I have button to press. But won’t press.

Instead I dance with graphs, charts, future gains. And something called, “added value.”

I rather you press button.

But cannot press button.

Button.

Button.

Button.

A drunk tail, the old man told himself, as he told one to family members, before passing out. Drunk tail? Tale? To him, it was the same thing.

Later, when he woke up in the middle of the night, the old man, found his teeth in the usual place. He also found lots of twenty dollar bills as he doddered to the bathroom to pee.

The multitude of Andrew Jacksons were laid before him, like clues. Like deeds gone undone.  Before he peed, he bent down to collect the money.

Then he peed. Then, the next morning, he paid out the money to friends and family.

They smiled awkwardly as they received the money. They knew why the money had been laid there on the way to his bathroom. To remind him. To pee. To pay.

To stop drinking.

It was hiding somewhere (Yes, I checked the closet, smartass).
I found it on the East Side. But I’m a West Side boy.
So we compromised; decided to meet in the middle. In Central Park.

I thought it was time. But it wasn’t.
I yelled, “Surprise!” Prematurely and Immaturely.
Which turned out to be more truthful than you can imagine. The lone victim of my well-meant outburst caused the individual to cease and desist.
Let’s try that again:
The lone victim of my well-meant outburst caused the individual to decease and resist. Well, the resistance came first. His hands flashed forward, in an attempt to stop my joyous ill-timed outburst. Then, almost at the last minute, he grabbed a weapon. A lamp, that he tried and failed, fling it at me. Since the lamp was still plugged and his attempt so poor and last-minute, his arm found itself twisting at an odd angle, which caused the rest of his body to follow suit, bending him back, which his legs then tried to overcompensate for, which ultimately failed as well, causing him to lose his balance.

So he fell, which, and which, and which…

Well, you get the picture.

But I really thought it was time to yell, “Surprise!”

I don’t like it when friends bring up frightening things. I won’t mention them but mainly they will start out as quite innocent observations like, “Oh. look at the Branson home. I see both flat screens are playing the same television shows in two different rooms. Why doesn’t the son just come out of his room and join the rest of the family in the living room?”
I don’t like it when I know someone who is spying into someone’s house. Though I have done myself before. Not deliberately of course, but when you live in a town as small as I do, people tend to just let all things hang out, if you know what I mean.
I once came back late from shopping in Houston back in 1978. It was dusk. I drove a Lincoln Towncar at the time–you know those how ridiculously quiet cars those cars are. And it was almost nightfall. So I parked much deeper in my driveway, under the small grove of trees, next to the shed. This put me in the line of sight of my backyard neighbors. The Ramos family. I could see the whole family at the kitchen table, all four of them sitting down to eat. I could smell their food.
The nose of my car was only a few feet from their back fence. So I walked up to their fence. Dinner aromas surrounded me.It had been a long day in Houston and I’d skipped lunch. So I sat there watching them  passing around dishes and bowls. I could see, even from here, that they mostly used plastic—including their utensils. Poor things.
Even the window window I saw them through, large enough to see them all, including their bare feet, were draped in those plastic cheap curtains from Dollar Bill’s. So sad.

After they’d served themselves, I saw them join hands. They bowed their heads. Grace was uttered in Spanish by their father, a rotund man who drove a truck for a living, I think.
I waited until the prayer was over. I would have even stood there for the entire meal but a cloud of mosquitoes had found me and I decided to go into my own house.
Since I’d parked essentially at the back of my own house, it was easier to enter through my kitchen. My kitchen smelled of anything but food.
But I did say a little prayer. Not Grace, mind you, but something that didn’t remind me of food.

Joanne Syler is in a wedding in New York and won’t be able to make it to Jake Sarney’s potluck dinner.
Jake is pissed, not only because he is in love with Joanne Syler but because she is marrying his brother.
It’s a long story. But suffice it say, the potluck will contain some angry dishes and some broken plates—though the plates are paper.

Spiraling forward, ingesting things before me, filling myself, I gathered it all like an insect. At no time did I wish to have more. Though I wouldn’t have minded wings. For then I could have flown above all that which moved, reassembled as quickly as I could piece it together.

A flyswatter is no match for the mess it makes afterward. I must admit, I made this mess. Insect and killer, both am I. I wouldn’t otherwise admit it’s me, but someone has taken the swatter from me, and instead of ingesting, I am fleeing.
But not flying.

The President coddled his youngest son. The little boy saw a tall man who laughed and bounce him on his knee. And could lift him with one leg and hold him upside.
The father’s grin was large and generous. And upside down.
A powerful man, the boy thought. As he hung there.

Salt, sugar, flour, milk.
Huh.
The woman’s tilted her head, for the bifocalized version of the ingredients.
Sodium, glucose, gluten, hormoned dairy.
She  took off her sunglasses. Since she couldn’t see the dessert, she felt for it instead, uncovering it from the package. She sniffed. Tasted. Guessed at what else might be in this muffin.

Her mother expressly forbid her to lift weights. It would stop her menstrual cycle, she claimed.It did. Genevieve “Veevi” did not get her period until she was twenty years old because of her workouts.

Hank was told not to dance ballet by his father for reasons that seemed more obvious–to his father, at least. But Hank joined a ballet class anyway. And then his father died. Died laughing after his son invited him to his first ballet recital.

It was at Hank’s father’s funeral that Hank and Veevi met. They were both twenty. They knew each other, vaguely, as children until they switched schools, Hank of the parochial variety and Veevi of the secular one. This all happened in the 80s, when the way their appearances worked against them. Veevi so muscular and tall. Hank’s lithe, rangy limbs.

After the eulogy, there was some sort of reception, in an adjacent hall. Outside summer had just begun, and birds flung themselves and their songs at each, all in the hopes of mating.

While Veevi and Hank bumped into each other at the buffet table. They made small talk. Which was all that was needed, when one fell in love. The sound of birds was enough to fill those long silences between them as they grabbed food, their arms accidentally hitting each other.