The Power of Propaganda

I was recently visiting with a friend who is smart, wise, successful, and much older than me. We were just starting our day together and as a topic of discussion I shared my class lineup at the University of Denver this fall (I’m an MA candidate at the Josef Korbel School). One of the classes I am taking there this fall is called modern Islamic political thought.

Thinking my friend was about to further the discussion of Islamic political thought I listened intently to the words that came out of my friend’s mouth. “Egypt’s looking for a new Islamic leader. I say let’s give him ours.”

I might have looked like a deer caught in the headlights for a second while I took these words in, realizing my friend truly wasn’t joking. And then I held a private funeral in my head for the intelligent conversation that was clearly not going to happen.

I played dumb. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, that’s a political thought,” my friend said.

I was thinking that to call it a political thought is to give it more merit than it’s due. “What’s a political thought?” I asked.

“That we should give Egypt our Muslim leader,” my friend responded.

“Obama is not a Muslim.” I tried to say this as calmly as possible.

“Oh, he’s not?” My friend responded.

“No, he’s not. And for you to call that idea a political thought isn’t right. It’s absolutely garbage.”

My friend looked taken aback. My stare was intense and I could feel my pulse rise as I waited for a response, but there was none. That was the end of our political discussion for the day. But for the rest of the afternoon I thought about our conversation and I was embarrassed over and over again for my friend. That my friend could believe such a lie, such propaganda, was sickening.

It was my first personal experience with someone who has truly been fed a political lie enough times that in their head the lie has found a permanent home as a supposed truth. This particular lie is often presented as a legitimate concern by right-wing media outlets. On Fox News someone might joke about it, but no one is reprimanded for it, no one speaks up and says, “We are better than that.”

Yesterday’s conversation exhibited the power of this propaganda machine. The lie starts with one person and is then adopted by a cabal, whose only interest is their own, whether it be the political downfall of a certain politician or a desire to stay rich, powerful, and barely taxed, or a combination of these. These people are powerful enough to own TV stations, radio networks, whole news organizations, and they use these assets as hugely powerful tools to present myths and rumors as fact while simultaneously hiding the truth from our eyes. (See Roger Ailes and Donald Trump.) Gradually, the lie spreads across the audience, who might have even dismissed it as ridiculous the first time they heard it or read it (I hope my friend did at least that). But the saturation and the never-ceasing tide of money coming from the wealthiest Americans has proved itself strong enough to hold hostage the intellectual and independent-thinking abilities of many Americans. (See the continuing belief by some that Obama isn’t American or that Obama is a Muslim.)

One of the more popular lies among the Right (although, to clarify, it’s not a lie for them) is to compare the Obama administration to that of the Third Reich. Yes, the same propaganda machine that convinced my friend that Obama is a Muslim, would also have you believe Obama harbors a secret agenda of spreading national socialism across America.

Nothing about Obama’s policies has ever evoked, for me, a whisper of Nazi Germany. In fact, it was the conversation with my friend that had me contemplating many a table conversation in 1930s Germany, when it might have been shared by a friend or family member that they had joined the Nazi party to the absolute dismay of anyone at the table who had a brain. I am not calling anyone a Nazi here. If you want to see that, watch a week of Fox News and you’ll see someone hint, at least once, that an Obama policy is strikingly familiar to one of Hitler’s policies. No, I am referencing the power of propaganda. The Nazis certainly mastered it and both the Right and the Left have adopted some of their strategies. But now, at this point in America’s history, I think it’s clear that the Right’s propaganda machine is churning out a lot of lies and doing whatever it takes to shift the mantle of power back to their side by spreading fear and angst that we have a president who is not American, but also a president who is a secretive Muslim who is colluding with Islamic nations across the world in order to favor that religion’s interests.

I am in awe of the propaganda machine and its ability to convince smart people that they most adopt such vacuous ideas. Next time, don’t consume the lies. Instead, try to do the thinking yourself. 

Expectations precede it

What is it with the coffee shop? Why does Bryce think he can walk in there with a laptop or notebook and think he is a writer?

He always has these expectations for coffee shop writing. Like the atmosphere is going to overload his senses with motivation and ideas for blogs, stories, or books. It never does. He usually walks away with a few pages of ramblings that even with the most meticulous rewording could not be kneaded into a blog, a story, or a book.

There might be a paragraph about the two middle-aged men playing Magic: The Gathering near him. Sentences therein might read something like this: One man, perhaps 45 years-old, is balding, tall, and gangly. He is dressed in casual business attire, but his shoes stand out. They are leathery clogs. His friend is wearing Chacos. He looks granola-ish, and oddly out of place in the Midwest. He wears cutoff jean shorts that are accompanied by a blue tank top. He is topped by a mop of bleached dreadlocks that frame his full beard. A surprisingly pretentious pair of reading glasses rest on a nose that protrudes from his face in a knobby fashion. Green eyes rest in a tanned, weathered face that is twisted in confusion at his opponent’s recent play.

Bryce might dabble in a rant about a barista who is asking everyone if they would like the large for just fifty cents more even though they asked for the medium. He thinks good baristas should shut up and just make the medium as good as a large. He could imagine a conversation with her and write it down.

“Would you like to get the large for just fifty cents more?”

“No! I would not. Do you think I think there is only one size here? I picked the medium for a reason. Do you think that I picked the medium because the fifty cents more for the large is going to put me on food stamps?”

“No I don’t, sir. I’m sorry for the confusion. I was just pointing out…”

“You were just pointing out what? I chose the 16-ounce drink because I wanted the 16-ounce drink.”

Many authors have written books in coffee shops. Or have they? He only remembers reading one author that mentions how he wrote a book in coffee shops and pubs around the Portland area. Why does he think many authors have done the same? Well, this is the place where book lovers go, right? The smell of coffee might do it. He likes it; it reminds him of cracking a fresh book and taking a whiff of the binding. No, he thinks. It must be the music; it’s always there, but it’s always absent in a way. If he doesn’t listen to it, it goes away. If he listens for it, it is there. For these reasons the music is magical, and since the music is in the coffee shop it makes the coffee shop magical. Magical places must inspire, he thinks.

He admires the wood furniture. Aged, scratched, weakened, and creaky, the wood cries out to be made into words. His heart cries out to make the wood into words. A transformation of the coffee shop into words, that is what he wants, but he never gets. The people on the wooden furniture, the purveyors and consumers of the coffee, and the ears listening to the music all distract him from the purity.

Bryce walks away from the coffee shop feeling like it let him down today. He casts a forlorn look into its deep hallows as he drives by and wonders about its potential. Will it ever give him something good? Can it ever give him something good? He wants to return to show that it can be made into words. The chair, the desk, the mug, the wisps of steam, the beans, the walls, the music, the dark, comfy corner…all into words.

*He wrote this at home.

Four Dollar Conversation

***This is loosely based on a conversation I had with my girlfriend once***



“What the hell? You just bought that?” he said.

“What?” Kate said.

“The freaking Pillsbury pie cookbook. It cost four dollars,” he said.

“Yes, I did just buy that and I think it was worth it.”

They learned so much in Automatic Millionaire about how to save hundreds of dollars a year by eliminating such worthless purchases. “Automatic Millionaire, Kate,” was all he said.

“Oh Bryce, get a grip. It has a lot of good recipes in it.”

“Four bucks down the drain.”

“Don’t try to make me feel bad for buying the recipe book.”

“Well, if you wanted to buy it, then fine, but it was a spur of the moment purchase and a stupid one, one that you certainly didn’t think much about.” It wasn’t his four dollars. What did he care?

“Bryce, I am going to have this for the rest of my life. Four dollars spread out over the rest of my life isn’t bad.” That thing was not going to last four years. It was ten flimsy pages, stapled twice, and folded in half.

“I’ll give it a few years. Then…sayonara,” he said.

“I am glad I bought it, and you are going to be glad I bought it when I bake you some pie.”

He grabbed the book and thumbed through the pages. “Ahhh, the pictures don’t look too good Kate. Look at this Sweet Potato Pie. It looks like molded puke.”

“Gross Bryce! Just give it up will you?”

“No, I won’t. You know how many random four dollar purchases you could make in a lifetime if you keep on going like this? Let’s say…one crazy, four dollar purchase a week. That is sixteen bucks a month…one-hundred and ninety-two a year. Add that up and put it in a mutual fund with ten percent annual interest. WOW!”

Okay people, Kate thought, he really isn’t this crazy all the time. “Look at this one, you would like it. It has strawberries and blueberries. Tell me you wouldn’t like that?”

“I wouldn’t like blueberries with strawberries, just strawberries. And look at this, cranberry tartlets? Are you kidding me? Tartlets? They just made that word up for this recipe book,” he said.

“It is a word, Bryce.”

“Oh, well, ya know what I mean? A word that is used once a year when couples are arguing about the Pillsbury Pie Recipe Book.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“The word is as useless as the four-dollar cookbook.”

“We will see about that. I am going to make the chocolate mousse cheesecake when we get back to your place.”

“Fine.”

Hero in Hiding

Just a few entries ago I wrote about collaborations between writers and composers. Here is a brief description of my collaboration with a composer.

This collaboration was designed as a work for children. We wanted something along the lines of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf set in a modern urban environment. The Hero in Hiding is a simple story about a hero who rescues a young boy and will always be remembered for his bravery and humility. The goal of the composer was to accentuate and complement the text. He chose instruments that would be found in a jazz ensemble and wrote for them in a jazz-like style that would be fun for a younger audience to listen to. - L.W. and B.P.

The Hero in Hiding

The hero leapt from building to building. By his definition, the night had been calm except for some petty criminals.

The robber, whose incompetence was the roadblock to a successful criminal career, was an easy catch.

And the fight he stopped. He thought as alley after alley passed beneath him, people always fight; it is in their nature to try to bring each other down. The robber will never understand this. He wished his job didn’t have to exist, but there will always be the next hero.

A fight far below him in an alley brought him back to reality. He saw a large man standing over someone. He swooped down with ease and once he was closer he could see the person being beaten. He was a young man, very close to the age in which he was found by his hero.

The brute towered above the boy, throwing punches in a great downward arc. The hero was moving as fast as he could toward the brute, but he didn’t get there before the hard fists of the brute had plunged deep into the boys face.

The brute saw the leg out of the corner of his eye and caught the hero’s foot in his hand. The brute’s hand engulfed the foot. The boy’s rescuer didn’t underestimate his villain though. The hero quickly bounded to his feet and threw the first punch to knock the brute away from the boy. He shouted, “Run!”

The boy ran, but not far. He wanted to see his hero in action. A crowd had amassed at the end of the alley to watch the spectacle. They yelled at the boy to move further away from the fight, but he longed to see goodness prevail. His hero threw punch after punch into the brute, but the size of the man was great, he threatened people solely with his towering frame.

The two fought for a long time. They traded punches and kicks. The hero was wearing the brute down, he slumped in exhaustion and his fist no longer traveled forward with that intense power.

The boy saw his hero step back a few feet. He leaped toward the brute and was above him when he brought his foot across the man’s face. The two men collapsed in a tumbled mess.

The boy ran to his hero, he had been slashed by a knife and was badly hurt. The boy was determined to help his weakened hero up.

Together, the boy and his savior helped each other to the end of the alley where the crowd stood cheering for the hero. Now with his hero by his side, the boy walked out of the darkness of the alley and was hugged by many strangers and friends. He turned to see his rescuer, but he had vanished from the spotlight, like a true hero should.

Some Distant, Some Near

The field had absorbed the last snow quickly and the sun had dried the ground so it wasn’t too soggy for a game of football. I sat down on the steps leading down to the drop-off zone for the buses and watched the game. I would occasionally play and I was damn good at running…if I caught the ball. I had developed a reputation of not being able to catch and had been named “Butterfingers” by the popular kids at school who busied themselves with bringing down everyone they knew.

I soon got bored with the football game—I didn’t want to play today. I might have had some fun, but then it would have ended and so would my freedom with another chime from the speaker. I looked across the street, through the park, and onto passing cars. I walked down to the sidewalk and stared at my bike and thought of Trey, my best friend and next-door neighbor. He was one year older than me and now went to the high school in town. He was getting out of school right now because he didn’t have a class the last block of the day. He would probably zoom by any minute if I kept looking at the street. The thought of hopping on my bike and riding to his house crossed my mind. I could spend the rest of the afternoon with my best friend and miss a couple of classes. I had never skipped school, but I had a good reason to try it this one time. No one would notice.

My classmates would probably think I was going for a brief ride. I would pass from sight and they would never notice whether I came back. I untangled my bike lock and coiled it around the stem of my bike seat. I looked behind me while I was straddling the bike to make sure no one was watching and pushed off with one leg. The first pedals were hard; someone was going to see me, they were going to tell, and I was going to get in trouble. But having a great afternoon with my best friend was a lot more tempting than two more hours of school—I sped off.

The bike ride passed quickly because I was distracted. The anticipation of the afternoon’s fun was building. Trey and I didn’t have to do much of anything to have fun, so I knew we would. On the way home, I rode through a couple of intersections and couldn’t remember if the light was green or red. I pulled up to the side of my garage and leaned my bike up against the house. I walked across the gravel side yard and into the grass that neatly lined all sides of Trey’s house. Crouching down next to the basement window well I could see Trey in front of the TV. He spent all his time in the basement when he was home and sure enough he was sitting cross-legged in front of his old TV framed by cheap wooden paneling. He was playing his Nintendo and the glow from the TV danced across his face, his nose casting a pointed shadow back to his ear. I reached out over the window well, making sure I didn’t fall in, and tapped the window. The window well scared me because of the huge wolf spiders that lived in them. I had this fear of falling into the hole and being eaten alive by spiders, their hairy legs all around me. Trey didn’t turn around before he bolted up the stairs to come to the door; he always knew it was me. I was the only one who tapped on this window.

I walked around the front of his house past the great window that looked into the living room. I could hear his loud steps up the stairs. He skipped two, maybe three steps with each lunge and made a racket that his mom couldn’t stand. Trey opened the door with a startled look on his face. His hair billowed upward in uniform waves that jerked when he gave a cautious look back into the house.

“Trey!” His mom’s yell escaped the house just as Trey slid out and shut the door behind him.

“What’s that all about?” I said.

“Nothing, she wants me to do my homework now,” Trey replied.

“So…nothing serious then. Phew! Thought she was going to chase after us there for a second.”

The lawns in our neighborhood were not fenced so Trey and I began walking from his front yard to my backyard.

“Wait, aren’t you supposed to be at school?” Trey said.

“Yeah, I ditched. I don’t know what got into me today. I couldn’t take anymore classes after Algebra. Just wanted that part of my day to be over.”

“That’s fine with me,” Trey said.

“I knew it would be.”

We jumped on my trampoline and I tried to bounce Trey higher than ever. I was getting big enough that I couldn’t jump too high without hitting the ground through the trampoline—that stung a little. We jumped for an hour and then mimicked the wrestling moves we had seen on TV earlier in the week. We were pretty good at them and we should have been because Trey and I watched six hours of wrestling per week. We also had plenty of time to practice because Trey and I didn’t concern ourselves with homework. We would try homework, but we had too much energy back then and couldn’t take our minds away from our own fun for more than ten minutes.

Eventually we got bored and picked some crab apples from a tree in Trey’s yard. Our backyards faced a busy residential street that our old elementary school was on. The fence lined the backyards of the houses that faced the street. Trey and I each got a handful of crab apples. I stood at an angle to the fence so I could see, through the slats of the wooden planks, the next car that was coming up the street. We launched our handfuls over the fence. The car didn’t stop. We continued hitting car after car. There were a few boring people who kept on driving after we drilled them, but finally one car stopped right in the middle of the road.

“Run like hell,” Trey yelled.

“Good idea, dude.” I took off after him because he was the faster runner. He led the way to the front yard between our houses. From there we could hear the driver’s door slam, like he had stepped out to chase after us. We quickly caught our breath before walking to the end of the cul-de-sac. We took a few steps toward the corner of the fence and saw the car through the slats. A man was slowly driving up the street toward us.

“Go, go, go! He’s right there!” I yelled. We cut through backyards, jumping over shrubs, and rocks, and dodging through trees. The trampoline was a soft place to land. We stood up in time to see the driver turn the corner.

“That was a close call, Trey.”

“I know. He almost got us.”

We lay on the trampoline on opposite ends so we wouldn’t slide toward the middle where the trampoline would sag. When my family moved into this house we planted a small maple tree in the backyard and it had grown tremendously over the years. The maple now gave Trey and me shade from the hot afternoon sun and prevented the trampoline’s surface from being uncomfortably hot to touch. Before we hunkered down for the night with thirty blankets we made sure the trampoline rested under the maple tree so it would shade us from the streetlight. In a few years the maple was big enough to keep the light out from my parents second story bedroom.

The next five minutes passed in silence. We caught our breath. I stared at the clouds rolling across the sky and followed a rare maple leaf that had been brushed off by the rustling of the branches in the wind, fall down in-between us. Trey’s serious face caught me by surprise.

“We’re moving, Brian,” Trey said.

I took it in before I replied. He must not have known an easier way to break the news and it was impossible to break it lightly.

“Uhh…you are?” Silence.

“Yep, I would have told you sooner but I’ve been dreading this conversation with you because there’s no way to make it easy.”

“Well, no there isn’t. Where to? And why?”

“My Dad found a new job in some town about an hour south of here.” We had both returned to our backs, too afraid to face each other and the truth.

“That sucks. Well, what I mean is that sucks for you and us…good for your dad. When are you moving?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks, Trey? That’s so soon. You haven’t even put the house up for sale.”

“I know. My parents have already found renters and they closed on the new house last week.”

There was nothing I could say that would make Trey stay here, living next to me. I wanted it to be a lie, but I could see a tear sliding down his cheek. I rolled over on my stomach and elbows. My head drooped and I paid ridiculous attention to the blades of grass through the tarp of the trampoline, trying so hard to wish this away. My tears ran down my nose, falling to the trampoline. Our silence thickened the air. I sorted through my memories of Trey. I feared not having anyone to talk to. Who was I going to cause mischief with? When were we ever going to practice our new wrestling moves? When were we going to see each other again after he moved? And the years left of high school…I badly wanted to experience those with Trey. The double dates we could have gone on, the proms, and graduation parties. Those years now expanded in front of me, endless on the horizon. Each remaining year of high school was going to feel like a decade.

I wasn’t wise enough to enjoy the time we had left as neighbors and friends. To me, this news meant Trey was going to die in two weeks. Sixty miles away is just the same as a thousand miles away when you don’t have cars.

I think I’m heading inside, Brian,” Trey said as he rolled off his side of the trampoline. I expected him to break the silence with that, but I couldn’t tell if that was an open invitation for me to follow or not, so I just lay still.

“Okay, see ya later, man.” Maybe if I weaned Trey off like some bad habit it would make the move easier for the both of us.

I was foolish then. I should have spent as much time with Trey as possible over those weeks, but I didn’t.

Over the next few months Trey and I managed to see each other almost every weekend, but that was only through the summer. We got distracted from our friendship when school started. Our visits were mostly around holidays or three-day weekends when we had a lot of time on our hands.

The visits we had were less and less eventful. We always seemed to be reminiscing about what it was like when we lived next to each other. We tried wrestling on the trampoline, even threw crab apples at buses leaving the elementary school, but we weren’t into it like before. The experiences Trey and I had, the things we did, made any time apart insignificant because they could bring the closeness back, but whenever conversation shifted to the present I felt disengaged. We couldn’t achieve the comfortable level of friendship we had before by reminiscing about our experiences. We needed originality and it was not to be found by either one of us.

After one visit I realized that we would never have enough time to fully catch-up. Trey would always have friends I didn’t know, and I would always be involved in activities that he would never hear the details of, even if we had a week together. That wasn’t enough time to establish familiarity again. I thought Trey and I were living the same life. It was easy to think that because we liked the same stuff, thought the same stuff, and did the same stuff. Now it seems like they were always separate when I look back on those years.

* * *

Seven years later I find myself in a similar situation. College brought many new experiences and friends, but I didn’t expect it to bring a friend that I cherished as much as I had cherished Trey. Zvika is three years older than I and graduated a year ahead of me. I had accepted the fact that when I went to college I would have friends from all over the country, but Zvika is from Israel.

The morning before I took Zvika to the airport one last time, I lie on my bed and shuffled through the memories of my friend. For years I had confided in him all my internal struggles. The first year we lived in the same hall. I often walked down a few doors to his room to vent my frustration with life. He helped me through relationships with girls, or the lack thereof. I would lie on my floor staring at my ceiling after a girl rejected me. I busied myself with finding faces in the drywall pattern until Zvika came into my room and talked things over. He had served three years in the Israeli army before coming overseas. I always thought of him as being more experienced. I respected my elders, so I expected Zvika’s advice to be good. He had been through a long distance relationship with his girlfriend for years; I admired that, so I listened. In return, I offered up what little advice I had for him and occasionally I would correct his English.

I swung my legs over the side of my bed, waking my tired eyes for this day. On my trip to the bathroom I stopped and looked at the door Zvika slept behind.

My home was Zvika’s home away from home. He had joined us for Thanksgiving breaks and Easter breaks. He had been there when my family surprised me with a Nissan Maxima one morning. My mom took snapshots of us the first time we got in the car—smiles from ear to ear. My family took him in, welcomed and enjoyed his presence.

Before Zvika flew home to Israel this morning, he spent one last night in my parent’s house. I expected it to be a profound night, but just because someone is leaving doesn’t mean something magical is going to happen. We sat around and drank Coronas while watching Sportscenter. ESPN was a luxury we didn’t have at our apartment.

I knocked on Zvika’s door, opening it up to see him sprawled on top of the covers. “Hey, you ready?” I said.

“What time is it?”

“5:30. There’s a clock right there.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll be down shortly.”

“Alright, see you then.” I shut the door. Just like last night I had expected something great to happen, I expected our last conversations to be profound, but by now I know it is our friendships that make the everyday talks memorable.

My parents weren’t up yet, they had said goodbye to Zvika last night. I stood at the top of the stairs leaning over the banister listening to their goodbyes. I thought if I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t cry myself, but I did. Unlike my last weeks with Trey, I had spent as much time with Zvika as possible. I had known this day would come for three years. The brevity of friendships forces you to treasure them. I had learned that much from Trey, but you couldn’t learn to make these departures easy and I feared that most this morning.

“No breakfast?” I said to Zvika as he hauled his suitcase down the stairs.

“Nope, no time.”

“Okay, it’s up to you.” Zvika had always obsessed about being on time, and on time for him was early.

The drive to the airport was long; I had a lot of time to determine when I should give Zvika his letter. I had tried to write everything I felt, but it just turned out to be a jumbled mess. Finding the exact words that would encapsulate my emotion was impossible, this was a feeling that I couldn’t write about, at least not yet, maybe never.

I drove intently so it looked like I was too busy to talk. Zvika wasn’t saying anything either. The rift in our friendship was on the horizon. We silently cowered before it, afraid to take the next step on this journey.

“Man, I am glad you shipped all your other stuff home,” I said as I lifted Zvika’s suitcase out of the trunk.

“Got everything?”

“Hope so.” I could see tears in his eyes. Mine soon flooded with their own.

I hugged him tightly, trying to remind myself that I would see him again, but this was the end for this stage in our friendship. Backing off, I held out my hand to give him the letter.

He looked confused. “What’s this?”

“You’ll see,” I said.

I held out my hand for a parting handshake and Zvika firmly grasped it.

“Goodbye, my friend,” I said.

“Until next time.”

I laughed and stood on the edge of the curb leaning up against my car. Zvika turned and walked into the terminal. The tinted automatic doors shut behind him and he was gone.

It was silent in my car, absent of Zvika’s boisterous voice and joyful laugh. I thought of all the laughs we had shared then. The drive home was hard. I started to reminisce about the times with Zvika, the parties, the trips home, but mostly the conversations. We knew each other so well. I didn’t worry so much as to who would take his place like I did after Trey left. I knew no one would ever take his place, just as no one had replaced Trey. There would be another great friend down the road, but Zvika and Trey were now memories, some distant, some near.

Always Listening

*All names, events, and places are purely coincidental.*


My hand had never felt something so hard before. It was Craig’s body, but with the life and warmth drained out of him—cold and hard. I pulled back in shock and regained my composure to touch him one last time.

Craig lay in a cherry wood casket inside the funeral chapel. He was dressed in his favorite Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, with tokens from his life set snugly in the coffin between the wall of the casket and his bitter body. A stuffed monkey, a mix CD of Craig’s favorite band, the Beastie Boys, and a shot glass, usually filled with bootlegged vodka, placed in the casket down by his feet.

I touched Craig on the shoulder and looked for the bruising around his neck from the noose, but the shirt was buttoned all the way up to his chin, hiding any evidence of pain. My eyes stuck to Craig’s face a long moment before they looked away. I hoped that I would be able to call upon the image at any point in my life to recall the person I once knew. As soon as I turned away, however, the image left me and I realized that images of Craig alive would be the only ones I would be able to remember.

* * *

I knocked on the door. No one. After a few minutes I saw Craig come down the stairs and motion to me that the door was open. I would have just walked in, but I didn’t feel comfortable.

“What’s up, bud?” I said.

“Not much. You coming out tonight?”

“Maybe. What’s going on?”

“Party somewhere.”

I sighed and thought about telling Craig how we could be better friends if he wasn’t relentlessly bent on drinking. I would have loved Craig to stay sober tonight. We got along so well when he didn’t drink, but when he did I could never relate to the Craig I wanted to know. I resigned myself to change and didn’t try to persuade him into not attending the party. I tried to change the subject.

“So, when do you think Lauren is going to marry your brother?” I said.

“Which one? Brian?”

“Of course, man.”

“I don’t know. It is pretty serious though. You know, once they get married, we will be like brothers.”

“I have always wanted a brother."

* * *

My ceiling glowed dark silver, reflecting light from the window blinds that were collecting the moon’s rays. This night I lay in bed for an hour, like the previous three nights, and tried to picture Craig in Heaven. Heaven was a mysterious place to me, but I lay there in contemplation of my friend enjoying its bountiful treasures.

I had found some comfort in talking to Craig, as though he were standing beside me, the last nights as I fell asleep. I can’t claim to know about the ability of the dead to communicate with the living, but I held on tight to a thin line of faith that he would be able to hear me. I might have known a thing or two about Heaven, but I was unsure about Craig’s ears for my words.

“Craig? I don’t know if you hear me, but I just wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you. I just wanted to say that I hope whatever peace you couldn’t find in this world you found in the next.”

I held back enthusiasm and emotion when I spoke to him, thinking that if I spoke clearly and smoothly my voice would be more discernable to Craig.

“I miss you, and your friends miss you. We’ll never forget you.”

The words didn’t last long before the exhaustion of the week overtook them and changed them into an incoherent slur.


I dreamt I was in my high school’s main hallway. The hum of the white, tube lighting overhead could hardly be heard above the commotion of students leaving for the day. My last block of classes had finished and I joined the lemmings headed for the parking lot. We were propelled toward the doors by our desire to leave school.

It was freezing outside and my height gave me ample opportunity to scan the drop-off zone of the parking lot for the cars and their drivers that would be able to spare me the cold, long walk to my car. A red Honda Prelude caught my eye. I had seen the car before and recognized the cheap hub-caps that could have been bought at a gas station’s convenience shop. I was soon by the side of the Prelude. I bent over and cupped my hands over my eyes on the frosty window to see Craig staring blankly at me.

The window rolled down. “You want a ride, man?” Craig said.

I was thrilled that Craig was back. He was dead, but now he was very much alive, and I was going to get a chance to ride in his car, something I hadn’t experienced prior to his death.

“Would you give me a ride? That would be awesome, dude. I wasn’t looking forward to the walk,” I said.

“Hop in. Where are you parked?”

“The far side of the tennis courts.”

His composure was casual. He seemed to evade the mood of suicide that lingered in the air, making it thick. He started to drive and loop through the parking lot in order to get to the opposite side. I sat there, half expecting him to start telling me why he’d done it, and half expecting, the next time I glanced to my left, to see anyone else but Craig driving the Prelude. But it was always Craig at the wheel, and he never said a word.

I had so many questions about his death, but now that he was here all I could do was sit in silent reverie. My mind muddled through the questions, trying to pick one because I felt as though I had only one shot at getting a reply before my ride ended.

The Prelude pulled to a stop, and I saw my Accord to the right. I opened the door and put one foot outside. I hesitated and gazed at my car for a moment. I didn’t want to waste my opportunity. I slowly turned to Craig. His face was expectant, as if he knew my question before I had even chosen the one to ask.

“Can you hear me when I talk to you, Craig?”

His eyes glanced down and a smile flicked through his complexion as though he was happy I had chosen this question above the others.

“All the time,” he replied.

I couldn’t put into words the joy his answer gave me; anyway, no words were necessary. We smiled, and I nodded one last goodbye. We wouldn’t see each other again until my time came. I didn’t stare at him, trying to grasp again one last image before I stood up out of the car. The door shut and I watched the silhouette of Craig disappear down the street.


I was staring at my ceiling again, but this time it was a bright white, with the reflection of the sun off the rain-soaked street bending through the slits of the blinds. I remembered my dream in its entirety and tears found their best path down either cheek. I wasn’t trying to cry; the tears just came forth without effort. I find that these tears, the joyful ones, come unexpectedly and are welcomed.

The Collage

***I tried here to take pieces of other works to make one complete scene. This is what I came up with.***

What I recall isn’t pain but a sense of jarring reversal, as of all motion, sound, and light encountering their massive opposites. I felt grass and dirt against my cheek, and sorrow that Dad was shot, and confusion that I couldn’t reach him. (1)

As I saw the last blue line of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation before I opened another. (2)

I shut my eyes, the old morte settled its grip, and the next country gathered itself under my feet. (1)

The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. (3)

I waded ashore with measureless relief. The bank was an even slope of waving knee-high grasses and I came up into them and turned to look back. It was a wide river, mistakable for a lake or even an ocean unless you’d been wading and knew its current. Somehow I’d crossed it and somehow was unsurprised at having done so. (1)

There came into view a man, or so it seemed. (4) He had a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright, and his face was red as a ripe apple, but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter. In his hands he carried on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of white water-lilies. (4)

“This is what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.” (5)

The words uttered by the person without, affected me as somewhat singular, but what chiefly rendered them remarkable was the tone that accompanied them. It was wholly new. I cannot pretend to communicate the impression that was made upon me by these accents or to depict the degree in which force and sweetness were blended in them. They were articulated with a distinctness that was unexampled in my experience. But this was not all. (6)

“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” (7)

It (the words) imparted to me an emotion altogether involuntary and uncontrollable. When he uttered the words my heart overflowed with sympathy and my eyes with unbidden tears. (6)

He sat down on a rock and swung his feet in a stream – it was deep and swift; it would take him in a moment. I seized his arm.

Please, I said.

Soon, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. Very soon! He added, clasping my hands; then unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. (1)

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief?

No sir.

All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw.

I’ve been there and am going back.

Make of it what you will. (1)

(1) Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River. Atlantic Monthly: New York, 2001.
(2) Irving, Washington. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories. Penguin: New York, 1978.
(3) Tolkien, J.R.R. Return of the King. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1955.
(4) Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1954.
(5) Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. Harper: San Francisco, 1946.
(6) Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland. Oxford: New York, 1994.
(7) Hebrews 6:12. The Bible.

Streamlined

*All names, events, and places are purely coincidental. This story isn't based on true events.*

The dark street lit up with an arrow of white-blue light. A boy bounded from the couch and raced to the garage. He didn’t have to see the car to know who it was. It was his dad’s car and those headlights, imported from Japan, had a welcoming glow.

A silver Honda Civic droned into the garage, its front bumper barely above the pavement. The boy could barely see his dad over the large scoop in the hood that faced the windshield. All the boy could make out was his dad’s slicked back hair with his silver sunglasses resting on his head. His hair was silver too. Everything was silver.

The driver’s side door opened and Dean climbed out of the Civic. He had naturally pink skin and painting in the sun all day didn’t help Dean’s skin look better. Two outcroppings of slightly pinker skin encircled his eyes where the Oakley sunglasses had been. The white Billabong t-shirt had a montage of paint splatters that the boy would often reach up and touch when he hugged his father. The splatters dried stiff and they were a precise record of how long Dean had been painting in that same shirt.

“What are you doing up at this hour, kid?” Dean said.

“Waiting for you,” the boy said.

Dean gave a slight smile. He knew the boy paid no attention to his bedtime because his mother wasn’t home yet. He would reward him for his disobedience.

“What do you say we go cruise Main?”

The boy examined his father up and down. He couldn’t believe his dad had just asked him to go cruising. For as long as he could remember, the boy had watched his father’s friends come over for a night of cruising. His father’s friends had nice cars too, but everyone came here because his dad’s car was the best. It was the holy grail of street racers. Some would say, “Why it’s only a ’96 Honda Civic,” but the boy knew that the model and year didn’t matter. His dad’s magic is what made it fast. He knew more about the car than the builders themselves, and could drive it better than anyone else. Never in his wildest imagination had the boy thought the day would come when he got to see his dad race, actually be in the car with him.

Races would come and go with Dean’s friends, but races for Dean were a test of manhood. They weren’t to be taken lightly.

“You’ll have to be real still and real quiet when it is time for Dad to go, okay?”

The silver glow of the car had hypnotized the boy. He imagined it revving up past redline and shifting into gear, the tires smoking because his dad gave it so much power.

“Levi? You listening, kid?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll be real quiet, real still,” Levi answered.

“Okay, good. Now you just wait in the car. I will be back in a moment.”

Levi noticed the faint smell of smoke as he climbed into the car. His dad didn’t smoke, but his friends often got a cigarette by his dad long enough to light up and get a few puffs before his dad would throw it out the window.

The interior of the car was silver. The dash had been black, but it didn’t match so Dean found a silver dash at an online auto parts dealer. Levi’s younger brother had been in Dean’s car more than him, but certainly not when Dean was racing. Eli’s child seat was in the small, worthless backseat. Eli’s seat was the only thing dirty about the car. Not even a small pebble carried in the tread of someone’s shoe had found its way to the floor-mats. The seats were wiped down with a leather-protecting polish, and Dean used Windex on the face of his stereo and the heads-up displays.

Levi could now barely see out of the car because of the scoop in the hood. A large sticker that ran the width of the windshield narrowed the view out the windshield even more. Levi could see just a strip of his dad’s shirt, as he walked over to get in the Civic.

“Ready to go?” Dean inquired.

Dean changed into a white t-shirt that wasn’t splattered with paint, and jean shorts. This was dress-up for Dean. Any article of clothing without paint on it was fancy.

“Let’s go,” Levi replied, trying to hide his excitement and wonder at the site of his Dad at the steering wheel of this car.


Main Street was flooded with cruisers on Saturday night. Oncoming cars sped by with low or high-pitched hums, depending on what kind of engine and exhaust. Dean’s car had a rhythmic, high-pitched sound. The sound was a cross between a weed-whacker and a lawnmower.

Dean had taken the shocks off and this made the ride a little bumpier, but it had made the Civic look much sleeker than before. It was a streamlined car now, ready to take on any cruiser in its path.

Dean weaved in and out of traffic to come even with a green Honda Prelude. Levi had never seen his Dad move so fast in the car. It was as though Dean was now part of the machine. He moved in indescribable efficiency. The light ahead turned yellow and then red. Main Street was a four-lane road and the Civic and Prelude were now the first cars stopped at the intersection.

The driver of the Prelude was in his twenties. The Prelude was a present from his parents for getting his GED. He didn’t know how to become one with his car, and that is why the race was over before it started.

Dean revved the Civic to get it warmed up for the quarter-mile sprint. The Prelude answered back. The light turned green. Levi was thrown against the back of his seat. He had been waiting for this moment for so long and was able to slow everything down to take it all in.

Dean’s eyes were bent on the street ahead and nothing else. The sinews of his muscles tightened on the wheel. He knew how to shift by the sound of the car because Levi never saw his eyes shift as they sped off the line. The tires shrieked and left a streak of black on the asphalt behind them. As Dean shifted into second, the Civic’s turbo kicked in. Air was injected into the car and it hissed for a brief second. Dean was only in second gear as long as it took him to shift to third. The car exploded forward and the streetlights blurred by.

Levi looked right to see the Prelude, but it wasn’t there. It had fallen back far enough that Levi could only see its low profile in the rearview mirror. The quarter-mile mark was a couple seconds away and the Prelude was in too big a hole to make a comeback now.

“That fool had nothing. Look at him…way back there,” Dean exclaimed.

The apprentice had succumbed to the master once again. Levi didn’t think it was possible to be as good with a car as his Dad was. Dean had molded into the Civic for the fifteen seconds the quarter-mile usually took. Levi felt like he was in the car by himself during the race. Dean wasn’t human, he was the car.

“You like that, kid?”

“Thanks so much, dad!” Levi’s smile spread across his face.

“Maybe we will make this a habit now.”

“I’d like that.”


The white-blue light flooded the garage as the Civic came to a stop. The engine hissed as Dean turned the car off. The tires were still warm from the race and Levi could feel the heat rising from the floor as he made his way out of the car.

Levi felt like he had been on a magic carpet ride for the past hour and was still staring at the car when Dean called to him from the door of the house, “You coming, kid?”

Levi didn’t answer and ran to his father.

“You think I could drive that car like you someday, Dad?”

Dean watched the garage door close and shroud the car in darkness until the next race called its driver back to the streets.

“Maybe, kid. Maybe.”

Apartment 504

*A note. All names, events, and places are purely coincidental and aren't based on real events.*

The noise rolled up through the walls and threatened to shake the picture frames off the coffee table. The wood floor vibrated and made my feet tingle the rest of the day. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know what to do about the band practices going on in the apartment below me. My once beautiful and open apartment now seemed cluttered and choppy. It was the noise. The abrupt changes of beats from the drums, the bass guitar, and the screeching (or was that singing?) changed everything.

* * *
I wasn’t a feng shui expert, but my furniture made good use of the space available in my one-bedroom apartment. The couches’ low backs didn’t divide the living room into sections. My desk, with books and a laptop, had a low profile and hid in the corner where I had just bought a plasma television to mount on the wall. I was very proud of the whole layout and I called my parents to thank them for finding the apartment for me. I had been so busy with job applications that the time to search for housing was out of the question and my parents took it upon themselves to find a nice, but inexpensive residence in Newark. I was hoping for something closer to Manhattan and specifically not in New Jersey, but it was a sacrifice I had to make because living in Manhattan would mean much more expensive housing.

When I moved in, I noticed the apartment below was vacant, and hoped a pretty young lady would take it. Perhaps she would commute to Manhattan with me when I found a job there.

After I finished my job searching for the day I knocked on the door of the empty apartment. I held my breath as I anticipated the sight of my beautiful neighbor, but no one came. I was beginning to fear it would be vacant until I upgraded to a Manhattan studio apartment.

It was a Sunday afternoon. I started climbing the stairs to my sixth floor apartment. As I approached the fifth floor door right below mine, I heard a noise from inside. It grew louder with each step and I knew that my wish hadn’t come true. There couldn’t have been a pretty young lady in that apartment making that earsplitting racket. I stopped at the door and stared at its dull green paint job. My hopes for a neighbor had been dashed away in a matter of stairs and I dreaded what lay beyond that fifth floor door – the source of that noise.

I slammed the door behind me but it couldn’t be heard. The disturbance from beneath my wood floor muffled all other noise. I wasn’t and am still not the expert on rock music, but I knew by the time I reached my door that a rock band, or at least one member of the band, was now living below me. I thought to myself, I need a job fast, and a well-paying one. Newark can be home to the lower people in life, the rock bands. People with the loftier goals can move to the city.

Sleep didn’t visit me that evening. The band played through the night. Even in my room, where I wasn’t directly over the guitar, drums, and amplifiers, I heard every chord. I lay there with my eyes closed. Why did people have to do this during the night? I made a pact with myself that if I didn’t sleep at all the next night I would visit Apartment 504. I would ask them as politely as possible to practice some other time, maybe during the day. I was sure that wouldn’t be much of a problem for the band. I mean, it wasn’t as if they would have day jobs.

Still, I was without sleep twenty-four hours later. I dressed for the big introduction and kept imagining the person who would open the door. I had heard mostly yells from below the last two nights and feared what kind of body housed the vocal cords that could make such noises. The vocals in the band’s songs were raspy and loud. The voice carried notes, but in the form of shrieking. This was a discovery for me. I didn’t know the human voice was capable of such horrendous noise. I wore jeans and black leather shoes with a pea coat. I hoped that my clothing wasn’t too preppy or would somehow intimidate the neighbor into a position of inferiority. Naturally, my apartment cost more because I lived higher up, not that I had a great view of Newark, but I had a sense of pride that no one lived above me. I took a cautious approach to Apartment 504 because I was going to suggest a change in their daily schedule for my convenience and I didn’t want to come off as arrogant.

The drab green door stared back at me. I was now ready to say what I had to say. I had played through the conversation in my mind and it was going to go smoothly after some small talk and introductions. I knocked. There was no answer. I put my ear to the door and listened for even the faintest sound of the guitar. Maybe they were playing acoustic in there for a change. I leaned harder into the door. My right ear smashed into the door and engulfed the peep hole.

Someone yanked the door open and I almost fell into the entryway. Just in time, I grabbed the door jam with both hands and managed to stay upright. At least I had kept an embarrassing scene from becoming worse.

“Can I help you?” A man asked me before I saw him.

I was repositioning myself and fixing my coat, which had been shifted on my body in the attempt to rescue myself from complete humiliation. I looked at a man who was 6’5” and probably weighed 250 pounds. I could tell he was strong, but not chiseled like a body-builder. He wore holed jeans with Converse Chuck Taylor low-tops. His tight black shirt stretched across his chest and the words, “The Sex Pistols”, were barely readable. He had a protrusion of metal coming out of his chin. I had only seen this piercing on MTV a few times and thought it was so animalistic. His face was stern. There was no moustache or beard present except enormous sideburn chops coming to a point on either side of his mouth. His hair was buzzed short and he had a mohawk. It was a subtle mohawk, if there is such a thing.

“Uh, yes sir. I wanted to introduce myself. I am from Apartment 604, the one right above you. My name is Brent.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Craig.”

“Sorry if I seemed to be snooping around. I was trying to hear if anyone was home.” I made eye contact and was surprised to see welcoming blue eyes that weren’t glaring with anger as I had imagined them to be.

“Oh that’s all right. I was just cooking up some breakfast. Everyone else is asleep.”

I was trying to nonchalantly peer around his mass to get a view of the entryway. I saw a bunch of cords wrapped in electrical tape running through the hallway from the bedroom to the great room. The light from the window reflected off of the wood floor, making the dirt visible. By the look of Craig I would expect more dirt on the floor, but the entryway was almost as clean as mine.

“Brent?” Craig asked.

“Sorry. Excuse me Craig, but did you say everyone?”

“Yes, I did. There are four of us. We’re all in a band and needed someplace to stay before we move to New York. We are trying to make it big and get some gigs going that will give us more than enough money to get us through the night.”

“I see. And does your band have a name?”

A wave of mercy came over me and I suddenly felt sorry for these four guys. They were just trying to make a living and I selfishly wanted to change their daily schedule so it would improve mine. I felt intimidated by Craig’s presence and was not ready to suggest that they practice some other time.

“We go by Damrosch.”

“Well, good luck with the gigs…Damrosch,” I squeaked out. I can’t believe I said that. I didn’t even mean it, but was too scared to say anything about the sleep deprivation that was clearly visible in my bloodshot eyes.

“Thanks man. I’ll let you know what happens.” Craig turned and shut the door. The sight of the door made me forget about the surprisingly nice tenant who lived behind it. The music came rushing back – the screams, yells, and violent guitar.

I spent the rest of the day strolling around Manhattan. I hoped to find a job writing short, one paragraph product descriptions for one of the big department stores’ catalogs. The distraction of Damrosch’s music hindered my job-searching enthusiasm. The rock of Damrosch came with me wherever I went.

The bass drum had vibrated a picture frame off the wall in my entryway while I was away. I picked it up. It was a picture of my parents and me on Fifth Avenue. They had come out to help move me in and we had taken a day off and gone into the city to gawk at the canyon of skyscrapers in the heart of New York City. I opened the closet to the right of the front door, grabbed the broom and swept up the glass. Damrosch was playing as I swept and the glass shards bounced across the floor with the vibrations that thundered from beneath.

After the third consecutive night without sleep I couldn’t even move the next morning. I tried to sleep during the day but the thumping was in my head. The bass drum would constantly strike, even when the neighbors weren’t playing. I had never experienced a migraine until now. It came with the drums. I spent that day hiding from light. I pinned a dark blue fleece blanket over the curtains in my room to snuff what ever light had managed to leak through the curtains. I took a body pillow from my bed, stuffing the edges of it between the base of the door and the floor. It was pitch black; I stumbled back to my bed and hit my nightstand. The stand was the cheapest piece of furniture in my apartment. I had bought it at a garage sale before I left for Newark. It had three legs, but one leg was significantly shorter than the rest. I sat down as slowly as possible into my bed. My brain felt like it would burst forth from my head any minute. I groped for my water in the dark; I found it along with a bottle of ibuprofen. I took four of them. As I lay there, I couldn’t distinguish anymore between the echoes of Damrosch’s music in my head and the live music below my apartment. They molded together and synchronized in my head. I was accepting the noise, that was when I was able to sleep.

My migraine was gone the following morning. I had slept through the rest of the day and that night. I had fallen asleep around four in the afternoon. I had sixteen remarkable hours of sleep. There were no guitar chords echoing through my apartment when I pulled the body pillow away and opened the door. Damrosch must have been taking a break from their noisemaking. It didn’t ever sound like playing. For me, the goal of Damrosch’s music was to make noise, and they were damn good at it.
I had some luck that day with the job searching. I had applied at Macy’s and given them some samples of my writing. They called for an interview later that day. It was set for three in the afternoon. I spent the morning cleaning the apartment. I had denied any effort to clean the last couple of days because I couldn’t find the motivation. It is so useless to clean when vibrations are bound to knock more objects off of desks and tables. I found some sticky tack in a drawer of my desk and thought it would be of great use. College graduates didn’t have to sticky tack their posters to walls anymore. Graduates trying to make a living needed to mount their framed posters by nail, hammer, and level. This was another step toward sophistication.

The sticky tack held pictures to tables and my computer speakers to my desk. I even put a piece in every corner of the laptop. The computer was fairly heavy but my paranoia about the powers emanating from below my apartment pushed me to extremes. I was so sick of picking up the same books off of the floor that I stuck them to the shelf in the bookcase. The books were old and dusty anyway, left over from some obscure college course because the bookstore refused to buy them back. I also remounted my plasma television on deep hooks so even an earthquake couldn’t send it from the wall.

My apartment was Damrosch proof. However, my mind wasn’t. The time came for my interview but I had another awful migraine. I ended up having to excuse myself mid-interview and that surely sealed the deal that I wouldn’t get the job at Macy’s. I didn’t even notice the guitar riffs when I came back to my apartment. The real ones just melded into the guitar already playing in my head and caused me to hole up in my cave with some more ibuprofen.

I slept again and woke up right before sunrise. Damrosch was still playing, but now I wanted to hear more of their music, it had made me lethargic before, but now it was energizing me. I took down the blanket and opened the window. There was an escape ladder right outside the window with small platforms at each floor. I slowly stepped out of my window and set my feet down on the platform outside the window sill. The platform and steps of the ladder were rusted red. I didn’t want to trust the metal with my whole weight. I was fearful of the platforms ability to support even my flimsy body. I bent my head to hear the music. The noise was coming out their open windows and bouncing off of the brick wall facing the building and up to my perch. After all this time listening to the music I couldn’t decipher the words in any of the songs. If the words were sung and not yelled, that would make the difference. There were parts of one particular song that I did enjoy. The drums died down and so did the shrieking while the guitar player lit up the amplifier with an impressive solo. It started slowly and built to a climax. Its rhythm always thrilled me, but it would be drowned out by the drums bursting forth from the silence. I tried many times to pick apart the drums so I could hear the guitar, but it was too hard. The noise began to irritate me, it wasn’t as muffled outside, and so I slipped through the window into the dim apartment. However, I was thankful for the timing of my rest on the windowsill, so I could hear the guitar solo that I enjoyed since Damrosch moved in.

I walked into the living room and felt imprisoned. The room didn’t flow like it used to. The edges of the room and furniture were sharp. The lines of objects ended suddenly, much like the songs, and then they would start up out of nowhere again to disturb the peace. I wanted to rearrange the furniture but knew that this was the best possible layout. I had drawn up all the layouts and chosen this one because it made the most use out of the least amount of space, but now the walls seemed to lean in on all sides. Perhaps the beats of Damrosch’s music were caught up in the walls like they were caught up in my head and they were about to explode onto the room, rearranging the furniture in the loudest formation possible – the way Damrosch would arrange furniture.

The next morning I woke up from sleep that wasn’t induced by a load of ibuprofen and a migraine. Damrosch kept playing through the night, but how could I tell? They were always playing in my mind. There would be no job searching that day. I needed some rest and hoped that I would be able to get back on the same daily routine now that I could sleep to Damrosch’s music. Lunch was New York style pizza in New Jersey. On my way back to the apartment I saw a moving truck out front. I remember thinking maybe someone would move in on my floor. We could help one another cope with the monotonous chords of Apartment 504. I tore up the stairs hoping to find a pretty young lady in the empty Apartment 606, but I halted at the fifth floor. The door to Craig’s apartment was open and there were boxes stacked six feet high. I took a few more steps and Craig came around the corner of the entryway and out the door with a box in each arm.

“Hey Craig. Are you moving out?” I said.

A low grunt came out of Craig as he set the boxes down and he rose with a smile, “Yes, we are. We finally got a permanent gig in the city and we are headed there. The housing is going to be steep, but we will get by.”

I couldn’t believe it. Just when I was learning to live with Damrosch’s music, they were moving out. Now my thoughts were focused on the future of my life in Apartment 604.

“So no more late night practice sessions?”

“Nope. Why? Were we keeping you up?” He chuckled.

“Ah, are you kidding me? No. No. No.” I smirked and doubted my ability to lie.

“Great. I was worried about the other people in this building and the next.”

“It was fine. Do you need any help?”

“Nope, the rest of the guys will get the last stuff. Thanks anyway.”

“Yeah, no problem. Maybe I will see you around in New York.”

“Maybe, talk with you later.” He heaved up the boxes and lumbered down the stairs in his Chuck T’s.

When I got into my apartment I felt as though Damrosch was still below me playing. The only thing that was missing was the vibrations moving through the floor and the walls. The sticky tack was the first stuff to go. It didn’t bother me that it was holding my pictures down. However, the tack was simply unnecessary with Damrosch gone. I swept the floor and picked up some papers that had been drummed off of my desk. Lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, I fell asleep to the guitar riff I was going to miss.

I woke up with the worst headache yet and stumbled around with my eyes closed until I found some ibuprofen. This headache had come on instantly, much like earlier versions when Damrosch would start up another concert in their living room. A couple hours had passed and the ibuprofen still wasn’t working. I made my room as dark as possible again, remaining on the brink of sleep throughout the day and night. Movement hurt and I only got out of bed for the bathroom, where I would also fill up my water bottle. I might have slept some during the night, maybe an hour, before I came out into the living room. I wore my Oakley sunglasses to reduce the throbbing pain brought on by the light. The beige curtains in the room didn’t do a great job blocking out the morning rays.

The bowl of Frosted Flakes was hard to keep down that morning and it was hard enough to eat. The light burned my sleepy eyes so badly I couldn’t see my cereal bowl. I managed to find my spoon and take a few mouthfuls of Frosted Flakes, but I couldn’t finish them. I felt sick. My headache was different; it was brought on by the lack of Damrosch’s music, not because of it. I was now certain this was the cause of my pain. I knew I had started to get more used to the constant noise. The music may have been continuous, but I had some of the best nights of sleep and my headaches were beginning to be rare. If Damrosch were here now, maybe the headaches would be dying off completely. If I kept on living in my apartment without Damrosch below me my headaches might eventually go away, but how long would that take? I didn’t have the time to take a week off from job searching. I needed to be rested and sane to even have a shot at an interview. I wondered where Damrosch would have moved. Certainly, they were some place that was cheap, but closer to their work. I didn’t have Craig’s last name though. I didn’t even know the other band members. I thought that it would be impossible to track down Damrosch and even harder to move in above them, but that was my best shot at getting rid of the migraines. The housing wouldn’t be as nice and the rent would be more, but this move had the power to open windows. I wouldn’t have headaches. I would be able to sleep. And I would be closer to a potential job in New York City.

I walked down to the fifth floor and stared at the doors. Craig had to have befriended someone on the floor. He turned out to be a nice guy and it was possible that he had given someone his new address. I tried Apartment 502. My memory served me right, my other neighbor, Adam, answered the door. I hadn’t spoken with Adam much since I had moved in. There was an occasional “hello” and “how you doing?” but nothing serious. I used to hear Adam’s surround sound when he watched movies but all other noise was drowned out when Damrosch moved in. He answered the door in gray plaid pajamas and a white t-shirt. I had woken him up by the look of his hair.

“Hey Adam, I have a weird question for you.”

“Alright, go ahead.” He looked puzzled.

“It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. Did you know Craig, next door?”

“Yah, nice guy. His music was a little loud but I learned to deal. They moved out yesterday.”

“I know. Would you by chance have their new address?”

“Let me check. I wasn’t here when they left but I think Craig slid it under my door with a note.” Adam walked back to a small stand inside his entryway and picked up a slip of paper. “Here it is.”

I read it, Northwest Corner of North 10th St. and Berry St., Apartment # 301. It was hard to tell if it was 10th or 11th Street. Craig had drawn a vertical line right through the zero. “Thanks a lot Adam. Have a good day.”

“You all right, man? You look like you haven’t slept in a few days.”

“A couple. I am fine. I just need to get out of here.” I walked away quickly hoping Adam wouldn’t inquire as to why I needed to leave – he didn’t.

So, there were two possibilities. I wished that there weren’t apartment buildings on the corner of 10th and Berry and 11th and Berry, but I wasn’t that lucky. There were two apartment buildings, nearly identical, and they both had Apartment #301. I knew it would weird Craig out if I knocked on his door and told him I am his new neighbor, but I was willing to take that risk to get my daily dose of Damrosch back. I tried 11th and Berry first without any luck. No one came to the door. The apartment building at 10th and Berry was similar to mine in Newark. Its staircase wound up in a big circle and Apartment 301 was in the middle of a flight of stairs on a landing that was not much bigger than two doormats. I didn’t even have to knock. I heard Craig’s shrieks coming from inside and I knew I had found the place. The bass drum was hitting hard, the energy from that guitar solo was back, and the bass guitar thumped. I didn’t have to spook Craig out by telling him I followed his band to another city to live above them.

I contacted the real estate agency and couldn’t believe my lucky streak. Apartment 401 was vacant and I told them I would move in that day. I didn’t have much to move. Adam was willing to help me move the sofas and the bed with his pickup truck and I thanked him a number of times. As I took load after load up the stairs I heard Damrosch’s rock blasting through Apartment 301. The Newark apartment was twice as large as the new one, but I was all about sacrifice. Adam helped haul the couches up the stairs and I gave him a twenty as a thank you. I wanted to spare more, but this place almost cost twice as much as Apartment 604. My headache had begun to taper off when I arrived and by the time Adam left it was gone.

The arrangement of my furniture wasn’t such a big dilemma this time. There was barely room for it all. I put everything up against the wall and created as much open space in the middle of the room as possible. I finished unpacking in a few hours and sat down on the sofa. I was completely relaxed and ready to start my job searches tomorrow. Damrosch’s music shot up from the floor and my ears ate the noise up. There was something weird about the floor. My feet didn’t feel any vibrations. I looked at the pictures on my coffee table and they weren’t shifting at all from the bass drum. I was no longer able to see the dirt on the floor bounce to the music. There was something different about this Damrosch. The ear splitting sound was there but the force that shook everything on the same block was gone. It might have never been here. I didn’t pay any attention to feel the walls or the floor for the vibrations of their playing earlier. I was too pleased to hear their music again. I was positive Damrosch was playing so I had to go see for myself.

I visited the apartment right below me and could hear them playing inside. It was deafening. I pounded the door with my fist because I knew it would take something awful to be heard inside that noise box. Damrosch kept on playing and they were playing my favorite song with the guitar riff. I stood at the door and didn’t knock until the drums had overpowered the artistic expression of the guitarist. This time the door opened. It was a woman. She was probably in her mid-twenties. She wore a lot of black make-up but it didn’t hide her beauty.

“Can I help you?” I couldn’t hear her over the music.

“What? I can’t hear you,” I yelled.

She didn’t answer, turned around and ran into her apartment. The music stopped. It didn’t gradually die down like it was live. It stopped like it was a CD. I realized then that Damrosch didn’t live here. I was hearing their music, I wasn’t hearing them playing. Whoever this girl was, she was playing Damrosch’s music as loud as they used to practice it. This would explain the lack of vibrations. The sound was present in my apartment, but not the energy, the force that made the building shake violently.

“Hello, can I help you?” The woman asked.

She caught me daydreaming about the band she was listening to.

“Sorry. I thought someone else lived here.”

“Nope, it’s only me. And your name is?”

“I’m Brent.”

“I’m Cassy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I just moved in upstairs, right above you.”

“Would you like to come in for a minute? Have a drink maybe?”

“Uh, sure.” I felt uncomfortable but she was being the nice neighbor and inviting the new kid on the block in for a drink.

I followed her into the apartment. It was identical to mine and she had her furniture backed up against the wall too. One wall had an enormous bookcase with a television, CDs, books, and her stereo. Cassy pressed play on the CD player and turned the volume down.

“Sorry the music was so loud. I really like this band.”

“Who are they?” I played innocent.

“A new band from Jersey. They’re called Damrosch. Have you ever heard of them?”

“No, but I like their sound from what I have heard so far.”

It’s true. Their sound had grown on me and I discovered after they left that I couldn’t live without it, I had mistakenly followed it here. Cassy wasn’t Damrosch. Her Damrosch CD didn’t shake my apartment and knock picture frames off the wall, but it was the same sound. I hoped that the sound would be enough for me and that I didn’t need the vibrations of the live music to rid me of the headaches. I was willing to give up the live music to live near Cassy. I was sure I could adapt to living with just the music and not the presence of the actual band living below me.

Cassy was a pretty young lady, and I was all about sacrifice.