain to melt the jap's skin off, because humanity is a blight on our planet.

But that mindset, the idea that "if I'm the only one dealing with this, then others don't have to" is a symptom of the larger problem. I was an enabler. My silence allowed this man to continue abusing alcohol, himself, and eventually led to him sexually harassing one of my friends. If I had said one thing, just one thing, to a manger asking for help, there would have been record of his behavior. If I had allowed him to go around knocking on doors at 4 AM demanding that people give him liquor like he wanted to, there would have been consequences. By hiding his behavior, by pretending I was a nicer guy for letting him live his life the way he wanted, I didn't just hide a problem. I made it worse.

I'm lucky he didn't do anything worse than verbally harass my friend. I was stupid, and it's not going to happen again.

What makes me feel like shit even more is he's just been fired. Obviously, there's a no-tolerance policy here for sexual harassment. He just stopped by to tell me that he has nowhere to go, nowhere to live, and the job he was counting on probably isn't going to work out - it was owned by the same company that owns the business I work at. He won't be able to get a job at any of their locations, which means most of his opportunities to work have dried up.

This is not a black and white. He's not a terrible guy when he's sober, and everyone agrees that he's a damn hard worker. He's just an alcoholic who screwed up (albeit in a pretty nasty fashion). No matter how hard I try to paint things simply, it just doesn't work.

The killer? Had I spoken up earlier, he might not have hit up against the wall of zero tolerance. He might have checked his behavior a bit, kept just getting drunk in his room. Or he could have been asked to resign instead of fired, so he could still work with the company, but not up here where he has no outlet for his addiction. Regardless of what might have been, the fact remains that I dealt with the situation badly.

So for god's sake, don't be me. Don't be a martyr to someone else's problem. You won't help anything, you'll make it worse. If your spouse, loved one, or even a coworker is abusive or hurtful on a regular basis, don't keep it down. You aren't responsible for someone else's happiness, but you can be responsible for doing the right thing. If you see something, say something. Don't be as stupid as I was, for god's sake.

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's day.

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prize fighter

I absolutely love the song that this title comes from. Every youth pastor I've ever known worth his salt has listened to that band.

Some nights are hell. Not because of anything that has to do with real life, but because my imagination is a slave driver. I'm not sure how your imagination seems, constant reader, but mine is a merciless bitch who loves to flog and spur. Every now and then the log burning in the back of my subconscious spits an ember into my brain, and it sits there - sizzling - until I can't sleep or think about anything else. That itchy, burning sensation some people get behind their eyes fills my head and before I go absolutely crazy I have to write something down; outlines, bare bones fillers, sometimes entire novellas of ramblings and ideas.

Thus, I have discovered my dream career. All I would do is spew forth radical ideas for someone else to write. I'd be the venture capitalist of the literary world, slinging from story to story like spiderman on a verbose rampage. Zip, swoosh, plop comes a plotline onto your desk. "Thank you literary spiderman!"

"Everybody gets ONE."

Something has been percolating for a few weeks now, and the only reason I'm mentioning it is because I know only a few people read these things anyway. I think I want to start a webcomic. Possibilities:

Parody of real life comics: There's quite a few of these out there, and they seem to do quite well. Girls with slingshots, Questionable Content, Something Positive, and others are all great reads, and have been running for years and years. Jeph Jacques, the author of QC, literally makes his entire living off of these. Least I Could Do is another good one, but stretches the boundaries of reality a bit more than the others. Believe me, enough bizarre and macabre humor occurs around my friends and I that I think I could write one of these pretty reliably for years without having to stretch my imagination to create new drama and jokes. Someone recently told me my facebook page is the written equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, sans melting clocks. I'm not sure if that was a compliment - I AM sure that it's material. The problem with doing a comic like this is that you don't have a set reader base that you can immediately zero in on easily. Readers of these comics seem (I say seem because I have no way of verifying this) to be very casual and normal people, with varying senses of the absurd. Uniformly what I've noticed about these comics personally is a genuine sense of human relationships: how they work, how they run into trouble, the absurdity of just how complicated they can get in real life. On top of that, most of the comics I've mentioned above are successful not only in the long run, but funny enough on a strip-to-strip basis that readers can get hooked easy.

Can I do any of that as a writer? I hope so... but any stand-up comedian will tell you that making your friends laugh does not equal good comedy. In fact, it can be just the opposite - you could just have really f*ed up friends.

An action-adventure comic with a unique twist:
There are quite a few webomics out there that try to pull this off, with varying degrees of success. Google searches of the title of the comics are good ways of judging this; everyone "knows" that google searches are somehow prioritized by number of hits. If the comic is popular enough, it shows up higher on the list. The wiki article on Google Bombs is fascinating in relation to this, by the way.

Some of my favorites in this category include Zap!, Spinnerette, Flipside, Gunnerkrigg Court, and Goblins. All of these have fantastic art, decently original plotlines (well.... Zap! can be generic at first, but it got more complex as time went on), more than a little humor, and truly engrossing settings. In particular, Gunnerkrigg Court mixes science fiction with Fae particularly well.

The key to these comics seems to be the key to a good story overall. Have an interesting protagonist whose traits set him/her apart from the rest of the world, with believable human personalities. You know why so many people dislike Superman? For a large portion of his comics, he's a goody-two-shoes. People enjoy conflict, characters with more than one dimension. In addition, these comics are successful because they can make you run the gamut of human emotion. Goblins has some extremely powerful scenes of heroism, and there's a strong undercurrent of sacrifice to the whole thing. I can't emphasize enough how deeply that can resonate with someone like me.

While the art in these comics is superlative, there are a few that use basic forms of representation, yet still can be remarkable by virtue of the writing. The best example of this is the Order of the Stick. By simple expedience of good writing, D & D jokes, and an interesting plot, OOTS has been one of the most popular webcomics to date. In some cases the simpler art style even adds to the enjoyment of it.

The comic based on random absurdity:

You all know these comics, if you read any at all. They're some of the most popular. XKCD and Doctor McNinja are two prime examples. McNinja could fit in the adventure, quirky protagonist category as well, but I feel that Chris Hastings' sense of humor is more Douglas Adams than Marvel Comics. Could those two ever be used together? Yes. Chris is authoring a Deadpool comic soon, which is the holy grail of comics for me. I will definitely be ordering some off the web if possible. Hell, I'll drive to a good store in Minnesota just to pick it up. Chris's work is good enough to be worth it. Check the news at the bottom of the link I provided for more on that.

These comics are often the funniest out there. Another one that I genuinely love is Rock, Paper, Cynic. No particular rhyme, reason, or continuity (McNinja has plenty of continuity, though) are needed to enjoy these. I feel that this would be a very Zach-friendly way of going about things, since my brain is such a huge pile of absurd anyway.

In some cases, these comics can start out with vague or no direction, and end up fantastic serial pieces of pseudo-plot, like with Sam and Fuzzy. Or not - just remain true to your subject matter, like with Penny Arcade.

Ginormous, glaring problems to any of these ideas
I have no manual artistic talent to speak of. Xkcd's stick-figure comics are probably beyond me. The time it takes for the artist to color an individual ball pit might actually kill me. Playing pictionary, or pictionary telephone, with me is an exercise in abstract extrapolation. Is that a platypus, or satan's mallard? Did he actually draw "cockpit" the way I think he did?

Good webcomics have good artists, period. Just because one has a different style doesn't mean they aren't good at what they do. The difference between R.K. Mulholland, Jeph Jacques, and Phil and Kaja Foglio (their comic Girl Genius is also amazing by the way, it's won a bajillion awards) stylistically is astronomical. Talent-wise? That is a much, much tougher call. They all have huge strengths that are unique to their own particular comic.

Realistic solution? Find an artist. There are major problems with this. One, will it be the right kind of art for what I want to do? Two, do I even have a RIGHT to be picky about it? Who am I to judge an artist by his work if I can't do anything anyway? Three, and this maybe the worst of the lot, they would have to work and put up with me on a regular basis. I'm a nice guy, but I can get crazy about my work sometimes. Hell, I can get just plain crazy. How do Sohmer and DeSouza do it? They must just be saints. If we do have artistic differences, how do we get through it?

Getting the word out. I'm not terrible at this. I'm a pretty good salesman, even when it comes to things that not every consumer needs. I was a friendly neighborhood Culligan man for a while, and did pretty well at it. Fund-raisers came decently quickly to me also. But, like any good entrepreneur will tell you, the internet is crazy different. Just because you HAVE a product doesn't mean people will like it or tell their friends about it. A lot of extra work is required to promote your craft. Jeph Jacques probably spends more of his time working on promos and merch total than anything else he does. Not that he doesn't spend huge amounts of time drawing his comic, but you know what I mean.

I always feel like a cad-when self-promoting. In high school, I thought my writing was the epitome of talent and refinement. After college, it was easy to see I'm a low-budget hack compared to most of the people out there. How can you promote your work if you don't think it's any good? >.< In a nutshell: crazy levels of dedication. I've been a reviewer for an online magazine before. Regular updates are harder than they look. Nothing is more irritating to me than a webcomic that updates once in a blue moon. (Dresden Codak anyone? Also, I'd KILL for some continuity to that one.) Too many good ideas are derailed by a lack of commitment.

Still, this is real life. My sister just got married. My folks aren't getting any younger. I have an education to finish, a career to plot out, and (eventually) a family to start, somehow. My good friend (author) Justin has started his career as a professional author, and I honestly don't know if I've got the guts to make it doing that. I would love it to death, explode from the sheer joygasm of it, yet somewhere in that pile of pathos that sits in my chest I can't tell if I'm cut out for it. Nerves, man. They kill.

I have nothing but admiration for webomics artists who set an update schedule and stick to it religiously. Even when Jeph Jacques is dying from the plague, he'll update his comic with a yelling bird spewing obscenity. Hell, some of those yelling bird comics are some of my faves anyway.

Failing would blow goats. No joke, the goats would be the only ones happy about this. Still, dealing with a crushing fear of rejection is something we all have to deal with sometime.

Right?

My brain is its own worst enemy. I have too many ideas to count. If I decide on a format, how do I solidify things into a coherent whole? Do I have to? Oh, what about this new idea? Can I work that in? Should I work it in? Am I ripping off someone else's work without knowing it? Am I going to get sued? Is any of this marketable? What should I do if my ideas don't pan out? Can I start a new thread, or should I just move on with my life? Can I turn a webcomic into a novel?

You can see the problem here.

There are massive, massive techincal considerations. And by that I mean difficulties. Do I pay for webhosting? There is no FREE webhosting, really anyway. How do I update the comic regularly? What barriers are there to getting started? Is there a CLASS on this sort of thing? Would it be conceivable for me to email some of my most admired artists and ask for advice?

If I do have webhosting (and can afford it), how do I troubleshoot? If the site goes down, am I screwed? How do you handle security so you don't get hacked while hosting a webpage? If the comic takes off (unlikely), how do I expand my database to handle server load?

And my imagination is still flogging me to death.
Somehow, I have to get this stuff out of my head. As of right now, it's all sitting in tiny little appleworks files on my old ibook (gosh I love that thing). Still, writing this blog has helped me realize something: no one does this stuff alone. If they do, they're some kind of demigod spat from the head of Zeus himself.

In the meantime, those embers are kindling something still. One in particular is about to start a fire. If anything remains after everything burns down, I'll put some of it up here.