Sid

Sid didn’t care about anything anymore. The fact that he was staring at a Texas beach with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of cheap whiskey in the other after a night of binge drinking three hours away was proof of that. The black watercolor melting point where the ocean met the sky in front of him looked like a promising and somehow romantic resting place. A full moon overhead illuminated the whitewater caps of the small waves as he sipped from the half-empty bottle. His shoes were carelessly thrown somewhere between his beat up Honda and the shoreline and he was feeling the cool water lightly kiss the top of his feet below the cuff of his rolled up jeans. He knew that going into the ocean at night was dangerous, but as you already guessed, he didn't care.

Earlier that night, Sid started his Friday ritual at one of his favorite neighborhood bars after having taken down a fifth of vodka at home to warm up. He never drank vodka in public, but rarely started a night out without it. The place wasn’t anything special. It was, in fact, particularly unspectacular, which was why he liked it. He could sit at the bar, flirt with the cute bartenders and waitresses, strike up conversations with other "solo" drinkers, and diligently hammer away at the crumbling condition of his twenty-five year old liver and lungs. He burned through half a pack of cigarettes and four pints of imported beer within his first hour. Having secured a spot in that area between “cool buzz” and "all out drunk," he picked up his cell phone and called her. She had changed her number a long time ago, but Sid felt a strange, masochistic comfort in calling it up and hearing the recording tell him that the number he dialed was no longer in service. He ordered a couple of whiskey shots and another pint. The brown liquor in the small shot glass didn’t really taste like anything by then, but he smiled as it went down because it reminded him that he had an unopened whiskey bottle in his car outside - just in case. He threw both shots back in quick succession, lit another cigarette, and smiled at the pretty blond behind the counter as he began sipping his cold beer. She flashed him what he considered to be a patronizing smile and turned her attention back to the martini she was making. The bartenders were used to his presence as a regular and considered him to be harmless because he never started fights, yelled, or came onto them in a threatening way. He was just some lonely, unspectacular guy that could handle his booze.

Bored and reaching the point that he would describe as “sorta drunk,” he called up some friends, none of which answered, and began convincing himself that they all hated him. He was sure that they had grown tired of his shit. At first, they probably thought his routine was somehow charming and would be enticed by the drinks he would always insist on buying, but after a while, his constant moaning and rambling about her began to wear them down. He was sure of it. She wasn't all he talked about, though. He’d ramble about anything to anyone who would listen. In any case, it was obvious to him that they had all had enough. He put his phone in his pocket and lit another cigarette. It was 12:30 on Friday night and he was completely alone in a crowded dive. He pretended to send text messages to people so that it would look like someone might be meeting him, but he was pretty sure that anybody who looked his way knew that no one was coming. At one point he glanced up at the television mounted in the corner over the pool tables just in time to see that Navy Seals ad that he really liked. You know the one that shows a moonlit beach where the waves come in and, all of a sudden, everything is dark except for the moon and when the scene lights back up there are these footprints on the ground that get washed away by the next wave? He liked that part. Seeing those footprints washed away struck him somehow. Those guys were badasses. They snuck in, completed their mission, and covered their tracks. There was no evidence that they had even been there. They may as well have been ghosts.

That was all it took. Three hours on the road and a half bottle of imitation Jack Daniels later, he was staggering in the sand and yelling gibberish at the stars. It was pretty incredible that he made it that far without getting pulled over or losing control of the car. He was well past "drunk" when he made it to the beach. He had nearly fallen out of the car when he opened the door and he pitched his shoes somewhere into the darkness because he figured he wouldn’t need them anyway.

A few wobbly moments later, he tossed his cigarette into the wind and noticed a figure that seemed to be in similar clothing with a bottle in his hand, making his way out into the surf. Sid lifted the bottle of whiskey over his head and poured half of its remaining contents all over himself as he watched the man in between the small breaking waves do the same. What were the odds of another guy having his exact same idea at that moment? It was nearly four in the morning on a secluded Texas beach,"why would anyone be out here," he thought. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. The figure disappeared into the darkness. Sid's eyelids were getting heavy and the whiskey started tasting salty. He thought about what she would say about all this as he looked back at his beat up Honda on the beach and proposed a drunken toast. He gurgled out some indistinguishable words and took one more man-sized drink.

The tide stealthily rushed in beneath the moonlight and Sid’s footprints disappeared.

Mr. Six

You’ve seen him. I know that you have seen him. He is the face of American amusement; the one that determines how much fun you are having by using some sort of nonsensical “flag system" of measurement. He drives a red and white, retro-style charter bus and loves late-nineties electronica. He could easily pass for Freddy Krueger’s unburned and sharply dressed, yet still terrifying older brother. His mouth gapes widely and his eyes bulge out of his skull as he spontaneously breaks into spastic dance moves and convulsive gyrations in a furious effort to encourage us to collect more flags i.e. to have more fun. He was laid to rest in 2005. We thought he was gone, but we were sorely mistaken. In the spring of this year he joined the ranks of notorious villains such as: Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and the previously mentioned Freddy Krueger by returning from the dead stronger, more determined, and more...evil.

Who would have thought that the song, “We Like to Party,” a one-time popular dance track by the Vengaboys, would raise my neck hairs and instill a creepy unrest inside me comparable to being awakened by the musical themes of scary movies like, “The Exorcist” or “Halloween,” mysteriously blasting out of my stereo in the middle of the night? It is a threat: A declaration of impending doom. When presented as it was originally intended for release in 1998, the lyrics to this song tell the listener that “The Vengabus” is coming and everybody’s jumping. The choice to use this particular piece of music (albeit instrumentally), with its promise of exciting party transportation and enjoyable communal exercise, works well as a sugarcoated method of misdirection that is used to distract us from knowing what is really happening and who is really coming. While the ironically upbeat dance track falsely assures me that I will be having a good time, “You-know-who’s,” face practically pops out of my television screen and forces its way into the depths of my subconscious. He is coming and I’m scared. I am, in fact, terrified. My very soul depends on my ability to have fun. Not only do I have to have fun; it has to be six flags of fun. Or else…

Who unleashed this beast? Who are the diabolical geniuses that gave this specter the keys to our living rooms? Whoever they are, they have figured it out. When it comes to deciding the appropriate place for my amusement, I have been scared straight. Nothing could encourage me to line up and pay exorbitant amounts of money on roller coasters, fried food, theater shows, and carnival games that promise the possibility of cheap prizes more than a creepy old man in a tux with thick black glasses and caked on make-up wildly dancing across the screen in front of me. Even now, I’m concerned that my flag level could be dipping below his standard. Such an event could only yield a disastrous and horrifying outcome.

I know you have seen him. He is the man whose first and middle names are surely the same as his last. He is evil. He is coming. He likes to party.

The Rachael Coincidence

How many stories have you read, true or otherwise, that start out saying that what you are about to read is absolutely true? I’ve read a bunch of those kinds of stories and I typically want to believe them, but it can be difficult. The situations don’t have to be completely outlandish, but sometimes the coincidence factor may be a bit too convenient – like the timing of an occurrence was altered just a bit to make for a better read. Writers can ultimately create anything they want in their stories, so the onus is on the reader to decide if what they are reading is really accurate: Unless the author has a witness.

What you are about to read is absolutely true.

I’m sitting in a house that is fifteen minutes from Laguna’s main beach on a Thursday afternoon. The front door is open and an occasional breeze hits my leg as I stare at the laptop in front of me. Wes is on the brown leather love seat about five feet to my right. He is pricing used vehicles on his laptop and intermittently looking up at the Carl Sagan documentary that is playing on the wall-mounted plasma screen television directly across from us. I am in the red pleather chair under the wet bar next to the kitchen doorway and writing an overdue chapter for my previous blog – soon to be book. Throughout that particular story I frequently mention my girlfriend and how much I love and miss her, but I never explained how we met. The rough version of the, “How We Met,” chapter begins with me describing the terrible condition I was in and the tragedies that befell me prior to that amazing event. It takes me about fifteen minutes or so to get through the introduction and then I start explaining the moment that I first saw Rachael. I could write about her all day, but I‘ve only just begun describing that first glance. Butterflies.

The scenario playing in my brain is highly romanticized and reminds me of one of our favorite movies: The Royal Tenenbaums. You know that scene where Gwyneth Paltrow gets off the Greenline bus and that Nico song, “These Days” starts playing while everything is in Wes Anderson-trademark slow motion? She and Luke Wilson look at each other as she walks toward him and everything about the sequence conjures feelings of true love. That’s what I’m thinking/daydreaming about when Wes strikes up the shuffle function on his I-tunes. Which song starts playing? You guessed it.

See? It doesn’t have to be an unbelievable premise. Coincidences occur all the time and can serve as entertaining stories. I’m just glad I had a witness.

What is this?

My goal is to set up an easily accessible collection of the various writing projects and random ideas that pop into my head on a regular basis. Some might say that it is more organic to keep things in a physical journal or notebook. The pen meeting paper is the way that “real” writers do it. Unfortunately, my handwriting is awful. That being said, I want this blog to serve as a place where I can create, store, and display the things that I write: A personal anthology to be shared with anyone that is interested.

According to an online dictionary, an anthology is, “A collection of selected literary pieces or passages of works of art or music." There are many anthologies out there that are strung together thematically. The literary pieces on this site; however, will not be in any order and will not necessarily relate to each other in any way. The common denominator of these seemingly unorganized works will be the author that brought them into existence. This is my stream of literary consciousness: my sounding board. This is a place for short stories, rants, observations, and ideas. This is a creative exercise that will constantly be in progress. This is “Sloanthology.”