He rarely knows the date though he can usually pin down the day and month. Sometimes he forgets the year. When everyone speaks at once he thinks they’re speaking in some foreign language.
Down with a chest cold, he’s been working long hours at a dead-end job with very little sleep. In the grey light of dawn he sits in his wooden chair at a wooden table with a wooden expression on his face. He looks weary, road-warn- and maybe he is, but right now he’s just tired of waiting for the coffee to brew. The glass carafe broke a year or so back, and he watches as the coffee drips directly into an oversized orange ceramic mug.
He takes his coffee black, which suits him well. He’s dark, black, bleak- he isn’t sweet like sugar or smooth like cream, he is a dark morass of emptiness, long past loneliness or despair- those things just made him a more durable piece of material. Standing at the window with the steaming mug in his fist he gazes out at the empty street, enjoying the early morning silence.
Wordlessly he makes his way to the bathroom, sets his coffee next to the sink and leans into the shower, adjusting the valves until the water scalds him. His plaid boxers drop to the floor and he steps under the hard stream of steam and heat, letting it pummel his skin, beating against him as if his chest and back are drums.
The steam rises around him, filling the small room. Whenever he stands in the shower he thinks of her. She was a long time ago, a distant memory, at this point an even mixture of pleasure and pain. Memories are arrows shot through time- they are no longer present yet they still inflict damage.
She was really beautiful- the mother of their child- she was graceful and delicate, intelligent, regal, sensuous, sexual- at one point they seemed to be joined physically- couldn’t keep each other’s name off their lips, could barely keep their hands off of each other. Today she doesn’t even speak to him.
They were together quite a while- years- a “whirlwind romance” as some people like to say, followed by a tumultuous relationship with all of it’s ups and downs. They loved each other fiercely and burned very brightly for quite a while, though they had their differences. In retrospect, probably a better than average relationship, up to the last year.
After the magic dissolved they still had their son to hold them together, and they both focused their waning love for each other upon him, renewing it, for a time renewing them, and again drawing them closer together. They still made love on the back porch underneath the stars from time to time, showered together by candle light- yet there were times when they didn’t speak for days, two ghosts occupying the same celestial space.
He was drinking a lot at that time, going out with his best friend Jason who was single at the time. She would let him go, knowing that ultimatums were an end of things. He and Jason would hit the bars, walking from one to the next, drinking to make the reality of the present soften and fade. When they were both single they’d shared a place, and were pretty close. Even so they would drift apart whenever they were in relationships, but always they came back together here and there as friends are wont to do.
They had a fight, he and she- a pretty big blowout- and she went to stay in her condo up North for a week, time to cool of and gather perspective. The baby was around two years old, and he would drop baby off at preschool and she would pick him up, and then the reverse the following day, alternately- so they didn’t have to see each other, didn’t have to speak. After a few lonely days of this he called her up and apologized, and she apologized also. He asked her to come home and she agreed, and said she would come tomorrow, after work. They both wanted to try again, and they both would for many years before they finally would part ways one last time to be forever separated yet always connected through the boy.

It was a week or so after she came home that he inadvertently picked up her phone thinking it was his own. He thumbed the send button and immediately knew it was hers, yet he was intrigued by several listings in a row, all showing the name “Fred Flintsone”. Thumbing the appropriate button he finds that she and Jason have been swapping calls for two weeks- lots of brief calls and a few long ones, more on the week that she was gone, but a few long ones during the day on the week after she returned. At first he was angry, then hurt, then a little amused that she had masked the name as “Fred Flintstone” rather than just erasing the call history. Stupid mistake for such a smart girl.

Every time he showers he thinks of her, pressed against someone else, hanging onto his best friend and telling him all the things she used to say to him. Even after all this time, even though that love between them has faded, every time he thinks of her he thinks of how she gave herself to his best friend and then quietly, wordlessly returned home to him. He knows her- she loves to have sex, always has. He knows Jason- Jason will nail anything with a heartbeat. After the fact he realized there was something quiet between them the whole time, right in front of him- it only took that week apart for them to consummate the physical act.

Every time he showers he thinks of her.

Every time he thinks of sex he thinks of her, with someone else.

Every time he thinks of relationships he thinks of betrayal.

Mostly he tries to just not think.




Psychiatrist: “So you’re still in touch with your son’s mom?”

The dark man: “Yeah- sure- I get my son every other weekend. I pick him up, give her some cash- she’s civil enough as long as I bring her some cash- doesn’t say much more than two or three words to me, though. I mean- come on- she‘s my son‘s mom- despite everything that‘s happened, there‘s always our boy to think about. ”

Psychiatrist: “What about Jason? You ever see him?”

The dark man emit’s a long sigh.


“Jason…… Yeah…… Jason..... he never knew what hit him.”