Scenes from my Real Life:

Arrive off the bus in Agnes Scott Town and walk three blocks east along the tracks to Plato's Cavern. Arrive there and Sura's birthday is in full swing with a table Camelot packed with a who's who of Terminus theatre. Black hood up, black leather zipped, black gloves tight, black boots shined. Every step they take brings me closer to the table. It's got me feeling like some sort of 80s era tough guy TV extra looking to wrestle with TJ Hooker only to have stumbled on to the set of Masterpiece Theater.

Sura's great though. A hostess perennial and greets me as she will every other guest that follows, as if a complete satisfaction would not have been possible without our attendance. In her... what was it?... silver dress and gleaming tiara, yes, she vibes happy royalty. A queen who insists you sit in her throne rather than have her suffer the sight of you standing. Luckily it doesn't come to that and she finds me a seat after a big hug. I'm between her beau Youngman and a lumberjack chinned actor with a diplomat's grace.

Making small talk with the actor was a rare treat for me in that I'm in a crowded room and have total control over how I represent myself. I'm not introduced as a writer, as a man who's had a book published and another sitting in 1st draft limbo. What follows is a polite glaze of sheer indifference. I'm asked to explain what it is I write, what I mean by write, what I mean by being a writer and not a single answer I give registers with my questioner any longer than Bell's Theorem would with a goldfish. So instead I introduce myself as an office manager and it's simple enough really, even if the Tarot tats hint at something more, something hidden. Even, if I dare be so bold, someone interesting.

And it was nice but then Teddy Bear rolled in along with some folks I know and by this time my drink had finally arrived. A Jamie, double, figure I'll save the server a trip and me a wait. Step outside and alone under the starless milky black on the all but abandoned save me patio. I take a cold seat in a metal chair. I light a cigarette. I pull out my phone. Write my thoughts, rough and wild, no one to explain myself to. The page the only thing I have to explain my writing to.

Later the liquor will work its way, kill the introspection behind the smiling office manager mask and I am surrounded with my peers...

"They're your friends, Jack." My Virtue Victoria tells me in about two hours when I'm home sprawled out on my bed and on the phone with her. "They'd be hurt if you ever said otherwise."

"Hnh." I snort staring up at the dark ceiling as she stares up as well many miles away at a different dark ceiling. "Jes a semantic formality, my love."

"You should be grateful to know so many people who call you friend." She dismisses my drunken snort. In my head now I'm a inebriated gunfighter who's settled down with a good church raised woman who is no stranger to the ways of the outlaw and reprobate both. "One day you might be sorry you didn't say it to them when you had the chance."

... I am in a circle with my friends outside Plato's Cavern. Everyone's got enough wine or whiskey or beer in them to dismiss the chill snapping at their conversations. Everyone's smoking cigarettes, holding their drinks in the parking lot, across the street the Valero's sign glows, behind it the tracks are silent.

"You want one more before last call?" Our server steps outside in just a t-shirt and a towel over his shoulder.

"No, I'm good." I smile in that enigmatic way that applies the statement across a broad spectrum of meanings and Kid Hemingway, my future opponent, insists on driving me home.

"Not now, please." My mother speaks sixteen hours later in the kitchen and behind her the exhaust of the Frigidaire microwave mounted over the full stove blasts uncontrollably. There's no way to turn it off. She's worried about money as everyone worries about money during the Holidays and the idea of a repairman having to come out Thanksgiving weekend is a strain her budget can't handle right now.

"It's okay, mom." I hold up my phone and I've pulled up a page about FAQs regarding Frigidaire Microwave troubles. "It says here that it does that when it starts to overheat. Frequent when you're heating up a lot of dishes one after the other. All we have to do is kill the MICKWAY (as it was marked by the previous tenants) switch and it should be good in a half-hour."

Which is what I do and relieved she lays out the full spread - the turkey breast, the stuffing, the lumpy gravy, the creamed spinach and cranberry sauce. We put on the classical station on the TV and Vivaldi pipes through the TV.

It's okay, I tell myself smiling as the two sit for dinner... both of us hung-over, both of us hungry and smiling with the little dog begging by the side of the table.

Later we'll watch the latest X-Men movie On Demand. We'll eat chocolate cupcakes and miniature pumpkin pies along with platefuls of seconds. Reheated in the microwave, whose exhaust fan is silent now and what else could I ask for?

"I'm grateful you're back in my life." Her text message reads a few hours later, she's deep in conversation with her family at her aunt's place that sits with all those cities between us. Can't break free for the voice-to-voice we old fashioned types prefer. It's the closest I've come to crying in a long time out of something that wasn't self-pity or pent up rage.

All that in twenty four hours and that's what made this one of the more memorable Thanksgivings I've had. A day that is normally devoted to remembering the things you're thankful for becoming in itself that which you are most grateful for.

Days like these are like the friends I know, the love and family as well... rare and to be cherished for as long as it is mine to be cherished.

Just so long as I don't have to go around talking about it face-to-face I suppose.

It begins...

Moloch of the Draw

It was a little after three in the morning when Mary, a 44 year old suburban housewife wearing full KISS army face paint, drove a text-and-drive proof SUV through the local Sprawl-Mart. A small crowd had gathered in front of the glass doors in anticipation of Black Friday savings and almost all of them had managed to leap out of the way in time of the Yuppy War Wagon blaring "I wanna rock n' roll all night and party every day."

Mary drove that fucker straight through the glass and laughing the whole way. The man splayed out in front of her hood and miraculously still on his phone was no deterrent. She drove that fucker straight aisle 7 and hit the brakes sending her passenger head first into a really good deal on a flat screen TV.

A squad of blue-vested Sprawl-Mart employees surrounded the vehicle, armed with mops and price-guns, ready to face whatever fury stepped out of the SUV. For it was their sacred and minimum wage paid honor to defend their employer until their dying breath and be thankful for having been given the opportunity to have done so.

The song hit its last chords and the SUV went silent. The door opened. A single Kermit the Frog fuzzy slipper clad foot touched down with action figures and fast-food debris spilling out. Another one and there was Mary. In a bathrobe soft as a skinned yeti and the color of toothpaste. Her sensible hair cut was in bed head disarray. Her eyes had a black stars painted over them and a Benson Hedge's hung lit from the corner of the lip. For the first time since her second child had been born she no longer felt the ambient sting of her migraine and she hadn't felt this good since her daughter substituted her Prozac for molly that one time. In her hands was an NRA and Jesus approved semi-automatic assault rifle.

Undeterred by the raw firepower that Mary was packing the blue vests charged as one - "Aiiiiieeeee! Die for Sprawl-Mart! Die for Black Friday!"

Mary didn't hesitate to start mowing down many suckers.

The first volley took down a somersaulting teenager. The second took out the kneecaps of some old veteran of the Greatest Generation who though he survived Normandy would not survive Mary's wrath. At one point some fellow middle-aged housewife came in with Shao-Lin worthy twirls of her push broom and managed to whack her up the side of the head with the handle. She managed to block the second swing with the stock of her barrel and bring it driving up into the employees chin knocking her unconscious. She spun around and there was a large man with a price gun aimed at her head point blank.

He squeezed the trigger three times and Mary staggered back with the price of a new Blu-Ray player tagged to her head in triplicate. She emptied a few rounds into the price gun-slinger and was lifted off the ground in a bear hug from behind. A large security guard had grabbed her from behind and was squeezing the air out of her. She dropped the assault rifle. She threw her head back and smashed in the nose of the security guard. Instinctively he released her as he howled in pain before she emptied the clip into him.

She didn't have time to reload so she just dropped the rifle and whipped out two handguns from her robe and finished off the rest of the staff.

When there was nothing left but dead bodies Mary stripped down out of her robe and stood there in her pilates honed and gluten-starvation diet honed glory. She kneeled down to one of the dead employees and dabbed her fingers in their blood. With it she drew the outline a bull's head over her torso with great horns curving around the breasts and the snout driving down the belly to end at the pubis.

From there she reached into her SUV, fired up one more the KISS army anthem and climbed on top of the SUV to sit cross-legged on the roof. In her lap was a blood soaked stuffed animal and in each hand were gripped the smoking pistols.

She watched as slowly the crowd ventured in and made their way down the aisles, plucking at the great deals, the buy one get one free's and the two for ones. Then with arms stuffed they approached Mary on her SUV throne and kneeled before her as chanted along with her holy litany: "I wanna rock n' roll all night..."