Timothy Glasby

“May I have a gin and tonic and a date,” asks the tall buxom blonde.
“The gin and tonic is no problem, but you’ll have to talk to my girlfriend about the date,” I smile, embarrassed, showing off my set of twenty-five-year-old white, straight teeth. Only I know that my teeth are the straightest thing about me.
“I thought someone as nice as you would have a girlfriend,” she answers.
Again I have disappeared into the guise of being a straight man. If I had been truthful and not vanished for that moment I could have told her, “No, I have a boyfriend, a tall handsome guy that I’ve been dating for a long time.” But it was the same legerdemain that I pulled off a half dozen times a week. This act of magic is never followed with applause or an ovation, just a sinking feeling of being a liar and a coward.
Certain questions set me at the edge of this double life and the lie that I live at the bar. “How come we never meet her? What does she do? Is it okay with her that you’re a bartender and girls hit on you?”
If I wasn’t caught in this flash of smoke, mirrors, and untruths, I could tell them, “He’s very happy that I work in a straight bar. He never has to worry about who flirts with me or if I’ll end up going home with them.”
The vanishing act lasts only as long as it takes to rid myself of this young woman or any of the other pretty girls and their advances. I then reappear as myself, the bartender, a trick so good that people don’t even know it’s being performed.
In the mirror behind the bar, I watch myself become invisible, like a vampire, when I answer the questions with bold-faced falsities.
Someday maybe I won’t have to stage this elaborate illusion any more. If not, I fear I may vanish and never reappear.

MY FIRST MOVIE

Frances Costikyan

All Mamma would tell me was
“We’re going to the movies.”
Fact was, she had never been to
one herself, so that was the best
description she could give me.

The event was being held in
the auditorium of the Riverside Church School,
and though we were early,
well before the advertised 3:00 pm.,
when we arrived nearly all the
seats were taken.

There was some sort of music, and
as the lights in the auditorium dimmed
words appeared on a screen set up on the stage
where actors ordinarily performed.

Since I couldn’t read very well yet, I wasn’t sure what
the words said, but before I could ask my
mother, there appeared a blue and white scene
like the one on my grandmother’s china.
And just like when I stared long and hard
at my grandmother’s china,
the figures began to move.

There was an “ahh” from the audience
as the little blue people on the screen
walked through the garden of blue flowers,
and across the blue bridge in
the middle of the plate. I wasn’t all
that surprised, because that’s what the little blue
people did on my plate at my grandmother’s house.
whenever I stared at them while
waiting for the meal to begin

Afterwards, when the lights in the auditorium
came back on, everybody was marveling and laughing
about what they had seen, and years later I
realized what I had seen. But while I was watching it,
my first movie just seemed like what was always
going on in my head.

Laguna woods
July 2007

Reiss duPlessis

“You poor little thing, you have such pretty sisters and handsome brothers, where did you come from?”

“Aaahhh, I don’t know. Maybe the stork dropped me on my face?”

“Humph! Well, I’ll say this for you, you have a quick tongue for a young man who is supposed to be a gentleman.”

“Thank you.”

“Hummmph!”

I walked away from Mrs. Dupre with my most dreaded fear confirmed, I was an ugly duckling. I always knew it but it had not heard it expressed openly before...well, not in my presence. I wondered, as I walked toward the house if, inside, they were talking about me and how ugly I was. Mrs. Dupre is a nice lady. She would not say those things if they were not true. Everyone likes her. She is the neighborhood icon of propriety and all that is good, Catholic and genteel. People ask her advice and her opinions are respected. Now I have her opinion, I am officially, certifiably ugly. Mrs. Dupre said so!

This exchange with the neighborhood, “sweet little old lady,” was the moment I was, in a community where beauty outranked achievement, talent or monetary gain, officially crowned the family ugly duckling.

The ugly duckling in a large family of beautiful people has a difficult and often treacherous road to travel. It, I guess, would be easier if the duckling had someone with whom to share the honor... anyone... a less than attractive distant cousin would do. That would be better than standing alone. This duckling stood, web feet pointed toward that big, pretty world out there, all alone and alone was a lonely place.

It was a joy to have two breathtakingly beautiful sisters and a mother who was acknowledged as one of the city’s great beauties, but the pride and joy for the beautiful women in the family did not compensate for my misery. My brothers did not help either. One was considered “pretty for a man,” and the other was, according to everyone, “so handsome.” All I had to offer was my ranking as the baby in the family. That helped a bit as everyone in our large, extended family loved the baby but no one ever said the baby was pretty, cute, handsome or good-looking. I was simply “the baby,” “the youngest one” or “our little brother.” Happily, they loved me and they were always kind to me.... well, most of the time.

It was not fun when other kids had their chins pinched because they were cute and I had my nose pinched, “to straighten it out.” Try, as they might, pinch, with their might, my ski-slope would not straighten, nor would it ever be like the trademark family nose...beautiful, aquiline and straight. Bob Hope, you were not alone!

Time, sweet time. It brought another distinction. One day I was taller then everyone in the family, my two handsome brothers, my beautiful sisters and all of the pretty cousins! Six feet, three inches tall. Ha! Take that! Handsome, no. Good looking, no. Attractive, no. Tall, yes! Well, that’s something! There must be some credit given to tall guys. Finally, I have a distinction in this family of beautiful people and it’s not a negative one! I’m the “tall one.”

I am contemplating more than my navel. I am contemplating my own mortality. I may have only two more days to live. What to do with them? I can't think of anything that might be significant or important. I've known for the past two months that I have lung cancer. Two days from today, a surgeon will cut out the upper lobe of my right lung.
Am I afraid to die? That is a difficult question. If death occurs the same way it did the night before my triple bypass surgery in 1991, it was easy and painless. I stopped breathing for twenty seconds. The monitor screen showed a flat line for that time. However, I came back to life myself before the staff responded to the code blue. It felt like falling into a deep and dreamless sleep and awakening.
I wish I had a deep religous belief in an afterlife and in heaven where I would be reunited with my seven siblings, my nieces and nephews, my father and my mother. But, I do not have that deep religous belief. Nor do I believe in the existance of the conventional hell. Though, if it does exist, I would like to send some people there, those who abuse children and helpless animals and several other groups, too.
I do regret the added burden my death would place on my daughter. She has her own serious health problems, a diabetic husband she takes to dialysis three times a week. In addition, now she is concerned about me. I wonder how much time my son-in-law will gain by going on dialysis and what about the quality of that time? How much longer can my daughter continue to work when she experiences so much pain she works while in bed with the computer on a tilt table in front of her. How much time before she is immobilized in a body trying to destroy itself?
I wish I'd been a better mother to my children. I wish I'd been able to send them to college. I wish my son's life had some financial stability. I wish my daughter and her husband enjoyed better health. Well, I can wish even for the impossible.

Square Peg, Round Hole
Gene Koltvet
July 2007 mj’s blog writing assignment

In the rear of an ancient building made of concrete, with a clay tile roof and heavy plank barn-like doors with huge wrought iron hinges and lift-latches for opening, I contemplate my future. I stare out the window over the top of my microscope, and watch Monsieur with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, going back and forth in his field with horses pulling a walking harrow. Work is slow in the tiny, cramped Army medical laboratory in rural France. My military obligation will be finished in a few months. Then I will be mustered out of the Army and will no longer enjoy the life support systems that have protected and directed my life for nearly twenty-four years.

My life has been rich with valuable and fulfilling experiences. I acquired a college education that exposed me to technical studies, social studies and the arts. Finally, the military is providing me with a technical education in the medical field that can be parlayed into a civilian profession should I choose. Yet, I am undecided and unsure who I am or what I want my future to be.

My desire to work with my hands and a pragmatic analysis of careers with good monetary potential and a high personal satisfaction quotient, lead me to consider a trade in heating and air-conditioning. Using my GI Bill, I apply at a trade school to study air-conditioning after which I will apply that knowledge changing out swamp-coolers for air-conditioners in Phoenix, Arizona.

Between the time of my application and matriculation I drift into a job at an airline, operating IBM machines. This challenges me and I excel at it. I am happy that I have found my calling or at least one that gives me some satisfaction. I notify the trade school that I will not attend as planned. As life goes, things change. IBM equipment changes too. Complex hand wired machine control panels give way to computer programs. Working with my hands is now taking a back seat to complex mental exercises – computer programming. I take little satisfaction from it.

Years slip away and I grow less and less interested. Midway in my career I feel I have to face the decision to find a new career or settle for the one I have. The thought of change and the impact on my family numbs my desire to change. The pace of computer technology is changing at warp speed; my heart is not in it. It is getting harder to go to work each week. If I change careers now, what will the new one be? I am not a mental gymnast, my interests are tactile, I need to see and touch. My occupation is moving in a direction that doesn’t interest me. I feel like I don’t fit anymore. At the age of fifty there isn’t much time to retrain and start over and how will this impact my family?

Opportunity knocks. I am called into my boss’ office; heart pounding and mind spinning, I enter the den. I smile nervously to cover my hyper-ventilation and take a seat in front of his desk. He informs me that the company has made the decision to build a new computer center. He asks me to represent the department and be a technical liaison to the facilities department in designing and building the new computer center. Silence. I ask a couple questions to stall for thinking time. Then tell him I will think about it as it will move me out of management and into a staff position; not desirable. In my heart of hearts there is no doubt. My heart is screaming, “Take it! take it!”

I can’t sleep. I am thinking about what I will do in this position and as I think about it, I realize that what is fueling my excitement is that I will be working with my hands again; blueprints, steel rules, transits, levels and hardhats. I will be working with people who want to cooperate and build, not compete and scheme. I abhor competitive office politics.

In one year the new center is finished. My assignment to help design and build is finished. I turn to the company maintenance director and ask who he is going to assign to maintain the power and mechanical systems in the new building. His answer is short and curt. He says, “You built it, you run it.”

I have gone from dreaming about home air-conditioners in Phoenix, to helping design and operate industrial air-conditioning and power systems. I discovered by another person’s hand, I think he knew all along, that my real calling was designing and building, not mental gymnastics.