This blog presents a series of short stories, listed below in reverse chronological order.


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I am an Oklahoma academic with an interest in creative writing.

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

37. The Return of the Garden Rapist

 Later that Saturday evening as Thad and I got ready to go eat, there was an aggressive knock at the front door.
Looking to him inquisitively, I went and opened it and then and there almost shrieked: As I live and breathe it was the Garden Rapist, standing there on the front porch looking just crazy as a loon with her giant gleaming gardening fork, luridly abnormal ponytails, and distressingly snug mom jeans.  
“Remember me!” she said, her Latoya Jackson eyes spinning around in their sockets as if on individual gyroscopes.  
“Oh! Yes. Hello.” I glance down to make sure the screen door was locked. It was: that would surely protect me from her attack.
“I was just driving by,” she began, “And I thought I would stop by and see if you wanted to do another flower exchange, you know?  I got a whole bucket of my irises out in my truck, and I brought my fork.” She brandished it and laughed like a deranged imbecile. “So what do you say, Michael?”
“No!” I just blurted out, having learned my lesson with her last time. But then afraid she might stab me, softened it with, “But thank you. We’re about to go to dinner, so now is not a good time.”
She narrowed her eyes, “Then when would be a good time? I can come back. The flowers I brought are real pretty. Just come on out and look at them. Come on out. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“No…no thank you.” I shook my head. “We are really busy right now, just really busy lately.”
“But, I mean, I can come back right? You did say I could. I gave you all of those pretty irises before. I thought we had a deal.” She had not moved her body since I opened the door; she had been motionless except for waves of that big fork to punctuate her sentences. And now she was just speaking flat crazy.
I took a step back and deepened my voice slightly, “You know, I don’t think I ever said that. I was fine with the one exchange we did last summer.”
“But you did say it, Michael. You did.” Her eyes flared up like wild fires.  
I was truly afraid of this small woman, as you could tell there was something unholy creeping deep inside her.
“I’m really sorry but I have to go,” I said with a forced smile. “Thanks for stopping by, and you take care now.”
As I started to shut the door she did not move one bit. Our eyes locked and her look was a murderous one, like she wanted to cut me and cut my flesh and lap up all of my blood till it was gone.
The door lock clicked. Through the stained glass window on the door, her shadow was clearly visible to me, still unmoving. 
I stayed perfect still, waiting- praying- for her to leave.
“Who was that?” Thad said walking through the room.
I jumped so high I almost fell over, and turned to hiss, “Shhhh….”
When I looked back the shadow was gone. I had not heard her leave. I took a step toward the living room window and pulled back the lace curtains: no one was out there, not even her car. How could she have gotten off the porch and driven away so quickly? Maybe she just slipped around the corner of the house? Was she hiding on the other side of the window, just out of view?
“What the Hell are you doing?” Thad snapped from behind me, and I again almost jumped out of my skin.
“Quit doing that!” I said in a loud whisper, running my hands over my bald head.  
“Why are you whispering?”
“It was her,” I said. 
“Her, who?”
“The Garden Rapist.” I mouthed.
His eyes widened and he whispered, “Oh! Is she gone?”
“I don’t know…I don’t know.”
We both looked out the window wide-eyed.

After we searched the porch and backyard and found nothing, Thad tried to convince me she had been a ghost, and that I actually had been dead the whole time since the beginning of the movie.  I did not think that was funny, but he sure did. 

          Thirty minutes later, as we sat down to dinner at the Chinese restaurant, I pulled out my list.
          “What’s that?” he asked, suspiciously.
          “It’s the list for Gaga.”
          “Jesus Christ,” he sighed. Can I at least get some food first?”
          “Well, yes of course.” I said, crossing ‘EAT DINNER’ off of the top of the chronological list.

I waited in somewhat silence until he was about half-way through his plate of noodles and sushi before I pulled my list back out. He hated my list-keeping, but it was necessary for me.
          “So I booked us a hotel room downtown, right near where the concert is going on. I’ll take care of the hotel since you got the ticket.”
          “Good,” he smiled.
          “The concert is at 8 PM, so why not leave here at 1PM? That would put us getting to Tulsa at 3 PM, we can settle into our room, have dinner somewhere, walk around downtown, and then be at the concert just before eight, okay?” 
          I looked at him and he said nothing, not even looking up at me.

The problem we had was that I required multiple levels of planning to stay calm, especially when leaving town, yet planning had the exact opposite effect on Thad: it just tripled his nerves.  He would rather just sprint out of town with not a plan in the world, and be perfectly fine with that; whereas that would literally just kill me flat dead on the spot. But where he could not plan to save his life, I was perfectly capable of spontaneity, as long as it was planned well in advance. Suffice to say, we did not travel well together. 

          “Is that okay?” I repeated louder.
          He rolled his eyes and banged his fork down. “Michael, I want to go to this concert with you, but I don’t want you to make it into this big ‘thing,’ like you do with everything. I don’t want things to be so analyzed and planned that we can’t have fun. We’re just going to Tulsa for the night, for the concert. It’ll be okay. Please let it be okay.”
          “It will,” I lied. I was so tied in knots waiting for my lab results that I could hardly focus. Putting all of my attention on Gaga had really helped, and I had actually calmed some. There was no way that I was going to lessen that organizational hold on this concert, at least not until I got clean bill of health. Surely I would get the results back before the concert. But I had ceased sharing these feelings with him, as he told me I was being ridiculous.  
          We were silent for a minute as we ate.
          Then I just could not hold it in any longer, “Well, what do you want to do the day after the concert up in Tulsa?”
He stopped eating and frowned. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“Well,” I began as animated as I could to try and engage him, “I thought the
next day we could go to brunch at the Philbrook Museum, and sit there and overlook the gardens and eat. Wouldn’t that be nice?”  
          “Yeah,” he softened, “It would be. That sounds great.”
          And with that we both melded into talking about the trip and how fabulous it was going to be, and how exciting the concert would be and what souvenirs we wanted to buy, and how excited we were to see Gaga, and for that meal I actually quit thinking about my impending test results and the fact that I might actually be dying of, oh, I don’t know, Bell’s Palsy.

          Back at the house after dinner, as I fumbling with the key at the door, Thad whispered, “Look…”
          I turned to see a car slowly driving by the house. The driver was in the shadows at first, but then I made out a woman…in Jackie O glasses… and a head scarf…the Garden Rapist, and she was staring right at us!  
          “Get in! get it!” he screamed.
          And we ran inside like terrified school children to frantically lock all of the doors, shaken to the core.   
          “She’s evil, you know,” Thad whispered.
          “I know. I know.” I said, peering out of the front window, shaking.  
          She again was nowhere to be seen.



38. The Case of the Missing Terra Cotta Chicken Planter Full of Clover

          The next morning I woke gloriously next to Thad, feeling like the beginning of a coffee commercial. I had missed having him there, missed listening to him breath, missed smelling his smell, even though it had only been a week.  
          I got up and started breakfast. It was lovely April morning, sunny but not too hot.
          After my oatmeal I went to get the Sunday Paper, which I still read in bed like a proper American. As I walked back up the big porch steps, I noticed something askew: some of the porch furniture had been moved, but nothing appeared missing. I scanned the porch up one side and down the other, standing rigid, eyes darting.
Living in a college neighborhood I immediately assumed it was some of the drunk students that lived up and down the street, as about once a year during some random big party things would go missing from my porch, or I would find car tracks rolled through my flower gardens. As I surveyed, something seemed strange, gone; but I could not put my finger on it.
          And then like in one of those horror movie scenes where it’s a tight close up of the hero but then the camera pulls back at like a thousand miles an hour, I realized my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover was gone! It had sat out on the far porch pier, like a lighthouse on a promontory. But now the spot lay bare, empty. I scanned around to make sure it just hadn’t been knocked off or just moved, but alas, no.
In my bathrobe, my eyes tightened. It appeared the only thing missing.     
          Those drunken bastard kids!

          Stomping back into the darkened bedroom to dress, Thad mumbled a “Morning.”
          “Yeah…” I said, fumbling in the dark.
          “What’s up?” he said, rearranging the pillows. He slept a lot. I mean a lot, even for a fairytale princess.
“We’ve been burgled,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Pinched, pilfered, popped, robbed. Someone has stolen my terra cotta chicken planter full of clover! And I loved that chicken!”
“From the porch?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. It was probably the Garden Rapist, mad you wouldn’t let her have any more irises.” He yawned, rolling over. “Can I go back to sleep now?”
“Sure, sure, whatever.”  
And standing there in the dark, the stark horrible ponytailed reality came screaming to me and I knew he was right; it made perfect sense! And I knew what I must do.  

Within five minutes I was on the phone with the police.
“And what was taken, sir?” the receptionist said with audible boredom in her voice.
“A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover.”
“A what?” She repeated.
“A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. I’ve had it for fifteen years. It was very sentimental. It was quite big, about the size of a 1980’s microwave, and probably weighed a good 30 pounds. It was worth about $75 or more. It was swiped from my front porch. I mean, I just don’t want to live in a neighborhood where we can’t have nice things out on our porches…”
“So it’s a potted plant? You had a potted plant stolen?”
“Yes, but a very large, old potted plant.”
“So an old potted plant. And it looked like a chicken?” she repeated.
“Yes. A terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I think I know who took it.”
“Oh, good,” she said dryly. “I’ll send a squad car out there in a minute to get your report.”

I went back into the darken bedroom.
From under the covers Thad mumbled, “Please God tell me I didn’t I just hear you talking to the police.”
“Well, yes,” I said justly, head out and up like a knight of yore. “You are totally right. That heathen woman took it!”
“Oh good,” he rolled over.
“It’s totally the Garden Rapist. She took it, mad that I wouldn’t let her have  any more flowers.”
Thad folded the covers down to show his face, “So you called the police over a missing planter?”
“Yes! I will not be intimidated by her and her stupid gardening fork. I mean, how dare her come back over here and sneak up on the porch in the middle of the night and take the nicest pot out there. That is trespassing! We even saw her scoping out the house late last night.”
“It was 8 PM.”
“Well, that’s late for us now.”
“True,” He sighed. “Are the police on their way?”   
“Yes, and I will need to find an appropriately civic-minded outfit to greet them in.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” he sighed, covering his head as I flipped the overhead bedroom light on.

As I dressed, I felt proud for having the courage to call the police, for putting this act of thievery on record in case it happened again, or she came back and threatened us. But I also, secretly, wondered if I was acting rashly because of my nerves. I was tense about leaving tomorrow for Gaga and doubly still crazy anxious about getting my stupid lab results back. Maybe I shouldn’t have called the police, and just let it go…it was just a potted plant…and an old one I had gotten for free at that…but it was too late to think like that now: the police were on their way.

The cop was large and bald with a long Polish name and a big gun. We stood in the living room, me now in a respectable civic-minded collared shirt and khaki shorts ensem.
“So all they took was the chicken pot?” he asked.
“Yes, the terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I think I know who did it,” I said in my deep, heterosexual voice.
“Who?” he asked, looking up from his notepad.
“Well, we call her…” I stopped. “Well, I guess that’s not important. But it’s this crazy woman who came by a while back and wanted to do an iris exchange-those are flowers.”
“Yes,” he said, “I am aware what irises are.”
“Okay, sorry,” I smiled, wondering if he had little sugar in his britches. “She seemed kinda nuts. But then she came back last evening as we were on our way out and she wanted to do another flower exchange. And I told her no, and she looked very mad when she left. And then we saw her driving by after we got back from dinner, so I think she did it to get even with me.”
“And what is this woman’s name?” the policeman asked.
“Angelique, but I don’t know her last name.” I smiled weakly, suddenly realizing the flaw in my great story: I knew next to nothing about her.
“Oh,” he said with a frown. “Do you know anything else about her?”
“Not really…” I said, looking down, suddenly very embarrassed.
Thad walked back into the room and asked, “Who you talking about? The Garden Rapist?”
The Policemen looked at me and I blushed and said, “Yes, she never told us her last name did she?”
“No,” Thad said, “but remember she said she works at the dairy over on Porter. You could probably find her there.”
The Policeman looked back to me and I felt a rush of stupidity: I had called them to report a missing old porch plant and I was fingering a culprit I had no solid information on.  
“I guess that’s not very helpful,” I said with a weak smile.
“No. No, it’s not, ” the policeman said shutting his notebook.
“Well, you could go by the dairy.” Thad said, “I mean how many garden-crazy, pig-tailed, wall-eyed women named Angelique do you think they got working there?” He smiled like he had been a very helpful witness on CSI New York and walked out of the room.
 “I’ll see what I can do with this information.” The policeman said running a hand over giant square jaw. “If this woman that you think stole your pot comes back, I would not engage her. I recommend putting your name on the bottom of all of your outdoor items, and bringing in anything that’s sentimental or valuable to you. Outdoor decorations often walk off, especially in a college town. Is there anything else?”
“No, and thank you for your time.” 
 “No problem, and have a nice day.”
We shook hands. He had very big hands. 
“Thanks!” Thad called over the TV from the Den. I distinctively head the Lw & Order “Dum Dum.”
As I watched the policeman drive off, Thad came back into the room.
“Does he think he can get it back?
          “Probably not,” I said. “I didn’t even think about the fact that we don’t even know her last name.”
“Manson?” he smiled.
“Probably! So now I’m out one terra cotta chicken planter full of clover. And I really liked it. I had had it since you and I lived together over on Park Street in 1995.” I sat down. “It’s just weird to know she stalked out the house and then came up on the porch while we were asleep and took it. I mean it’s creepy. Just flat creepy.”
“Well, don’t let it bother you. It’s over now.” 
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. I can replace it.”
And with that I started to digest the crime and make myself let go of my anger and fear over the act of thievery. But as I did the specter of my impending test results again reemerged its vile, poxy head.  


39. The Results are In

          “But do you know when they might be e-mailed to me?” I asked, tapping a pencil to the desk in my Den, wanting a cigarette. “The man in the lab said ‘within a week’ but I didn’t know if that meant a five day work week, or a seven day week?”
          “Hopefully they’ll go out today,” the Nurse on the other end of the phone said, “But maybe tomorrow. Your appointment was only five days ago, sir.”
          “Yes, yes, I know. And thank you for working with me. It’s just that I’m leaving on a trip later today, and I was hoping I would know by now, you know, to ease my mind.”
          “I’ll see what I can do,” the nurse said, sort of sounding like she meant it. “Just keep checking your e-mail.”
          “Okay, thanks.”  

          It was Monday and we were leaving for the Lady Gaga concert in Tulsa in four hours.  Thad was still asleep, having spent the night again, in preparation for the trip. I had not slept much, worrying about the stupid Garden Rapist, wondering if she was going o come back and kill us in our sleep, and having stress dreams over my lab results. In the latest one I found little pools of blood all over the house, and at first I thought Charlotte Bronte was bleeding, but then I realized there were too many of them to be from her, that she didn’t have that much blood in her, as they were everywhere, all over the floor…hundreds of tiny blood pools.
          I went to check my e-mail again. Work crap, Shakespeare listserv crap, students complaining about grades, but nothing from the doctor.
          So I went back to packing for the trip.

Everything was laid out and labeled on the dining room table. I had five outfits selected for the next 24 hours: One for driving, one for hotel lounging, one for dinner, one fabulous one for the concert (with appropriately fantabulous   sunglasses), and one for the formal brunch tomorrow and the drive back.  Each had its own accessories, jewelry, hat, and shoes. And surrounding the clothes was everything else that was necessary for me to take to feel calm: bags of toiletries, bags of medicines, maps,  cameras, power cords, batteries, snacks for the drive, and on and on, just for one night. And looking at all of this crap, I just felt sick.
          The OCD liked to stay close to home, really close to home, for it was safest at home. Now I had worked on it, and could travel, in fact had been traveling the world for more than a decade now, but it was difficult on me. Or to be exact, the leaving was the difficult part. Once I got out, I was fine. So to ease that leaving process, I used organization as the balm. If everything was ordered, leaving was easier; never easy, but easier.
          I looked over to the part of the pile that Thad had contributed: 2 shirts and a rumpled pair of chambray shorts in a Wal-Mart bag. Yup, that was it. Oh, and a container of glitter for the concert. That was his idea of packing.
          Good lord how different we were. 

          I went back to my computer to check my e-mail and wait: still nothing.     

          Thad got up around 10, so it was safe for me to start dragging the big luggage out of the bedroom and really get to the orgy of packing. He watched TV for a while and then announced “I have to go get...something…from my apartment,” which was this week’s recent unsubtle code for going home to sit and smoke.
          “Yeah, sure.” I just wished he would or wouldn’t smoke instead of this weird grey dance he was doing.  
          As the front door shut, I heard my laptop e-mail alert binged.
With hesitant hands I checked, as I had all morning. I just wanted to be done with this waiting, have it over and know one way or the next. I opened it up and  there it was, from Dr. Deeds.
          And my heart kinda stopped. This was it. This would decide my fate; this one stupid, puny e-mail. I didn’t think I was dying, but the OCD sure the Hell did, so I just needed an answer so I could either go on with my life or start weaving my patch for the AIDS quilt.  
          I clicked it open….blah, blah Cholesterol good...blah, blah, no hepatitis… blah, blah, no STDs…blah, blah, and no HIV.
          And that was that.
          I was alive. And healthy. 
          And suddenly I was awash with joy and freedom and music and birds and old people kissing and fireworks and life and clapping and clapping and more clapping. I wasn’t dying! I wasn’t dying! And as much as the OCD tried to find a way around it, this was only good news: A complete clean bill of health for the first time in years! And the OCD, for just a mite, was gloriously, gloriously vanquished.  
          Grabbing the phone, I called Thad to tell him and he, “Yeah! I’m so happy for you! I knew you were fine, you big worrying girl.”
          “I know! I’m just so glad the waiting is over! And I always knew I was fine, but God damn it, it’s nice to have it confirmed by e-mail.”
          “Good for you, honey,” he said as I heard him trying to quietly light a cigarette from his end.
          Letting him go, I got up I danced around the room with such life and zip and pop that Charlotte ran for her life, and I felt alive. Alive.   

          By 1:30 we were on the road, blaring Lady Gaga, talking about Lady Gaga, and laughing about how crazy Lady Gaga was. It was great. I was totally looking forward to the concert, and thrilled that he and I were getting to go, and that he had even bought my ticket. It was a beautiful day, and now-finally- I had the mood to match.

          Merging on to the Turnpike past Oklahoma City to head up to Tulsa, I said, “You know I can’t believe I was so nervous about going to the Doctor. I mean, it was such a minor thing –a trifle really- and I feel so good now.”
          “Good,” he said.
          “I mean so good,” I continued. “Like better than I have in years. Like I should have just gone years ago. I mean to have a clean bill of health is just so nice.”
          “That’s great,” Thad said with less enthusiasm than I expected.
          “What?” I asked.
          “Nothing,” he said flipping through his Vogue. He always read magazines on car trips, as driving made him nervous, and pictures of skinny models in haute couture apparently seemed to help. 
          “I mean I’m just so psyched!” I laughed.
          He flopped his magazine down. “Yeah, I know. It’s all you’ve talked about. Yeah, you’re alive!” he said sarcastically. “What did you expect? You’re fine, it’s great. Move on.”   
          “Spoil sport,” I muttered, frowning. “You just hate it when the attention is not on you…” and as I said it I knew I had gone too far, as I had…said…the… truth.
          “Shut-up!” he snapped.
          “Sorry, sorry,” I backtracked, not wanting to be the one who ‘ruined the trip.’    
          We sat in silence, he moodily looking out the window, magazine closed.
          A few minutes later I said, “Do you think she’ll be wearing the meat dress?” to try and goad him back into conversation.
          He was silent.
          “Maybe with a ham hat,” I continued, “And live hamsters as clogs.”
          He giggled and I knew I had him back.

          We drove on, me so happy to be alive even though Thad did not seem to particularly care.

40. Vertigaga

          The new Tulsa arena was one of those huge spiraling Frank Geary-like tuna can buildings, but done by a cheaper architect. Lit with blue neon steaks, the interior lobbies and hallways and restaurants and offices and bars and souvenir stands spread out in a myriad labyrinth of ramps and escalators and secret doors heading off in all ways before us. And pulsating within every inch of this mini-city was the oddest sorts of people you could ever imagine.
          Before we had even entered the arena I had seen Lady Gaga twice outside: there were two of her  kneeling and genuflecting outside a tour bus also painted with a giant bas-relief of her Gagaian head. The bowers, one of whom I think was a man, appeared to be paying homage to the Gaga bus as if it was Mecca.  Then once inside the arena I saw her three to four hundred more times. Almost every other girl, and many of the boys, were dressed like Gaga, all dancing and snapping pictures with their cell phone and high-fiving each other in a Technicolor celebratory riot.
 Every look from every one of her videos was represented, every still photo and poster, and in every outfit you had ever seen her in on the TV, news report, talk show, or award show: lobster hat, bubble dress, meat dress, Alexander McQueen Godzilla shoes, girls and boys splashed in gallons of fake blood and strawberry red sequins. But amid the costumed perversity, there was laughter and hugging and kissing and an air of pure unadulterated acceptance: the Little Monsters were out in fervent force.      
          And we just stood there, two forty year old gay guys in semi-comfortable outfits to hide our guts, mouths open, blindingly impressed by the sprawl of the arena and the jubilant buoyancy of her preening, high-heeled, eyebrow plucked devotees.  
          “It’s like the Emerald City,” Thad gasped.
          “From The Wiz…,” I added.  
          Still having not even seen the arena proper, we stood in the outer halls trying to find our assigned entrance. We had already gone up three levels and still had not found it. Thad stopped a passing usher and held up his ticket.
          “Where are these?” Thad asked.
          The old black man peered at the ticket and then whistled through his teeth, “Them way up. Take that last escalator and go on up.”
          “Thanks!” Thad smiled. He had tried to apply glitter in what he called a ‘Rock Video Way,’ but with his raspberry streak he had only seemed to accomplish a ‘fourth-grade extra from a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream’ look.
          “Way up huh?” I said looking down the three escalators we had already taken. “Where did Bettina get the tickets?” We were already about four stories up, and I wouldn’t say the air was thinner, but my breathing was getting slightly strained.     
          “Internet.” Thad said with a shrug, which sent his glitter cascading. “She said she got some of the last seats they had, and that they’re way up.”
          I frowned, hoping we’d at least have a good view.
          We took the final escalator up and roamed until we found our curtained entrance. It was guarded by a young usher allowing access to a line of mutating people, which we joined.   
          “This is so exciting!” Thad said when he reached the usher, handing him his ticket.
          The usher looked it over and whistled through his teeth, “In and to the right and all the way at the top. You’re one row from the roof.”  
          “Thanks!” Thad said as the man pulled the curtain back: A long thin hall full of people stretched before us. We entered and started walking in toward the arena, the roar of the crowd beginning to beat in our ears, the lights flashing ahead of us. The pounding excitement was lavish.
As we walked, the floor began to shake with the rage of the interior crowd. I leaned into Thad, “Why do they keep doing that whistle thing when they see our tickets?”
          “Because of that,” Thad said with a point as we exited the hall into the arena.
          And the breath just left my body. We had exited out onto a tiny balcony about five thousand fucking feet up in the air, surrounded by fifteen thousand screaming writhing freaks. I had to squint to even see the stage, it so, so far below: It was just a tiny smidgen in the far, far distance, as if it was a fleeting image in a dream, like the nighttime sighting of a sprinting chupacabra.
But what was suddenly real was the instantaneous vertigo that entered through my toes with a jagged burst, crawled up my jiggly- oh-so-jiggly legs, and exploded into my wiggling gut with the feeling of a thousand terrified June bugs winging for freedom.    
          “This is kinda high,” Thad said making exaggeratedly movements that I knew would sure would lead him to cascade down to his doom ten thousand feet below.      
Without thinking I stumbled backwards and gripped the wall behind me, pressing my body into it, terrified, as the ground began to swung up one way and then back the next, up one way, and back the next. I knew I had a fear of heights-this had happened a number of times before-Towers in Paris, Needles in Seattle, Duomos in Milan-I just had no idea we would be perched so precariously high that vertigo would even be a factor at a stupid concert! People pushed by me and I held onto the wall, just flat shaking with fear.  
          Thad, not having the same reaction as me at all, swiveled to point up, “And I guess our seats are way up there.”
          It went up even higher? Oh good God!
          In white, white fear I rotated my head without moving my body, and yes the  tiny perch we presently stood on was not even close to the top of the arena. From our scandalously delicate position an almost vertical stairway lead up and up and up, and at the very top of this monstrously mammothly, gargantuanly huge arena, just one row from the frickin’ roof, you could barely make our two lone seats.
          “Here we go!” Thad said, turning to sprint up the stairs.
          And I looked back down at the stage, oh so far away, and felt like I was falling to my death. The fear was so great I had no control; all I could think of was flight: to run, to be free, to be back on solid earth, not just dangling up in the sky as people shook around me in all directions, to run to safe Mother Earth.   
          But I had to make a choice. I could demand to leave and we could try to go get better seats, but the concert was completely sold out and had been for months; there would be no more tickets. Or I could suck it up and just make myself do it. I could not ruin Thad’s trip; he had invited me, he had paid. I could not ruin it. I had to just suck it up. I had to. I had to. But all I wanted to do was run.
          As I stood there not moving, two teen dudes pushed past me and my feet got tangled and I almost fell from the balcony, but I grabbed for the wall and held on for dear, sweet life. I did not want to die at a Gaga concert; although it would make a good story for Thad to tell at bars after I was dead, as I was sure he would start drinking again the moment the dirt hit my coffin. I pulled myself back to safety and willed myself not to cry.
          Thad bounded back down to the tiny balcony and snapped, “What? Are you coming?”
          I looked back down at the ground, so far away, and then just made myself suck it up. I had to. There was no other choice. So I nodded a ‘Yes’ and turned to follow him up the stairs.

          The following all kinda runs together in my memory, it was all just so horrible, like a car wreck, house fire, or early childhood abuse. The stairs to our seats could have doubled as a ladder they were so steep, like those Lord of the Rings stairs that led to the top of the mountain thing. But I just climbed them, head down, trying not to vomit.
When we reached the seats, we found that were on the aisle. I sat myself down as quickly as possible, but being on the aisle meant I sat dangling off into the void of nothingness. Sitting there was like being perched on the ledge outside of a two-hundred story building or lounging on that stupid plexy glass deck over the Grand Canyon or just falling to your death.
 A line of huge fat drunk girls sat behind us, bouncing up and down as fat girls often do. Thad tired to make conversation with me, but I was incapable of speech. In fact I realize I had said not a word since we exited the warm canal of safety that deposited us in this huge cruel chasm; speech did not exist here for me. He had finally found something to silence me: eminent falling death.
          Over the next twenty minutes, as I clawed at my seat and tried to keep my eyes closed, we had to get up and down three times to let people into the aisle. The first time I stood, I almost pitched forward , but instead just fell back to grab my seat, hardly giving the people room to get by. And that was the successful try. The second one had me almost falling into a tall dude and sending him tumbling, but he caught himself and pushed me back to safety The third time I just had to crawl into the aisle on all fours to let the people by. Hand to God: Dr. Michael Stiles, Professor and noted international Shakespearian scholar, bowed on all fours not by Lady Gaga, but by gravity, the great equalizer.      
          As I crawled back into my seat, the fat girls behind us guffawing and bouncing happily, I turned to see Thad staring at me.
          “What’s wrong?” he said, with no anger in his voice, just concern.
          I couldn’t speak. Him moving out. The doctor visit. The AIDS. The Garden Rapist. The police and now this. It was just too much too quickly. I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t do it.  I just couldn’t.
          Thad took my hand. “I have never seen you paler or more covered in sweat. Are you okay?”
          I still couldn’t speak, but apparently I could cry a little, as fat tears began bubbling out of the corners of my eyes.
          “Michael, what’s wrong?”
          “I can’t do it,” I whispered, mortified, trying to make myself calm down but only wanting to flee, flee, flee. “It’s too high. I feel sick.”
          “Do we need to go?” He asked again with concern, not anger, which just scared the shit out of me, as if he was being the bigger man, the protector, the savior, how the Hell scary must I look to force him to act so responsibly?
          “No,” I said unconvincingly.
          “Are you sure? Because we can just go. It’s awfully high up here. I had no idea these seats would be this bad. It’s okay if you want to go.”
          I could tell he meant every word he said. He only wanted to protect me, but I could not let this irrational baseless fear beat me.
          “I can do it,” I lied, my teeth chattering, tears continuing to gathering in my eyes. I just hated, hated, hated Lady Gaga at that moment, hated her and hated her meat dress and hated the stupid architects of this terrible building for displaying me in such a splay of weakness.
          From down the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, a giant fat man dressed in a quadruple-XXXX Gaga t-shirt began to stomp up toward us. Even at twenty steps I knew he was heading to our aisle. There was no way he was going to be able to get in without me, no small man myself, completely moving out of the way. I would have to stand freehanded at the top of the stairs, above God and the world below as the fat man maneuvered his giant ass into the row, and all I could see was me falling, falling, falling…
          “I can’t do it!” I cried to Thad, clutching at him. “I am so sorry. I can’t. Let’s go see if we can get better seats, somewhere down there. I just can’t. I’m so sorry…” I looked down and the fat man was still making hard-breathing strides right towards us.
          “It’s fine,” Thad said in a much more adult voice than I thought him capable. “We just need to make sure you’re safe.”   
          “Thank you. Thank you….”
          And shakingly I rose and began to take the long steps back down, one at a time, backwards, eyes closed, holding on to the stair rail as Thad held on to my shoulder. After what seemed like an hour, I reached the tiny balcony and I pushed a number of idiots out of my way to get back down the long hall and back to solid ground outside the arena, Thad right after me.

          We did not get to see the concert. We did not get to see Lady Gaga. We talked to a number of different ushers; there were no more tickets. The only way we would be able to see the concert was sitting in our assigned seats. I tried one more time, just as the opening band went on, but I couldn’t even make it out of the long hall because now the whole place was pitch black inside. I just turned and ran back out, arms out in front of me, like I was running from a Scooby Doo villain. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. And Thad was completely okay with that.
         
          As we walked back to the hotel, he took my hand and I felt privileged to be with a man so strong.