What is your name?
For the purposes of my writing outside of the office in which I actually earn a paycheck, my name is “Gil A. Waters.”
How would you describe what you do?
I try to transform personal tragedy into prosaic beauty. Put differently, I engage in therapeutic writing that I hope others will enjoy reading…
This was the defining moment that separates men from boys.
He opened the driver’s side door with a swagger.
No longer would he have to endure fatherly admonishments about traffic safety. Now, there would be speeding. And drinking. And girls. Lots of girls…
At the time, it seemed like the ideal moment to make my move.
It’s not every day I find myself engaged in rapt conversation with a beautiful woman fifteen years younger than myself; her eyes fixed on mine with an intensity suggesting more than a passing interest.
Smoothly, coolly, nonchalantly, I said, “We should get together sometime. Like, go somewhere. Or something.”
Perhaps my wooing abilities had grown a bit rusty. But I hoped the sincerity of my offer would convey an endearing sense of innocence.
A bitter smile broke across her face. She shook her head in a manner that unequivocally said “no” and redirected her gaze downwards to the gray surface of the metal table at which we sat…
{…a.k.a. “NeuroVont, Incorporated,” which first appeared in The Battered Suitcase…}
It didn’t look like the kind of place that might hold the key to salvation.
In fact, it was little more than an unsightly growth along an otherwise unblemished stretch of highway. Four small buildings of sand-blasted brick and sun-blistered wood, each marked by a single generic sign that announced its purpose: “Gas” and “Diner” on one side, “Motel” and “Bar” on the other. Between each pair of buildings lay a gravel lot large enough to accommodate the tractor-trailers that accounted for much of the traffic in this unrequited corner of the world.
Rik slowed his car and pulled into the gas station alongside the lone gas pump. An unkempt little man wearing oil-stained overalls and no shirt emerged from the shadow of the open garage bay and approached as Rik stepped out of the car and surveyed the desolate landscape. Nothing but scrub and sand in all directions, occasionally interrupted by a tiny silver trailer baking in the sun—a nighttime home for one of the few mummified souls who actually lived here…
When the first of my failed marriages finally came to an end, there was one thing I wanted above all else: sex. Not passionate lovemaking infused with deep emotion, but raw fucking that leaves a really big wet spot. I seriously entertained the idea of hiring a hooker for her services, but I was a “high-end call girl” kind of guy on a “toothless crack whore” budget, so paying for sex was out of the question. And, as a shy alcoholic who’d been dry for less than a year, joining the inebriated herd at a singles bar was unthinkable. So I decided to try what was then a relatively new option for desperate and socially isolated people in search of companionship: internet dating.
Back in those days, internet personal ads tended to be very Spartan in nature. Most people didn’t even post pictures. You simply indicated your gender, age, and body type, and the gender, age, and body type of your potential mate, then hoped for the best. In my case, this translated into something along the lines of “slim, 32-year-old man seeks anyone between the ages of 18 and 55 who was born with and currently has a vagina and is not suffering from morbid obesity or an incurable sexually transmitted disease.” Degree of physical beauty was highly negotiable. Intellect and personality were irrelevant…
Because I grew up in a bland, East Coast suburb far removed from my Midwestern roots, I rarely met any of my extended family members. Of course, since the invention of the automobile and the airplane, geographical distance only goes so far in explaining the relative dearth of family connections experienced by people such as myself. A certain degree of emotional distance is also to blame. In the case of my parents, this emotional divide was in part the product of self-imposed, alcoholic isolation. Beyond that detail, however, was the fact that the families of my mother and father were unlikely to view one another with any real sense of familiarity, let alone friendliness.
Although neither side of my family was exactly over-populated by cosmopolitan over-achievers, at least my mother’s side included a few professional musicians and artists who lived in real cities like New York. My father’s family, in contrast, was more likely to include professional railroad and carnival workers in Wichita. When my mom’s brother would visit us and we’d all go out to dinner, chances were that he’d wear a well-tailored suit. My dad’s sister, on the other hand, was more inclined to head to the restaurant in her fuzzy pink bath slippers. It was habits like these that bespoke a gaping chasm in world view within my extended family unit…
I was a bland and humorless child. The causes of this condition are legion. Start with the combed-over, slicked-down hair, parted just above my left ear and extending in a single horrifying mass all the way to my right ear. Throw in debilitating shyness, paralyzing social anxiety, and a genetic inability to catch, hit, throw, or run while holding a ball of any kind, and you have the makings of one sorry specimen of American boyhood—me. And it was all down hill as I made my way into an awkward adolescence and dysfunctional young adulthood: glasses with lenses as thick as bricks, volcanic pustules of cystic acne, and a nearly terminal case of protracted virginity.
As if I didn’t have enough somatic and psychological barriers separating me from the rest of humanity, I also had the misfortune of being born to parents who refused to lie to me. From the moment I was old enough to ask questions, they heartlessly provided me with real answers. “Where do babies come from?” “Who puts the presents under the Christmas tree?” No stork or Santa Claus; just sexual intercourse and rampant consumerism. Like a little missionary, I brought my joyless brand of objectivity to the juvenile masses…
It didn’t look like the kind of place that might hold the key to salvation.
In fact, it was little more than an unsightly growth along an otherwise unblemished stretch of highway. Four small buildings of sand-blasted brick and sun-blistered wood, each marked by a single generic sign that announced its purpose: “Gas” and “Diner” on one side, “Motel” and “Bar” on the other. Between each pair of buildings lay a gravel lot large enough to accommodate the tractor-trailers that accounted for much of the traffic in this unrequited corner of the world.
Rik slowed his car and pulled into the gas station alongside the lone gas pump. An unkempt little man wearing oil-stained overalls and no shirt emerged from the shadow of the open garage bay and approached as Rik stepped out of the car and surveyed the desolate landscape. Nothing but scrub and sand in all directions, occasionally interrupted by a tiny silver trailer baking in the sun—a nighttime home for one of the few mummified souls who actually lived here…
I’m sitting in the slum that I call home
and I’m just waiting for a sign
While the world around me crumbles
and the rich get richer all the time…
