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.