Brinkhurst.com

“It’s weird how it all happened. I didn’t have a plan or formula for any of it. I didn’t meet up with some guru or whatever before I left. I just sold everything. I sold my house, my car, my TV, my everything. I even sold most of my clothes, and I didn’t have that many to start with. I took all of that money, along with my wife’s retirement fund, my children’s school funds, and the money that was in my bank account, and I put all of it into investments. I took $1000, and the clothes on my back, no food, no tools, no real knowledge of what it would take to survive, and I walked off into the forest and just starting wandering.”

“What about work?” Jessica asked.

“I left it behind. I didn’t even tell anyone; I just left it behind.”

“What about your family and friends?” Jessica asked.

“I told Ren. He is the only one that would have understood, so I told him, nobody else.”

“People must have thought that you were dead,” Jessica said.

“They thought I was gone. Some thought I was dead, but it  just didn’t matter to me at the time. I had to go, and I did.”

“It sounds like you were afraid to tell other people,” Jessica said, confrontationally.

“I was. I was terrified. I changed a lot in the last year. Now, I don’t care what anyone thinks, but I won’t apologize for leaving. I did what I needed to do, for my sanity. I just walked, for a year; I walked. I suffered along the way. I suffered a lot, not knowing how to survive. I experienced hypothermia, dehydration, severe vomiting, and a hell of a lot more. In figuring out how to survive, I realized why I was out there. $1000 went really far too. It got me food, some tools, and clean clothes. I would take cash only day jobs when I could find them, and I never had any shortage of money. I probably didn’t spend more then about $3000 that year.”

“Why were you out there? What did you figure out?” Jessica asked.

“I just don’t get this,” Jessica said.

“You don’t get what?”

“How is it that I’m crying with every word you say, but you’re so composed that your voice doesn’t even shake? How did you go from an emotional wreck to someone that’s just OK with all this, all within one short year?”

“Think of today as one day, normal in the context of time.”

“OK, right?” Jessica said inquisitively.

“You and I met close to 10am this morning.”

“Right, so?” Jessica asked.

“So, is this not that fastest day that you’ve experienced in a long time?”

“Yes, just because we’ve done so much,” Jessica said.

“Tell anyone of your friends and family members that you fell in love with a guy who is 5 years younger than you within a matter of hours; tell them that he fell in love with you too. Tell them that we had never met before. What would anyone of them say?”

“It’s too fast,” Jessica said, with a look of realization on her face.

“Right, and you just admitted that this was a fast day; it flew by, right?”

“I just feel like I know you so well. I feel like we’re really getting to know each other,” Jessica said.

“When people date, especially if they like each other, they try to be interesting, likable, even lovable. It can take a long time to get past all of that and see someone for who they really are.”

“That’s why I’ve never really be interested enough in anyone to get married,” Jessica said.

“Right, cause when you find out who they really are, you don’t want that. You want the person you first met.”

“Yes,” Jessica said.

“In what might be the fastest day of your adult life, where minutes have turned into seconds, you’ve experienced maybe a week or a month.”

“It feels that way,” Jessica said with a bit of shiver in her voice.

“How you feel today, that was the last year of my life. I set out on a journey, and I lived every single second of my life. That year was over before I could snap my fingers, even though I didn’t know that I was ever coming back. I lived, really lived, probably 10 years worth of experiences within that 1 year. A day, or even a year is just a unit of measurement, but it has no bearing on what we actually experience.”

“So, what did you do?” Jessica asked me again.

“After everyone had died, everything that I began doing seemed really artificial. I was working everyday, but I didn’t know why. I would accidentally make meals for four people then I would cry so badly that I couldn’t eat. I tried leaning on one or two of my closest friends, and they were great. We got drunk; we partied. It would have been so much fun, if I wasn’t filled with an emotional pain that hurt so badly I sometimes couldn’t even move. At first, I would try to sleep in my bed, and I would naturally stay on my side, but I began to realize that what seemed like a tiny little queen-size bed was now enormous. When my wife was in there with me and one or both of my boys would jump into bed, there was never enough room, never. That lack of space was so comforting, so real. Now, I was enveloped by space, huge amounts of space. After a couple of days, I actually woke up on my wife’s side of the bed, and I cried, for the whole day. I couldn’t go out or even talk to anyone that day; I just sobbed, uncontrollably. After that, I knew that I couldn’t sleep there anymore. The next night, I decided to sleep in one of my boy’s rooms. I couldn’t even walk in the door. Instead, I fell to my knees and cried myself to sleep in the hallway outside of his room. In my dreams, I heard my boys calling my name over and over again. I would run around the house looking for them, but all I saw were empty rooms, just empty rooms, and they would scream out ‘Daddy I need you.’ After that, I couldn’t sleep at all. There was nowhere that I felt comfortable, so I just worked harder, made more money, and continued my life without purpose.”

“Is that what you did for a year?” Jessica asked.

“No, that only lasted for a few weeks after the death of my last son. Looking back, it’s amazing that it lasted so long, but I’m just too tough to stop, so instead of melting down completely, I changed everything in my life, and I went on an adventure for about a year.”

“Where did you go? What did you do?”

Tears are rolling down Jessica’s cheeks, but she wants to hear more. She wants to know everything, and I want to tell her.

“Mushrooms, bacon, and green peppers,” shouted hairy knuckles man.

Jessica moved quickly up to the front, said nothing, handed the guy behind the cash some money, exact change. She grabbed the pizza, and we left.

“So, you asked me how I got past it?”

“Did you get past it?” Jessica asked

“I did, and it only took me a year.”

“That’s why you haven’t talked to your friends in the last year?” Jessica asked.

“I had a great life. I had a good business, good friends, made good money.”

“But?” Jessica asked.

“But, I loved my family, more than anything else. I didn’t like my work, but I did it to support my family. So much of what I was doing became meaningless when my wife and boys died, so much, everything. My wife and I had big life insurance policies on each other so that the kids could always have a good life if one of us died. Out of nowhere, I had no debt, and I owned everything in my life. I had been working so hard to make sure that all of them had everything they needed in life, and now, they were dead, and I had nothing to pay for. Without them, my entire life had no meaning, no purpose, no point. I was just some single guy who was making a ton of extra money that I didn’t need. I went from the guy who couldn’t afford to buy new pants to the guy who could buy whatever. Sure, I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t even a millionaire, but I had way more than I needed, and I hated every minute of it.”

We started heading down to a local beach. Even though it was cold, really cold, it’s always nice to hang out at the beach.

“So what did you do?” Jessica asked.

The guy with the hairy knuckles came back out to interrupt what would have been a very difficult conversation.

“Corkscrew, for young lovers,” he said.

Underneath the tangled hair between his fingers, he held a very old fashioned looking cork screw, one piece metal, one piece wood. It’s the kind of thing you always see on TV when you’re watching waiters at fancy restaurants.

“Thank you so much. I guess I should open it now,” I said.

“No, not here. You take it. You take it,” he said.

“Thanks so much. That’s very generous of you.”

“No. It’s a corkscrew,” he replied.

Jessica took my hands into her hands. She held them loosely, and looked very seriously at me.

“Are you going to tell me about your wife and children?” she asked.

“There was nothing exciting or interesting about it. It was just average. We were an average sort of family, ordinary. I loved my wife. We both had full time jobs, and we were both entrepreneurial in our ventures, so we were kept busy with work, maybe too much. I never felt that I had enough time in a day to give them the attention they deserved, but I just loved everyone of them so dearly. Even their deaths were average. My wife was driving up to see her father; an SUV that was going too fast in bad winter weather had slid over to the other side of the road, demolishing our car. My wife and one of my son’s died instantly. My other son lived on for a few days in hospital care; it was a long and painful goodbye. In all of this, I couldn’t see the norm; I couldn’t see the average. To me, my family life had started out perfectly. I had a family that I truly loved, which very few people can honestly say. Their deaths crushed me, completely.”

Jessica eyes began to well up.

“How did you ever get past that? How do you move on from that?” Jessica asked.

We walked over to a local pizzeria.

“Why on earth are you carrying the wine like that?” Jessica asked.”

“I don’t want aliens drinking it before we have a chance to open it. They can’t get at it if the bottle is upside down.”

“So, you’re carrying the bottle of wine upside down so that aliens don’t drink it?”

“Yes,” I answer.

Inside the pizzeria, we walk up to a man working the cash who has more hair on his knuckles than his head.

“Mushrooms, green peppers, and bacon?” I ask Jessica.

“How do you know I’m not a vegetarian?” Jessica asked.

“We had lunch together. You had chicken.”

“Right. Hey, wait. You don’t wheat,” Jessica replied.

“That started at lunch. I wasn’t able to commit through dinner.”

“You couldn’t commit to no wheat until dinner? What chance do I have?” Jessica asked.

“I’d say your chances are pretty good, since you’ve been around through lunch, a robbery, and finally dinner.”

“You were robbed?” hairy knuckle man asked.

“It was the diner down the street,” I said.

“Is everybody OK?” hairy knuckle man asked.

“They are thanks to Matt here,” Jessica said while pointing toward me.

“Sam. I’m Sam.”

“Yeah, but you’re really Matt,” Jessica said.

“Yes, but you should introduce me as Sam.”

“So, you’re Sam to everyone?” Jessica asked.

“Only to those in my personal life who don’t know me well.”

“I’m in your personal life, and I don’t know you well. Should I call you Sam?”

I kissed her on the lips.

“You should always call me Matt.”

“OK Matt, tell me about your wife and kids.”

“I’m sure the patient man behind the counter wants us to order some pizza.”

“We’d like a large pizza with green peppers, bacon, and mushrooms,” Jessica said.

“Do you have whole wheat crust?” I asked.

“Yes. Mushrooms, green peppers, and bacon on whole wheat crust,” hairy knuckles man said.

“Perfect. I said.”

“How come you are carrying the wine that way?” hairy knuckles man inquired.

“I want to keep the cork wet. I didn’t think to pick up a bottle opener, and it’s going to be difficult to open.”

“Yes. It won’t break apart if wet,” hairy knuckles man said.

Hairy knuckles man walked to the back to put the order in.

“So, tell me about your family,” Jessica said.

“Matt? Are you OK?” Jessica asked.

“Jess, I’m starving.”

“Well, yeah – we didn’t eat. Are you all right though? You seemed to be kinda out of it for a while,” Jessica said.

“Let’s check out the liquor store.”

“Uh, you wanna get drunk?” Jessica asked me.

“Maybe. Do you want wine?”

“Red wine?” Jessica asked.

“Is there any other kind?”

“Yeah, I want red wine,” she said.

There’s nothing quite like walking into a liquor store. It’s sort of a super store of alcohol.

“Is it my imagination, or is a liquor store the ultimate salute to the alcoholic?”

“Why do you say that?” Jessica asked.

“Around here all the liquor stores close at 9pm.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, you really have to plan out your drinking to have some booze, and if you’re not planning out your drinking, you’re getting drunk before 9pm. Who drinks before 9pm?”

“Ah, one flaw in your argument Matt.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s before 9pm, and we’re going into the liquor store. Does that make us alcoholics?”

“It’s 8:55.”

Since I wasn’t wearing a watch and didn’t have a phone, the time was only a guess, but it seemed about right. We grab a smaller bottle of a Chilean Cabernet and go to the cash to pay.

“Can I see some ID please?” the guy behind the cash asks.

“Sure no problem.”

“Oh my god; how young do you think he is?” Jessica asks.

“Ma’am, we ask everybody for ID.”

“Did you just call me ma’am after asking him for ID?”

“Thank you sir,” the man behind the cash said, while handing my ID back to me.

“How old are you?” Jessica asked.

“I figured about five years younger than you,” I said.

The transaction is complete, and we start heading out. Jessica looks completely stunned that I would guess her age as five years older.

“What makes you think I’m five years older than you?” she asked.

“You’re a well established lawyer, and you’ve gone through a career change, yet you’re still successful. You could pass for younger, but you definitely couldn’t be any older than what I’m guessing. You could be younger, but I doubt it.”

“Why do you doubt it?”

“Well. You’re definitely not younger than me. You just don’t act like the younger women do. You’re more sophisticated. As far as your career goes, the time lines don’t seem to add up, unless you are a bit older than me.”

“So, if you think I’m 5 years older than you, how old are you?” Jessica asked.

As we were leaving the liquor store, I saw someone who looked to be about 6 feet 5 inches tall, but it was dark out. His breathing sounded a bit labored. He was just waiting out there.

“How old do you think I am?” I asked.

“I thought you were in your late 30s.”

“I’m 33.”

“Oh.”

Her ‘oh’ is telling. She is saying that she doesn’t date younger men. To her this is not acceptable.

“And you are?”

“38,” she said.

“It didn’t matter this whole time. Don’t let it bug you now.”

“It’s fine.”

“OK. It’s obviously not fine, but that’s all right. Let’s just keep it out in the open. You’re not OK that I’m 5 years younger, especially since you thought that I was the same age or even older.”

“It’s starting to bother me. I don’t know why,” she admitted.

“Let’s just live today. If you like being around me, be here. If not,” I stopped.

I looked at her as though that answer was obvious.

I just want to leave the diner now. I have an overwhelming sense that I’m going to have to lie for someone, and I won’t; I can’t.

“Jess, I wanna go now.”

“Ah, yeah, OK, sure. Are you, are you all right?” Jessica asked.

“You’re going?” Deyja asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“If there’s anything, anything at all that I can ever do for you, let me know,” Deyja said.

“There are three things,” I said.

“Anything at all,” Deyja voiced again.

I reach into my wallet and hand her $40.

“Number one is take this to cover the beer and nachos.”

“That’s way too much, and you didn’t even get . . .”

I interrupt Deyja mid-sentence.

“That’s number one. Number two is never forget that there is always a second chance.”

“And number three?” Deyja asked.

“Tell me what a stuffed goose with a dollar bill fastened tightly around its neck means.”

It’s obvious that Deyja has no clue. Her gaze is unaffected, and she isn’t really even thinking about it.

“I don’t know. Why would a person put money on a dead animal?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I just don’t know.”

I start to walk out, but Deyja grabs me, and she holds me tight, as if she were trying to hurt me.

“Don’t walk out forever. Come back and see me,” Deyja said.

I just stroked her face gently, as one lover might do to another. Then I grabbed Jessica’s hand and left.

The robber is very angry. I see his fist clench, gun still pressed hard into my head. He couldn’t be more mad, but I don’t care. I’m loving this moment. I feel empowered. I’m about 6 feet 2 inches tall, and this guy is at least a few inches taller than me. He stands up really straight, trying to intimidate me, extending his neck up. I see my opportunity and punch him, with all the strength I can gather in my skinny arms. My bony knuckles land right in the middle of his thick neck.

I hear “click” and “bang,” a bang so loud, like a fire cracker going off inside your ear. My eyes force themselves shut, beyond my control. I feel a cold chill come over my body. I am ready to go now. I told everyone how I feel. I have been the director in my own life. I fell in love with Jessica, and I lusted for Jet. I am ready. Everything is dark, and everything is a blank slate.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“I love you. I really do. If you had of got shot, I would have been so upset. I mean. I, I would have been so angry with myself for not having told you Matt. I love you. I really do.”

I open my eyes.

“I love you too Jessica.”

I see Jet standing beside me, holding the gun.

“He dropped it, and he dropped like a bloody sac of potatoes. God damn Sam. Nice hit. As soon as he could get up, he ran the hell out of here.” Jet said to me.

“Are you OK Matt? You had your eyes closed for a while there. Are you OK?” Jessica asked me.

“Jet. That’s like a bad diner name right? That’s not your real name?”

“My name is Deyja.”

I look up to see a bullet hole in the ceiling.

“Deyja,” I repeat.

I’m almost frozen, completely trapped in my own body. I’m mustering the strength to try to be the person I’ve always wanted to be. Now, I can face certain death. I can be the honest, genuine person I’m always trying to be. It’s true that I don’t lie to others, but all too often, I spend a lot of time lying to myself. All I have to do is go over there and be myself. I know I’m strong on the inside, but why can’t I move? Why does this all seem like a movie? Why do I always feel like I’m observing my own life? Are we all the audience in our lives? I want to be the director or even the producer. I want to make a difference, everyday, in everything around me. I can move. I can do this. I can be whoever the hell it is that I’ve convinced other people I am, for real. I start walking down the hall, but I feel something actually pulling back, Jet, so I turn around quickly, about to tell her that I have to go.

“Don’t. It’s just money. It’s not worth anything,” Jet says.

“You’re right.”

She’s right. Why would I fight this guy? Why would I help a restaurant keep it’s revenue? Why do I care?

“It’s not worth it,” Jet says.

“You’re right, about the money, but he just shouldn’t be allowed to come in here and wave a gun around.”

I slowly back away from Jet.

“Sam, don’t go. Please.”

I turn around, walking toward the cash. I’m so sick of being an observer in my own life. I close my eyes, still walking toward the cash. I’m calm, relaxed. I see nothing. It’s a blank slate. I’m not the audience. I am the director. I open my eyes, and I shout at the top of my lungs, louder than I’ve ever yelled anything before in my life, in complete jubilation.

“You are my cast!”

I walk right up to the robber, putting myself between him and the women behind the cash. He pokes the barrel into my forehead. I would have expected it to feel cold, but it was a bit warm, almost comforting.

“Move or your dead,” he said to me.

A simple order from a maniac with a gun.

“You are my cast,” I whisper to him.

He doesn’t understand the director / directed relationship. He steadies his hand as though he will shoot me. He presses the gun further into my head and quickly motions his body toward me, trying to get me to flinch.

“Bang!” he yells.

I am motionless. I am a thick cactus on a still day in the desert.

“I’m ready to die,” I say.

He says nothing. He is still, but he is getting angrier.

“I’ll kill you,” he says back to me.

“You aren’t man enough.”

“Just one of the bullets in this gun will make your whole head look like ground beef. Do you really want the back of your head all over the counter behind you?”

“You’re just a little baby. You could never do it.”