After we finished our sixth match on Thursday, you’ll recall, around ten o’clock, we decided to call it a night. We always do pull even, Bill, and God knows I’m too nervous to play that seventh match to see who’s better. Not that we don’t know already. That backhand of yours is stellar, and sometimes when I end up near the back of the court and you slam that impudent piece of rubber into one of the elbows of the front wall and it just skims the ground, bounces twice in only inches—well, I know I could never do anything like that myself.

Do you remember that night, Bill? We started early. We must’ve, since we always play six games and always run past eleven o’clock closing. But then you said you needed the time out of the house. Laura had gone a bit nuts, I guess, not that she wasn’t nuts to begin with, but you never did listen when I told you that marrying a Frick was a bad idea regardless of the money. Too much rich white guilt and no ethics to show for it. Well, at least Will turned out alright, though I guess it’s too early for us to be able to tell just now. Jumping the gun, maybe.

Anyways, I know you said Laura didn’t care for the new car that you just about sold your soul to get for her. Not that that’s what this was about, right? It just overshadows the whole thing. But you told me you left during dinner to the sound of screaming and meatloaf splattering on the wall behind you, a few flecks of ketchup-soaked beef dripping down the back of your neck, and you’d about had it, and so I said yeah, I’d head to the gym early. It’s not like I was waiting for a wife to come home.

Racquetball was the way we kept ourselves together after high school, when you headed to Kenyon College and I stayed stuck here in Indianapolis, sliding my way through classes at IU and paying my bills with the money I made down at the Hilton pool. I guess I’ve always been kind of jealous of that—you worked so hard, you knew so much, and I just couldn’t get there, always felt like I was floating in a stew of vague ideas. I guess racquetball was the same. I knew the strategy, but couldn’t really act on what I knew, could never bring it into shape with my swings, and you could. I guess that’s why I never married, either, though it’s not like you succeeded in that department any more than I did.

So we played our six games and you were in the locker room showering, and Laura comes in screaming. She knew where you were, Bill, of course. We’re pretty predictable, you know, heading down to the gym every night like we do. But she comes in screaming and you’re in the shower and you’d told me all this terrible stuff about how she looks at you at night and the kinds of things she says just before you fall sleep and how you live on the couch now like some itinerant desperate for shelter and since you weren’t there to scream at she started screaming at me and then she was on the floor and I stepped back and her blood swirled with the fungal floor water down the locker room drain.

I’m sorry I couldn’t let you walk out of there, Bill. I knew you’d had enough trouble, that you’d really lose it if you saw Laura like that, that you’d assume you’d be blamed and to defend yourself you’d blame me. I didn’t want to hit you, Bill, but it seemed like the only option, and the locker was right there, your head was so close—

I’ll visit the hospital soon, I promise. It looks like they’ll count the killing as self-defense on your part, and since coma patients can’t really confirm those kinds of details I took the liberty of clearing everything up for you. Call it a spousal battle royale, eh, Bill? And everyone’s off scot-free: you’re napping at the hospital, Laura’s in a similar position down at the St. Mary’s morgue, and Will’s staying with your ma, who’s spoiling him rotten, I’m sure.

I’ve arranged for someone to manage the apartment for you, too. In the meantime, I’m taking the train down to Mesa. Figure I’ll rent myself a trailer out there and try to get a job teaching psychology somewhere. I think the heat will do me good, don’t you? None of that Florida heat, mind you. It’s Arizona, Bill. The Southwest. Nice and dry. If you ever get the chance you should come down, maybe bring Will. It’ll be hot as hell, but don’t let that trouble you. The courts are always air-conditioned.

(Author’s note: Needed to write a three-page something for my racquetball class, so I figured I’d take a shot at a short piece of fiction and post it here. Feedback much appreciated; I don’t do all that much fiction writing these days.)

There is no romance in a morgue in reality, it’s just cold and lifeless. It’s funny what your mind does once you become single. The memories you choose to live with or forget, the phrases you picked up, the ones you stopped using in whatever period of time you were with that person. The even stranger part is what your brain and heart choose to romanticize from this period of time. You remember the smallest gesture and create this romantic wonderland around it that may have never in fact been a part of your relationship. Some pretty serious silliness. I have never understood why this takes place; is it that you miss the feeling of having a companion and you seek refuge in those memories in some attempt at catharsis and mourning your loss?

A statement that I feel rings true in many cases for relationships, which strangely enough comes from the travesty of a movie “The Happening,” is that in a relationship we are always chasing one another—one half of the equation is always in pursuit of the other and it constantly switches back and forth between who is chasing and who is running. It’s not until both parties stop running and just sit and enjoy some beer and waffles that the magic truly happens. I feel as though this romantic desire to relive the memories that bring along with them such sadness is a continuation of this running after your partner. You chase these memories in some attempt to get those old feelings of happiness back. But really it’s just a sad circle jerk with a party of one.

I write this while doing exactly what confuses me so much. I feel as though it’s always important to remember the cold hard facts of a relationship that ends. It ended for a reason, and since it ended it clearly was not working in some way. In the end, the only way to be happy is to take solace in having a fresh start and being able to weigh a relationship for what it truly was and see why it ended. After that, you can either try to understand what happened and improve yourself for the future or realize the other person was fucking batshit crazy. Always a grenade free zone.

On a lighter note, I once heard an NFL commentator doing one of those in-game ads talking about the movie “Devil” pronounce the director’s name “M. Night Sham-a-lamin.” Just sayin’. True Story.

Author’s note: Although this poem is not explicitly relevant to the date on which it is being published, the author certainly hopes his readers will find some pertinence to be existent despite authorial intention. Let us gather pieces, let us push them together, let us find a whole that is worthy of its parts, let us dust them off and find a way to love that whole the way we loved the pieces and the way each piece should love itself and all others.

Once their watches strike midnight, they triumphantly unzip their ceremonial blue jeans and piss. They piss with a retaliatory rage. They piss as if they are pissing off of a balcony and into the scalps of their capitalist oppressors during one of their posh soirees. This glorious rebuttal by the agricultural class toward the “urbane” urbanites downstream is called The Great Yellowing.

Only adults have the prerequisites to understand the political and personal impact of The Great Yellowing. Hence a boy can only participate in The Great Yellowing once he becomes a man. Each June 22^nd, all of the boys (or men, rather at least in the minds of the town’s elders) who had turned twelve within the past twelve months stood next to their fathers as their father showede them the . It was the responsibility of the town’s fathers to prep their sons for this spirited rite of passage.
Oftentimes fathers would passionately explain to their sons the political symbolism and significance of their piss-streams, for their sons were still young. Because of their youth, the boys of the town had yet to be confronted with the injustices of contemporary society. For while this townwide rite of passage was an act of triumph and unity for
Shawnboy, like many of the young men who were pissing in the river for his first time, was skeptical about the importance of the ceremony. His father, Remus, sought to correct this ignorant and childish yet understandable opinion as they walked on the winding trail to the river’s edge.

“First of all, why don’t the girls in town have to do this?”
“Think about it, boy.”
“Okay, so why do I gotta whiz in the river with all the other dudes in the town anyway?”
“Well for two reasons, son. The first is that, quite frankly, this has turned into a rite of passage for all the townsfolk. Now, for you to defy this time-honored tradition would begin to subtly tear apart the unity of the collective whole. In some ways our piss becomes one as it collides and coalesces in the river’s waves. Like tears in the rain.”
Shawnboy rolls his eyes. “Yeah and what’s the other reason?”
“Do you know anything about economics, Shawnboy?”
“No duh, I’m twelve.”

“Well, our people, us farm and wilderness folk, we belong to a different economic class than the folks downstream, specifically in Manhattan. While the outer boroughs are home to an urban working class, our proletariat brothers, Manhattan has become increasingly gentrified over the past two decades, and this created a more economically homogenous city on the whole.”
“What does their lives have to do with us?”

“Well, Shawnboy, all of those who live under the same capital S State are tenaciously connected to one another, whether we like it or not. And our class, the agricultural working class, we serve the food demands of Manhattan’s yuppie population. We, that is those in the bitterly yet inaccurately named Sebarnackee Lake, ultimately resent the way our land has been, pardon my French, raped by the wealthy urban class. All of our best crops are sold to them. Did you know that grapes are supposed to be green? Not that brownish color you are used to.”
“They’re not brown, Pop.”

“Regardless, my point still stands. The French had a guillotine. We got our piss.”

Hey, all. Just here to let you know that we here at the GSC have a Facebook fanpage which we’re just starting up, and we’d love you to like us! Check it out here.

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Thx.

—GSC

a sunspot on the right
brow he gave a sign
of peace he said
A handsome guy
A lovely lady
such a pretty dress
You must be getting
married someday
and they said Okay
and he on floortiles
walked toward bread
eyes quieted
fingers twisted shut

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details of this shoe, I must say that, as a rule, I have never been one who approves of wearing sneakers to formal occasions (weddings, graduations, Church, and the like). This is mostly because up until lately, sneakers were inherently casual wear, and when mixed with slacks, a jacket, and a tie, inevitably looked sloppy. One of the biggest contributors to this appearance, I think, is the (over)use of vulcanized soles, a point that can be argued and explained in length equivalent to a series of posts, so let’s not go there. Along with the sole is the overall design of a sneaker versus the design of loafers and other dressier shoes.

However, that rule has recently been amended by these shoes: the new(ish) Jordan V.2 Grown.

Coming with a new all-black patent leather upper extension, these are not your every day sneakers; these are elegantly formal shoes. (I’m waiting for the opportunity when I can abide by my amendment and wear them with a tux.) Even in spite of the soles, the combination of upper extension and tucked woven waxed laces give this shoe a clean, classy look, without sacrificing comfortable feet.

Keep an eye out for more colors to come—as of now, Jordan has released seven colors, with two more on the way (a burgundy denim in August, and a grey suede with an electric “chlorine blue-spark” sole in February): http://www.nike.com/jumpman23/index.html#footwear/414174-601?cid=414174-601

It was then that I kneeled
by the radiator
to remember the scent
and sounds of warmth.