Cinemorphosis

Tag: writing

  • Love in the Time of Warm Beer

    Love in the Time of Warm Beer

    In 1984, while you were still in college, your grandfather—a card-carrying Marxist who frequented Russia and Cuba and claimed to have befriended Fidel Castro—decided to pay your way for a Soviet-sponsored “Sputnik Peace Tour.” He wanted you to see the Soviet Union through his rose-colored glasses. Maybe, just maybe, you’d come home singing the Soviet anthem with a crimson flag tattoo stretched across your 52-inch chest.

    You joined a group of about a dozen college students from across the country, a few professors from Arkansas and Tennessee, and a Soviet-appointed tour guide named Natasha. The plan was to travel mostly by train—from Moscow to Kyiv, Odessa, Novgorod, Leningrad, and back to Moscow.

    To prep you for the two-week summer adventure, your grandfather handed you a copy of Mike Davidow’s Cities Without Crisis: The Soviet Union Through the Eyes of an American. According to Davidow, the USSR was a society in bloom—happy children with “rose-colored cheeks” played in utopian cities unblemished by the chaos and violence of capitalist America.

    Out of gratitude, you gave the book a fair chance. But by the halfway point, the propaganda wore you down. It was a slog—repetitive, dull, and deaf to irony. You ditched Davidow for A Clockwork Orange, a dystopian acid bath from Anthony Burgess that, had your grandfather caught you reading it, would’ve gotten you labeled a reactionary.

    You carried that subversive novel on the Aeroflot flight from New York to Moscow. That’s when Jerry Gold—a fellow tourist and law student at Brown—noticed it and leaned in with a warning: “They’ll probably confiscate that at the airport,” he said. “They’ll mark you as a troublemaker and keep tags on you. Look over your shoulder. And if anyone offers you good money for your jeans, it’s probably KGB. Black-market trading will land you in prison.”

    You laughed nervously, but the real threat onboard was not the KGB—it was the in-flight food. Small foil-wrapped cheeses, off-color cold cuts, wilted lettuce, and soggy carrot slices—all served by demure flight attendants in drab uniforms. The Aeroflot menu was a direct contradiction to Davidow’s utopia. A lack of good food was a crisis, and pretending otherwise was its own crisis.

    Jerry, peeling the foil off his sad cheese triangle, folded his industrial-grade napkin and pocketed it. “This might be the only toilet paper you get on this trip,” he advised.

    “That’s disgusting.”

    “You ever used an Eastern European toilet?”

    You hadn’t.

    “A hole in the ground. Deep knee bend. Free Jack LaLanne workout. Things can be primitive.”

    You asked why, with all his doom-saying, he’d signed up.

    “College credit. Exotic street cred. How many Americans get to say they’ve been to the USSR?” He bit his cheese like it was a dare. “What about you?”

    “My grandfather wants to convert me. He’s a communist.”

    “So he sent you to paradise.” Jerry pinched a cold cut and gave it a good stare.

    “The food’s not a winning argument,” you said. “Neither is the lack of toilet paper.”

    Jerry smirked. “In the Soviet Union, if you see a line, you stand in it. It means something’s for sale.”

    A week later, you stood sweating in a Kyiv market watching babushkas queue for wrinkled, fly-covered chickens. You thought, Cities without crisis? Bullshit. Sixty-two miles away sat Chernobyl. Two years later, the reactor would blow. Cities without crisis indeed.

    But in 1984, as you encountered shortages, queues, and squat toilets, one detail stirred something close to admiration: classical music playing everywhere—train stations, parks, museums. Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Prokofiev streamed from speakers like sonic incense. Was it cultural enrichment or state-sponsored propaganda—a rebuke to Western vulgarity? You wanted to believe it was the former. Your grandfather would’ve insisted it was.

    No one confiscated your Burgess novel at the airport, but the following day, at the Moscow Zoo, you saw a silverback gorilla pounding his chest while a Rachmaninoff piano piece played. Then she appeared: a stunning woman in an elegant black dress, black hat, and pearls. She smiled and told you, “You look very Russian.”

    She wasn’t wrong. Your mother’s family hailed from Belarus and Poland. Even your fellow tourists said you looked native. She added, “Russian men are strong. You are weightlifter, yes?”

    You were. Before bodybuilding, you’d competed in Olympic weightlifting and idolized Vasily Alekseyev.

    “Russian women love strong men,” she purred.

    You blushed and beamed. Then Natasha grabbed your arm and marched you behind some bushes. She said the woman was probably KGB. A honey trap. Kompromat. Whatever the game was, Natasha wanted it shut down.

    But you couldn’t stop thinking about her. You had been awkward and monkish in college, more comfortable with piano, Nietzsche, and protein powder than dating. Now you felt unshackled, lusty, hungry for connection. Natasha had ruined your chance—or so you believed.

    The next morning, you found a grand piano in the lobby of the Moscow Olympic Hotel. You played a sad piece you’d composed. Your fellow tourists gathered, impressed. Truth was, you were a sloppy pianist who overcompensated with melodrama. But you had flair.

    At a nearby table, Soviet military officers drank warm beer. The Commander—tall, square-jawed, festooned in medals—watched you. Then you saw her again: the woman from the zoo, standing by the piano. Before you could approach her, the Commander locked eyes with her, leered, and sent her fleeing.

    He turned to you and mimicked your piano-playing with theatrical finger waggles. His men laughed. He invited you to his table, poured you warm beer, and barked, “Drink!”

    Three times he commanded. You complied. It was the price of being a charlatan. A dandy. A fraud. Russians trained their children in piano. You were a ham with no chops. He knew. They all knew.

    When you got back to your room and twisted the sink’s cold-water knob, the entire unit came off the wall and slashed your chest. You bled, cursed, and lifted your shirt the rest of the day to show off your injury as proof that Russia itself was trying to kill you.

    The Commander popped up again—on the train to Novgorod. He laughed when he saw you. Jerry speculated he was keeping tabs on you. CIA paranoia, or just Soviet protocol?

    You weren’t sure. But by the time you arrived in Novgorod, you had a fever. Natasha insisted on a doctor. Soon, a stunning, no-nonsense woman in a white coat examined you, declared it a cold, and ordered you to drop your pants for a Soviet “remedy.”

    The shot felt like hot tar. Your fellow tourists watched, delighted.

    At a barn lecture the next day, the Commander showed up again, reinforcing that you were always being watched. Jerry managed to prank him with a piece of hay, brushing his neck like a mosquito. The Commander slapped himself silly. Your group stifled laughter. You limped away, your ass sore, your ego tattered.

    Later, at a toy factory near the forest, you saw buses of children arriving. When you asked Natasha if they were starting a shift, she had them shooed away. One boy even got a boot to the backside. You had glimpsed a truth they didn’t want captured.

    That night, North Korean kids in uniforms got the best dinner service at the hotel. You and your group got leftovers, like stray dogs. You were done with Novgorod. You needed Leningrad.

    The next evening, you were sitting in a Leningrad discotheque, still nursing a sore ass, and talking to a cute Finnish girl named Tula. It turned out you had a lot in common. You were both in your early twenties. You both shared a passion for Russian literature and the music of Rachmaninoff. As you conversed under the glittering gold disco ball, the Bee Gees’ “Too Much Heaven” blared across the club. Through your mutual confessions, it became clear that neither of you had any real romantic experience. Tula was short, diminutive, bespectacled, and elfin, with short sandy blond hair. At one point, she said, “I will never marry. I have, what do you say in English? Melancholy. Yes, I have melancholy. You know this word?”

    “Yes, I was no stranger to melancholy,” you said.

    “I am so much like that,” she told you.

    “That explains your love of Rachmaninoff,” you said.

    She clasped her hands and almost became teary-eyed. “How I love Rachmaninoff. Just utter his name, and I will break down weeping.”

    You thought you were a depressive, but in the presence of Tula, you had the perkiness of Richard Simmons leading an aerobics class.

    She asked what you were doing in Russia. You explained that your grandfather was a card-carrying communist, a friend of Fidel Castro, and a supporter of the Soviet Union. He used a shortwave radio in his San Pedro house to communicate with Soviet sailors on nearby ships and submarines. He visited Cuba whenever he could, bringing medical supplies that were in demand. One of his friends, a Hollywood writer, had lived in exile in Nicaragua after being arrested in France by Interpol for driving a Peugeot station wagon filled with illegal weapons. Your grandfather had wanted you to fall in love with the Soviet Union and become a champion of its utopian vision, so he paid for you to go on a peace tour.

    Had you fallen in love with Russia the way your grandfather had hoped? Not really. So far, you had been approached at the Moscow Zoo by a striking woman in black and pearls—whom Natasha, your tour guide, claimed was a KGB agent trying to frame you for soliciting a prostitute. You had been washing your hands at the newly built Olympic Hotel in Moscow when the sink fell out of the wall and gashed your torso. You’d caught a fever in Novgorod, prompting a beautiful, stern-faced doctor to give you a shot in the ass. You’d been approached by young men on the subway asking if you wanted to sell your American jeans—just as Jerry Gold had warned—most likely a KGB setup for black-market entrapment. And everywhere you went—hotels, trains, restaurants—grim chamber music poured from loudspeakers, as if the Soviet authorities were saying, “Try not to be too happy while you’re here.”

    Tula listened to your long-winded tale for a couple of hours, wide-eyed, touching your shoulder. “I need to see you again,” she said.

    You agreed to meet the next day at the Peterhof Royal Palace by the Samson Fountain. The place was enormous—a garden the size of multiple football fields, full of gold statues and fountains shooting jets of water into the air. You and Tula sat on the hot concrete steps in the near-ninety-degree heat, flanked by golden naked statues posed around a spectacle known as the Grand Cascade. She wore a short white dress. Eventually, the heat got to you both, and you decided to get ice cream.

    On your way to the ice cream bar, a gypsy suddenly tried to hand you a baby—like a quarterback executing a handoff. Before the infant could land in your arms, a Russian police officer swooped in, seized the baby, returned it to the gypsy, and shouted at her. You thought for sure she’d be arrested, but the officer merely berated her. She shriveled under the scolding and slinked away with the child.

    You returned to Tula with the ice cream and recounted the bizarre scene.

    She nodded. “Things like that happen all the time here.”

    “But what was I supposed to do with the baby?”

    “Perhaps adopt it? Buy it? Save it from a life of misery? There is so much tragedy here.”

    “So I was supposed to fly back to the States with a baby? Go through customs and everything?”

    “I know. It’s crazy.”

    “I don’t think I could be a parent. I don’t have the hardwiring for it.”

    “Me either. I’m too sad to be a parent. Sadness is a full-time job that leaves me with little energy for much else.”

    She finished her ice cream and smiled at you, then said, “You and I are like two kindred spirits meeting each other in this strange world.”

    “It’s hotter than hell out here,” you said.

    “So will you marry someday?”

    You shrugged. “I doubt anyone will take me.”

    “Don’t be so hard on yourself. If I were the marrying type, I would come to America and spend my life with you. We could live in California and be sad together. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

    And oddly, it did sound lovely—living in shared sadness with Tula, marinating in Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, discussing the existential torment of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. What other kind of life was there?

    She stood up and said she had to catch her plane back to Finland. She gave you a chaste kiss on the cheek.

    “I really hope you find happiness. You are such an outstanding person.”

    “Outstanding?” you repeated, unable to hide your skepticism. The word struck you as hollow—like describing a house beside train tracks as “charming.” You echoed the adjective with a trace of sarcasm and said goodbye. You never saw her again, but you never forgot the vanilla ice cream—it remained the best you’d ever tasted.

    Nine months later, you were back in your Bay Area routine of working out, playing piano, and slogging through college assignments. You were living with your mother, standing beside the loquat tree in your front yard, holding a letter with a Finnish return address. Mexican parrots shrieked from a neighbor’s dogwood tree. It was a warm May. You walked under the porch light and opened the envelope.

    Dear Jeff,
    So much has happened since I met you. I took your recommendation and read A Confederacy of Dunces. I laughed my ass off, but the book was so sad. I keep the book on my shelf and always think of you when I see it. You won’t believe this. I’m getting married! I have you to thank for this. I never thought I was the marrying type, but those two days I spent with you in Russia changed me. When I got back to Finland, I was restless, I thought about you constantly, and even at one time I had this mad idea that I should arrange to visit you, but a high school friend Oliver came into my life, and we began seeing each other, not as friends but as lovers. I have you to thank for this. Meeting you awakened a part of my soul that I had never known before. I hope that you don’t forsake love, as I had planned to do, that you too will find someone special in your life. You deserve it. You are an amazing man!
    Love Always,
    Tula

    You stood there, staring at the letter, listening to the parrots cackling in the distance.

    So that was your role—you were the guy who helped a sweet-souled depressive fall in love. Not with you. You weren’t the recipient of her love. You were the lighter fluid, the spark, the kindling that got her fire started. You’d made a difference.

    You went inside, sat at your ebony Yamaha upright, and played something sad. You tried to imagine Tula as your audience, but her image was pushed out by the Russian Commander. You could see him sneering.

    “You are a charlatan,” he said in your mind. “An American charlatan in Russia. You must always be put in your place. You must drink warm beer until you puke your guts out. Only then can you redeem your vain self.”

    Over the years, the Commander had become a constant voice in your head—a reminder that you were pretentious, fraudulent, self-regarding. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe you needed him. He was the unexpected gift of a trip designed to make you a Communist but instead taught you to keep your inner ham in check.

    Because an American charlatan in Russia was still a charlatan everywhere else.

  • Bahama Dreams

    Bahama Dreams

    You had been the worst college student ever. But to understand the full catastrophe, you had to start at the beginning.

    It was fall 1979. You were seventeen, riding high as an Olympic weightlifting champion and competitive bodybuilder. You had dreams of going big—Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia—and then opening your own gym in the Bahamas. It all made perfect sense: a beautiful body, a tropical environment, and zero obligation to wear clothes beyond Speedos. Regular clothing gave you claustrophobia. You wanted to slather your shaved body in tanning oil and live free, unburdened by sleeves or pant legs.

    When you shared your paradise plan with your recently-divorced mother, she gave you her signature eye-roll. “Don’t be a nincompoop. You can’t isolate yourself from the world on some tropical island.”

    “Don’t worry,” you’d reply, dead serious. “I’ll be well connected. I’ll invite Frank Zane, Tom Platz, Robbie Robinson, Kalman Szkalak, Danny Padilla, Ron Teufel, Pete Grymkowski, and Rudy Hermosillo. We’ll hang out, drink pineapple protein shakes, and talk about how bodybuilding transformed our lives.”

    “They’re not your friends. They’re models in your stupid magazines,” she’d say. “I’m not an idiot.”

    Contrary to the meathead stereotype, you had earned straight As in high school. But your high school had been so dumbed down that a 4.0 GPA was about as meaningful as a participation ribbon. You had taken classes like “Money Matters,” where you learned to balance a checkbook and write rudimentary budgets. Your education had all the intellectual heft of a marshmallow.

    Another class, “Popular Lit,” required you to read three library books and submit one-page book reports. That was the semester. Your teacher, a ghost in a wool coat, spent her days reading tabloids and clipping her nails while you and your classmates pretended to read. She looked more like a sleep-deprived fortune teller than an educator.

    It was clear no one was preparing you for intellectual greatness. They were prepping you to stay out of prison and flip burgers with dignity. College wasn’t even part of your plan. Bodybuilding glory was. Still, you begrudgingly agreed to attend the local university to avoid being kicked out of the house and forced into the brutal world of full-time work.

    Despite your disdain for higher education, you saw signs of your future greatness. You had the body. You had the connections—like the time you trained with NFL legend John Matuszak, aka “the Tooz,” at The Weight Room in Hayward. Matuszak, nearly seven feet tall, was a force of nature. You two would bench press to England Dan and belt out love songs between reps.

    You also befriended fitness store owner Joe Corsi, a vampiric former bodybuilder in a sleeveless jumpsuit who told you with conviction that you were destined for greatness. You envisioned a Weider-style sponsorship complete with daily deliveries of steaks and supplements.

    College was supposed to be a brief detour. A holding pattern. A cover story.

    You failed miserably.

    You couldn’t stand your professors. You envied them—envied their tailored clothes, their African safaris, their artisanal puttanesca recipes. You resented their polished lectures and their effortless confidence. Your Ethics professor, a philandering dean with a toupee that behaved like a terrified woodland creature, became your personal nemesis.

    The university deemed you too hopeless for regular freshman composition. You were placed in Bonehead English, then demoted further into Pre-Bonehead, a class so embarrassing it was held in the basement next to the boiler room. Maintenance men would peer inside and snicker like you were part of a secret leper colony.

    Worse still, you may have just been stupid. When a neighbor’s Siberian Husky licked your lips, you panicked and called into KGO Talk Radio to ask if you could contract AIDS from a dog. You weren’t even dating anyone, yet you had managed to develop a highly specific form of neurotic celibacy.

    Your mother overheard the broadcast.

    “You need to cool it, buster,” she said.

    You agreed. You couldn’t believe you’d made it this far in life.

    You tried every major—Criminal Justice, Sociology, Psychology, History, Oceanography, Accounting. Each one drove you deeper into despair. You couldn’t stomach the language, the jargon, the self-congratulatory tone of academia. You dropped classes. You failed others. The university put you on academic probation and handed you your soul on a stick.

    You hit bottom.

    You considered alternatives: tech school, piano moving, garbage collection. The gym guy nicknamed “The Garbologist” said he could get you in with the sanitation department.

    You told your father. Over steaks on his patio, you made your case. You needed a job with good hours and gym time. Sanitation had potential.

    “You can’t be a garbage man,” your father said.

    “Why not?”

    “You’re too vain.”

    That stopped you cold. He was right.

    From that moment, you had an epiphany: You hated those classes because they were poorly written. What you craved was great writing. You became an English major. You also realized your fidgety nature required self-directed study. You bought your first grammar handbook and taught yourself the mechanics of language like it was the Rosetta Stone.

    You saw grammar as proof that the universe had structure. That your scattered life might be wrangled into order. Nietzsche once wrote, “We are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” Now you understood what he meant. Grammar was your God. Grammar was your salvation.

    You improved your grades. You got hired by the university’s Tutoring Center. Then they asked you to teach. The same institution that had nearly kicked you out now trusted you to educate others.

    That’s how you began your journey—from the worst college student ever… to the worst college professor alive.

  • How to Pick Up Girls and Get Stung by Reality

    How to Pick Up Girls and Get Stung by Reality

    The 70s were a carnival of ostentation and fakery. You strutted through junior high dances in Angels Flight bell-bottoms, paisley Dacron shirts, platform shoes, and pukka shell necklaces. In summer, you bared your tanned chest in fishnet tank tops and more gold chains than a Vegas lounge singer. Instead of building character, you sculpted a persona: muscular, flamboyant, visually arresting.

    Even your face had to match your aesthetic. Inspired by the Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Bachelor of the Month,” you fixated on cheekbones and jawlines. Compared to Robert Conrad or Jan-Michael Vincent, you came up short. So you sucked in your cheeks—first occasionally, then obsessively—until you learned to speak while biting the inside of your face. You’d come home with raw, bleeding cheeks. You’d walk through school with puffed lats and exaggerated posture, only to be mocked by your classmates.

    You were the punchline of a sitcom, a caricature of yourself.

    This was the decade of the Mock Apple Pie—Ritz Crackers masquerading as apples. Authenticity took a back seat. Fakery got shotgun.

    Perhaps the high priest of this philosophy was a man you called Frank Reeves.

    It was the summer of 1977. You were spending every Saturday at Cull Canyon Lake, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil—zero SPF, all banana-scented seduction. And every weekend, there he was: Frank Reeves. Late twenties. Owner of a black 1976 Camaro with white racing stripes. Wavy brown hair, manicured mustache, deep tan, blue Speedos, white puka shells, and a gold chain glistening over his chest hair. He carried a Playboy cooler, a boombox, and a Frisbee, and he reeled in women like it was a sport.

    You noticed that he always said the same things in the same order. Every Saturday, it was: “Paid my uncle five hundred for that paint job… Dad owns clothing stores… Helped him manage since high school… Waiting on a Hollywood callback… Own my own house in Parsons Estates.” He said “Parsons Estates” like it was a holy incantation.

    Frank Reeves wasn’t just a cliché. He was a walking, Speedo-clad composite of How to Pick Up Girls!—Eric Weber’s infamous book of manipulation. You recognized his lines. You knew the script. He embodied the Playboy ideal: cosmopolitan, cocky, a god in his own eyes. And every Saturday, a new woman bought the lie.

    You watched him work, all while reading your parents’ paperback version of The Happy Hooker on your beach towel. Then came the bee sting. A shriek. A girl gasped. “You stepped on a bee!”

    Reeves tried to laugh it off, but his swollen foot looked like a smoked ham. Sweat poured down his chest. He collapsed, hyperventilating. Paramedics came. He was in anaphylactic shock.

    You never found out if he survived. But the image stuck: a man all pose, no substance. A fake warrior devoted to a fake gospel. And like all fakes, he was eventually undone by something real—a bee, of all things. A tiny truth with a stinger.

  • Barbells and Boundaries

    Barbells and Boundaries

    Late one Saturday afternoon, you were marooned in your bedroom, held hostage by the epic saga playing out in your kitchen. Paul Bergdorf, a plumber with the emotional subtlety of a freight train, had been battling the kitchen sink since morning. His oversized toolbox had exploded across the linoleum floor like a mechanical crime scene. Every few minutes, you heard a grunt or a thud, the sounds of a man locked in mortal combat with ancient pipes.

    Your mom strolled into your room with a face that mixed gratitude with a romantic optimism that always smelled like a warning.
    “It’s so nice of him to do this,” she said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” you asked.
    “He’s not charging me.”
    “Of course he is.”
    “No, he’s a friend.”
    “He’s not your friend, Mom. You just met him.”
    “His name is Paul Bergdorf. One of my girlfriends introduced me to him.”
    “This isn’t going to end well.”
    “Keep your voice down.”

    Right then, Bergdorf bellowed from the kitchen, proudly declaring that the sink had been fixed. Your mom hurried away. You stayed in your room, knocking out reverse barbell curls while watching through the sliding glass door that connected your room to the atrium. Beyond that was the kitchen, where Bergdorf stood like a sweaty gladiator, wiping his greasy mitts on a rag. He looked like a bloated baby trying to cosplay as a man: massive belly, oil-streaked jeans, beat-up boots, and that tragic attempt at a combover. His blue eyes were permanently glazed, his nose red and bulbous like a squashed tomato, and the house now reeked of his sweat mingled with low-grade cologne.

    He turned the faucet on, then off, proudly displaying his handiwork. “Now before I go,” he said, puffing out his chest, “I just want to say—I may not be the best-looking guy around, but I can grill a damn good steak. I’m talking big, thick, juicy slabs of meat. How about joining me next weekend for a barbecue?”

    “That’s very nice, but no thanks,” your mom said, her tone firm.

    Your forearms burned from the 50 reverse curls, but you kept going, switching to wrist curls as if preparing for battle.

    “I’ll get us some prime steaks,” he pressed on. “You won’t believe how tender they’ll be.”

    “Thanks again, but I’m busy.”

    “All I ask is one chance to serve up the most delicious barbecued steak you’ve ever had.”

    “No, really. I’m not available.”

    “Just pick any weekend,” he insisted, “and I’ll deliver a steak you’ll never forget.”

    Your forearms were bulging. That was it. You dropped the barbell, stormed down the hall, past the dining room, and burst into the kitchen like a SWAT team with a moral objection.

    “How many times does she have to say no?” you demanded.

    “Hey, let’s cool it,” Bergdorf replied, raising his hands. “I was just asking your mom out. I fixed the sink. It’s the least I could do.”

    “If you want to volunteer your plumbing skills, great. But fixing a drain doesn’t entitle you to date privileges.”

    “I just wanted to make her a steak!”

    “Okay, we get it. You’re a steak wizard. Good for you. Now pack up your tools and get the hell out.”

    You towered over him, finger pointed at the front door like an Old Testament angel. Bergdorf glared, shoved his tools into the truck, slammed the door, and roared off, trailing a plume of driveway dust behind him.

    Your mom just stood there, stunned.
    “You scared him away,” she said.
    “Next time, let’s just pay the plumber.”

  • Nicknames Are a Life Sentence

    Nicknames Are a Life Sentence

    You sat in the soaked bleachers of Canyon High on a rainy Friday night, the stadium lights casting a sickly greenish-yellow haze across the field. The Canyon Cougars were facing off against the Hayward Farmers, but all eyes were on their freshman linebacker phenom, Jack Del Rio—part football player, part demigod in cleats.

    Next to you, Liz huddled under a massive umbrella. Between the two of you sat a bag of popcorn that had long since surrendered to the rain, each kernel tasting like soggy regret.

    Off to the side, you noticed the girl they called the Tasmanian Devil. She was marooned on a solitary slab of bleacher, her jacket soaked, mascara melting like the villain in a low-budget horror flick. No umbrella, no allies, just rain and raw adolescence.

    “Tasmanian Devil’s got that look,” you said to Liz, chewing a kernel that crumbled into sadness on your tongue.

    “What look?” she asked.

    “The one that says she knows her life is a steaming pile of crap.”

    Liz nodded slowly. “Poor thing.”

    “Do we even know her real name?” you asked.

    She gave a small shrug.

    “Exactly. She’s been sentenced to that nickname for life. Might as well tattoo it on her forehead.”

    As the game dragged on, the rain lightened into a mist, coating everything in a kind of apocalyptic glow. The crowd buzzed as Del Rio took the field, and a man behind you barked, “That kid’s going pro, you mark my words.”

    You leaned toward Liz. “Jack Del Rio and the Tasmanian Devil—two trains, opposite tracks. One’s off to glory, the other’s derailing into a swamp.”

    “We could invite her over,” Liz offered.

    You waved like a deranged game show host. “Need an umbrella? Want to join us?”

    She shook her head. Her eyes stayed on the ground. Her jacket soaked through like a sponge left in a car wash.

    “At least you tried,” Liz said with a sympathetic smile.

    You shifted the conversation. “You mad at your dad?”

    “No,” you said, surprising even yourself. “If anything, I’m relieved. There’s less tension now. No more walking on eggshells.”

    Liz nodded. “After my dad left, my mom never dated. She’s allergic to men. She’s got this fortress of piano recitals, farmer’s markets, and gin rummy with Grandma. Her friend circle is basically a man-repellent sorority.”

    You sighed. “I’m dreading my mom dating. She’s too nice, too open. Men could run circles around her.”

    “You can’t control everything,” Liz said.

    “There’s this awful book called How to Pick Up Girls! It’s like a predator’s playbook. If some sleazeball uses that on her, I swear I’ll Hulk out.”

    Liz laughed. “You can’t be a bouncer at your own house.”

    You squared your shoulders. “Watch me.”

  • Welcome to the Kids of Divorced Parents Club

    Welcome to the Kids of Divorced Parents Club

    It was a cold November Friday night at Canyon High School, and the Frosch Dance had been in full swing. Freshmen and sophomores had packed the cafeteria, KC & the Sunshine Band’s throbbing disco beats pulsing through the linoleum and cinderblocks. Boys had huddled on one side, girls on the other, like oil and water at a chemically unstable mixer. You’d stood with Hewitt and Kaufmann, scanning the room for Liz Murphy.

    Kaufmann had jabbed his finger across the cafeteria at a girl who looked like she could’ve started for the Raiders. Broad shoulders, neck like a redwood stump, and a forehead that could stop a speeding truck—she’d stood alone, her eyes glowering from opposite ends of her face like rival sentries. The dark pouches beneath them added to the haunted look. Her mouth, locked in a scowl, might as well have been carved in stone.

    “Must suck to look like the lead singer of Meat Loaf,” Kaufmann had snickered.

    “She’s known as the Tasmanian Devil,” Hewitt added. “Flashburger was yelling ‘Hit the deck! Tasmanian Devil on the loose!’ when she came near the quad. She’s got a twin brother. Both in special ed.”

    “That’s gotta be rough,” you said. “Getting ridiculed every minute of your life.”

    “You probably get used to it,” Kaufmann mused. “Grow a thick skin.”

    “Or maybe you don’t,” you said. “It’s like that myth from Mrs. Hanson’s class—the guy chained to the rock getting his liver eaten every day.”

    “Prometheus,” Kaufmann confirmed.

    “What a hellish life. Constant Prometheus treatment.”

    “Do we even know her name?” Kaufmann asked.

    “Nope,” said Hewitt. “Just Tasmanian Devil. That’s it.”

    That’s when Liz Murphy had walked in, burgundy top hugging her in all the right places, jeans so fitted they might’ve been sewn on. Her red hair flowed behind her like a cape made of fire, and her middle finger was braced, injured. She spotted you and made her way over.

    “I almost didn’t come,” she said. “Emergency room after volleyball. Dislocated my finger. It swelled up like a balloon.”

    Kaufmann cleared his throat. “Sorry on behalf of all the guys for being assholes to you in middle school.”

    “We called you names we shouldn’t have,” Hewitt said.

    “Like Giraffe?” Liz raised one eyebrow.

    They nodded, shamefaced.

    “Yeah, it sucked going home crying myself to sleep every night.”

    “But look at you now,” Kaufmann said.

    “Yeah, lucky me. But I wonder—what if I still looked like a giraffe? Would you still be assholes, or am I only off the hook because I changed?”

    “I can’t honestly say,” Kaufmann mumbled.

    “Be easy on us,” Hewitt pleaded. “We were barely thirteen, super immature.”

    “Not like now?” she said, dripping sarcasm. She turned to you. “You never treated me like that.”

    “Jeff was too afraid of girls to talk to them,” Kaufmann cut in.

    “Diana Nesbitt asked Jeff to kiss her in seventh grade and he fainted,” Hewitt laughed.

    “That’s exaggerated,” you protested.

    “We had to revive you with smelling salts,” Hewitt said.

    “I didn’t faint. I walked into a pole and got disoriented.”

    “You fainted,” Kaufmann said. “We have over a dozen witnesses.”

    “Jeff’s come a long way,” Liz said, slipping her arm around your waist.

    “Wow,” Kaufmann said. “You guys going steady, or what?”

    Liz studied your face. “I don’t know. We haven’t had a DTR.”

    “A what?” Kaufmann asked.

    “Determine the Relationship.”

    “Holy crap,” Kaufmann said. “That would scare the shit out of me. Sounds like an FBI interrogation.”

    The lights dimmed, and “I Hope We Get to Love in Time” started playing. Couples moved to the dance floor. Liz took your hand and led you to the center.

    Kaufmann yelled after you, “I hope you’re blushing, McMahon, because if you’re not, I’ll blush for you!”

    Two minutes into the song, a blood-curdling scream erupted: “Who crushed my face?”

    The music stopped. Lights flipped on. Lori Walker was clutching her eye and shouting that someone had slammed into her. All fingers pointed at the Tasmanian Devil. She insisted she’d just been heading for the drinking fountain.

    Mr. Reinhart rushed in, handed Lori an ice pack, and tried to calm things down. Lori jabbed an accusing finger, curses flying. The Tasmanian Devil ducked behind the soda machine and started crying.

    Mr. Reinhart followed. “You can’t stay there all night.”

    “Wanna bet?”

    “I’ll call your father.”

    “You do that.”

    “Wait in front of the cafeteria. It’s not safe back there.”

    “Why not?”

    “All the electrical stuff. You get shocked, that’s a lawsuit. You hear me?”

    She got up and followed him out.

    The DJ apologized and cued up “For the Love of You.” Liz pulled you close again.

    “I did something really stupid last week,” she said.

    “What?”

    “I found my father.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I hadn’t seen him since I was little. My cousin found him. He’s in a trailer park in Union City. We went there, and I saw him through the screen door, shirtless, eating KFC, drinking beer, watching Kojak. He screamed at the TV, spit flying. I walked back to the car, told Susanne to take me home. I knew I’d never see him again.”

    “Did you tell your mom?”

    “Hell no. She’d kill me. After the divorce, things were never the same.”

    “Speaking of divorce,” you said. “Something’s up with my parents. My dad took this so-called job promotion, but I think he wants out.”

    “What kind of job?”

    “Travel-heavy. Six months a year.”

    “Oh yeah. He’s a goner.”

    “Divorce City. I can smell it.”

    “Stand in line, Jeff. Soon enough, you’ll be in the Kids of Divorced Parents Club.”

  • Canyon High School’s Mythic Bruiser

    Canyon High School’s Mythic Bruiser

    You had just stepped onto the concrete plaza of Canyon High School, a fourteen-year-old bodybuilder armed with a cafeteria tray loaded with a burger, a salad, and a milk carton—your pathetic nod to nutritional balance. You devoured your lunch in monk-like solitude, your pockets clinking with ten Argentine beef liver tablets, swallowed like they were Tic Tacs of the gods. The cafeteria’s noise faded as you retreated to the shade of the overhangs, the lockers looming behind you like post-apocalyptic filing cabinets.

    Then came the charging beast.

    A teenage mass of muscle and menace barreled toward you like a linebacker with a vendetta. His head was absurdly wide, shaped more like a boulder than a skull. His black sweatshirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms that looked like they’d been sculpted out of poultry—two Thanksgiving turkeys in full flex. His hands were sausages wrapped in leather, his calluses more rugged than your self-esteem.

    “Hey, shit sack.”

    You flinched. This was Falco Labroni—the school’s mythic bruiser. You’d heard the tales. Now you were living one.

    You managed a nod.

    He eyed you like you were a science experiment gone wrong. “You look like a sad excuse for a bodybuilder.”

    “Sorry,” you muttered, like a kid caught microwaving a fork.

    “So, you work out, huh?”

    You nodded again, trying not to visibly shrivel.

    Falco snorted. “You look like you should be running track, not pushing iron. You’re doing everything wrong. You need to check into a hospital, get fed through a tube, and save your calories with an electric wheelchair before you can rejoin humanity. You might be the worst thing to happen to bodybuilding since pink dumbbells.”

    You looked down at your frame. Okay, maybe you were a bit slim. But still…

    “I wear extra-large shirts,” you offered.

    “Who cares about your damn shirts? You’re a disgrace to the international bodybuilding community. What’s your diet?”

    You recited your list like a desperate catechism: eggs, steak, chicken, brown rice, bananas, peanut butter, whey, fruits, veggies.

    Falco looked like you’d just admitted to eating cat food. “Forget the steak—eat the fat. Open a can of fruit cocktail, toss the fruit, chug the syrup. That’s the path to greatness.”

    He zeroed in on your neck.

    “Why’s your neck so scrawny?”

    “No clue.”

    “You ever try trap squeezes?”

    “No.”

    Falco then described a sadistic exercise involving sky-staring and daily two-hour neck contractions. You gave a half-hearted nod, already certain you’d never do it.

    “Who’s your favorite bodybuilder?”

    “Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

    “Good. Anyone else?”

    “Frank Zane.”

    Falco recoiled. “Frank Zane? That elegant pencil-neck? He’s not a bodybuilder—he’s a decorative lamp.”

    “But his proportions—”

    “Remarkable proportions? Jesus. Don’t ever say that again.”

    You stood your ground. “He’s in my top three. Serge Nubret, too.”

    Falco leaned in. “You know who I am?”

    “I think so.”

    “Then don’t throw these artsy names at me.”

    “You strike me as more of a Sergio Oliva guy.”

    His eyes lit up. “Now you’re talkin’. But I want to be bigger than Sergio. I want to evolve beyond humanity. Grow gills. Be the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I want people to faint when I take off my shirt.”

    The bell rang.

    You grabbed your books, feeling like Atlas with a paperwork burden.

    Falco looked at you like he was almost amused. “You one of those students?”

    “Trying to keep up a GPA.”

    “So you’re one of those assholes.”

    You nodded. “Apparently.”

    “Cool. Meet you here tomorrow.”

    Thus began your strange friendship with the school’s resident man-beast. Freshman Rick Galia later gave you a full hour-long tutorial on how to survive high school under the gaze of Falco Labroni. You took notes.

  • The Cinnamon Apocalypse

    The Cinnamon Apocalypse

    You shaved with your father’s vintage Gillette Super Speed razor and immediately sliced the tip of your chin. A small crimson droplet formed—a blood-signed pact with manhood. You showered, scrubbed away the dried blood, threw on jeans, and topped it off with your prized Larry Csonka Miami Dolphins jersey.

    When you stepped into the living room, your mother was parked on the couch, Carly Simon lamenting through the speakers as she ate raw hamburger meat with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, her fingers slick and red like she’d just committed a low-grade crime. She stared forward with the calm of someone contemplating Earth’s pending expiration date.

    “Mom, can’t you cook that?” you asked, half-gagging, half-pleading.

    Without looking at you, she speared another bloody hunk and took a bite.

    Then came the honk. You bolted outside to find Gutierrez in his orange Karmann Ghia, a discount rock star with his bushy sideburns. Susan Bowman, the blonde British exchange student, sat next to him. Crammed in the back were Rick Galia, Cheryl Atkins, and Liz Murphy, packed tighter than socks in a suitcase.

    “I can’t fit,” you said.

    “No problem,” Galia said. “Cheryl and I will get in the trunk.”

    “You can’t be serious.”

    “We’re creating a mobile make-out den. McMahon, close the trunk.”

    You did.

    In the back seat with Liz, you caught the scent of strawberries and ginger from her hair and cinnamon gum on her breath. She looked like a holiday ornament come to life in her green sweater. Your hands were sweating like you were mid-squat with a barbell.

    You thought about that puberty film in biology—the one where a guy lifts his arms to reveal industrial-grade sweat stains. Not helpful.

    At the pizza parlor, you all hit the salad bar and settled in. Galia whipped out a wad of cash like a game show host. “Dinner’s on me.”

    Turns out his dad’s shark-bitten surfboard sold for two grand. You doubted the story until you remembered Galia could sell sand at the beach.

    You hated the pizza, said so, and earned your first dose of “Greenridge snob” accusations.

    Afterward, at the theater, Shampoo was sold out. So was The Apple Dumpling Gang. You all opted for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but had 40 minutes to kill.

    Truth or Dare began. Your confession? You had a cousin who dated Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. Weak. Then came the bionic beach vision fantasy. Stronger, but still humiliating.

    Liz, amused, asked if your muscles were bionic too and squeezed your bicep. You were melting inside.

    In the theater, she rubbed her boot against the metal chair in front of her. The sticky sound made you want to crawl into the floorboards. She did it again.

    “Please stop,” you whispered.

    She grinned. “Conditioning.”

    The other couples were busy kissing. You were busy dying inside.

    After the movie, you all piled back into the car. Cheryl sat on Galia’s lap. Gutierrez drove you home.

    Outside your Eichler house, you turned to Liz and mumbled something about a good time. She responded by popping her gum and planting a cinnamon tsunami of a kiss on you.

    And that’s when you snapped.

    With a caveman scream, you launched upward, tearing through the convertible’s soft top like a hormone-fueled jack-in-the-box. You stood half-exposed above the car as the others gawked in stunned silence.

    “What the hell, McMahon?” Gutierrez shouted.

    “I don’t know. I think I’m stuck.”

    Liz was laughing like a lunatic. Neighbors came out filming. A Great Dane named Thor barked in chaos.

    Then your dad appeared with a flashlight and a robe that looked like it had survived Woodstock. “Jeff?”

    “Unfortunately.”

    “I’ve got a hacksaw.”

    He sawed you free. You climbed out, brushed off the canvas bits, and said, “I’ll pay the deductible.”

    Gutierrez waved it off. Galia said the kiss must’ve been nuclear.

    You retreated to your room, tried to decompress with bodybuilding magazines, and realized your mouth still tasted like cinnamon.

  • The Biceps That Gravity Forgot

    The Biceps That Gravity Forgot

    You had been marinating in delusions of Schwarzenegger-level grandeur, dreaming of championship stages and oil-slicked pecs, when the world as you knew it collapsed inside the Canyon High Student Lounge. There you were, slouched on a vinyl couch, flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle, when existential dread blindsided you like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. The culprit? A doomsday op-ed dressed up as science journalism.

    According to futurists and a certain Princeton physics professor named Gerard K. O’Neill, Earth’s days were numbered. The human species, it seemed, was destined to ditch the planet and board lunar shuttles en route to solar-powered orbiting colonies. O’Neill’s vision of humanity’s next chapter was detailed in The High Frontier—a prophetic fever dream of “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit” powered by sun-harvesting mega-panels. To make matters worse, the article was illustrated by some artist named Don Davis, whose watercolor nightmares depicted tranquil cottages, babbling fountains, and crowds of eerily placid, malnourished utopians.

    But what truly made your blood run cold wasn’t the loss of Earth’s ozone layer or the scarcity of clean water—it was the complete and utter absence of gyms in space.

    No dumbbells. No squat racks. No gravity.

    You were staring down the barrel of the greatest crisis to ever confront the adolescent mind: the total obliteration of your bodybuilding future. What good was a solar-powered paradise if it left you looking like a string bean in a Speedo? You’d be condemned to slurp nutrient paste in zero-G while your muscle mass withered into oblivion. You pictured yourself floating aimlessly through space, a tomato with toothpicks for limbs, indistinguishable from the other protein-starved citizens of O’Neill’s nightmare.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the Student Lounge was oblivious. Kids were gossiping like caffeinated squirrels. Others were playing Paper Football with apocalyptic enthusiasm, as if the Earth weren’t on the verge of being abandoned for a weightless dystopia. You wanted to scream, “Shut up! My dreams are dying!”

    That’s when Liz Murphy strolled in, radiant and red-haired, walking straight toward you. She handed you a birthday card that screamed, If It Feels Good, Do It! Her smile was bright enough to reroute satellites. She was clearly flirting—or at least offering a hand in friendship—but you were paralyzed by cosmic dread.

    You glanced at the card, then back at her. “It’s over,” you muttered, face ashen. “No gravity. No bench press. No protein. Space is going to destroy bodybuilding.”

    Liz blinked. “What?”

    You handed her the newspaper like you were delivering the last will and testament of humanity. “They want to launch us into space. Colonies with no iron. No steaks. No deadlifts. My dream physique? Finished.”

    Liz read for a few seconds and then laughed—hard. “Are you serious right now?”

    “Deadly,” you said, your voice trembling with conviction.

    “I came here to give you a birthday card, not an existential crisis,” she said. “I’m not proposing marriage, you melodramatic meathead. Relax.”

    Her laughter was like an emotional defibrillator, jolting you back to reality. You chuckled—barely. Still, the horror lingered. The gym-less future. The protein-free vacuum of outer space. But for now, you allowed yourself to accept the birthday wishes… and the present moment. After all, if the end was coming, you might as well enjoy the applause before gravity lets go for good.

  • How to Visualize Your Higher Self and Be a Fool at the Same Time

    How to Visualize Your Higher Self and Be a Fool at the Same Time

    By late morning at Canyon High, you had taken sanctuary in the Student Lounge—a sacred space masquerading as a study haven but better known for Olympic-level loafing and social maneuvering. Lined with shelves of crusty dictionaries and guarded by Mrs. Stinson at her post like a sloth in bifocals, the real action was found at the cushy couches. That’s where Paper Football reigned supreme: a sport that turned scrap paper into pigskin gold. Flick the triangle across the table. Let it hang off the edge—touchdown. Launch it between your opponent’s outstretched fingers—extra point. You figured ninety percent of student productivity was lost to this noble art.

    You were flopped on an orange couch, thumbing through Nectar in a Sieve, trying to survive its soul-crushing tour of starvation and sorrow, when your survival instincts kicked in. You swapped it out for a bodybuilding magazine. Surely a glimpse of sculpted abs and hypertrophic deltoids could rescue your psyche.

    That’s when Liz Murphy appeared—red hair blazing like a warning flare. Wearing a ketchup-colored tee and jeans, she plopped down beside you with the kind of energy that should be illegal before noon.

    “What are you reading?” she asked, peering at the magazine.

    “Article on Robbie Robinson. Some say his biceps peak is the best in history,” you said, delivering it with the gravitas of a man discussing global diplomacy.

    She raised an eyebrow at the photo. “You want to look like that?”

    “That’s the plan,” you said, puffing your chest with delusional pride.

    She squeezed your bicep. “I think you look perfect just the way you are.”

    “Perfect if you’re into track runners,” you said, trying to hide behind self-deprecating cool.

    Mrs. Stinson glared at the two of you from her help desk, her eyes sharp enough to etch disapproval into stone. You buried your nose in Robbie’s glistening biceps and pretended to read.

    Liz, undeterred, asked, “You seriously want to look like that?”

    “My goal,” you declared, slipping into motivational speaker mode, “is to become Mr. Universe, then open a gym in the Bahamas.”

    As the words exited your mouth, you immediately regretted them. But Liz didn’t blink.

    “That’s so cool. You’re only fourteen and already have goals.”

    “It’s called the Creative Visualization Principle,” you explained, summoning a vaguely authoritative tone. “You visualize your higher self, then manifest.”

    “Where’d you read that?”

    “My mom’s self-help books… or maybe one of these mags. I can’t remember.”

    “You crack me up,” she said, smiling.

    Then came your confession. “Liz, I did something gross. You might hate me.”

    “I doubt it,” she said, intrigued.

    You took a breath. “First day of school, I showed you a picture in that book. Said it was me hanging upside down on a chin-up bar.”

    “Yeah?”

    “It wasn’t me. I made it up. Just flat-out lied.”

    “Why?”

    “I don’t know. I wanted to impress you, I guess. And I’ve felt like a fraud ever since.”

    “I don’t hate you,” she said, calm and kind. “You were nervous. It’s not the end of the world.”

    You didn’t know what to say, so you nodded.

    After a pause, she asked, “There’s a dance Friday night.”

    You nodded again, unsure where this was going.

    “You going?”

    “Didn’t plan on it.”

    “Why not?”

    “I don’t like shaking my butt in public.”

    “If you go, I’ll slow dance with you. First dance—promise?”

    “Yeah,” you said, barely breathing. “Promise.”

    And just like that, your Friday night was rewritten by the girl you once lied to—and who somehow still wanted to be your first dance.