"I found what I was looking for."
To be fair, I thought I had at the time. We were in Mexico, in an abandoned little town that my mother had sent me a postcard from once, a long time ago. I thought that was it for me and dealing with my mother, but I was wrong.

"Don't go. Don't leave me..."
She didn't stay anyhow, and it just made me look kind of pathetic. Both times I said this - once when my mother left (I was 14) and once when my ex left after we'd lived together for three years.

"I'm fine. It's okay."
When Mac asked my permission to marry my ex. I wasn't really fine. It wasn't really okay for quite some time after that.

"Sure, I'd be honored."
When Mac asked me to be the best man at his wedding to my ex. Yeah, still wasn't really okay with that- and didn't go too well.

"In the highly unlikely event that I do, it won't be with you."
Jules had told me that I'd have other relationships. Had just kissed me. I don't know, it was an asshole thing for me to say - I knew he was in love with me then and had been since, hell forever. I'd figured that out, somewhere along the cycle of sleeping with him whenever I got too lonely. He was always my friend, but it never meant anything to me like he wanted it to. I still feel bad about that, even now when we've both sobered up and got someone else and all this is past. I was in my asshole stage when I said this.

"Go fuck yourself..."
Said to one Dawn Randal, a fan of our music who was unlucky enough to be there the night I had my breakdown. I also vomited on her (just a little). Was not pretty. Wound up all over the internet.

"I don't care if you ever come back..."
To Jules, when he left the band to work on his solo album, after I had that little breakdown. Obviously, I did care. At least we got things back together after I got out of rehab. Heh.

"I'll talk to him about it."
When Annie wanted me to talk to her dad about continuing to tour with us instead of going to college. Mac was none too thrilled.

"Three festivals is fine."
No, three festivals is never fine. Festivals are exhausting, especially when they're so close together in the midst of an already way too long tour. One festival per tour, new rule forever. When we get done with this summer tour (just over two more weeks now), I am going to curl up with Wolf and sleep for at least a week. No interviews, no practices, no nothing. Me, Wolf, and four non-mobile, non-changing walls around us. End story.

Michael is feeling: tired

( Big graphic and Thankful/Unthankful list back here )

Michael is feeling: good

For charloft



I've written about my kitty, Clawdia, a few times before. Well, she started out as my kitty - about twelve years ago now? Yeah, she'd be about twelve now. I found her in the dumpster when I was working at Java the Hut - poor thing. Who would throw out a kitty like trash? I soon discovered the perfect name for her, since she came out of there claws first. Clawdia still loves to claw, but now we've got Soft Paws on her - declawing is way too mean.

When the band started going on the road a lot, I felt bad leaving Clawdia. First she stayed with Texas and his wife, but then Mrs. Tex found out she had cat allergies - so Clawdia went to stay with Jenny. And then after when Mac's daughter came to be with him - and they moved in to my father's old house - Jenny and Clawdia just sort of merged into living there. And after Jenny and I broke up, well... Clawdia just kind of went with her. And then Mac and Jenny got married, and had more kids and... yeah. So she's not really my cat anymore, even though I see her a lot and I always ask about her. Really, she's more like Annie's cat - Annie's the one she follows around such.

I miss having time with just me and Clawdia though, sometimes. I used to enjoy brushing her, and talking to her about my day. She's a very talkative cat, so she'd even mew back at me. And sometimes when I'd play my songs, she'd look at me with this look of contempt like 'Why are you wasting your time with that instead of feeding the cat?


( Past drabbles about Clawdia... )

Michael is feeling: amused

I think I'd have to choose blind, because being deaf would make music a lot harder. Sure,they say Beethoven was deaf - but he was a genius. I'm no genius, so I need all the senses I can get when it comes to composing. I wouldn't like being sightless though - I'd miss out on a lot of the world that way. I think it'd be harder to adapt to walking around in darkness than walking around in silence, though. So that's another big downside to being blind - but I'd have to deal with it in order to keep the music going. It's pretty much the best thing I have going, so I really don't want to ass it up.

(for charloft )

Michael is feeling: uncomfortable

charloft provides daily prompts for novelists, roleplayers, NaNo writers, fiction writers, and fanfic writers. If you've got a character that just won't get out of your head, come on down and let them roam in the Charloft! Participate as often or as infrequently as you like. No pesty application - just join up and you're ready to go.

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We also allow for roleplaying, character questions, and other interactive activities outside of prompts - so there's always something to do at the Charloft!

Join today - prompts start Monday!

Michael is feeling: cheerful

San Diego musician and working class superhero Eben Brooks wrote this song inspired by Michael's Story - California People.

Michael and I think it's amazing! Thanks Eben...




--L

Michael is feeling: excited

Take this place in which
we exist, but fear living.
Call it anything but beautiful.

The sun will rise and set.
The trees absorb your carbon
whether or not they want to.
There's oxygen enough to breathe
on cloudy days, it's far enough
from the smoggy streets of LA.

There's a sharp contrast
between the bullet casings
and the spread of our silk sheets.
I can trace the metal line from
your hand to your heart.

Pull the trigger and we'll dance
pull the trigger and we'll dance
pull the trigger
pull the dance...
my hands in your heart
your heart in my hands.

Michael is feeling: creative

FIVE times captured in photographs and one time there was no camera

1. I am sitting on the edge of a lake. My pants are rolled up to my knees, and I'm studying the ripples my feet make as they slosh through the water. I am perhaps eight - vacationing with my parents. My mother is barefoot, wearing a ridiculous straw hat and creeping through the grass behind me. I see her distorted reflection in the water. From the opposite shore, my father snaps a photograph. It's one of the few pictures I still have of my mother, the only one where we are together and happy.

2. In California, at my Abuela's 85th birthday - her face a roadmap of age reflected in the flickering candlelight. They sing 'Feliz Cumpleanos a te', and I mouth along, still too embarrassed by my poor accent to join in proper. As she blows out the candles, she reaches for my hand. Old eyes meet young, and we both smile. My cousin's got a disposable camera - it takes him a while to finish the roll and take it to be developed. I've long since left California, and Abuela is three months gone from this world when the photograph arrives in the mail. I cry like a baby when it falls out of the envelope.

3. My first open mic - I'm nervous as hell until the lights go down and I step up to the mic. I don't look up the whole time, my head bowed down over the guitar. My hands keep moving when my voice fails, and I repeat the instrumental portion twice before I have the nerve to sing. The moment I open my mouth and look up is the exact moment Jules chooses to photograph me - the blinding flash makes me look down again, but I keep on singing. I haven't stopped since.

4. We're appearing at this huge festival , and there's a crowd so big it near stops my heart. Before that moment, I didn't really ever believe that we'd made it, but now I know and that knowledge is staggering. There's more flashes going off than I can count, and my palms are sweating so hard I fear I might drop the guitar. When we start playing, I forget all about that, and just let myself get lost in the music. There's tons of pictures of the show online - we look at them all and get a little amazed that this is us, from an outside perspective. There's this one shot - it's obviously taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, of just my hands, moving over the strings of the guitar. There's a slight blur to suggest movement - I was in the midst of a furious solo - and when I see it, I smile. "This is the one," I say to my bandmates, who look at me like I'm crazy because it doesn't even show my face, "that makes me feel alright about what we've become."

5. 'An intimate venue' is how Texas tries to bill it, but lately I've been fucking up to the point we can't sell to a large capacity anymore. A lot of places won't take the risk - they've heard how unstable I've become. I stagger out on stage, mutter something into the mic - there's a video of it, but I try not to watch it and it's all something about how shitty it is to finally live in California and not have the balls to enjoy it. I'm high on at least three different substances, and I've been hitting the beers since we rolled in to town. I make it halfway through the third song before opening my mouth and spewing vomit all down myself and this girl in the front row. She's gracious enough not to scream, but there's a look on her face that makes me tell her to go fuck herself right before I pass out into the puddle of puke. Her friend snaps a picture from a cell phone that's all over the internet before I even sober up. Jules prints it out lifesize and staples it to my front door before walking out to make his solo album. Mac takes it down the night he drives me to rehab.

----
When Wolf came to live with me, he kinda kicked my life back to good. With him around pushing me to actually give a shit about things again it was harder to feel sorry for myself. The one thing he never pushed me about was music - I didn't pick up the guitar for almost half a year after I got out of rehab. "It'll come to you when you're ready," Wolf said. And he was as right about that as he was about other things. One day I was bored out of my skull, so I grabbed the guitar out of the corner of our bedroom. I strummed, expecting her to be out of tune - but she wasn't. It was like the guitar was just waiting for me. Wolf was stretched out on the bed, and I knelt down beside him and played. There was no camera to capture the look that passed between us, but the image is burned into our memories so there doesn't need to be.

(for just_muse_me)

Michael is feeling: thoughtful

Three candles burned in the window of my apartment, the first week I got home from rehab. I lit them every night as soon as it got dark, and I'd sit on the couch to watch the flames flicker and the wax drip. I wasn't answering my phone in those days, but I'd left the ringer on so I'd know folks were calling. It helped, somewhat, to think that someone out there cared even if it was just that they wanted to know when the hell I'd get back to working on the album.

The only call I cared about was the call I knew wouldn't be coming- the call from Jenny saying that her marriage to Mac had been a terrible mistake, and that she wanted to take me back. I was still clinging to that shred of hope, though by then they'd already had a couple of kids together. It was stupid really, but I wanted to slide back into that part of my life that had been the least painful - the time where she was waiting for me every time I came home. She smiled then, when I spoke to her. Now whenever we have to speak, her lips draw back like she is biting into something distasteful. I hate being the cause of that look on her face, so we don't talk - and by extension, lately, I haven't talked to Mac either.

Doubtlessly one or more of the calls was from Jules. Though he was doing his own solo project and we'd had this huge blowout over it - he still gave a shit about what was going on in my life. When I got myself together enough, I appreciated that. I really did.

The one call I didn't expect came on the fifth night. The candles had melted to the point that wax caked on my sill, and made me think I should have been smart enough to stick a plate under them because it might never come off the wood. I was contemplating whether or not I cared about that when I heard a voice - the first human voice I'd heard since getting home. "Michael..."

Not from the phone, but from the hall. A knock, the voice again, louder. "Michael Malone..."

I recognized that voice - it belonged to a man I'd met at the sanitarium. Alexander Wolf - an veteran of the Iraq wars, he'd been wounded and got a little too fond of his painkillers. A hell of a better reason he had for being in there than I did, me with my wide-spectrum substance abuse that had no cause other than my own inability to deal with my life. We'd gotten along well enough that I'd given him my address, told him to stop in and see me sometime when he got out.

"Yeah, just a minute..." I called back, shuffling to my feet. It occurred to me that I hadn't really showered since getting home, or changed really. I still had the hospital bracelet on my wrist. I opened the door- he looked good, standing there. Tall, together, clean, and clear-headed. He'd obviously shaved, showered, and dressed more than once which put him well above my bar. What the hell was he doing here, coming to visit a wreck like me? "Hey..." was all I managed.

"Thought you could use some company," Wolf said, with a grin. "Just for a while."

I noticed the army duffel slung over his shoulder, and smiled wanly in return.

"Maybe," I admitted. "Just for a while."

He stepped into the living room, and set his duffel down.

Whether he reached for me first, or I reached for him first, I wasn't quite sure but suddenly the distance between us was insubstantial. I blew out the candles.

Wolf never did leave - and the sill is still waxy, but I'm really quite alright with that.

(Words: 648 - for on_thecouch)

Michael is feeling: contemplative

Hey. Um...

Hey there. I'm not really good at these things, so I suppose I'll start at the beginning-- or maybe more like the middle.

I guess I'm not all that much of a story teller- I'm more of a musician than anything. Give me a six string that's reasonably in tune and I'm good to go. But give me something to say in front of people... and this happens.

I freeze up.

More than just a little stage fright- we're talking the Titanic iceberg kind of frozen. No sound, no words, the occasional glottal stop. Yeah, I can sing. I have a voice that was once compared to springtime, but I can't just walk into a crowded room and spontaneously speak.

I guess I can trace the problem back to the untender age of fourteen. We lived in Hoboken, my father and I, alone after mom ran off to Mexico with her Latin lover. The Mexican just showed up at the house one day--some guy with a Ferrari and an unpronounceable name, a black haired Adonis towering over me by at least two feet. He had the thickest gold chain I'd ever seen around an even thicker neck. My mother bustled out in a flurry of suitcases, her curses and laughter the only goodbyes.

It was just two of us for the first time that fall, and we were still in shock about the whole desertion. I mean, she didn't even like burritos for Christsakes, and there she was heading South of the Border for a life of refried everything. Just me and my father, two tiny specks of leftover nothing in our little side street house.

I inherited smallness from my father. Maybe that's why she left him, you know? Maybe it carries over into... eh... other areas. But he's a seriously tiny man, just barely over five foot with thick glasses that make his face seem hollow. He's like a fucking elf, only with a bottle of scotch instead of good cheer. So I'm small... short, really. But graceful, like a sapling, not stubby and thick like my father. I suppose that's the one thing (other than her credit card bills) my mom left behind- good genes granting me a slender build. I can be grateful for that. Really.

I don't know what I expected from my first day of high school, other than general apathy and a healthy amount of anonymity. We lived in the city after all, and Central High was certainly not a tiny place. Whatever I expected, I was dead wrong. My smallness, far from affording me an opportunity to hide, shone like a beacon to every jock, jerk, and jackass in the building. By the end of my first week, I'd been the victim of nerd baptismal twice, and didn't have a cent of lunch money left.


I had these dreams all through my Central years. My mother would come back from Mexico like a barefoot peasant goddess in a white blouse and colorful skirt. Her unpronounceable lover would claim me as his own son- and I'd rise up from my bed, reborn. I'd be tall, swarthy, and full of exotic grace. The cheerleading squad clambered over me and the jocks gave me a healthy degree of respect. Sometimes I was the star quarterback, sometimes Valedictorian. But always I woke up small, pale and with a terrible case of acne that lasted the better part of my school career.

I remember the first time I picked up a guitar... my father'd been harping on me to get an after school activity so that I'd look good for colleges. He wanted to get on with what was left of his life which was hard to do with me living at home, hanging like an albatross around his bank account. I wasn't smart enough for Chess Club, or athletic enough for Tennis, or interested at all in Science. Band seemed the way to go. Students were encouraged to try out all the instruments so they could see which one 'fit'.

The drums were too damn loud for my taste, and reed instruments have this disturbing phallic quality. I didn't have the lung power for a good blow- trumpets were right out. So there it was, the guitar. The one they'd had for an example in the band room was acoustic and battered, badly out of tune. But when I picked it up and ran my hands down it, I got a real shiver up my spine. It felt right, like I was reaching some sort of epiphany.

My father said no.

Band cost a hell of a lot of money he didn't have. Instrument rental, for one. Then there were fees up the ass. Why couldn't I be smart and take up chess? But now t was in me- the desire to have an instrument to call my own, something that set me apart. I wasn't eating lunch anyhow, so I started saving up my money at home. Sure it meant taking a few more hits, but eventually the guys that were rolling me over got the picture that I was useless and tapped out. Only took about three black eyes and a chipped tooth. I considered that chip a badge of honor.

I bought my first acoustic from a pawnshop. I was sixteen, and feeling the guitar in my hands was so damn orgasmic. I couldn't wait to get home and give her a few strokes. To my surprise, the sound that came out was nothing like music. Apparently, it took more than saving up sixty dollars to be a guitar player. Frustrated, I flung her in my closet for the next year and a half, to be buried under all my future disappointments.

I can't remember what made me dig her out again- I think I was drunk at the time and that was really reason enough. I was seventeen then, and had a job after school bagging at the Quick Mart. My father'd grown sloppy with the keys to his cabinet, and no longer cared what I drank as long as I gave him money for another bottle.

Yeah, I was drunk-- I remember now.


I'd been drinking tequila and thinking about my mother. She'd sent a postcard that year for my birthday. First time in three years I've heard from her, and it's a fucking tourist-card. There's a Chihuahua on the front in a sombrero and a putrid rainbow poncho with the legend 'Viva El Mexico' emblazoned over his head. On the back she's written in her careful hand 'Feliz Cumpleaños.'

I pitched the card into my closet, but it wasn't buried enough. I wanted it down deep, under the coat that I'd outgrown, the badminton racket I'd never used, and the tank from my failed attempt at raising guppies. So there she was, my old guitar-- under coat and above aquarium. I picked her up and strummed any old way, but the sound was beautiful to me now. Maybe it was the tequila talking, but I connected to the moment in a way that temporarily eased the disconnection of the past three years. I strummed until my fingers bled then passed out next to her in a pile of my own vomit.

It wasn't an auspicious beginning to my musical career, but I started using my money for more constructive ways than paying my old man to slake his bottles. I started paying for guitar lessons from this neighborhood guy that was in a band. Kept me good, right through graduation, until that thing in California tried to take it all away. But we won't talk about California. The important part is I came back then left Hoboken again for Perinthus, NY and the university.

By the time I get to college, I'm almost good with that guitar. Not Damn Good, but I'm writing these songs. They're about feelings and mushy shit like that, but at least they're mine. At first, I won't sing them for anyone. But freshman year of college is making me a lot more functional. There are weird people here like me. People who never connected before coming together over how fucked up they are.

On rainy days the lounge is full of people just telling these stories. I am there one of those days with my guitar. That is the first time I let it out in public, the songs that I wrote. By the time I finish everyone is quiet. There is this silence that hangs over us. I felt them all staring. Then like thunder breaking-- applause. The guy from debate club is slapping me on the back, and some girl with hemp in her hair slips me her phone number. I am in among the out.

But I still can't talk to them. Not about anything real. I can sing and I can make casual conversation, but any time I try to talk about something more than the weather and how's-your-cat, I get paralyzed.

Now I'm dating the hemp girl, only she's calling me a fucking fagot for calling our dorm-room sex 'making love.' She wants me to make her feel dirty, like the songs do. I can't do anything but borrow moments because I know she's never really mine. We break up after she throws me a birthday party and I won't play the guitar for her hippie friends. As she's walking off the porch into a sudden spring downpour, I punch my hand through the front window and watch my blood rain its own river. "Feliz Cumpleaños," I shout before slamming the screen door and wishing I could cry.

Most nights now, I dream of future-me out of college, a nine to five cubicle slave. There I am truly anonymous. I half expect to be baptized in the water cooler, and have my co-workers shake me down for vending machine cash. But I dream I drift among them like a ghost. I don't have to talk about anything more serious than being out of toner.


Dream-me plays in clubs, making a name for himself, only the name is Miguel because Michael just isn't all that stage worthy.

When the band makes it big, I am always unprepared for the success. Every woman wants to know me. I am every man's friend. And they all want me to talk...about something, about anything. Reporters and groupies, hanging on my words but even my own dreams betray me – I still cannot speak.

I get invited back to Central high to make a speech. It's the same stage that I got my diploma on some ten years ago. I've got note cards, so I can't screw it up. I've got a writer now who takes care of these things. See, I've had dreams like this before-- where I'm at school giving this talk and suddenly I'm in my underwear and everyone's pointing and laughing.

Today I feel naked as I step up to the podium.

I check my pockets, and I can't find the notes. And then the pockets disappear and I'm in my underwear -- yeah, it's another one of those dreams. In the audience front row center, is my father. He's got this expectant look on his face waiting for sound to come out of me. I'm small and fragile again. I look out, getting ready to say anything, when my mother tangos in with her Mexican. The Chihuahua from the postcard trails behind them. So they're all sitting there now and waiting, even the damn dog.

This is where I usually run off the stage, accompanied by a sitcom-style laugh track. Occasionally, there is the pelt of ripe fruit. A high school class has come in and I see faces that reflect my tormentors from years past. I want to stop speaking, to run again, but this time is different. I open my mouth, and words, spoken, come forth...

"So you've discovered the secret now - that high school is not much different than this so-called 'real world.' We're all still out there -- the losers, the jerks, the jocks and the cheerleaders- and we're all trying to make it, just doing the best we can....”

“Show don't tell, Malone,” my English teacher shouts from his third row seat. “This whole damn dream is a cliché – C minus.”

I draw a deep breath, summon the strength to continue.

”We all hurt. We're all disappointed. We're all frozen inside and there's nothing like a great bout of apathy to help you never thaw. You think you're so special right now- so important. All your life, you've been the beautiful ones. Ten years from now you'll have broken marriages and tattered hearts. You'll look back to your glory days, telling boring stories that your children won't care about. And one hundred years from now, none of it will matter. Not a single fucking thing. So take your life now- right now while you can still get it, while it's fresh and real and vital - and live! Stop with the endless cycles of hurt and hate and bitter and broke, just open your mouth and speak. Speak up in rage, or in exaltation, but speak. Say anything. Say everything. Silence is only fool's gold. Regret...”

Here I close my eyes, pause for just a moment before looking back into the audience. They've all disappeared except my mother. She's silent, but there's tears in her eyes.

She's mouthing "Lo siento..." The alarm clock rings.

Michael is feeling: nostalgic

We were drinking pretty heavily by the end of that summer's tour. We'd rented these cabins in the woods, for no other purpose it seemed to sit and drink. Mac had gone on home - he and Jenny were already expecting their first baby. That left me, Jules, and the new guy we'd hired on to take up some of the slack Mac caused by his continual family-related absences.

Aaron passed the bottle over to me, and gave his best philosophical look. Jules and I tried not to snicker, because truth was, we could drink the kid under the table. It was early on in his coming to work with us, so he was still insecure enough to try and keep up.

"You know what I think?" he said, in his profound voice.

"Not particularly," Jules assured him. He took the bottle from me before I even got my swig of Jack.

"Sure," I said, then poked Jules to get the bottle back. I took a long drag and passed it to Aaron. "Enlighten us."

"2012," Aaron said. He raised the bottle to his lips, and took a swallow. We ignored the coughing that came after, out of partial politeness and also because there's only so many times you can laugh at someone's inability to drink before it reminds you how much of an alkie you've personally become.

Jules and I just looked at him. What the hell was that supposed to mean anyhow?

"You know... end of the world," Aaron said, staring at us like we were uneducated for not knowing. "That's how long we've got. And that's not long at all."

"Oh bullshit," Jules said, snagging the bottle out of the kid's hand like he was wasting our time with this crap.

Maybe in a way he was, but I was curious. "Why then?" I asked.

"Aztecs," he said. "That's when their calendar ends. They say there's going to be some sort of astronomical event that just... wipes us out boom, there we go. You're not going to grow old, get gray, have your Behind the Music special hasbeen days..."

Jules snorted.

"... because it's all going to end on December 21st or some shit, when the planets align and the poles reverse and BAM."

"Fucking lot of shit there," Jules said. "I think I like you even less when you're drunk, kid, if such a thing be possible." Really, Jules liked Aaron well enough - and he was a damn good keyboardist, which was why we hired him. But this was a kind of hazing they went through the first couple of years. Looking back on it now, I don't think Aaron ever really minded all that much- he's always smarter than he gets cred for.

Aaron just shrugged that long-boned shrug of his, the one where I think his arm just might detach. It never does, but he throws his whole body into it like it just might.

"I don't believe that," I said quietly, taking my turn at the bottle. "I think it'll keep on turning."

"We could make a bet," Aaron said, "but we won't be around for me to collect on it so I'll pass."

"The world's too mean to go out like that," I said. "In a bang, in an all of a sudden sort of way. I think we're just going to keep on sliding into this decline, keep on spiraling towards global catastrophe by degrees and do ourselves in when we finally realize we've fucked things beyond all recognition and it's too late to turn back. Then the religious folks will praise or curse their gods, the angry folks will rape loot and pillage, and the rest of us will just write the best damn songs ever because nothing fuels good music like a big old bout of catastrophe."

"If the world's going to end, I'm just going to get fucking wasted," Jules said. "That's pretty much my plan. I want to be so strung out that the world can end all around us and I won't know the damn difference until it's all over."

"Maybe it's already ending," Aaron said, taking the bottle from me and drinking a long draft down. This time he didn't choke. "Maybe we're all that's left in the universe."

"God help us if that's the case," Jules said.

"The world isn't ending." I got unsteadily to my feet, headed for the door. I paused long enough to look over my shoulder at the two drunks on the floor that made up about three quarters of my life right about then. "It wouldn't be so kind."

I stepped out into the night air to walk under the potentially infinite stars and sky. What did I have to fear about the apocalypse? As far as I was concerned, I was already the speck of dust at the end of the world, had been since the day she left. It couldn't have been further from the truth, but drinking makes for poor philosophy and poorer future planning.

Michael is feeling: contemplative

(takes place a few weeks after this)

"In the highly unlikely event that we survive this, I am so kicking your ass," Jules said, spreading his arms like wings to keep his balance as he followed me across the fallen tree branch. "Wait the hell up..."

"It's not that far down," I insisted. We'd taken a rest stop at a park, and I'd wanted to see what was on the other side of the river.

"It's not the down I mind, it's the wet."

"So? It's like eighty degrees out here," I said, continuing on my way.

"Mac'll get pissed if we come back all filthy, we got a show...."

I turned around to tell him I didn't give a damn what Mac thought, and slipped in the process. I grabbed on to Jules to try and steady myself. A few seconds of flailing later, we were both in the water - colder than I thought it would be, just deep enough that I landed square on my ass in the squishy mud of the bottom. I started laughing.

Jules found it a lot less funny than I did. He started to slosh his way towards the log.

"Wait, wait..." He turned around. I splashed him.

"Goddamn it, Michael - everything's a joke to you lately. You're such a goddamn jerk."

"Fuck you, Jules." I lay back in the water, and watched the clouds roll by.

He pulled himself back up on the log, glared down at me. I smiled up at him, and waved. His expression softened. "You're not okay with it, are you?" he asked.

"No," I admitted, knowing exactly what he was speaking of. "But what can you do?"

"Fight it. Tell him fuck you no, you can't marry my ex? Tell her you still love her?"

"Some people aren't meant for happiness," I said. I'd come to terms with that. Jenny and Mac were happy together - and who was I to stand in the way of that, just because it hurt like hell?

Jules slid back into the water, and sloshed back over on his knees. He hauled me up to face him. "Never say that," he said.

"I just did."

Jules pulled me roughly to him, kissed me hard. Since Jenny and I had broken up, I'd made out with him a few times - usually while we were high, but we hadn't gone all the way or anything. And I wasn't about to, out there in the muck and the water and thinking about her. "You deserve to be happy," he said, holding me at arm's length. "You'll have another relationship..."

"In the highly unlikely event that I do, it won't be with you." I pushed past him and climbed out of the water.

"Fuck you, Michael. You're such a fucking asshole..."

"I know," I said, and kept on walking.

Michael is feeling: cranky

"Michael, I love her," Mac said, trying to explain to me for thirteenth time why he was marrying my ex.

"What's love got to do with it?" Jules sang in the back of the van, until Mac turned around in his seat and gave him the Stare Of Doom.

I scrunched further down in the passenger's seat, pressed my face against the glass of the window. Ventura highway sped by, for probably the fifteenth time since we'd become a touring band.

"Mike?"

I didn't turn around.

"I need you to be okay with this."

Jules cracked open a soda in the back seat, reached around the passenger's side seat to press it cold against my arm. I jumped slightly, but was grateful for the gestue as my mouth felt dry as cotton. I took the soda and had a long swig. "I'm fine," I muttered around the rim.

"You're not fine," Jules called from where he'd settled back into his place.

"You stay out of this," I snapped. I caught him flipping me off in the side view's reflection, so I shifted the other way to look at Mac. His face was set in a line of worry that made me regret calling him a girl-stealing-douchenugget the other night when I was wasted. "I'm fine," I repeated. "It's okay. It's not like.. hell, Jenny and I've been broke up long enough, right?" Three years without her had seemed like an eterinity- and now it would stretch out into a lifetime of moments like this one. Moments where it felt like my heart would sink straight through my toes from the hollow weight of loneliness.

"You're sure?" Mac asked, stealing a glance at me before turning down our exit.

"Yes," I lied.

"Good.. because I wanted to ask you a favor."

I took another sip of the soda and let that pass for a reply.

"Jenny and I have talked it over - and we both agreed. We'd like for you to be our best man."

"Oh snap," Jules called from the backseat. I wanted to reach back and slug him. My hands tightened around the can.

"Sure," I managed to choke out. "I'd be honored."

Michael is feeling: sick

"Uncle Mike," Annie called, nudging my back with her bare foot. "Are you awake?"

I wasn't until just then. I was lying face down on the couch in the back of the bus, where I'd fallen asleep a couple of hours ago. I think we were on our way to Seattle, or maybe it was Portland. It all blended together sometimes. I tried to fake sleep, hoping she'd give up. But Annie Mackenzie was Mac's daughter through and through. She knew better than to fall for that. She waited, patiently, for me to get bored of lying there and roll over.

"Meh," I muttered, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "What's wrong? Are we stopping?"

"No," she said. "But I need to talk to you." She plunked down on the arm of the couch, drawing up her knees and resting her head on them. I couldn't believe how grown up she looked now, this girl I'd known since she was six. She'd grown up around the band, and these days she was designing our merch and doing some album art and everything. She had an eye for design.

I sat up the rest of the way, and looked up at her expectantly. "Shoot, kiddo."

"It's Dad," Annie said, exasperation in her tone. "He keeps bugging me about college."

"Well?" I said. "He does have a point. You'd learn a lot more from there than you will hanging out with us bums. It'd be good for your future."

"Oh that's bullshit," she said, wrinkling up her nose. "Dad never went to college."

"I did. Jules did." After a pause, I added. "Your stepmother, too."

"I'm not saying I'll never go to college Uncle Mike, but I don't want to go right now."

"Because of Aaron?" I asked. She'd had her eye on our new keyboardist.

"No!" she insisted quickly, but the flush of color in her cheeks said more than her denial. "He's... I mean sure, he's nice, but I just finished twelve years of school. I need some time. You didn't go to college right away, after all, and it worked out for you. Can't you remind Dad about that, so he'll quit bitching at me?"

I winced. I still didn't like to think about all that business that had delayed my going to school. Annie didn't know the half of it, and I wasn't about to tell her. As far as she knew, I'd delayed school to live for a while with my grandmother in California. I lived with my Grandmother for a while, and I spent those years in California, sure. That much was true. But she didn't know about Jackson, about the empty urge to belong to him, about the days and weeks I couldn't remember because they were one long party. She didn't know how when my Abuela had died she'd taken with her the last tie I had to my mother and I couldn't bear it. She didn't know how my father'd brought me home from California in disgrace, how I'd tasted charcoal the whole way home though I'd been out of the hospital a week by the time we'd left.

She didn't know how I'd gone to college not out of the desire to learn, but out of the desire to be away from the looks my father gave me like I might try to hurt myself again at any given moment - like I'd been too stupid to even get that right. She didn't know that I had nothing else left to do with my life, and that enrollment was more an act of desperation than the suicide attempt had been. I didn't tell her. I wanted her to continue looking up to me, because some days it was all I had. Even when I hit bottom for a while, when I wasn't together at all after Jenny left me- all I had to do was go spend some time with Mac and Annie to feel right again.

Of course, after Mac remarried, that had changed. It took me a while to get comfortable with all that, but what could you do?

"I'll try," I told her. That was all I needed to say.

She threw her arms around me, and hugged me close, despite the fact that I hadn't showered for a couple of days and my face probably still bore the imprint of couch. "You rock!"

That type of unconditional affection warms my heart. I still think Mac's going to kick my ass if she doesn't go to college because of me, but I feel obliged to champion her cause for a deferment. She is only just about to turn 18, and there will come a time when she will want to be anywhere but where we are- where she will want to live her own life, and find traveling with the band a chore that she'd rather avoid. Daddy, Uncle Mike, and Uncle Jules will be three old uncool guys that she doesn't want to be anywhere near. And instead of loving the songs we write, she'll probably find them all kinds of blah.

Maybe there's a bit of selfishness there on my part, in wanting to keep her our little girl a while longer, but I can forgive myself for that. We might be a makeshift misfit family, our little band, our circle of friends and loved ones - but it's the best damn family I've ever had and I don't want to let it go.

Annie lost patience with me gathering my thoughts, and sighed.

"I meant NOW," she said, giving me another nudge. "Not like, tomorrow."

"Teenagers."

She stuck her tongue out.

I got up from the couch, and headed for the front of the bus. Mac was sitting at the table of our little kitchenette, spreading mayo on half of a turkey sandwich.

"Hey," I said, settling across from him.

"Good morning. Want a sandwich?"

My stomach churned at the thought of food. "I'll pass."

He got up to put the mayo away, and resettled to eat. After a few bites, he looked up at me again. "Annie wake you up?"

I nodded.

"She want you to talk to me about college?"

"How'd you guess?"

"Because Jules came tearing through here about half an hour prior shouting that he was not going to do her dirty work."

I was slightly offended that I wasn't her first choice. "Well, heh... about that whole college thing."

Mac groaned. "She got to you."

"Well, I just think you should consider her side," I said. "She's young, she's having fun, she's spending time with her Dad..."

"It's Aaron, isn't it?"

"Well, kinda, maybe..." I wasn't very good at being persuasive. "She does seem to like him."

"All the more reason for her to go to college," Mac said.

"She will, eventually," I insisted. "Just... look, if you push her into it, she'll hate you for it. I know. My father tried to push me into a lot of shit - and it never did him any good. He wanted me to major in math, for gods' sakes..."

"Well, he was an accountant," Mac said. "And he did want the best for you, despite his problems. You don't know what it's like to be a father...."

I looked away. Mac seemed to regret his words, and rested a hand on my shoulder. "Michael, I didn't mean...."

"No, it's okay. I'm alright." I'd gotten over the fact that he'd married my ex and and had two-point-five kids. Really.

"I just don't want Annie to be a bum musician like her old man," Mac said. He'd always regretted never going to college himself. As smart as he was, he was entirely self-educated.

"You're not a bum," I assured him. "You've done right by your family. And by us. And look, we're doing fine, aren't we? We'e got the bus now, our album's doing good, our shows are selling out... what more could you ask for?"

"I guess," he conceded. "I guess it would be alright if she waited a year or so to start. If it's alright with Jenny... I'll have to call her and ask."

I fidgeted. "Yeah, well... say hi to her for me."

"You know, you can talk to her. When she calls, when I call her- she always asks how you are."

"I know. We talk sometimes," I insisted. At holidays, at get-togethers, when other people were around. When it was safe. I didn't trust myself to talk to her alone. It'd been a good eight years since we'd broken up, five years since her and Mac had gotten married. I still couldn't do it.

"Well, you don't have to. I'm just saying if you wanted to, it would be okay. I wouldn't mind."

"Thanks," I said. I fidgeted slightly, then made a big show of catching wind of my armpit. "Man... it's been a while since me and water were acquainted. I have to go shower, okay?" I pushed away from the table and got to my feet.

"Michael... she still cares about you, you know. She's got a lot of affection for you- we both do, you know that. We all love you."

"I know," I said , then retreated as fast as I could. I stepped around Jules and Aaron who were playing cards in the aisle, made my way to the bathroom where I could let the hot water beat down on me and wash away my loneliness.

Michael is feeling: lonely

"Jenny, where are you going?" I asked, my hands already shaking. She turned towards me, no pity left.

"We've been over this. You know, I'm done. Really, I just... let's just talk about this tomorrow, okay? I'll call you."

The love of my life was walking out the door, wearing the sweater I'd given her for Christmas that year. One of the sleeves was already starting to unravel. An orange string hung down from her cuff. I touched her arm.

"Michael. Don't make this harder..."

"No, I - I just want to..."

She stopped. Her face was set in a scowl that didn't quite reach her eyes. They were misty. "Please..."

"Just this thread," I muttered, and tugged at it.

She sighed, but didn't push my hand away."This isn't helping any."

"I just want to fix it," I said. I pulled. It unraveled further.

"Get the scissors. Just cut it, okay?" Be quick, her eyes said.

I ran into the kitchen, and opened up the drawer under the sink where we kept the scissors, along with the spatulas, corn holders, knives, and those little kitchen utensils she used that I didn't know the names or the purpose for. The one with all the wires that spread out like a fan. That wooden mallet with the ridged end. I found the scissors tangled with the wire thing, and shook them free. I ran out, and cut the thread clean.

"Thank you," she said, relieved that I wouldn't pull at her any longer.

"Don't go."

"Don't make this any harder..."

"Don't leave me."

"I'm not leaving you, Michael. I just need some time, okay? You'll know where I'll be. I won't be gone forever."

She needed time to 'think about things', she'd said. Time to spend apart, to think about whether or not she could stand to spend any more time with me. I had no idea if I would ever see her again. I couldn't help but remember how my mother had left, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, how she'd danced out the door to a life of freedom leaving me and my father behind. Now my father was gone, and here I was - a twenty-eight year old musician who couldn't keep a responsible future in line who was struggling to keep the love of his life from walking out the door. "If you go, everything will change."

"Everything is always changing," she said. "You've changed. I've changed."

"I haven't..."

But I had. She was right in that. The past three years or so since we'd come back from Mexico, since I'd been making a real go of it with my music. The band had been on the road more, and with Jenny working on her Masters, we were just seeing less and less of each other, despite living in the same space. We had both changed. There were times when we went perhaps weeks without really having a meaningful conversations. Days in which we never even touched each other. Times we even slept separate, with her falling asleep in her studies, or me passing out on the couch after a show.

I wanted to touch her now. I wanted to take her in my arms, and find some magic words that would make everything alright again. I wanted there to be some way to turn back the time to the trip home from Mexico.

Listen, it was like this:

The radio was playing, all the windows were rolled down. We were in the back seat, with her head on my shoulder. The wind was blowing her hair, and it reminded me of waves on the ocean, how it fell and rose in soft, soothing patterns. I was near memorized; she was near sleeping.

"I love you," I murmured into her hair, then.

"I love you," she muttered back, then. A half-smile forming on her sleepy face and transforming her into an angel.

I wanted those days back. I wanted to be freshly graduated from college, and full of hope for the future. I wanted to think that the whole world was a wide expanse of road, that I could drive down it in any direction I chose.

But I couldn't. I couldn't say the words to make her stay. "I'll call you," she repeated, and walked out the door.

It closed.

I stood there a while, expecting it to open again. She would come running back in, saying how she couldn't stand to be apart from me, that even ten minutes was too much of this 'trial separation'. The door didn't open. My legs started to ache - I'd been performing steady all week, and all the moving around I did on stage got to me sometimes by the end of it.

I put the scissors away, and held on to the thread. I curled up on the couch, too tired and too lonely to make it to our bed. Besides, if the door did open up again, I wanted to be right there where she'd see me waiting - before she could change her mind.

I tied the thread around my finger, like an orange thready ring. I fell asleep, and dreamed I was alternately twenty five and fourteen.

The women I loved were leaving me.

They always were.

Michael is feeling: crushed