073018 How does the werewolf connect the gamesman with the gamesman? I don’t know, but I’m sure there should be some kind of prize for having a pair come up like that. Maybe there’s a jackpot if you get a three of a kind—maybe then you get to change your past, and have been someone, like a reporter or a communications officer like Maupin was. Oh, that again. The old, familiar insistence that I’m not eligible to be who or what I want to be. I don’t have the right kind of stories. I wasn’t galvanized in the right kind of crucibles. And of course, now, as it was ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago, it’s too late to change that. So I should obviously give up, except that for some reason, I’ve never *quite* been able to. Which, then, well, the only logical conclusion to this line of thinking is that I’m just pathetic. A hanging-on, self-deluded wiry dog who wanted to be a werewolf So I continue to play the game, halfheartedly, with myself, careful to make sure I’m the only one who knows the rules and is allowed to roll a seven on a six-sided die. Yeah, OK, enough maundering. What, then, instead? Remember, she said “anything at all that’s not pure nonsense.” That’s the only way to make this process not impossible. As soon as it has to be a certain thing, the universe is frozen in time and there’s literally nothing you can do besides fuck it up. We have to be brave and silly enough to stay, to inhabit that lightning-flash eternity when everything’s already fucked up as a natural matter of Oh nevermind, I forgot where that sentence was supposed to end, duh. But you get the point. The point is it’s OK to live in a shack on an eroding beach. Enjoy it while you can. Starlight reflected in glimmers of beach glass. The thinness of the atmosphere. How the moon and the surf talk to each other endlessly, never getting bored of each other’s reptitive laconic observations about white noise. How there’s the sand, and you, and then the apex of this cosmic isosceles is so far away across the horizon that you literally can’t fathom it. You’re only here for an instant, ain’t that right, Schand? Yes, I suppose so, he says, looking up from under the sink. There’s a nail in his mouth and a hammer in his hand. You’re not sure that a hammer and nail is just exactly the called-for combination of materials when fixing plumbing is the task at hand, but you don’t want to hurt his feelings, so you don’t say anything. Moments later there is a horrible honking screech of metal and wood, and Schand goes, “OH SHIT,” and a merry whitewater stream issues forth from what’s left of the pipes. Buffetted as if by a firehose, he staggers back and stands up and slips in the quickly growing lake, and topples backwards, barely managing to grab the stovetop to keep himself from bowling over completely. “Hey, um,” he says, composing himself with more than his usual aplomb, “Can you do me a favor and go downstairs and turn off the water?” You’re proud of yourself for remembering where the shut-off valve is. Knowing little things like that is manly enough, you figure, when you’ve got a man like Schand-Jack around the house. Ten years ago, five, maybe even two, and this whole incident would have ended badly. The visible parts would have been expense, embarrassment, inconvenience, fish swimming through the kitchen, unpleasant dislocation from routine. But now, I don’t know, somehow things have changed, and you don’t even really know why. It’s not as though you can point to an official moment, circled in red, that says, “One day everything just clicked into place,” but there may as well have been a moment like that, somewhere along the way; maybe you didn’t even notice it when it happened, but now, today, the marine destruction being visited on your poor linoleum just looks like a weird piece of art, and Schand-Jack, thank god, Schand-Jack still has his shirt off and is holding that standard-issue hardware-store hammer as if it were Thor’s first choice in accessories, and he’s wet, and he’s sweaty, and he’s stocky, and there’s that swirl of hair on his chest in between those petulantly buff pecs, and you know, you just by god know that you handled this exactly right, and you by god know without a doubt that your reward, though it won’t be called out as such, is going to be the sweatiest, gruntiest, warmest, most loving hard pounding FUCK of your life later on tonight, after you figure out together how to get at least some of this mess cleaned up, so you can get busy making the next one.