"Could I bum a smoke off ya?"

"Yea, sure," she said. "I don't wanna die alone."

They rode the Holy Roller coaster with the best of them. It's a wild ride. For those of unfamiliar with the Pentecostal arena let me explain. It begins as a crisis moment when you feel utter joy, a feeling so high, of such elation, you would think the creator of the universe is giving your soul a bear hug.

As the intensity of the moment begins to fade in time, you must struggle to maintain the zeal, even while it dwindles into a mild contentment. If you lived in a vacuum, apart from the effects of time, insulated from the tapping hammer of reality, if you could remain beneath the juniper tree, locked inside the cloister, kneeling on the mat, praying to the east, you might be just fine.

Sure at first you approach the world with a zeal and boldness. But eventually, you must return to Monday morning, and there you we are forced to break the gaze, awake from the moment, and the hypnotist returns to his day job as you are left with the residue of bliss, which is not necessary a bad thing, but against the church's weight of personal guilt and eternal fear, it is not quite sufficient.

One reads the bible in the morning; one prays to start the day. Makes a conscious effort to watch one's thoughts, to watch less TV, devote more time and money to the church. But gas for the engine is always burning. Therefore, like a vampire craving virgin blood, the Pentecostal returns to the sacrificial altar to plead the blood of Mary’s son, like a junkie craving the New Wine. A fix to get you by until the next Sunday.

Sometimes these fixes are elusive. These are called ''dry spells". They are cured by what some country preachers refer to as ''gully washers."

My Fly


The first time I saw him, he was sunning his underbelly on one the window panes that line the front of a particular downtown coffee shop. Behind him traffic bustled through green lights and the sidewalk teemed with people working their way down sidewalks, beneath the glare of the city’s scape.

I thought the whole image worth capturing, set my newspaper down, and quickly put a lens onto my camera. I moved in close enough to get a good frame, but just before I clicked the shutter, the little guy took off.

No big loss. I settled back into my comfy chair, took a sip of coffee, and straightened my paper, which was when I saw the fly resting on my shoulder. Without thought, I brushed him off. He flew a foot into the air, then returned to my shoulder. Once again, I swatted, but, once again, he returned.

This exchange went on with increasing vigor until I exhausted all the energy that first cup of coffee had given and came close to giving up on ridding myself of him.

Then the barista walked past. Remembering women had enough difficulties with me,I saw no need to add “he has flies” to that list.

Nonchalantly, I shooed. Predictably, the fly returned, and just stared at me. I stared right back at him. Of course flies don’t blink, but I stared anyways.

He looked like your common fly, except for the tiny iridescent streaks of red and blue and green where light separated as it passed through his translucent wings.

The thing that really caught my eye was this fly’s behavior. He wasn’t all fidgety like most. He sat still as a tie tack, almost serene.

I decided to reason with him.

I want to point out that I didn’t think reason would be effectual really, but swatting hadn’t been either, and I just figured that before resigning myself to the filthy advances of the coffee shop’s only fly, I should at least talk him.

I leaned in real close so as to not arouse the concern of any of the other patrons and whispered, “What’s you’re problem, man?”

Unfazed by my breath on his back, he didn’t move a muscle, except for those that caused his little fly belly to expand and contract rapidly as he took his little fly breaths, something I hadn’t noticed in keeping my usual distances.

“I can’t just have you hanging around here. It’s not cool.”

He just stared at me with his little fly eyes. I leaned in closer and squinted. I thought for a second he was batting lashes at me, but, naturally, he had none.

“You’ve got a whole city here.”

He kept looking at me. And his eyes weren’t little, really, at least not for a fly.

“Alright. Whatever. Hang out.”

I sipped my coffee, read for a while, then went outside for some fresh air and a cigarette. I came back in, sat in my comfy chair, straightened the paper, and noticed the fly still sat still, there on my shoulder.

“You are a cool little fly, aren’t ya?”

Then the barista looked up from a mop: “Are you talking to yourself, Johnny?”

“Not anymore.”

But such is my life. I knew from early on it was a bit more than it was all cracked to be.
My mother always told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. For a few years my grand ambition was to be a garbage man.
I’d run out to the end of the drive twice a week when I heard them rumbling down the street. I became somewhat friendly with them. They’d say hello to the curious gaping white boy.
I’d wave goodbye vigorously as they drove away, amazed that they were allowed to stand on the back of a moving truck.
My parents seemed supportive of my career, buying me a Tonka garbage truck for my third birthday.
They said I could be anything I wanted, and I believed them for a while.
I had my first inkling that life wasn’t so simple when I went to my mother and told her I wanted to be a puppy dog when I grew up.
You can’t be a puppy, Johnny.
I thought I could be whatever I wanted?
Well, you can’t be a puppy.
And that was just the beginning.

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.” -Thoreau

I settled in front of my trusty external frame backpack and begin to methodically, carefully fill it with rolls of clothes, filling the empty nooks with precious goods: the steak knife, the cork from that bottle of Chianti, a crumpled pack of Galois Bleus, those cheap disposable razors, my tattered Bible, and such.

I extinguished my cigarette, pressing the hot yellow butt into ground, burning a neat hole through the plastic floor of the tent.

I thought of taking the knife and cutting out the tent’s entire floor. I’d like to see the two of them shagging there then, slapping against the wet mud, arousing the interests of the German beetles and army ants that inhabit the underworld of the Thalkirchen Campingplatz.

Being out-numbered, tempered with fear, I resisted disemboweling the tent.

As I crawled from the tent, I could see, in the corner of my eye, a mass huddled around a camp fire, eight Irish blokes still sloshing Spaten even as the sun broke clear of the Eastern tree line. I could feel their moonshine eyes considering the final demise of the village demon, at last exorcised. If Isabel was among them, I could not make her out from the other blurry, flickering silhouettes, at least not without turning my head.

I strapped on my backpack, slung my broken-zipper sleeping bag over my shoulder, and started off, cool as I could, heading for the trail that leads to the river. Then, I walked the path that ran along the bank, through the forest, towards the Wawirtschaft Biergarten.

In the eye of a storm, I walked along with all my life at my back, on my back, hanging on my shoulders.

Slowly, the gray skies won over the clear morning sun,
The horizon stayed orange, but the clouds above gently defied and a soft rain fell, plucking the slow river, marking concentric circles that expanded on the water before disappearing into the current.

I observed the drizzle from beneath the eave of the forest's canopy, the branches stretching towards the sky like twisted roots towards an old river.

I walked along, considering the pain of losing my first love, and the rain against the dawn, and the river through the forest.

Never had I mourned a greater loss, and yet even this blind fool knew that moment was beautiful. Damned. Beautiful. Alive.

Soon, though, I’d forget this take. For, the storm soon blew me from its eye, and I found shelter in the Biergarten, washing dishes for minimum wage, room, and board.