My Bio-Dad Was a Runner

When I was younger I came down heavily on the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. Now that I'm older I'm the opposite. Back then I would have said of course nature and nurture both play a role, but nurture is king and nature is secondary. Today I would say the opposite. Some of this switch is due to reading about scientific studies also seeking to solve the debate but most of it is my own lived experience. What does this have to do with fathers and more specifically my bio-dad? Well read on.

First some history: my bio-dad Leo and my mom got a divorce in 1973 when I was 3 years old. I have plenty of memories of him both before and after the divorce - some good, some bad. Some of the good ones when I look back at them with adult eyes are actually quite bad, but hey 5 year old me had a blast. Sometime in '79 or so my bio-dad moved to Costa Rica suddenly. At the time I didn't care too much since I wasn't seeing all that much of him at the time and the last few visits we'd had had been rather traumatizing. (Topics ripe for a different essay!)

In Costa Rica he met a local woman and married her fathering two more children - my half-sister and half-brother. Sometime in the 80s they all moved to West Berlin and then eventually back to the States. I saw him once or twice in the 80s then in the early 90s when my grandmother, his mother, died - but for the most part had no real contact with him. I didn't really discuss him much with my mom or siblings back then either. I was busy growing up and bonding/fighting/bonding/fighting/bonding with my step-dad who is my actual dad in every way BUT genetics.

I knew very little of my bio-dad's life after he cut out in the late 70s - and my understanding of what went on before that was through the eyes of a child. I never viewed his sudden departure to Costa Rica as an example of his running back then even though it obviously was. In that instance he had a very good reason to run. The DEA was after him for selling coke and weed from his house across from Northgate Mall. Lucky for him some of his best customers at the time were local cops who tipped him off that the DEA was sniffing around. 

Flash forward to 2013. I was playing around with a people finder web page doing searches for people I'd lost contact with. I did a search for my bio-dad and noticed that my half-sister* was listed as being a connection to him. One site listed my half-sister's married name. I searched for her with her married name and she popped right up on Facebook. A few messages and a friend request later and we were connected. She lives in Richmond, VA. A business trip to DC was the perfect opportunity to drive down to Richmond and meet her and her family. 

One of the first things we did was fill each other in with as many stories as we could remember about our shared dad. I knew many from the 70s and before and she knew many from the 80s to the present. One of the things I learned from her was that my bio-dad was a runner. Several times in her life he picked up and ran off from her and her mother. They all wound up in Berlin because my bio-dad ran away there by himself. My half-sister and her pregnant with my half-brother mom followed him there against his wishes. I had never known how they wound up in Berlin. Sure I knew he had problems and wasn't a good dad, but I never knew he was a runner.

What does this have to do with nature vs. nurture? Well I too am a runner. Several times when my relationship has hit the rocks my impulse was to run off and that's just what I did. I quit my job, climbed into my car, and hit the road. I've done it a few times. Do I regret it? Yes and no. I regret the anguish and upset it has caused my husband, but I don't regret the peace and clarity it has brought me. I'm not saying it's a viable solution to life's problems - I'm just saying it's what I did in the moment without much thought or hesitation. Where did this impulse come from? I cannot say that it was something I learned from my bio-dad - I never really knew he was a runner until after I'd run off a few times myself. It was only when my half-sister filled me in on his life after he moved to Costa Rica that I realized my own running had some sort of genetic tie-in. I didn't learn by watching my bio-dad run but somehow still wound up running nonetheless. 

Furthermore, my older brother is a runner. He's disappeared and wound up across the country a few times in his life when marital trouble hit. Looking back on what I know of my paternal grandfather's life it's obvious that he too was a runner. Something on that Y chromosome makes us Dent boys hit the road when the going gets tough at home. I can see the evolutionary benefit to it. Men who run off are likely to father children far and wide as both my dad and grandfather did. It's perhaps not something to be proud of, but I wonder if either of my two boys will wind up unexpectedly on the other side of the country someday? If they do, they'll have come by it naturally. 

*Please note I refer to my sister-from-another-mother in this essay as my half-sister since genetically she is, but I only do that so as not to confuse her with any of my other sisters (full and step). Since reconnecting in 2013 we've become quite close and there is nothing half about our relationship. She's my sister and I love her as such!

A Foreign County

A Foreign Country          

     I never felt more like I had entered a foreign country than I did back in 1987.  In the spring of that year I was a single mom still living with my parents and trying to finish up my bachelor’s degree at Miami University.  I was working nightshift at a Perkins in Cincinnati, Ohio.  If you’ve never been to a Perkins, think IHOP and you’re close.   I’d work 9pm to 5am and then come home to breastfeed my daughter, Alison, who had been born at the end of January that year.  I’d sleep for a few hours before I’d wake to take her to the babysitter on my way to Oxford for my college classes.  What amazes me now as I look back on this time on my life is that I felt like a big failure.  You see, nice Catholic girls weren’t supposed to get pregnant out of wedlock.  The baby’s father was out of the picture.  I wasn’t even sure where he was.  I was working, going to college, and being a mom to a newborn.  I was a badass-I just didn’t know it back then.

     It was at Perkins on one of those 9pm-5am gigs that I met the man who would become my first and second husband.  But that’s not the point of this story.  That man was a foreigner of sorts.  When he and I began dating in April of 1987 and married in mid-June of the same year, he introduced me to what felt more like a foreign country to me than the other countries I’ve had the good fortune to visit.  He belonged to the Apostolic Pentecostal Church.  And when I married him, I married into a strange new world. 

    For starters, there were all the rules. So many rules.  Women couldn’t cut their hair, couldn’t even trim their hair.  No makeup of any kind was permitted.  Clothing had to be modest and had to fit the churches definition of feminine.  No pants, no shorts, nothing sleeveless or even cap sleeves were allowed.   Men had to have short hair and had to be clean shaven.  And for the men, no shorts ever regardless of the humidity were permitted.  No jewelry was allowed.  Even wedding rings had to be simple bands.  Watches had to be utilitarian and couldn’t look like jewelry.  I even heard a preacher give a lengthy discourse about the horrors of open toed shoes for ladies, as if the sight of my bare toes might incite lust. 

     The clothing and dress restrictions were hard enough, but then I learned the worst.  No “worldly” music.  Only Christian music was acceptable in this new land.  If I snuck and listened to (and I did sneak)  on the radio I had to be sure to turn it back to the gospel station before my husband got in the care.   The pastor at our church preached against having televisions in the home, so we didn’t have one.   Amusement parks were forbidden.  No Kings Island pass for me that summer.  Alcohol was right out, but I did sneak some wine now and then when I visited my parents.  No R rated movies.  No “mixed” swimming which basically meant no swimming, because unless you had your own private swimming pool it was pretty difficult to avoid seeing people of the opposite sex in bathing suits at the neighborhood pool.  No trick or treating or celebrating Halloween-it was the devil’s holiday. 

     I never felt like education was valued in my little sect.  When I finally graduated with my bachelor’s degree in May 1988 there was little fanfare from my husband or my church family.  When my daughter got older some of the church ladies seemed horrified when I mentioned that I planned to send my child to a public school or maybe even, God forbid a Catholic school.  I reasoned that I would send her wherever she’d get the best education.  They admonished me that I would be “giving my child to the world.”   

     We spent an insane amount of time at church and with church people.  We’d have Sunday school and worship in the morning which lasted about 4 hours total.  Then we’d go have lunch and stop home for a quick nap before turning around to head back to the church.  We’d have choir practice at 4 and then we’d have the evening service that would start about 6 and go to till 9 or 10.  We’d have service on Wednesday nights and then usually there’d be some prayer meeting on one of the other weeknights. 

     Why did I stay for so long in such an oppressive community?  What was the draw?  Looking back I think I wanted to succeed at something.  I wanted to follow all their rules and be a good little Pentecostal wife.  I was 22 when I got married.  I think I was looking for absolution somehow, that if I submitted to all of these restrictions it would make up for me getting pregnant.  I really believed back then that I had to earn God’s love.  I know better now, that He was there all along and that He wasn’t impressed with my long hair and my jean skirt and tennis shoes.  But He did see the sincerity of my heart-I do believe that.  And I know Him so much better now than I did back then.  Somedays I talk to Him about my Apostolic days and I feel like He just smiles kindly upon me and chuckles at the lengths I was willing to go to in order to try to please Him. 

Topic: A Foreign Country…

Author: Chris Dunn

We stood in a teeming throng at Trocadero staring at La Tour Eiffel and waiting for the fireworks to start. People crushed in on all sides, jockeying for the best views and trying to avoid the periphery where a constant rain of M80s reminded us of the joy of the day. “Freedom!” The bombs seemed to demand with each thunderous retort, but the only purpose they really served was to keep us all corralled tightly in our waiting pen. I’ve never been a fan of fireworks, loud cracks and brief flowers of light followed by oohs and ahs from strained-necked gawkers. Ugh.. My nerves were shot and my bladder was full. I turned to Drew who was staring at the dark sky as if the show had already begun, “I have to pee,” I said.

“Do you have money to pay the fat lady?” he asked. I stared at him blankly and he continued explaining that though there were signs declaring bathrooms available in the Metro, during holidays and events there was often a fat lady (his words) who sat by the door and demanded a tax of a few francs. I guess to ensure only serious contenders would apply…

We had exchanged cash just that morning, so all I had were twenty franc notes. With a sigh, I hunted for a vendor and eventually purchased a trio of warm sodas, which I deposited in my companion’s hands while I made for the metro; my pocket full of change and my bladder full of piss. At the bottom of the stairs I found myself deposited in a war zone. It turns out that metro tunnels have the best acoustics you can find for M80 explosions. Let me explain for any Americans in the room, you think you have freedom here with that secret stash of poppers you secured for the Fourth by driving 4 hours into the boondocks and buying them at some hastily erected shack with a purple phantom logo? No, you have no idea. in France, every free citizen is issued a bag full of ¼ sticks of dynamite and urged to throw them at unsuspecting people for fun. Now, that’s freedom! Through the thick smoke haze, I could just make out screaming hordes of people fleeing in terror – hands over their ears – through the litter strewn floor as maniacal figures hurled flickering, deafness bombs into their midst, and hapless subway controllers stood by flaming garbage cans with shell-shocked looks of combat fatigue. I waded through this mess only to find the sign had lied! No bathrooms. No fat lady. No relief. I dreaded the return trip, but there was nothing for it. I rode the waves back, surfing the surge of the crowd, carful to keep a buffer of humans between me and as many explosions as possible.

When I returned to square, things were little better. Nursing my warm Coke, I stood with Drew and Kit staring at the Tower as staccato explosions and piercing screams split the night all around us. Eventually, the police showed up. Never before have I been so happy to see a gendarme in my life. Finally the horror of the situation receded to a background tension, as the leader forced his horse to the front of the crowd, until his silhouette blocked our view of the Tower. His words were French, but his tone was clear. I didn’t really need Drew’s translation to know. “No show tonight. Tomorrow at 10:30…”

Kit and Drew were disappointed, but this was fine with me. I was done! I wanted out! We headed down to the Metro again. Apparently, Kit and Drew had not believed the severity of my report - perhaps thinking it artistic embellishment. The looks of amazement on their faces as they took in the whole of the chaos were quite rewarding. With no other way home than a miles long trek through crowded, shrapnel filled streets, we dove in. This time the fire in the garbage was out, but a woman had been injured. She stood to side cradling her broken arm as tears streamed down her face and the controllers shielded her from further injury with their bodies. Too inured to even slow, we hurried through the scene, pausing only when the crowd surged backward to avoid another explosion.

We balked only a moment at the turnstiles. We only had one ticket, but an explosion in the near distance spurred Kit and Drew to action, and they leapt the barrier in slow motion like action heroes. We grabbed the first train that came. I leapt aboard as soon as the exiting crowd had moved on to their disappointment above, only to find that one of those freedom loving, Bastille Day celebrants had left behind a grenade. I tried to retreat, but the tide push me forward and the bomb exploded in my face. Deafened, I collapsed against the wall, happy simply to be underway.

It wasn’t until my hearing returned, that I understood what Drew was saying to me. This was the wrong train. Sigh. Thus began a long trek all in grips of an angry funk. We had to walk a mile, zip along some one-way people movers and catch another metro across the entire diameter of Paris to find our way home, all the while being serenaded with the constant song POP! BOOM! BANG!

Eventually we made it to our semi-quiet hostel. I was so surly that Drew insisted I needed to go get a bottle of wine and calm down. By the time I returned from what was the longest and most satisfying piss of my life, Drew had ditched us to find other sleeping accommodations. Kit and I drank Cokes that I paid for, and he retrieved. Then we played Mekton to the backdrop of the constant rain of artillery on Paris. Gone were the pleasant memories of the day. I have only the briefest of notes about our trip to an amusement park or our visit to Jim Morrison’s grave that day. All sacrificed on the altar of yet another celebration of freedom.

Father

Hey Dad,

It’s me. Still slogging along down here, putting one foot in front of the other and so on. A lot has happened. I got married. And divorced. And married again - very happily this time.You’d love Bridgid, my second wife - she’s a lot of fun, really good looking and smart and funny and she sings like an angel. I can’t imagine what she sees in me. 

I have a daughter, Claire. She’ll be 21 this December. I actually have 3 other step kids as well, from my first marriage. Claire is bright and artistic and wonderful. In fact I’m quite proud of all the kids.

Do you remember when you used to lie back in your recliner with me sort of lying back on your lap? You’d cross and uncross your legs really fast and I’d try to keep up. It made me laugh and laugh.

And do you remember coming to take me out of school a few times? You’d take me to check on some of the oil wells, or to the stockbroker’s office to watch the ticker tape. I’m pretty sure you had no idea how important and special those excursions made me feel.

Well, I did get accepted to medical school. I actually got in to several but I chose the University of KY because I could get in-state tuition, even though I had been living in Saudi Arabia for the preceding six years. I graduated with “high distinction.” I wish you could have been there, I know it’s what you always wanted for me.

I think I rebelled and chose to try & play music professionally precisely because you & mom were so eager for me to go to med school. I don’t know why I did that, because deep down I was always so desperate for your attention & approval that I’m surprised I didn’t just get it over with & apply long before I finally did. I remember quitting band and going in to ROTC my sophomore year of high school to try & win your approval for something. As you know I really hated it and went back in to band as a junior. 

Daddy, you were grossly inarticulate as far as being able to talk about feelings and being able to say that you loved me and so on. And I’m ashamed that I took that personally & held it against you for the longest time. I thought you didn’t have much use for me but now with some perspective I can see you just didn’t have the tools to share things like that. Mom told me some of the things you said about me, after your cancer became terminal, that showed me how wrong I was. 

So I’m sorry if I was sort of distant after I was out on my own. I loved you dearly and miss you every day. Please forgive me for being so dense, I just didn’t recognize then what I recognize now.

Father

My father is smart.  He can recite the Declaration of Independence, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and countless Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquies on demand. 

 
My father doesn't know a stranger.  When the Jehovah Witnesses came to our door and my mother urged him to tell them we weren't home or, worse yet, that we were Catholic, Dad would answer the door.  When the kindly old lady announced that she had a message for us from the Lord, my dad invited her in for coffee. 

 
My father made me feel important.  He regularly took me to work with him at Miami University where he taught English literature.  He'd tell the class that I was his assistant instructor for the night and let me pass out papers and sit up front with him. 

 
My father was an impetuous romantic.  When the Village Square Townhouses apartments were scheduled to get new carpet installed he spray painted a big red heart three feet in diameter on the shag green rug and wrote "1-4-3, Dee," his short hand way of saying I love you to my mom.  She was aghast, but he reasoned that they were just going to tear it all up anyway. 

 
My father was fun.  When I was four or five he'd pretend he was a polar bear.  He'd get down on all fours and let me ride on his back.  If there was any leftover pizza in the fridge, and there usually was at our house, he hand me a piece saying, "Here little bear, have some cold walrus."  I was about 12 before I finally realized that there really was no connection between walruses and cold pizza. He let us have food fights on the nights mom was away at law school.  We almost got away with it until we left a telltale piece of baloney stuck to the ceiling. Once mom spotted that he had to think of other ways to have fun.  He went through a phase where he loved model trains, and he installed a train that spanned the length of our large dining room table and made a huge oval path.  He took our lunch orders and then delivered lunch via electric train.  We were entranced. 

 
My father can sing.  If he has stage fright, he hides it well.  He can do more than carry a tune, he can sell a song. His specialties are "Brandy" by Looking Glass, "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits, and "Steamroller".   Even in the midst of chemotherapy he belted out "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers with my little brother at a karaoke bar in town. 

 
My father loves to eat.  If what you're eating at a restaurant looks good to him he'll ask, "Are you gonna eat that?" or sometimes he'll just help himself to your plate.  Once I brought a new boyfriend around and dad just started eating the man's pancakes.  I nudged my boyfriend and told him, "This means he likes you.  He feels comfortable enough to eat off your plate."

 
My father never judged me even when I judged myself.  When I learned I was pregnant out of wedlock in the spring between my junior and senior year of college I dreaded telling him.  Instead of disappointment, he embraced me and said, "That's great news."  He practically jumped up and down yelling to my mom, "Dee did you hear?!  We're going to be grandparents!  This is great!"

 
My father made me feel pretty when I felt anything but pretty.  In junior high I was shorter and heavier than the other girls in my class.  Everyone seemed tan while my pale skin freckled or burned. But every day through junior high and high school my dad would stop me before I headed out.  He'd look me square in the eye and he'd say, "Bridgid, you're alright."  And eventually I started to believe him. 

 

 

 

Topic: Father

The room was full of boxes. The boxes were all about the same size, seven feet long, a little over two feet wide, a little less than two feet tall. They came in many styles, some quite garish in their audacity. I stood in front of a simpler one, maple I think with a modest brown stain. It felt right. I looked briefly about at the others, glittering prisons for the soul and knew I was right. The man who specialized in finding the best Christmas presents at Big Lots wouldn’t approve of wasting too much on a fancy box that we were only using once. The man who owned the room asked if we wanted a sign on the box. I asked for one that said Dad.

He was never the best Father in the world. I don’t think he would argue with that. Father was too formal. Fathers were stern, they “knew best.” Father was a costume he wore sometimes when he thought he needed it. But the mask would always slip and Dad would be found smiling underneath, laughing at a joke only he heard. I was never fooled. I never called him father, he was always Dad.

While the man who owned the room of boxes prepared him for his final trek to his homeland of Price Hill, a reporter, one of his people, asked me what my father had taught me. I don’t remember what I said then, they didn’t use it on the news. But I know now what I should have said. My Dad taught me to play. To play with passion and joy, to love the game as much as the winning. He taugh me to laugh with others and at myself. He taught me how to make a baby smile every time. Not the most important lessons, not Father lessons. But the best Dad lessons one can teach.

We put his body the box and we put that box in the ground, not far from where his own father's bones rested. I remember the last time I saw that box, as autumn leaves swirled in a light breeze and the sun dipped behind the hills to the west. I laid my hand on the wood, for a long time, alone. I was the last person who knew him to touch that box. I said my goodbyes and joined the caravan of grief to return to lives that had to go on.

Lou

Topic: Father

Author: Chris Dunn

“Oh, yeah? Well… My dad can beat up your dad!” This taunt got thrown around a lot when I was a child, rarely at me, of course, since my father taught me to work hard to avoid the situations where such taunts would arise (i.e. Fights). Instead, I was typically on the sidelines when two boys would square off in disagreement and allow things to escalate to sharing each other’s breath in close proximity along with the traditional pre-fight exchange of threats. There wasn’t always a fight in the offing, sometimes it was just simple macho posturing for status, but either way I was always afforded time to think on the unspoken question. “Could my dad beat up theirs?”

My father was strong. I remember him rushing me, cradled in his powerful arms, to the emergency room. Despite my added weight, he leapt in a single bound up the four foot loading dock rather than waste the time scaling the steps. His thunderous command cut through the tangled, ER bureaucracy. We didn’t wait in line, sitting for hours with the bloodied and bandaged in the waiting room. We were ushered straight to x-ray and in short order found ourselves sitting an exam room as a bored-looking doctor pointed to the gray image of my skeleton with an obvious foreign object hovering within the nest of bones. “Yeah, it’s a penny.” The doctor was obviously unimpressed.

And he was certainly crafty. Our townhouse on Bising Avenue was frequent host to bearded college men, some his students, some his fellow professors, some just friends. The would hover over their armies as they stroked their beards, adjusted their spectacles, and pondered furiously for hours. I tried to watch and learn from the masters as they shuffled their horses and bishops in intricate, slanting attacks and defenses, but the game moved at such a ponderous pace to the eyes of an eight year old. Win or lose, his mastery of the game’s rules and the procession of obviously learned men who had journeyed to our backwater berg just sto challenge the master, proved his station as one of the greatest. It would be nearly a decade before I won my first game against him. It is still one of my happiest days.

And smart? Puh-lease! The man’s brain is a vault of knowledge. I’ve seen him – albeit, at the oddest of times - pull from it reams of poetry and prose. Don’t you dare mention a crow around him, unless you’ve got time to hear all 13 different ways of looking at it. For years I assumed he knew Shakespeare personally and had helped him write most of the plays. We had a rule in our house, parents weren’t allowed to answer Jeopardy questions, until the kids gave up, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get an answer in edgewise. “Why don’t you go on this show?” we would plead. He unraveled the mysteries of poetry, converting it from a tangled web of sing-songy lines into heart-felt sentences arranged in meter. He was the one who taught me that Shakespeare was more a bawdy, joke-smith than a lofty, unreachable master whose reputation obscured understanding. I owe my English degree to him, in more ways than one.

But this is a fight... Does he have the fire and fury inside him to take down his fellow man? Surely, I’ve seen him red with rage at the injustices this world can heap upon people. Many time of I’ve heard him speak with the harshest invective against those whose would exploit their others for their own gain. I’ve seen him tear apart a chair with his bare hands and punch a hole in the dining room wall, but never have I seen him strike another person.

In truth, he often seems too gentle for this world, and must take pills to numb the many pains it can cause. He’ll give you the shirt off his back and spend hours – much to my mother’s chagrin – talking to the witness of jehovah - you know, since they came all the way out. He is the founder of the only faith whose tenets I believe in total. Put simply: No hitting.

So can he beat up your dad? If we’re talking philosophically, it’s likely no contest. And if we’re not talking philosophically, I really don’t care.

Topic: An Unexpected Guest

Sometime in the spring of 1994 I donated a bunch of eggs.  I'm not talking about eggs like bacon and eggs, but of human eggs, the stuff of life.  I was working full time as a licensed practical nurse in a locked Alzheimer's unit at a nursing home and finishing up coursework to become a registered nurse.  My kids, Ali and Aaron were ages 7 and 5 respectively.  And I had just remarried their dad about a year prior to my egg donation.  My first and second husband, the father of my children and I had always had a difficult relationship.  We eloped in 1987, divorced in 1992 and remarried in 1993.  He had promised he had changed and that it would be different this time.  So what do you do when you have a difficult marriage that it isn't working much better the second time around?  You buy a house in the suburbs. 

We had rented through both of our marriages and even lived in a mobile home.  Well actually it was a trailer, not even a double wide and certainly not worthy of being dressed up by the name "mobile home."  Maybe if we had a home, a real house with a yard and a patio and a basement things would get better.  Maybe if he had more space, maybe if our little family of four had more space he'd be nicer to me.  But where would we get the money to make a down payment?  We needed about three grand.  He worked as an office manager and we were paying private school tuition for both kids. We weren't on food stamps anymore like we had been while I was in LPN school, but money was still pretty damn tight. 

I saw an ad in a local newspaper for a fertility clinic out of Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio looking for egg "donors".  They wanted healthy women of proven fertility to donate eggs and the compensation they were offering was in the thousands.  When I went to be screened I asked how we could be considered donors when we were being compensated so handsomely.  They told me that I was not being paid for my eggs but for my time, that it was illegal to sell human body parts, that human eggs were the stuff of life and were not, could not be for sale.  But after intense screening I was selected to become a donor.  I had to a complete history and physical, took the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) and a standard IQ test.  I was interviewed by a psychologist who wanted to ensure that I was donating my eggs freely, that I understand I had no claim on them or on any children that might be born from these eggs I was giving up.  I eagerly signed.  I had two kids and didn't want anymore.  At least I had enough sense to know that bringing more kids into my troubled marriage or should I say, troubled marriages, would have just made things more complicated. 

I completed two cycles of egg donation and went for two "harvests" at the hospital in 1994.  Yes, that's what they call it when they surgically remove the eggs from your body, a harvest.  It was unpleasant.  I had an IV and some drugs but they didn't give me the good stuff.  The eggs are harvested intra-vaginally, and the procedures felt like someone was pinching my insides.  Not as bad as childbirth I consoled myself and tried to focus on the fact that I was making money and would be helping a nameless infertile couple or couples. 

I vaguely remember getting a call from the clinic it seemed like a year or so after the procedure.  They just wanted to let me know that a child had been conceived and born from my eggs, a healthy child.  They didn't tell me if this child was male or female or where the sperm came from, just that this couple wanted to make sure I was thanked for my donation.  I appreciated the call but I felt really thanked when I got my check for $3000 and used it for a down payment on a 3 bedroom cape cod house.  After that call life moved on and I rarely thought of my egg donation experience.  The new house didn't save my marriage and we divorced again in 1998. 

But 24 years later I was in line at Kings' Island on a Friday evening when my sister called and asked, "Did you ever donate eggs?"  I told her briefly about my story.  She told me that a 22 year old young man from Paintsville, Kentucky had just called her. He found her through DNA matching on Ancestry.com.  My sister and my father were listed as close personal relatives of his.  The young man told her he was the product of an egg donation.  His parents had gotten eggs from Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.  All of the details fit.  He had been looking for his egg donor for years by this point. 

The young man, Coltt and I talked on the phone for over an hour the next day.  I tried to answer all his questions.  I was nervous at first but quickly became at ease.  It was like I'd known him all his life.  Two weeks later he came to visit me.  It was a four hour drive so he and his boyfriend ended up staying the night. 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how much he resembles my son Aaron both in appearance and mannerisms.  And it kind of feels like I found my long lost son but not quite.  I can't take away from his mom who carried him and raised him.  He did ask why I did it, why I donated the eggs.  And I had to be honest.  I did it for the money. I wanted a house.  But I got more than that.  My unexpected houseguest has become a friend, a second son of sorts and that is worth way more than $3000. 

Topic: Landscape

I'm a big fan of windshield time.  I've always liked driving, it seems to clear my head.  Part of it is the scenery.  I don't really care if the terrain is bleak, or stretches up and down as well as across.  It's all good for me.  I can use the minor changes -- or even the lack of change -- to think about how to handle my most pressing issues.

It especially helps if there's some music, though it needs to be interspersed with some voices as well.  I'm still a proponent of radio as a medium, and a bit of tuneage that I use for a sing-along... well, that's fine.

I still have no idea what that has to do with a horizontal paper orientation, though.

Topic: Landscape

Author: Aaron Collins

Last September, my wife, my father-in-law, and I drove from Phoenix, Arizona to Cincinnati, OH. Joe had fixed up a 2007 Volvo “Something” that I’m not sure where he acquired. The car was ours as long as we could get it over to Arizona, pick it up, and drive it home. Joe wanted to come with us just in case something happened with the car along the way. I’m glad that he came with us because some of the stretches of road were some of the longest and loneliest I’d ever experienced. Normally, Joe said, he’d drive through New Mexico, Texas, and then up through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and into Ohio. But I suggested we should go a different way so we could see more of Colorado. I was picturing mountainous vistas, which there were for a minute, but that changed quickly. Turns out, the bottom left corner of Colorado into Kansas is the forgotten abyss of America. There were stretches for fifty miles or more that did not veer or curve in the slightest, where you could see no livestock, no trees, buildings or people. I didn’t understand this at first, but this caused me a great deal of anxiety. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe our continent was like the universe; mostly wilderness and expanse peppered with civilization here and there. Or more like extremely dense populated areas sandwiching a great scar of a void in the middle. It was beautiful and scary to me. I suppose some of the fear was generated from feeling overwhelmed by the lack of stimuli on the horizon. I just couldn’t fathom the…space. So much space. This went on for quite some time. At some point we did hit a gas station which was like an oasis. You had to wonder WHO THE HELL LIVES OUT HERE! There was a hand written sign for a rodeo party on of the telephone poles out sign and a farm in the distance with two or three cows grazing. The woman at the counter in the gas station had this look about her, like she was from the past. They had Keurig though and I made myself some coffee and then we drove on for most of the day through similar stretches of nothingness until we reached Missouri which was actually a relief. There were trees and businesses and people. My anxiety retreated.

I-15 in the Virgin River Gorge

I-15 in the Virgin River Gorge 

by Drew Oetzel

In 1997 Kit, Dennis, and I set out on the Rainbow Bright/Assassination Location Tour across the country to finally return me home to San Francisco after 7 months of bohemian life in Cincinnati. We’d each died our hair bright colors and set off to investigate the assassination locations of both JFK and MLK. This story isn’t about that. This part of the story happens later on when things had started to go a bit, but not completely sideways. 

After a grueling all night drive on lonely desert roads in Northern Arizona we found ourselves at the North Entrance of the Grand Canyon. We grumbled and paid the 20 dollar (!?!?) entrance fee since this was the Grand Canyon after all. It was truly majestic as promised but didn’t quite seem worth the drive the guide books said the North Rim was. No matter we basked in nature’s beauty but couldn’t afford to camp there so we pressed on see Frank in Vegas. 

When we were leaving St George UT we started to notice the brakes were making a bit of a grinding sound. This went from faint to extremely loud quite quickly and we decided to make our way from Southern Utah to Las Vegas as quick as we could to get the brakes looked at.

The path from where we were to Vegas was 1-15. On the atlas map it cuts through the upper corner of Arizona on into Nevada then right into Vegas. No biggie. Loads and loads of flat roads in the desert. We set off with Kit behind the wheel. I dozed a bit as we zipped through flat desert scrub back into the upper corner of Arizona. As we got closer to the border with Nevada the road started to incline down and a sign said “Entering the Virgin River Gorge.” Soon enough the walls of the gorge rose up around us and the freeway careened downhill though an amazing desert canyon landscape. 

I sat in the passenger seat agog. It seemed like the combination of weed, lack of sleep, and fear of death from complete brake failure enraptured me with the landscape. The way the freeway was delicately placed within the gorge awed me anew at the amazing thing our Interstate system truly is. I sat and stared all around me just drinking in the scenery and the landscape - truly a glorious moment to be alive. Kit did his best to bleed off speed as we careened down down down the gorge to the Great Basin valley floor. Once we were down at the bottom I wanted to beg Kit to turn around drive back up and do it again! But of course we couldn’t.

We eventually make it  to Vegas with no more steep hills or gorges to descend and pulled into the parking lot of Frank’s apartment complex with basically zero brakes left on the car. How we eventually got the breaks fixed and made it on to San Francisco is yet another tale.

I’ve been back up and down that stretch of I-15 a few times since. It’s never been quite as numinous and amazing as the first time (what is?) but it’s always stunning. One time I even stopped driving early in St George UT so I could be sure to drive that stretch of 1-15 in daylight hours the next day. It’s the stretch of freeway where I once touched heaven. 


What makes this notable and usual is that this portion of the Virgin River Gorge is certainly above average as freeway vistas go but it's nothing special at all compared to the gobsmacking splendor surrounding it. It's so run of the mill for the area that it was deemed suitable to ram a freeway down! All of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona is full of truly magnificent vistas: Glen Canyon, Zion, Arches, and of course the granddaddy of them all the Grand Canyon. Which I had just gazed upon with some wonder, but mostly indifference a few hours earlier in the day. Somehow the heady mix of exhaustion, THC, fear of brake failure, and sheer admiration of the engineering and chutzpa to put a freeway here made it burn in my mind as truly spectacular even unto this day.

Topic: Landscape

Author: Chris Dunn

Kellin sat for a long time in his peaceful spot on the forested hill. He loved this place because there was a rare break in the almost absolute canopy that blanketed the hills, and through it he could see the entirety of the village and the many peaks which ringed the isolated, and nameless, community. Kellin knew each house and had climbed every peak in his field of vision. He could almost picture the activity going on in every house he beheld. It was getting on toward evening and smoke was springing through the chimneys from cook fires all over town. He imagined the various families busy at their evenings, each cast unique, but much of the action playing out the same, just under different roofs.

Kellin located his own house, nestled under the giant oak which showered the roof with acorns every time the fall winds blew. Its chimney was still cold. Inside his mother would be waiting for him to return – as was her way - before starting the meal. She would cook, and he would sit at the table and tell her all he could of his studies that day as the small room filled with the familiar salty, boiling scent of stew. And she would smile and nod, like she understood, which always bothered him a little bit. He didn’t even fully understand half of what he was learning! He would soak in her approval and bask in her pride, and they would eat and guess at what the next day would hold in store.

This time, however, would be different. This time, he knew exactly what he had learned, and he knew precisely what tomorrow held. On the morrow he was going to leave, head off up the twisting river road which stretched out of the valley, this valley whose familiar confines were all the world he had ever known.

There, on that steep hill, not far behind his house, he had taken a bad spill years ago. The rocks had slipped under his feet as he had scrambled toward its summit. He had fallen, sliding and scraping, his limbs flailing, until he came to an abrupt halt against a half-buried boulder.  Lying there crying in pain, but too scared he would be punished if he called out and his father found him. He wasn’t supposed to be out exploring by himself, but youth and vanity are friends at the start. They had convinced him he could reach the top and return in safety. At that time, he had thought it amazingly fortunate that his father had been able to locate him. To his mind, he was miles away lost in distant hills. Today, from his current vantage, he could see just how close the house had been – just a short stroll up the hillside, really. His parents probably heard him cry out as he fell and come straight to his aid, but it had felt like hours of agony, lost and alone. Even now he couldn’t remember exactly how his rescue had occurred.

All his memory held was his father’s strong arms cradling him with ease as he carried Kellin back to the house. His wounds had been superficial, and the dreaded punishment for his disobedience never fell. Oh there were lectures, stern words about the dangers of hills, bears, rocks, wolves, bandits, wild cats, insects… The list was long and overflowed with the stuff of children’s nightmares, but he wasn’t restricted or restrained, in fact, it was from that day his parents began allowing him  more freedom. Once his wounds had healed, mother had sent him off to Widow Freyna’s to pick up some herbs. All by himself! All the way across town! It had been meant as part of his punishment, but Kelvin had never before been permitted to go so far on his own, nor had he been entrusted with a task of any such importance.

Now as he looked, he could see how short a trek it really had been. His parents could probably have watched him almost the entire way. How old had he been? How huge the village had seemed. And now here it was, full in his vision, a tiny, insignificant, little valley town. Nestled here in the bucolic landscape of cramped hills covered with trees dyed a thousand different hues as fall took their leaves. Unknown to most people, this place was Kellin’s whole world. And now, just as he had come to be able to see it, he had to leave…

An Unexpected Guest...

Thom Dunn

(1) THE HIGHWAY

I got home  from school where I teach just in time to see the house across the street being torn down with a backhoe. I had not known that was possible. Later I saw the former occupant, Mr.Brumbaugh, relocated further up Joseph Court, while Dunns and Streckers remained the last two families on the now snubbed off end of the street. All shortly became clear: The Cross-County Highway was finally in the process of being finished, After the houses were removed, day and night bulldozers raked back and forth over the ground tearing up an entire creek bed and all foliage on either side. Word spread quickly: "The Cross County Highway's going through " We didn't call it the Ronald Reagan highway because we were among those Democrats whose hatred for Reagan bordered on the visceral.  After a while we got to calling it simply The Highway.

(2) FIRST CONTACT

Not long after the building of the Highway got going, we had our first contact with a "guest":  about 5:00 AM something entered our attic. Sounding like a drunken sailor, it clomped across the floor of the attic just over our heads. It didn't take long to guess it was a raccoon, a big one it sounding like--perhaps a half-ton or more. We learned later that raccoons do not LIVE through the day, they HARBOR, picking out a convenient spot to spend the day in preparation for night forays. After days of this, the entrance point became clear while the harbor was a spot over the porch we came to call, "Club Med". Club Med for the raccoon, or course, something less expansive for us. At this point it was all in fun--except for the 5:00 AM wake-ups. We were still relatively young and ready for adventure. Well, this was the start of one.

(3)  CRITTER CONTROL

The way Bill explained it to me, you want to trap the raccoon OUTside the house to avoid leading other raccoons Inside. Bill was tall and rangy. The name of his outfit (Critter Control) appealed to me. The trap was two feet long. Rocky walks in the open end going after the bait. As he does he triggers a deadfall that closes behind him. Bill nailed a trap to the roof and the next morning a big raccoon went straight for it: When Bill came to take Rocky away I asked him What happens now ? To the raccoon, I mean. Bill said that it would be taken far away and released.  I didn't inquire further, hoping I was being told the truth. Within a week we had captured three raccoons. I say "We" because I was paying for it.

Unexpected Guest Pt.1

Author: Aaron Collins

Today I went over to my Mamaw's house. I had called her out of the blue the other day to see how she was doing; that and I felt guilty having not really spoken with her more than once since December. I was driving down the Norwood lateral when I decided to give her a call. Her phone rang and she answered with a tired,

“Hi, Bubby,” to which I responded,

“Hi, Mamaw.”

            It was probably more than fifteen years ago that I asked her to call me Aaron, most likely when I was twelve or thirteen and felt I had outgrown the nickname. But it was so difficult for her to call me by my name. Many times she would call my name,

“Hey Bubby—I mean, Aaron! Sorry honey I keep calling you Bubby. I’ll try to remember next time.”

I’ve always reassured her that it’s no big deal, she can call me Bubby if she wants. But she’s never forgotten this bratty request of mine and I’m now almost thirty. I wish I had never told her to call me Aaron. She’s still struggling after all these years to call me Aaron, forgetting that I’ve told her it’s okay to call me Bubby.

She said over the phone that today was a difficult day.

“I have my days,” she said.

Only six months ago her husband, Raymond, my Papaw, had passed away after his lungs stopped working. She said that some days were good and that other days she couldn’t get out of bed. Today was one of those days.

“Melissa and I would like to come by and see you this Thursday,” I encouraged.

“Okay babe, what time?”

“How does three o’ clock sound?”

“That’s fine with me honey. I’ll be home all day. Don’t forget now. I know how forgetful you are,” Mamaw reminded. She’d also never forgotten the times that I’d flaked on her.

“Okay, I promise I won’t,” I reassured her.

We pulled up to the house which is next to some kind of factory near I-75; they are literally her neighbors. I had brought over a small charcoal grill that she’d let me borrow like two years ago. I assumed she’d given me the grill, but she refreshed my memory, telling me she’d loaned it to me until I got my own and would like her little grill back.

“Mamaw likes charcoal,” she referred to herself in the third person, “I don’t like those gas grills.”

Raymond and Rachel had been married for over fifty years and lived in the same house for over thirty.

“That’s why it’s so hard to move on, Bubby. I been with him almost my whole life.”

            Mamaw spoke with a little bit of a twang. Some remnant of her Appalachian roots. Where she came from, everyone was Bubby, Sissy, Mamaw, and Papaw. All the boys are Bubby, all the girls are Sissy, and grandparents are Mamaw and Papaw.

            We sat at her kitchen table which still had the same lazy susan which held keys, lighters, vapour refills (which would have been cigarettes back in the day), loose change, pens, a pocket knife and a deck of cards. While the lazy susan was the same, I noticed that the table and chairs were different. She told me she gave the old table and chairs to Ashley my cousin, but that she misses it now and wants them back. She told us about her new male friend, Jim. She said he meets her at Frish’s once a week for dinner and at the VFW hall once a week for country music and drinks.

            “I just tell him everything about Raymond and I cry, but he just listens—Bubby, he’s such a good listener. Then I tell ‘I’m sorry for crying, sorry for talking about Raymond so much’ and he says ‘that’s okay, Rachel, I was just like you when Luanne died.’ Luanne’s his wife, she died thirteen years ago. Your Aunt Missy and your Dad make fun of me, say that I have a boyfriend, but he’s eighty years old for christsake! He’s just good company, that’s all. He’s my friend. Sometimes I’ll talk for a whole hour and he won’t say a word. Then he’ll pat my shoulder and say ‘it’ll get better, Rachel’.”

Raw Vegan Visitors

Sometime in the late 90s I received two very welcome visitors to Guerrero. I was in between jobs at the time so had plenty of free time to hang out. Bobby and Tonya had driven out from Cincinnati. They’d been camping up north in the redwoods and Tonya made me a painting inspired by the redwoods. I found a nice home for it on the wall in my kitchen/living room. The three of us hung out and ate some burritos. We passed a very pleasant 24 hours. Both Bobby and Tonya were living very simple on their journey: camping/staying with friends and eating quite cheaply. Just your normal hippy vegans out on the road.

Besides coming to San Francisco to see me and the city, they were also meeting Tonya’s sister Renee who was flying in from Amsterdam.  She lived with her rich boyfriend and was a “kept woman.” I said Renee is more than welcome to crash at Guerrero too - it’s a very welcoming place for visitors, even unexpected ones. Tonya’s response was a very quiet: “We’ll see . . .”

The sister arrived the next day and Tonya and Bobby went to pick her up. She arrived with a flourish and fancy luggage. I welcomed her to Guerrero and within about 5 minutes she managed to disparage the apartment and my furnishings. Tonya looked pained but I found it funny. She was such an odd creature and such a stark contrast to the mellow and easy going Tonya and Bobby -  I wanted to see more. 

Renee then went to to say how she ONLY ate raw fruits and vegetable and would need a constant supply of those to maintain her health. She also needed some very specific organic face creams and some other sort of cosmetics which she was sure wouldn’t be sold in the backward and unenlightened town of San Francisco. My fascination for her only grew with these pronouncements - she acted like a caricature of a rich lady! I was dying to know more about her life as a “kept woman” in Amsterdam! 

I told Renee that actually San Francisco, and California more generally, was one of the few places you can easily get farm-fresh fruits and vegetables year round. Being located right next to where all these fruits and vegetables are grown definitely has its advantages. Why just one block away was an amazing but tiny grocery store that had a produce section to die for. And if that wouldn’t suit I knew several high-end grocery stores and organic beauty emporiums which would absolutely be able to provide her with the very special creams and ointments required to keep her raw vegan complexion in tip-top shape. I figured with Renee’s special needs, the whole crowd would be staying on for a few days and I was thrilled! I looked forward to blowing the sister’s mind with how much more advanced San Francisco was than chilly old Amsterdam. 

The plan was for the sister to join Tonya and Bobby on their further cross-country adventures - which sort of made my mind boggle. How were they going to be able to keep Renee in vegan raw fruits and vegetables on the road? Tonya and Bobby were eating ramen and cans of soup to save money - never mind the fact that trucks stops and gas stations were not really big on selling raw organic produce. All this is why I figured they’d linger in SF for as long as they could. Maybe stock up on some less perishable produce before taking off? But unbeknownst to me Tonya was mortified by her sister’s arrogant tone with me and decided that they couldn’t stay one day longer. 

The next day when they said they were leaving I was very disappointed. I genuinely was looking forward to spending more time with this strange creature. Raised up from the trailer in Claremont County Ohio to the rarified heights of raw vegan jet-setter in Amsterdam! I wanted to take her to Rainbow Grocery and the crazy hippy/Wiccan cosmetic store in my neighborhood. Yes she was condescending and extremely high maintenance, but meh, I wasn’t working or dating anyone at the time.  I had plenty of time and lots of “anthropological” curiosity! But alas as soon as they arrived they were back on the road again. I wished them a safe journey and couldn’t WAIT to hear how it all went down on the road.

Months later when I was back in Cincinnati I asked Bobby about it. He said: well it was a very unhappy 48 hours or so with her in the car. She mostly laid in the back seat napping and complaining - in between farting out the most disgusting raw vegan gas you ever smelled. We quickly got fed up and dropped her off at the Greyhound station in Tucson. I told him they should have stayed in SF a few more days at least, but he said Tonya was just too embarrassed by her behavior to stay. 

- Drew Oetzel

An Unexpected Guest

Icing my black eye, I took time to reflect upon the possibility that my wife may not always appreciate my sense of humor. You see, I had come downstairs to drink my morning coffee and sulk for my traditional thirty minutes before heading off to work. But when I got to the bottom of the stairs I saw a large pile of what appeared to be dog shit. So I yelled upstairs, “Damn it Bridgid! Did you shit on the floor again?!” She was not amused and, after showing her appreciation of my joke, asked what the hell I was talking about.

There, on the living room carpet, was the aforementioned excrement, surrounded by several brown stains. This was odd, because we only have cats. And they usually hit the litter box quite reliably, or at least get damn close to it. But this was a few rooms away from their box. Looking about further, it became evident that all the kitty’s dry food had been eaten up. And their water dish was almost empty and there were several pieces of dry cat food deteriorating in what was left of the water in the bottom of the dish. 

We realized that an intruder must have come in overnight. We have an automated cat door which allows the cats to come & go as they please. It’s triggered by ultrasonic signals emitted from special collars that they wear. But if the door hits something on its way down, it opens up again for a little while. So we theorized that some animal must have come in this way, trailing closely behind one of the cats. Then we both thought no more about it & went off to work.

That night, I wondered if the trespasser had been a raccoon. And, I idly wondered, if so could it still be here? Then I went upstairs to change out of my work clothes. One of our cats followed me to my closet. He poked his nose in and froze - it was like he was pointing at something, like a dog might. I slowly slid the closet door open and looking up at me, with a most malevolent glare, was  a huge raccoon!

I gingerly shut the closet door, then got myself & the cat out of the room and shut its door. Then I hurried downstairs to tell Bridgid. It turned out she was involved in a phone call which I was reluctant to interrupt. So after she finally finished her call I told her, “There’s a fucking RACCOON in my closet!” After we were both done freaking out, we Googled “animal removal” or something similar & luckily found a company who would come out right away and catch the little bastard.

The animal remover guy got here in about a half-hour, took his implements & went upstairs. Shortly thereafter we heard an ungodly shrieking and about fifteen minutes later he came back down with this enormous, very annoyed raccoon in a cage.

He carted the animal off to be disposed of. And we shut off the cat door!

Topic: An Unexpected Guest..

Author: Chris Dunn

With the spray can clutched in my right hand and a mask over my face, I make a quick count to three to steel myself before the horror that is to come and throw open the door. What follows is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever been a party to…

See, it all started a few weeks back when Karl arrived for the game. “There’s a strange smell on your porch,” he said as he entered. This is not a typical greeting in our culture, so I took it as Karl being his normal, weird self and ignored the comment for the most part. In the back of my head, I assumed he was suggesting, back-handedly, that the cat litter boxes needed to be emptied. I made a mental note to check on that and tried not to take offense.

Then two days later while leaning out to get the mail, I noticed the smell too. It was certainly stronger outside, but the stench I found out there explained what had been teasing my nose all day up in my office. It wasn’t a smell I would call “strange”. I’d definitely label it carrion.

“Oh shit!” My mind raced back to week’s further still when I was sitting alone watching TV in the early evening hours of a thunderstorm. The rain was falling steadily, punctuated by brief flashes and booms, and I was just hoping the power would stayed on when I detected a sound that couldn’t be coming from the television. I muted the TV, and sure enough, the sound persisted. It was a faint, plaintive meow emanating from my front door. Miranda, my cat, was seated on her chair next to me seeming wholly oblivious to the intruder, so I rose slowly and cracked the door, figuring to find a sodden feline from the neighborhood riding the storm out huddled on my porch, but strangely, raven-like there was only darkness and rain beyond the door. The meowing stopped as well, so I pet my cat as I returned to my seat assuming my approach had scared away the interloper. I lost myself in whatever, cop-drama-sci-fi-explodey show I was watching to while away the evening, until the sound came again. This time I rose quickly, but when the door opened the meowing persisted, coming from under my very feet.  “Oh, shit…” Now I know what’s going on. There’s a crack in foundation of my porch and the tiniest crawlspace that runs all along the front of the house. Every now and then, possums like to crawl in there, scratch away and make their bizarre possum noises, but this was clearly a cat, and from the sound of it, a cat in some distress.

I returned to my living room pondering how I could help the animal without stressing it further. What was I to do, go out with an umbrella to stand in my neighbor’s driveway with a handful of cat food and try to coax beast to come out into the rain. “Hi, there… I’m a stranger and there’s a ton of water out here, but are you hungry?” That wasn’t going to work. My best hope was that the cat was just wet and scared and would leave of its own accord - perhaps at storm’s end. When the continued meowing got to be too much, I decided to retire early, and promptly forgot about the whole affair.

But the stench brought it all back. The cat hadn’t left of its own accord, and it hadn’t been merely seeking shelter from the rain. Likely injured by one of the commuters who use our back streets to avoid the gridlock of the nearby main thoroughfare, the poor wretch had found itself a nice, dark hole in which to die. Right under my front door! Yes, I felt a momentary pang of pain for the beast and a twinge of guilt that perhaps I should’ve done more, but those feeling were quickly pushed out by the power of the lingering stank of its rotting corpse. Now what was I to do?

If the likelihood of extracting the injured animal from the depths of my porch recess during a thunderstorm, was slim. I had to put the chance of removing its dead body from roughly 15 feet down a 4 inch wide crack in my porch, at none. I resigned myself to wait it out. Two days in, my resolve gave way and I called everyone I could think of, animal control, building contractors, my brother Marty, anyone with an ounce of handiness. They all sounded hopeful and helpful until I laid out the particulars.

“Wait, so it’s how far in? And how big is the whole?”

“Yes, yes. That’s what I figured. How long do you think… Two months!”

Yes, two months of stench. “You get used to it,” I told people. It was true. It’s amazing what you can come to ignore. Each night my gamers would arrive with looks of revulsion on their faces, but shortly after sitting down to play they stopped smelling it. There was nothing to be done outside of complaining. I researched alternatives, powders and sprays to nullify the stink but the issue was always, how to get them to the body. I envisioned a long pole with a flash light and a pouch, a pouch with some sort of catch-release, but honestly, I’m not a mythbuster. I just watch them on TV.

Weeks went by with the smell lessening a little each day, and it was all but gone when the true horror began. First it was one fly. Then two. Then five! Big, fat, enormous, slow-moving flies that seemed dazed and confused. It was easy to coral them into corners and the downstairs bathroom and swat them by the dozens. They barely tried to evade the swatters. I’d open windows to offer them escape to the wild as an alternative, but too many decided to they wanted to move in. I went to the hardware store and bought all the equipment: fly spray, swatters, fly paper rollers, citronella and a weird plastic contraption which claimed to kill for up to 3 months. I went to work making a couple passes each day. I figured it couldn’t last much longer. The smell had stopped, I could swat a few more flies and it would all be over.

Until the morning I came downstairs to find that the smell had returned. This struck me as odd, but what really bothered me wasn’t the smell I detected, but the sound. There was a buzz, a significant buzz coming from under my living room. I knew immediately what it had to be, but my mind refused to accept it. Even as I climbed down the basement stairs through a new thick cloud of flies, I hoped against all evidence and reason that what was coming could not be reality. Creaking open the door to room which once contained the ancient coal furnace, I shuddered in revulsion as my eyes beheld the entire ceiling of the small room covered in a carpet of thousands of buzzing insects. I beat a hasty retreat and fought desperately for a plan of action. Lighting a fire and walking away was high on the list! But no, it was my house, my responsibility. These are the kinds of things they don’t mention in realtor ads. “Own your own home! But remember, anything that goes wrong there is now YOUR responsibility. And when we say anything…”

Another trip to the hardware store, and I procured a couple more cans of industrial strength bug killer and some respiratory masks, and this takes us to where we started. The spray was powerfully effective on the newly spawned flies and their dead and dying bodies rained down on my by the hundreds. I remained for as long as I could stand the pelting, then fled to the safety of the upstairs shaking my hair clean of corpses over the sink. I cherished the gulps of poison-free air while simultaneously trying to banish what I’d just experienced and also searching for the courage to face the realization that I would need to do it several more times before they were all gone.

I did it. Today, that’s what the kids would call “adulting”, but really it was just a simple question of what else could be done. The basement floor was so thick with dead flies that I removed them with a shop-vac. This was years ago, but the scars remain, and every so often I’ll move a piece of dust-covered furniture in the basement and find a small pile of dead flies, a continuing reminder of that rainy night and my unexpected guest.