Pie

After Raina told me that we have an irreconcilable compatibility (we both like women), I blacked out. Well, not in a sense of drunk blacking out; I remember what I was doing, I just didn’t have control of my actions anymore.

I’m not sure how long I stood there just staring at her. It felt like years. Maybe that was from all the years we spent together seemingly being erased like a wrong answer on a blackboard.

I finally said something like, “It hurts when your dog sits on my foot.” We don’t even have a dog. I guess I’ve never been one who deals well in stressful situations.

Raina looked at me as if I had just explained the theory of relativity in Russian.

“Um, what?” she said.

Now, I could have saved myself right here but due to a lack of sense of simply what the hell I was doing, I just repeated, “It hurts when your dog sits on my foot,” like she was actually asking what I said because she couldn’t hear me.

“Well, I guess I’m sorry my dog is so heavy,” she responded, then cocked her head a little to the left. Her emerald green eyes looked at me quizzically and sad.

“So now what?” I asked.

Raina reached into her purse, pulled out a five-dollar-bill, and placed it on the table.

“That should be enough for the pie and coffee I got,” both of which she only half finished, “but I should go. I hope you’re not mad at me, but I can’t just let this go. I have to follow it.” And with that, she put her hand on my shoulder, held it there for a second, and then walked out the door with a nod and smile to our waitress on her way out of the diner.

I called the waitress, Suzanne, over and asked her if there was any of the pie left that Raina’s slice had come from.

Suzanne smiled and said, “Sure, like, the whole damn thing, practically.” Suzanne never in her life wanted to be anything other than a waitress. At least she has aspirations.

“Great,” I said. “I’d like to order the rest of it, please.”

Suzanne’s eyes welled up and her cheeks blushed because she thought I just did the most romantic thing she’s ever seen. All I wanted to do was eat my wife out of my mind.

When Suzanne asked if I wanted a box with it, it dawned on me that I can take the pie home and save some of it, too. Maybe feast on her for a while. This girl’s going to go far, I thought to myself.

“A box would be great.”


A slice of pie with Raina’s fork imprints carved out of it still sits in my freezer. I have it wrapped in clear wrap so it’s tightly sealed yet I can still look at it when I feel the need. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’ll wake up with the sudden urge to stand in front of an open freezer and stare at a piece of pie. The cold air rushing out reminds me of Raina’s words, freezing me in my tracks.

I had a job. I’m not sure what happened to it, though. The phone rang a few times in the past couple days and I’m sure at least one of them was my boss wondering where the hell I am. I could easily tell him that I’m standing in front of my open freezer looking at pie but I’m afraid he wouldn’t understand. I did answer the phone, however, when Raina called.

“How’s your foot?” she asked.

My foot? I wondered.

“Oh,” I suddenly remembered, “it’s fine. How’s your dog?”

“You tell me,” she answered.

I couldn’t. So I didn’t say anything.

“Look,” she started. “I’m sorry for all of this. I hope you don’t hate me. You don’t, do you?”

Anyone else hear dogs barking?

“I’m not mad,” and I wasn’t lying. I was pissed. I spent four years working hard to get up the nerve to propose to her. My skills and knowledge, or lack thereof, of relationships was not too developed. It’s probably from my mother leaving my father because he got too involved in his work and started drinking. I tried to remind her that it has to be tough to be a rodeo clown. She didn’t want to hear it.

“Raina, if you could have three things in life, what would they be?”

Kind of a strange question to ask, but in light of the dog comment, I thought this shouldn’t seem as strikingly odd.

“Well, the first would be comfort in myself.”

I knew that answer was coming. Why? Because it’s such an obscenely obvious and over-used answer that the odds were in its favor. Who doesn’t answer that question like that? Suzanne the waitress.

“The second would be comfort in someone else.”

Now that was an interesting answer. It implies one of two things: either I was not that person or that person was not me. Take your pick. They both work, for her at least.

“The third is that person’s comfort in me.”

That was a dog-on-the-foot answer, if you ask me. What the hell does that mean? Did I really want to know? Apparently I did.

“I’m sorry. Say that one again?” I said.

“Well, it would certainly help with my comfort in myself.”

Raina was always cryptic, though the last year or so I thought I had broken her code.

“I want someone who knows me well enough to be comfortable with me. But if even I’m having trouble with knowing my own damn self well enough, how the hell can anyone else know me that well?”

“What if I told you that you could have the last two of those, you know, comfort in someone and its reciprocation,” a word, by the way, that I think is way too underused, “and have it right away?”

There was a quick silence.

“I’d say that’s not possible and I’d be pissed off at you for lying to me.”

That one hurt. A lot.

At that point in the conversation, which was seemingly, and thankfully, over, I said that I had some pie that I needed to finish off, then hung up.


I’ve spent the last three days higher than a giraffe’s ass. I had this outrageous moment when, while stoned out of my gourd, I thought I had solved the whole lack of understanding issue I was having.

I decided that I was going to go out and have sex with a guy. Maybe, just maybe, I could see what the hell the big deal of sexual orientation is. That “plan” had me sober in a matter of seconds when I realized a major flaw in my pitiful plan: I’d have to want to have sex with another guy. I didn’t.

Oh well, back to square one.

And I haven’t been able to get as high as I was since before the Buzz Kill Plan.


A month ago, Raina and I decided that we’d take care of Christmas presents right away. The next day, in the sweltering heat of a mid-west July, we went out and got some pictures of the two of us to send to family and friends. Touching, hunh?

A few days ago, I received a package, just a large, orange catalog size envelope. Among the items in there was a note. It read “I thought you might want these.” It was Raina’s handwriting. When I emptied out the contents on my living room table, a happy couple spread themselves out in three different sizes and three different poses. I turned the envelope upside down and shook it like there was something else in there. All that came tumbling out were memories.

I scooped up the pictures, stuffed them haphazardly back in the envelope, and left the house with the envelope in hand. I took them to a photo shop in the mall and told the lady behind the counter that I wanted all of the pictures in the envelope framed. She opened up the envelope and looked up at me, then behind me, like I was playing a practical joke on her.

“All these?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s a 2 year anniversary gift for my wife,” I said.

Nicole, the photo shop clerk, had a look on her face like she couldn’t figure out if I was the husband she wishes she had or the husband she’s glad she doesn’t have.

“Well, I don’t think we have frames for the wallet size pictures,” she said.

I must interrupt for one second.

I have a theory. I call it my Well of Stupidity Theory. I believe that there is this well. It’s a simple well, round, made of large stones mortared together. The biggest problem with this well is that there is no bucket, and this well of stupidity continues to get more and more full of water (tainted, I’m sure) every day. Thanks to Nicole and her astute observations of reality, the level of water just raised some. And it keeps getting deeper and deeper.

“Oh, that’s ok,” I responded. “You guys don’t sell wallets, do you?”

Nicole started to answer, then her shoulders sank with apparent relief because she realized I had made a funny.

“Are you pullin’ my leg?” Nicole asked with a grin the size of Tennessee.

“Yes,” I say with a grin and half-closed eyes, “yes I am.”

“You’re funny,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head. She then walked away to get models of the frames for me to choose from.

I wonder if Nicole knows Suzanne.


Lately, I’ve been waking up smelling fish. Funny thing is that I’m allergic to seafood. What does that mean?

The other day, while trying to shower off the smell of orange roughy, I decided that I was going to visit the truck stop diner just west of town. Sometimes I’ll go there in the middle of the night and people watch. I play Spot the Hooker. It’s a fun game, actually. I keep mental tabs on each one and how many times they leave and come back. I try to add up how much I think each one makes throughout the night. It’s not an easy game. There are a lot of factors to keep in mind while the game is on.

For example, one particular streetwalker has a bum leg. She doesn’t need a cane, but with each step with her left leg it’s as if she’s going to tip over. Obviously, her wages won’t be as high as the blonde with the multi-pierced lip.

Clothes are an important factor, too. Are you going to want a blowjob from the hooker in leather and fishnet stockings or the one in sweatpants with stains on them and says, “Hooker University Athletic Department” on the leg? So you see, the clothes can easily make the hooker. However, during the winter, when it’s colder outside than an Eskimo’s ass, this rule is suspended until spring.

As I was finishing up my breakfast, runny eggs and toast that was so burnt I had to put three layers of butter on there to soften the blow to my teeth, one of the day prostitutes came and sat down at my table. Apparently the communication lines with the night workers aren’t open that much. She didn’t know I was just a watcher.

“You need anything, honey?” the redhead hooker asked me.

“Are you my new waitress?” I asked.

“Oh,” she slyly said, “I’ll be your server, alright.”

That’s all it took for me.

We started heading to one of her favorite hotels when I said this time it’s on me. I had a little extra spending cash so I got us a nice room in a Motel 8.

She started taking off her clothes, I started a bath. I needed one.

“Are you a big bubbles person?” I asked.

The look on her face of sheer confusion was priceless. It was like someone gave her a gift, a pile of dog shit coated in gold and she didn’t know whether to bag it or place it on her mantle like an award.

“Bubbles?”

“Yeah,” I said, “bubbles.”

“Well, okay.”

We sat in the steaming bubble bath for almost an hour. We drank Jack Daniels minis from the mini-bar in the room. We washed each other. We blew bubbles at each other. It was a party. There may as well have been a pony ride and a clown juggling red rubber balls in the bathroom with us.

After the bath, we dirtied each other up again.

“So what’s your name?” I asked as we were heading back to the diner.

“My friends call me Steph,” she answered. “But you can call me Stephanie.”

I had never been with a hooker before. Since then, I haven’t smelled fish.


I never want to be the one that leaves a party earlier than others. Before, I’d be the last man standing. Now I’m the first out the door. I get very claustrophobic now. I don’t know why. Never bothered me before. Now, I feel like even a small group of people in one room spurs a mini anxiety attack.

Last night I went to a party at a friend’s house. He and his wife just put in a new patio and wanted people to see the finished product. Veggies and martinis were being served while Frank Sinatra crooned in the background. Strangely enough, however, that’s not what made me uncomfortable.

First of all, I got there early. I didn’t miscalculate the time, I just had nothing to do. So I got there about an hour before the official start of the party. I volunteered my services for any chores they had yet to finish. Their list of things to do had been completed already. All they needed to do was clean themselves up and change into respectable party clothes. They didn’t need my help for that. So I sat on their couch and watched TV until the first guests arrived.

The first people to arrive were a couple I didn’t know, but they had gotten married just last year. Cute couple. She’s a brunette about 5’6”, he’s an idiot about 6’1”. Ladies and gentlemen, Jean and Barry Parnham.

“So Jean,” I started, “what do you do?”

“I’m an out of work florist,” she answered.

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “It’s difficult being unemployed.”

I thought the conversation would take the path of talking about unemployment and making ends meet. I should’ve known it would be otherwise.

“Oh,” she said. “I have a job, I’m just not working.”

Perspective, it can be a bitch sometimes.

“I have a question,” I said after a pause. “If I’m standing in the Far East, let’s say Hong Kong, am I still in the Far East?”

Jean just looked at me with the golden dog shit look. I seem to be getting a lot of that lately.

“I mean, I’m now in the Middle East if I’m in Hong Kong, right?” I continued. “Shouldn’t the term be specific to where you are?”

“Hong Kong can’t be the Middle East,” Barry chimed in. “Isn’t Hong Kong on the coast of China or something?”

Jean looked at her husband, then back at me.

“I need a drink,” Jean said as she got up from her chair and walked away.

Touchy, touchy.


I parked my car outside of Raina’s house after the party. Stalking? Depends on my intentions, I guess.

When we first started living together, we got a cat. Like a Halloween decoration, I can see him in her bedroom window. Just sitting there on the sill looking out at me wondering, “What the hell is going on here?!”

I sympathize with you, buddy. I wish I had the answer to that question because I ask it every day since a closet appeared out of nowhere.

It wasn’t much past midnight when I got there. The downstairs light was on, and so was the bedroom light upstairs. Raina never had a knack for understanding how the “energy bill-thingy” works.

Three Camel Lights later, her living room light went out. A few minutes later, the bedroom light was turned off. The cat was no longer in the window, but the blinds were still up. I sat there for the length of a CD and wrote her a mental poem as I resolved the evening to one more smoke. That’s when her bedroom light came back on. I saw several shadows crawl the walls and thought she lit a candle. But the shadows disappeared suddenly and a minute later, the front door opened.

At this point time switches to slow-motion.

Raina kissed her “friend” and waved as she walked down the sidewalk, fortunately the opposite direction of where I was sitting. However, Raina, always the suspicious one, looked down the street in the direction of where I’m parked. She noticed me and it was as if our eyes met. I can see her mouth the words “Oh shit,” and I turn on my car and head home.

Masochism is a horrible, horrible affliction.


Raina showed up at my apartment this morning. She knocked, but I couldn’t move from my spot in bed. I just heard her knocking and saying that she knew I was home and to open the door. I couldn’t. She finally got the hint and left. But that wasn’t the end of it.

The phone rang shortly after the knocking ceased.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she confessed.

I told her to go fuck herself. I mean, she should enjoy that, seeing that she’s found this new interest.

“You have every right to be angry.”

“You’re damn right I do!” I screamed.

She tried her best to convince me that being apart was the best thing for me.

“Let me decide that,” I said. I guess, though, I was still thinking in the “us” mode. I mean, we spent over four years together. You’d think (or at least hope) that she’d be thinking in the “us” mode as well. Even the “we” mode would be fine.

I hung up, went to the medicine cabinet, downed a few “sleeping aids,” and slept the day off. It was a wash from the start.


I’ve had some strange trips and dreams in my day, but the one I had while asleep turns them into children’s stories full of bunnies and balloons.

I was in an ocean. Just floating in the middle of an ocean, no boat or raft or surfboard. And I didn’t have to paddle; I was kept afloat by mental wreckage.

Every couple of seconds, bubbles would rise to the surface which was shoulder high. When these bubbles reached the surface, they would pop and utter a word. I remember looking all around me and watching these bubbles rise to the top, noticing their size- the bigger the bubble, the harsher the word. I watched one bubble, a very large bubble, rise to the top with such force that when the word “liar” was muttered, I flinched. It was her. It was her voice.

Soon, the bubbles got so big, I could feel one pushing at my feet as it rose toward the surface.

“LIAR!” it popped.

The noise was so loud, it woke me up. And when I woke up, she was still echoing the word around the room, the word bouncing off the walls. After a few seconds, the volume decreased with each bounce, until it finally wasn’t heard anymore. I decided to try my hand at sleeping again, though I was hoping that dream was no longer the matinee.

I rolled over, placed my hand on her back, and went back to sleep.