In college, I worked
as a beach lifeguard.

Admission was $2.50 per person.
All day.
Every day.

I never saw the attraction.
The lake was dirty,
full of black snakes,
and geese liked to shit all over the sidewalk.

On one evening, I turned away a family of four.
The $10.00 seemed to steep,
so they drove across the bridge,
where it was free. 

No lifeguards
on duty.

Within two hours, I heard
the sirens blaring. In my gut, I knew it was that family.

Their five year old son swam out
too far,
screamed for help,
but his cries were drowned out by music.

I remember the mother shaking and chanting,
“He could swim.
He could swim.
He could swim.
Oh, God, my baby knew how to swim.”

CPR was performed, but it was
too late. 

He was blue, the lights orange.
Hysteria in slow motion.
Within minutes, he was whisked away
and pronounced DOA. 

Many say having a photographic memory
is a blessing, but I also know
it is a curse.

I sit here in the waiting room,
surrounded by magazines and coffee,
waiting for my friend to get his left nut
cut off.

It’s just a cyst, I tell him. 
Nothing to worry about. 
But my uncle had his balls
sliced and diced.  

He died one year later.

I often wonder if men feel about their testicles
the way women feel about their breasts.

Does it define them?
Make them feel more manly?
What if he could never get a hard on again?

On my third cup of coffee, the phone rings.
His nut is in a jar somewhere. 
Ready to be discharged.
He awkwardly limps out with
a halfhearted smile.

I didn’t take the scenic way home.
It involved a lake and sailboats.
And that, well, that would have been
unkind.   

After bawling for
a week straight
over my last dog,
I found myself
in the grassy parking lot
of the dog pound.

The stench was the first thing
I noticed.  

It was a frightful concoction
of urine, wet dog, and
blacktop.

After that, it was
the howling
from the cages.  

Big dogs. 
Little dogs. 
Old dogs. 
Young dogs. 
They all wanted rescued.

I chose an abused brown mutt,
the runt of the litter and
the last to be picked
from her clan.

As I quietly pulled away,
the puppy furiously licking
my chin and armpits,
I cried
again. 
 
I wept for
the one I rescued,
and I wept
for the hundreds
I had to leave behind.  

Once upon a time,
there was a wonderful basketball coach
at Kennedy Christian High School.

He recruited talented athletes. 
He won numerous championships.   
He put Hermitage, PA, on the map.

Then, for no apparent reason,
he was asked to step down.

As it turns out,
he was porking not one,
not two,
but three 17-year-old seniors.

It was all kept hush-hush
until the big game
because we all know
a tri-county trophy
is far more important than
the statutory rape
of three minors.  

Two glasses of red wine,
and I still couldn’t
sleep.

So I crept out the back door
to the broken screen,
cursed at the rusty handle,
and sat underneath
the pine trees.

There is something spectacular
about the stars at
4:00 am.

The way they make a broken person feel
full, encourage the most hopeless
of artists, and how they randomly
nosedive into the
horizon, as if they’re showing off
to peers.

I sat there for a long time, embracing
the delicious stillness.

At dawn, the sun
rose.

The sprinklers came on,
neighbor children began to fight,
and the garbage man stunk up
the neighborhood.

Two glasses of orange juice later,
I could dream
again.