WINTER

Cold sharpens the mind.

I had forgotten that.  It sounds like a barely-remembered childhood memory of something my mother used to say.

"Cold shahpens the mind."  Estelle would say, her Boston accent lending its weight of authority on all topics weather-related.

Cold sharpens the mind.

Maybe she said it.  Maybe she didn't.  But I feel it as much as hear it - which is ever-so-slightly but unmistakably audible.

But I didn't KNOW it.

Living in LA will do that; its nearly-always-warm-and-sunny-non-weather will unwind a lifetime of wonderful childhood memories.

Memories of jumping into a pile of just-raked leaves on a cool, bright and clear late-Autumn day, where the air arounds you is as crisp as the dead, fallen leaves you are digging your way out of and the dog has just gleefully plunged into.

Memories of sledding down the hill that looked so big when you were little and seems impossibly small when you occasionally visit the New England neighborhood where you were raised.

Memories of icicles melting on the fronts of rooftops and white snow giving way to green, green grass as Spring announces its coming and the first buds begin to form.

LA takes those memories and puts them in a storage space in Van Nuys that you pay for with an automatic monthly withdrawal from your Wells Fargo account which you never check so you soon forget all about what is stored there.  But.

Cold sharpens the mind.

I had completely forgotten, because I hadn't been cold, truly cold, in so long.

That all changed today.

That all changed today because, Today...

Today was cold.

Real cold.

And I had forgotten.  Forgotten because I live/have lived so long in LA, where "cold" is what we call a day where wearing a hoodie is only slightly more utilitarian and only slightly less fashion statement.

But I am not in LA.  And I had forgotten, but now I remember.  I remember it wasn't something my Mother would say.  It was something that was just true and everyone who survives climates where real cold exists knows that it is true.

Survives.

I remember now.  I remember now that Cold can kill.  I am hyper-focused on that fact because it is cold and...Cold.  

Sharpens.  

The mind.

I remember now because I am alone in the cold and I am ill-prepared.  But my mind is sharp.  I know these things as clearly as a thing can be known.

1.  It is cold.

2.  I am alone.

3.  No one knows I am here.

(whispered) "Cold shahpens the mind."

The pain in my toes is gone.  The sun will rise in five hours or so.  I cannot sleep or I will not wake up and I am exhausted.  I know all this because...

Cold sharpens the mind.

LUNCH

--I'm not as photogenic as you, but I can tell a story....

LUNCH


Seeing that perfect ass again after all that time was shocking, exciting and dangerous (I received the image as a text while I was driving).  I had drifted across the center line a bit and was awakened from my trance by the frenzied blaring of multiple car horns.  I righted the car and tried to be slick in my response.

“Who is this?”

I thought that was pretty cool, considering I hadn’t heard from Annie since she left me standing at the altar nine years earlier.  I was devastated at the time, but the guy she left me for - a drummer for a Ska band called “The Intoxicados,” gave her Chlamydia.  She begged me for another chance, but by then I was pretty involved with the stripper I’d been fucking the whole time Annie and I had been dating.

“Nice try,” she responded, then went on.

“I have a job interview Thursday. The company’s headquartered in LA, so they’re flying me out for a day.  I thought we could catch up.  Thought you’d like the pic.  I’ve been working out.  But don’t get any ideas.  I’m happily married and a mom (boy and a girl).”

Really.

So she thinks after not hearing a word for nearly a decade that I am going to drop everything and meet her for some bullshit lunch date because she sent me a picture of her ass?

I texted back.

“Galleria Mall food court. 1pm.”

What can I say?  She does have a stellar ass.


THURSDAY

And there she was.  Stunning.  Well, not LA stunning. But still totally bangable in any city.  She has great skin and a hot little body and a girl-next-door face that is so pretty, I would have flown to China to have lunch with her, but please do not tell her I said that; I gotta keep her on her toes, right?  She was just stuffing her face with Panda Express noodles when I took the picture (which I now use as the wallpaper on my phone).  Her eyes are all buggy and mad and the chopsticks are going in different directions.

“Dick!  Delete that right now!”

“That’s what you get for starting without me.”

She wiped noodle grease off her chin.

“You’re a half-hour late, as usual, " she said, her words barely audible because her mouth was still full of food.

“Sorry.  Didn’t mean to leave you at the altar or anything.”

She swallowed her last bite and fixed her non-wondering eye on me, coldly, then got up and turned to walk away.  Black mini-dress.  Mother fucker.

“Hey!  Ass-whore!”  I said, loud enough so that half the food court turned to see who I was talking to.  She turned and walked up to me until our faces were a couple of inches apart.  Jesus, she smelled amazing.  Not kissing her was tough.  Maintaining my "I don't give a shit" attitude was nearly impossible.  She was winning this round, for sure.  But I was just getting warmed up.

“That’s right.  And you.  Will never.  Find out.”

“You’ve got some nerve wearing that dress.”

“Do I?  And I suppose you wear that cologne every day?”

“Every nine years or so.”

This was a battle she was sure she would win, but I had done some quick calculation and knew better.  Take notes, you youngins, and learn from The Master...

I knew she was married and I knew she had two kids and since she was too “Play-it-safe and follow-the-rules” to have gotten knocked up or rushed into anything, I figured there was a yearlong engagement and another year before deciding on a kid.  So, by my math, she hadn’t been fucked right in at least four years.  I, on the other hand, had just had rockstar sex with the 28-year-old bartender from Saints And Sinners that morning.  So, despite her posturing, I definitely had the upper hand.  Her powers were useless against me.

She broke the ice with a hug.  I got hard instantly.  She pulled away and gave me a look that said many things at once.

“What?”  I said.  “You should take it as a compliment.”

She pretended not to give a shit, but she had been a huge fan of my cock.  She used to say that she loved how it “filled her up.”

....

The rest of lunch was uneventful and mostly PG-rated.  She and Mr. Safe had moved to Connecticut and had a good healthcare plan and their retirement account was right on track.  I started to drift off when she started talking about her kid's school.  I found my gaze dropping to the floor.

Bitch.  She had a fresh pedicure.  Ruby Red.  Best Hawaiian Punch flavor and sexiest nail color. She was fucking shameless.  I found myself wondering if she’d waxed her legs the day before.  Brazilian?

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

“No.”

She looked at her watch.

"My interview’s in an hour and I have to do some quick shopping first.  Wanna come?”

She called me a pig before I could answer.  But I did remember the last time I’d made her come...in the rental car on the top floor of the parking deck at Logan Airport.  Security rolled up on us in a little golf cart with a flashing light on top.  She wanted to crawl into a hole and die.  I tried the Jedi Mind Trick on them, but they were not having it.  They took us into a little interrogation room where we all watched me fingerbanging Annie.  The security guards tried to act serious, but one guy could not hide his smirk.  She was mortified.  I asked if they'd let us go if she flashed her tits (Looking back, I realize I should have run that by Annie first.).  They didn't say "Yes" but they didn't say "No."  Annie has a great rack and she was a real sport about it.  Everything was cool, but she got really mad when I asked if they could burn me a copy of the tape.  They let us go with a warning.

“What kind of shopping?” I asked.


VICTORIA’S SECRET

“You think you’re funny, but you are playing with fire, young lady.”

Annie looked at me with faux-innocence.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean, sir.”

The next twenty minutes consisted of Annie torturing me, modeling various teddies and corsets and whatnot, saying shit like, "Do you think my husband will like this one?" while I stood outside the open door of her dressing booth going out of my mind and acting like I wasn't.  The salesgirl was enjoying the show as well.

Finally, I could take it no more and when Annie went in the booth to try on another outfit, I put on my leather driving gloves and waited for her to hang her previous outfit over the door.  Then I made my move.

Dressing room doors have the flimsiest locks.  Just saying.

When I smashed through the door, she turned toward me and was about to instinctively cry out.  That’s when I put my gloved hand over her mouth before tearing off the emerald green teddy she was going to model for me.  I pulled her hair back with my other hand and sunk my teeth into her neck like she was Sookie Stackhouse and I was Eric Northman.  She quivered and I felt her weight as her knees went weak.  I turned her around roughly so that she was pressed up  hard against the full-length mirror.

I tore what was left of the teddy off Annie and that was it for foreplay.  I jammed my cock in her so hard, she screamed against the leather-clad hand still covering her mouth.

I had always been a very "sweet" lover.  Romantic.  Taking my time.  Building slowly.  But nine years was a long time and I guess I still had some resentment to work out, so I drilled her.

I hit that pussy like it owed me money.

Every bit of rage, desire and frustration got compacted into the most intense fucking I have ever been a part of before or since.  Her face and her tits were pressed up against the mirror so firmly, I thought it might shatter.  I took my hand off her mouth and smacked her ass so hard that it alerted the salesgirl who totally knew what was up.

“Is everything alright in there?”

Annie’s response was timed to my savage thrusts.

“Yes, fine!  Every!  Thing’s!  Fine!”

I spun her around and the back of her head smacked against the mirror as my gloved hand caught her by the throat.  I was in her again and took her feet right off the ground and just pounded her.  She bit her lip, hard, to keep from crying out, but I was smashing her so hard against the wall, the entire dressing area was shaking

Annie dug her nails deep into my shoulder sending trickles of blood crying down my arm.  I felt myself get even thicker and harder as I drove it home a dozen more times.  I bit deep into her shoulder as we climaxed.

I stood there panting as Annie slid down the sweat-soaked mirror into a heap on the floor.

I picked the shredded teddy, wiped the sweat off my body and the Annie-honey off my still-throbbing cock.  I pulled up my pants and left Annie collapsed against the wall.  I was still catching my breath when I told her...

“I’d go with the black corset with the white, lace trim.  He’ll like that.”

The salesgirl was standing outside the door when I exited.  She looked past me, wide-eyed at Annie all fucked-out and out-of-breath, lying in a heap on the dressing room floor.  I handed the salesgirl the soaked teddy, wrote my phone number on her hand with a Sharpie and kissed her softly on the neck just below her ear.

I walked out without looking back.

Game.  Set.  Match.

DEFERRED

My heart has been broken more times than I can count.

I am responsible for all of these, except the first time because I could not have known such a thing was possible.

I was fifteen.  Dale was seventeen (considered a significant age difference at the time).  She told me that my intellect belied my years.  She was my equal.  She was my first.  We were in love.

Infidelity did not occur to me.  When we breathe, do we imagine something better than air?  It never crossed my mind.  I had no jealousy or insecurity.  My parents stayed my parents.  My brothers were always my brothers.  The sun rose in The East and set in The West.  And Dale and I only made love to one-another.  Until...

Of course I now know that this shit happens all the time.  I have betrayed and been betrayed numerous times.  It always hurts, but the pain has always been tempered with knowledge of the possibility or expectation or even resignation...

God, I wish that last part were true - that it gets easier.  But becoming accustomed to pain and developing a tolerance to pain are two different things.  And though, over the years, I have developed a tolerance to all sorts of things, heartache is not one of them and I think I know why.

I simply never healed.

Earlier this month I had surgery done on my rotator cuff.  The pain in my shoulder was really bothering me.  The surgeon asked me when this pain started.  She looked at me funny when I told her, "I first noticed it 25 years ago.  It was either a diving injury or motorcycle crash, both of which occurred before I was twenty."

"Well, you're going to feel a lot better in six months.  But why did you wait so long?"

The pain was not that bad in my twenties and it only flared up after a workout at the gym.  Avoiding the gym seemed to solve the problem so I went sporadically and would get into a routine until my shoulder hurt.  Then I'd quit.  As time passed, the activities that triggered the pain increased as did the intensity of the pain.  I couldn't pick up my son, a toddler at the time. When I was taking surfing lessons, I found it impossible to paddle out.  I couldn't swim.  I live on the Westside; how am I supposed to take a yoga class if I can't do it on a fucking paddleboard?

So, I went to the VA and started the process I should have started a long time ago.

Now I'm    h    e    a   l  i  n g   and the pain is more intense and nearly constant.  It is DIFFICULT to imagine that I will be able to put something on a shelf above my head, let alone swim or surf.  I feel like my recovery is a burden on others.  Things need to be done and I can't do them.  I was told emphatically that if I did not allow this injury    t   i   m   e    to  FULLY  heal...

...re-injury.  Is.  Certain.

But I perceive people looking at me like I am just avoiding work (would not be the first time).

What they cannot see is the work that IS being done.  They cannot see it because it is under my skin.  It is within the framework of my joints.  The cartilage and tendons, the muscle and bone, the very parts that animate us.

All I need to do is rest.  Eat.  Drink.  Shower.  Shave.  Say, "Yes." Ask for help and graciously accept it when offered.  Try to be positive.  Get discouraged and move forward anyway.  Let time do its work.  Only do activities which the PT says I'm ready for, because I will feel healed before I am.

If I do all this, somewhere out there where the surf meets the sand (hopefully somewhere where the water is warm) there is a wave waiting to carry me toward shore

KISSED

Her name was Kelli Saunders.  She was my brother Steve's girlfriend and she was about to give me my very first legit kiss.  I was fourteen.  Steve was twenty-one.  He and his best friend, Steve Rozelle(from as far back as I can remember, virtually all my brother's best friends were named Steve - Steve Hall, Steve Bedrosian, Steve Rozelle, etc....) were in the house listening to Cheech and Chong and smoking Acapulco Gold.  I was sitting in Steve Rozelle's Saab, talking on the CB radio.  Kelli had gotten bored and came to join me.  She was seventeen with smiling eyes and smelled like fresh rain.  I was off balance and nervous in the presence of girls, especially pretty ones and Kelli was a pretty one. She smiled at me and was flirting but I didn't know how to recognize it - the upward glance through a curtain of fine chestnut hair she let fall over one eye, just so.  Mm. The hair that just barely touched her bare shoulders. I wanted to be that hair but she was my brother's girlfriend and he would surely kill me if he could read my thoughts and wasn't under the influence of such a peaceful drug.

She asked me about the CB and I started to explain the " 10-code" to her.  While I explained, she reached around me and started turning the knob that reclined my seat. I was explaining that "10-36" was the code for "What time is it?"  Her hair brushed past my face and I forgot what "10-9" meant (repeat last transmission).  She laughed and caressed my face with her hand.  I thought my heart would leave my chest.  She had reclined my seat all the way, but I sat up.  She got behind me and sat on the headrest and gently lay my head between her legs and began massaging my temples.

"Reeeeeeeeeeeeelax," she breathed.

I did.

I closed my eyes.  I looked up at her smiling down at me looking up at her, upside-down.  She leaned over, her hair a canopy encircling my face.  Soft lips touched mine.  Upside-down.  Strange and wonderful.  I really did not expect the tongue.  No one told me shit about that.  I barely parted my lips and a river of excitement and joy flowed into me and it has never left.

I saw her, years later.  She looked the same.  I had to tell her who I was.  It took her a minute and she remembered.  Barely.  Michael McDonald was so right.

"She had a place in his life.  He never made her think twice."

WINDFALL

When I found the money, I didn't do anything.

Not right away.

I couldn't.

Literally.

You ever been pulled over by the police when you're doing some shit you ain't supposed to be doing?  You got weed in the car or an open container or you got an outstanding warrant or it isn't your car...

Your heart constricts.  Your throat tightens.  Your mind races.  All you can think is, "Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckingfuck!"

That is how I felt ten seconds after I found the money.

But, MAN, those first nine seconds were great.

Then, I'm just sitting there looking at the money.  More money than I had ever seen in my life.  And I had seen a lot of money before.  But this.... This wasn't a lot of money.  This is what me and my friends call, "Fuck you!" money.

I know I gotta do something fast.  The longer I sit there, looking at the money, the better the chances of someone seeing me looking at the money.  Hit pause on the tsunami of crazy, scary, violent, paranoid (not necessarily untrue) thoughts, put the shit in the trunk, drive the fuck to someplace safe and then hit the play button and come up with a plan.

So I put the duffel bag in the trunk, I look around.  No one there, so far as I can tell.  I get in the car, put that shit on cruise control and drive.

OK, smart guy.  What the fuck does, "Safe place" mean?  A hotel?  Where you gotta show ID?  You gonna pay with a credit card since you only have eighteen bucks in your wallet or you gonna peel a hundred off the stack of...what?   Counterfeit?  Ransom?  Marked bills from some fucking sting operation?  ...You gonna drive home?  Bring this potential nightmare to your parents house?  What if there's a GPS tracking device in there, genius?  You saw "No Country For Old Men" (actually, that flick wasn't gonna come out for a while, yet, but still...)

I go with the hotel.  GPS or no, the chances of my name being anywhere near this shit is pretty slim.  I'll find out what's what with that soon enough.  So I hit the Airport Hilton.  One forty-nine, plus tax.  I check in for the whole weekend.

I play poker.  I'm not great, but I win more than I lose.  I've cashed in a dozen tournaments and took second place once at Hawaiian Gardens on a Friday night.  I cleared thirty-five hundred.  That's the most I ever made playing hold-em.  Point being, I know how to act like I don't have the nuts when I do have the nuts.  I wasn't sweating like the guy in "Midnight Express".  I was cool.  On the outside.  I get to the room.  It's nice.  A mini-suite with a great view of the city.  I close the blinds and I empty the contents of the duffel bag onto the bed.

I wrote a screenplay once.  It got optioned, but never got bought (yet).  It was about a family that robbed banks.  One of them had gotten killed in a botched job and they needed to recruit a new guy, or at least that's what the new guy thought.  In reality, they were using him as a patsy - a diversion to keep the cops occupied while the rest of the crew did the real heist.  Anyway, at one point, I had to figure out how much space a couple of million dollars in hundred dollar bills takes up - 2.5 million, to be precise.  After my research, I estimated that you could fit 2.5 million dollars in hundred-dollar bills into one of those cases that commercial airline pilots carry.

My point being, before I found the money, I already new what a couple of million dollars looked like and this was more.

A king-sized bed covered with bricks of hundred-dollar bills.  I took a real deep breath.  Counting was not priority right now.  I figured I should quickly flip through each stack and  address some of my most immediate concerns.  I stop.

I have to go to fucking CVS and get some latex gloves and a counterfeit-detecting pen and a blacklight, if they have it.

Fuck.  What if there is a GPS thingy in one of those stacks?  I come back from CVS just in time to get my head blown off or some shit.  I think for a moment.  I got it.

It took me awhile to find a  housekeeping cart, but I find one on the sixth floor.  I grab two pairs of gloves and am back to my room without anyone noticing me.  I'll flip through all the stacks real quick and if there's no tracking device, then I'll go to CVS for the other shit.

Each stack was banded - ten grand.  No GPS or other electronic device.  That's good.

Bills were newish, but circulated and non-sequential.  Also good.

I put it all under the bedspread and go to CVS.  I buy a counterfeit detection pen, a blacklight on a keychain, a Red Bull and a pint of Haagen Daz Vanilla Swiss Almond...(to be continued)

UPSTAIRS

You want to know what's upstairs?  First you gotta know what's downstairs.

Downstairs was just that.  Downstairs.  The living room had a sofa, TV, you know, living room shit. The kitchen had kitchen shit, and the bedroom was exquisitely adorned with all manner of fine bedroom shit.

This is to say that if you was to come calling at any time of day or night, and upon doing so were granted entry by the occupant, it would appear to you that you were in a large, beautiful home in a gated community.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  You feel me?

You might even stay awhile, take a swim in the pool, have a bite to eat.  All would be as it should be and  you would depart having no suspicions about the home you had just visited.  You get in your car, the gates at the bottom of the driveway swing wide, and off you go down that windy mountain road, eventually making your way back to your own much smaller, but equally unremarkable home.

You'd go about your business doing whatever it is you do and about a week later, you are eating a sandwich and your mind begins to wander and you think about the sandwich you had eaten at The House.  You smile as you remember how beautiful a home it was and then...there was something.

It was faint.

It was so faint that it took your brain a week to assign it enough importance to qualify for only the most fleeting of thoughts...

...so faint that you almost didn't hear it at all.

But, you did.  Hear it.

And now comes the question that took seven days to form.

You envision yourself, back at the house, sitting at the butcher-block kitchen table, eating a Boar's Head Saulsalito turkey with avocado on rustica.  Your host has excused himself and you sit alone, eating your sandwich while looking out at the pool and beyond to the city and beyond that to the mountains.  That is when you hear it.  And that is when you ask yourself,

"What is that hum?"

You cast your eyes toward the ceiling as you strain to listen harder, but it is barely perceptible.  Your subconscious is just about to make a list of possibilities - air conditioner, fish tank, Jacuzzi (all wrong), but before your unconscious mind has the chance to perform this task, your host has returned.

He smiles.

"How's the sandwich?"

He is so disarming that your suspicions evaporate like ether.

"It's delicious."

You forget the hum until you remember it a week later.

But of course all of this would only have transpired if you had been invited in.

And that.  Would never.  Happen.

* * *

GRAVITY

I do the same thing every time.

The same, exact steps in the same exact order, for years.  So many times.

How many times?

How many times have you made yourself a sandwich?  Or got dressed for work?  Or taken your dog for a walk?

Same way every time.

I've been sick.  I've been late.  I've been angry.  Still...same routine, like my life depends on it.  Because it does.

We all jump at once.  They are elated or terrified.  Laughing or crying.  Sometimes they panic, but Ray or Angela or Tony always calm them down.  It's a gift they all have, especially Angela.  I do not have that gift.  My gift is my ability to capture the moment, and I do it every day right after I follow those same steps in that same order, day after day.  Week after week.  Year after year.  Except today of course.

It sounds boring, but I assure you it is not.

Falling.

They fall.  I fall with them.  I record everything.  The smiles.  The wave.  The "thumbs-up".  Then suddenly - very suddenly, they are gone and I am falling alone.  Then there is only wind.  And earth.  And me.

As it is now.

I've experienced a couple of failures over the years.  I followed procedure without thinking -  automatic - and I lived to tell the tale.  But this... this is...embarrassing.

Fuck!  How could I fucking forget?!  Jesus!  So stupid.

Ready for some irony?  Guess what I was thinking about when I was skipping the most important step.

Regret.

Ain't that a bitch.

That's about all the time I have to beat myself up.

This is gonna be a real drag for a lot of people...that girl that works at Dunkin' Donuts that was waiting for me to ask her out...Ray, Angela, Tony.  Mom.  Sorry, Mom.  Christ, today's students are all gonna be scarred for life, especially Carrie, floating somewhere above me.

Wow.  This is taking longer than I would have thought.

Here comes the ground.  I hope it doesn't hurt too much.  I guess I get to see where you go.  I'm going to be OK.  I really wish I'd asked that girl out.  She seemed