Friday Night Smackdown in Puerto Rico
Hyped-up Ricans Pop for Bad Bunny
Real life is fake, wrestling is real
‘Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!’
I’m a middle-aged man on a plane heading to San Juan, Puerto Rico to watch professional wrestling. Many failures have led me to my aisle seat across from the toilet. I failed as a baseball player after a decent run. I was what they call a 5 o’clock hitter, which means that I looked great during batting practice before the game; at 7, when the lights came on and the crowd streamed in, I struggled. After the bat let me down, I decided to pick up the pen. A guy whose first language was Spanish and who’d spent most of his life hanging out with jock savages wanted to be the next Philip Roth. A total fool, I was. I am. A foolish failure who persevered a bit, wrote some decent stories, and got into the top creative writing program in the country, except the novel didn’t sell. I’d struck out yet again.
Why am I writing in the third person? It must be something failures do. Which is how I decided to become a …
The Bull Calf
Nature is cruel yet tender
Stagnant cow patties and stale urine are the alternatives to honoring a mother’s decision
Life and death in the scent of spoiled milk
There’s a film of dried milk crusted across the backs of my hands, down my forearms and the tops of my thighs, sun dried and getting sweeter as it sits. It’s similar to the way grass smells when it’s been drawn out by the hot summer sun, but richer. “Let Him Fly” by Patty Griffin is moving through my earphones with such resonance, but our sweet bull calf didn’t make it. I feel defeated, sitting here wafting in the familiar scent of bottled milk and powdered electrolytes, which I spent my morning feeding him in desperation. The smell now reminds me of death, of loss.
At lunch, my partner Grant and I sit quietly. The weight of what we’d just witnessed is heavy in our bodies. Feet up on the picnic table, we’re tired, spent. This work is hard. In all my emotions, I also sense peace. I share this, as we look out over the pasture just beyond our stoop, where the grass is growing drier with each passing …
Logging in July
Widow-Makers
The Poplar and the Box Turtle
But Not Bob’s Wife
The climb gets steeper and more punishing, but work awaits at the top of the hill. The air is already heavy and oppressive, like a steamy wool blanket, though the day has barely broken. Sunlight slips through scattered holes in the dense canopy, casting beams of luminous vapor to the forest floor in the hills of southern Indiana.
The undisputed champions of the summer woods harass me incessantly. Gnats, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, hornets, wasps, and countless others feeding and breeding in a frenzy. The man or beast that dares to toil in this maniacal din pays a heavy toll. I have sworn many times never to return to logging, yet here I am — and in the worst month possible. Rejecting the constraints of conformity has a price. My price, my sentence, is logging in July.
When I left an acting career in New York and returned home to Indiana, I was convinced the only remedy for my inner extremes was to live …
