A couple years ago, somebody told me to write a book about all that happened, but I’m not a writer and didn’t really have time to sit down and write it out. Didn't want to. I can’t tell stories. I was a lawyer back in the day – that’s the saying the kids use now -- that was – what – eight years ago. 1995, or was it ’96. Yep, seven years ago, and I still don’t really know what I did was the right thing. I don’t feel very good about it. It is not your usual slice of reality.
Maybe that’s why I’m doing this. Blogging. Weird. My wife’s dead because of what I was doing. And what was I doing? I guess the simple answer is that I was just trying to do my job. And she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Isn’t that how it happens, though? Wrong place, wrong time. I can’t tell you how many people told me it wasn’t my fault. That I couldn’t do anything about it. Yeah, right. And these fucking religious people – I don’t know – I'll say here they're well-intentioned, but they give me the creeps, even worse than that fucking girl. God’s will – you all have heard those people talk. And preach. A couple of them – I don’t know how they found us -- said I was an “instrumentality of God.”
And the boys? Our two young men. I guess they were in the right place, then, according to all those people who believe in that kind of shit. Yeah, right.
And me? I tasted the oily barrel of Buck’s nickel-plated .44 Magnum – guess on that particular day I didn’t like the taste very much. Good thing, I guess. The other time I leaned against the front fender of my old Cosworth Vega – the car was actually the “instrumentality of God,” what with the spider webby (is that a word, Matman? – he’s the one that told me to blog about this – therapeutic, he said) crack in the windshield where her head got stoved in.
The Matman said – well, he didn’t say it, he chatted it to me in a chat we had the other night on that chat thing that Microsoft is getting rid of because of liability problems or something. I mean, I’ve never met him or anything like that. Just chatted on the internet. I guess he’d be like an internet friend. Whatever. So, I called Bill, who got me steered in the right direction when I was 16. I guess that’s why I became a lawyer. He got me out of a jam. Not before he laid me open and made me look inside my teenaged self. So, I talked to him about the blogging thing because he said he did it. And he’s “real,” not just some disembodied line of type. Stole that line. He told me to give it a try. Gave me his old site to use, it being paid for and all. I’m still trying to figure out what’s what. I changed some stuff and kept some stuff the same because I’m new at this -- didn't feel comfortable moving in and re-decorating like he said to.
Back to reality – see, I’m getting the hang of it already. That’s the name of the site. And the hang of it – you need to remember that one. Up above, I said the other time – this was last year back in May – I was leaning against the fender of the Cosworth Vega, symbolic, I guess, waiting for the fucking train to come by and splatter me over half the state and parts of Canada. Then, in some kind of ker-chunk into reality, I figured I better not do that. The boys have been through Hell and back – I caused a lot of problems before. Why make more of a mess. Feeling better now. What an understatement that is.
I don’t really know what good this will do. Spilling my guts. I’m holed up in a backwater town with two teenagers – trying to carve out a life for them. The fucking girl I mentioned ever so briefly above -- I kicked her ass out a long time ago. I think the thing with her was one of those grief reactions they talk about – she was there and I labored under the impression she cared. Or maybe it was like in Die Hard, which was on the boob tube yesterday, where the shrink on TV was saying that the hostages were bonding with Hans Gruber and his gang (I realize that they weren’t bonding. I watched the movie for the umpteenth time, but so what – this is hard enough to put into words.). And I was the hostage in that scenario, which is closer to the truth than the grief reaction pseudo-psychological diagnosis. Or maybe I was still the bait in the game she was playing. Some game -- change that to "struggle she was involved in." Fanatics -- they are not fun to live with.
Anyway, I really haven’t seen much that would prove that they are still out there. I have seen reports out of Africa, but nothing concrete, hard or just freshly poured, that could be considered proof – those are like the e-mails from the Nigerian scam artists. Got one of those today -- it was from a Nigerian guy representing Chuck Taylor, the Liberian dude, with his 17.4 million. Phony. I am sure that somebody has tracked down the source of the African stories and arranged to take care of any problem.
Is it safe? Only time will tell. And speaking of time and telling, I figure that it’s time to tell what happened. So, I'll figure out where to start and go from there. Therapy, more or less.
