In God we trust...all others are suspects.

So I merge. I merge into the right and true, or at least what passes for right and true for the moral majority. I started working out, I even got a crew cut.

I became hyper vigilant and studied hard and went to the pistol range a lot.

Turned out I had a knack for handguns as well as collecting evidence. Who knew?

I became friends with my other cadets, leaving out my past. I appeared average; pregnant wife and all, working my way through the academy and I learned about the 'The thin Blue Line', the line that separates civilians and officers.

It is real and it is wide.

The line can separate an officer from his wife, his parents, his lifelong friends. Why? Because those that don't, just don't know, and those that do...put it on the line, in uniform or out.

And when an officer goes down, the line wavers but never weakens...it is real and true and civilians are stupid.

It is an unspoken code, a look from one who straps on a gun to go to the toilet, lest someone get the drop on him with his dick in his hand. Or her, for that matter. Some of the finest officers I met were female, with balls larger than my own.

I started working as a deep nights security supervisor for the World Trade Center while tending to class in the evening. We had moved in with her parents to save for the girls' arrival and I learned that those in security are frustrated police officers and have a very dark sense of humor as well.

One of my fellow supervisors would make his security rounds through the kitchen of the Trade Center, helping himself to a sandwich, invariably pissing in the soup tureen left out for the following day. He thought it added a little something for the snotty upscale employees who looked down upon us as blue collar turds in their crystal punchbowl. He may have been right.

They always sold out of soup.

I reinvent myself and I am unrecognized.

The dull monotony of my life was as suffocating as the bottom of a dumpster on an August day at high noon. Her parents and mine were quite content with the 'nothing' I had achieved by way of career, so not much was expected of me, other than staying sober and paying bills. (The first kiss of a deadly make out session)

I began to withdraw into literature again as the ever increasing girth of my bride was causing me more discomfort than it should. I read Lawrence Block and a lot of Joseph Wambaugh, and as it seemed, the more I read, the more my life dovetailed into that experience. It is a phenomena that has happened on more than one occasion.

I was at work one winter evening, watching sleet pelt the window, wondering if the spirit of the guy in the bathtub wandered the building, hoping he did, while not really wanting to see it.

Four guys in jeans and heavy jackets entered the building and slid up to the desk. One flashed a badge. Undercover? Cool. This would be new. They wanted information on a tenant, and I was so bored I happily obliged.

He wasn't in and they left a card. Call when I see him. Sure, why not.

He was a young middle eastern dude who would slip in very late, usually with hookers , slide me some cash to look the other way, eyes dim pinpricks over the occasional nosebleed. Very animated, very loud, and about as stable as Gary Busey.

Sure. Why not.

It was a phone call. Sure I saw him. I made the call and let them in the building. I called his condo and told him I had a package he needed to sign for. He sounded congested. Go figure.

The cops slid up the stairwells, silently, and came down on the elevator. A bundle in tow. Knot over one eye, towel stuffed in his mouth.

Worked for me.

The one who gave me a card said they could always use somebody who was observant and could keep his mouth shut.

Me? A cop? He didn't know me or my background so he could be forgiven. A cop? I doubted it.

But the thought lingered, so one day, I made a call. It was a matter of paperwork and a couple of interviews. Oh, hell, why not. Just go through the process, see how far you can take it.

I had lived halfway around the world, drinking and drugging my way through far away bedrooms. Before I could romanticize it, I remembered I had shit my pants in three foreign countries. This shouldn't take long.

But I got passed from interview to interview. Letters of recommendation coming from people who had only known me sober.

The next thing you know, I was to report to the Regional Police Academy in Arlington. Night academy, six months.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Another example that God drinks.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.- F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the theater of assisted suicide, the show is usually private. But not always.

I had flirted with the concept of taking my own life in my more morose moments, but extreme cowardice and a glimmer of hope always saved me from myself.

One botched attempt many years before (which amounted to chugging a bottle of NyQuil, case of warm Budweiser, two packets of Unisom sleep aides and a small bottle of Chaps cologne,) resulted in the grandmother of all headaches, shit filled trousers (my own) and very interesting smelling breath.

It also left the act very far to the back of the drawer in which we keep our most selfish possessions.

Most days I would forget it was even there.

One day the very real, very ugly reality reminded me what it could be.

I was at work, meandering about the building, floor to floor, keeping all within the building secure. I had a partner at the front desk manning the phones and I kept in touch with him by radio. This was an extremely boring exercise in that nothing ever happened and I never had anything to report. No terrorists storming the building; so I could hide in the stairwell and somehow save the day; no fires to run through thereby saving an extremely grateful heiress-just empty hallways and the occasional smell of onions in one of the elevators.

Boring.

My radio crackled to life and my partner (sounding like he had been smoking weed by the dumpster instead of filling out the activity log) told me to report to a unit on the 9th floor for a possible water leak. Oh boy, wet socks for the rest of the night and a bullshit report, but it broke up the boredom.

I could hear running water as I approached the front door and saw the carpeted hallway in front of the door a darker, squishier shade of green than it should have been.

I knocked loudly, announcing myself in the largest, most authoritative voice I could muster.

No answer.

I used the master key and opened the door. The sound was coming from the bathroom to the right of the door. The door to the bathroom was closed, but brownish, brackish, foam poured from underneath the door and past my shoes into the main hallway.

I opened the door.

Big mistake, but what was I to do?

The male tenant was in the tub, clear plastic bag tightly over his head, the tub water brown with his own shit, flowing over the sides. His head was half submerged. What I could determine of his face was infested with open sores and lesions.

Oh, fuck me Tilly...this was bad.

Two attempts on the radio alerted my partner to call 911, my voice within an octave of a Bobcat Goldthwaite imitation and the guy in the tub began to twitch like Stephen Hawking at a limbo party.

Without thinking I grabbed him under the arms and tugged upward, losing my balance and falling into the putrid water on the floor, ass first, which caused him to actually submerge momentarily. The water was hot. The air fetid and foul. This was NOT worth seven bucks an hour.

"Oh no you don't fuckhead!" I screamed and grabbed him by the head while he slapped at me weakly.

We wrestled while I gouged a hole in the plastic around his face, causing him to gasp and wheeze and blow nasty bubbles and tried without a lot of success to roll him from the tub onto the floor.

I heard someone scream shrilly from behind me. My partner. This was not something he should be seeing stoned.

"Turn off the water, jackass!" I yelled, trying to keep our victims head out of the poop smoothie he was laying in.

He did and I heard voices in the hall. Police and Paramedics. I let them in to do their thing and stood in the hallway, soaked in shit (someone else's) and shook for a while.

The Police took my statement and someone from down the hall gave me a jogging suit to change into after I showered in the exercise locker room in the basement.

The victims sister arrived, filling in the blanks. He had been diagnosed with AIDS and was next to through anyway. Depressed and despondent.

I guess he wanted to call it on his own terms. I don't know.

Did I save him?

No. He died in the ambulance.

I thought about curling up with a bottle of Bushmills but curled up with my pregnant wife instead.

We didn't talk much about it. What was there to say?

It took me a long time to fall asleep.

Black is east and up is white...and we get pregnant.

As usual, I was bored. Dead end job, hated the people I worked with/for, no idea what the future would hold, yada, yada.

Christmas was coming and some fool thought I would be a great candidate for a Discover Card, with a pre-approved $1200 limit.

My first credit card. One of the most dangerous things that could happen to a person like me.

I say that for the following reasons: (I learned this about me the hard way and thank God I have gotten better about it over the years, but back then, if I were out of sorts, and meetings were just the same tired rhetoric and the world turned that particular shade of grey, I would do some things, perform certain acts to break out of the mold and get back at 'you', if there was a you at all.)

I will either drink "at you"; I will use drugs "at you", I will have sex "at you" or I will spend money "at you". Sometimes all at once.

This time I went nuts shopping for Christmas. Small items...a lot of small items. Our Christmas tree was piled with presents, some very stupid presents, (fitted sheet holders for the corners of the bed? Are you serious?) but bunches of them. I was briefly satisfied and thought for a minute about making a card payment, then thought better of it. Fuck 'em, as it were, this was my Christmas and they sent the card. That should teach them.

I can't remember if we discussed having a baby or if it just happened. I seem to recall it was a mutual decision, and we tried several times, checking the ominous little plastic strips with alternating waves of hope and dread, and then, finally it was positive.

I was excited. A second chance at normal.

A baby, one that I could be there for, one that might be the glue that could hold this ever crumbling union together (I thought at the time) unlike my first daughter, who by the way I had attempted to find on several occasions to no avail.

(Years later I found out why. My first wife told the judge-as she stood in front of him, looking twelve, bottom lip quivering, her new family behind her, smirking, to include the 'little girl' now grown up, that I had left behind-she thought I would kidnap our daughter, so she went into hiding. Are you fucking kidding me? )

Was it a make up child? Maybe, or maybe a solid, physical means for staying on the straight and narrow, and let me assure you, it gets very straight and as narrow as an Elvis Costello tie, with no room for expression, at least for me.

Because now it's pay bills, work hard, more bills, work harder, she's getting fat, so what, look at the other miserable bastards , shuffling behind these huge breeder bitches at the Mall like the walking dead (who seem to think it's not so much a vagina as it is a clown car)... their lives, their dreams, finished and dead.

Oh yeah...I was happy.

So our parents were thrilled, she got bigger, and after three sonograms we learned we were having twins. The Doctor broke the news by pinpointing Baby A, then Baby B, both girls. I remember I was stunned as if bludgeoned and could not form words. The only time that has ever happened.

The gravity of the situation then became 'doubly' apparent.

Oh my.

And I stepped through the looking glass.

When you dry hump the American Dream, wear a condom. You don't know where this country has been.

The stripper eventually moved out, and we were back to having a duplex to ourselves. And our dog, and now three cats. (I am not a pet guy, never have been, but normal people have pets.)

I had resigned myself to not working as a writer, listening to the opinions of people who had no passion, or soul, telling me I should simply get a job, pay my bills and be married. The same people who willingly go to Wal -Mart as a shopping option.

Christ, that's a prison sentence for someone like me, but I tried it. Pretending my heart was not creative was very difficult and I would secretly buy Writers Digest magazine and stash it in the closet like most guys stash Ass Spank Quarterly.

I had obtained employment working as a security officer for a high rise apartment building on Turtle Creek. Her Father worked the deep night shift and got me the job.

I sat in a cubicle, signed in guests, watched the other security officer and apartment manager pretend they weren't sleeping together and let the wealthy view me as subhuman, holding the door open for them as they did so.

I had lunch one day with my best friend, his little sister and his Mom. His sister was very much like my own and I knew she had great things in store for her. I will always cherish these people.

A week later I got one of those phone calls; the kind that rings and you know it is terrible news before you even pick it up.

His little sister had been driving down Northwest Highway, near Abrams, when a car came across the median into her lane, hitting her car head on.

She died instantly, and a piece of my heart died with her.

We buried her in a little Nordic Cemetery in a rocky, West Texas field on a clear, big sky day.

I bought my friend a white and black Australian Shepard pup to help take his mind off his loss, gradually, and give him something new to love. He named her Ruby and she lived with him for seventeen years.

I dream his sister plays with Ruby in a huge, emerald colored field of clover and Ruby is young again.

When I wake up... my face is wet.

Our government couldn't cover up cat shit at the beach...but plausible deniability works for me.

I was flat footed busted. She knew it. I knew it. And as our voices escalated, our neighbor knew it. However; I stuck to my guns.

"What's wrong with you? I was simply trying to let the dog out and I find a naked chick in our backyard. Was I staring...hell no, I was just shocked, you don't see that everyday. What do you want me to do...demand she put clothes on. It's her yard too...".

Maybe defending her right to be bare -assed in our yard put her over the edge...I don't know, but I wound up having to talk to our landlord about it. He lived next door, was my age, and had an extremely hot girlfriend, and I secretely wished I was him. Especially right then.

I felt like I was the biggest whipped loser in the world. My balls? Somewhere in one of her cavernous purses apparently.

I knocked timidly on his door, knowing she was watching me from our porch, arms folded, curdling milk and neutering small animals with her gaze. I felt her stare burn holes in the back of my shirt.

He answered, Van Halen on the stereo, a margarita in hand. My junk shriveled even more.

"Hey dude, look, uh, we have, I mean my wife has a problem with our neighbor."

He looked at me quizzically.

"She's naked in our back yard...suntanning...our neighbor, not my wife."

"Sweet...what's the problem, she need help with lotion," he grinned.

I suddenly felt like a Ken doll. Kick me in the crotch, you'd only hit bone.

"No, my wife, she's upset, uh, says it's rude or inappropriate or some kind of wife thing, I don't know dude, she's just really pissed...like I told her to get naked or something."

He laughed. "Can't help ya amigo, she's a dancer...needs to look good for work. Tell your old lady to broaden her horizons...later." He shut the door.

Damn. This could only get worse before it got better.

Oh, sure, I could see me walking into the yard, asking her to cover up. Not.

The thought of my wife doing it...not so much...while the idea of a half naked, oily, bald cat fight was strangely appealing I felt like sleeping with my eyes closed...inside the house, so that was out.

She glared as I walked on to the porch. "He said we have to deal with it..," I said sheepishly. She grabbed her purse and hurled herself into the car, backing out with great haste.

Shit. This would be a long night.

My dog had peed in the front yard so I did not have to let him out the back. But I did peek to see if she had gone inside.

Nope. Still there. Still naked. And still glistening.

I made popcorn and placed a kitchen chair by the window.

What? It's not like we had cable.

A writer is a true voyeur...until he's caught; then it's research.

And so our idyllic little home was intruded upon by a neighbor. A very attractive, Australian neighbor. She kept to herself and worked odd hours so we had very little interaction.

I was home alone one afternoon as the wife was probably at Emeralds to Coconuts (her favorite store) spending money we didn't have on shit we did not need.

Our Labrador was in need of some outside time so I walked to our kitchen prepared to let him out. I was not prepared for what was in the backyard.

Apparently our neighbor had the day off, or, a stark naked, bald headed alien was sunning herself in our backyard.

Holy shit.

I stood at the backdoor window transfixed; unable to move, my breath forming condensation on the glass. She was tan. Really tan. Everywhere. And she was liberally applying oil to places only her Doctor could be proud of. Wow.

My dog whined to go out and I gave him a sharp kick to the slats. "Not now, you moron..." I had no idea why she was bald, I simply knew it was wildly attractive and much like an old joke I was fond of.

"Do you know the similarity between a 9 volt battery and a woman's butt hole?"

"You know it's wrong but eventually you want to put the tongue to it."

Her breasts were magnificent but her head was gorgeous. Tan and shiny and smooth, it was like a third breast on top of her shoulders, put there to keep the rain out of her neck.

I suddenly felt the need to pleasure myself, much like Cardinal Richelieu at a Boy Scout Jamboree, and then I felt someone behind me.

The wife had returned.

"OH, " my voice cracked, "You're home?"

She could see past me through the window and I felt her next question entirely superfluous.

"What...are...you...doing?" she hissed, giving me a look that could wither flesh, and did, if I recall.

I then reverted to thousands of years of male conditioning, responding from the deep end of my gene pool.

"Nothing...?"

There never was a great love that was not followed by a great hatred. (Irish Proverb)

These events were almost twenty years ago.

Yeah, time flies. Much like a shit laden diaper hurled at your head from across the room.

School was going great and I did what I usually did when faced with success. I quit.

Now, I did it under the pretense of having to support us as the book store gig was laughable and I needed something more.

But the reality was I couldn't face being successful...too much would be asked of me and I was so much more comfortable with failing. The tragic flaw of the Greek hero.

We failed to meet the rent in my childhood home, which in a way was good because there were things going on emotionally in the house (because of the house) that were decidedly unhealthy and weird.

We found a duplex near my Grandparents (Mom's side) two-story home near Lakewood. It had burned down but I remembered the area, specifically the back yard.

My Grandfather; a large, white haired, red and ruddy faced Scotsman was a lineman for the telephone company. My Grandmother was a stern, hatchet faced, East Texas emasculator.

She had been given a new vacuum cleaner the size of an iron lung on wheels and would clean the gargantuan house and leave the monstrosity in the front hallway, much to the displeasure of my Grandfather upon his return from work.

It happened several times and he finally told her if she left it in the hallway one more time he would see to it she had no vacuum.

My Grandmother was not a great listener, especially where my Grandfather was concerned.

He arrived home one day, tripped over the torpedo shaped machine and drug it, without a word to the back yard.

He removed a shovel from the garage, rolled up his sleeves, took a pinch of Garret snuff and began beating the blue eyed Jesus out of the vacuum.

WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.

My Grandmother watched silently from the kitchen window, taking a big slug from the bottle of Old Overholt (Grandad called it Old Overcoat) she kept under the sink.

These were my people, and it was within these memories that we moved a few blocks away.

The other half of the duplex was empty so we set up house, allowing our Lab free reign in the back yard.

Then the bald headed, Australian stripper moved in.

I have a lazy eye...it doesn't wander far.

Valentines Day-1989. An ice storm has turned the metroplex into a skating rink and I am getting married, frozen wasteland or not.

We rented a community center in Irving and some non-denominational Jacobite officiated the proceedings. My parents were in attendance, may have even nodded hello, but no blows were thrown. My best man may have been high and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Other than labored breathing, the sound of hundreds of ice pellets hitting the outside of the building masked the involuntary groans I think I was making as the vows were read.

She had the decency not to wear white and I tried to look happy. If you look at pictures of the event I am not smiling. I look like I have very painful gas.

We did it, cut the cake, thanked the crowd and slipped and slid all the way home, the backseat loaded down with chafing dishes and a couple of toasters.

Our wedding night consisted of diarrhea and silence. I think I may have shed a few tears, alone in the bathroom.

We should have had it annulled the next day, but I have always been one to see where things would lead, so we grimaced and left town the next morning, still ill, but having a honeymoon, all the same.

We had garnered a condo on Padre Island and the winter storm even hit there. I buried the MR2 in the sand at the beach during a freak snowstorm and spent most of our wedding money on a tow truck. She came down with a fever and tucked into a bottle of NyQuil and slept for a day and a half. I boiled shrimp and went to an AA meeting.

When I came back she was still asleep and I sat and looked at her. This was so patently unfair. To her, I mean. I should have left her alone to live her life and I know I am not an easy man to live with, even harder to love and understand. For better or for worse...Boy, did she get the bonus plan.

We followed up that nightmare with an overnight stay in a hotel on the River Walk in San Antonio. We ordered a room service cheese and fruit tray and in a playful mood I winged a piece of Gouda at her from across the room. SPLAT, right in the eye. Great. It left a bruise.

We walked the river and I kept her next to the water, keeping the urge to throw her in at bay.

Love is not something you can put chains on and throw into a lake...that's called Houdini. (J. Handey)

Love did not exactly enter into this.

We were caught up in the momentum, and the undertow was a bitch. I had stopped waiting tables and was working for next to nothing in a book store, attempting to support us both.

We had even moved from my one bedroom apartment into the two bedroom house I lived in while attending first grade. (That was surreal and there were times I felt like I was my Father and she was my Mother, and I held myself in check, not willing to go all the way down that narrow, shitty little lane.)

We obtained the obligatory Labrador and watched Thirty Something, taking notes.

I had started to write and enrolled in college, taking journalism and creative writing. My idea was she could go back to court reporting and support us while I obtained a degree, then, I could support us with my writing.

I was delusional as well as opportunistic. All I remember her doing was sleeping...I even did the cooking. Now, I'm trying to be fair, but I honestly don't remember her doing anything.

And these are my memories, after all.

I became the arts and entertainment editor for the school paper and my scholastic claim to journalistic fame was interviewing Terry Gilliam. Hell of a nice guy, and visionary, to boot.

I had a mild flirtation with a reporter but she knew I was engaged, and I was truly trying to behave...I didn't need the guilt, so I passed.

I learned a lot, and learned that I loved to write, and it didn't really matter what. I also learned that I hated rules, especially one's that hampered my creativity. I say that with tongue firmly in cheek. I understand today, that in order to break the rules, it is necessary for one to know what they are. Plus, I didn't know shit...and there are those who would say I still don't. That is not up for argument.

I entered into and won a short story contest. I wrote every spare moment I had, and meanwhile, the wedding was being 'directed'. I'd say planned, but it was not being planned by me, but rather directed by 'her', her mother, and mine.

It was similar to the Invasion of Dunkirk, but with fewer crying Englishmen.

I was nothing more than a work beast, used to procreate and lift heavy shit. My desires failed to enter into it.

So I lost myself in school, becoming an honors English student and excelling in academics for the first time in my life.

The wedding date was picked. Wait for it...here it comes...February 14. Again, I cannot make this shit up.

Cupid was throwing up Everclear the night of my bachelor party.

The Million Dollar Saloon was in it's heyday; lap-dances, foot massages, a platoon of plastic breasts and yours truly stayed sober. I had invited a lot of friends from my table waiting period as well as best friend and cousin. It was a good time, and everything a bachelor party should be, until the douche arrived.

The douche was a kid from the restaurant that no one liked, the original annoying-know-it-all who simply crashed the party. My best men handled it by taking us all to a Korean stroke job parlor on Harry Hines-where we got rid of the douche.

He was last seen running from a hooker and her pimp after he accused her of jacking his wallet.

We drove away with him running toward us in the rear view mirror, the whore hot on his heels.

We never saw him again.

Other than the birth of my twins, that was the most fun I would have for the next ten years. (And I'm not too crazy about c-sections.)

Deep down, I'm pretty shallow...but I mean well.

I got my own apartment and left my brother with a girlfriend. Good for him.

I, unfortunately, had one as well. I don't think she really liked me that much, but she was so screwed up from childhood and one failed marriage that I seemed like a minor step up.

She still lived with her parents, even after moving a load of her crap to my closet, including the feminine unmentionables under my bathroom sink. Yet, she spent five or six nights a week at my place, and only went 'home' when I told her I needed some space.

She was hostessing as a temporary respite from her court reporting job. (She had gotten arrested, and fired in the Denton County Courthouse parking lot for firing up a hog leg with the Sheriff watching from his window. This was the future mother of my twins. Great.)

So we were together a lot. Home, work, lather, rinse and repeat.

One day we were driving to lunch and suddenly I was possessed by something unholy.

I think the quote, jokingly, was "We spend so much time together we should get married..."

She laughed and agreed. I mean really agreed. There was that moment, and I saw it slide away, and with it my future, when I should have said, yeah right...just kidding, but instead kept my mouth shut.

Meanwhile, my brain was screaming..."What in the blue fuck was that? Are you kidding me? NO, No, Nooooooo!!!"

We drove all night to New Orleans and had lunch in the French Quarter to celebrate. I called my Mom from a pay phone to tell her, yes, with my brain in full free fall and Mom asked if I had been drinking.

This was the same woman that when she met her said , "Honey, he's ornamental as hell but otherwise pretty damned useless."

I assured her I was sober, and no she was not pregnant and reminded my Mom she's the one that said I should marry my best friend. She just never gave a firm definition.

"Now honey, why would I say that?"

Oh, shit...now what?

Age and treachery beat youth and volume...but not as well as a hammer.

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