Kiss Jupiter Goodbye

Kiss Jupiter Goodbye

By Ashton Goggans

“Hand me the nine-iron,” Jimmy reached into the blue bag stuffed in the bushes and pulled out the rusty club. “Wait for the light to turn green and we’ll all hit on the count of three, ok,” He threw the club to me and grabbed a handful of tennis balls out of the garbage bag sitting on top of the bench.

Thanksgiving had just passed and the city of Jupiter had put Christmas lights up all over the downtown area; light up candy-canes and Santa Claus statues with a few giant menorahs, for political reasons. Fountain Park, our park, was covered in bright white lights, our little holiday heaven--a beacon of truth. Jupiter was a retirement community; World War vets, still shell-shocked, and eager to take their struggle out on the snotty grandkids of their bridge partners. We claimed this space as our own, we being the kids who didn’t go to football games on Saturdays and who were yet to learn that girls preferred confidence over obscure knowledge of early punk bands. No one could take this from us.

Jimmy worked at the Jupiter Humane Society. He injected kittens and puppies, some whose eyes had not yet opened, with blue liquid. This, painlessly he was told, killed them from the inside out. He hated everyone , for obvious reasons. We had become friends some years ago. In middle school the skateboarders stuck together, we weren’t cool then, not even close. We were broken toy soldiers carrying our dignity, and comic books, in military rucksacks. We spent weekend sleepovers wearing out cassette tapes of Black Flag, watching the same skate videos over, and over, and frothing over stolen Playboy magazines.

Jimmy and I began volunteering at the shelter after we were caught stealing fireworks. Forty hours was enough for me but Jimmy had a fondness for the work--walking and feeding the animals, making sure they didn’t fight, and, when the daily duties were finished, running down the clock lying on the cold concrete floor with the tragic beasts. We hadn’t learned about blue-juice yet.

The local tennis clubs would bring their day-old tennis balls to the shelter. They felt philanthropic and slept easier at night knowing that the soon to be blue-juiced dogs had something to chew on. Jimmy said that the balls just sat there because the dogs would “fucking kill each other” if you threw a ball into the pack.

So here we were. Saturday night debauchery was a tradition for us. We would have firework-gang-wars with each other and convince the cops, who always showed up, that we were rival gangs in hopes of getting arrested. Jimmy thought it would give us more street cred. We would place cardboard in the middle of the five-way intersection, wear sweatpants and headbands, and offer free break-dance lessons to the passersby, or bring the water-balloon launcher and shoot anything that was lying around--- rocks, dead birds, day old muffins that the coffee shop I worked at let me take each night--anything. People loved us.

Tonight we were golfing with tennis balls: trying to hit cars stopped at the intersection down the block, and getting really good at it.
My Dad encouraged mischief; he knew the law and the freedoms that being a minor contained. At night Dad and I would sit and discuss most everything but usually came back to his youthful exploits. His eyes would light up as each memory crept through the fog left by three decades of drugs, debt, and fatherhood. He grew up just north of Jupiter, a different time, a different world,—he told me that him and his brothers got to name the street they lived on; Spartacus, they named it Spartacus. He hated video games and cut our T.V. cable with hedge loppers when I was seven. He would rather us be out knocking down mail boxes than inside watching television. He loved Jimmy, and more, somehow, when he got me into stupid shit.

The park bench, our park bench, faced east, and looked directly at the main highway. There was a major intersection there, where the street which ran along the north side of the park ran into the highway. We set up in the middle of the intersection, five deep tonight, and waited for the light facing us to turn red. All at once the five of us would tee off; the sound of brakes screeching meant contact, and sent us running into the bushes for cover.

We had been golfing for about forty minutes and had not even made a dent in the bag. Forty minutes was about the longest we could ever get away with anything on Saturday nights before the cops showed up. We never got in
real trouble; they just wrote our names down and told us to get lost. This was our Jupiter--every weekend the same shit.

Jimmy put the bag back into his truck, a 1982 Chevy pickup aptly named “The Brick” because of its rust color and seemingly immortal nature: we had tried to kill it and it would not die.

As he was walking back, on cue, Officer Wells showed up, lights twinkling, adding to the Christmas warmth. At 23 Wells was a junior deputy and had graduated with some of the older kids who hung out at the park. His dad had been an officer and was killed by a heart attack that occurred while cleaning leaves out of their gutters. The doctors didn’t know if the heart attack or the two story tumble had killed him. Wells parked on the curb of the park, left his lights on, like always, and got out.

“Hey Sherriff” we said in what seemed like unison.

“You boys want to get off that bench and talk to me?”

“Not really man, the bench is really comfortable,” Jimmy said, sitting down.

“I have had some reports of kids hitting golf balls into traffic over here,” He looked at the statue that stood in the middle of the fountain, then back at us. “You guys wouldn’t know anything about that?”

Jimmy hated being patronized more than almost anything, only slightly less than the blue-juice back at the shelter.

“They were tennis balls and no, we don’t know anything,” Jimmy snapped. “And another thing, we aren’t kids; we’re only like four years younger than you.”

Wells looked at Jimmy for far too long, then turned back to his car. He reached inside the passenger window and pulled out a solitary tennis ball, turned back to the group on the bench and dropped it at their feet.

“What’s this?” He asked sarcastically, picking up the tennis ball that now lay between my torn Converse. Jimmy couldn’t hold it down and started laughing hysterically.

“Are you planting a fucking tennis ball on us?” He asked.

“Jimmy, can’t you fuck around at home?”

“Do we look like golfers or tennis players to you?” I asked, feeling courageous after watching Jimmy laugh in his
face. Truth be told I was a good tennis player, I had taught summer camps all through high school, and Dad and I played most weekend mornings.

“Every week I have to come down here and deal with you. I’m sick of people complaining. I want you guys to move this somewhere else. I don’t want to see you guys here again tonight,” He said.

“Well where do you want us, if not in a public park?” Jimmy asked. The other kids had grabbed their skateboards and began to leave. I had my dad’s stories tumbling through my mind. Jimmy had all the misanthropy of a young man forced to kill baby animals boiling inside of him—we weren’t giving an inch.

“Anywhere but here, I’m done dealing with you,” and on that note he picked up the tennis ball and tossed it to Jimmy, turned, walked back to his car. He turned the glorious blinking lights off and as he drove off Jimmy smiled at me, and flicked him off.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Jimmy said, trotting off to his car. He opened the trunk and pulled out what was left of the first bag of balls and the second full one. He looked down the street, in the direction which Wells had left and crossed back over to the park.

The other kids were putting their skateboards back in their cars about to leave when Jimmy handed me the almost-empty bag, smiled again, and began emptying the contents of the second one into the intersection.

“This town is dead, there isn’t a thing left here. I’m gone, I am fucking gone! Kiss Jupiter goodbye!”

He dumped all the tennis balls out and began kicking them into the street. I dumped min and followed suit. The rest of the kids began laughing nervously, acutely aware of the implications of Jimmy’s actions-- Jimmy just smiled. He looked alive, radiant-- a beautiful sight, standing under the sepia light of the street lamp, glowing with indignation.

Sunday morning it looked like a cloud had descended over the intersection and rained down tennis balls. The gutters were filled from one end to the other with barely used fuzzy balls. The coffee shop was buzzing, like only small towns can, with talk of who was responsible for the offense. I smiled, thinking of Jimmy’s face, soaking in youth and hate and beautiful, pointless, defiance.

My dad walked through the door, stopping for the paper and Sunday coffee. He greeted the customers sitting at the bar, “Can you believe all the fucking tennis balls?” he smiled at me and I could picture him, thirteen again, filling his older brother’s air intake with baking flour. Authority is nothing against tradition.

Norman Mailer RIP

If you have never read Norman Mailer's anti-war novel "The Naked and the Dead" then you have truly missed out. Another one of Americas great writers has left us. "So it goes".

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.
Norman Mailer

Sunday Silence

Sunday Silence

That bobbing left hand, it looked like he was masturbating an imaginary dinosaur, only when it came, I got a money-shot-right-hook to the chin. I stood there, flat-footed, ignorant of the sport and pissed. Dad got out of Vietnam for having flat feet, but that wouldn’t save me now.

I hated Reese on so many levels. He was a musician in the loosest sense. He butchered others art like a Nazi, all leads, all the time-- rhythm was for pussies, like helmets or condoms. I knew guys that didn’t play rhythm, but they played on acoustic guitars, with nylon strings and at reasonable hours. When Reese turned his amp on all the neighborhood dogs tried to drown themselves in the outdoor pools. They needed a hero. I was doing this for them.

We circled each other a half dozen times before squaring up. He would approach right foot forward, left hand bobbing rhythmically. The moment the left hand stopped bobbing it would stab into my chest, as the right would hook above my left shoulder, connecting with my lower jaw.

I withstood several of the masturbatory assaults without faltering. I was a sponge. He was born with a six-pack and defined biceps, which stood in glaring contrast to my undeveloped physique and thunder thighs. I didn’t know anything about boxing. I was a coward. Ask my Dad.

He stepped forward again, as I regained composure. He circled, left hand still bobbing.

I thought about the dogs. I thought about the cloud of noise reverberating from his guitar amp on Sunday mornings. I thought about the four years of hell I had endured since I first saw the Jersey plates pass our house and pull in.

The hand bobbed, bobbed, bobbed and stopped. Before the dinosaur lost it, I jumped back. His fist fell just short of my sweat ridden face. He stumbled forward with the momentum of his punch. I caught my feet, balled my fist and, with every ounce of life I had, plunged it directly into his face. It felt soft and warm as it smashed against his face, skin and bone against skin and bone. He screamed-- an awful, blood curdling, dog drowning scream. His eye was filled with blood.

Save a few stray vessels, and most of his Italian dignity, everything healed fine. I never apologized. Dogs love me. Sundays are sacred.

Blue Eyes

Blue Eyes

by Ashton Goggans

The grit against my skin did not wake me- at six years old sandy sheets were second nature. Nor did the echo of the wind slapping branches against my window stir me from the bottom bunk. My brother, usually nestled in bed above me, whispered my name in the dark; he needed the reassurance that I was there.

Jack, two years my junior, had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a cute lisp. At four I knew he was something different.

Hurricane Andrew had ravaged the southeast coast of Florida, leaving it in rubble. It jogged west and slid under us during the middle of the night. Most people didn’t lose a wink of sleep.

Jack and I crept quietly across the wood floors of the hallway to our parent’s room. My Father slept in the jungles for a few years while engaged in certain business ventures which would cause nearly anyone, iron nerved or not, to lose sleep. He slept like a tiger.

He greeted us as if he had sent invitations in the mail and received our RSVP’s weeks ago. He had set comforters and pillows next to the bed for me and Jack to sleep on. The room had one wall made of sliding glass doors that opened into the backyard. He pulled back the curtains so that Jack and I could witness the violence outside.

Before he closed his eyes he told us a story of some crazy who wanted to, “feel mother natures wrath”. The guy would climb palm trees or row a dingy out to sea during hurricanes. We felt the wind was bigger than us and knew it was safer inside. I think Dad was trying to reassure us that we were safe.

I remember a kite, which, looking back was a figment of my imagination, slicing into the oak tree in the dark. I pictured it squirming with each gust trying to free itself from the arms which now devoured the plastic sticks and silk.

Jack and I didn’t sleep or talk much that night. He knew I was there and I knew he was there. We both knew nothing of what was going on outside and did not discuss it. Any noise would wake Dad and he was more fun well-rested.

Morning came slowly. My father found us wide awake, clear- eyed, and ready to see the carnage. Jack never called Dad “Dad”. He was missing his two front teeth and insisted on calling him by his first name. The lack of bite made Jack sound like a pre-pubescent Bostonian.

“Mawk, Mawk!” he would shout. “Down’t mewlt the cheeeese”

He hated melted cheese. The kid ate more pizza than Luigi and Mario combined, but in his head he hated melted cheese.

Dad was a postman and had been since we were born. He had traded in his contraband for more respectable employment and settled down with my Mom and a pair of dogs. Dogs were as far as he planned-- Jack and I were more than he bargained for. He told us, after our psyches were solid enough to handle loaded statements, that "there is nothing harder than trying to talk a woman out of a pregnancy without sealing your imminent doom.” One can imagine not.

He was a rural carrier but did not hold the whole “rain, sleet, snow” mantra very close to his heart, and a hurricane had just blown over, so he called in sick. We were overjoyed. When Dad wasn’t at work he was with us, either playing catch in the back yard, or at the beach. Considering our back yard looked like a woodpile, we knew it was the latter.

Dad drove one of the old style postal vehicles: a little, white, military-style box. He strapped his surfboard to the crude racks fastened on the roof and piled us in the back with mountains of rubber bands. I could have made a rubber band ball the size of the sun. We used them as ammo in the John Wayne signature rubber-band guns our Grandpa used to send us, usually finishing these duels by wrestling each other into the dirt.

The ocean looked as large as it sounded. The surf was deafening and we stayed clear of the waterline. Runoff gave the water very pungent smell of fertilizer. Dad didn’t surf as much as I think he would have liked and we knew it was a special thing when he did. We entertained ourselves quite easily in the sand. This particular day we were delighted at the virtual gold mine of rubble embedded in the sand by the wind, rain, and surf crashing, bringing the abandoned and discarded treasures of the less fortunate.

We spent the afternoon making castles out of the trash and toys we found. Jack and I didn’t fight or argue over the plunder. We were happy to be with each other and to have experienced the storm. I remember my fathers smile as he approached us, inspecting our creations. Dripping wet, he scooped us both up and tossed us down in the sand.

Twenty years later, standing on a cliff in Northern California, watching the morning fog blow off the thundering pacific into the redwoods, Jack remarked:

“I think that is the earliest thing I can remember”.

The surf boomed off the cliffs below us. We had chased this swell from Los Angeles to the cliffs of Monterey. He zipped up his black wetsuit and clamored down the cliff.

Two hundred miles away peoples lives were destroyed by that storm. We built sandcastles out of the wreckage. Together we fear not.