A Change of Plans

Japan is her idea. A way to reconnect. A second honeymoon, even though we never really had a first. Only eighteen when we married, it wasn’t in the budget. Besides, in our situation, we had more pressing matters. A couple of kids having a kid. But then we didn’t. In a way I don’t think we really fell in love until we were comforting each other over the loss.

We didn’t try again for a couple of years. Happy years, the way I remember them. But the next time it happened the sorrow seemed to push us apart instead of bringing us closer together.

She joined the Church after miscarriage number three. She did her best to get me to go with her, but my attendance was spotty, my devotion even more so. It wasn’t the people, they seemed nice enough. I just didn’t find any answers there. Maybe I was asking the wrong questions, but the building felt as hollow and empty as her womb.

I sought solace in a different way. Long hours, weeks spent living out of a suitcase. The punishing grind of sales, rewarded with quarterly bonuses and awards banquets held in smoky barrooms that tend to turn ugly as the liquor flows into the night. My willingness to forfeit a personal life for a professional life does not go unnoticed. The youngest regional director of sales of in company history, I try to placate her, and maybe myself, that it will all be worth it in the end.

And then she proposes Japan.

The trip is organized by a group at her Church. Each year they go somewhere new. Italy. Greece. Israel. And each year her friends return and we listen to their stories and admire their pictures and purchases and she pretends to be so happy for them. They ask us to join them, but we tell them of the plan, our plan, that more hard work now means an earlier and better retirement later. Free and unencumbered, young enough to still enjoy it, we will have it all. But it eats at her. I know it does. So I relent.

We spend our first night in Tokyo. To me, the city is beautiful, a futuristic forest of metal and glass and neon. I understand its tempo, its pulse, the hurried existence of its citizens. I love how the city straddles the edge, teetering between ragged chaos and an ordered, almost military-like structure. I feel safe in its frenzied cocoon.

She does not.

She wants tradition, history. She wants cherry blossoms and wooden temples, tea ceremonies and tranquil gardens. She wants to feel the past. She doesn’t understand that the past is littered with pain and death.

Or maybe she understands it better than me.

The sun is barely up when we drive south and leave Tokyo behind. The trees glisten in the early morning light. When we arrive in Kamakura, the air is already hot and thick. Swarms of mosquitos buzz about, as do the crowds of people at the great Shinto shrine of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. I find a place to sit in the shade as the rest of our group scales the stairs to the Senior Shrine. I long for the central air conditioning of our room. When they descend, I look at our itinerary. One more stop. The Daibutsu at Kotoku-in.

We round the corner and I see him. He sits nestled in the hills. Humble, yet profound. Open and ready for whatever the universe brings. He is not afraid. He is not happy, or sad, or angry. He just is. And in his shadow, just for a moment, I too, catch of glimmer of what lies beyond the mysteries. It changes everything.

The truth, in all of its simplicity, is laid bare before me. Everything I know is an illusion, the life I have created is nothing but a series of calculated distractions. The fancy clothes, the newest gadgets, the Best in Sales plaques that dot my walls, all are mere band-aids, failed attempts to cover the gaping wounds in my soul. The overtime I put in at work is not a sacrifice to get ahead, rather it is me trying to avoid the unavoidable. I know that now.

I cannot run from suffering, I cannot escape it. It is inevitable.

I see her standing a few feet away, studying the great statue with reverence. It hits me that someday I will lose her, and she will lose me. Instead of terrifying me, I realize that I am okay with this, that I have to be okay with this. That if you are not willing to let your heart be broken, you cannot love. And a life without love is worse than death.

I walk up behind her and put my arms around her. She’s startled by my sudden affection.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

I smile at her.

“Yes,” I say. I pull her closer to me and kiss her. I kiss her like I used to when we were eighteen. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t been this good, in a long, long time.”

“Wow,” she says, and she means it.

Together we stare up at the giant bronze Buddha. I feel an electricity between us that has been long absent.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she says. “It’s hard to believe that it’s been here for over seven hundred and fifty years.”

I look at his face, calm and serene. I wonder how many others have stood in just this spot, how many others he has shown the truth to, how many others he has saved.

“It’s… It’s magical. I can’t really describe it.”

The tour guide announces our departure. Our group starts to shuffle away, back to the bus, back to the city that suddenly holds no appeal. We turn to go.

“Thank you,” I say, mostly to her, but also to him.

She looks at me.

“For what?”

“For everything. For not giving up on me, on us. For bringing me here.”

She squeezes my arm.

“You’re welcome.”



Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Rob Gregory

Hands

“I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” - Joan Didion

I. Hands
You sit in church with your mother, examining her hands. The preacher talks about Christ nailed to the cross, and you run your fingers over the lines in your mother’s palms, wondering which one is the lifeline. You hope it stretches forever. Eternal life. You take the rings off her fingers, try them all on. This is how you’ll look when you’re married. This is how you’ll look when a man buys you jewelry. When you’re old enough to be trusted not to lose it, your grandmother buys you your own gold ring with your birthstone clenched in microscopic prongs. During the sermon, you push your ring down over your mother’s pinky finger, where it jams against the first knuckle. You lace your fingers in hers. She never tells you to let go. She never tells you to be careful with her jewelry. She never says, “Give me my hand back” so she can turn the pages of the hymnal, thin and translucent as insect wings. Your mother is both outside your body and still part of it. You own this hand as much as you once owned her milk, as much as you once owned the blood that pulsed through the rope connecting her body to the floating, vulnerable mass that would become yours.

II. Second Hand
Your neighbors come over with two black trash bags of old clothes. They’ve been shopping in Atlanta and have all new things for school this year. Your little sisters attack the bags like wolves to wounded prey. It’s a name-brand explosion. Overalls from GAP Kids. Leggings from Limited Too. Ribbed turtlenecks from Lands’ End. At four-foot-something and well over a hundred pounds, none of it fits you. You’re at the beginning of what will be two decades spent bulging. Your sisters spin into the living room, twirling ruffle-trimmed denim jumpers and cheerleader skirts from the private school spirit shop. You sit on the couch with your mother, who squeals over her own good fortune at money saved. You tell yourself you’re too good for second hand. That this is the perk of being the oldest. You keep telling yourself that.

III. Handiwork
Your mother takes up cross-stitching. She makes a beautiful sampler for each of her children—your long, full names, your dates of birth, the cities in which you first appeared. She frames another: Home is Where the Heart Is. Charmed by jewel-toned embroidery floss, you beg for your own kit. You mangle your first project and resort to using the thread to make friendship bracelets. Your mother makes a new sampler and hangs it in the den: Insanity is Hereditary. You Get it From Your Children.

IV. Let’s give a big hand for…
Self-esteem culture! You are the proud new owner of a marble pedestal topped with a gold, plastic softball girl! You have participated, if not achieved! Appreciate yourself and move on.

V. Handsome
He is the boy in your class who brings squid for lunch. His father collects Porsches and his mother was a state beauty queen, but he’s considered that-weird-boy by all of your socially-adjusted classmates. For show and tell, he brings his pet tarantula. You’re a little freaked out, but totally intrigued. You say nothing, harboring your secret crush. A few years later, you hope he will ask you to prom. You end up going with girlfriends. Then, finally, he transfers to your college. You’ve spent the last year abroad, and it’s left you thin and cultured. He’s spent the last year lifting weights. He’s given up spiders in favor of snakes, and this time, you reach into the aquarium unafraid and let the boa constrictor wind itself around your wrists. You carry it, the live version of an expensive handbag, as you follow him out a window onto the roof, where you talk and smoke. He’s tall. He’s still weird, but the socially-adjusted girls from school are living out their drug habits and tech-school dreams elsewhere, and you two are here, in this moment, just as you’ve always been, yet transformed. You wait for him to kiss you. He never does.

VI. Hand Job
You know you were thinking it, perv.

VII. Handle Your Shit
Improve your time management. Set alarms. Wake up when alarms go off. Make plans and think backwards from the time you’re set to arrive to the time you should leave. Pay your bills. Keep your cellphone connected. Keep your lights on. Don’t let your landlord stack your belongings in a gutter. Don’t engage with harmful people. This includes relatives who stress you out, the boyfriend who cheats on you with that sorority girl in your poetry class, and the friend who eggs you into making bad hair dye and alcohol decisions. Speaking of substances: clean out your body. If you’ve got a habit, make sure it’s not noticeable.

VIII. Handshake
On your first day of work, your boss takes you around to everyone’s cubes. On the walls, you pass photos of these strangers’ children, motivational quotes, lists of deadlines. You remember that in prison, an inmate will refer to his cell as “my house.” Your boss introduces you, and you shake hands, repeating name after name that you won’t remember. When you meet Rebecca (or was it Sharon?), she tells you your hands are ice cold. You apologize. “Whatever,” she says. “I have hot flashes, so it’s fine.”

IX. A Warm Handoff
Translation: passing the buck.

X. Panhandler
You’ve learned to appreciate the hustle. Especially the panhandlers with hungry dogs. A man with a shepherd mutt holds the door to McDonald’s open for you, then says, “If you get any change, I could sure use it.” You buy him an Egg McMuffin, then spend the rest of the day oscillating between questioning your resolve and questioning your motives. You use everything you’ve learned from the internet and lean into the discomfort: you are privileged, you are basic, you are too old for Forever 21, but not old enough to be taken seriously. You decide there is nothing self-righteous about making a commitment to feed homeless people, even the sly ones. Near work, you pass a man rattling a cup of coins, and you go into 7-Eleven to buy him a slice of pizza. You splurge: pepperoni. When you offer it to him, he grimaces. “No thanks.” You sit on a park bench and eat the greasy, cheesy bites, blowing your daily calorie target. You wipe the film from your fingertips onto your silk blouse. Hands down, this is what you deserve. 

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

Losing It

Because your mother raised you Baptist, buy into your pastor's definition of fate. Believe in the existence of a soul mate and search for her. It’s never too early to find “The One.”

For guidance on this journey maintain perfect attendance at the Sex-Ed classes your church offers. The boys who share your curiosity about how and when God wants you to have intercourse will raise their hands and ask all the questions fumbling in your mind.

“So, when I get married I can do anything I want with my wife?” one will ask, as you imagine all the dirty things you’ve witnessed on late night web-browsing sprees.

“With your wife? Sure,” the pastor will guarantee despite the stunned look on his face.

When another kid asks him if he ever masturbated, he’ll end the class with a prayer begging the Holy Trinity for assistance.

                                                                                                   ***

At sixteen pursue a sweet Christian girl in your classes who’s impressed by your purity ring. She happens to be half Cuban, even though the only traits she inherits from her immigrant mother are her abilities to maintain a metabolism that sends food straight to her ass and to speak so fast that you have trouble keeping up with the words departing from her virgin lips.

Convince yourself you’ll end up with a Latina because the more time you spend swooning over the white girls at school, the less action you’ll get. God knows you’ll never make enough money to impress their fathers.

Develop a friendship before professing your love to her. That way you’ll know what songs to spend hours learning when you pick up the guitar. And she’ll appreciate that you sing her the one she likes to belt out of her window while driving around town on summer nights. Remain patient through the months she spends deciding if she’ll reciprocate your feelings.

During Youth Group discussions, when she defends the biblical condemnation of committing suicide, nod your head in agreement despite thinking life can be fucking depressing. Don’t mention that your father’s alcoholism looks a lot like someone ending his life “before God intends to.”

Ignore the invitations from your closest friends to party at the beach. To get drunk off light beer, get high on cheap weed, and roll around in the sand with girls who have daddy issues.

Instead, write your prudent girlfriend flattering lyrics accompanied by your guitar. Write her four-page letters explaining why you can’t breathe as easily now, because loving her has enlarged your heart so much that there’s hardly any room for your lungs. Or some corny shit like that.

Relish every opportunity to caress her round, soccer-toned ass. After your hand slips underneath her bra to grip her breast, her nipple poking the center of your palm, she’ll never allow you to do so again. Settle for dry-humping on your bed, the TV volume turned up so your mom can’t hear. One day the girl will mention that the friction between your jean-covered privates feels wrong. Because your religion has programmed you to associate pleasure with guilt.

That’ll be the extent of your sexual relationship for the three and a half years you spend admiring the virtue of her intentions.

                                                                                                   ***

In college, the two-hour drive between you will provide the space she needs to grow closer to God and for you to question whether He ever existed.

The Real Estate market will crash. She’ll know you transferred schools to help your parents so they don’t lose the house that represents an inkling of success after being uprooted from your homeland. But they’ll lose it, and she won’t call to ask how you’re doing.

When she does, she’ll say, “I don’t think we’re meant to be together.”

Realize she never loved you. Next time, listen to your mother, who foretold your heartbreak as if she were a prophet.

Go to your best friend’s house and drink your first beer, toasting the girl who wasted too much of your time. To hell with her and the morals she instilled in you.

                                                                                                   ***

Hang out with a good friend from high school who still talks to your ex. Lay a blanket at your favorite beach spot and drink a few brews to build courage. Tell her you always thought she was beautiful and kiss her when she tackles you onto the dunes.

You’ll drink too much on your twentieth birthday and almost hook up with the cute Colombian girl crushing on you. But your conscience will tell you you’re not ready. Her incessant texts after the party, outlining your future together, will prove it would’ve been a mistake.

At twenty-one ask out the cubanita who frequented the Spanish service at your church years ago. After a few dates she’ll sneak you into her house for foreplay, and you’ll wonder if she took that Sex-Ed class with the pastor’s wife.

Attend a drunkfest at your buddy’s pool. Your cubanita, who couldn’t look more like a white girl with her curly blond locks and icy blue eyes, will seduce you at the party and lead you to her car. Apologize when you leave her unsatisfied. She’ll say, “It’s okay,” and kiss you on the cheek before driving away.

Don’t think about your ex, who’s saving herself for marriage and expecting the same from her devout future husband—thereby forbidding your reconciliation. Don’t wonder if sex is the final Right of Passage to becoming a man. A man she would describe as ungodly.

Drown your regret in your father’s firewater. You’ll be unable to decipher what’s making you sick, if it’s the rum or the realization that you lost your virginity to a girl you’ll never love.

Written by: Eric Zurita
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe