Leaving by Barry Garelick, espresso con panna

Judy was leaving soon. She was leaving San Francisco after six years there, leaving people and places behind. Jack was staying in San Francisco where he had lived for the last twenty years, though he was not unfamiliar with leaving his past behind in search of something better. They stood in the tiny kitchen of her studio apartment, wrapping the last of the glasses in newspaper.

            ‘What are you going to do when I’m gone, Jack?’

            ‘The same things I’ve always done.’

            ‘Like what?’

            ‘Talk with friends and argue with idiots.’

            ‘Sounds like a poem,’ she said.

            ‘Everything is a poem if you listen the right way.’

            She placed the box of newspaper-wrapped glasses with the other boxes in the living room-turned-obstacle course. Some were sealed, and others not. The sealed boxes she would take with her; the unsealed ones would be stored in her parents’ house in Los Angeles. Jack sat in one of the two chairs at a small table just outside the kitchen and lit a cigarette. ‘Do you think you’ll come back?’

            ‘I may, or maybe I’ll go back to LA.  Or stay in Hawaii. Or go somewhere else entirely.’ She thought a moment. ‘It depends,’ she said, as if that provided clarification.

            ‘It’s good not knowing what you’re going to do next,’ he said.

            ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

            She snaked through the boxes over to the window that looked out onto the street and the hill beyond it, on which were more apartments and houses. Under the window was a stack of papers and notebooks which she began separating into ‘save’ and ‘discard’ piles.

             ‘Why did you choose University of Hawaii?’

            She looked at a notebook and after some hesitation put it in the discard pile. ‘I was accepted by UCLA and Hawaii. I’ve already been to UCLA so I chose Hawaii.’

            ‘Because it’s further away? Or more exotic?’

            ‘Because,’ she said showing slight irritation, ‘I liked their program in public administration. Health care planning.’

            ‘Anything with ‘planning’ in it, I don’t understand. Urban planning, this planning, that planning. What is it? What is ‘public administration’? You get to call the shots? You got tired of social work and now want to be in some lofty position and tell other people what to do?’

            ‘No. That isn’t it.’

            She would have argued with him in the past, but she wasn’t taking the bait. She’s definitely leaving, Jack thought.

            ‘Maybe I’m tired of PhD psychologists evaluating me as if they know how to do my job,’ she said. ‘I had one of them tell me I should get psychotherapy if I’m going to be in this line of work so I can better understand how to help people.’

            ‘He really said that? I would have told him to fuck off.’ When she didn’t respond, he said ‘I’m serious.’

            ‘We live in different worlds,’ she said.

            ‘We live in different parts of the same world.’

            ‘I’ll miss you, Jack.’   

            He laughed and she joined him. There then followed a long silence. They were both comfortable with silence. She continued to busy herself with her pile of notes, and then back to her boxes. Jack remained at the small table, the short stub of a lit cigarette between his lips, and removed a battered notebook from his shirt pocket and a broken pencil in desperate need of sharpening.

            He looked at Judy and wrote: ‘Leaving people …’  He couldn’t think of anything to follow, and crossed it out. Jack was one of the people she was leaving he thought, and then wrote ‘I love her. Like a sister.’ He stubbed his cigarette out in a small dish that Judy had left on the table for him to use as an ashtray.

            Judy was short and thin with dark straight hair. By her own description she had the features of a Polish person (her mother was of Polish descent) – slight bags under her eyes and high cheek bones. She was in her mid-thirties but looked to be in her twenties sometimes. Today Jack thought she looked older.

 

They met at one of Jack’s poetry readings in 1977; over the years they became friends and would get together, at her apartment, or in his hotel room, or at Old Uncle Gaylord’s Ice Cream Parlor on Market Street. She was adamant about not getting together with him for a drink at a bar.

            He made friends easily, and was a familiar sight as he walked in various neighborhoods of San Francisco (most often North Beach), smoking a cigarette, waving to those who knew him. Some of his friends he knew from his New York days, fellow poets, of whom some were well known and others, like Jack, were struggling. He would hold court in coffee houses and bars, sometimes about politics and sometimes poetry, it was hard to tell the difference at times.

            Jack was in his fifties but his white hair and the stubble on his face made him look older. His ways were familiar to Judy by now; his arguments and accusations, his anger, and self-righteousness, his drinking, betting, and confusion. He was a poet who had some published books by publishers that had long gone out of business. She had tried to help him in various aspects of his vagabond poet’s life – finding him jobs that he quickly quit, loaning him money that he never paid back, and trying with spotty success to get him help with his drinking and living situation.

            Since she and Jack first met, various conflicts of the world served as a backdrop for Jack’s thinking and rantings: Iranian protesters on the streets calling for the removal of the U.S.-placed Shah; the tensions and attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in 1978, the exile of the Shah of Iran in early 1979, the taking of U.S. hostages in Iran later that year, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

            It was now 1981 and with Reagan’s election, the country was shifting to the right. ‘He’s out of his mind,’ she told Jack shortly after the election. ‘We might have World War Three.’ She had talked about leaving, getting away from the madness.

            ‘Where would you go?’ he had asked.

            ‘Unless I go overseas, and I don’t want to, there really isn’t any place to go. Every state voted for Reagan.’

            ‘Minnesota didn’t,’ he had said.

            ‘Too cold.’

            They both had laughed at this after which Judy had said wistfully that she felt like the country left her. ‘Even some of my friends voted for him.’

            ‘Nothing is forever," Jack had said.

Judy was now looking out the window. It would be dark in a few hours. She would be off for Los Angeles the next day, and then to Hawaii a few days after that.

            ‘What are you going to do with your car?’ he asked.

            She looked back at Jack. He knew she suspected that he wanted it, but both played it as if he didn’t. ‘I’m leaving it with my brother.’ 

            He’ll probably sell it, Jack thought.

            ‘What are you writing, Jack?’

            ‘Some ideas.’

            ‘For a poem?’

            ‘Yeah. Ideas mostly. Lines of a poem.’

            ‘A poem about what?’

            ‘I don’t know yet. Sometimes I don’t know I’ve written a poem until after a few days. The lines I thought would go in some poem actually is the poem.’

            He suspected the poem would be about leaving – and being left behind. He wondered how many lovers she had had while she lived in San Francisco. He only knew about Karl; someone he never met, but felt like he knew, like a television show or movie that mentions someone that all the characters talk about, but who is never part of the show.

            ‘You still getting postcards from Karl?’

            ‘What made you think of Karl?’

            ‘I don’t know.’ He leaned his head to one side and rested it on hand, pretending his eyes were a camera and he was making a movie. ‘You told me he writes you postcards every now and then.’

            ‘Yeah, once in a while. I got one a few months ago. He was in Germany; he sent me a card from there.’

            ‘What does he talk about? On the cards I mean.’

            ‘Not much. What he’s seen. He doesn’t ask about me. It’s like he’s writing in a diary. He wanted to go to Germany; he was fascinated by Germany. The movies coming out by these new directors.’

            She said nothing and looked down at the pile of papers and notebooks, now just whittled down to those that she decided to save.

            ‘I once saw him coming out of a movie," Judy said. 'It was during an Ozu festival. Some theater was showing all these movies by Ozu, the Japanese film-maker. It was a little after we broke up. I remember coming out of the theater.' Judy said.

            ‘What was the movie?’

            ‘I don’t remember. But we said hello, and he went on his way. A few days later I get this card from him saying how Wim Wenders was influenced by Ozu and he was saying some things about the movie we had both seen. How Ozu’s movies are all about family and their break-up.’

             ‘Does he know you’re leaving?’

            ‘I haven’t talked with him. I doubt he knows. And I’m not about to tell him.’

‘He wants to get back together with you. How long has it been? Since you two broke up?’

            ‘Jesus, Jack. It’s been two years. And it’s not like we were going together for a long time. And he’s the one who broke it off. If he wants me back, he can call me instead of sending me postcards. He knows my phone number.’

            ‘Do you want him back?’

            ‘I’m leaving, Jack.’

            She wanted him back, Jack thought. He sensed a sadness in her, though he wasn’t sure if it might by his. He thought about old lovers, and then his ex-wife, the anger, his feelings that nothing was his fault and then how everything was. There was some in-between but he could never pin it down. The break-up of families; yes, Ozu was right, and it wasn’t just a Japanese thing, he thought. He thought about his son, now a teenager, who he saw when he went down to L.A. His ex-wife tolerated his visits and he would make an effort to stop drinking for at least a week before he visited. She had moved on and married someone; a nice guy who ran his own printing business in an old area of L.A.

 

He looked down at his notebook and read what he had written a few minutes earlier. ‘You asked me what I would do when you were gone. I gave you an answer but it wasn’t a complete one. Here is the rest of it: I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll be thinking of you as I write poems, as I walk around San Francisco, go to the races, smoke cigarettes, and drink coffee in the morning. I’ll be thinking of you as I try not to get drunk, as I go to sleep somewhere, hoping I wake up the next day. I’ll be thinking of you as we try to save the world. Each in our own way.’

            He thought about giving it to her, but decided not to. It might make a good poem, he thought, but maybe not. He would read it over later. Not now. Now it was time to go. Time to leave.

            He put his notebook back in his pocket and stood up. The sun was out in the way that it sometimes emerges on overcast days – not a full commitment to sunlight, but enough.

            ‘I have to go,’ he said, heading for the door.

            ‘OK, Jack.’ She made her way through the maze of boxes to meet him at the door.

            ‘I’ll be thinking of you,’ he said.

            ‘Me too.’

            ‘Write to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where I’ll be living soon, but you can send it care of Caffe Trieste. They know me.’

            ‘I will.’

             ‘I’ll still be here if you decide to come back,’ he said. ‘I’m not hard to find.’

‘Goodbye, Jack.’

            ‘I love you. Like a sister.’ 

            ‘I know.’

            They hugged, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

            ‘I have to go,’ he said.

            She stood at the door and watched him start walking down the three flights of stairs. His steps echoed in a dramatic fashion as he imagined Karl’s steps had when he left Judy that last time. When Jack reached the entrance he stood, looking out and then opened the door. He walked outside and stood, waiting for the door to close behind him, and lit a cigarette. 

About the author 

 Barry Garelick has fiction published in Heimat, Cafe Lit, Ephemeras and Fiction on the Web. His non-fiction pieces have been published in Atlantic, and Education Next. He lives in Morro Bay, California with his wife. 

 

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How Has 1973 Been for You? by Barry Garelick, espresso con panna

 Something new to talk to Dr. Shapiro about: A few days after Nixon ordered the troops home from Viet Nam, Daniel met Bonita at a neighborhood café. Bonita sat at a table with a black man, both in their twenties. She wore lipstick and eye make-up, blue jeans, a thick sweater and an overcoat. He wore horn rimmed glasses and a long, thick, woolen U.S. Air Force overcoat. Daniel was wearing a Marine jacket.

 

            ‘Beautiful overcoat,’ Daniel said, as he passed by their table.

 

            ‘Nice jacket,’ said the man in return. ‘Where'd you get it?’

 

            ‘Salvation Army.’

 

            Daniel's Marine jacket frequently generated questions from the people he worked with regarding when he had served. He hadn’t served and he was finding out that military garb was not quite the hip fashion statement it was when he was in school, now two years ago.

 

            ‘What do you expect people to think when they see a Marine jacket?’ Dr. Shapiro had asked at Daniel's last session. Daniel had become indignant. But now Daniel had proof that Dr. Shapiro was wrong, and not up on current style and culture. It was still hip to wear military clothes – at least among certain people.

.

            Bonita shared an apartment with the black man, Larry. Both were art majors at San Francisco City College and unlike most of the people at the café, and most art majors, they were both outgoing. This was pleasant for Daniel who found that his out-of-school contemporaries kept to themselves. He had mentioned those ‘certain people’—his out-of-school contemporaries—to Dr. Shapiro at a few of their sessions.

 

        As he had explained on several occasions to Dr. Shapiro, Daniel disliked the taciturn crowd who hung out at cafés and for whom the reading material was usually The Diary of Anais Nin—at least for women. And as was usual when Daniel complained about this, Dr. Shapiro did not respond.

 

         Whether Bonita and Larry were just roommates or lovers was something Daniel could not tell. But when Larry left to meet with someone about buying a car, Bonita didn't seem uncomfortable to be sitting with Daniel. ‘Have a seat,’ she said.

 

         Daniel saw the corner of a book poking through a nest of lipstick stained tissues in Bonita's purse which rested between them like a centerpiece on the small white table.

 

         ‘You reading The Diary of Anais Nin?’ She smiled as if he had asked if she slept in the nude. ‘No, why?’

 

        ‘Just practicing being perceptive, and failed. I saw a book in your purse and assumed that's what it was.’

 

        ‘Nope,’ she said, dragging out Carlos Castaneda’s latest book, Journey to Ixtlan.

 

                 ‘Castaneda’s absolutely amazing,’ Daniel said.

 

     ‘He's definitely onto something,’ she said. ‘He's plugged into all these archetypes and myths of the world.’

 

            Bonita took a sip of coffee. ‘I like how drugs allow you to see the world in different ways’ she said. ‘Or maybe as it really is.’ This was looking promising: A woman who drank black coffee and was open about liking drugs at first meeting, and didn’t look upon conversation initiated by men in cafés as a sexual affront.

 

            ‘I used to wonder,’ Daniel said, ‘and now after reading Castaneda I wonder even more, if everyone doesn't go around seeing and hearing their own version of the world. It just appears that everyone agrees we are all seeing and hearing the same things.’

 

            Bonita looked puzzled. ‘That makes no sense,’ she said. She ran her hand through her hair and leaned forward. Her throat bore the remains of a slight scar. He imagined kissing her throat where the scar was.

 

            ‘It's like how do we really know that what we're both looking at now is a cup of coffee?’ Daniel said. ‘You may be seeing a little tarantula and you assume I see the same thing, and I assume you see a cup of coffee. We each are experiencing something different. But we think we’re seeing the same thing.’

 

            ‘That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard,’ she said. He was about to go on, but his theory was getting beyond him, so he stopped. She opened her purse and showed him a joint. ‘Do you want to come up to my apartment and smoke some devil's weed?’ she asked.

 

 

Bonita's apartment was a block away, at a busy corner on Fillmore Street. It was in an old brick building with a marble-floored lobby and an old fashioned elevator  cage. Bonita had turned the one bedroom apartment into two by using the living room as her bedroom. The living room adjoined the kitchen where they now both sat. She inhaled deeply on the joint and passed it to Daniel.

 

            ‘What kind of work do you do?’ she asked.

 

            ‘Technical writer. At an engineering firm.’

 

            ‘You don't seem the technical writer type,’ she said.

 

            ‘I'm not. It's just a job.’

 

            ‘A lot of people I know say that. What do you want to do?’

 

            ‘Be an actor, I guess. I did some acting in college and I liked it.’

 

            ‘So you're a drama major?’

 

            ‘Physics.’

 

            ‘How'd you end up interested in acting?’

 

            He shrugged. ‘By the time I figured out that I liked acting more than physics it was too late, so I completed my major in physics.’

 

            His last words about physics rang in his ears as if it were the lyrics to a strange song. Their conversation became detached in a pleasant sort of way. He felt he could talk about anything, and so he found himself talking about recently giving blood as part of a drive they had at work.

 

            ‘I’ve never given blood,’ she said.

 

            ‘Not my favorite thing to do,’ he said. ‘I'm not fond of lying on my back looking at a mobile of Babar elephants. I don't like having holes poked in my veins.’

 

            A brief silence followed that he felt compelled to fill. ‘I'm afraid of holes,’ he added.

 

            She leaned forward, elbows on the table and head in her hands. ‘You're afraid of holes?’ she said and smiled.

           

 

‘I never should have said I was afraid of holes,’ he said at his next session with Dr. Shapiro. ‘It's like admitting that I was afraid of her.’

 

            ‘I don't know,’ Dr. Shapiro said, in a rare instance of disclosure. ‘She was probably tickled pink that you were interested in her vagina.’

 

            ‘How do you get that?’

 

            Dr. Shapiro hid a smile behind his hand.

 

            ‘I don't see that I said I was interested in her vagina. If anything, I was admitting I was afraid of it. I may as well have said ‘women frighten me’.’

 

            ‘Did she act like she thought you were afraid of her?’

 

            ‘No.’

 

            ‘What happened after that?’

 

            ‘We talked, I guess. We were getting pretty stoned. We ended up talking about the early Mad Magazines. You know, when it was a comic book?’ Daniel assumed that Dr. Shapiro was as familiar with the early Mads as he was with vaginal imagery.

 

            ‘She left the room to look for this old Mad paperback she had, and while she was gone I got a good look at this poster that she had hanging over the kitchen table. It was a girl who was topless, wearing blue jeans, with her hand underneath in the crotch area – a tough girl expression on her face.’

 

          ‘That would be intimidating,’ Dr. Shapiro said. 

            Daniel was silent.

          ‘What are you thinking?’ Dr. Shapiro asked.

 

            ‘I guess it was. Intimidating, I mean. I left shortly after, kind of angry that I didn't at least try to go to bed with her.’

 

            ‘Most women don't like to have sex right away,’ Dr. Shapiro said. They were both silent, and then Dr. Shapiro said it was time to go. Mental note to himself about next session: Begin with the artwork in Bonita's bedroom--a watercolor of a face with a white mime mask, eyes brimmed with tears running down each cheek in a very straight line. ‘I did that after I saw the movie Performance,’ she had told him when he looked at it.

 

 

He had visited her a few more times after that. They would get stoned, talk about Castaneda, or Jung and archetypes. Her roommate Larry was never there and though the possibility for sex would present itself, he would feel he had to leave.

 

            On one visit he told her about a dream he had about a spider. A bicycle wheel rotated in the middle of a swimming pool and there, in the hub of the wheel was a very large bright, orange spider. He couldn’t move, and remained staring at it, at first frightened and then finding it beautiful.

 

            ‘I'm very excited about this dream,’ he said. ‘I think it’s an archetype.’

 

            ‘It's a great dream,’ Bonita said. ‘I wish I could have a dream like that.’

 

            They sat once more sharing a joint in the kitchen, the poster of the topless woman looming over them. ‘I have dreams sometimes where I'm crying,’ Bonita said. ‘It's such a deep type of crying, from way inside me, the deepest crying I've ever done. I've never felt such sadness in real life; I only feel it in dreams.’

 

            The conversation moved to drugs and Bonita told Daniel about a Quaalude party that her friends at school were having at the end of the week.

 

            ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘I've never done Quaaludes.’

 

            ‘They're nice. Not as good as methadone, but pretty good.’

 

            ‘Methadone? Were you addicted to heroin?’

 

            ‘No; I did it once with some guy. It's a lot stronger than heroin, you know. They get you off heroin by hooking you on methadone, then getting you off that, gradually. You get so relaxed you have to remind yourself to breathe.’

 

            She stretched her arms out in front of her, like a cat and then pointed her finger at him. ‘Stay right there,’ she said. ‘Don't go away.’ She ran into her room and emerged with a basketball, which she bounced on the floor, the hollow, ringing sound filling the room. ‘Whattya say?’ she said. ‘Wanna play?’

 

            A few minutes later they were at a multi-level park which Bonita called the ‘ziggurat’. At the top level were tennis courts and a small basketball area in which they played one-on-one. Either Bonita was good, or Daniel was bad; it was hard for him to tell. Afterward, they sat on a bench, a mercury vapor lamp behind them turning their faces pale and their lips purple.

 

            ‘I used to play basketball with my brother's friends,’ Bonita said.

 

            ‘That's the problem, then. My brother didn't play basketball, so I didn't get to play with his friends.’

 

            This tickled Bonita and she laughed – a whole-hearted laugh that shed all pose. She hugged her ribs as she laughed and at the end said ‘That's wonderful’ to no one in particular.

 

            They sat with the basketball between them. A breeze came up, blowing the powerful smell of magnolias toward them. ‘What a fragrance,’ Bonita said. Her lips had the same look of a girl Daniel knew at school when the opportunity had come to kiss her. He let the opportunity with Bonita pass, however, and he walked Bonita home.

 

 

           ‘Why didn't you kiss her?’ Dr. Shapiro asked at their next session.

 

            ‘I don't know.’ He looked at the Miro poster behind Dr. Shapiro. When the silence became unbearable, Daniel started speaking. ‘I’m afraid that if I get involved I’ll get clingy and possessive.’

 

            ‘Why do you think you’ll be possessive?’

 

            ‘It’s happened before,’ he said. Daniel said nothing more, and the two of them were quiet.

 

            ‘She might be getting tired of you not making a move.’

 

            ‘What do you mean?’

 

            Dr. Shapiro responded with his usual silence, and then announced that they were out of time. ‘Let’s talk about your fear of possessiveness next time. In the meantime, I don't recommend you go to any Quaalude parties.’

 

            A few days later Daniel called Bonita and asked if he could come by. ‘Yeah, OK,’ she said, in a spacy voice.

 

            Across from her apartment, a young man who Daniel had seen on previous visits, staggered in the alley behind the donut shop on the corner. He saw Daniel and nodded toward him as if the two were old friends. According to Bonita, the young man was a junkie. She had talked to him once in the donut shop. ‘He was kind of a creep,’ she had said. ‘I went there a few weeks later, and he was there. He sees me and asks ‘How come you don't come by here anymore?’ ’

 

            At Bonita’s apartment, he knocked on the door; receiving no response, he walked in. All the lights were on in the apartment; he could see into Bonita's bedroom where she was sprawled on the bed.    

         ‘Hey, Daniel, how're ya doin'?’ she said when he walked into the room.

        

          ‘You all right?’ he asked.

 

            ‘Yeah, I'm OK,’ she mumbled.

 

            ‘What are you on?’

 

            ‘I'm all right.’

 

            He knelt beside her bed. ‘So, Daniel,’ she said. She tried to point a finger in his direction, but could barely lift her arm. ‘How has 1973 been for you; does it look like a good year?’

 

            She seemed to be focusing on a faraway object; her eyelids became heavy, then closed, and her breathing became deep and regular. He bent over her and looked at each of her arms to see if there were any tracks, as if it were something his parents might have taught him. He saw no evidence of needle marks and decided she was probably on Quaaludes. Perhaps tonight was the night of the Quaalude party she had talked about.

 

            Daniel walked over to the window. The street was empty except for the young man stationed at the donut shop, now looking up at Bonita's window. The two saw each other, but neither acknowledged each other's stare. The young man knew where Bonita's apartment was. He probably stared at her window every night, Daniel thought.

 

            He looked at Bonita once more before pulling down the window shade, turning off the light in her bedroom, and leaving the apartment.

 

 

All the next day he thought about Bonita, how she might possibly have died from a drug overdose. He called her number several times but there was no answer until in the early evening Larry answered and said that Bonita was out. ‘I'll call back,’ Daniel said and realized that this was the first time Larry had ever been home when he called.

 

            He wouldn’t see Dr. Shapiro again until the end of the week. He took the next two days off, calling in sick each day. On the first day, he went to City College; San Francisco State the next. Both days he wandered around the campuses, the thought of going back to school crossing his mind.

           

            He thought about Bonita's strange question about 1973, wondering what meaning her question could possibly have had. It made little sense given that it was still only February. In fact, he didn’t think it was going all that well. He was having doubts about the philosophy that what you wanted to do in life was what mattered. Not everyone was an artist; not everyone was a genius even though it seemed that most of the people his age were one or the other.

 

            Calling in sick for one day almost always was a sign of playing hooky; two days in a row made it seem legitimate. His boss asked him how he was feeling when he came back, and others seemed concerned as well. He told them he was fine and went about his work without saying very much to anyone.

 

            At the end of the day, he took the bus to Mt. Zion Hospital where Dr. Shapiro was a resident psychiatrist. Daniel was silent for five minutes and then began talking about his last visit to Bonita's apartment, her lying on the bed, how he thought she had died, his visits to the schools, and then was silent. After several minutes Daniel spoke again. ‘I think it's hopeless to get anything going with Bonita.’

 

            Dr. Shapiro again said nothing, and Daniel was sure that he would eventually ask what Daniel was thinking about. Instead, he surprised Daniel by talking. ‘I think you've been assessing what you want to do,’ he said. ‘Perhaps visiting those schools was a way to revisit what you've left and where you want to go,’ Dr. Shapiro continued. ‘The fact that you thought Bonita was dead might even point to you making a break with your past.’

 

            This assessment seemed mundane and obvious; the mark of a resident trying to be the real thing, Daniel thought. He had expressed those thoughts to him in the past, but Daniel decided to keep those thoughts to himself this time, instead savoring the rare occasion of a pronouncement. This must be the reward for being honest, for question­ing his life, for avoiding people who did drugs, for conforming to the norm. Dr. Shapiro wasn't like Castaneda’s guru Don Juan, but this was the best Daniel could do.

 

            ‘I'm sure this is very painful,’ Dr. Shapiro said. Daniel knew this to be true and felt like crying. More words followed, all of them obvious, including ‘plenty of other fish in the sea’. He could have gotten such advice from his father, for God's sake. But he could see that Dr. Shapiro meant well.

 

            There was still much ground to cover, Daniel knew. His difficulty adjusting to life outside of school, why he felt sexually insecure, why he felt like he didn't fit in. And of course, the inevitable confrontation about the seriousness of his half-hearted pursuit of an acting career was bound to come up soon. But not too soon. Maybe in a year. Or maybe never. There was time.

 

About the author

 

Barry Garelick has written non-fiction pieces that have been published in Atlantic, and Education Next. His fiction has appeared in The Globe Review, Cafe Lit and Fiction on the Web. He lives in Morro Bay, California with his wife. 

 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)