The Loneliness...

The Loneliness Is Everywhere. It's like a fog. Like a dark cold wind that circles round me, and fills my being. Longing. To be held. Caressed. To hear that soft voice whisper, you belong to me. An aching deep inside like another heartbeat. Steady. Beating into my  brain. The missing piece of the puzzle. The sum of all desires. That one perfect match. Feeling like old friends at first glance. Finishing each others sentences. And knowing deep inside, that this is what the rest of your life was leading up to.

Little Earl...

In the mid 1970's I lived on the east side of Detroit with my father. My younger brother would visit us on weekends. But only very rarely would we receive a visit from my older brother, my father's first born son we all had come to affectionately refer to as Little Earl.
On those rare instances we would hear the sound of his motorcycle approaching from a distance. Then he would appear. His shoulder length blonde-brown hair, his blue jeans and lumberjack shirt. With that unmistakable scent of the open road upon him. He was the very human embodiment of coolness and freedom.He would bring me stacks of motorcycle magazines, and I was the only kid in my class who knew that BMW's had a drive shaft. The glossy pages held photo after photo of  Norton Commandos, and Triumph Bonnevilles. I knew then what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be just like him.
He had gone across the country on his bike, and had many tales of his adventures including an exciting tale of a brothel with hideous wallpaper. Occasionally we would make tape recordings on the reel to reel.
He sang Buddy Holly's Rave On, A song I had never heard before. growing up in a house where my father, Earl senior preferred Frank Sinatra, and swing era music to the rock and roll of the day. I was 14 before I surreptitiously joined the Columbia tape club, and finally got to listen to Jethro Tull, and Frank Zappa. Jim Croce, and Jackson Browne.
Little Earl was the opposite of our father. A free spirit. An explorer. Soon he would head off again walking the bike to the end of the street so as not to bother the neighbors, and finally he would disappear into the night. It would be years before I'd see him again, but he was, and remains my hero. It was him who introduced me to the love of motorcycles. An enduring love that has grown over the years to a full blown obsession on my part. It's in my blood. And every time I hear a motorcycle, I think of him and smile.  

Comedic Tragedy Conclusion

Jen continued to pop in and out of my life for the next two years. Undermining the new life I'd begun with Penny. Penny continued to sew her wild oats having opened Pandora's box. I continued to be torn apart caught in the crossfire of all of it. Because Penny and I worked opposite shifts, we saw very little of each other. I would get up in the morning take her to work, and go pick up my elderly father and his wife, who took up literally all of my free time, and then head for work myself. Having lived out of state for several years prior to all of this, I was determined to try and make up for lost time with my father and his wife.
This cycle continued until I couldn't stand Jen's false promises of reconciliation. When she moved another man in to her house I finally issued an ultimatum. Either he goes or I do. He never left. So, in October 2002, I said goodbye to Jen forever. My heart was broken. Her boyfriend lived there with her until his passing approximately a year later. Penny made promises to help me through this whole ordeal, but in fact continued to do whatever she felt like doing, always apologizing, always promising no more infidelity. Always getting caught. At one point I foolishly agreed to an "open" relationship, just to keep her from doing it all behind my back anyway. And secretly hoping she would get it all out of her system. She never did.
When her sister passed away suddenly in 2003, at 40 years old, Penny's mother was left alone in the family home they had all lived in since the 1960's.in Detroit's east side. At that point, her mother came to live with us and the family home was sold to pay off the mortgage. The three of us then moved in to a shotgun shack in a nearby suburb, where I took care of her mother until her passing in 2012. My father had passed away in 2009.My mother in 2013.Penny and I were finally alone together, but alas her wandering eye got the best of her, and she spent years pursuing a man she had known for several years prior to our meeting who had been in a relationship with the same woman for 28 years.Once he broke up with his girlfriend, Penny chased him even to the extent that at one point she had asked me to leave so that he could move in.She even confessed that she'd married me because I resembled him. I declined that offer. He eventually lost interest in 2015 finding another younger woman more to his liking.
There never was a reconciliation. I became her cook, and house keeper. I do her laundry and wash her dishes. I am essentially for all intents and purposes her employee, in exchange for room and board. All intimacy has ceased for years now. People who see us in passing at stores or restaurants think we are brother and sister or, father and daughter. She is quick to remind any woman I meet that  we're married, although that is only true in the sense that it is a legal marriage. There is nothing about this relationship or, "arrangement" as I like to call it that resembles a marriage. We live very separate lives under the same roof. I sit alone at night and write and watch T.V. hoping and praying for a change. She comes home from work,eats dinner and goes to bed.I look in on her at night to make sure she's ok, and fix her blanket. As a byproduct of all my years on midnights I continue to stay up all night, and usually go to bed when she leaves for her shift which changes every day.There isn't much work in our area for people my age.In truth I've given up looking after dozens of rejections, so I have no income and no vehicle.
This comedic tragedy is a work in progress. The pathetic outcome of the best of intentions. I continue to hope for love. For the tender touch of a caring partner. A kind word. A warm embrace. These things exist for me as ghosts in my head. Fever dreams. Imbecile illusions of happiness, which are the stuff of books and films,and songs. Not the lot of an aging romantic. I have so much love to give, and need so little in return. Like a cactus which will bloom with very little water, here and there. Like something growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. Incidental.Invisible Unnoticed. This must be Dante's tenth ring of Hell. Longing.Waiting.
The End? 

Comedic Tragedy Part 3

The ghost of Jen hang heavy in the air. It didn't help my new relationship that everything reminded me of her.
Living just a couple of miles away from her didn't help much either, and eventually curiosity got the best of her and she rang the doorbell at my new residence. I of course fool that I was invited her in. I offered her a glass of ice water.When I opened the freezer door to get the ice cubes the only thing in the freezer other than the two ice trays was the portion of the wedding cake meant to be eaten on my first anniversary with Penny. Jen saw it immediately, screamed at me and ran out the front door.
The other thing that didn't help my new relationship was the fact that Penny worked days, and I worked afternoons and midnights. During the first year of our marriage we passed like ships in the night,as the tired saying goes. To complicate things further, my father and his wife were over virtually every day. I could see that Penny resented them tremendously. Each day I would drop her off at work, go home and get some sleep, or visit with my father and his wife, and head off to work. Each day Penny would come home eat the dinner that I'd fixed, and go to bed. It was as if we were roommates more than a married couple  This went on until we were just roommates.
Each night at work in complete solitude I would sit and hash it over and over in my mind. What Went wrong? Why couldn't Jen and I have worked through the issues that split us up? To make matters worse, Jen would occasionally appear at my work with lunch, or dinner for two. Always showing just enough interest to make me certain that there was a chance at reconciliation. Always making sure I didn't put down roots in my new relationship. Then the phone would ring every night around 11:00 even when I was home Jen would call to talk about her day. This drove a wedge between Penny and I. I began to drink trying to dull the pain. How could a love so strong be damned? Was I wrong to start a new life still so trapped in the old one?
Then one night Penny didn't come home until 4:00 in the morning. She'd been out with an old flame sitting in a car parked out in front of the neighbors house three doors down. We hadn't been married a year yet .
I didn't know what to do. I was so conflicted on so many different levels. Was it my fault she was seeing him? How much more of all this could I take? Why couldn't anyone just be straight with me?
To be continued...

Comedic Tragedy Part 2

Jen was 5 years my senior, with three children. In the first 6 months we were "together", I was moved from the plush surroundings of the upstairs flat, to a makeshift room in a corner of the basement,that was recently vacated by her oldest daughter. The room had a spacious closet made of plywood, and shared two of the basements brick and mortar walls, with two plywood walls rigged together with two by fours. There was a door affixed to the room that could be locked in my absence. It was there I would spend the next year.
During the first 6 months I lived there, her mother died, in a rest home. Her Father died, in the hospital nearby. Her oldest daughter got married. And her sister's special needs child died of complications due to his illness, relative to birth defects.I stood by her through all of this, believing deep in my heart of hearts that these shared milestones in her life were bringing us closer together. It had never occurred to me that these events would merely continue to push me further away, as she retreated further, and further into her own private Idaho of sorts. You can imagine my surprise 6 months later when she asked me to marry her.
We were married that August of 1996.

Once we were married, almost immediately, her family began to question the timing of or relationship, and began to assert that I was interested in her, not for Love and such,but for the house she had just inherited. This was not true. In fact, I made enough money then to buy a house for us, and frankly could have cared less if she sold the house we lived in, and split the money with her kids, or siblings.
They worked this theory on her, to the point that 6 months after our wedding, I received divorce papers.
 It was only then  that I was allowed to move in to the apartment upstairs with the lovely kitchen, front room, dining room, bedroom, and full bathroom. In exchange, I paid the mortgage payment.
She would visit me from time to time, and alluded to a reconciliation that would never come to be.
Night after night I'd lay there, alone grieving for the Love I'd lost. The Love I'd never really had to begin with. My thoughts turned to Penny.

I had spoken to Penny over the years that I was in that awful situation, and she knew I regretted our breakup. She assured me over and over that we were a much better fit, and went out of her way to prove herself with lavish gifts and gestures, trips to the Fox theater, and wooed me till my resistance was gone.She would meet for coffee, or drinks and dinner.Convinced I was doing the right thing, Penny and I moved in together, and were married in August of 1999.
She had never been away from home. Never had a serious relationship. She had lived with her Mother and Sister, in the house she grew up in, since 1966.This was her big chance to escape the confines of home and move out.
 She knew all about Jen, and how devastated I was by the divorce. She seemed like the obvious choice, and at the time I thought I was correcting a grievous wrong I had done her years before by choosing Jen over her. And honestly, who could blame me. She was a "Good" Catholic girl, who'd never been married,she was very pretty, and was the exact opposite of the other women I had been with, who had brought so much baggage to the table, that I felt like a desk clerk at a hotel. Nothing could have prepared me for the way it would all turn out.
To be continued...

Comedic Tragedy Part 1.

I remember the first time I saw her. It was June of 1995. She was wearing a pair of very short shorts with polka dots, with a matching halter top that tied in the back. Her long reddish brown hair hung down below her shoulders. Her eyes were sometimes green, but sometimes seemed more blue, depending on her mood.
She was about 5 foot 3 inches tall, to my 5 foot 5. She resembled a young Shirley McClain or Ann Margarete.
I found out later she'd been asking around about me and was flattered and surprised that she even took an interest, as I had thought myself to be almost invisible to women at that time. That is, with the exception of the girl I'd met two weeks before, whom I had taken a liking to, or so I thought; until I saw her.

The gentle summer wind blew her hair across her face as we exchanged small talk. I even mentioned the girl I'd met recently, and how I was supposed to meet her after I got off work. That's when it began.
She looked so hurt at the mention of "Penny" that I honestly felt as though she was going to cry. I wanted to apologize. I was shocked and amazed that this stunning beauty would be interested in me. She seemed clearly out of my league.
At that moment I decided to investigate further, and gathered up the nerve to ask her name. "Jen", she replied. I asked if she would like to go for coffee as my shift was almost over. She anxiously agreed, with an almost childlike innocence. She couldn't hide her excitement. I was floored.

When we got to the restaurant she sat across from me. And before long we were holding hands. We talked for hours, seeming more like old friends who hadn't seen each other in a long while rather than strangers who had only just met. I felt the pieces of the puzzle falling together as we both shared stories of love gone wrong. I felt the movie starting in my head. The way we fit seemed almost perfect. Seamless. That night in the parking lot she held me so close to her I never wanted to leave. We agreed to meet again the next evening and I went home.                                                                                                                                    That night I couldn't sleep. I struggled with the thought of what to do about Penny, and decided that because Penny was five years younger than I, and had never been in a serious relationship before, I was afraid I'd become her training officer. Thinking she would find someone else more her age, I decided to end things with her to devote myself to this new possibility. And regardless of where things went with Jen, I didn't want to play around with Penny's feelings.
 Over the next few days we met each night to talk and get to know each other. The pain I saw in her eyes mirrored my own, and we bonded over that sense that people who share a common disaster have, like people in the same plane crash.  As time went on she promised no one would ever hurt me again. I believed her. Every word. She asked me to move in to the upper flat which till recently had been her parents' place. I agreed. Two weeks in I moved my few belongings in. And so it all began...                                                 
To be continued...

Surprise...Surprise...

In the summer of 1971 I was living in the East side of Detroit. Our house was small, and had no central heat or air conditioning. We slept with the windows open all summer. My father's bedroom was adjacent to the front room, where I often slept on the couch.
My father was a big fan of rummage sales. Our house was filled with an eclectic variety of items. I remember him finding an officers dress sword, allegedly from England, along with an odd looking helmet with ornate plumage. He kept the sword in his bedroom, largely to prevent my brother and myself from having impromptu sword fights, which had occurred on more than one occasion, especially if we were watching Robin Hood or some pirate movie with Errol Flynn.
On one summer evening, very late into the night, I remember my father coming out of his room, with the sheet wrapped around him like a Toga of sorts, with the sword in his hand. He motioned for me to be quiet, and pointed toward the front door. As he tip toed toward the front door, I could see the doorknob begin to move. He reached down, grabbed the doorknob with one hand. and raising the sword, opened the door. A young man still holding the knob from the outside stumbled forward toward my father, and as his eyes locked on the sword, dad punched him with his free hand knocking him off the porch and into the front yard.
The look of utter terror on the would be burglar's face caused us all to break out in uproarious laughter.
He ran off down the street, and disappeared into the darkness.
Dad said he heard him out on the porch through the screen in his bedroom window.
We all went to sleep. Laughing to ourselves, and wondering what the young man thought of his encounter with Julius Cesar. Surprise...Surprise.

I'm Clark Gable You Son Of A...

My father served during world war II in the Army Air Corps. On one occasion, his unit was denied their weekend pass much to the chagrin of everyone involved. Dad decided that enough was enough and, after lights out he waited in his bunk for the first headcount, in full uniform with the covers up tight around his neck. After the bed-check, all being present and accounted for, he snuck out of the barracks. Adjacent to his barracks, was a tennis court, presumably for officers. He climbed the tall fence, ran across the tennis court, jumped the net, just for kicks, climbed the opposite fence, came down the telephone pole which put him in the alley next to the camp.
He avoided detection,and went into town. As I recall, he had a few drinks with a lovely young girl, said his goodbyes, and proceeded in the predawn hours to make his way back through town to the alley, climbed the phone pole, went up and over the fence onto the tennis court. Once again he jumped the net, just for kicks, and scaled the fence adjacent to his barracks, where upon he heard a stern voice shouting from behind, "HALT! WHO GOES THERE"... He froze for a moment, and replied,' I'm Clark Gable You Son Of A Bitch"...And ran around the rear of his barracks, snuck back inside and got into his bunk, still in uniform, and pulled the covers up to his neck.
Moments later the doors flew open, the lights came on, and two M.P.s burst into the barracks and commanded, "NO ONE MOVE AN INCH".
No one did. And after a brief head count, all being present and accounted for, left in a huff, and all was quiet again.
Now, every time I see Clarke Gable, I can't help but chuckle to myself picturing Dad and that story.

Holden Caulfield...

As a child my father often used to compare me to Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in the J.D Salinger book The Catcher In The Rye. In the book Holden Caulfield was given to imaginative speech,and shall we say, tall tales. On one occasion, when I was 6 years old, I remember going on a long walk with my father. We often took ridiculously long walks, which I both enjoyed, but found exhausting at the same time. It was Autumn, and the leaves were falling. At one point in our walk we came upon two Nuns and a class of  grade school children.
As we grew closer to the group, I let go of my fathers hand, and collapsed on the cement. The Nuns and the children gathered around, and one of the Sisters Asked me, "Little boy, what is wrong? Are you hurt?".
I looked up at her,massaging my temples with both hands, and replied, " My electronic brain is not functioning properly." The children burst into hysterics, laughing uncontrollably.    

Dreams Of You...

I Still Dream About Her.After All These Years, There She Is Sitting Across the Table From Me Like Nothing Ever Happened. Like She Never Broke My World. Her Auburn Hair Hanging Gently Across Those Hazel Eyes. The Warmth Of Her Voice Wrapping Itself Around My Very Being...I Can Feel Her In My Pulse. The Light Shines Through The Same Window I Looked Out Of All Those Years Ago, Silently Illuminating Everything In The Room In That Almost Cinematic Quality. I See My Things In The Adjacent Room, And Wonder How I'll Get Them Out Again. Who Will Help Me Leave While She's Away On Some Errand. What's More, Would I Be Able To Bring Myself To Leave Again, When Just The Sight Of her Fills My Being With That Same Old Flood Of Emotions. What If She Touched Me..Would I Die? Or Just Wake Up Again, Angry With Myself That I Had Felt All This For Someone Who No Longer Knows I Exist...If She Ever Did. Once My Wife...But Yet A Stranger...She Knew How To Be Intensely Intimate, Without Taking Any Of It Personally. The Ice Queen. The Perfect Combination Of Movie Star, And Mercenary. I Quietly Thank God For The Alarm Clock, As I Awake, A Single Tear Comes To My Eye.
And Once Again She's Gone These 13 Years, And I Can Take Comfort In That. Until The Next Time.

                   Greetings,
                                  At Last I Have Chosen To break My Silence, And Finally Share My
                    Thoughts And Dreams With The Sea Of Ears.
                                  It Occurs To Me, That Introductions Are In Order.
                                  I Am A Warrior Poet. A Singer Of Songs. A Hopeless Romantic, Brought
                   To My Knees By Love Gone Wrong. An Observer.
                                  I See Myself As The Narrator, Rather Than The Star Of The Movie.
                                  Watching...Recording...Voicing My Observations. Bringing My Perspective
                    To The Table, For Better Or For Worse.
                                  Voicing Recollections. Perspective. 
                                   I Am Not Political. I Am Not Competitive. I'm Just As Happy To Watch
                    Someone Else Do Well, Always Hoping I Will Have My Turn.
                                  I  Am A Dreamer Forced To Live In A Realist's World. A Lover, And A
                    Writer.
                                  Looking Forward To The Privilege Of Entertaining You, Perhaps Amusing
                    You, And Maybe If I'm Fortunate Enough, To Inspire You, And Encourage You.
                                  Welcome One And All To Spartacus Speaks.
                                   I Am Your Host.

                                                                                                      Chezwa Zee