Sooty McLain sets down her gun, slowly looks me over and pronounces me done. Sooty has an eye for detail, and she certainly took her time with me. But I’m not complaining. Sure, I’ve shed some blood, and my hide is somewhat torn and tattered, but it hardly hurts as much as I had feared it might. In my mind I had been here a thousand times, partly curious about the experience but mostly afraid of the pain, my quirky, manic melon constantly oscillating between giddy fits of anticipation and inhibitive bouts of anxious dread. Now that the time has finally arrived, I am relieved to discover that my fears were utterly unfounded. Sooty is a pro. She did me right, and now there’s no turning back.

The devilish grin above her chin lets me know that Sooty is pleased with her latest work, or at least as pleased as she ever allows herself to be. Like any artist, Sooty engages in the constant pursuit of a ghost called Perfection, chasing specters with throw nets and relishing in strife. Arduous and twisted and more difficult than most can know, the artist’s life is a journey rife with meaning and adventure. The way I see it, it’s the most meaningful life of all. So I guess it can be said that I admire Sooty. I admire her courage, vision, and skill, and I am especially drawn to the artist’s pain that lingers just behind her eyes. My mind races, my heart pounds, and somehow I feel more complete, having just experienced the business end of Sooty’s brand new gun.

“That’s it? I’m finished?” I ask, as Sooty stares me down with an intensely discerning and critical eye. A few beats later she offers a reply.

“Yeah, Sickboy. You’re finished. I hope I didn’t hurt you much.”

“Hurt me? No way,” I tell her. “As a matter of fact, I was just thinking about what I pussy I’ve been, putting this off for so long, afraid I’d have regrets. But right now, I’m telling you, I feel like a real badass.”

“Good to hear it,“ she says. “Honestly, it would have hurt a lot more if I had used my old shader. That rusty fucker would have chewed you up like a lawnmower. The new machine arrived just in time. The guys from Neuma custom made it for me. They even shipped it free of charge. Let’s just say I made a few friends at Ink-and-Iron last month.”

“Right, I remember you telling me about that. Long Beach, the Queen Mary, the parties and all. And your new gun.”

I must have said something that stung her, because all of a sudden Sooty is laying into me like a rabid wolverine.

“Whoa! Hold on Sickboy! Guns are for criminals. I didn’t shoot you, did I? I didn’t take aim and fire. What I did was render a killer work of art on that freckled, quivering canvass of yours. And for that unlikely artistic endeavor, I used a fine, custom-made tattoo MACHINE, not a fucking gun.”

Apparently, Sooty doesn’t appreciate it when the tools of her trade are referred to as guns. More than slightly perturbed, she launches into an eloquent five-minute lecture, touching on surgical grade steel, tubes and needles, coils, pneumatics and a sweet custom grip. While I definitely envy her passion, I honestly don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. After all, this is only my first tattoo. One thing is for sure, from this day on, when it comes to the art of intradermal ink, my verbal palette will include a heavy dollop of machine and not a trace ofjee-yew-EN. Sooty has just made sure of that.

“Holy shit, Sooty! I got it. A machine. I’m such an asshole.”

Sooty finally cracks a smile, which softens her rugged cowgirl stare and mellows her biker’s charm. She likes to treat me like a dartboard, and I get a kick out of watching her throw darts. The dirty-blondish, graying locks draped down to her denim clad ass suggest that big sis is a little north of fifty by now, although I don’t really know for sure. As long as I’ve known Sooty I have never thought to ask her age. Anyway, this is not her first rodeo. In the early eighties she used to run with Country Dick Montana and his crew, real rockabilly, honky tonk type shit. But that was before my time. Sooty and I met only a couple of years ago, while throwing back shots in the bar one night. She’s been like a big sister ever since.

“What do you think?” Sooty asks, as she angles a mirror next to my shoulder to give me a better view. “How do you like your Sissy Puss?”

“It’s Sisyphus, “ I correct her, referring to the rendering of the mythological Greek king which she has just finished machining onto my right arm. “Oh my god, Sooty! This is amazing,“ I gush. “The detail. The shading. The rock really pops. And the look on his face! You really nailed it. I can’t thank you enough for this. “

Sooty has done a masterful job. From my right shoulder to my elbow and wrapped around my arm, the scene epically unfolds in a half-sleeve of forcefully realized artistic vision. Sisyphus was the founding king of Corinth and quite a cunning knave. When his time on earth was up, he tried to cheat life by outfoxing the gods. His hubris, of course, just stirred their holy anger, and eventually Hades himself dragged Sisyphus to hell. In Tartarus, the abysmal pit of eternal torment, Sisyphus was sentenced to forever push an immense boulder up a steep, rocky mountainside, just to watch it roll all the way back down. A battered yet determined prisoner of hell, Sisyphus presses against the enormous rock, inching it ever so slightly up the precipitous incline, willing his way skyward in defiance of the vengeful gods. When he reaches the top, gravity pulls on the rock, and Sisyphus starts from the bottom again. So goes the eternal struggle of the once sly and mighty king of Corinth, and I can’t help wondering what’s on his mind. Now, thanks to Sooty’s considerable skill, the myth plays out upon my flesh, and I’ll forever remember Sisyphus. I don’t know how Sooty did it. It’s as if she herself took a trip to Tartarus to sketch the weary man on the mountainside. It truly is a work of art. Even Sooty takes a moment to gloat.

“I know you were set on black and gray, “ she says, “but I’m glad you let me use a touch of color in the background. The muted red and orange hues really give it a hellfire look. It looks so cool. “

It is cool. It’s badass, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

Sooty reviews some care instructions with me while administering a clear cellophane patch to cover and protect the freshly injected Sisyphean scene. I promise not to pick at the scabs and stand up to give her a hug. I am a little lightheaded and nearly fall over, as my rubbery legs forget how to stand after six straight hours of sitting.

“So you’re really leaving?” Sooty asks at the end of our fleeting squeeze.

“I don’t know what else to do at this point,” I reluctantly confess. ”I think I’ve exhausted my options out here. I’m broke, out of work, and technically I’m homeless. On top of all that, everyone I know has been looking at me like I’m made of glass. I just need some time to get my head straight. You know what I mean?”

“I get it, Sickboy. Honestly, I’ve been a little worried about you since you quit your job. But I get it. So Philly it is. We’re gonna’ miss you around here. You better stop by the bar tonight and say goodbye to Jenny. She’ll kill me for saying this, but I think she’s a little upset that you’re leaving.”

Despite the grit and tattoos and sharp verbal darts, Sooty can be a real sweetheart sometimes.

“Thanks, Sooty. I’ll drop in for a pop and a shot. And don’t worry about me. I’m an ass-kicking machine. You know that.”

I give Sooty a nod and exit the shop, stepping out onto Newport Avenue, where I’m greeted with the promise of another soul-cleansing San Diego sunset. First thing’s first, though, as I turn to my reflection in the shop window and refocus my thoughts on my new tattoo. I move in for a closer look, carefully inspecting the glistening ink, when suddenly I’m assaulted by an audible plop and the sensation of some warm and slimy substance oozing slowly down my fuzzy nape. Shit! I look up just in time to glimpse the set of ragged tail feathers protruding with menace from the rooftop above.

“Fucking pigeon!” I growl, as the offending hen dismissively emits a coo and struts away like pigeons do. Beady-eyed cocks and arrogant hens overrun the streets these days, bombarding us with droppings. Some days the feeling overwhelms me; this life is for the birds.

Determined not to let a little pigeon shit ruin today’s post-inking endorphin rush. I wipe the slime from the back of my neck, turn to my left, and embark on a westward stroll. I amble along at a leisurely pace, paying special attention to the tall, slender, hundred-year old palms stretching high above the restaurants, bars, and specialty shops. Newport Avenue’s trademark trees stand in perfect single-file formation on each side of the thoroughfare, a royal greeting party to welcome all comers to the quaint, eclectic seaside village, known to locals as OB. Ocean Beach, this perfectly flawed slice of paradise, has been my home for the last ten years, but now it’s time to say goodbye.

When I reach the corner of Newport and Bacon, I see the old man who spends his days burning artistic etchings in driftwood using only sun rays and a magnifying glass. He’s strumming his guitar and peddling his wares to a fat, pasty couple on vacation from Wisconsin. The couple seems to be impressed, and well they should be. That old man is creative and brave.

I walk the remaining block to the beach and hop atop the seawall. On the wall, which had crawled with curious onlookers all summer long, there currently roosts just a few local kooks, yours truly now among them. While hippies slap bongos, young lovers embrace, and surfers catch the last waves of the day, I sit in silence and look around, listening to the whispering tide. High in the western sky, night is just arriving, as the setting sun melts into the sea along a fiery horizon. Scores of sunset revelers line the pier, as dusk rolls over Ocean Beach, setting aglow the streetlamps along Newport Avenue. Only half a block from the sand, above the door on the facade of the perfect little dive, blue lights ignite to reveal the word Tony’s in flowing metallic script. It’s my favorite time in my favorite place, but now I really have to go.

I jump down from the seawall, walk half a block east, and pass under the glowing, blue sign. Once inside, I locate my spot, third stool down from the south bend of the bar. Simone is slinging drinks tonight. She spots me right away.

“Look who it is,” she exclaims. “You gonna’ behave tonight, Sickboy?”

With her jet black hair, arms covered in ink, and an often nasty disposition, Simone scares the shit out of most people. But not me. I’ve chipped away over the years, and I’ve found a real sweet girl underneath that sassy armor.

“Come on, Simone. You know I’m just here to say goodbye. One shot and a pop, and I’ll be out of your hair foever.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Simone says with a smile, as she sets me up with a cold Bud bottle and a shot of Beam. “So I guess you’re really leaving. You OK? I’ve been a little worried about you lately. ”

“You’re not the first person to say that today,” I reply with a squint of inquisition. “Don’t worry about me. I’m aces, baby. Just gotta’ shake things up a little bit.”

Judging by the look of concern on her face, Simone is not buying my swagger.

”I’m sorry to see you go, buddy. You know, Jenny will be here in an hour or two. You better stick around to say adieu.”

“I’ll be here,” I assure her.

After two refreshing chugs of Bud, I throw back the shot of Beam and drift off in a bourbon flow, my mind turning over scattered thoughts and vague conceptions of the world I hope to know. The bourbon lights a fire inside, and the heat quickly radiates to my fingertips and toes. Here we go. Man on fire! Simone sets me up with another.

“What have you got there?” she asks, pointing to my right shoulder.

I deadpan my reply without missing a beat.

“It’s the weight of the world… right here on my shoulders.“

My play on words elicits a chuckle, and I’m feeling pretty good about myself. I like to think of wordplay as the best kind of foreplay, with slick metaphors and witty puns in place of licks and strokes and nipple twists. Simone seems to be digging it.

“Oh, you mean my tattoo?” I ask with feigned surprise. “Sooty did it this afternoon. I’m really stoked about how it turned out.”

I tell Simone all about Sisyphus, how he offended the gods and has to roll his rock up the mountainside over and over to the end of time. Then I start to go on about Camus, and how his famous essay was my real inspiration for the tattoo.

“kah-WHO?” she asks.

“kah-MOO,” I tell her. “Albert Camus. He was a French philosopher and author who wrote The Stranger and The Plague. He also wrote this essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he uses the plight of Sisyphus to make some observations about the absurdity of life.”

Simone pretends to care as I continue to describe Camus’ proposition that the only important philosophical question is whether or not one should commit suicide in the face of our meaningless existence. He puts forth the idea that once a person realizes just how absurd life truly is, the only choices are to accept God or to opt for auto-terminaton. He then obliterates that notion by suggesting a third option, the one he imagines that Sisyphus employs by finding happiness in the acceptance of his fate and dutifully rolling his boulder uphill. By coming to grips with the inescapable absurdity of life and carrying on in defiance of the void, true happiness can be obtained. Whatever Camus’ point might be, it sure as hell doesn’t make for great barroom banter. I’m buzzed and rambling now, and I’m growing a little ashamed of all my pretentious talk. I sound like a real asshole. I take another swig of brew to keep my tingling lips from flapping, and Simone saunters down to the far end of the bar to lubricate some new arrivals, just in the nick of time.

Two hours and six shots later, my head detaches from my neck and hovers above my shoulders like a helium balloon tethered to a park bench on a windy afternoon. Oh, brother. I just drank myself retarded. Social D is playing on the jukebox and I’m bobbing my head like some drunken punk. I grab a pen from my pocket and start scribbling on a cocktail napkin. Simone quickly takes notice.

“How you holding up, Sickboy? OK? Whatcha’ writing?”

I try to straighten up and look something less than smashed. I fail miserably.

“Here. Wanna’ see?” I slur, as a slide the napkin across the bar so Simone can peep my scribbles.

She starts reading aloud.

“Dear women of the world, you are God’s most special creation. I love every single one of you, but some more than others, and right now one most of all. Yours truly, Sickboy”

Simone’s emerging smile consists of one part appreciation and three parts pity.

“Aww, Sickboy. Jenny just called. She’s not coming in tonight. I’ll tell her you came by though. I’m sorry, sweety.”

“No worries, Simone. I gotta’ go anyway. Can you just tell her I said…”

I slip into a futile, silent search for words I’ll never find. Simone throws me a line to rescue me from drowning.

“I know. I’ll tell her. Good luck in Philly. Come back and see us soon. OK? What’s the name of the neighborhood where you grew up again?”

With bourbon breath and bloodshot eyes, “Fishtown,” I reply.

I lean across the bar, give Simone a friendly peck, and stumble out to the street. It’s probably best that I won’t see Jenny tonight, given the shape I’m in. I’m really going to miss that girl.

So my last night in Ocean Beach ends like all the others, alone and lost somewhere deep inside my whiskey riddled mind. It’s been a difficult year, and I had to make some tough decisions. I can understand why my friends think I’ve come unhinged. I quit my job at the onset of a great recession, lost my money and my place at the beach, and I keep suffering these manic attacks, compelling me to write or die. I think I now know what it means when they say art requires courage. Fuck it! I’ve got courage. Forget the pigeons, priests, and corporate whores. Give me the tattoo artists, the driftwood etchers, the painters and the fearless scribes, while I put my shoulder to the boulder and finally enjoy the climb.

“Uhhh… Since this is my first time reciting my scribbles into a hand-held electronic sound amplification device, under hot lights and in front of a group of living, breathing, drinking listeners, I thought I would start with something kind of upbeat. I wrote this poem. It’s a real feel-good rhyme, the kind that makes you smile and want to hug your mother. Oh, and by the way… Poetry is not just for pussies. I just wanted to say that.”

There’s a lonely so deep down the shaft of this well.
I was fetching a drink the moment I fell.
A pail on a rope.
Unquenchable thirst.
It’s clear to me now, this well is cursed.

Pitch black. Damp. Slime coats the wall.
Colder and darker the longer I fall.
Subterranean terror.
A pinpoint of light.
As the opening shrinks and fades out of sight.

Ten meters per second per second I sink,
Unending descent instead of a drink.
How did this happen?
When will it end?
Unanswerable questions, my only friends.

Surely colors explode on the surface above,
Amongst laughter and learning and art and true love.
Sunlit existence.
Life above ground.
Down here there’s no feeling, no light and no sound

I thought I’d fall through the lithosphere and blast through the core,
Emerge from a well on some Far Eastern shore.
Science of the rock.
Best I can tell,
Nature’s rules do not apply in the darkness of the well.

Satan’s realm approaches, perhaps the end that I desire.
But demons rise above me as I plummet past the fire.
I envy the sinners.
They landed in Hell.
While I’ve yet to stop falling since the moment I fell.

Sickboy smirks and emits a sigh of relief as he steps off the stage. He is proud of himself, one smartass yet oddly sensitive drunk scribbler…a regular Edgar Alan Schmoe…but most definitely not a pussy.

The young family nearly has the beach to themselves this morning. The autumn winds return OB to those who appreciate her most, as the summertime crowds wash away after Labor Day. On the seawall, which had crawled with curious onlookers all summer long, there currently roosts just a few local kooks. Among them is one particularly pensive and hopelessly disheveled man. He is dirty and alone with no direction home. His few worldly possessions are stuffed into the huge hiker’s pack leaning on the seawall next to where he sits. He is adrift in Ocean Beach, drawn by the warmth and comfort of this quirky, laid back village by the sea. He and others like him constitute the diaspora of the disenchanted, roaming the coast from Dog Beach to Sunset Cliffs, comfortably rejecting the norm.

So it goes. Only yards apart, yet unaware of each other’s presence, years of time and circumstance now separate Jenny and Sickboy. Both slinger and sot have moved beyond the dim lights and warm buzz of the bar. Jenny now has her shop and her husband and her precocious little girl. Sickboy has his backpack and a mountain of debt and the outward signs of desolation. If Sickboy could escape the inside of his head for just a moment, from his perch upon the seawall he might catch a glimpse of Jenny walking on the beach. Jenny’s beauty, strength and determination, which had kept Sickboy bolted to his barstool years ago, now shine brighter than ever. What a boost it would be to see that shine today! Look up Sickboy! Look up! But he is lost too deep inside his head, where only memories and racing thoughts fill his field of vision. He will not see Jenny on the beach today. Like a hot meal and a good night’s sleep, Jenny is now a memory.

In his weary, gnarled hands Sickboy holds a copy of the morning paper which he scooped up while dumpster diving in the alley behind South Beach. Times are tough, and the news is grim. A noxious fog of ego and greed seeps through our culture laying waste to the American dream. Jobs are lost. Homes are destroyed. Desolate parents are abandoning their offspring. There is a story of a murder-suicide in L.A. involving a recently unemployed couple and their five children. The tragedy is beyond belief. A trillion dollars of federal relief will never fix this. The problem runs too deep.

Sickboy himself had felt the creeping of the noxious fog. It had chased him into the bars and finally onto the streets. Immersed in the soupy haze of materialistic pursuit, he had carried on with the idea that prosperity determines success. And so, as he came to accept his lack of prosperity, he began to crumble under the weight of his perceived lack of success. The burden of failure and extreme self-doubt affected every aspect of his life, especially his relationships. Am I dependable? Who can I trust? What good do I do? While Sickboy truly cared and at times could even show it, his neurosis would never allow him to be cared for in return. After all, who could love a failure? Jim Beam. That’s who!

All of Sickboy’s troubles can be traced back to a lack of purpose. An odd blend of logical and artistic tendencies swirl together in his mind. At one moment he can be engrossed in analysis and find great satisfaction in presenting his results, only to be frustrated an hour later by the utter meaninglessness of the work. Is he a poet or an accountant? The dichotomy is unrelenting. Ultimately, it can be said that Sickboy has a mind for business but no tolerance for the culture of business in the modern world. In the workplace good people struggle while snakes succeed. Young, pliable minds are snatched up by corporations and sent away to business school to be conditioned for title chasing, salary hunting, and platitude dispensation. Something has been lost in the maelstrom of buzzwords and ego and spin that passes for business in our times. And now we are facing the consequences. The economy crumbles, and good folks are losing hope. The problems are beyond systemic. They are existential. People are lost.

Sickboy now subsides on the streets of Ocean Beach, where once he had laughed and loved and shared good times with friends, until a chronic case of sensitivity finally forced him to the streets. He had been unable to quiet the noise that polluted his pursuit of love and understanding. His passion was forever tempered by qualifiers. I love you but I have no money. I love you but I have no career. I love you but I have no plan. I love you but I’m not sure that I am reliable. And so love was lost but a lesson learned.

Times are tough. Making sense of it all is even tougher. A man has to find his way, and as Sickboy’s story attests, with too much thought there will be struggle. But underneath the scraggly, salt-and-pepper beard, behind the weary eyes and sunbaked face, there is goodness to be found in the man on the street, and there are lessons to be learned from the path that led him here.

Yes, Sickboy really talks like that sometimes, particularly at work. And with those words he joins the ranks of the unemployed yet again. This time he’s not going back. Never again will he subject himself to the mind numbing inanity of corporate America and the deluded drones that inhabit it. Don’t be fooled – MBA is nothing more than a euphemism for lobotomy. In a world of buzzwords, conformity, and self-preservation at all costs, there is no place for objectivity and a racing mind full of common sense and good intentions. This is no mere case of sour grapes. The culture of business is truly offensive. Sickboy had no choice but to unplug from the machine.

Having shed the shackles of his cubicle once and for all, Sickboy heads to Tony’s to celebrate his insanity.

Immediately Chloe senses that a burden has been lifted from the shoulders of her most irregular regular.

“Sickboy! You look like your in good spirits for a change. You look… relaxed.”

“Yeah, Chloe, well I finally did it. I said my piece at work. I called them on their bullshit, and told them that I’m moving on. They won’t have me to do their dirty work any more.”

In less than a second Chloe’s sardonic reflexes kick in.

“It’s about time. I’m sure they were just devastated. What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

The truth is Sickboy has no idea what to do next. Unemployment was not the most practical choice, especially given the current state of the economy, but the existential burdens of postmodern capitalistic life had become too much to handle. Sickboy has yet to find his calling, and it is becoming more and more likely that his condition may prevent him from ever finding it. Sickboy is an artist without a medium… unless, of course, self loathing and social implosion come to be considered art.

As Sickboy sinks into oblivion, Chloe probes a little further.

“What about writing? Some of your stuff was pretty cool.”

Chloe is referring to the mental masturbation that Sickboy posted online last Spring. He would chase down a thought and try to blow it up to the size of a page, scribbling about love and friendship and drinking and depression and creepy, crazy, manic, creative flow. It was another awkward episode in one perpetually awkward lifetime.

“No. I’m done with that shit. Sometimes I still can’t believe just how weird that was. I can barely bring myself to show my face around here any more. Thank God for medicine.”

Of course, by medicine, the boy means Jim Beam.

Chloe pours him two shots, one of Beam and one of encouragement.

“Look, Sickboy. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’ve been tending bar for 15 years, and I have seen a lot of drinkers, drunks and bar stool philosophers. You’re not so bad. I mean, you’re not the strangest guy to ever pass through here. Something will come up.”

“Geez, thanks, Chloe.”

“Don’t get me wrong… you’re definitely strange… but in an interesting way. A good way. And you know what… I like you. And you know who else likes you?”

“The bourbon distillers of Kentucky? … for demanding their supply?”

“No, smartass. Jenny, that’s who. Jenny likes you.”

Sickboy lights up like a kid on Christmas morning. He’s such a simple being.

“Wow. She’s the best, Chloe. I love her. I really do.”

“So why do you keep coming around here and getting wasted all the time? Can’t you just hang out? Get your shit together, kid. It’s painful to watch you.”

Chloe is right. Sickboy is pathetic – a grown man so lacking in confidence and direction that he can only drink to the point of dementia and then scribble little diddies on his PC the next day. There has to be a better way.

“I know, Chloe. I know. I’m a fuckin’ idiot. I just struggle so much all the time. The way I feel about that girl… it just seemed right to tell her in weird and memorable ways. You know what I mean? But then the tide rolls out and takes my confidence with it, and I just keep sinking deeper into the wet sand. I need a girl willing to take a chance on me, but I hate to put that burden on someone I care about so much. See? It’s a Catch-22.”

Chloe smiles.

“You know, Sickboy. I feel like I’m getting to understand you a little more each time you come around. I’m rooting for you.”

“Great. Now I have to add YOU to the long list of people in my life who I have let down.”

Then Sickboy throws back what turns out to be his last shot ever. After one last look around the bar, he steps outside and merges with the foot traffic headed west on Newport Avenue toward the pier. On the street in Ocean Beach, Sickboy finally has found a home.

A friend of Sickboy’s since a chance encounter in the coffee shop where she buried her face in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Kelly Kirkland is one in a million girls, the perfect combination of beauty, wit, and soul. Currently, she and Jenny are the sweet and shiny apples of Sickboy’s admiring eye. Sometimes he feels blessed to have been born so undesirable. Otherwise he might have to choose between the two. Fortunately for Sickboy, he is an equal opportunity repulser and one extremely sad sack. He has no choice.

Before kicking off another weekend of boozing and wallowing in self pity, Sickboy makes a quick pitstop on the way out of work, popping into Kelly’s office on the 6th floor.

“Hey, Kirkland, I’m taking off. Have a great weekend.”

Kelly turns around with wide eyes and an inviting smile. Sickboy is prepared. He reminds himself that every two minutes during the conversation he has to look away. And don’t forget to ignore the way she is playing with her hair. Kelly exudes a charm not unlike the Sirens’ call, and Sickboy has come perilously close to smashing up against the rocks on a number of occasions. There’s just something irresistible in that smile and in those eyes.

Then Sickboy feels like Superman, a humble hero about to crumble, as a full karat of kryptonite arises from the band around Kelly’s left ring finger. Soon it will be official. Kelly has someone to have and to hold.

“You have a good one too, Sickboy. What are you doing this weekend?”

“The usual. Drink. Brood. Wallow. Stumble home. Sleep. Repeat.”

“Cool.”

“Not really. Don’t patronize me, Kirkland.”

“I’m not patronizing you. I’m sorry. Are you taking the bus right now?”

The fucking bus. Sickboy rides the fucking bus! But cars are such a hassle. Pay for gas. Pay for insurance. Pay for repairs. Pay for parking. Pay attention to the stranger in the next lane. Zoom! Zoom! Hurry up! The ultimate con on society perpetrated by Henry Ford and the oil companies. Who needs it!

“Yeah, Kirkland. You know how I roll. I like to get out there among the people.”

“You want a lift?”

This could be tricky. Sickboy let his feelings be known immediately after getting to know Kelly. When it comes to matters of the heart, the boy knows only one way. The few things they have in common just happen to be the most important things of all. A soulful connection is the result. On top of that, Kelly is everything good that Sickboy is not.

She had gracefully dodged Sickboys advances, citing a respect for her boy and their relationthingy. Then came the trip to Vancouver and the ring. But Sickboy is a gentleman, able to compartmentalize his desire away from his sincere admiration and friendly affection for the girl. She knows how he feels. He knows she knows how he feels. Honesty is the only true template for friendship between a man and woman. Nothing lingering here. Just two friends who know the contents of each other’s heart.

“Uhhhhhh… sure, Kirkland… if you’re headed my way.”

The ride home is marked by the usual small talk and banter and few playful glances. Sickboy could go all day. When they reach Sickboy’s pad twenty minutes later, Kelly pulls into the driveway and turns off the engine. The sudden silence and turn of the key throw Sickboy for a loop.

“What’s up, Kirkland? You OK?”

Kelly’s eyes stay glued to the dashboard for just a moment before she turns to Sickboy. No words. Just those inescapable eyes and an appreciative smile. Sickboy’s wheels start turning. The overthinker is overthinking again. That look. This girl. This moment. All of these moments. It’s just too good. Too good not to be right. Too good not to be true.

“You know I love you, Kirkland.”

Oh, Sickboy… not again. But he keeps going. Sometimes he can’t help feeling that her eyes are asking him to intervene.

“Look, if you’re not sure about this guy… I mean…you’ve done a lousy job of convincing me. But I didn’t want to say anything because… you know… because there’s part of me that wants to be with you. But I’m also your friend who loves you and wants you to be happy. So when I sense your hesitation or see the pressure tightening down on you, I can never be sure if I’m concerned as your friend or interfering as someone who wants you for myself. So I say nothing, and I banter and I evade and I diverge. This is crazy. Just tell me that you’re happy.”

Kelly’s expression never changes. Sickboy’s friend whom he has come to love looks him in right in the eyes and commands in a calm and soulful tone, “Get out. Get out of the car. Get out of the car right now.”

Such is the plight of Sickboy, the boy with the manic mind and the sometimes deluded sense of self. Stay true to your heart, speak your mind, and be prepared to deal with the consequences. Sometimes it feels right. Other times he is so full of doubt. It’s no walk in the park – this illness of his. Ebb and flow. High and low. Like the tide upon an uncertain shore.

Thankfully, one thing is for sure… The bar is open every night until two.

This year Sickboy lugs a twelve pack of Newcastle bottles along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, on his way to Sevrin’s pad for a barbecue with the crew. As he enters Sevrin’s complex and begins to ascend the stairs, his eardrums are pounded by the explosive sound of whispers. Apparently, the fireworks have started early.

“Yeah, he’s like chronically shy or something. But you have to check it out. obsickboy.com,” Sevrin tells his guests.

Albino Bill follows with a verbal M-80 of his own. “Yeah, I saw one of his cards stuck to a palm tree outside Winston’s last week. What’s up with that?”

No one has actually said anything negative, but Sickboy is nothing if not hypersensitive. His scribbles are what they are, posted on the world wide web for anyone to see. Sure, he wants people to read them. But he sure as hell doesn’t want people to read INTO them. If you like a good story, check it out. If you relate to certain aspects of the character, well that’s the idea. But don’t go thinking you have Sickboy himself all figured out. The story is about you as much, if not more so, than it is about Sickboy. Stoners, loadies, drunks, and depressives – we each have our addictions and character flaws. Can’t we all just get along? Goddamn whisperers!

Mush Rider hurls the next cherry bomb.

“obsickboy.com, huh? Alright. I’m gonna’ check it out and see what that crazy motherfucker is up to. You know what they say… Still waters run deep.”

Just then Sickboy taps on the screen door to throw a damper on the fireworks show.

“What the fuck, fellas!”

Sickboy is feigning embarrassment…sort of. He can take a little shit talk from the boys, but Mush Rider’s new girl is hanging out as well. Isn’t there some code of man ethics that applies here? No clowning one of the boys in front of the new girl. But Sickboy gets no respect. It’s not easy being an anonymous online scribbler, especially when the protective cloud of anonymity evaporates like the coastal marine layer at two o’clock on a sunny summer afternoon.

“Oh, hey, what’s up, Sickboy!” Sevrin stutters.

“Fuck off, Sevrin! But Happy 4th to the rest of you.”

Sickboy is having some fun now.

“Hey man, don’t hate” Sevrin whines.

Sickboy needs to set some things straight so he can enjoy his holiday.

“Chronically shy? Look, you pussy, I have a lot on my mind. So I spend a lot of time lost inside my head. But I wouldn’t call it shyness. I’m just picky about with whom I’m willing to share. I have standards. That’s all. There’s no one who I think needs to hear something who hasn’t already heard it from me. When a friend needs advice, he gets it. When someone offends me, he hears about it. And the girl I love… she knows it. That’s more than I can say for the cocoon of bullshit that you’ve spun around yourself… fuckin’ mothman! ”

Sevrin tries to end the discussion with his usual retort. “Whatever, dude!”

Sickboy isn’t quite finished.

“Yeah, whatever! I think you have some pent up shit that you need to get out, Sev. You need a laxative for your soul or something. You know, push one out.”

“Fuck you, Sickboy. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sickboy cracks open a Newcastle and takes a big chug. He’s done explaining himself for the day, and he gives the host a friendly pat on the back. Sevrin is a good guy, even if he is emotionally constipated.

The party moves out to the patio where Mush Rider and Albino Bill get into a discussion about the La Jolla traffic circles. Like most motorists, Albino Bill is not a fan. Relating his antics as only he can, the man with no pigmentation has everyone on the patio cracking up.

“There’s like fifteen of those fuckin’ things on LaJolla Boulevard. Forget that slow down, loopdy-loop shit! I just drive right over them – over the curb, on the grass.”

Bill is not kidding either.

For some reason, Mush Rider steadfastly defends the loops, like the Minutemen defending Boston Harbor from the Brits.

“Actually, my uncle’s firm was contracted to build the loops, and there are three, not fifteen. The only problem is that the landscaping needs to be trimmed. The bushes are so high that you can’t see the oncoming traffic making its way around the circle.”

Albino Bill stands up and bellows “To hell with those stupid circles! I hope they tear up all twenty of them! Who wants to smoke a bowl?”

Mush rises from his seat to respond.

“It’s three! Not twenty! Not thirty! Three! And there’s a nugget of Silver Haze upstairs on the counter.”

Nothing like some crystal laden chronic to repair a potential rift between dueling stoners. He rides the mush but he smokes the kush, and the big white man is more than happy to partake in his stash.

Mush Rider is always holding some crazy strain or another. Sometimes the names sound like their taken right off the menu at Jamba Juice. Other times they seem ripped from the cereal aisle of the grocery store.

Hawaiian Punch. Cat Piss. Grapes of Wrath. Vanilla Fusion. Numb Dick Stick. Cocoa Puffs. Humboldt Lightning. Captain Crunch. Mango Madness.

A few rips later and no one’s talking about the traffic circles any more.

Over the course of the day, several species of beast are roasted and consumed by this gathering of beer swilling savages. Right around 8:30 the party breaks up as the stuffed and wasted tribe heads toward the beach to watch the fireworks launch from the OB pier. Sickboy breaks off from the group and finds a spot on the lawn next to lifeguard tower two. He turns his attention inward as sound and fury erupt in the sky above the sea.

Out there in the cosmos, far beyond the exploding sky, there is a parallel universe where Sickboy has his shit together. He is healthy and confident and he sweeps Jenny off her feet, as all that is good inside the boy comes pouring forth for everyone to see. Here on earth, in this lifetime, however, an overthinking, overdrinking sick and troubled soul can only scribble his way to health and happiness, one episode at a time.

Sickboy beats a path westward on Niagra, accompanied by a cool evening breeze and a few lingering thoughts. Yesterday’s Street Fair and post-party have taken their toll on his liver and melon. A little fresh air is in order. Conditions are right for a soul-cleansing Sunday evening stroll, and for once the universe looks to be on Sickboy’s side. Of course, looks can be deceiving.

Not only is the universe not on Sickboy’s side tonight, but it’s about to kick him in the nuts with a steel-tipped boot. As the poor sucker approaches Bacon Street, an all too familiar face begins to materialize at a table on the patio outside The Vine.

It couldn’t be.

No way.

What are the odds?

Has the boy not suffered enough?

Sure enough, it’s Jenny, the face that launched a thousand shots, and she’s not alone. She and her date are sipping wine and and making small talk. Sickboy’s entrails slip out through the rip in his belly, leaving a crimson streak on the sidewalk to mark the spot where he has just been drawn and quartered. He does his best to stuff his guts back inside and tries to proceed with a cool indifference, just as Jenny looks up to catch a glimpse of her unwanted suitor passing by. Jenny is graceful as always.

“Hi Sickboy” she says with sweetness and sincerity.

Sickboy manages a semi-smile and a silent wave and just keeps moving faster. Jenny’s date is a baseball cap and hoodie as far as Sickboy is concerned, but this splash of reality has left Sickboy feeling old and lonely. What a fucking nightmare! An immediate brain dump is required. Erase the harddrive and reformat the disk. For just a moment, Sickboy considers maintaining his course on Niagra Avenue all the way to the end of OB pier and beyond. A long walk off a long pier. But if the boy is going to drown tonight it will be at the bottom of a gallon of Beam, not in Davey Jones’ Locker. He makes a hard right down the alley next to South Beach, and what started as a quiet Sunday evening stroll is about to get dark and Beamy.

Inside Tony’s Sickboy hops atop his favorite stool. Time to medicate.

“What can I getcha’” asks the Sunday night fill-in behind the bar.

Sickboy doesn’t even look up to acknowledge the guy.

“Jim Beam. Double. Straight up.”

As the stranger pours the shot tall and tasty, Sickboy drifts off in contemplation. What was the universe trying to tell him tonight with that random and unlikely encounter? Was it a dose of reality to shake away a lingering crush? Or maybe Sickboy is just being too self-centered. Maybe the universe wasn’t speaking to him at all. Just maybe the universe was speaking to Jenny, saying “Hey, sister, enjoy your wine tonight, but Sickboy is your guy.”

Suddenly Sickboy begins to chuckle aloud. He has just caught himself playing silly games inside his head, and he realizes that he is the most ridiculous, emotionally immature sap to ever swing a shotglass. He slaps a twenty on the bar.

“Keep the change, buddy. But you can dump the shot.”

With that, Sickboy hits the street. Mr. Beam will no longer be required. Tonight the bar is not as comforting as it once had been. Sobriety seems preferable to inebriation, at least for now. As he walks home, Sickboy continues to untangle the knots in his belly. Perhaps he finally has figured out how to separate jealousy from true affection. But just in case, he takes the long way home to avoid walking back past The Vine.

Coast to coast. A thousand bars. A million drinks. More pretty faces than he could ever recall. Sickboy is no ordinary drunk. He is an extraordinary drunk, well versed in the trappings of the tap room. He should have known better than to let himself feel. He’s not sure how it happened, but now it’s time to let go.

“Sickboy! What’s up! You never come by any more.”

Jenny is genuinely surprised. A few months ago Sickboy committed himself to never again bellying up at the bar during Jenny’s shifts. The bar can be a bewildering place for a simple soul like Sickboy. Sometimes its hard to know what’s real. Given his feelings for the girl, he saw no point in getting all twisted up inside when he just wanted to sit and stew and sip a brew. Knocking them back with Jenny behind the bar, Sickboy would always wonder where the job ends and the girl begins. No one needs that kind of torture, especially not Sickboy.

“Hi Jenny. I’m not staying. Just poppin’ in to say Hello.”

“How sweet! What’s new with you?”

“The ususal. Actually, do you have a minute?”

“For you, Sickboy, I’ve got two.”

Sometimes in life there are perfect moments, unforgettable moments, when everything seems to go just right. This is not one of those moments. Sickboy stammers.

“Yeah, Jenny, ummmm…you know I like you, right?”

Jenny smiles and nods her head reassuringly, her comforting eyes fixed on Sickboy’s face as he nervously continues.

“Well, do you think I might ever see you outside of the bar? I would… uhhhh… I mean, I would like to… uhhhh…I’d like to get to know you better.”

It seems like a simple question, but for a mindfucked overthinker like Sickboy it just never gets any easier. It’s not so much a fear of rejection. Sickboy eats rejection the way a fatty eats ice cream – often and so quickly that brain freeze kicks in. Rejection is not a problem. The problem is that Sickboy is just too painfully aware of his own impracticality. Sure, he can be sweet, but he also carries a bus pass in his wallet to get him to and from work each day. He is perpetually Ramen Noodles broke, and his apartment is furnished only with the same cardboard boxes that he used to move in a year and a half ago. He has a freakishly large ovoid mass for a head and a grill so scary that it makes little kids cry. His job makes him miserable, and his only hobbies are barstool surfing and Beaminous poison intake. The guy is in no shape to be professing his love. No doubt Jenny deserves better.

Momentarily surprised, Jenny collects herself and manages to be both graceful and direct in her response. Heavy on the direct

“I don’t think so, Sickboy. You are such a nice guy. You’re like the sweetest customer I have ever known. But I just don’t see you like that. We’re friends though. And you make me laugh. I love that about you.”

A simple shiny sword in the chest would have sufficed. But this rusty dagger is killing the boy.

“Right on, Jenny. Well, I had to ask. I can’t help feeling that there’s something good going on here. I know it’s your job and all, but you just shine so bright…I can’t help wanting to tell you all the time.”

Sickboy is reeling and suddenly he realizes why Jim Beam is his best friend.

“Oh, and Jenny, I’m sorry about the online scribblin’ stuff. I hope that wasn’t too uncomfortable for you. It’s not like anyone read it anyway. I can’t really explain it. I just really needed to get that stuff out. You have no idea how much shit Sevrin and Bobby D. give me for falling for a bartender. You know those guys have been in the business for a long time. And Chloe? She’s ruthless. It’s hard being a joke. But the thing is, when I look across the bar at you, I don’t see the bartender. I never did. I just see this amazing girl, this beautiful and amazing girl who always makes me smile. And then when I see you off the clock, I’m so nervous and worried about being… uhhhh….a burden or something, like some guy who just doesn’t get it. Anyway, I have a ridiculous crush on you, and I had to ask. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. So… uhhhh… I’ll see you around.”

Never in the history of men and women has a more awkward exchange taken place. And it’s too bad because Sickboy truly loves Jenny. Bar. Church. Supermarket. Bookstore. Coffee Shop. The setting is irrelevant. The feeling is real.

“Hey, Sickboy.”

Sickboy braces himself for one more painful puncture wound.

“I’m glad you came by. Don’t be a stranger.”

Graceful. The girl is absolutely graceful.

With his tail comfortably tucked between his legs, Sickboy mopes out on to Newport Avenue . Deep down he probably always knew that Jenny would never take him seriously, but he had allowed himself to hope. Relinquishing that hope was painful, but only for a moment. Sickboy is resilient. As he crosses Bacon Street, his swagger already begins to return. He has made a friend who he loves, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

Half way between Bacon and Cable, the gravitational pull of Pac Shores begins to take hold of Sickboy. The next time Sickboy walks past The Shores without stopping in for a pop it will be the first. The joint is inescapable.

In the comforting darkness of the bar Sickboy is not quite surprised to find Bobby D. sipping down some JD and watching the Lakers game on TV.

Bobby D. is glad to have the company.

“Sickboy! Yay-yeeeeah! A Beam for my boy! Where you headed?”

Sickboy takes a seat at the bar, one stool to the left of Bobby D. Shots beware.

“I’m on my way home. I just stopped by The ‘Shine to drop something off for Jenny.”

“Jenny? Look at you, big man! What did you bring her?”

“Nothing really. Just my broken heart and some awkward conversation.”

“Sounds like you. You OK?”

“Yeah, man, I’m alright. I love that girl and I had to tell her.”

“You told her? What did she say?”

“She said it’s not for her. But she said it perfectly. You know how she is.”

“Awww, fuck, man. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I feel good. You know I subscribe to the ninety percent rule.”

“Seriously, Sickboy, that is total bullshit. Ninety percent? Fuck that!”

“No. I mean it. Ninety percent of the fulfillment in any good relationship comes from the knowledge that the other person knows how much you care. If people could just figure that out for themselves and stop searching for so much in the other ten percent, we would all be a lot happier. Anyway, she knows. So I’m OK. “

“You’re really not hurting at all?”

“No, man. I’m good. Just like broken bones, a broken heart grows back stronger. I’ve had my share of heartache, and I learned a lot from it. If I only loved the girls capable of loving me back, then that would be a condition. And I’ve learned to love unconditionally.”

“Dude, you are so full of shit sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know. Right now I’d rather be full of Beam. Salud, my friend.”

“Looks like you got a little hitch in your step there, Sickboy.”

At the moment Sickboy has lost his good humor. Let the squawking commence.

“Yeah, can you fuckn’ believe this! Two days ago I was baking in the sun and building sand castles on the beach with Hawaiian Kan and his kids. Now today I’ve got third degree burns on the top of my feet and its like Green Bay in December out there.”

Sevrin can’t resist.

“Dumbass! You forgot to put sunscreen on your feet Sunday? How long have you been in San Diego now? Twelve years? Are you ever gonna’ stop being a tourist here? Then again, if you think sixty degrees qualifies as Wisco cold, you might be a local after all. Beverage?”

Sickboy hops up on his stool. Chloe slides a fresh frosted pint glass in front of him.

“What’s shakin’, Chloe?”

Sickboy might as well be a ghost. Chloe offers no acknowledgment and quickly shuffles back to the far end of the bar.

“What’s up with you and Chloe?” Sevrin asks with curiosity as he pours the Bass. “If it wasn’t a frozen tundra in here before, it sure is now.”

Sickboy is weary from the long workday, but he musters up the energy for an explanation.

“I think she’s creeped out by my scribblin’. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I started that. But now I can’t stop.”

“The blog thing? Yeah, that’s definitely a little weird. How’s it going lately?”

“First of all, it’s not a fuckin’ blog. I hate that word. I don’t blog. I’m not writing an online journal. I’m more interested in telling a good story than in telling the truth. I just make shit up whenever it’s convenient, which is most of the time. So it’s definitely not a goddamn blog.”

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know what the fuck it’s called! But its no blog.”

Sevrin won’t let it go.

“How’s it different than a blog then?”

Sickboy wasn’t prepared for this interrogation, and his patience is waning.

“Look, I just told you. I make shit up.”

“Like what? What do you make up?”

For just a second Sickboy considers throwing his pint into Sevrin’s face to put an end to this line of questioning. But he reconsiders.

“You know. I exaggerate things. Thoughts. Feelings. Conversations.”

“You mean like all that sappy shit about your feelings for Jenny?”

Even Sickboy has to admit that he’s laid down some super-saccharine scribbles as of late.

“Exactly. It’s a character. I exaggerate reality to magnify the character’s insecurities and neurotic headspeak. I play up the dichotomy between the drinking and the childlike simplicity of his emotions. It’s fictionnn… ish.

Sevrin doesn’t buy a word of it.

“Yeah. But you’re exactly like that. What part are you exaggerating?”

“All of it, asshole! It’s all an exaggeration. It’s literaturrrre… ish”

“Uh, I don’t think so, my friend. It’s pretty much you.”

“Fuck you, Sevrin.”

Sickboy’s online artistic endeavors are a sore topic today. After only six weeks, he just received his first piece of hate mail. He never thought his scribbles would warrant enough attention to generate hate mail. The experience has left him feeling a little uneasy, and Sevrin picks up on it.

“What’s up? Something else going on?”

“Yeah some fuckin’ psycho wrote some nasty shit on the website last night. He calls himself the Crowbar Mangler. It’s been creeping me out all day.”

“Crowbar Mangler! Fuck! What did he write?”

“He called me a fuckin’ faggot and told me to cut off my hands and drink gasoline.”

“How are you supposed to drink gasoline if you cut off your hands?”

“I don’t know. Through a straw? Or maybe I’m supposed to drink the gasoline first.”

“That’s pretty scary. Who do you think it was?”

“Oh, I know who it was. It was some dude right here in OB. I guess he didn’t realize that his IP address would display with his comment. It’s no big deal. I let it go.”

It’s obvious, however, that Sickboy has not let it go. The Mangler’s hateful remarks are bumming him out. Sickboy doesn’t take the hate personally, but the idea that an OB local could be so moronic and hateful is a real downer. OB is supposed to be Sickboy’s laid back beach village. Who the hell invited The Mangler? And why is he hating on the scribbles? What harm could they be doing?

“The thing is, Sev, whenever I hear a guy call someone a ‘fuckin faggot’ , it reminds me of Eddie Berger.”

The name means nothing to Sevrin. “Who’s Eddie Berger?” he asks.

“You know I grew up in the ‘hood back east. Eddie Berger was one of my classmates in sixth grade. He was dumb as a stump and nearly two years older than the rest of us. He’d been held back twice. He was a skinny little dude with mop top hair, all hunched over and mostly deaf in one ear. He talked like he had a mouth full of marbles. But he was as harmless as a fly.”

“Why does hearing ‘fuckin faggot’ remind you of him? Did he get caught blowing a guy in the park or something?”

“No. Nothing like that. One day in the summertime he was walking home from the store with a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk for his mom. I was standing on the corner with my buddies and decided to have some fun. It started out harmless enough. I was making fun of the way he talked. Ehhhdeeee! You Weeetard! Stupid kid shit. But then I ran across the street and backed him up against the wall of the rec building. What are you looking at, Berger, you fuckin’ faggot! The poor kid was scared to death. I still remember the look in his eyes. But my friends were laughing and I was all puffed up with pre-adolescent adrenaline. Kids can be so stupid at that age. Whack! I smacked him in the side of the head. The gallon of milk dropped and splattered on the ground. This twelve-year-old kid’s eyes welled up with tears. He put his hand over his ear and started bawling. My ear! My bad ear! The milk! My mom is gonna’ kill me. My friends just laughed harder which only fueled this weird hateful impulse in me. Shut up, you fuckin’ faggot! Whack! I slapped him again. But this time he stopped crying. He just looked at me in silence with these sad hopeless eyes as if to say I give up. It was like a brick hit me in the face. All of a sudden I felt sick and couldn’t breathe. I was overcome with regret. Shit, I’m sorry Eddie. I almost started crying myself. I’m sorry, man. Then Eddie ran home, and I probably ran home even faster. Anyway, “fuckin’ faggot” just sounds so hateful, whether its thrown in the face of a young kid with a speech impediment or at a man who attempts to venture into the realm of artistic expression.”

Sevrin is having a hard time believing that Sickboy was ever a bully. “That doesn’t sound like you, Sickboy. You really smacked the kid?”

Embarrassingly enough Sickboy is getting a little choked up as the sins of youth come back to haunt him for a moment.

“Yeah. I smacked him. Twice. I was a kid. But I learned my lesson. What kills me is seeing these idiots, these grown men, who are like me when I was 11 years old. They haven’t learned a damn thing! They still carry around this latent ghetto rage that explodes with the words fuckin’ faggot every time someone different comes along. It’s just ignorance. Hate. It’s like the word nigger. Go out on to Newport and scream Fuckin’ nigger! to the first person that walks by. You can’t do it, right? You can’t yell those words because you need to have a belly full of hate just to get the words out. You don’t have it, Sevrin. No reasonable person has that kind of hate festering inside. There’s no place for that shit in OB. Have you ever in real life seen someone yell Fuckin’ Nigger! into the face of another human being?”

The conversation has taken an uncomfortable turn and Sevrin is squirming, but he replies.

“Honestly. Growing up here, I can’t say that I ever saw it.”

“Well, I have. Again, the east coast hood rat that I am… In my neighborhood there was a gang of high school kids who called themselves the Bomb Squad. Out of twenty of them, there may have been three legitimately tough dudes. It didn’t matter because they never fought fair. I once saw six of them beat on a black kid with brass knuckles and a baseball bat. I think the kid was just passing through, walking home from his job downtown or something. He probably spent his bus fare on a Coke and a candy bar. I was about twelve at the time. Stay the fuck out of our neighborhood you fuckin’ nigger! It’s like words are the embodiment of pure hate. I’m telling you, Sevrin, that shit sticks with you. I’ve got no room for hate these days. I just don’t understand it.”

By now Chloe is working her way down the bar back toward the boys. She picked up bits and pieces of their conversation while she was hustling back and forth keeping the customers lubricated. She still thinks Sickboy is a creep, but she can’t help wanting to lighten the mood.

“Sickboy! Holy shit! Is the Sermon on the Mount over yet? When did you get all preachy? Lighten up.”

Sickboy and Sevrin laugh as the tension of talk about faggot and nigger and hate begins to evaporate. Then Sevrin baits Chloe.

“Don’t worry, Chloe. Sickboy is just pissed off because The Mangler questioned his manhood.”

Chloe twists the dagger.

“The Mangler, huh? Well, Sickboy… Are you a man?”

Sickboy is tired of being so serious today. A mischievous smile erupts on his grill.

“I’m not sure, Chloe. Maybe on your break you can give me twenty minutes in the back room and we’ll figure it out together.”

With that, Sickboy has just accomplished the impossible. Believe it or not, Chloe is blushing.

It has been six weeks since Sickboy started his underground anonymous online artistic venture. Unfortunately, it has not been nearly anonymous enough. Sickboy’s manic mind has put him up to something strange. He went online and ordered business cards with his web address printed below an evil smiley face. “The OB Revolution!” is stamped across the top in a fat comic font. He started pinning the cards to palm trees and telephone poles on Wednesday mornings for the Farmers’ Market crowd to find. Something different to pass the time, to make the work day just a little less intolerable, to dampen the sting of loneliness and poverty and male pattern baldness. Anonymity would be the key. Anonymity would give Sickboy courage. Anonymity is what Sickboy lost when he started telling his friends about his scribbling and handing out those goddamn calling cards to anyone within reach every time he caught a buzz.

Chloe was the first to receive a stack of Sickboy’s cards. Sickboy was smashed and sprawling one Thursday night at Tony’s when he fanned a dozen cards out on top of the bar. Chloe put on her best attempt at an encouraging smile. Then she quickly deposited the cards in the trash, as Sickboy’s modest charm began to devolve into an uncomfortable weirdness. Of course, Sickboy was too drunk to notice.

Initially Sevrin got a kick out of Sickboy’s scribbles, but soon his buddy’s antics only made him cringe. Same can be said for Bobby D. Sickboy’s friends are not sure what to make of him these days. Truth is Sickboy’s not sure what to make of himself. He’s beginning to second guess his artistic impulse. Art or a mild case of insanity, he wonders.

Now Sickboy is rolling toward the ‘Shine to meet the boys for a pop. “Yo Sickboy!” someone screams from half a block away. It’s Kate walking down Bacon Street with either some kind of hairless rodent or perhaps her pet chihuahua on the end of a leash. “I read your scribbles!” she shouts.

Sickboy is stunned and his face must be radiating shame.

“Awww. Did I embarrass you?” Kelly asks as she approaches.

In a town full of cool people, Kate is one of the coolest. She fills in some weekends at Tony’s when Gina is out of town. Despite her intermittent presence behind the bar, Sickboy and Bobby D seem to always catch her shifts. “That’s because you two NEVER leave,” she tells them every time. Kate’s’s got a great sense of humor and a generous spirit to go along with a sparkling pair of doe eyes.

Sickboy is a little jolted but not quite embarrassed. He vaguely recalls handing Kelly his calling card when she was slamming Summer Hummers with the boys at the end of her shift last Sunday. Only for Kelly would Sickboy ever give up his beloved Beam for a shot with a name like Summer Hummer.

“Nah, Kelly. I’m not embarrassed. That’s why I put my scribbles out there…so that people can read them.”

An awkward silence follows. Then it’s a warm hug goodbye as Kate heads off with her rat and Sickboy continues on toward the ‘Shine.

Inside the bar Sickboy meets up with Sevrin and Bobby D who are shooting a game of eight ball. The fellas’ are six shots deep and Sickboy has some catching up to do. Bobby D is the first to welcome his friend.

“Yo, Aristotle! What the fuck? You gonna’ stand there and scratch your head and give a lecture? Fuck that! School is no longer in session. Order a round, you pussy. Car bombs!”

Sickboy takes it in stride. “Nice to see you too, fuckhead.” Then he wanders over to the bar to pick up some TNT.

While Simone is drawing the Guinness and adding Bailey’s toppers to the Jameson shots, Sickboy glances around the bar. It’s always bright on the open air side of the ‘Shine but suddenly it gets a whole lot brighter as Jenny glides down the stairs, a gift for Sickboy from the roof deck above. Jenny is OB regal in a cascading crown braid and that sleeveless top with the blue and white tie dye pattern.

Sickboy’s palms are swampy as Jenny makes a beeline straight for him. He’s more nervous than usual because he’s sure Jenny has seen his scribbles online recently. His mind races as he tries to build up his confidence.

I’m a rockstar. Any girl would be flattered to have a song written about her. Why should my scribbles be any different? Musicians are cool but scribblers are creepy? That’s not right. Be cool. You wanted her to know what’s on your mind and now she knows. No big deal. You’re a grown ass man, for God’s sake. Start acting like it.

“Sickboy, are you being good today?” Jenny asks with a smile.

“So far I am, but I’m about to get down. With friends like these it’s really hard to be good for long. How have you been? How’s everything?”

What Sickboy means to say is Are you over that boy yet? Are you dating? Can I see you sometime? Do you know how you make me feel?

What is it that keeps us from saying what we really want to say? Fear? Stupidity?

Jenny keeps it short. “I’m good.”

But her eyes keep talking.

All Sickboy has to do is hold her gaze, but he can’t do it. He nervously turns back toward the bar to check on the status of the car bombs. Inside his skull his thoughts berate him. Fuckin’ scribbles! Why do you have to be such a goddamn nutjob? You’ve made a complete ass of yourself and all of OB is a witness. Loser!

Jenny reaches out to put a hand on Sickboy’s shoulder, but a palpable pathos now fills the air. Jenny pulls back and her eyes sink to the ground. “See you around, Sickboy.”

“Later Jenny.”

Sickboy is dying inside, once again paralyzed by his thoughts.

Simone lines up three half-pints behind the whiskey-and-creams. Sickboy picks up a shot and drops it into a Guinness. In two seconds the explosives are down the hatch and on their way to Sickboy’s manic mind – a car bomb to blow that troublesome motherfucker to pieces.

Eddie has penned another one of his typically witty commentaries, this one regarding Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Yankee Stadium. Sickboy has no opinion of the pontiff and only a mostly indifferent awareness of Decker, but the combination of the two has him fuming at the moment. He starts barking at Sevrin, who’s trying to watch the Padres game and nurse a pint of Yellowtail.

“Normally I like this dude’s stuff,” yelps Sickboy in reference to Decker and his tales. “But this just pisses me off. There’s nothing worse than an overtly and overly intellectual smartass.”

“Tell me about it,” Sevrin snaps back smugly.

Sickboy can be a handful at times, and Sevrin knows a shit storm is about to break as Sickboy initiates a rant that may never end.

“This self-important soapboxing motherfucker thinks he’s so smart! He needs to get his face out of those goddamn books and start seeing the world for what it is. Cutesy intellectual bullshit! Says he wanted to drop a bomb of rational thought on Yankee Stadium…you know, to infuse some common sense into the irrational minds of Benedict the Rock and his flock of 60k. Religion is only good for dividing people, he says…the last bastion of hope for the lazy mind.”

Sevrin halfheartedly interjects.

“What? Now all of a sudden your a crusader for the Catholic cause?”

“No, man. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I dig that. But to hell with contrived morality, doctrine and ceremony. I’m not advocating the Catholics. It just bugs me that guys like Decker think they are so smart, baggin’ on religion and religious folks, when they themselves cling to rational thought with the same irrational enthusiasm as the craziest fuckin’ bible-thumper. It’s stupid! Look, religion and science are one in the same, Sev. They both lead to the same answer. Religion is science with a leap of faith in place of a million meticulous steps. And science is religion with a microscope and PC where there would otherwise be a crucifix and rosary.”

Sevrin is sort of amused but also getting a little freaked out by his currently sober drinking buddy.

“What the fuck, Sickboy?”

Sickboy is a dilettante, a dabbler. And sometimes scattered and incomplete fragments converge in his mind to convince him that he’s got something figured out. Apparently this is one of those times.

“Eeeee equals emcee squared!” Sickboy sings. “It’s been proven. Ever heard of Einstein? The fuckin’ atom bomb? Matter is energy, bro. You and me and all this shit around us…we are all made of the same stuff. We’re made of molecules, which are made of atoms. Do you know that an atom consists of 90 percent empty space? And the other 10 percent, as it it turns out, is energy! Energy with some probability of existing at a given time in a given place. We are energy with some probability of existing! It’s quantum mechanics. Don’t believe me? Well there are some really smart dudes over in Switzerland right now smashing atoms and proving my very point. Matter is energy. We are matter. We matter. We are energy! God is energy. We are God!”

Sickboy pauses for just a second to catch his breath, literally just at a second.

“Religion. Science. Call it whatever you want. They’re just two different modes of travel along the same path and headed toward the same destination. I refuse to ride either one the entire way. I jump on and off as I see fit. Mostly I’m surfing on art all the way to the promised land!”

Sevrin has just about given up.

“Damn, Sickboy! Did you drop a tab or two? Are you shroomin’ right now? You are TRIPPIN’!”

Sickboy IS tripping. But he’s never touched the psychedelics. Nature’s gift to Sickboy, his very own manic mind, is all the impetus he needs at the moment.

“Come on, Sevrin! Feel it? Art! Here’s an example. Maybe a little corny. But you’ll see what I’m talking about. Remember the Pearl Jam concert last month? During the encore you and me and the girls and twenty thousand strangers singing in unison…the chorus to Alive. Tell me you didn’t feel it! That resonance! That unity. It was like the whole crowd was one giant cohesive organism.”

Sevrin smirks.

“You sound like half a fag right now, Sickboy, but yeah I know what you mean.”

“That’s right! I know it sounds corny. But through art we can FEEL our oneness. We can experience the unifying sameness of our existence. You got to let go from time to time, bro, and just feel it. Feel the resonance. Feel the energy. The religious man…he has faith and he believes in the energy. The scientific mind tries to deconstruct the energy. The artists and the patrons of the arts…we just FEEL the energy! Read a story, recite a poem, soak in a painting, sing a song. Feel it. Experience the energy. Experience God. Like William Blake wrote, all religions are one and they stem from the Poetic Genius. And I’m not talking about a smart dude who rhymes. I’m talking about the seemingly innate ability of man to conceptualize and create. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What better way to convey that message than to create a story about a nearly perfect hippie with such capacity for unconditional love that he allows himself to be beaten and crucified! Two thousand years since the story was constructed and just about the whole world knows it. And sixty thousand people packed into Yankee stadium to commemorate it. That is the Poetic Genius at work!”

Sickboy is all over the place, scattered and flailing now. He has lost his audience of one as Sevrin has tuned out. But that doesn’t stop Sickboy.

“Yeah, man. William Blake. To see a world in a grain of sand. Heaven in a wildflower. Infinity in the palm of your hand. Eternity in an hour. A world in a grain of sand! The atom bomb. Matter is energy. God is energy. The Poetic Genius. See! Religion. Science. Art. It all converges and swirls together. There is no right or wrong. Irrational clinging to rational thought makes no more sense than religious fanaticism. Everyone just go listen to some live music with friends and write some fuckin’ poetry. Amen.”

Now Sickboy is exhausted. Off on a manic moonwalk but sober as a boyscout, he orders another cranberry juice.

Chloe obliges. “Look at you Sickboy. What are you huffin’ and puffin’ about?”

Sickboy is too ashamed to recap. But he’s quick on his feet, and he improvises well.

“It’s nothing, Chloe. Sevrin is trying to tell me that the girl at the end of the bar is the hottest chick he’s ever seen in here. I say no way.”

Chloe likes to play along with the boys.

“You mean the chick who ordered the Appletini? She’s really cute. But you say not the cutest, huh Sickboy?”

Chloe smiles and winks a wink that is easy to understand for those in the know. Once again she and Sickboy are playing a little game they call Don’t Say Her Name. Now it’s Sickboy’s turn.

“Not even close, Chloe. Not even close.”

“Heeeyyyy Sickboy! I got you!”

Sickboy knows the drill. Rusty is a big UFC fan. If there was a Special Olympics of mixed martial arts, Rusty would no doubt win gold. Sickboy‘s eyes are about to pop out of their sockets and he’s turning smurf blue, but he still has a smile on his face. Rusty’s his boy. No one is sure just how old Rusty is, but he lives with his mom on Narragansett. He’s been a fixture on the strip for years. Everyone knows Rusty. Sickboy reaches back behind his head and slaps Rusty on the arm three times. Tap out. Sickboy gasps, “You win, Rusty. You’re king of the octagon.”

“I beat you! I win!” Rusty exclaims before laying a big one-armed bro hug on Sickboy. Rusty is good peeps.

String Bean Gina just enjoyed the match from behind the bar. She’s wearing a slinky something accentuating her features and highlighting her infectious smile. She congratulates the victor.

“Way to go, Rusty. You just kicked Sickboy’s ass! Again! You’re like the toughest dude in OB.”

Rusty is all pumped up, but still always the gentleman. With his slightly slower than average drawl he starts sweet talking Gina like he does all the girls in Ocean Beach.

“You look beautiful. Did anyone tell you that today?”

“No, Rusty. You’re the first. Thank you so much, sweety.”

“Well you DO. Do you want a cookie?”

Rusty pulls a pack of half crushed macaroons from the pocket of his cargo shorts and extends them out toward Gina as far as his little arm will go. Gina politely declines.

“No thank you, honey. You have fun today.”

“I will! Bye-bye, beautiful.”

With that Rusty makes his exit on his way next door to the ‘Shine to choke out another local and tell ten more pretty girls just how pretty they look today. Rusty’s got game.

Sickboy takes a pull off of his Bud bottle. The cold brew soothes his freshly strangled pipes. And now he’s got a particularly pensive look about him.

“What’s on your mind, Sickboy?” Gina inquires. “Thinking about changing up your training routine so you can beat him next time?”

Gina is sharp as a tack. She’s one tough string bean and she can dish out the sass. Sickboy’s got a thing for sass, but right now he’s spiraling inward and oblivious.

“I don’t know, Gina. I’m just disgusted with myself. All I ever do is sit here and drink and sulk. I need to be more… I don’t know… positive? Upbeat. Happier… more like Rusty. That dude is always happy. He’s all hugs and smiles all the time.”

Before Gina has a chance to offer any uplifting advice, Sickboy feels a hand on his back making reassuring circles. No choke hold this time. But it’s a touch he knows well. It’s the touch he lives for.

“What are you guys talking about?” asks Jenny in the sweetest voice ever sounded. She’s just passing through to say Hello to String Bean Gina. Sickboy remains silent. He looks at Gina and holds up a finger as if to say, “Shhh. I got this one.” He doesn’t want Jenny to know that he’s been sulking again. He stands up and turns to face her. He looks deep into her eyes. She returns his gaze. Time freezes and Sickboy wishes it could stay frozen forever. Then he opens his arms wide and immediately Jenny wraps him up in a bear hug, the side of her face planted firmly in his chest. He squeezes her tight. He gives her a loving peck on top of her head and says softly “Jenny, you are so beautiful. Has anyone told you that today?”

Then one last squeeze and Sickboy releases the girl of his dreams.

“Bye-bye, beautiful” he says as he heads out the door.

Jenny looks at String Bean for some help with interpretation.

“What’s wrong with Sickboy?”

String Bean Gina is grinning from ear to ear.

“Sweety, there’s NOTHING wrong with Sickboy. In fact, I’m beginning to think that there is a whole lot right with that guy. Whatta’ you think? You know how much he likes you.”

Jenny doesn’t miss a beat.

“Yeah, I know.”

First it’s Herc at the door.

“Sickboy, where the hell you been, my brother?”

As door guys go, Herc is a pretty mellow dude, always sporting a beard and beanie cap. He’s been a friend to Sickboy and never misses a chance to bust his balls about his drinking or his crush on Jenny. Herc is yet another fuckin’ Yankees fan. They’re everywhere it seems.

“I’ve been around, Herc. Just around.”

Sassy Cass is sitting at the bar sipping a martini. She’s a super-cute petite blonde who used to be a brunette until three months ago. Sickboy knows her from Tiny’s Tavern down on Voltaire where she serves up pints with a sidecar of sass.

“Long time no see, Sickboy. Where you been?”

“I’ve been around. Good to see you, Cassie.”

Next up is Chloe behind the bar. She sure enjoys giving Sickboy a hard time.

“Holy shit! Look what the cat dragged in. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come back.”

Sickboy is getting embarrassed now. All this attention is making his belly ache. A few Beam-n-Buds should take care of that.

An hour and a half pass by and Sickboy is marinating and making scribbles on a cocktail napkin. Chloe is intrigued and in the mood for some conversation.

“Whatcha’ got there, Sickboy?”

Sickboy hesitantly slides the note toward Chloe’s hand. She snaps it up and reads aloud, but just loud enough so that only she and Sickboy can hear.

Dear Women of the World,

You are God’s most special creation. I love every single one of you…but some more than others…and right now one most of all.

- Sickboy

Sickboy would be blushing if he wasn’t already sporting an Irish sunburn, the kind that works its way from the inside out. Chloe pounces.

“Goddamn, Sickboy. You really are a hopeless romantic.”

Sickboy ducks the blow and fires back.

“You’re wrong there, Chloe. If there is one thing I have, it’s hope. As a matter of fact, hope is all I’ve got.”

Never do Sickboy or Chloe mention Jenny’s name, but they both know it’s Jenny Sickboy is talking about. He stayed away from the bar for months after hearing about Jenny’s break up. He had come to accept that her heart belonged to that boy, but now he would have to learn to swallow a much more bitter pill – Given a choice, Jenny will never choose Sickboy.

There isn’t a guy within ten miles of Ocean Beach who is not in love with Jenny. The minute word got out about the split the wolves started circling. Sickboy wanted no part of it. He’s got this empathy thing. He feels for the girl and wants to see her happy. He had imagined how tough things would be for her at the start and how much she would need her circle of closest friends, a circle which Sickboy had not yet been lucky enough to join. Stay the hell away from her, he had told himself. Sometimes love means knowing when to disappear.

Chloe can feel Sickboy’s pain. There’s a hint of understanding in her eyes as she prepares a double shot of sweet amber Beam for the patient.

“This one’s on the house,” she says in a succinct and clinical tone.

Sickboy breathes deep, and then he takes his medicine.

“So the fuckin’ cop arrests me right on the porch, a foot away from my own front door, and drags my ass downtown to the drunk tank.”

Bobby D is all fired up as he relates the story of how his Sunday night ended a few weeks back. He and Sickboy had spent five hours making pitchers disappear on the deck at the ‘Shine before moving next door to Tony’s where they slammed shots for another two hours. They had thrown in stops at South Beach and Pac Shores at the end of the night just for good measure. An hour before last call Bobby D had gotten flighty and rolled home, leaving Sickboy to chat up a little Filipino beauty under the black lights inside the Shores.

When he reached his front door, Bobby D was so wasted that he dropped his keys, kicked them off the porch, and couldn’t find them. The cop busted him as he tried to climb through the window of his apartment. What an interrogation that must have been! Bobby D with his mohawk and handle bar ‘stache, slurring incoherently and puffing up on the pig, trying to explain that it’s his own home he’s breaking into like the world’s clumsiest cat burglar. He’s lucky he didn’t catch a nightstick to the cranium before his ride downtown.

“That’s the kind of shit that only ever happens TO ME,” is how Bobby D ends the tale… just like every tale he ever tells.

Sevrin chimes in next.

“What are you laughing at, Sickboy, you fuckin’ derelict!”

Here it comes.

“Let’s not forget about March Madness a few years ago. Six cops and the paramedics packed into your room at the pad in Clairemont. A huge meat flap hanging off your skull and the whole place covered in pools of crimson after you passed out and cracked your melon. You drank about a barrel and a half of Cutty Sark that night. Who the fuck drinks Cutty Sark?”

Sickboy comes to his own defense.

“Dude, I had just watched Goodfellas that day. Spidah, on your way here git me a Cutty and wooder!”

The triumvirate are cracking themselves up.

Stringbean Gina enjoys the show from behind the bar. It never gets old.

“You boys ready for another round?”

“We’re ALWAYS ready!” Sickboy shouts back a little too loudly given the proximity of Gina’s ear to his big mouth. “And a round for the ladies too!”

At the south turn of the bar by the window Betty, Simone, and Jenny are sipping on snake bites and playing coy. Or maybe they’re not playing. Maybe they’re just oblivious to the presence of these boys. It doesn’t matter. Gina pours six fat shots of Petron and sends half to each side of the bar. Three for the ladies and three for the fellas.

Betty shoots a look of gratitude through the flirty librarian specs sitting low on the tip of her nose. “Thank you, boys!”

Six glasses raise and six shots go down.

Jenny makes a face like she just swallowed a mouthful of bleach. It’s the cutest bleach swallowing face Sickboy has ever seen. Then for just a second he catches Jenny’s eyes. There it is! Sickboy’s moment. One second in time when eyes meet and more is said than a thousand spoken words could ever convey.

“Sickboy, quit ogling Jenny, you fuckin’ pervert!” Sevrin chastises his friend.

Sickboy knows he’s been busted yet again. “Ah, come on man. Give me a break. It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like then, Romeo? You’ve been her lap dog for a whole year. Fuckin’ flowers and little notes. You gonna’ step up or what?”

Sevrin has a point. But Sickboy is trying to play it cool. This girl is the real deal. A life changer. Now Sickboy’s tone takes a turn from jovial to introspective.

“Look, she just broke up with that boy less than a month ago after six years of serious relationshippy type shit. The last thing she wants right now is some dude hanging around who’s in love with her.”

Sevrin and Bobby D simultaneously let out a huff of disbelief.

“So you’re in love with her, are you?” Bobby D razzes Sickboy.

“You’re just a big pussy. You don’t even know her,” Sevrin piles on.

“Fuck you guys. I don’t know all of her details, but I know her. I know all I need to know. I’m just doing some old school wooing here. People don’t woo anymore. Wooing is a lost art.”

“Woo? Are you fucking kidding me! WOO?” Bobby D is astonished. “Hey, Jenny” he shouts, “Woo-Woo! Here comes the Sickboy train! Woo-Wooooo!”

Sickboy turns a darker shade of red.

“Now you guys are fuckin’ embarrassing me.”

Stringbean Gina and the girls are cracking up. Bobby D and Sevrin each put an arm around Sickboy and shake him around to let him know they’re just having fun. And they are… having fun. They’re always having fun at Tony’s.

“Hey Sickboy, I was talking to Jenny this afternoon. She’ll probably be here in an hour or two.”

For just a second that does the trick. The mere sound of Jenny’s name fills Sickboy with strength and courage. He puffs up with anticipation. Unfortunately, Sickboy has a brain that quickly devours strength and courage and shits out insecurity and doubt. Poor shithead.

“Did she ask about me?” Sickboy inquires.

Simone’s hesitation is all the answer Sickboy needs. He is the furthest thing from Jenny’s mind. And why wouldn’t he be. Sickboy returns to a silent, sulky brood.

Simone sees that Sickboy is sinking. So she throws him another line.

“Sickboy, you are a sexy, sexy man!” she says with a wink a smile.

Sickboy chuckles. And Sevrin, seated next to him, gives Sickboy a pat on the back. That ought to keep him afloat for awhile.

“You have good taste, Simone. But you and I both know that all my sexy is on the inside. The girls on this side of the bar will just never understand.”

“You’re too much, Sickboy.”

Simone gives Sevrin a look and together the two head out to the patio for a smoke.

On the slick new flatscreen high atop the back bar, Ryan Howard circles the bases, having just hit a walk-off grand slam to propel the Phillies to a 7 to 3 victory over the Yankees in ten innings. The Phils have just secured a three game series sweep in interleague play. “That’s right!” Sickboy thinks to himself. “Goddamn Yankee fans.” But Sickboy’s heart just isn’t into it. Tonight he’s got mortality on his mind.

Five years ago to the day, Sickboy’s father passed away after a futile six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer falls right between burned at the stake and eaten alive by an army of fire ants on the list of most gruesome ways to die. Sickboy’s father had been a sweet man, but he taught his sons more about life through the way he died than he had ever taught them by the way he lived. Sickboy sips his medicine and travels back in time…

Mom uses the applicator to carefully place a few drops of morphine on the thin dry lips of the skeleton that once had been my father. There is no oxygen tank, no artificial breathing apparatus. There is only what is left of my father, heaving and contorting with every forced breath. This is how he wanted it — to be surrounded by his family and by the sound of his favorite music — jazz and big band mostly. Stan Kenton is his favorite. There is no beeping machinery, no blinking lights, no PA announcements. There is no army of white coats, no parade of shoes hustling back and forth along a linoleum laid hallway. There is just what is left of my father and his family – my mom, my three younger brothers, and I.

Dad has been unconscious since just after I arrived. I took the red-eye last night from San Diego and arrived at the house at 8 o’clock this morning. The hospital bed had been placed in the corner of the living room where I spent many hours of my youth napping on the sofa and watching television. Now there lays what is left of my father in a hospital bed, and the sounds of jazz fill the room. I drop my garment bag. (I knew to bring my suit for this trip.) I take his cold, fragile hand in mine. He opens his eyes. He recognizes me. He struggles to say my name. At this point he is not really talking so much as he is moaning barely audible fragments of words. He has been so brave and strong through the struggle as the cancer has wreaked havoc throughout his body, starting with his pancreatic ducts, shutting down his digestive system, cutting him off from his energy source, and finally causing his body to digest itself. I cannot imagine the pain. I hate to see him like this, and I fight to hold back the river of tears that wells up around my eyes. I kiss him on the forehead. He tells me he loves my mother. I say I know he loves her and that we will take care of her. He manages to flash something that resembles a smile. I continue to hold his hand and try so hard not to cry, but I can’t fight it anymore. I love you, Dad.

Mom tells me that yesterday she and my brothers went out for a while so that Shelly, the home hospice caretaker, could clean up what was left of dad. His insides were liquefying and he had bled out. Shelly had replaced the blood soaked sheets with fresh new ones and she had cleaned all the blood from the skin stretched tightly over the skeleton that once had been my father. Shelly is a saint.

It is 2:00am. I have been home with my family for 18 hours now. The skeleton that once had been my father has been unconscious since shortly after I arrived and cried at his bedside. Mom and I talk, and the skeleton heaves and contorts, the chest rising and falling violently. Every bit of the little energy he has left is used to force his lungs to expand and collapse. Mom tells me again how she and dad met. He was a smart but quiet clerk in the IRS office in which they both worked. She was intrigued by this tall, intelligent yet quiet and quirky clerk who would become my father. They fell in love. Suddenly, the heaving stops. Mom and I walk over to the bed and stand above the corpse that once had been my father. I hear his last breath escape his lungs and pass over his lips. I take his hand. I smile. I cry. I hug my mom. We smile and cry together.

Sevrin and Simone return from smoking their butts. Sickboy sits staring straight ahead at nothing, a smile of utter contentment frozen on his face.

“What are you smiling about, Sickboy? Your team win?”

“Yeah, Simone. My team won. Life is good. And every day truly is a gift.”

Inside the invisible man sits lost among the juke and chatter. He throws back a shot of Jim Beam and drifts off in a bourbon flow, his mind turning over scattered thoughts and vague conceptions of an ideal world. The bourbon lights a fire inside, and quickly the heat radiates to his fingertips and toes. He’s no longer invisible. He’s on fire. Chloe pours him another.

“You see this?”, the man-on-fire asks Chloe, pointing to his left shoulder.

An inquisitive squint is Chloe’s only reply.

“It’s the weight of the world… right here on my shoulders.”

Chloe shoots him a smile and the man-on-fire is pleased.

Two hours and five shots later the young man’s head detaches from his neck and hovers above his shoulders like a helium balloon tethered to a park bench on a windy afternoon. He’s really feeling it now. Some college kids are playing pool and dropping dollars in the jukebox. The sound of “Sickboy” by Social D. rings through the bar. We’re all sickboys! The man-on-fire sings along, and he can’t hide the confident grin that appears on the front of his now floating head. It’s a rare sight. Sickboy actually feels good.

In walks Sevrin, the peaceful warrior. He throws up a peace sign and pulls up a stool next to the sickboy-on-fire with the floating head. Chloe pours a vodka and soda strong enough to kill a bull, but it won’t kill Sevrin. It’ll just make him real stupid real fast… just like his Beam swilling buddy. Sickboy and Sevrin, two drunk and stupid guys hanging out in the perfect dive, plotting ways to fix their lives.

The hours pass until its time for the most amazing sight in all of Ocean Beach, as Jenny sneaks in and takes a seat at the far end of the bar. Sickboy nearly falls off his stool. It happens every time. He’s smitten. The bar is a small place in a big world, yet somehow it is here where Sickboy has the good fortune to make time with the most beautiful girl he could ever hope to meet. Be cool, Sickboy tells himself. But he wants to say it all. “Jenny, you have a warm touch and a bright shine that I can’t help being taken by. Inside and out you are the most beautiful person I have ever met.” But Sickboy struggles to find the line between cordial neighbor and adoring friend, and in the process he lands directly on leering creep. His confidence is shattered like a light bulb dropped from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He can only swallow his words and chase them down with a flood of bourbon. Sickboy thinks too much. That’s his sickness.

As Jenny makes her way down the bar, Sickboy tries to straighten up and look something less than smashed. He fails miserably.

“Miss me?” He slurs with a boyish grin.

“Always,” Jenny shoots back with a bat of the lashes above her blue diamond eyes. “You look like you’re having a good time tonight.”

“I am now,” says Sickboy with unashamed affection.

Then Jenny flashes a smile so sunny and sincere… Sickboy came for the booze, but he stayed for that smile. No doubt it is that smile that makes the world turn. But Sickboy is done. It’s already been a long night. Time to go home before he says something stupid.

Sickboy gets up to leave. He stumbles to his feet and slides his stool against the bar, pausing for a moment before turning to Sevrin.

“This is it, man. This is where it begins. Right here at Tony’s!”

Sevrin looks perplexed.

“Dude, what are you talking about?”

“The world is gonna’ be a better place, man. And it starts right here. Right now. In this world there are no strangers. In this world honesty prevails. In this world there’s no need to wonder what’s on my mind because everyone already knows. Can you feel it?”

Blue eyes and bourbon make Sickboy say some funny shit sometimes.