Tora Estep
“What Lies Beneath”
Oil on Canvas
Inspiration piece

Natascha Dea Burdeinei
Response

The morphine push didn’t take long.

One moment I was holding my lucid and sagacious 92-year-old uncle’s hand, explaining to him exactly what the nurses were doing to him while interjecting we love you’s. He was anxious and worried the nurses who removed his high-flow oxygen and replaced it with 2 liters of nasal cannula oxygen were trying to save him; not letting him go as he requested I give them consent to do when I arrived at his Bergen County hospital room, bags in hand, two days prior:

“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re here. It’s time. I need you to sign the papers.”

The next moment, he began to say something, then held up his finger in understanding as he felt the morphine. He nodded at me.

I squeezed his hand.

“I’m going to stay with you. I’ll be right here.” I kissed his forehead and laid my cellphone near his ear and pushed play on iTunes so the jazz albums I’d copied onto my laptop and synced to my phone before I left Chicago would begin.

The love of his life, who passed away during the pandemic, resurrected digitally to sing him out of this world and into the next as I sat with him, talking to him, making sure he knew how loved he was as the morphine took effect.

“It’ll be about 24 hours,” the nurse said. “Are you going to stay?”

Yes, of course, I was going to stay.

My staying genuinely surprised her, and it broke my heart a little more than the week already had. But I understood. We cared for my mother-in-law in our home for the last years of her life. I witnessed her community and loved ones disappear when her dementia progressed. Family and friends stopped coming by. “I just can’t see her like this,” they’d say as I’d gently remind them this visit is for her, not them. They’d pause and look at me as if begging me to release them from the obligation. At the end of her life, it was just my husband and I holding her hand in her bedroom, next to ours. The hospice nurse we paged, who said she could be to us in 15 minutes, hadn’t even arrived. She got stuck in traffic. It would be an hour before she walked through our front door.

“I’ll be here till the end or you kick me out,” I told his nurse.

She asked me if I needed anything and generously made up a bed for me at the foot of his bed.

“If you need something to eat or drink, go into the nurses’ break room and get it or come find me,” she said as she left the room. “I’ll be close by.”

Sleep does not come easily when you’re keeping vigil. Especially in pandemic times, when masks are required to be worn inside a patient’s hospital room.

Yet, sleep is a must. Decisions have to be made that require presence and a focused mind. I tossed and turned for hours, finally falling asleep but bolting out of bed every time his breathing changed or the nurse came in to check on him.

The moon was full and massive that night. Glancing outside his hospital room window, I saw two deer in a patch of grass near the now empty visitor’s parking lot, illuminated by that massive moon. The kind of moon Shanley wrote about. I described it aloud as my uncle slept and his body slowed down, with just enough morphine and oxygen attached to him to keep him comfortable.

He turned 92 the day after I arrived. We celebrated over frozen custard, his chosen last meal. From Rita’s, because I couldn’t get Coney Island’s frozen custard to him quickly enough. We called his loved ones. Shared stories. He gave me a list of writers to read.

“Have you read Rushdie?” he asked, “dear God, I hope he doesn’t die.” The news of his stabbing shocked us both as CNN shouted it from the television mounted from the ceiling in his hospital room. It never shut off. As if hospitals aren’t loud and sad enough without a cacophony of talking heads weighing in on the atrocities of the day.

“I have read Rushdie,” I assure him, “but I’ll reread him. It’s been a while,” his head nods in approval.

I told him about the time I saw Vanessa Redgrave commune with Tennessee Williams’s spirit in the middle of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as they etched Williams’s name into their Poet’s Corner, and how holy that moment felt; he told me about the time he worked with Tennessee Williams and how closely connected the sacred and profane are on stage.

Profane, he said, like his aging body hooked up to hospital equipment. His hands and arms were black and blue as if someone had painted them in ink, tentacles of IVs coming out of his body.

“Honey, I’m sorry I’m not the life of the party right now. Do you need anything? Go get a coffee. I’ll take a rest while you do that, then we’ll talk about the war.”

The war. The Korean War. He was drafted.

He was an explosives specialist working in an armory in Alabama. After the war, he’d parlay his time there into expertise in pyrotechnics on stage productions.

I signed the consent papers to remove him from oxygen the morning after his birthday, after checking in to make sure he’d spoken with everyone and said everything he’d needed to say.

He had.

I told him I believed his beloved was waiting for him to join her. A newly ordained minister raised Episcopalian like he was, I still feel like I am playing dress-up in religious matters.

When he was still lucid, he told me he hoped that would be the case, but wasn’t sure heaven existed. To be honest, I don’t know if heaven exists either, at least not in the way it’s described in many churches and movies. But I’ve witnessed enough dying and death to know that love enters the rooms of those who loved in this world. Love enters in their last days, hours, minutes, and seconds from some invisible plane and is visible in their countenance and peace. Surely that is heaven.

They pronounced him dead at 2:52 am on my fifth night in town. I’d stepped out of the room while he still had a strong heartbeat. Suddenly, his heart rate crashed, and he took his last breath. As if he was waiting for me to go get a cup of coffee. He was gone and pronounced in mere minutes.

I reentered the room and told him and his beloved I loved them and I understood his choosing to go alone. I said a prayer and held his lifeless hand. As the nurse came back in to undress and clean his body, I removed his glasses, unclasped his watch, and smoothed his hair. I gathered the pictures surrounding him.

Five minutes later, I was outside in the shockingly warm night air with a Patient Belonging Bag filled with the items he loved and wanted close to him as he left this world. The stars were shining, and I was sobbing. I will never get used to a soul being there one minute and not the next.

Somehow, though, I was certain he was fine wherever his soul was now.

I made a mental note to reread Rushdie, and I yelled into the northern night sky: “Don’t you die, too!”

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“I Exist”
Pippa Possible
Response

Nasturtiums
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

Certainly vines had been creeping forth in the days prior to my noticing, but it was as if the nasturtiums appeared out of nowhere. One day barren earth; the next, lush greenery reaching out onto the patio, bright orange and yellow flowers poking heads toward the sky.

The flowers taste peppery and burn floral essence into nasal passages. This I know is true, though I can’t recall a specific instance when I’ve plucked a flower and placed it on my tongue. Glancing out the window that first early day, I felt a jolt at the sight of them, and then I felt crazy. Had I planted nasturtiums? Watered them? Watched them sprout? I wondered if a secret being hid inside me and snuck out to sow seeds as a message: I exist.

While I sleep the nasturtiums travel, furtive, their tendrils seeking support to climb upon. They find the narrow metal stake that holds up a battered, unused screen porch and claim it for themselves. Now I greet them as I turn on the electric kettle each morning. Water begins to boil and I scan the yard to see how far the stems have traveled. Sometimes they grow a foot in one day.

Meanwhile, the world moves around me. I hear cars in the distance and imagine drivers hurrying to important places. Somewhere close by, a shovel scratches loose rock. The whine of a lawn mower. Aroma of cut grass and gasoline.

I remember that feeling of purpose. Once I had things to do, too. Though not old, I feel archaic and worn. Never know how to go on, how to keep waking up. In the morning, when I do rouse, I often surprise myself by still being here. And yet here I am.

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Alyscia Cunningham
Response

Lost Threads
By Gena Stutzman
Inspiration piece

lost threads from your old coat
chosen and carried through the air
by that hope-filled sparrow
contain memories of you
particles of you-

smiles, loving intentions,
tenderness, tears
epiphanies,
wild rhythms and wild dancing
each thread like stardust.

imagine a tree filled with memories of hundreds of seasons
waiting,
longing,
for the softness of feathers
the rejoicing of birdsongs.

traces of you becoming the answer to the prayers of a tree and a bird.

Brian MacDonald
Inspiration Piece

Spark
by Alyscia Cunningham
Response

At first you grasped me tenderly,
Caressed my core vivaciously,
Piece-by-piece, created me,
To light our cosmic galaxy.

Formed my inner soul perfectly,
And topped my crown so carefully,
Then flipped the switch in hope to see,
A flick of light inside of me.

My inward being wanted to be,
Your hopeful opportunity.

But your smile conflicted far from glee.
As my glow dimmed like debris.

Unfilled expected goals,
Felt as if you’ve lost control,
A space once warm has now turned cold,
Frustrations trigger lonesome holds.

You turned your back from our console,
And slipped into a sunken hole.
Forgotten pathways to uphold,
Trials and tribulations stroll.

Return to feed your dreams abstain,
Let time not be your goals refrain.
Please pick me up and try again,
And Spark the coil that joined our chain.

Under far
cumulus cliffs
in a circle
of bone soil
one vapor plume
leans and twists
Brief white spurts tease
with collapse
until ghosts boil
ascending
Peaked hoods and
shoulders warp up
a scroll with
winter mountains
become flame-
tongues of wild steam
Rock fissures
over magma
shout old rain
back at heaven

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Below the Surface
by Pippa Possible
Response

Twelve years old, she is strong and lean. Two years old, my little arms drape around her neck. My legs wrap around her waist. We dunk below the surface.

We are swimming in a lake of water so clear, we can see details as through a magnifying glass.

Every multicolored mottled stone and pebble. Every fish, illuminated by the midsummer midday sun. Scales glistening sequins. The air smells of aloe-vera sunscreen, and campfire smoke. The sun is direct, and immediately hot on my back. The water is comfortably cool, near tepid. Goose bumps still appear on my wet arms.

Below the surface, my sister and I are surrounded by fish. We swim rapidly through occasional schools of them. Synchronized swimmers. We attempt to join their underwater dance. Fish disperse in random directions upon our intervention. A few fish swim toward us, near enough.

I imagine that I can pet them with my bare hands. I want to pet these fishes as I have learned to pet cats and dogs, gently and calmly. A fish makes eye contact with me, before flitting rapidly away.

We are pretending to be a dolphin. My sister, the swimmer. She propels us through the water using the force of her strong legs. I feel safe, attached to my sister’s back, like a barnacle. In this moment, I can gauge my own strength. I hold on firmly. She brings us close to the bed of the lake.

My sister and I explore the bright depths. The water magnifies details. Rays of sunlight filter through the water from above. Illumination. We glide across the bed of the lake, slowly. My toes graze across the slick pebbles. Fish now swim beside us, seemingly undisturbed and unperturbed.

My lungs begin to burn. I signal to my sister with a light pinch on the shoulder. She changes direction and kicks fiercely, thrusting us rapidly to breach at the surface. Lob-tailing, we create as much splashing as we can. I am the blowhole, loudly coughing and spitting water into the air. Gasping to inhale as deeply as my lungs can bear.

Scorched breaths!

We can hear our parents at the shore, laughing at how silly we appear. My mother is sitting at the blue picnic table, tending to charlie-horses in her feet. My father is tending to the campfire, poking at kindling with a stick.

Below the surface, the fish again are scarce. Our dolphin act has frightened them away. I want to remain below, resting on the cool slick pebbles until the fish feel safe to return. I want to befriend these fishes, and swim with them, in synchronous movements. I want to grow gills, so my need for air will not frighten them away. I want to stay here with them, below the surface.

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Taxue
By Daniel David Watkins
Inspiration piece

One morning, quite a while ago, before Hong Kong became what it is, a horse appeared on the beach, just a silhouette small upon the white sand. It stood at the far end near the rocks wild but not free, being hemmed in on the right by the sea and on the left by the bank rising to the fishing village of Deep Wave Bay. The land beyond to Lantau Peak was hidden. Unknowable. I had come down in the early morning from the apartments – themselves, at that time, incongruous. The cold blue grey of dawn made me giddy and I blinked before I stared at the impossible horse thrown up by the sea. I thought I might hunker down where I stood above the beach to watch. Safe.

Wu Fong made wooden puzzles. He would take them to the market in Central for the tourists. He fashioned their intricacies from drift wood but you would never have known, once the grain was polished. The pieces were hard from the salt and bleached white and he left them like that so they felt good in the hand. And the boys would take them apart in their arrogant haste but never could put them back together with their fumbling fingers. All impatience.

In truth, the boys had woken me. Their feet had slapped down the concrete steps outside my door and I wondered at them in my half dream. But they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had gone to the village to help with the nets. The thought of them unsettled me and I imagined they would appear suddenly on the low cliffs above the horse to throw stones.

The horse began to walk now close to the water’s edge. It lowered its head before shaking itself away and rising to a trot. Perhaps it had seen me or sensed me watching, and the possibility of a connection between us unnerved me so that, even from my vantage point, I decided to rise to my feet.

Mr Lau would know. He would know how the horse had appeared. He would know what to do. The boys said the horse had been stolen from the stables at Shatin by the Wo Shing Wo but the ransom had not been paid. In desperation the gang had brought it in the night to Lantau on an old dredger. I looked at Mr Lau the following week but he shook his head and said nothing. So I knew it wasn’t true. And the next day a rumour grew that the horse had swum across from Tsing-Yi to escape a cruel owner. I imagined the poor beast’s head bobbing above the waves, its eyes wild, its nostrils gaping red holes as it struggled against the currents and tides between the great container ships towering above. It could not have been like that. These were fumbling tales.

Just as suddenly as it had arrived that winter morning, so it disappeared. The impossible horse vanished after the second week. And they said it had been a ghost.

I met Taxue in the spring. I had been so lonely during the long winter that I wondered if I had created her out of my own imagination, that she had somehow emerged out of the breeze as alienation personified. My kindred spirit.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Rock Climbing
Response

ABCs
By Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

You gave me a sheet of green lined paper
with my name ranged across the top and a
lopsided heart halfway down. You signed it
in kindergarten letters carved in the certainty
of milk and cookies:
Your Valentine
as if somehow I might not know what was
already written in the stars.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Beginning/End
Inspiration Piece

Star-Crossed
By Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Summer finally remembered to check the calendar.
She’s a few weeks late and I can relate.
Who can resist the pull of the off-season: lazy
days washed down with spritzers and beer,
reset rhythms that might leave one unable
to tell sunset from sunrise, midday wake-
ups to the sound of open car windows
and trains of nowhere? Who can resist
the weight of nothing to do? Who can blame
the wayward season for wanting to close her eyes
and relive the dream, dancing up a snowstorm
on a frosted night, in a white dress and red boots,
warm in the ephemeral embrace of Winter.

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Animated image here: Breathe
Breathe
by Greg Lippert
Inspiration

Force of Nature
by Robert Haydon Jones
Response

This is about a heinous, rape-murder.

If I were writing this expecting to get money for it, (expecting you to pay money for the magazine carrying this story like the Police Gazette or the National Enquirer), then I would be writing this in the third person narrative that pro writers use these days because in the words of one pro writer I know, “When the Readers at the big houses see a manuscript written in the first person, they just throw it straight to the reject pile.”

Honestly, I tried telling this story out in the third person, but it came out hollow. Like Hemmingway said, “The most important tool a writer can have is a built-in, shock proof, crap detector.”

I want to get money for telling this story out to you, but the problem with the third person narrative is that it could be anybody. I am the perpetrator. I need to spit this thing out of me to be rid of it. And somehow I have to do that and keep you engaged so you don’t throw me on the reject pile because I am using the first person and spitting things up in front of you.

Like I said, this is about a heinous, rape-murder.

Kim Donnelly was a wiry, brown-haired, freckled nineteen year-old sophomore, from Ashtabula, who was best friends with Amanda Jackson a chubby, blonde junior from Akron, with beautiful, fluffy breasts the size of airplane head pillows, who I had relentlessly ravished day after day and night after night for nigh on to three weeks until I told her firmly that I couldn’t see her any more, not even once more, because I had a fiancée I had promised to marry, waiting for me back East, when I graduated in two months,

I was a vet, come back from the Marine Corps, finishing college on the G.I. Bill at a state school with a Georgian campus set in a rural farm town in southeastern Ohio.

This university featured some pretty darn good football teams over the years. Even so, it always had far more female than male students. In fact this university graduated more elementary school teachers than any other school in the Midwest.

When I arrived there from the Marines as a 22 year-old junior, I felt like a wolf in the henhouse. And, believe me, when I tell you, I behaved just like I was a wolf in the henhouse.

Because that is precisely what I was. I had returned with nary a scratch from terrifying times in shit hole after shit hole. I morphed from a green idiot expecting the certain death I deserved for being a green idiot to a hardened, merciless, survivor counting down the days till I came improbably to the final sleep and wakeup and then miraculously I marched aboard a silver aircraft and was borne away from the final shit hole to the craven glory of honorable discharge and safety from the certain death and/or disfigurement I no doubt did deserve.

I had left the pretty girl who wrote me every week while I was in the Marines back East because she was finishing college back there and we had both promised our parents we wouldn’t get married until each of us was graduated.

So there I was in the henhouse with hundreds of beautiful young women fresh out of high school, many of them away from home for the first time. Many of these hens were without a boy friend or even the prospect of a viable date. Most of the men at the university were actually still foolish boys – much more interested in drinking, drugging, and fraternity house activities than women.

So this “older man” the lean Marine, was like a pig at the trough and I helped myself at every opportunity. My years away from my girl friend had supercharged my lust. When we made love on my return, I was swept away with the sheer pleasure of it. I really couldn’t get enough.

Sex was a tonic for me. For some unaccountable reason, I felt bad most of the time. Bad and ashamed of myself. Not of anything in particular. Just ashamed of me. Sex made me feel good about myself. Good and strong and powerful and worthy. And deep down deserving of the long, glorious, orgasms I was having and having and having.

I was smart enough to figure out that to get the sex I needed, I had to have a willing, enthusiastic, partner easily available. So, early on, I decided to be a very considerate lover, even though it took a lot of effort. Actually, once I got the technique down, it wasn’t all that hard to take my girl friend where she had never been before.

She had been around quite a lot before I met her. She told me straight out that I was a genius lover compared to my predecessors. I told her it was because I loved her so much and I guess she accepted that. I liked her all right. She sure acted like she loved me and I was good with that. She was very, very pretty. A real knockout. I really liked having her on my arm. I liked her parents. She liked my parents. She called me; “The Master Marine” and I liked that too.

So at the university, right from the first, I developed a routine and a persona with the girls that I met which enabled me to be intimate with them on a friendly basis rather than as a candidate for a lasting relationship. In fact, this friendly persona enabled me to get closer to them much quicker than if I had been a “regular” suitor.
The fact is they were all horny out of their minds for sex even if quite a few of them weren’t really aware of it. Believe me, once Yours Truly started up with them with my “considerate” technique, almost all of them turned into little freaks. I no longer had to ask them out. They called me. I no longer had to do beer or a movie or a recital up front.

When we met up, our first order of business was finding a place we could go to get it on. In bad weather, we would look for empty classrooms, storage rooms, even remote hallways. Some times we had to go to a motel a few miles away. As a vet, I was one of the few students with a permit to have a car on campus. So, we’d drive to a motel. I always insisted the girl pay $25 toward the room. Since I got the room on an hourly basis, the $25 usually covered it.

In good weather, we used the great outdoors to do the friendliest thing two people can do. I had a poncho from the Marines that rolled up tight and worked real well. Although often, we would roll off the poncho and thrash around on the grass and after a while, I figured just how the title to the song, “Green Sleeves”, had originated.

I treated many a love discourteously. My favorite outdoor venue was an old graveyard that had been filled up in the 19th century. I enjoyed idyllic, bucolic privacy with one exception. One afternoon in early May, I had decided I had come to the end of foreplay and was just about to swing into action when a large brown shoe entered my field of vision. It was a Boy Scout Master with a troop of about 20, strung out single file in back of him.

“Oh, sorry, sir”, I said.

“No worries, young fellow,” he replied.

He was a burly man in his mid forties. He had on the full brown suit, replete with medals and badges. He had a thick black mustache. He pivoted and beckoned to his troop with the same signal we used in the Marines.

“Follow me, lads”, he yelled authoritatively.

He marched away and they followed. It was pretty impressive. I couldn’t help but notice that they kept a proper interval. We waited a little while and then we got down to it. It was better than ever.

So, my routine, my persona, went like this: “I am lonely and I am so happy that I have found you and that we can be friends and be good to each other – but it can’t ever get out of control beyond friendship, which will be so hard because I am so drawn to you, but we must never let that happen because someone very much like you is waiting back East and I promised her I would be back and she said okay than I could have friends like you if I promised on my honor.”

So that was the Holy Ground Rule. It enabled me to have all the wild sex I wanted without any fear of entanglement. I’ll tell you what – it enabled me to really be nice to these women – to really like them – okay, maybe even love some of them – without any fear of being snared. It was a foolproof ticket to genuine abandon.

Much as I hate to admit it, a few of them, declared it was time to stop before I did. I never argued, although, frankly, it pissed me off. In any event, 95% of the time, it was me that made the announcement that I was being drawn so close that any more would overwhelm me and make me renounce my Holy Promise. I experimented making the announcement before or after love. The best time by far was before. Afterward, there really was nothing left to say. Afterward, almost 100% of the time, we were both very, very happy campers.

The Holy Ground Rule also had another benefit that I had not foreseen. It generated a natural “Daisy-Chain” effect. Since I always parted as the best of friends, my left girls were inclined to pass me on with a golden recommendation as the sort of man any girl would be glad to have as a friend.

That was how I had arrived at my favorite graveyard with Kim Donnelly. Her best friend, Amanda Jackson, had put us together. According to Kim, Amanda said I was a prince of a man and the greatest, most considerate, lover on earth. She had only let me go because I was such a good person who had made a vow to a good young woman back East.

So, I guided us to my favorite spot in the graveyard and spread out my trusty poncho. Kim was in a league of her own as a kisser. I mean she was hot and she was a real expert. She had a hard body but she pushed up at me and I was enveloped by her voluptuousness. She kissed my neck and then licked it slowly and I almost lost control. Then she reached down to my crotch and stroked me. She really knew what she was doing.

I reached under and up to take her panties off but she resisted, so I moved them to the side and started pleasuring her with my fingers with the utmost consideration. She moaned and gave a deep shudder and said my name again and again.

I pulled off my pants real quick and maneuvered so I could get in her but she pushed back with a surprising amount of strength and she said, “No, don’t!”

I knew she wasn’t serious. A lot of girls put up a “No” the first time we do it. As a matter of fact, Amanda Jackson had run a whole string of no’s at me before I got her to say yes, yes, yes.

So I just pushed down steadily. I was holding myself up above her and my hands were by her neck. “No”, she said. “Please don’t. I’ve changed my mind.”

Well, I absolutely knew she couldn’t be serious. So I kept pushing. “No.”, she said again, and I kept pushing – I had been here before. Then she said, “No” again and sort of wriggled under me – so I pushed down real hard and then she stopped.

Well, the time had finally come, but as I made ready to enter her, I looked down and a green, bubbly, foam had seeped from between her lips and she wasn’t moving at all. I rolled right off her and looked again. She lay still. The bubbly green foam drooled off her lips on to her chin. She wasn’t breathing! I put my ear on her breast. There was no heartbeat! I touched her carotid. There was nothing! She was dead!

I was horrified. I was terrified. I was a fucking murderer! My life was over!

I wondered if I could hide her somewhere and go get a shovel and bury her in one of the old graves. But I realized that wouldn’t work. When Lisa went missing, Amanda would tell the police she had introduced us – and where we probably had gone.

Even if I could bury her quick, they would find the fresh grave…. or if I was able to mask the grave, they would probably use dogs who would find poor Kim. She was dead and so was I!

No one would believe me that it was a total accident. I had been a little rough like this in the past to get around the no’s and everything had worked out. No problems.
My only chance was to hide her body, get my car and run fast somewhere far, where maybe I could build a new identity.

About 40 feet deeper in the graveyard from where we were, there was a clump of Rhododendrons that surrounded a little spring. I figured this was the best place to hide Kim.

As I approached her to put her in a fireman’s carry, her eyes started to flutter. It startled me. I must have jumped a foot – I figured it must be rigor mortis starting. But, no, because now she made a gagging sound and then a low moan. She was alive!

Then her eyes suddenly flipped open and she looked right at me and smiled. “Wow,” she said, ”That was intense. I must have passed out. You were pretty rough on me.”

It was the most thrilling moment of my life. I think it still is. It was like two people had come back from the dead.

Yes, it turns out this is not about a heinous rape murder after all!

“Gosh, I’m glad you’re okay,” I said dumbly, like I was reading from a nerd script. “I’m real sorry – you’re just so dam sexy – I got carried away.”

“I’m going to have to throw away my undies”, she said. “I soiled myself. Turn your back – I’ve got to clean up.”

So, I turned my back and I could hear her rustling around. Then she said it was okay for me to turn back around and there she was standing there looking at me.

“Are you okay?” I said. Do you want to rest up?”

Well, the minute I said it, I regretted it.

“No”, she said, “I ‘m okay but I want to go back to the dorm and take it easy for a while. You were pretty darn rough on me.”

When she said that, a fear bolt coursed through me. Would she report me?

“Well,” I said, “I sure am sorry. The fact is — we both got carried away.”

Even now, I think it was an absolutely brilliant thing to say.

I saw her consider it.

“Are you okay without your undies?” I asked solicitously.

I saw her consider that too.

“Yeah, I’m okay”, she said. “Things did get out of hand. Are you okay?”

I told her I was okay. I walked her back to her dorm. I never dated her again. Amanda called me and asked me if everything was okay with me and Kim and I said it was – but that I had decided to completely eliminate dating these last two months out of fairness to my girl back East. And that is exactly what I did.

You might say I was scared straight.

So now, many years later, I am a respectable citizen. In addition to working hard at a job I love, I am a volunteer at the prison two exits up I95. I’ve often counseled men doing hard time for sexual assaults not all that different than my near catastrophe with Kim.

I’ve also worked with two men doing life for rape murder. They claim the sex was consensual and they just got carried away.

All I can do is tell them I understand.

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