The good thing about working on my novel every day and treating it like a job, which is something I've done since returning from South America a month ago, is that I'm slowly making progress. I do a little each day. There is still no end in sight, but I'm learning to enjoy the process. I'm seeing the benefits of keeping my head in the game and how it's paying off over time. I'm learning to confront the fear I have over this thing. Not the novel in specific, but the writing, in general. So there's all that to be excited about. Which is a lot, I think.

The bad thing about working on my novel every day and treating it like a job is that I have nothing to post here. Which probably bothers nobody except me, but does bother me nonetheless. Posting things here has always been a little reward to myself. Which seems silly to hear myself say that. But I think it's true. So today I'm going to post the chapter I just finished, even though it's probably not really finished. I do need to stop working on it for now, though, and move on to something else. So, in part, I think posting it here will help me get it off my plate, psychologically speaking.

While there are important things going on in our world, and protests happening downtown, and economies like ours that don't seem to be recovering, I fully understand the insignificance of my little pieces of prose that contain my little preoccupations. And that insignificance stings a little bit. But it doesn't get to me as much as it used to. Because one thing I realized, thanks to C and also thanks to my friend Paul, is that if I died today, my biggest regret would be not following through on doing this. Which means it is significant. To me. It has to be.

In the past I've offered little explanation of what I post here, but with this I feel different. With this, I'm proud to call it the "big thing I'm working on." With this, I want people to know what it is and not wonder "What the fuck?"

This is chapter eleven. The chapter I posted here last time was chapter one. A lot happened in between. Posting random chapters out of context seems like precarious business. There are things happening here that have significance to earlier chapters. There are characters that are mentioned here that were introduced about thirty thousand words ago. At the same time, there are self-contained things here that can stand on their own. And themes that fit in with other things I've posted here on this site, not to mention real-life events. This might make it ideal to post here. Or confusing. Or redundant. I'm not sure which. Maybe all three.

A fair warning: bits of this are R-Rated. If you're not into R-Rated reading, maybe skip this, okay?

One more thing: This completely violates the rules on length I've set for myself on what I post here. Hell, this introduction alone violates it. I'm honestly banking on the hope that most of you will see how long it is and decide not to read it. Which begs the question: Why post it?

Whatever. I'm not going to over-think it. (Too late, I know).


The Killing Things


The things that are going to kill me are the things that help me forget that I'm dying. Not that I'm dying, in the terminal-illness sense of the word. More like, I'm dying in the we're-all-dying sense. And I think about that all the time. Which is not a great way to live. So to put it out of my head, I pour another drink. Or I take another pill. Or I smoke another cigarette. Or, if things get really desperate, I have sex with somebody I barely know. And for a few moments I am just in that moment doing that thing. And I am not floundering. Or sad. Or confused. I'm not thinking about what happened earlier that day. Or how I could have dealt with something differently. Or what I'm going to do later. I'm not in the past or the future. Just the now. And it feels good. And it feels right.

Until later. When I realize that doing these things I do will eventually bring about the thing I'm avoiding.

If I keep smoking every time I start worrying about cancer, there will eventually be cancer to deal with. And hospital beds. And breathing trouble. The same way it was for my grandfather, whose labored mechanical breathing, and the rise and fall of his bird-like frame in the last few hours of his life, still haunt me.

And if I keep drinking on top of the pills I take to relieve my anxiety? The anxiety which may give me ulcers? Well, then I might get ulcers. All the labels say this. All the goddamned labels on all the goddamned bottles. They all say this. "Daily alcohol use is risky."

Risky? Let's talk about risky.

Risky is getting up in the morning. Risky is driving to the grocery store in your car. Risky is riding a bike down Massachusetts Avenue. Risky is standing under a goddamned tree. It's getting married. Or having kids. Or meeting new people. It's loving somebody. Putting your trust in a friend. It's all fucking risky.

And while I'm on the subject, here's another thing that's risky: putting my tongue against the warm, wet cunt of every girl that helps me forget I'm alone and focuses me. Which, at the end of the day, is the only kind of girl worth knowing. The kind with the dangerous laugh. The kind with the perilous skin. The kind I want to consume. The kind that eventually consumes me. And I just don't care. I don't care because when I'm with that kind of girl, I don't care about anything. I don't care about my mom slowly dying in the nursing home. I don't care about Jenny and the baby we lost. I don't care about my failing career and my lost personhood. I don't care about getting older and the pain creeping into my hands and neck and joints. I don't care if this time I am consumed to the point of oblivion. I don't care if this time I don't recover.

Some things you don't recover from. Some women. Some drugs. Some cures. Anything worth doing. Anybody worth knowing. They have the kind of consequences you can't undo.

On the other hand, maybe none of these things will get me. It's possible, it might even be probable, that they won't. And that's the thing that's truly terrifying: Maybe in the end, it'll be my brain to go. The way it is with my mom right now, who's forgotten how to dress herself and how to do the things that used to make her happy. And maybe there's nothing I can do about that. Maybe this is my future no matter what, no matter how many cigarettes I do or don't smoke. No matter how many scotches I do or don't drink. No matter how many women I do or don't fuck. And so I should just enjoy the things that help me forget. And go about doing them over and over until I can't do them any longer.

Risa wasn't the first woman I'd been with outside of my marriage with Jenny. She was just the first woman I'd been with who I loved. She was also the first woman I'd been with who was married to my best friend. Despite, or perhaps because of these things, she let me forget. She gave me a respite from death like nothing I'd felt for some time.

She supplied the oblivion I needed.

It's always about getting that oblivion, until one day the oblivion gets you.



The Monday after the party at our apartment, I went to my studio and listened to the tracks Risa and I had recorded together a month earlier. Then I called her. She was still sleeping.

"Hello?" Her voice was low and sleepy.

"Hi."

"Oh, hey." She yawned. She audibly stretched.

"Is Adam at work?" I asked.

"Yeah. Of course. What's up?"

"You should come by the studio today. I'm finally done mixing the tracks. You could listen to them with me. See what you think."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I think they're ready."

"Ok," she said. "That's..." I could tell she was stretching again. She yawned. "That's great."

There was a long silence, which was filled with the things I wanted to say but didn't. Like maybe I was in love with her. Like maybe this thing was about more than sex.

"I'm glad you called," she said finally. "I've been thinking about you since Saturday."

"It was good seeing you," I said.

"It was," she said. "For me, too."

More silence.

"So you're coming over?" I said.

"Yeah. Give me about an hour."

"Good," I said.

"Bye," she said.



I used to think that I could trick my shadow. That if I ran fast enough, I could beat it. And when that didn't work, I'd try walking extra slow, and I'd lift my foot and put it down with painstaking precision so as to make it not meet the shade it cast at the concrete. When you're young, you think these kinds of things are possible. That you can out-run yourself. Alter reality. You don't need help getting high. You don't need drugs, or money, or people to do it for you. You just leap off the ground. By yourself. You make that leap, off of brick retaining walls in the manicured gardens of shopping malls, out of trees in neighbor's front yards, on your bike on a ramp you make out of dirt and mud on the trail near your house. You do it every chance you get. You do it to see if this time it will happen. If this time, you'll lose your shadow. And it always seems possible. Because, to you, nothing is inevitable, yet. The certainty of foot meeting silhouette. The predetermined mathematics of terminal velocity. The ineluctable truth that you will die. You can go up in a plane, even, and somehow avoid the thought that this hulking hunk of metal and gasoline could easily fall from the sky. All it would take is one malfunction. Some ice on the wing. A bird in one of the engines. But even at that altitude, you're able to avoid it: the thought of death. It's not that you don't understand the concept. It's not that you don't know about crashing planes. You just don't think it could apply to you. It seems implausible. Planes that crash are the kind of planes that other people are on. The kinds of planes you get on are the kinds of planes that fly and fly, and fly forever.

Then you get on a plane one day and you look around at the people who are just like you and you ask yourself: Why not? Why not me? Why not this plane? And from then on, you can't get that thought out of your head. But you keep getting on planes, anyway. And you keep going up in them. And on each new ride, you hear that white roulette wheel ball bouncing. Especially when you're coming back from a sleepless weekend in Vegas with your amphetamine and scotch buzz wearing thin.

And so, to get rid of the thought, you watch the girl who's putting her luggage in the overhead compartment next to you and how her sweater lifts a little bit and you can see the tattoo on her stomach. And the upper hem of her black panties against her olive skin makes your heart leap and you feel it hover there above you and you want it to stay there. And she catches you looking at her and you meet her gaze, which is a gaze into eternity, and your eyes say, You caught me and I don't care. And you smile. And she smiles. And then your eyes say, I want you to jump off the ground with me and we could avoid our shadows together. Just for a little while. As long as we can. And hers say, That sounds nice. And when the plane lands safely at your destination you make sure you're walking behind her off the jet bridge and when she stops at the terminal to adjust her luggage strap you bump into her and you both laugh and you apologize. Then you ask her if she'll have a drink with you. And you don't hide your wedding ring. In fact you put your left hand on display at your right shoulder, not only to emphasize the broadness in your chest , but so she can see that band clearly. Because something tells you she's the kind of woman who holds a lot of interest in that sort of asset. Because you know addicts and addicts know you. And you say to her, "I've never been to this city before." And you say to her, "I don't know anybody here." And these things are lies, because you actually know lots of people here. Because you've actually just landed in your home town.

I know now what everyone comes to know: that I will never put my foot down on the sidewalk in such a way that I will beat my shadow there. But to give up on it is to give in to cowardice. Cowardice is not loving. Or not living. Which are the same thing. When you're doing either well, you're doing something inherently risky. When you're doing either well, you're doing the things that cause you to stare at death. You're doing the things that bring about oblivion, which are the same things you need to keep you from oblivion, suspended in mid-air.

It is the bravest thing to love well. To live well. To be reckless in it. And to let go. And give up control.

And to be ready to die while you're up there in it.



When Risa arrived at the studio, she came in and took off her leather coat and set it on the chair at the soundboard. Her heavy, black biker boots knocked on the wood floor. They had a silver buckle in the leg, and there were faded white stains at the toes and on the sides, which came from walking in salty snow and letting them dry without wiping them. She had on a long-sleeved ,green v-neck t-shirt with a heavy silver necklace that held a black stone pendant. Her black hair, which was so black it was blue, was up and her neck was exposed.

One of her songs was playing. She smiled. She said, "Nice. I like it."

I said, "It's good, right? It has that thing."

"It does," she said and crossed her arms. The bracelet on her right wrist clanked. "It really does. You nailed it. You nailed the sound."

"We nailed it," I said.

"Right," she said. "We nailed it."

"Do you want some coffee?" I asked.

"Ah, yes. That would be awesome," she said. "And one of these would be good." She shook a cigarette from the soft pack I had sitting on the soundboard and took a lighter from the front pocket of her faded jeans.

I had just boiled some water in the electric kettle. I poured an instant coffee packet into a cup and then poured the hot water and stirred it with a spoon. Then I handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said.

When she took the cup, our hands touched, which made my heart lift. The same way it lifts from having the first cup of coffee in the morning. The same way it lifts after my second glass of scotch. Her scent and the smoke surrounded me and wrapped itself around my grey matter and it held on.

I lit a cigarette too. And we stood in the small studio together enjoying nicotine and listening to the recordings we'd both been a part of making. We stood there and we sipped our coffee and we smoked our cigarettes and we moved our heads to the sound. Occasionally she would nod at something and she'd look over at me and smile. A few times she frowned. I heard some things I hadn't heard before. I made a few notes on a yellow pad about some changes I wanted to make.

It's hard to understand that thing you feel when you're listening to music and you connect with it and it connects with you. I've experienced it from several different perspectives: as the person playing the music, as the person listening to it, as the person recording it. I'm what people would call a "music-industry professional." I've learned lots of things about the academics of sound. I've learned the right words to use in talking about it. The right words to use in making it, and listening to it, and recording it. But despite all the things I've come to know about it, despite all the ways I've learned to describe it, I still find myself surprised by it all the time. And that's when I know I've found it: when I discover that special thing I can't explain. Or rather, when I discover that thing I can explain, but explaining it still doesn't make it make sense. When there is still something mysterious about it.

We tend to think of music as coming from the musician. We see it as this solitary, heroic act of genius. But I think this is wrong. I've seen a lot of music being made. And I've made a lot of music myself. And here's what I've come to know: music is an energy independent of us. Musicians tap into it. It doesn't spring forth from them. This doesn't mean that they aren't talented or that it doesn't require some degree of heroism to play. Musicians still have to be brave enough to give themselves to it. And they still have to practice and be talented enough to play what they hear. But the genius—it doesn't come from them. They are just people who happen to be at the right place at the right time. Mostly, because they allow themselves to be. Some people are at the right place at the right time more than others. We call these people "prolific." Others aren't. We call these people "one-hit wonders."

A musician has to learn how to tap into that energy and keep tapping into it. Risa does that. She lets herself play and experiment. She writes songs that are great. And she writes others that aren't. But she keeps doing it, no matter what. And that's a difficult thing to do. To keep playing.

Just to keep playing.

Tapping into the energy is frightening. And exhausting. But it's also intoxicating. To let it consume you. To let it wash over you and to feel the adrenaline and then to have it drain you.

I heard a musician say that every time he tapped into that thing, every time he wrote a new song, it killed him a little more. It killed him to do it, and ride it, and let it consume him. And afterwords it killed him not to do it, during those times when he'd lose it, and when he couldn't find it, or when it couldn't find him. He said that was the reason he drank: to dull the pain of not having it. To dull the way it left him alone afterwards. He said without it, without that energy and adrenaline he'd feel, the rest of his life hurt, and when it left him all he wanted was to have that thing back. But he couldn't just get it back. It didn't always come back. He had to wait for it, sometimes. And the waiting was excruciating.

The longevity of somebody like him has everything to do with a willingness to wait and face the possibility that he may die and that the thing may not ever happen again. That the best sounds are now behind him. There's no way to know. This may be the last crash. This might be the one you don't recover from. And not knowing can actually make you want to die. Which is the ultimate irony of the thing: how a longing to die can rise out of the fear of a death too soon.



Risa and I listened to all the tracks. And when they were over, we got up from our seats and we shook off the listening we'd done.

"They sound great, Nick," she said. "They really do."

"I'm pretty happy with them," I said.

"Yeah, me too."

"So what's next?" I said. "CDs?"

"Yeah," she said. "CDs. I need something to hand out at shows." She leaned against the wall near the door and crossed her arms.

"So let's talk about that. How many do you want? How much do you want to spend? I can talk to some people about artwork for the cover, unless you already have something in mind."

"Alright," she said. "Let me think about it some." There was a silence. We stood there looking at each other. I thought about that night: Her tied to the radiator in her living room. In Adam's living room. The way she pushed against me. The heat from her skin. I reached for the cigarettes.

"You okay?" I said.

"Yeah..." she said. "Just thinking."

"Me too."

"You're kinda cute when you're serious."

I smiled. "You're kinda cute...when you're not," I said.

"I'm almost always serious," she said. "It just seems like I'm not. Playing is deadly serious. But it has to appear like it's not. It has to appear effortless."

I stood there with an unlit cigarette in my mouth. I said, "I think you're right."

She moved over to where I was at the soundboard and stood close to me. I put my hand to her arm. She rested her hand on my belt, then took hold of it, her fingers slipping inside the waist of my jeans, her hand tightened around the leather. She pulled, bringing me closer to her. I let her. I removed the cigarette from my lips and dropped it on the floor. I lowered my head so it was next to hers. Our cheeks nearly touching. Our lips just short of kissing. We stayed like that, barely apart, separated only by the thin sliver of magnetic pull between us, which we resisted and which we withdrew from, even as it brought us closer together. Our lips touched finally, and the touch was loud and unmistakeable. Like a plane crash. And there was the roaring sound of metal on concrete and the tearing of fuselage and the heavy, heavy inexorable crush and scrape. And we pulled away, lifting up a little longer, suspended off the ground. Prolonging the inevitable. And there was heat now, and a rush of sound in my ears, and there was the smart from that initial landing, and there was the draw of the ground, pulling us back. But there was also the opposing desire to remain up, and to hold on to this temporary pleasure of floating, where it seemed like we could stay forever, not quite together, but not quite apart, racing hearts and pounding heads. That rush of flying. That surge of adrenaline. Hovering just above the earth, alert with anticipation, and ready to die.

And then the landing happened and we let it. The full force of the crash. Me into her. Her into me. She was against the soundboard, and her hand went back and touched some knobs and the music started to play again, and it was loud and it drowned out the sounds we made. And we were joined now and there was no going back and I pressed against her and she pressed against me. And there was nowhere for either of us to go except into each other. And there was no shadow between us. There was nothing from which to run.

I thought briefly that this might be wrong, but the thought was small and had no room to fight against this thing that was happening. I put my hand to her chest and her hands went to undoing and unbuttoning and unzipping. And her hands were decisive. They did not equivocate. We kept our lips together. I felt for the bottom of her shirt and I lifted up on it and brought it over her head. And her warm skin was there and her small breasts underneath the blue shiny fabric of her bra, which I unhinged in back, and let hang there on her shoulders for a moment, cupping her underneath it and then lifting up on the bra and easing it off. And I was becoming unhinged too. My mind. But also, my jeans, which hung, not quite on, but not quite off, momentarily suspended, undone and loose around my hips. I stepped back and brought them down off my legs, revealing my hard-on, full and up and unmistakeable against my innocent boxers.

Risa sat on the edge of the soundboard, and she leaned back and put one of the salt-stained, black boots to my chest. It smelled the way a boot should smell, like leather and dirt and the hard earth. She said, "Wait."

"What?" I said.

"Just wait," she said. She kept her eyes directed at mine. Her jeans were also unbuttoned and unzipped and she put her hand underneath them and underneath her blue panties.

She kept her boot against my chest. She said, "I want you to grab your cock."

I put my hand to my hard-on and I held onto it over my boxers, which should have felt ridiculous, but somehow didn't in front of her. There are the things we do when we're alone, and there are the things we do in front of the people that make us feel like we do when we're alone. Both are the things that make us who we are.

"Take those off," she said, referring to my underwear. "But don't stop looking at me."

I did. I kept my eyes directed at hers. She lifted her boot off me so I could bend over and pull my boxers down around my ankles. Then I kicked them off. I stood up straight again and she placed the boot back on my chest and the boot was cold and left grit on my skin, and it was rough like sand between me and the smooth sole. She leaned back against the soundboard again and she was looking at me and her expression was playful and her expression was also sober. She looked the way she did when she sang. She looked the way she did when she made music.

She said, "I want you to stand there in front of me. I want you to jerk off. But keep looking at me, though. Don't look away."

"What if I do?" I smiled. She didn't.

She said, "Don't talk. If you talk again, I'm going to fucking hit you."

I said, "Somehow I doubt..."

I didn't finish. She sat up and slapped me hard across the face. The slap was loud and it stung. It was strong and it was serious and it wasn't fucking around.

My face turned to the side. Risa cupped her hand roughly over my mouth. I could smell smoke on her fingers. She put her lips to my ear. "Do. Not. Talk." She spoke each word slowly and her voice was even and low. Then she let go and leaned back on the soundboard again.

I looked at her and saw that now she was smiling. I felt something like rage for a second. There was an instinctive urge to retaliate. To hit back. To grab hold of her and to push her to the floor and fuck her. And the feeling washed over me and made me excited and made me forget who I was.

I smiled back at her. I said, "I want you to hit me again."



There's so much pressure in thinking we're responsible for everything we do, in thinking that we're the ones making the music, that we're the ones controlling the sounds. Because when it's there and we have it, and the sounds are coming out of us and they're good, they're really good, and we really have it. And it's easy to feel something like pride about it. And it's easy to say, these are our sounds, goddammit. But then it's gone. And when it's gone, it's really fucking gone, and it hurts. And the absence of it teases us. And at those times, it's easy to feel like you've failed. And since you can't control the good, you turn to the bad. Because you still can control that. Maybe that's a little bit what my dad was thinking. Maybe it's what he felt as he sat underneath the tree in our front yard and put a gun in his mouth.

A lot of the time, I try to fight the idea that I might be like my parents. I see myself doing something they did and I think, "Oh, God, I do not want to be like them. I don't want to end up like they did." But other times, I find a certain comfort in it. Being like them means not being alone in the things I do. It means I'm not alone in the mistakes I make. Because the mistakes have already been made by them, and by their parents before them, and forever and ever before them. And I can't hide from them or undo them or change them. I can only confront them and accept them and know that I'll either survive them or I won't. And either way, it's not going to be that bad. Either way, it's fine.

I'll land on my feet. And I'll meet my shadow there. Until one day I won't. And when that happens, that might be the only thing truly unique to me. Is the way I die. Which is what we all do, eventually. We do that completely alone.



When I got home from the studio that evening, my body was bruised and there was a bright red scratch underneath my left eye. I took a shower before Jenny got home. I started making some hamburgers for dinner. I was in the kitchen when she came in the door. When she saw the scratch underneath my eye she asked me what had happened. She asked if I'd fallen down. She asked if I'd been in another fight.

I told her the truth:

It had been a beautiful day and the sun was shining and so on my way to the studio, I'd gotten a little high and fell in love with my shadow and the way it moved below me.

And then I lost myself in that feeling and fell down against it, and hit my face on the sidewalk.

And my shadow had been there when I fell. As it always was. As it has been for as long as I can remember.

And even though I wasn't proud of it, I'd probably do it again.

Category: NotAboutLove