Smack!

My wife slapped me awake this morning at 6:12am. It was the first time I've ever been slapped awake. She hit me, open handed square across my face. She didn't mean to do it. She was sleep slapping me. She apologized immediately but in a dazed coma, I cried out, "Why? Why? Why did you do it?" And that is how my day began. Slapped awake.

The Source

The late august blackberries grew heavy alongside the small creek making the trail impassible. He picked them into a canvas army rucksack as he waded upstream. Clear, cold curtains cascaded down small granite shelves into dark pools full of "natives." The forest service never stocked this far up. It was simply too inconvenient. These creatures were true natives - brook trout that cooked up pink like salmon. They never grew more than a foot in the small flowage and they tasted different, more wild because they had been eating mayflies and mosquitos all summer. He was climbing a thickly wooded box canyon. The sheer speckled grey walls grew immense as he climbed. A run of iron pipe held aloft by what looked like a minitature railroad track of ancient pine swayed precariously on the cliff above him every time a gust of warm summer wind pressed against the steep faces. Dry-rotted wooden slats hung broken from the track. He thought to himself, "The men that made this pipe are all dead." Water still flowed through the pipe. Thick droplets leaked from the seams of the pipe at regular intervals and landed on his baseball cap brim. Pit, Pat, pat. The pipe was once used for drinking water. Now people filled their radiators and wet their heads with it. The youth wondered if it was from the gold rush era. It was not. Some men from Sacramento had built it in the 1930s.

With the trees hemming in the course of the creek, there wasn't room to cast. In stead he floated a small grey, brown and black fly down into the pools. None was more that 20 feet across and despite the fact that he had just waded through them, the natives didn't hesitate to take the fly. The young man was far from the campsite. It was about three in the afternoon. He didn't load his creel because it was too hot and too far to take them back. He just slipped the natives gently back into their pools. All afternoon he climbed - occassionaly glancing at the pipe to make sure it was still there. He had stopped fishing and had broken down the rod and put the real in the canvas sack alongside the blackberries. The sunlight which passed through the canopy cast long shadows as he followed the watercourse. He would need to turn back soon. He hiked through the bouldery creek another half hour. The pipe was closer now but still stretched far up the side of the mountain. Orange-green light which usually brought a feeling of peace in him, incited a panic. And in this panic, he knew he had hiked too far seeking the source. He had lost himself. And it would be dark soon. He still hadn't found the end of the pipe. His canteen was as empty. He hurriedly stumbled down the cobbled creekbed - the rucksack bouncing on his back with each stride. He ran through the dark - because of the dark. Blackberry vines gashed his bare legs as he clumsily ran. He twisted his right ankle but just kept running on it because to stop would be worse. The wildness of the canyon became more wild as darkness ensued, pursued. At last, he made it to the outpost. He collapased into a patch of dry late summer grass next to the ancient gas pumps and the wooden carved indian. The smell of motor oil announced to his senses that he was safe. A few feet away, he heard a trickle. It was the end of the pipe. Bleeding and exhausted, his panic gave way to thirst. And he took a long drink from the pipe not knowing its source.

For Mike's Dad

I pumped gas into my little pick up truck this morning. I wore a black suit with a white shirt and a navy blue tie. It felt like I was in Pulp fiction or something. People look at you when you're pumping gas in a black suit. They wonder, "Why's that guy pumping gas? He's wearing a black suit...Curious." I guess it's the juxtaposition of the formal and the mundane. Black suits are for special occasions not for Citgo stations

A lot of stuff happens in my black suit. It's the suit I wear to weddings. I take my wife to parties in my black suit. I used to wear it to preach in when I worked in a traditional church. It has seen a lot of cologne and a lot of sweat - handshakes and hugs. I am wearing it as I write to you now. I wore it to Mike's dad's funeral this afternoon. It was cool and breezy so I didn't have to sling my jacket over my shoulder. I re-tied my tie in the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I heard twenty one gun shots and watched an older woman receive a folded flag.

I guess ordinary life happens in between the black suit moments. And as I am growing older, it seems like there are less of these moments. I remember the day I got married. I didn't wear a tux. I couldn't afford one. I wore my black suit and my friends wore theirs too. I wore a baby blue tie I bought from a guy in downtown Los Angeles. We took a picture on my dilapidated front porch. Our young faces were smooth and firm and our eyes hadn't yet been dulled by time. The porch was scabbed with peeling paint chips. An old man with white hair and a thick mustache took our picture. He must have seen the juxtaposition. He was wearing a black suit.

a whole lot of Truth all at once. (R-rated post)

It is late May in Milwaukee. Custard lines are long with grinning gawky teenagers and gray haired middle aged men imagine they are cowboys every time they crank up their Harleys. Downtown, the gentle zephyrs created when the strong southern winds meet the cold waters of lake Michigan, propel small fluffy white willow seeds upward to the tippy tops of the skyscrapers. And all along North Ave, from the freeway to 47th St, the prostitutes are out.

I awoke panicked in a cold sweat last night. I had seen one particular woman the night before on my way home at about 9pm. She must have been new to this life because she still put effort into her "sexy" outfit. She was wearing a miniskirt, stilletto heals and a tank top. She stood next to a phone booth in front of a boarded up store. It was in the low 50s and she was trying her best to look "alluring" while shivering in the cold. She was really young. The ambient light reflected off of her shiny blue heels. Her awkward pigeon toed posture betrayed that she was in her early teens. She was no woman - she was a kid.

There in the cool night room, a sick feeling crept from my stomache into my chest. I started to quietly weep in my bed. I turned away so my wife wouldn't wake up. Sometimes you can see something and not really see it until a long time later. And when you finally do, you wish you hadn't. This is the first time I have lived in a neighborhood where there are prostitutes. I am not used to it. I hope I don't get used to it.

I was a middle schooler when I first learned about the glamorous world of prostitution. I learned most things from a movie called Pretty Woman. Among the lessons I learned were:

1) Prostitutes look like Julia Roberts.
2) Prostitutes are well paid and 22 years old
3) Men generally fall in love with prostitutes and then lavish them with gifts and love.
4) Prostitutes keep the money they make.
5) Prostitutes make the decision to sell themselves and can decide to change their lives at any point.
6) Prostitutes are drug free

It turns out that these axioms of the sex trade don't really play out in my neighborhood. Perhaps they use a different business model here in Milwaukee.

My friend has started to do a little "recon" in one neighborhood not too far from my own. She says that on one block, there are a group of young girls who charge five-dollars for sex. They are young high-school aged girls. They operate in the mornings because they've found a unique business model. She tells me that suburban businessmen, on their way to work in downtown Milwaukee, stop along the block, pick out a young girl and have sex with them in their car in a vacant lot across the street. The whole process takes only a few minutes. It's like fast food. Most guys get starbucks on the way into the office. A few rape kids and give them a green piece of paper with the Great Emancipator on the front.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to. It was a whole lot of truth all at once.

Saturday Morning Beating

I heard sobbing -wet sniffling, mouth breathing and little groans. It was coming from behind me. It was far away but unmistakeable. I looked and couldn't see anything. Then from the vacant lot, next to a trash-filled alley behind two foreclosed houses, I saw a small figure.

He is limping. Blood rides his panicked breath and almost hits my flannel shirt. He is ten years old and I know him. His left eye is swollen terribly. It is almost shut. I imagine him getting punched. I can see, smell, almost feel the beating. He is making a line for his house where he can feel safe again. I try and grab him and find out what happened. He doesn't say anything. He is afraid. He fears that they will get him worse if he tells someone. He goes inside. His mom isn't home.

Before I heard the sound, I was digging a hole with a young kid from our church. He witnessed the whole interaction. He was wide-eyed and frozen when I got back. "Are you ok?" I asked him. "Yes," he replied. In his world young kids don't get mercilessly beaten. He was in disbelief. "That was scary for me," I admitted to him. "Was it scary for you?" I asked. "Yes." We kept digging quietly thinking about what we just saw.

The kid just wanted to shoot some hoops. There is an old basketball goal in the alley behind one of the boarded up houses. Kids play there because there isn't anywhere else to play. Illegally dumped trash, broken glass, old tires and used oil containers line the court. It is no place anybody should play. If you're an elementary school kid on the block, there is no place safe to play. You just take your chances. Parks are the opposite of safe in the city. There are old guys who talk loud and drink out of brown paper bags. Older kids want to test you and hassel you. It is better to stick close to your house most of the time.

But even sticking close to your house is no guarantee. Later I learned that group of high school boys beat him up for fun because they were bored and there was no one to stop them. The beat him to a pulp, for no reason, on a Saturday morning.

Two hours later, he came out - cleaned up, still red marks on his face that would soon be black and blue. He helped me replace a bad brick in the foundation of the house our church owns. We were chipping it out with a hammer and pry bar. I let him swing hard and wild even though it might hurt my hands. He needed to hit something, to break something, to know that he wasn't always the one getting hit, the victim. He chipped the bad brick out with a few powerful smacks of the hammer. He gave it a real beating.

S'more Community

Last Sunday night I got a hankerin' for S'mores. But I didn't want to have them alone. It is strange how something really fun like a barbeque or a swimming pool is terrible if there aren't others to share it with. S'mores are the same way. They are the type of food that is really an excuse to get together and spend some time talking, laughing and chasing your brother with a flaming marshmallow at the end of a stick. They aren't made for singular consumption. How depressing it would be to make s'mores on your own. I almost did it. But I came to my senses and invited some friends to share them with me.



I initially decided to share my s'mores with the dudes from our church that live a few blocks from my house. But then it occurred to me that maybe some of the kids in their neighborhood might have never had a s'more before. Something about the combination of sugar and fire delicately masked in the inherent responsibility of a stuffy graham cracker was sure to be fun for the kids. So I packed up the marshmallows, wood, firepit, chocolate and graham crackers in the back of my truck and drove the 3 blocks to the community house. We set up the little clay firepit on the concrete walkway in front of the house a few feet away from where we found a hypodermic needle a couple weeks ago and where there is still some gang grafitti on the sidewalk -The Great Outdoors. Kevin got a five gallon bucket of water in order to prevent anyone from burning alive and we got busy building a fire.



Sometimes I overestimate some of the experiences of kids in the city and underestimate others. For instance, most of the littlest kids know the word "foreclosure" and "eviction" but very few have ever seen a wood fire in real life before. None had tasted a s'more. A few of the kids mistook the fire for a grill - others acted like they knew what was going on but most of them didn't. They were acting cool but were really curious about the wood and smoke. One of the kid's moms had to explain that we were having a "real fire" that could hurt you if you touched it. So we roasted marshmallows - in reality most of the kids burned them to crunchy, bitter sweet ash. As the little white pillows sizzled and glowed, the kids, in a joyful panic, blew on the them to extinguish the sugar-fueled flames. When the chocolate all ran out, and it was getting as dark as it gets on a city street, a ring of kids began to form around the fire. They were loud and obnoxious, fun and free. They burned a bunch of sticks even after I told them not to. They all tried to make the funniest animal sounds they knew. One person started a story and the next person around the circle added to it until the plot grew too ridiculous to continue. And we all escaped the neighborhood for about an hour. We were the loudest. We were the coolest. No booming car stereo or big wheels or even goofy obnoxious teenagers could compete with our fire. We were the neighborhood for an hour. We were it. People gawked at us. I only wish we could have seen the stars past the street lights. They're up there even if you can't see them all the time. Glints of crystal brilliance dulled down by the glare of the city. I guess the stars are a lot like the kids. I saw them that night and it was beautiful.