by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)
Why do we need our partners to be The One?
Nobody knows what this living is, and so we just try to fill it.
The harder thing being to let our loves be wild. To let our loves be unknown at the same time as they carry you, direct you, change you. As the ocean carries the boat, let ourselves be tossed by the sacredness of whatever it is we might feel—about others, ourselves, our lives that we are failing or not failing at. Trusting the boat to handle the storm and the sea to eventually deliver us.
I stare at my new One. The tousle of his blond hair, his blue eyes serious and scared and a little sad. I know without a doubt that he is not a sociopath. I also know that he is not The One in the way I want The One to be. I know that he is the opposite of all the things he thinks he is, as is true of me, as is true of all of us. I know that as he’s strong, he’s also equally weak, and he’ll probably never want to admit that, the way none of us do. And I know that there will be times in the course of our relationship in which we’ll tear at each other, wanting the other to be stronger, bigger, better, until maybe we part ways furious, communicating via three- or four-word texts in regard to some beloved pair of socks I left at his house or a book he took that needs to be returned to my mother. I held and loved and laughed and shared everything with my first ex-One every single day for years, and now I don’t know where he is, and he doesn’t know where I am and neither of us know what it means, what we went through, other than that it got us to where we each are now—Here.
I want to tell this New One, sitting across the table from me, his sweet lips pressed with worry, “If we don’t think we’ll be together forever then we should quit right now,” but I wouldn’t even be able to get through that sentence without laughing, because, hell, this is just the way things GO. We love, we want, we shut down, we replace, we do it again, in the same order maybe, and the truth is I probably won’t ever give up this unicorn ride. I’ll go to the center of the sea for it, with all the hypocrisy and the fantasy and the foolishness, calling out the Ocean’s name, “It’s for failure that I’m calling you,” and the many that are She will laugh their one voice and say:
“All I want is for you to sing that one back to me. With that useless word, failure, make me something beautiful.”
Dayna Brayshaw is a somatic educator in Asheville, North Carolina, when she’s not somewhere else doing something else. daynabrayshaw.com
GARY BUSLIK
Neil and I
Looking back in time and space, a relationship comes full circle.
Neil Armstrong did me two favors—one as big as the moon, another as small as a footprint—neither of which he knew about. We didn’t know each other, but we did; we knew each other, but we didn’t.
In 1969, my buddy Willy and I, fresh college graduates, took a summer-long trip to Europe. We didn’t have much money, but we planned carefully. Or, rather, I planned carefully, for Will was a free spirit, whereas I had OCD before they invented the term. I calculated exactly how much I could spend each day for the projected time span—meals, Cokes, hotels. Willy didn’t give a shit. He figured one way or another he’d survive. That should have been my first clue. Still, we had been friends a long time, and if not for his adventurism, I probably wouldn’t have gone in the first place.
Mostly, I cursed that I had.
Willy papoosed a backpack; I schlepped two of my parents’ plaid suitcases. Neither of us had ever been far from home, let alone out of the country, yet he was savvy enough to know that if you’re twenty-one and traveling through Europe, you don’t pack a steamer trunk. Today everyone, young and old, travels by backpack. But in 1969, some of us (Willy) were ahead of the curve, some (Gary) way behind. No one from the Midwest was actually on the curve. And so Willy wore the same tank top for the entire summer, whereas I donned a sport jacket and tie, changing them often. Looking back, Willy should have ditched me sooner than he did.
It was the Day of the Hippie. I had never been one. I liked hot showers and haircuts and privacy, and I liked my country. I had considered smoking grass once, just to see what all the fuss was about. But then, the observant writer I hoped to be, I noticed that nature had given me two of almost everything—arms, hands, feet, kidneys, lungs—any of which I could, in a pinch, substitute with its twin. But for some reason known only to itself, that same nature had dished me only one brain—the organ of which, ironically, I was most in need of two. Getting stoned, falling asleep on Amsterdam’s interurban trolley tracks, and getting a leg sliced off might be embarrassing but, given Holland’s excellent health-care system, probably wouldn’t be fatal, literally or creatively. But getting stoned and falling asleep on London’s Carnaby Street and getting my head smashed by a double-decker bus would be (sorry) a no-brainer. You see what I’m getting at? No more writing (keep your snide comments to yourself).
Like travel budgeting, I tend to think these things out in advance.
Willy, on the other hand, was fully wasted for the width and breadth of our trip. It was hard not to be. So many American long-hairs descended on Europe that summer—the dollar was strong, air fare low, and since they’d soon be getting their asses blown off in Southeast Asia, the guys figured they may as well breathe happy while they still had breath—that to inhale was to get high. Train cars were marijuana dens, stations hazy with giddy smoke. All the famous gathering spots—Piccadilly Circus, Trevi Fountain, Ponte Vecchio, Place de la Bastille—billowed bell bottoms, beads, and bam. It was impossible to walk from one neighborhood to another and arrive in your right mind.
Willy always managed to find a source. He’d peace sign the right dudes, black-power fist the right brothers, surfs-up signal the right chicks and land somewhere to freak that night. Public squares and youth hostels were the crash venues of choice. Me, I preferred bathrooms with locks. So Willy and I would compromise with Europe on $5 a Day-recommended pensiones, but he wouldn’t show up anyhow. In the morning he’d leave word at the desk that he was still alive and would meet me for dinner, if he remembered. Sometimes we’d link up for an afternoon of sightseeing, but more often than not I’d wind up waiting for him in vain, and when, two nights later, he’d finally poke his head into our pensione, he couldn’t seem to recall my name or where he’d been.
In short, I was a complete killjoy. I’m an introvert. I kept to myself. I didn’t want to sleep with strangers in the same longitude, let alone the same room. At night I would curl up and write in my journal or letters back home, like a real writer but not quite. I had a sort-of girlfriend in Chicago—a convenient excuse for not, like Willy, picking up any glaze-eyed chick prowling for a hit. The problem being, what with Willy out having a great time, living life, loving life, and I perfecting the art of being a Republican, I was miserably lonely. That years later Willy would have absolutely no recollection of our entire European summer, not a single moment, was for me, then, of little consolation. The truth was, I was as forlorn as a wet cat.
Unhappy people write. Happy people bowl.
In desperation, I confronted my freaked-out friend. “This isn’t what I signed up for!” I bellowed. He did not seem sympathetic. He called me antisocial and told me to fuck off. “We’re gonna get drafted soon and die in a fucking rice paddy!” We squared off, but through his grassy stupor, his reason, such as it was, prevailed. He was taller and heftier, but I had been the college boxer.
Still, he had won the reality match. Yes, we knew—we all knew, all of us clinging to Europe that summer—that this great fling might well be our last. Vietnam was lurking, licking its chops, and for newly graduated dudes, the odds of getting impaled on a punji stick were higher than scoring an Amsterdam spliff. So in his own incoherent way, Willy had left-hooked me a fistful of truth.
If I was afraid of lockless toilet doors now, how would it be when I had to poop in front of fifty other GIs? If I was so homesick now, how would it be when a platoon of Viet Cong were trying to shoot my testicles to kingdom come?
Beating up Willy wouldn’t change the truth
.
And so he went his way—to Greece and Israel, I learned later—and I mine, according to our original itinerary and budget, tearing out Frommer’s chapters as I dragged along myself and my plaid. If I was lonely before, now I was wretched. I kept reminding myself that, as Emerson had said, “We all walk alone”—and so learned to despise philosophy. In Copenhagen I wandered through Tivoli Gardens, watching young couples snuggle under twinkling lights. Eurail-Passing Switzerland, I marveled at the Alps and charming mountain villages, but writing home about them wasn’t the same as seeing them with someone you love.
One night in Genoa I went to a bar (a couple of cuties sat nearby, but I didn’t have the courage to introduce myself) and listened to an American duet sing Simon and Garfunkel, which made me dissolve in homesickness.
On the ride to Rome, the train stopped at a platform. A rumor rumbled through the cars that we were all supposed to change trains. Hundreds of bell bottoms got off and crowded on the planks, looking for, waiting for . . . what? Having not personally heard any conductor tell us to change trains, I remained in my compartment, watching the backpacks mash together on the platform like migrating wildebeest on a riverbank. And I watched the herd shrink behind me as my train continued to Rome. Where the antelopes wound up, I have no idea.
So I felt smarter than the rest of the world but more alone than ever.
In Rome I checked into one of Frommer’s recommended pensiones, Splendide. I had a private room with bath and a clean, solid bed for only two bucks. In the lobby the manager, Maria, worked her counter, and on a table were an aluminum coffee urn, chipped cups, and cascading packets of Nescafé. There was an old sofa, three stuffed chairs, a floor-console TV, a sunlit Oriental rug, and it was all comfy and nice. But the cozy furnishings only reminded me of my own living room in Illinois, and I missed my family even more. I wanted to go home.
The problem being, if I gave up, I’d always know I was a quitter. I was a boxer. To quit was to lose. Oh, I would bullshit my friends about some good reason I came home early, but I’d always know I hadn’t answered the bell. If I couldn’t stick it out in Europe for a few more weeks, how would I stick it out in the army?
So it wasn’t Europe. It was Vietnam. That’s all the whole damn thing was—all of it to all of us: son-of-a-bitching Vietnam.
Maybe I was a quitter. Maybe that was the truth. But, I rationalized, maybe it’s not bad being who you are. Maybe the bravado is what’s bullshit. Maybe “peace with honor” meant getting your legs blown off for no damn good reason. Maybe you had to live to fight another day.
Maria recommended a nearby cafeteria and drew directions to the Forum and Colosseum. It was deep dusk, and nighthawks bruised the sky. The restaurant’s fluorescent glare made it easy to find. I bought a piece of chicken, some roasted potatoes, and a Coke. At about eight-thirty I made my way to the Colosseum. Oddly, the streets were almost empty. It was July 20 under a hooked moon. I had not been home for six weeks, and I had lost touch with the news.
The Colosseum was dark except for the slivered moonlight. I was the only one there. A cat’s shadow swept across the ancient stones. Inside, it was dangerous. There were no barriers. I could easily slip off a dewy ledge into the subterranean corrals. I squinted into the darkness and moved carefully. The pits were inky and deep.
I had a weird sensation. It felt haunting, standing there alone in that ancient place of depravity. Was it a death omen? Would my draft letter be waiting for me when I got home?
I, who am about to die.
Yes, I decided, this was an omen. So, if I was going to get blown up in a rice paddy and break my parents’ hearts, to stay away from my family any longer would be inexcusably selfish.
I would go home.
Walking back to the Splendide, I felt giddy with relief. I was going home. It was the omen’s decision, not mine. If I did get drafted, as I was sure I would, why should I continue to suffer now? If partying in Europe was Willy’s final wish, mine was to be in my own bedroom, clacking on my typewriter, eating my last meals with my loved ones.
Why were the streets so empty?
When I walked into Splendide’s lobby, I got my answer. A dozen people—Maria, her friends, other guests—crowded on and spilled over the sofa and chairs, all bent toward the TV, watching the Eagle lander lower itself in a dusty billow. When they saw me they jumped to their feet and applauded, as if it were me, personally, touching the moon. “America!” they shouted, pumping my hand, slapping my back. “America!”
In my self-pity wallowing, I had forgotten about the great mission. Now I sat with my new friends and, as they hugged me and cheered, we watched it unfold.
I liked being hugged and cheered. I liked it a lot.
That night, basking in my vicarious celebrity, I considered. What if the Colosseum omen had been something else, not death? How many people would ever be able to say they stood alone in that ancient monument, gazing at the moon at the very moment man first set pads there? One, that’s how many. Only one. Only me. And I thought, fate has meant it to be a great story, meant for one person to write—the only person who was actually there.
And I decided that, no, I wasn’t going to die in Vietnam. I was going to live and write that story and many more great stories, and that was my destiny.
I liked being hugged and cheered.
And I’ll tell you what else. I thought if those guys could go to the moon, could face the prospect of dying alone so far from Earth, I could tough out one crummy summer in Europe. I knew that if I went home now, if I quit, I’d never be able to write about Europe, about the Colosseum in the moonlight, or maybe about anything else. The memory of failure would chain my creativity like a lion to stone.
So I stayed. And for the rest of the summer, whenever I got so lonely I couldn’t stand it, I looked up at the moon and thought of Eagle, and I kept going.
I, too, returned home on schedule.
I waited for my draft notice, but it never came. I knew with absolute certainty, though, that I wouldn’t have sat out the war in Canada, as did Willy.
That is the big thing I owe Neil.
And I waited for my story to come, but, like the draft notice, it never did. Years went by, and, strangely, I wasn’t able to write about my experience in Rome. I’d think and think about my having stood alone in the Colosseum at that moment in history and rack my brain trying to make it a story, but nothing came. No story came. The years passed, and every time I tried to forge a plot, find a theme, create a drama, nothing came.
Any other writer would have begged for the chance to have had that unique experience and would have written something fine. But for me, the only person who was actually there—nothing. Over the years I kept coming back to the effort, assuming, hoping, that distance, experience, and maturity would reveal something, but I was wrong. Nothing came.
Stories travel on their own schedule. Our creative brains are vast and unfathomable, our conscious craft tiny and brittle. For a while we believe we are steering, for a minute we shine. But the cosmos will let them come or not, at its will and when.
Or we just run out of time.
On July 23, 1969, the last night before splashdown on Earth, the three astronauts made a television broadcast in which Commander Armstrong said, “To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11.”
Neil Armstrong died yesterday. And, finally, finally, my story comes.
This is the footprint he has left me, the smaller thing.
Good night to you, too, old friend.
Gary Buslik writes short stories, essays, and books, among them the comic novel Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls. He is also the author of the hyperbolic non-fiction romp, A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean. He lives and teaches near Chicago.
JAMES MICHAEL DORSEY
From the Ashes
The life of Pan revealed.
The smoke of wood fires
dulls the sunrise, silhouetting the spires of Angkor Wat as hazy apparitions.
The incomparable beauty of these temples, the soul of the Khmer nation, are a surreal backdrop for the tale of horror I have come to record.
I see Pan approaching, fingering his prayer beads, his saffron robes seemingly ablaze in the yellow mist. He walks as though he is not really there, feet barely touching the ground, a saint incarnate to the world at large but in his own eyes, a simple, humble, monk. He carries a quality I cannot assign to words, but people sense this as I notice heads turn with slight bows as he glides past.
He is bent from time and suffering, having lived through and seen more than anyone should, and I know through mutual friends he wishes nothing more than to spend his remaining time in secluded meditation, but upon hearing of my book project he readily agreed to speak with me in the hopes that no one should have to relive it.
Pan is a Theravada monk, one of about 350,000 throughout Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rouge, and now one of but 30 to have outlived their regime. Besides surviving personal atrocities, he bears the weight of trying to re-establish a religious order dragged to the brink of extinction under a barbaric reign.
Theravada means “Teaching of the Elders.” It is one of three main branches of Buddhism that originated in northern India and Nepal in the sixth century B.C. and rapidly spread throughout Southeast Asia until it was introduced to Cambodia in the thirteenth century via monks from Sri Lanka. It is a personal religion that worships no deity but rather teaches self-control in order to release all attachment to the material world and achieve personal enlightenment. Most Khmer men spend time as a novice before deciding to take the saffron robes or return to a secular life. For many it is the only escape from an existence of dire poverty and only hope for at least a minimal education. For Pan, it was a calling that almost killed hm.
