Review: Gina Frangello - Slut Lullabies

Slut Lullabies- Gina Frangello

Star Rating: 4/5

Readability: 3/5

Sex Appeal: 2/5

Ability to anger the elderly: 5/5

Slut Lullabies. That is the first mistake I make on the train ride home. Reading a book called Slut Lullabies. The word “Slut” placed prominently on the cover, on the throat of the cover photo of a woman under a scarf. The scarf is sheer, and the top of a pink nipple can be seen at the edge of the book, just popping out to say hello to the elderly woman across from me. She is not happy about seeing a nipple, because (and this is an assumption) she hasn’t seen her own nipples since they fell below her belly button many moons ago. Or perhaps she’s offended by the word “Slut.” She glares at me, and that’s when I make my second mistake. I don’t like old people, so I ask her, quite snipingly, what she is looking at.

“Your filthy pornography!” she hisses, grey hair leaving it’s carefully permed post to go rouge and prove her anger. “It’s filth! You should be ashamed!”

Old women have a habit of telling me that the things I’m reading are “filth.” Usually it’s because I am reading actual pornography on the train, ogling centerfolds and saving numbers for phone sex hotlines. And in those situations, I understand that cover stories like “Jenni Swift and Amber Foxx: Aussies Go Down Under” could make some people feel uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s the naked woman on the front. At some point I realize that the old woman is still talking at me.

“God’s wrath is boundless, and his vengeance will be known! Repent you pervert sinner! Repent!” Her face starts to turn red, the blue veins that snake across it are bulging and her eyes are trying desperately to escape from her head. She’s spitting with every word, and soon the rest of the train is staring at me like I have done something wrong. Let’s not forget that I was just reading a book with less than a half of a nipple under a scarf on the cover. The story that I am currently reading is pretty kosher too! It’s about… alright; it’s about women giving blow jobs. But that isn’t the point.

“Pervert” starts to echo around the train. Older women are the first and most brazen perpetrators, glaring while they say it. Then younger women, driven by their older counter parts, join in. The men start to look too. They seem to come from a different angle, though. The look they share is one of fleeting compassion, and then opportunistic joy. This then fades to faux anger and disgust, as they turn in their plastic seats to face their female counterparts. “That man is disgusting. Shame on him.” They seem to say. Inside, inside all of those men, they feel bad for selling me out. For not standing up for me. They could see the book, and even if they couldn’t, they understood that old women get too uppity about everything, and that if they judged anyone for looking at a porn rag, even if there was one, they would have to judge themselves harder, and first.

There is a difference between pornography and art. This debate has been had too many times, but still it’s a problem. Should nipples be part of cover art? Are sex scenes in movies gratuitous? Even down to the use of words with sexual connotations, we seem to have a problem talking about, looking at, or thinking about sex whilst in public. Gina Frangello doesn’t seem to have that problem, and it shows in Slut Lullabies. The collection of short stories covers sexual themes ranging from rape to passionless marriages to blow jobs in advertising. And all of it done in way that lets the reader know “it’s ok to talk about these things. You do it. Your friends do it. Your parents do/did it.” (not rape. But, you know, sex and stuff.) In ten stories, Gina Frangello takes you on a ride, leaving your breathless and feeling something inside you that you didn’t feel before.

Pill Whore

You used to cut the coke with baby aspirin and baking soda. You could flip an 8ball like a quad. That means just about nothing to most people, but the kids you ran with would marvel at that statement and treat you like a goddamn god.

Megan never noticed that the gram you would sell her every other day was weak. She might have, if she hadn’t been so fucked up on pills, the pills you used to sell her, and using the baby aspirin coke to bring herself back up from it. She might have noticed if she wasn’t trying to coat her brain with powders; white to speed her up, pink to slow her down, light blue to completely incapacitate her. You sold her ketamine once. She liked that all too much, muttering on about how she could watch herself like a TV show, from above, flying. Her eyes sat in her doughy face, thick black eyeliner getting slathered wider around her eyes, trying desperately to cover up the purple bags sagging under them. She hadn’t lost much weight, unlike most of the other junkies that started calling you all too often. You used to go meet them somewhere, the Meijer parking lot, the Steak n’ Shake, the park, all of the lonely places in your town that would never catch a glimpse of the handshake that took just a little too long and was a little too sloppy, as tiny plastic bags slid across a hand full of bills, the exchange done in as secret a way as possible. But they would never come to your house. You lived with your parents still, you did. You had moved back home after failing out, doing too many drugs yourself and fucking up. Now you’re a dealer, trying to make money until you can find a job, trying to find an apartment so that you can move out of your parents ranch house with the big yard, the big black room you call your own, and the refrigerator that is always stocked.

Megan is the only customer you let inside your house. You’ve known each other forever, since you were kids. She always was bigger, especially in the middle, the thighs, the arms, the tits. Oh, the tits. You still think about that night the year before when you had your chance; she was jealous of the girl, her pretty blonde friend that you were hitting on and to assert her dominance, she started kissing you. You got a hand up her shirt, for a while. Then you moved and she fucked your best friend, then started doing coke, stopped fucking your best friend, and started visiting you, brown eyes glossy and shining in your dull basement light, asking you for a favor.

“I don’t have any cash right now.” She said, running her hand along the top of her tank top. It was winter, don’t forget, so why was she wearing a tank top?

“Then you don’t get any of this.” You said, shaking the bag in the air. You smiled.

“Well, I mean, is there something else I can do? A favor maybe? Something more interesting?” She was being coy, batting her eyelashes, looking silly, really, a girl trying too hard. You remember when she was eleven, falling down in gym class, scrapping her knee and crying, even though she didn’t break the skin all that much.

“I don’t think I know what you’re getting at.” You lie. You remember that time you had just started high school, and she asked you what it was like, as if it were some special privilege that you received, something great, terrifying, wonderful.

“I think you do.” She says, slipping her left strap off of her shoulder, the black bra strap falling as well, meeting the red fabric of her shirt, and you remember the night that you kissed, fighting hard to race the sun when you would have to leave, go back to your house; you wanted to go further, to start exploring, to start working your way inside her jeans, but you got stopped in her shirt, her friend asleep in the bed next to you, dawn rapidly approaching. Megan takes a step towards you, from the black frame couch you have pressed up against your wall, to the bed in the corner that you sit on, wooden stash box filled with baggies in your lap. She drops the other straps, her shirt barely clutching onto her now heaving breasts as she inhales and exhales in what you guess is a sexy way, in through pursed lips, out through her nose, the ring in it vibrating with each breath.

You think and you think and you think. What will you do in this situation? Chances are, you’ll probably laugh it off, tell her to fuck off, and spend the rest of the night masturbating while thinking of her.

death (non-fiction)

My first run in with death­­, I was probably eight years old. I had a grandfather, the reason my family is where they are today, die from lung cancer a few years earlier, but I didn’t understand what that meant. In the years that followed, mortality was explained better, whether through school or simply understanding life itself better, and one day, in a Burger King, I was witness to the end of it.

I only vaguely remember the set-up. My family lived behind the BK and would go in lieu of cooking for most meals. It was day time, probably summer, and as I sat, eating the double cheeseburger I never finished, I heard a boy whimpering. He must have been older, sitting in the booth adjacent near the window, his little brother next to him with his mother and youngest sister across. They were all blonde. The kind of blonde that you expect to see in JC Penny catalogues, wearing the clothes you would expect such people to be wearing. Khakis, casual vests, the mom in Chino’s, that sort of thing. The kids were all eating kids meals, the bags or boxes that they came in crammed into the corners of their trays, the toys still wrapped but placed on the table, yet un opened. The eldest, the one whimpering, had something extra as well. Something white and furry, a small ball that he had placed on his tray on top of the burger wrapper, half of the sandwich still sitting there. He stroked it with his fingers, the tears welling up in his eyes, his face going red, and his muttering becoming more and more audible, “Please don’t die. Please don’t. Please. Please?” until his mother (and the rest of the restaurant) could hear. His mother started yelling, chastising him for bringing the pet with him. Her bob slashed around her face as she reminded him how she told him to leave it at home, and how the dear pet’s death was his own fault. He didn’t raise a water eye, instead his face slid like old glass, the tears running, dropping on the tiny corpse. My family finished their meals at this point, my mother walking to the counter to tell the manager of the health risk at the boy’s table, and I didn’t take my eyes off of my peer as he cried and mourned the death of his ward, friend, and plaything.

Of course, I can only assume many of the details. His family may have forgotten all of the details. My family hasn’t ever brought it up. We’ve dealt with deaths since then, real deaths of loved ones, some well before their time. My own mortality has become something I understand and think about, yet in the face of all of this, I still wonder what that boy thought at the moment that death was in his hands. To be the one who caused it. I once cut down one of my grandmother’s roses. I cried, not wanting the flower to die. Not knowing that, with flowers, death is a continual occurrence, with rebirth always following. It’s nature’s way of showing us how fleeting we human’s really are.

Italy #2

I'm not sure what i was hoping to get out of this trip. I was hoping for some sort of adventure, maybe? A world understanding? A vacation from America? Did i get any of it?

Sure, to a point. But more than that, I feel like i lost touch with any solid idea of where I belong. This isn't some existential crisis of "oh I don't know who I am!" no, this is an amplified feeling of not having a place in the world. This is masturbatory bitching about feeling lonely, while surrounded by people, half way across the world, and i can't seem to stop.

I prefer to alienate myself from others. I prefer to sit in my kitchen, complaining about how I feel lost, and confused, instead of actually talking to anyone. They are strangers. We've known each other for two weeks, and i'm supposed to turn to them for help? Certainly not. That requires opening up, going into details of the past, of the present, and hoping for someone to understand enough to be able to look at me as if i wasn't crazy and say "I get it."

I assume, based on preconceived notions of class, that I am alone in my mind numbingly boring anguish. I assume that i shit out bullshit and that's all it will ever be. Bullshit. My whole life revolves around me saying shit that isn't real, and the lines are starting to blur. I just want to be where I know where I am, and that, of course, means two things.

I don't know. What I'm trying to say is that I feel sad. So very, very sad.

words. (back to fiction!)

“And then she just fucking cut his dick off!”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“No man, seriously! Then he became this, like, awesome fucking salesman; the best!”

“No. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What is it with you and these fucking stories anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Man, every day you walk in here, put on an apron, and launch into some crazy story that you ‘heard on the news’ or ‘heard from a friend’ or ‘read on the internet’ or wherever you make this shit up from. Then you act like their true and if I question any details, you go into a different story that supposed to prove your point, but it’s just more bullshit.”

“Whoa. Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you about…”

“Dude, just tell me about your life. I tell you about mine, like that girl who used to call me Silver, like the horse from The Lone Ranger, for all the right reasons!”

Tori had told me lots of stories about his late night trysts, his escapades around foreign countries looking for tail, his prowess that was only matched by his alcohol tolerance. And good for him for being able to share all of that. He stood there, leaning against the black screen of the cash register, the pale yellow morning light crawling through the window, casting everything in a sick shine, and waited for me to tell him something about myself. We had been working together for three months at the smoothie joint, and I doubt he knew my last name.

It’s not that I was a compulsive liar. I told him fiction because for the last ten years I had gone from shitty job to shitty job, working my ass off, dropped out of school twice, and only recently could go more than a week without getting drunk or stoned. While all of it was happening, sure, I had some good times. You have to, otherwise you find yourself at the end of a rope or on the bathroom floor, foaming from the mouth, empty pill bottles around you. But reminiscing about that time you got so drunk and had to run from the cops, well, it gets old, quick. It makes you feel old. Like the good times are all over, and, hey, maybe they are.

I woke up on a sheet-less mattress at five in the morning, trying to stretch out of the night before. Every movement felt like it was done while wearing chains. Standing up was hell on earth.

I left for work on a third generation bike, the rusted chain rubbing against the flaking green frame, begging a rock, a bottle, anything, to jump up and break it clean off. On the way, passing the early morning jogger and the tranny prostitutes walking down Belmont, I tried to think of something good to tell Tori, something that would take up time so that he couldn’t ask me any personal questions.

“Come on, man. Tell me something real.”

“You want something real?” I was tired. Or maybe I wanted someone to talk to. An open ear that I could spill my soul to, clearing out all of the bullshit that I hadn’t told anyone because there was no one to tell. Maybe I just wanted him to realize why I didn’t like talking about true things. Either way, I looked at him and said “I’m turning twenty seven this year. I have never accomplished any of my goals. I stopped talking to my mom almost three years ago because all she said was how I was wasting my potential and how big of a disappointment I was.” I started pacing the floor, grabbing a straw in my left hand to mash into an unrecognizable mass of plastic, the other flailing wildly as my words tried to leave my body through any possible means. “I spent three months in a hospital for coke addiction when I was seventeen. I have to take so many pills to keep me sane, that I count them as my breakfast. I will never find a woman to marry, because I have commitment issues. Not to mention my dick is the size of a Gordon’s fish stick.”

“Shit.” Tori looked down, and started playing with a penny, rolling back and forth on the counter with his fore finger.

“So fuck off with this truth bullshit, ok?”

“Do you need a hug or something?”

“I need a cigarette.” I rubbed my hands on the apron, feeling every waterproof fiber with my callouses. Aprons. Everything I do, I do in aprons. The cycle never ends.

Tori was tall, a few inches taller than me, but at the moment I seemed like a giant next to him.

I never gathered an enthusiasm for living. I never found myself taking a walk and admiring flowers or a child’s laugh. I learned, quite quickly, to see the ugliness of the world. Love stories were works of saps, and language? Language was a tool for concise communication. Long winded explanations, poetic prose, are all just trying to cover up a lack of insight or actual experience. Manufacturing a life based around the good times, the happy memories, the sting of defeat only to be followed with a lesson or a “que sera sera”, it’s all (to be concise) bullshit.

It’s a bitter self-loathing that comes through the truths that I could tell. You grow up poor, you stay poor, you start to lose your sense of wonder and beauty. The rich have it easy, big houses, silver spoons, opportunities presented to them in the form of a “I don’t know why, but you’ve earned it!” The fortunate see the world as a wondrous place filled with whimsy and wind thrown cautions, forever knowing that below them, should they fall, lays a safety net. Landing on your feet is a given when you fall wearing a harness. I couldn’t tell Tori stories about me. It wouldn’t interest him, because when I look out at what is happening in the world around me, I see the misery, and I quickly spell it out. I do not dwell. I can’t think of my dreams as a mysterious, multi-faceted playground of emotions, the good bringing joy and the bad haunting, giving insight, or whatever. They are a collection of what has happened during your shitty day, and sometimes you wake up screaming. Or at least I do.

The rains came in while Tori and I sat in silence. They sky was black at ten in the morning, and droplets no longer described what was falling. It was the kind of rain that makes Christians build an arc or start preparing for the second coming. The giant glass windows shook with each clap of thunder, and the wind howled like a dying child calling for its mother. I thought about apologizing to Tori for the outburst, but as I watched him study the toe of his shoe I though, eh… fuck it.

Eight hours passed and the rain had let up significantly. My shift was over and I headed home. I was tired, and as I left, Tori asked if I wanted to go out for a drink or something. He looked worried. I told him I wanted to go home and drink a bottle of Drain-o, before hopping on my bike and pedaling home. As I cruised over the slick streets, passed taxis and disappointed Cubs fans leaving the rained out game, I sighed. At home, chaining my bike to a rod iron fence, I looked up into the once dark sky, and staring back at me, brightly in the sky, was a rainbow. I just walked inside.

Oh shit! Italy!

I got lazy in Hawaii and haven't written shit. This is me, writing, about Italy.

I have spent the last 3 days drunk. Or recovering from being drunk. Which usually involves me waking up, drinking as much water as i can stomach, moaning about a headache, and drinking more alcohol. This morning was rough; my head was pounding, my mouth was bitter and covered in a thick, white film, and despite our recent venture to the grocery store, we had nothing easily accessible other than crumbling bread and beer. Instead we drank a bottle of chianti.

The thing about drinking red wine in order to drown a headache is that it works all too well. Wine, then a walk to buy more wine, then prosecco (the mix of red and white sparkling was too much and the bottle was re-corked and put in the refrigerator for later.), finally followed with a bottle that was more of a jug with a screw on cap (another red). This was all before it was one in the afternoon, and we had drank until four in the morning the night/day before. The apartment is constantly littered with empty bottles, or half empty bottles that are begging to be finished, and by god, we will finish them. I found cups from the bar under a chair, still filled with a fruity drink and a lemon wedge. Those, I do not aim to finish.

The jug of wine took us to a bridge on the other end of town. Under the bridge to be exact. We walked past Michelangelo's David, past statues of Da Vinci, over a canal, until we came to a graffiti covered landing staring out over the river. Anarchist slogans and symbols dotted the trash covered concrete, and the congregation of middle-aged, middle-eastern men made our adventure surprisingly more enjoyable. After the wine was gone, and so was I, the walk home was all I had to keep from vomiting. I passed out on the couch.

It's not that Firenze is all a drunken blur. I have walked cobblestone streets that are older than my home country. I have sat in a window in a piazza sketching a world renowned church. I wandered city streets alone while reminding myself over and over again that this, even if it is only for a short period of time, is my home. I have come to conclusions about myself, my life, and my future while simultaneously enjoyed the blissful ignorance of living not day by day, but hour by hour. We followed paper footsteps up a hill to discover the greatest view of one of the greatest cities on earth. Still, the inebriation that has followed me, the days and nights filled with glasses of wine and shots of whiskey seem to force themselves to the forefront. Even so, I find myself saying "Wow. I am doing this." several times a day.

And I couldn't be happier doing it.

The Accident.

This is an excerpt from a bigger story. Enjoy!

My parents backyard pressed up against the access road, mere feet away from the Snyder welcome sign, and a literal stones throw from Pentook, the next town over. Pentook was famous (in the city of Snyder, anyway) as the worlds biggest population of douche bags and whores. This approximation was based on high school rivalries that were never let go after graduation. The populations of both cities tended to stay exactly where they were, leading to fourth, fifth, and six generation Snyderites and Pentookians. I can only imagine that the residents of Pentook felt the same towards us, but the figures stacked in our favor. Pentook had one of the highest drunk driving rates in the state at that time, with fourteen deaths a year, which is impressive for a town with a population that wouldn’t fill half of the Twin Cities Baseball Stadium (which possesses a modest 34,237 seats.) Every couple of weeks, I get to watch the funeral procession go passed the welcome sign and down the road towards Great Hill cemetery, the orange flags waving on raised, big wheeled trucks, low rider sedans, or the occasional motorcycle gang.

In June, I spent a lot of time smoking behind my parents house, hiding behind the shed that sat in an overly planned and organize mess of Midwestern wildflowers. My mom was a school teacher, and as soon as May hit, she began looking for projects, and the garden was this year’s. She bought black tubs filled with pre-grown blues and purples, yellows and greens, and spent three days arranging them on top of the soil, trying to get that perfectly executed mess. First they were too random, then not nearly enough, then she had to walk away, her short hair teased and frayed from her worried hands running through it. I thought it looked the same every time she rearranged it, but I kept my mouth shut, only offering a “looks good, ma” when she looked at me, her eyes silently asking me to say it.

My parents weren’t the loose, carefree type that turned a blind eye to childhood shenanigans. My father was raised Catholic in New York, moving to the North Star State with my mom soon after they got married. His parents were immigrants, living in Spanish Harlem, and raised him to be disciplined and to make it out of the neighborhood. He worked for the electric company as a plant manager, sitting behind a desk that he had earned after climbing poles and fixing transformers to put himself through college. A Cuban, and looking like it, he stuck out against the snow white town, but unlike Dave and the “Spic Racer,” my dad had fought hard to assimilate. It was fitting in that allowed him to move up, he believed. No one likes an immigrant, or anything they can mistake for one.

My mom was the product of a broken home and teen years of being a hippy. She left home at sixteen to finish high school from friends couches and her car. She worked her way into and through college as a waitress, a dry cleaner, a maid, and a drug dealer. My mom kept secrets, and lots of them, usually about her past. She was a teacher now. She had a degree now. She had a family and a life now. Why talk about then? This secret life, paired with the work ethic and demand on the other side, lead to my parents watching my every move. Parties were coded “band practice with Dave,” which was a long formulated idea, but would never get off the ground. I could never come home smelling like beer or weed, otherwise I would have to come up with elaborate stories about girls caught in bad situations, and having to go rescue them and drive them home. It wasn’t that my parents were overly protective. They just didn’t like the idea that their son would get into trouble or end up like all of the other drop outs or wastes of space that many of the kids of Snyder would turn into.

I smoked outside for the obvious reasons. I wasn’t sure if I was addicted (like my health teachers told me I would be after my first puff,) if it had just become a habit (it takes twenty one days to form. I had smoked for about that long,) or if it was just an excuse to be outside. It didn’t really matter to me as I watched the cars pass by, headlights turned towards the casino, the dual white lights going valiantly towards battle with the house that always wins, so sure of their luck, that they would be the one who would turn the tables and come out ahead. Or the red lights, moving under the speed limit, sheepishly, their lamps dulled by defeat, the energy required to shine taxing their spirit just a bit too much. The smoke would get caught in the summer wind, mix with the sweet tastes of the flowers, and the warm scent of night before blowing steadily east. It was what fireflies tried to look like, that smell. It was what a seventeen year old dreams about for months, counting the days until it is nice enough outside that they can sit, wrapped only in darkness, and breathe, be it clean air or acrid smoke. The hum of the cicadas was interrupted by the Doppler rush of cars, but other than that, it was quiet. Until the metallic screams of a dirt bike’s over revved engine pierced the night. The bike climbed the hill heading west, weaving though both lanes, wobbling heavily before straightening out again. The bike’s motor grew louder as it approached me, and as it was set to pass by my house, one of the tires slid hard to the drivers left. As he over corrected, leaning his whole body to the right, but not letting go of the gas, he headed straight towards the sign.

I don’t know if he was drunk. But as I sat there, entranced by the scene, he seemed like he was in total control. Time slowed. His face was clear, in perfect focus as though I were within arms reach. He smiled, winked even, and turned his attention back towards his direction. He threw his head back in a laugh, cursed the world, and raised his arms as if to be pulled by the heart upwards. The bike continued to work its way towards the sign, rearing like a horse in battle, stampeding towards its enemy, sentient and without direction.

Everything happened so fast. It was a blur of white and green as the plastic covered bike and him went face first into the wooden sign. The post splintered, but held enough that the driver went over the handlebars, flailing and screaming, before crashing into the ground twenty feet away with an explosion of snapping. It was like someone dropped a wine barrel from a four story roof. Neighbors’ porch lights popped on, the bugs all hushed in fear, and my mother came out the back door, asking “What was that?”

“Call an ambulance!” I yelled back, the dirt bike resting on the spotlight that light up the sign, still running.

“Oh my god. Is anyone hurt?” she called back, but I didn’t hear. I was running towards the man. I don’t know why, there was nothing I would be able to do for him. I had no idea how to do the Heimlich, nevertheless secure a broken bone. I guess I just wanted him to not be alone or scared. I wanted to help him, even if it was just to listen to him as he cried. I could call someone for him. I kept running towards him down the road. I could hold his hand and tell him the ambulance was on it’s way. I could tell him it was all going to be ok. I ran across the street. I could turn off his bike for him. I could put it in our garage until he could come back and get it. I could wait with him. I reached him.

There was so much blood on the street, but I couldn’t see it until I was close because it was so dark. I always thought the color was closer to a stop sign, but in the pool that was growing around the man, it was almost black. He laid on the ground, looking like he was trying to push himself up, one arm farther forward that the other, one leg bent and raised so it rested on the knee. His skin was tan. He only wore a white t-shirt that now had lighter red veins working their way up towards the back, the cotton absorbing the mess around him. His blue jeans were turning purple. Then I saw it. His forehead had slammed into the pavement, and smeared under his face were tan streaks and grey globs. Like raw ground turkey. I skidded to a stop from my full run, stumbled into the bushes, and vomited, cried, puked again, and cried a lot more. My dad was the next one to the scene. He came over to me, put one hand around my shoulders, the other on my eyes, and led me back home, the ambulance would be able to take care of it without me being there.

The police came to the house to ask what had happened. I told them what little there was so say. That he had been going so fast, that the tire slipped, that he leaned hard, that the bike hit the sign, that he went flying, that blood is so dark, that brains should never be out of the head, that I puked, that I cried, that I was still crying, that I was so sorry that I couldn’t have helped him, that I needed a cigarette, that it was summer vacation and nothing bad is supposed to happen, that the bike slipped on the street, that he was going so fast, that brains…, that his forehead hit the pavement, that I wanted to help…

I stayed inside for three days after that. The cops called the house and talked to my mom, telling her that he was from Pentook, that his blood tests showed that he was high on methamphetamines and had a .14 BAC, that the town was lucky that he didn’t hurt anyone, and that I should know that I did the exact right thing by having someone call 9-1-1 before checking on him. She should be proud to have such a level headed son. The community is happy to have me in it. She told me this. She told me that it was ok. That there was nothing I could do, and that I shouldn’t dwell. But as I laid on my bed, the stucco ceiling made pictures of the blood, the bits of bone, the whole scene. I had shaved my brown hair, no longer a curly mess, but buzzed almost to the scalp. My jaw looked harder, more pronounced, stronger that way. I had worry lines developing in my forehead. My eyes had always been some shade of hazel, greener some days, but now they were all brown. They never changed back.

I tried to get back into the swing of summer after that. They fixed the sign using a metal bracket on either side of where the post had cracked. Darla would call, we would walk. I would smoke. She would harass me about it. I would tell her “at least it wasn’t meth.” She would cry. I would apologize and we would walk some more. Night would come and we would head to the beach to drink with Dave. Until August, at least.