ZEUS

The white-haired man, who lived on the second floor, had a white miniature schnauzer. I thought that interesting. He flagged me down while I was out walking Schotze out front of our apartment building, and I’d try to avoid him and all other dog-walkers because the ensuing small talk is awkward and forced and “What’s your dog’s name?” and “What kind of dog is she?” and “Is it a she?”

But Schotze stopped to shit, and I was stuck with Sam. His little white schnauzer lunged forward at Schotze, pulling the line tight and nearly out of the man’s hands.

For the record, my dog is a schnauzer; he is gray; he doesn’t bark or shed; he is the fucking man.

Sam’s chirping dog barked and barked and barked at mild-mannered Schotze, who had seemingly gotten used to this annoyance. He eyed her confusingly. ‘The fuck you barking at, asshole?”, I imagined him saying. This made me smile.

“Hush now, he’s a friend of yours”, Sam said, which is always funny. When people talk to their dogs like real people. And just like that, Sam was in full dog conversation again, commenting about schnauzers and their  intelligence. I nodded, yes, I totally agree.

Then, I whipped a small plastic bag open and filled it with my dog’s gooey shit.

He was a slim guy, 70s maybe, with a European accent. Tucked his polo shirts into his seersucker shorts. All those elements hinted at money, but I wasn’t sure where that assumption was coming from. He had a wife, I think. They’d sit together on their porch, and I’d wave as I came out, Lilly barking from above, forcing her muzzle through the gaps in the white railing. Schotze, having no concept of up or down, would dart back and forth at the sound of her menacing growls, scanning the bushes for the source, finding nothing before settling for a piss on the iron-gate entryway.

Of course, during our last dog conversation, I never mentioned Schotze’s lack of intelligence, how he’s borderline manic-depressive, how he sleeps in my brother’s closet all damn day because he’s afraid of my guitar playing, umbrellas, dark trash bags, basically any loud noises and sudden movements.

And just when Schotze was about to tear into Lilly’s neck, I excused myself from the torturous small talk, pulling my dog down the sidewalk, Sam tugging Lilly out of Schotze’s ass.

After several weeks, the cops kicked the door down and found that Sam had done himself in. That’s what my brother had heard anyway.

I didn’t ask how Sam did it, but isn’t that the next obvious question?

The blinds are drawn at Sam’s apartment, and I wonder if he closed them or his family did once they moved his things out. The porch chairs are gone, and I think of his wife, girlfriend, sister, whoever that woman was and when she got the call.

Schotze pisses on the gate and stuffs his nose into random spots in the grass. I think of Lilly, and where that little bastard is calling home now.

I didn’t know Sam’s real name, and he didn’t know mine. Our talks were limited to schnauzers, and lasted no longer than it did for our dogs to relieve themselves, and then off we went, back to our regularly scheduled lives.

And, yeah, in hindsight I could’ve said more, could’ve put an end to the monotonous dog chatter and just stuck out my hand. “I’m Lou. I live upstairs.”

But fuck me. Fuck me and my unwillingness to try swimming off my little island for two minutes. Then I would at least know him by name, and not as the white-haired man from downstairs, who chose to die alone in his apartment with a hungry white dog nearby.



I really need a belt that fits.  This one is a 34 and because of all the weight that I lost over the last two years my favorite brown leather belt, because it’s already soft and broken in and arches around me from left to right, doesn’t fit me the way it should; there’s too much hangover after its buckled in the second-to-last hole and pulled through the belt loop of my jeans.  My waist is a 31.

I go to the gym to gain weight, drink Muscle Milk, lift and get skinnier.  I burn too many calories and eat like a bird.  I have a fast metabolism.  A guy in my office started watching Netflix Instant documentaries on his iPhone at work.  For two weeks he preached his newfound healthy lifestyle and commitment to Veganism, vowing only to eat organic foods.  Last week I saw him eat nothing but Apples and baby carrots.  Today, in the break room he highly recommended the Thai chicken wings, burger, and Bavarian pretzels if I ever dine at Quaker Steak and Lube.  And part of me, the same part that made me smirk and shake my head when I said, “That lasted a week,” lost faith in humanity.

I need new clothes, new outfits.  New shoes.  I know how I want to look; I’ve seen it in magazines and on TV.  Sometimes I see it on The CobraSnake when I’m supposed to be working.  Vans, Levis, button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and I’m a new man.  In the Winter I’ll rock sweaters, Cardigans if I have a choice, and slim-fit corduroys.  But I’m broke and stale.  People shop when they’re depressed.  I’ll hunt thrift stores for vintage t-shirts and hand-me-down sweaters.  You never find Cardigans, not in Western New York anyway.  My daily uniforms are constituted by my work environment; it’s very casual.  Jeans and vintage t-shirts mostly.  Once in a while I’ll wear a shirt and tie and my coworkers promptly institute a good ribbing as though ties are reserved solely for weddings, funerals, and Christmas and Easter Church services.

The only stores that I really like to shop in are Urban Outfitters and J. Crew.  UO is one of those tough-pill-to-swallow stores to admit that I shop at, an anti-establishment hipster mentality that is somehow overlooked by every shopper in the Galleria Mall with a few extra dollars in their ironic Velcro kitten wallet.  I like their jeans though.  It’s the only place in Buffalo I can find a pair of Levis that I like.  511’s or 514’s, I’d like a pair in every color, but I’m stuck with a pair of blue and a pair of black that are on heavy rotation every week, especially now that summer’s vanished and it smells like Halloween outside.  Maybe I’ll ask for a pair of boots for Christmas?  Trendy ones.  J. Crew offers a classic vintage-fit button down in a variety of colors that I’d love to own, but at $59 a pop all I can think about is the 99-cent boxes of pasta and generic marinara sauce I’ll be dining on for the next month as I approach the cash register.  I keep the preppy dressing room attendants busy with plenty of re-rack items.

Maybe if I made more money I’d dress better?  If I had health insurance and some disposable income?  Maybe I’d take more pride in my appearance, really hit the gym five times a week like I said I would?  Get a physical once a year and go to an orthodontist and get these protruding wisdom teeth ripped out of my skull before they push my back teeth out?  Finally get the bed that I’ve always wanted and some furniture that doesn’t make my living room look like an estate sale?

Maybe a new belt, one that fits and doesn’t hang out from underneath my vintage t-shirts like a limp pasta noodle, would change my outlook?  One that’s not a 34.  I’m a 31.

On this day, some 19 years ago, I arbitrarily decided that August 2nd would be Fuzzy’s birthday. Fuzzy was my hamster. He once went blind. The poor fella couldn’t even walk up his little ladder and go to bed in his house. Instead, he fell over a lot, despite being on all fours, and just spent his days sleeping in the corner of his smelly cage. Swear to God, in my father’s “Well, what the hell” approach to things, he crushed up Tylenol and put it in Fuzzy’s water bottle. No shit, after a few days, the little bastard could see again. He twirled in his wheel, chased down pieces of carrots fired into his cage. Fuzzy was reborn.

Then, of course, he died a short time later, after a long and joyous life.

So, Happy Birthday, Fuzzy. Hope you’re spinning in that big wheel in the sky.

My schnauzer, Schatze, stares at me while I do my budgets early Sunday morning. I know what he’s thinking in his tiny, pea brain: “I would like to go outside sometime in the forseeable future, Mr. Sit There in Your Short Pants.” His beady eyes judge me. I notice his grimy-ass goatee and laugh. Oh, Schatze, you little pecker.

I’ve already vacuumed. The dishwasher AND dryer clicked off an hour ago. Even scrubbed the god-damn refrigerator and stove. It’s not yet 11 a.m. and I’m thinking about dinner. I am the fucking domestic man. On the stereo, Miles Davis replaced the four yapping sports reporters on television, hammering away at God knows what. Damn, Mitch Albom’s ears are ENORMOUS, like two frying pans.

I pounded the Off button with satisfaction. See ya, fuckos.

Paraphrasing Bukowski here, sometimes this life is too sweet.

…

…

Looks like I’ll be living off $80 this August.

Schatze runs to the door, doing helicopter spins.

Interstate 485 and Johnston Road in Charlotte, NC, will kill you if you so happen to traverse its paths on a bicycle. The city can pave one trillion miles of bike lanes throughout Charlotte, but as long as we got these clown dicks in Yukons, tearing ass up and down the roadways, chirping on their cell phones and/or making love to a Five Guys cheeseburger, there’s just no way in hell I’m heading north on my bicycle. I’m stuck in south Charlotte, riding the ching-ching around plazas, getting quizzical looks from passersby. “Yeah, I’m 27, and I enjoy riding this bike,” I think to myself. “Go fuck yourselves.”

If I could just get across the interstate, a whole new world would open up before my eyes. And it was with that sort of ethos I took to south Charlotte tonight with one goal: Find a path that will lead me underneath I-485, then maybe I can live out my dream of getting around the city on a bicycle. Yea!

So I pedal down into the labyrinth of parking lots around the Ballantyne corporate center, which is nothing more than glassy office buildings. I’d noticed a mysterious path down near the lot’s outskirts while driving on the highway. When I reached the farthest ends, I was stumped. There just wasn’t a way to get across the interstate without sacrificing my life. Then, like fluttering butterflies sweeping down from heaven, I noticed a man on a bicycle, about 200 yards out, pass underneath the highway and disappear. “Ah ha,” I thought. “There IS a path!” I stood transfixed and waited for others to pass by. Perhaps the cyclist was merely an apparition, the Candy Man on two wheels. No, a teenager pedaled into frame. Hot Damn! But how do I get there? There was no path from the lot to the trail, just bushes and hills and scary looking weeds, maybe cannabis, hashish. Who knew? I’ve come this far, I thought, all two blocks from my apartment. There was no turning back.

This first hill was steep, and after 10 steps I hit a shin-high barbed wire fence. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t be here. Oh well. The Red Ching-Ching (again, that’s my bicycle) was not made for such foliage and terrain, so I shouldered it, took another few steps, quickly realized this was getting way too complicated, and ghost-rode the fucker right down the small hill. Its handlebars turned swiftly and upended. Clank. Sorry, Grandpa. I love this bike, honest.

I made it to the clearing and scanned my limbs for ticks. Lyme Disease would TOTALLY crush the next day’s trip to Milwaukee. Ditto for poison ivy. How would I tell the guys I got poison ivy a day before the biggest trip of the year? Would they treat me as a leper? Isn’t poison ivy spread by contact? I’d need to wear jeans the entire trip, and I certainly wouldn’t tell any of the guys. But, I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to find that trail, and it was getting dark. Again, bikers passed by, jolly, probably eating ice cream cones while dad followed close behind. I headed straight for the magical trail and hit a creek about 3-feet deep. Damn. I’d have to Chris-McCandless up the river to find a crossing. And I did, one with even more six-foot-high weeds, prickly weeds, steep slopes and lots of mud. I pushed my Ching-Ching through the brush, down ravines, but getting no closer to the trail. I was now on the other side of the interstate. Deer ran away from me, prancing. I was in foreign territory and FUCKING terrified, even though I was probably 13 yards from a Harris Teeter and/or Target.

Finally, I came to a crossing in the creek and made my way over, not before falling on my ass, soaking my shoes and bathing myself in North Carolina mud. Swell, I thought. This will go over well when I hit the trail, and some dad sees me coming out and thinks I just got done burying a corpse. Don’t worry, sir, I’m just hanging out in the woods, ya know, skinning my ex-girlfriend. My white shirt was streaked with dirt, my hands were caked in mud and I was no closer to the trail. Dammit, where the hell is this thing? I stopped. This fruitless journey had turned, well, fruitless. I smelled like river and my Ching-Ching, which was spotless when I started, was a dirty diaper. Not to mention I was man-sweating, blowing droplets of saltiness from the tip of my nose. Screw it, I thought. I’m gone. Forget this city. Forget Charlotte and its lack of foresight. I’m neck-high in poison sumac, trying to find a god-damn bike path, and … and…

I carried my bike back to the original hill, falling a few more times, muttering vulgarities toward no one in particular, “The Man” probably. My left ass cheek was caked in dirt. That’s what the pool’s for, I thought, and excitedly pedaled forth. My shins were burning from all the cuts.

I hit the main drag back toward my apartment complex looking like a dude who just got drilled by a bus. I’m sorry I did this to you, Ching Ching, I said aloud.

I parked him outside of the pool, removed my shirt and wiped Ching-Ching down. Afterwards, I tossed the shirt in the garbage and rode home shirtless, with my soaked shoes in my hands. It might have been the worst bike ride of my life.

No, Dirty Old Man, yeast is not located in the Feminine Hygiene aisle.

He wanted to call me a cocksucker like I wanted to call him a fucking cheapskate.

“Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “What’s two days, really? It was the weekend and I didn’t get around to renewing it. You can’t waive it?”

“No, I can’t,” I said.

Of course I could waive the measly $2 fine he accumulated after keeping a DVD out two days late. I have magic fingers and a magic keyboard that makes short work of small penalties such as these, but this bowling ball of a man, with a right eye that’s so lazy it’s practically asleep, took the wrong approach. It’s all in the approach, and his approach was piss poor.

He stepped to the circulation desk with condescension, a big no-no. Any idiot knows that when disputing anything, you bring your charm, the million dollar smile. Typically, the person behind the desk has had all that he/she can take from the mother fucking public (such is the case with myself). Customers like us know this. Not this fat bubble of cheese and dough, all slob and oversized shirt, laptop hung over his shoulder, nodding and nodding and nodding while I spoke.

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t do that,” I said. “Want to talk with my manager?”

I motioned to the door over my shoulder, my thumb up and out and back in an exaggerated, sweeping arc.

“No, I will not wait, and no I don’t want to talk to the manager,” he said. “You’re telling me you don’t have the power to waive the $2?”

You and I both know I have the authority to do this, sir.

“That’s right. I can’t,” I said.

He chewed his gum, shuffled his massive weight from leg to chubby leg. His eyebrows furrowed, two thick strips of black upon his bald head.

“When your items are late, whether you renew them or not, you get fines,” I said. “It’s kinda …”

I stammered here to soften the blow, to give the impression that I wasn’t prepared to chop this mother fucker down.

“…basic.”

You see, here, right here, I’ve kind of crossed the line. I’ve insulted him, ever so slight, and he registered it. I could see it in his fat face.

He rolled his eyes. Well, the good one rolled. The other darted off toward Jupiter.

“Listen, I know it’s basic, but it’s just …”

He stammered, too. I like to think he was mocking me. Very clever, sir.

“…petty.”

“That’s how libraries work, sir.”

“So you can’t waive the 2 dollars?”

So I can’t jab these scissors into your blubbery neck?

“No,” I said. “You’re talking to the wrong guy. That’s why I suggested getting the manager.”

He rolled the gum in his mouth and starred, waiting.

You lose.

“Well, fine … ” he said, turning toward the stairs.

Wait for it. It’s coming. Sarcastic, of course.

“…Thanks.”

Something I should have done months ago and only waited this long because procrastinating is what I do best.  Here is a short story by Stephanie, hopefully a new frequent poster at the Niceness.  Enjoy.

“Three”

I handed him three grapes.

He ate them, and looking up at me said: “I must really like you because I hate things in threes.”

Three months later, he was gone.  But that night, he wanted to tell me something he’d only told two other people.  By my math, I was the third. So, that boded well.  He asked me, in turn, to tell him something about myself few others knew, but I knew what he was asking: How are you broken?

Ah fuck.  Again?  At least I didn’t pull the same standards out – the dead mother, the moves, the surgery.  Because, somewhere I knew that if he’d ask this question on the third date, then he wanted to see my pieces, but he wouldn’t appreciate the years it took me to glue them back together under a halogen lamp.  He wouldn’t smooth the seams with his lips because women were more valuable to him shattered than whole.  To him, my sex tasted better raw and tenderized.

Three months later, as he was leaving, I asked if he thought he’d be happier with someone more like him – someone broken.

“Maybe,” he said.  “I want to feel like I’m taking care of somebody.”

So I turned on the crazy and he smiled and he stayed for three more hours.

That was three weeks ago.  He’s off obsessing and compulsing elsewhere now.

I’ve been fine. I’ve just been going through a lot more grapes recently.

I only eat them in threes.

~Stephanie

Part 2: 2nd Story Garden

The summer garden that I kept alive on the second story apartment porch from June to August thrived daily along with my hopes that the maintenance of pots stuffed full of lush plants would somehow bring you back.  Watered every day, sometimes twice; once in the morning and then once in the evening after work and the long drive in to round the corner with wanting eyes, never looking until the last possible moment to retain every last drop of hope like the dried out dying thirsty plants starved for water on the balcony above the tree which you used to park below on the street.

Pitchers of water filled two at a time were balanced over finished hardwood floors and splashed as I hip smacked the screen door latch open and shuffled onto the sandpaper-grain tar shingle rooftop second story garden.  Down the line, half a pitcher for impatiens; a quick splash for the strawberries; ten seconds on the Morning Glory; and not a drop on the leaves of the geraniums.  Out of water, so it goes, I holstered the pitchers, scraped the bottoms of my feet clean on the raised metal threshold and quickly tiptoed tiny balls of tar back to the leaky kitchen sink faucet for refills.  Second trips were hasty with dripping jugs of water over the clean kitchen floor, the living room quickly and both barrels straight to the big pot.  A soft pink shrub rose centered among white shade impatiens and a waterfall of cascading white verbena around the edges of a 20 gallon plastic terra cotta pot; a concoction dreamed up from a sample in a magazine and then carefully deliberated and chosen on a rainy Saturday morning near the end of April.  A melting pot of mixed annuals loved and thirsty that managed to survive the summer.

Spared the torture of night, free to rest in a dreamless sleep, each morning the flowers were forced awake with the sun.  The potted plants started weak, drooping and sad from a long night of dehydration, and perked with a morning shower forced back into existence for another day to breathe awhile only to wane again as the sun rose in the sky to take their strength, and finally withered at night on that second story waiting and wanting and needing; waiting for that drive in, round the corner and up the steps to the leaky faucet, at least.

And then all at once, or so it seemed, the jungle thinned severely at its heart as the centerpieces along the front rail walked away leaving faded water logged rectangles and small circular pot-bottom stains in their wake.  As the rest disappeared, the last to go were the Morning Glory and the large pot; the former refused to let go at the end tangled to its home, tied tight to the iron railing, the only life it’s ever known, had to be pried apart to remove.  And the large pot, too heavy to carry away, faded in the early October frost not prepared to weather the winter alone.