Self-Inflicted

By Dick Hoffman

Stories about a couple living together with different goals, the people behind the foreclosure numbers, a boy's experience of his parents' morning ritual, surviving a school shooting, and recalling first love. Plus poems on related topics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dick Hoffman
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386108429

Dick Hoffman

George Richard (Dick) Hoffman was born in Oklahoma and grew up (or at least older) in Texas except for a couple of years in California, which hardly slowed him down at all. He attended Texas A&M before it became a university. Before it had a creative writing program. Before it discovered women. After A&M, the Army sent him to fight the Battle of New Jersey. When he won that, they sent him to West Germany. Some say that's the main reason the Russians stayed on their side of the Iron Curtain. Others say that's BS. In any case, after he returned to the Dallas area he fought with one hand in the Real Estate Appraisal Wars for 39 years and 10 months, not that he was counting. With the other hand, he wrote poems, stage plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. He’s now writing with both hands. That is, between honey-do's and walking the two mutts, who must remain nameless because they're in the Witness Protection Program.  

Book preview

TO THE SYMPHONY AND BACK

KEVIN switched off the mower with one hand while he wiped the sweat from his brow with the other. He turned to survey the results of his work and admire the other neat lawns along the street. The setting sun turned a few feathery cirrus clouds into gold filigree. In a few weeks the nights and mornings would be cool and he could turn off the central air conditioning and open the windows and save on the electric bill. His eyes teared a little as he felt, almost physically, the beauty in the order of the world. Then he remembered again the dream of last night, and the tears flowed. He would talk to Emily tonight.

Inside, the house was cold on his shirtless chest and he knew it felt that way primarily in contrast to the heat outside, but he also suspected that Emily had lowered the thermostat while he was outside. She was in the shower, belting out Tonight from West Side Story, while Schnoopy the Schnauzer howled accompaniment. Kevin paused to admire her peach-colored form through the fogged glass door, then petted the dog as he retrieved his shaving cream and razor out of the cabinet. Emily was having her period, so there would be no sex tonight. He soaked a facecloth in hot water, wrung it out, and wiped the sweat and bits of grass from his face and neck. Emily turned off the faucet and pulled a towel over the door, still singing. He squirted shaving cream into his right hand. As he applied it to his right cheek, she opened the shower door and stepped out. He watched her through the plate-glass wall mirror as she finished toweling herself. That he had slept with such a body for four years, he knew was a rare privilege. He cursed the two inches of string that dangled between her legs as she bent over to kiss the dog.

Momma's baby sings so pretty, she cooed, then straightened up. What time is it?

He stepped into the bedroom and glanced at the clock radio on the nightstand. Seven-oh-four.

She faced the mirror beside him and styled her hair with the blow-dryer while he shaved. They talked to each other's reflection.

There's going to be a full moon tonight, he said.

Too bad, she teased.

It wasn't that she couldn't have sex during her period, it was just that they had tacitly agreed that it would be sort of a monthly time-out, a week off, a rest, a respite from the anxiety of it all—the will she or won't she, the can he or can't he, the are we doing it too often or not often enough—that lived with them. Every month he made a mild pretense of protest to match her pretense of incapability, but it was a false issue.

He entered the shower stall and turned on the water. With his head under the spray, he heard her talking to him. It was one of her most annoying habits. He turned off the water.

What did you say?

I said what's the program tonight?

Mahler and Copeland, I think.

Oh. Copeland shouldn't be too bad.

He turned the water back on. Emily was brutally honest. He couldn't remember her ever telling even a little white lie, the monthly pretense notwithstanding. When he finished showering, he said, I wish you enjoyed the symphony more.

"I like the ballet better. You get dancing and music at the ballet."

She was also unfailingly logical, without a romantic bone in her body. He hated her for refusing to marry him. If she left him he would kill himself.

He toweled off, applied after-shave and deodorant, then blew-dry and brushed his hair. He would need a haircut in another week. In the bedroom, he pulled on his favorite jockey shorts, blue with white trim. Looking through his shirts, he hesitated between a blue and a white, finally choosing the white because it was right for his gray jacket and trousers. It was right, also, because it matched the white trim on his shorts. The tie he selected was right because it had the blue.

Emily hugged Schnoopy goodbye at the door while Kevin turned out the bathroom light, set the thermostat on eighty, and closed the kitchen cabinet door where she had removed a glass for a drink of water. If she left him he would move to a one-bedroom apartment and save hundreds of dollars a month.

She was beautiful in a black velvet dress, slim and low-cut. She had built, with her husband, the leading property-management company in the state, then divorced him because he neglected her. What a jerk he must have been!  Now she lived off her investments and volunteered her time to a group working with troubled teenagers. Kevin met her at a time-management seminar about a year after her divorce, nine years after his.

He never understood exactly why she agreed to move in with him, a struggling middle-manager. All she ever said was that she was horny and she figured he was safe, a characterization he