Cinemorphosis

Tag: short-story

  • The Intruder from the Cypress Gloom

    The Intruder from the Cypress Gloom

    Sometimes you hear stories of horror and the supernatural, and you don’t know what to do with them, especially if the person telling the story seems sane and credible. As a result, the story lingers and haunts you for all your life. For example, I’ve never forgotten a story one of my college students told me back in the fall of 1998. She was a re-entry student—a nurse in her early forties—juggling coursework at UCLA with overnight hospital shifts. The kind of woman who sticks in your memory: short, sturdy, glasses perched low on her nose, with the weary, perceptive eyes of someone who’d seen too much and lips that knew how to pace a punchline.

    Most afternoons, after class let out, she’d linger by my desk and recount episodes from her Louisiana backwoods childhood or from the fluorescent netherworld of her hospital’s VIP wing. Her stories ricocheted between absurdity and horror—tales told with the calm authority of someone who could handle arterial spray with one hand and chart notes with the other.

    But one story gripped me by the spine and never let go. It wasn’t about dying celebrities or ER gore. It was about something far worse. A visitation. A monster.

    She and her cousin Carmen were feral children, raised in the lawless heat of rural Louisiana, where school attendance was optional and adult supervision was more myth than fact. Left to their own devices, the two girls invented what she called “mean games”—they tortured frogs, pulled wings off insects, and hinted at darker cruelties she refused to name. Lord of the Flies in sundresses.

    And then one afternoon, the visitor arrived.

    They were holed up in a decaying house, conspiring over their next cruelty, when the porch door creaked open and something stepped inside. It looked like a man. But it wasn’t. Over six feet tall, it had a tail—thick, muscled, and disturbingly animate. It moved with a will of its own, curling and flicking behind him like a fleshy metronome. His body was bristled with wiry hair. His voice? Low, hoarse, and calm in the most terrifying way. He didn’t threaten. He simply listed.

    Sitting in a rocking chair, the creature, a sort of rat-man, described, in brutal detail, everything the girls had done—every frog mutilated, every insect dissected. Nothing vague. He named the acts like he had them on file. And then he made his offer: Keep going, he said, and I’ll recruit you.

    He stayed for three hours. Just sat there. Breathing. Flicking that tail. Describing their path toward damnation with the steady tone of a bureaucrat explaining retirement benefits. When he finally left, dissolving into the heat shimmer of the Louisiana dusk, the girls were too stunned to move. Carmen whispered, “Did you see that?” My student just nodded.

    They never spoke of it again. But they changed. Overnight. Sunday school. Prayer. Kindness, enforced not by conscience but by fear. The kind that settles in your bones and never leaves. Whatever that thing was, it did its job.

    And this is the part that haunts me: she wasn’t a kook. She wasn’t mystical, manic, or given to exaggeration. She was a nurse—clear-eyed, grounded, more familiar with death than most people are with taxes. She wasn’t telling a ghost story. She was giving a deposition.

    To this day, I see those two girls, wide-eyed and paralyzed, staring down a thing that knew them intimately and promised them a future in hell’s apprenticeship program. Whether it was a demon, a shared psychotic break, or some mythological construct formed by childhood guilt and Southern humidity, I don’t know. But I do know what it meant.

    The creature’s message was brutal in its simplicity: Keep practicing cruelty, and you’ll lose the ability to stop. You’ll become it.

    That’s not just folklore. That’s biblical. The idea that if you repeat your wickedness long enough, God—or whatever you believe in—stops interrupting you. He doesn’t smite you. He simply steps aside and says, Go ahead. This is the life you’ve chosen.

    No wonder Kierkegaard was obsessed with working out your salvation with fear and trembling. There’s nothing more terrifying than the idea that damnation is self-inflicted, not by a thunderbolt, but by repetition. That the road to hell is paved with muscle memory.

  • The Death Car Dilemma: How One Man Escaped the Camry-Accord Abyss

    The Death Car Dilemma: How One Man Escaped the Camry-Accord Abyss

    At nearly 64, with four decades of college writing instruction corroding his patience, Aiken Riddle found himself drowning in self-disgust. His life, once measured in lectures and essays, had shrunk to a tormenting question: Camry or Accord? He obsessed over the choice as though he were deciding between Catholicism and Presbyterianism, his eternal soul dangling in the balance. The absurdity wasn’t lost on him. He had genuine problems—blood markers creeping north, a torn rotator cuff ruining kettlebell workouts, rooms that needed paint, twin daughters who needed driver training, retirement forms stacked like gravestones, and joint bank accounts to secure before death turned his finances into a probate nightmare for his younger wife. Yet he couldn’t stop watching the YouTube videos and Reddit pages comparing the new Camry and Accord. 

    He vacillated like a madman.

    One day while driving to his twins’ high school to pick them up, he would see an Accord and would say to himself with a sigh, “Ah, the Accord EX-L in Canyon River Blue. A very peaceful color. Not a bad car to die in.” Then another voice would say, “It’s a car, not a coffin, dummy!” Then he’d retort: “But this will be the last car I ever buy. Surely, it is my Death Car.” Upon which he’d rebuke himself, “God, you’re morbid! How can I live with you? Get away from me!”

    Then the next day while picking up his girls from their school, he’d see a Camry SE in Heavy Metal and would say, “Ah, the Camry seems to be made for that color. Everything fits perfectly. Plus for under thirty-three K, I’m getting a taste of Lexus.” Upon which his other self would say, “At least you’re not talking about death. That’s an improvement.” Then he would say, “But the Accord is a quieter ride. I need quiet. Plus, the Accord dealership is walking distance away. I can drop off the Accord and walk home. That tips the advantage to Accord. But, wait, people are saying that the new Accord body style looks like an old Ford Taurus. Can I live with such ridicule?”

    Over the ensuing days, he would go back and forth. It reached the point that his wife could tell by his body language that he was about to talk about his Camry-Accord dilemma and she would interrupt him even before he opened his mouth: “Stop right there, buster! I don’t want to hear it. Just make your damn decision!”

    So he was alone in his torment. 

    One day he woke up and said he didn’t need a car. He calculated that for the last decade he had only driven three thousand miles a year. That hardly merited getting himself a new car. The decision was final: His daughters would take the old Accord and he’d give the newer one to his wife. He would simply borrow their cars when he needed them. 

    The decision was genius. He would not be less obliged to drive when he felt his driving skills had compromised over the last decade. He was by nature a recluse. His decision to not buy a car helped his cause. Why spend forty thousand dollars so I can behold a rarely-driven car in my garage before returning to the living room to play the piano or watch Netflix?

    He learned that sometimes a decision is not either/or. There is sometimes another option, and not getting anything can be the best one of all.  

  • The Bodybuilding Gollum of Shepherd College

    The Bodybuilding Gollum of Shepherd College

    In Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man, paranoia has a name: Harold, a disgruntled English professor who stalks the halls of Shepherd College convinced his masculinity is shriveling under fluorescent lights and academic jargon. The place is no sanctuary of learning but a mausoleum of joyless theory—an institution where semiotics and power structures reign supreme, while Harold dreams of biceps, protein macros, and shredded abs. To him, the Priests of the Intellect are laughable scarecrows, their bodies soft as tomatoes skewered on toothpicks, their credibility dissolving with every Oreo they dunk between papers on Derrida.

    Banished to a basement classroom without sunlight, Harold becomes a musclebound Gollum snarling at his colleagues above, who bask in daylight and collegial belonging. Faculty meetings are his personal hell: an ordeal as odious as wisdom-teeth extractions performed by a dentist with no anesthetic and no soul. While his peers pontificate about “backward design” and “cohorts,” Harold visualizes his metabolism torching fat, each fiber of muscle flexing like a Renaissance sculpture coming alive.

    What makes Harold truly unhinged is Shepherd College itself—a cult in mortar and brick, built on the deranged philosophy of the late R.K. Mort, who declared that architecture should “infect” and “haunt” its inhabitants. Mort’s disciples fawn over his absurdities as if he were an academic messiah, turning the college into a dehumanizing theme park of theory. It’s Severance with faculty ID cards.

    As a lifelong bodybuilder trapped in academia myself, I relate to Harold’s plight more than I’d like to admit. Yet I nearly hurled the book across the room when Harold showed up to his interminable meeting without food. A man obsessed with protein who forgets to pack a meal? Unforgivable. In my forty years of teaching, I never once forgot to bring my Tupperware of chicken breast or Greek yogurt to the institutional trenches. I wanted to shout at the page: “Get in the game, Harold! Respect the gains!” Still, his misfit rage and comic pathos hook me. Harold may be a wreck, but he’s my kind of wreck.

    I’m only two chapters in but eager to consume the entirety of this delicious satire.

  • The Man Who Always Waved

    The Man Who Always Waved

    When my twins were born in 2010, I spent years pacing the sidewalks of my Torrance neighborhood with them—first in a stroller, then a wagon, and eventually on their own unsteady feet. Along those same sidewalks shuffled old couples with dogs, walkers, and time to spare. Sometimes one half of a pair would vanish, leaving the other to walk alone, and soon enough that figure too disappeared from the neighborhood stage. I never knew most of their names, yet I felt tethered to them; they would smile at my daughters, wave with fragile hands, and in that exchange I saw the cycle of life laid bare: the beginning in my stroller, the ending in their absence.

    One man I did know by name—Frank. I don’t recall how we met, but I remember the details: his beige Volvo station wagon, the clever mirror nailed to the tree behind his house so he could back out with precision. Frank looked to be in his late sixties in 2010. He walked the neighborhood with brisk efficiency, always in uniform—olive shorts, white T-shirt, glasses perched on his nose, a beige bucket hat shading his face, and a small wristwatch on a leather band, which he consulted like a man keeping an appointment with life itself.

    He reminded me of a restrained Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day: perhaps square at first glance, but steady, decent, reliable. No matter how intent he was on his route, he never failed to lift a hand in greeting. The wave was never exuberant, never perfunctory—it was graceful, automatic, the gesture of a man who seemed stitched together with quiet goodness. His wife matched him in cheer, and though I never learned her name, she radiated authenticity. They were a pair who seemed to exist outside of fashion, untouched by fads or pretensions.

    Over time, I realized they had become more than neighbors to me. They were a balm against my cynicism, proof that stability, kindness, and simple decency still existed in a world that seemed allergic to all three. Which is why, six months ago, while lifting weights in my garage, I felt a chill: What happened to Frank? I hadn’t seen him in ages. He would be in his eighties now. Surely he hadn’t slipped away unnoticed?

    Then, this morning, as I turned into my neighborhood after dropping my daughters at high school, I saw him. Frank, unchanged, same outfit, same bucket hat, same little watch. I raised my hand. He raised his. And before I knew it, a tear streaked my cheek.

  • Sangean PR-D12 Is Solid on FM and AM in the Right Environment

    Sangean PR-D12 Is Solid on FM and AM in the Right Environment

    The following is from my now defunct Herculodge blog. I realized when I did radio testing again in 2025 that RFI (radio frequency interference) is a far greater challenge than it was in 2008. I need to play my radios on batteries, not AC adapters, and keep them away from walls, which is a shame because I really want the Sangean HDR-19, a wall adapter-only radio, which has gone up in price about $80 since even a couple of months ago.

    Since the Los Angeles Fires tore through Southern California in January 2025, I realized my household was embarrassingly underprepared for live news coverage. Streaming devices and smart speakers suddenly felt flimsy when the sky turns orange. I needed something sturdier, more reliable—like a good, old-fashioned radio.

    Enter Sangean, a brand I trusted a decade ago. I fondly remembered their radios delivering a warm, bass-heavy sound—pleasant, if not exactly hi-fi. My ancient PR-D4 still hums along in the garage, proof that Sangean builds workhorses. So, naturally, I picked up their new DSP-chip PR-D12, curious to see how it stacked up against its analog ancestor.

    The verdict? The D12 is brighter and more balanced than the D4, though the warmth I loved has cooled a bit. FM reception is a mixed bag. From Torrance, Pasadena’s 89.3 comes in strong with three bars and crystal clarity on the D12. On the D4? Same signal strength but with a thin veil of static, unless I awkwardly angle the antenna like I’m searching for alien life.

    But then things get weird. 91.5, my go-to classical station, sings smoothly on the D4 but sputters on the D12—two weak bars and static, no matter how I threaten the antenna.

    AM? Forget it. 640 AM is listenable but laced with floor noise on both radios. I twist and turn the radios to align the internal ferrite antennas like I’m cracking a safe, but the noise stays. Worse, AM talk radio voices sound like they’re broadcasting through a burlap sack. Long-term listening? Not a chance.

    What the D12 does have going for it is user-friendliness. Four preset pages with five slots each make navigating stations painless—perfect for my wife, who refuses to wrestle with complex manuals that read like an SAT prep book. She’s happy with 89.3 and 89.9 blasting clear and loud, so the D12 earns its spot in the kitchen.

    Still, I can’t shake the feeling I need something more commanding, like the soon-to-arrive Tecsun PL-990x. Maybe it’ll crack the code on AM audio bliss. Until then, the PR-D12 holds the line—solid, if not inspiring.

    Moderate recommendation.

    Update:

    I told my fellow radio enthusiast friend Gary about how I could not listen to the AM sound on the PR-D12 or my PR-D4, and he expressed the same sentiment. He said the only AM he can listen to from his vast radio collection is his now defunct C.Crane CC Radio-SW, which is a clone of the Redsun RP-2100. This made me sad because many years ago I enjoyed listening to AM on my Redsun RP-2100, but I fried it when I put the wrong AC adapter in it. Getting good AM sound out of a radio is hard these days. 

    Second Update:

    Three days after writing this review, I moved the PR-D12 to the garage where it sounds great on AM so I blame the kitchen, not the PR-D12. 

  • The Fallacy of False Priorities, Watch Edition

    The Fallacy of False Priorities, Watch Edition

    “The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Guilty as charged. Case in point: my tortured relationship with FKM Divecore straps.

    The Notre Dame study had me spiraling—researchers tortured the material with solvents, heat, and abrasion until they squeezed out PFAS “forever chemicals” and then warned these might leach into human skin. Ever since, I’ve gone back and forth, back and forth, like a malfunctioning metronome, on whether to keep wearing the straps I love more than any other rubber I’ve tried in two decades of watch collecting.

    Of course, no one wants to think of their wristwear as a poison delivery system. But context matters. First, FKM is highly stable under real-world conditions; the lab tests were more horror show than practical scenario. Second, it’s the manufacturing process that endangers workers, not the end-user. Third, if we’re ranking PFAS risks, drinking unfiltered water, eating from PFAS-coated packaging, or cooking on scratched Teflon are solid tens on the risk scale, while wearing an FKM strap is a lonely little one. That’s the Fallacy of False Priorities: panic over the trivial while ignoring the obvious.

    Even so, the issue isn’t a Nothing Burger. Divecore’s own Paul admits handling FKM worries him, and he’s working on alternative materials—silicone, vulcanized silicone, HNBR—to protect his workers and reassure consumers. That’s just smart business.

    Meanwhile, I’m not without options. My strap drawer holds factory Seiko silicones and urethanes, plus top-tier Tropic straps made of vulcanized rubber. They’re fine, but none hold a candle to the sleek perfection of Divecore FKM. I tried swapping them in, but they feel like consolation prizes—serviceable, never glorious.

    So I made a deal with myself: enjoy my pristine FKMs for now, and when the new HNBR or silicone Divecore straps arrive, I’ll switch. Sounds reasonable. Except once you’ve let the idea of PFAS seeping into your skin lodge in your brain, it refuses to leave. I’ve written about it on Instagram, made a YouTube video, and now I’m stuck in an obsessive loop, second-guessing every strap change as though I were rewriting my will.

    Which brings me back to my original point: the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. And right now, that man is staring at seven watches, toggling between glory and paranoia, wishing he could strap on peace of mind.

  • Scaling the Walls of Forgetting

    Scaling the Walls of Forgetting

    Last night I dreamed I was trapped between two bodies—one fixed at nineteen, the other at sixty-three—and the hands kept swinging me back and forth. Each shift rewired me. My skin would tighten, my mind sharpen, and then in the next instant my knees ached, my thoughts clouded, and the mirror refused to settle on one face.

    In the confusion, I kept losing my keys. Not just keys—wallet, watch, phone. Every few minutes I’d pat my pockets and feel the hollow absence. I lived in a commune that was equal parts office, recording studio, and half-forgotten alumni reunion. The place was enclosed by towering steel walls, the kind that promised protection while making you wonder what you were being kept from.

    We scaled those walls to glimpse the outside world and, somehow, the higher we climbed, the further we could travel through our own memories. But altitude brought obstacles—massive gates stacked one atop another, each locked, each requiring a key.

    I had a locker at the base of the camp with everything I needed: my belongings, my one precious key. And then it was gone, lost to the dream’s careless currents. I cursed myself, replaying the loss in my mind until it stung.

    Kevin, an old friend with a voice like a warm blanket, told me it was fine. Not to worry. That I was okay. Ted, wiry and restless, was already at the top, peering over. He called down, telling us to follow his example, that freedom was just beyond the next barrier.

    Meanwhile, Charlie lounged at the compound’s base, getting his hair trimmed and his shoes polished by a contented employee, as if this walled-in world was good enough.

    The forgetting pressed in on me, thick and airless. Ted’s optimism couldn’t lift me, Kevin’s comfort couldn’t steady me. Without the key, I felt stripped of competence. I teetered there—between the clock faces, between the steel walls—on the edge of hopelessness, afraid that even if I found the lock, I wouldn’t remember what it opened.

  • The Other Place Has QR Codes

    The Other Place Has QR Codes

    Of all the Twilight Zone episodes that have taken up residence in my psyche, none clings more tenaciously than “A Nice Place to Visit.” A petty crook named Rocky Valentine gets gunned down during a botched robbery and wakes up in what appears to be paradise. He’s greeted by Pip, a genial, rotund guide played by Sebastian Cabot, who grants him everything his larcenous heart ever wanted: money, women, luck, luxury. No struggle, no stress. Every desire fulfilled on command.

    At first, Rocky revels in this frictionless dreamscape. It’s Vegas without losing streaks, heaven without requirements. But gradually, pleasure without purpose curdles into a thick, syrupy dread. He realizes that gratification without resistance is just another form of punishment. Bored out of his mind and desperate for meaning, Rocky pleads with Pip to send him “to the other place.”

    Pip laughs and delivers the gut punch: “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place!” And then, with glee, Pip cackles like the well-fed devil he is.

    Which brings me to paid parking.

    There is a hell, and it lives in the infrastructure of modern urban parking. It’s a realm of QR codes, license plate entries, and apps that want your soul—or at least your email and billing zip code. Some kiosks accept coins, others demand smartphone apps, two-step verification, and an MFA code just to stand still without being ticketed. My wife, tech-literate and cool-headed, usually handles this logistical hellscape while I loiter nearby, pretending to study the map of downtown like it’s a sacred text.

    But this week she’s out of town at a teaching convention, and I’m taking our twin daughters to Laguna Beach. This means I have to drive, find a parking structure, and—here’s the true horror—navigate the digital rigmarole of paid parking without her guidance. The thought of it has me sweating harder than Rocky in his silk suit.

    The absurd part? It’s not the traffic, the tides, or the teenagers that unnerve me. It’s the parking meter. The existential shame of standing in front of a digital payment kiosk, poking at it like a confused ape while my daughters wait patiently (or impatiently) beside me. I don’t fear the unknown. I fear looking like an idiot in front of my kids.

    But here’s the deeper, darker realization: this is just a symptom. My wife, through years of effort and mental load, has become the de facto logistics commander of our household. She knows which airport lines move faster. She’s the one strangers approach at terminals, sensing her Jedi-level calm. Meanwhile, I shuffle behind her like an NPC in a bad video game—directionless, frictionless, practically translucent.

    Frictionless living has a cost. It breeds detachment. It robs you of engagement, resilience, and presence. And like Rocky Valentine, I’ve grown too used to being served instead of showing up.

    Ironically, I’m obsessed with watches—those exquisite tools designed to remind you where you are in time. And yet, I’ve spent years drifting, distracted, floating outside the dial. It takes a solo day trip with my daughters—an hour drive, some shopping, a good lunch, and possibly a tantrum or two—to pull me back into the present.

    When my wife heard about my plan, she said, “You don’t know how happy this makes me.” And I believed her. She wasn’t just relieved that I was giving her a break. She was glad to see me step into the friction. To stop spectating and start parenting in real time.

    No, I don’t want to be Rocky. I don’t want a life where every parking spot is perfect, every line is short, and every meal arrives on time. I want the chaos. I want the curveballs. I want the real thing.

    Even if it means downloading the stupid parking app.

  • This Is the Life You Have Chosen

    This Is the Life You Have Chosen

    I’ve never forgotten a story one of my college students told me back in the fall of 1998. She was a re-entry student—a nurse in her early forties—juggling coursework at UCLA with overnight hospital shifts. The kind of woman who sticks in your memory: short, sturdy, glasses perched low on her nose, with the weary, perceptive eyes of someone who’d seen too much and lips that knew how to pace a punchline.

    Most afternoons, after class let out, she’d linger by my desk and recount episodes from her Louisiana backwoods childhood or from the fluorescent netherworld of her hospital’s VIP wing. Her stories ricocheted between absurdity and horror—tales told with the calm authority of someone who could handle arterial spray with one hand and chart notes with the other.

    But one story gripped me by the spine and never let go. It wasn’t about dying celebrities or ER gore. It was about something far worse. A visitation. A monster.

    She and her cousin Carmen were feral children, raised in the lawless heat of rural Louisiana, where school attendance was optional and adult supervision was more myth than fact. Left to their own devices, the two girls invented what she called “mean games”—they tortured frogs, pulled wings off insects, and hinted at darker cruelties she refused to name. Lord of the Flies in sundresses.

    And then one afternoon, the visitor arrived.

    They were holed up in a decaying house, conspiring over their next cruelty, when the porch door creaked open and something stepped inside. It looked like a man. But it wasn’t. It had a tail—thick, muscled, and disturbingly animate. It moved with a will of its own, curling and flicking behind him like a fleshy metronome. His body was bristled with wiry hair. His voice? Low, hoarse, and calm in the most terrifying way. He didn’t threaten. He simply listed.

    Sitting in a rocking chair, the creature described, in brutal detail, everything the girls had done—every frog mutilated, every insect dissected. Nothing vague. He named the acts like he had them on file. And then he made his offer: Keep going, he said, and I’ll recruit you.

    He stayed for three hours. Just sat there. Breathing. Flicking that tail. Describing their path toward damnation with the steady tone of a bureaucrat explaining retirement benefits. When he finally left, dissolving into the heat shimmer of the Louisiana dusk, the girls were too stunned to move. Carmen whispered, “Did you see that?” My student just nodded.

    They never spoke of it again. But they changed. Overnight. Sunday school. Prayer. Kindness, enforced not by conscience but by fear. The kind that settles in your bones and never leaves. Whatever that thing was, it did its job.

    And this is the part that haunts me: she wasn’t a kook. She wasn’t mystical, manic, or given to exaggeration. She was a nurse—clear-eyed, grounded, more familiar with death than most people are with taxes. She wasn’t telling a ghost story. She was giving a deposition.

    To this day, I see those two girls, wide-eyed and paralyzed, staring down a thing that knew them intimately and promised them a future in hell’s apprenticeship program. Whether it was a demon, a shared psychotic break, or some mythological construct formed by childhood guilt and Southern humidity, I don’t know. But I do know what it meant.

    The creature’s message was brutal in its simplicity: Keep practicing cruelty, and you’ll lose the ability to stop. You’ll become it.

    That’s not just folklore. That’s biblical. The idea that if you repeat your wickedness long enough, God—or whatever you believe in—stops interrupting you. He doesn’t smite you. He simply steps aside and says, Go ahead. This is the life you’ve chosen.

    No wonder Kierkegaard was obsessed with working out your salvation with fear and trembling. There’s nothing more terrifying than the idea that damnation is self-inflicted, not by a thunderbolt, but by repetition. That the road to hell is paved with muscle memory.

  • Reginald, Kent, and the Shark-Infested Sea of Self-Improvement

    Reginald, Kent, and the Shark-Infested Sea of Self-Improvement

    Last night, I dreamed I was twenty again. I was in attendance at a spectral dinner party filled with strangers and vague regret. I was young again, which is to say, raw and restless, clutching a satchel full of unformed ambitions and unfiltered loneliness. 

    A wealthy young man appeared, oozing charisma and vaguely European cheekbones, a demigod of fashion and cosmetics, the kind of person whose cologne smells like entitlement. He leaned in and offered me a revelation disguised as skincare: two miracle creams. One, to be applied to the crown of my head, was called Reginald. The other, for my back, was Kent. He spoke of them with the hushed reverence usually reserved for ancient scrolls or Swiss watches. These weren’t mere moisturizers—they were spiritual lubricants. Balms that promised not just hydration, but orientation. 

    Then, as if summoned by a higher capitalist calling, he vanished mid-conversation, leaving me with a business card and a lead on where to find a lifetime supply—somewhere by the sea. And so began the quest.

    To be worthy of Reginald and Kent, one had to wear formal attire, because of course one did. I found myself in a tailored black suit, wading through surf with fellow seekers, sharks gliding around our ankles like corporate anxieties. I held my leather dress shoes in hand, lest the saltwater stain them—a fool’s hope, given the bloodthirsty tide. Later, I caravanned with aging rock royalty—Peter Gabriel, Jackson Browne, Boz Scaggs—who casually discussed their rendezvous plans in Capri or St. Barts. For a moment, I basked in the illusion of belonging. But as the conversation turned to private jets and generational wealth, the truth descended: I was no musician. I had no bookings. My only claim to transformation lay in acquiring my precious creams.

    The journey devolved into a surreal slog. It rained as I crossed a deserted college courtyard. My business shoes were doomed. A younger version of S—someone I wouldn’t meet until decades later—appeared like a ghost from my professional future, pointing the way with a sense of urgency. I ran, I hitchhiked, I boarded phantom trains, only to land back at the shark-infested beach, no closer to the mythic Land of Body Cream. 

    Then, through the humid haze of beachside commerce and quaint seaside cafes, I saw Rachel—yes, that Rachel—from a hot tub party in Livermore, 1988. 

    Seated at a weathered café table under a string of flickering patio lights, I unspooled my sorrow before her, pouring it out like a battered thermos with a cracked seal—dripping, lukewarm, and uninvited. I mistook my own rawness for profundity, believing that the sheer weight of my unfiltered confession would conjure tenderness, maybe even love. But Rachel didn’t flinch. She studied me like a dissection project and began her work with clinical precision. Her words carved deep and clean, a verbal autopsy that exposed every rot-soft corner of my character. And just when I thought the vivisection complete, she found new organs of dysfunction to prod and slice. Her fury wasn’t wild—it was righteous, surgical, sustained.

    She stormed off, heels tapping out a verdict on the pavement. I sat stunned in the wreckage of myself, staring at the space she had vacated, still warm with contempt. That’s when the restaurant owner appeared—a woman with the weary kindness of someone who’s witnessed too many romantic collapses and kept score. She told me she’d filmed the entire scene. “You’ll want to study this,” she said, handing me the video with a nod toward the attic stairs. “It might help.” I obeyed without a word.

    I climbed into that attic, its rafters bowed with time, and watched the footage on an aging monitor. Again and again. I rewound every insult, paused on each flinch of mine, cataloged every truth she hurled like a polished blade. It became my gospel of failure. I spent the rest of my life up there—alone with my ghosts and her voice—striving to earn back something I’d never really had: the right to reenter the world and claim Reginald and Kent, the sacred creams of redemption I still believed might set me right.