Bullies, Tributes & Secrets

By Robert Paul Schmidt

Life is a collection of special moments. This is one of them.
This book is dedicated to readers who loved someone, lost someone
they loved or found the courage to confront a fear-inspiring person or
situation.
With Bullies, Tributes & Secrets, I have written about very personal issues
with the goals of gaining a better understanding of them, furthering my
personal growth and sharing that growth with others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462841080

Robert Paul Schmidt

Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, Robert Paul Schmidt earned his undergraduate degree in English at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Sixteen years later, he earned his master's degree in Literature and Writing at Cal State San Marcos. He lives and works in San Diego. When not writing, he enjoys music, reading, hockey, traveling, gangster movies and good sandwiches. Thanks very much for your interest in these stories. To read more of his work, visit www.robertpaulschmidt.com.

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Copyright © 2010 by Robert Paul Schmidt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

The Duchess of Denim

The Rules

Exeter’s Icarus

The Frog Lover

Nanny and Pop-Pop

The Twelfth of Never

What’s Best For Me

Take Me Home

It All Comes From the Blues

(co-written by Curtis Boyd)

A Better Way to Die

Robert’s Prayer

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Life is a collection of special moments. This is one of them.

This book is dedicated to readers who loved someone, lost someone they loved, or found the courage to confront a fear-inspiring person or situation.

The Duchess of Denim

Above the setting sun, orange sherbet streaks melt into violet darkness. I look west again and again, away from the freeway sloping upward ahead of me, away from the east where the day is being swallowed by blackness. I shift down into fourth gear. The engine in my Ford whines and the entire pick-up truck feels tighter. Stronger. I lean into the accelerator. My climb over the mountains—about fifty miles outside Bakersfield, California—resumes its 75 mph pace.

It’s been a year and a half since I made this trip—a year and a half since I visited Chiara. Sporadic e-mails prevented us from falling completely out of touch. We never talk on the phone.

Tomorrow, I will remind her that I once called her lazy and she called me inhibited. She will say she doesn’t remember.

To my right, tractor trailers make their ascent like weak-kneed grandfathers on concrete steps. The mountains behind the trucks are blisters—cracked earth oozing brown rocky soil tinted with green scrub. Chiara said she used to race through these steep passes at more than 100 mph, when the Tule fog’s thick breath reduced visibility to less than ten feet. She says those were her cocaine days. She described herself as suicidal back then. I describe her as homicidal—but never tell her that. And I never tell her I love her.

On this trip, we won’t share any cocaine—only alcohol. And we won’t smoke. I tried to smoke during my last visit. Sitting together on the living room floor, I watched her pack a wooden mandolin-shaped pipe with dried leaves. She bent the flame from a disposable lighter over the hollowed end, pinched the neck between her full lips, and inhaled deeply. Her drag turned the contents of the pipe’s sound hole into a bittersweet-smelling glow. She described that red-orange pit as a cherry. After another hit, she gave me the pipe.

Following her lead, I placed the neck at my lips and waited for her guidance. She held the flame for me and I inhaled hot smoke. Something, maybe reflex, demanded I stop. I coughed, cleared my throat, and swallowed a few times. I was determined. Let me try this again.

She masked her face with her hands for an instant, leaned forward, and then snapped backward. Her girlish laughter creased the side of her face with a deep dimple. Her black hair coiled over her shoulders. A glint in her burnt-chestnut eyes scratched at my flickering senses.

Taking the lighter, I tried again with the same result.

Feel anything? she asked.

She was an arm’s length away, just beyond my finger tips. I turned my palms up and tightened my fingers into fists. I shook my head and shrugged.

She took the pipe and set it on a coffee table. She pinched more leaves from a red plastic canister that looked like a 35 mm film case. There was a Felix the Cat sticker on the lid. She showed me again.

Frustrated and embarrassed, I pushed it away when she offered. I tried to dismiss my failure. That ain’t for me.

Now, I pull on my headlights and read a road sign. Bakersfield—23 miles.

When Chiara makes breakfast for us tomorrow morning, she will bring honey to the table for my tea. That simple act will touch my heart because tonight when we stop at a local coffeehouse, I will tell her I prefer it instead of sugar.

Tomorrow, we will chew toasted bagels frosted with cream cheese. She will reminisce about grade school delays and cancellations caused by the region’s fickle fog.

Just like the snow days we used to have, I will share, referring to the winters I spent growing up near Philadelphia.

I would hate to shovel snow, she will say. Warm up the car, clean off your windshield in the morning. She will shake her head.

Builds character.

Waste of time, she will say.

I will laugh.

I glance at the speedometer needle, quivering near eighty, and reflect on Chiara’s ability to make me laugh—and think.

Months ago, she sent me O Me! O Life! a poem by Walt Whitman. She printed it on white stationery bordered with a single long-stemmed rose on the left margin. I have read the final lines of that poem dozens of times:

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer:

That you are here—that life exists and identity;

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Sitting outside the coffeehouse later tonight, we will speak for hours. She will analyze a handful of fairy tales from a feminist perspective and outline the book she wants to write about them. She will surprise me when she describes the perfect remedy for the troubles plaguing a friend of hers. She needs to be dragged around by the hair and fucked in the ass.

Minutes later, my laughter will continue to escape when I think of her comment.

If we’re not both married by the time we’re forty, we should have a kid together, she will suggest.

I will silently reflect on her proposition while studying her fingernails—clipped short, polished and painted in smooth coats of bittersweet chocolate. Her earrings, tiny pewter elephants no bigger than kernels of corn, will hang in front of her dark-as-shadows hair, tucked behind her ears. She will not wear a necklace or any rings. Noting we are each dressed in jeans and jean shirts, I will dub us the Duke and Duchess of Denim.

Now, I turn up the volume on my truck’s CD player and struggle to find the beat in Dionne, a song I heard for the first time on the drive north two hours ago. After listening to it four or five times, I still marvel at the complex arrangement, sparse instrumentation, and the song’s stutter-step mix of waltz, pop and jazz. One of the lyrics reflects the singer’s lament, Dionne, I should have broke down and kissed you.

In two days, during the drive home from Bakersfield, I will play this song again and again and sing along, I should have broke down and kissed you.

The Rules

So what are the rules?

No touching, kissing, licking, or biting. She sets her purse, a miniature toolbox with a horseshoe-shaped latch, on the couch to my right. She sits on my left. Been here before, handsome?

This is my first time, I say. That’s the truth. I’m twenty-six and I’ve been to other strip clubs, but not this one that a friend recommended. He’s here, too. Somewhere.

I shake hands with the dancer and exchange names. How’s business? I ask.

Tammy looks across empty tables toward the main dance floor and shrugs. It’s a little slow. A few men slouch in black leather swivel chairs near the foot of the stage. A tall thin woman wearing only red platform shoes and a ring in her navel lifts her heavy breasts with both hands and squeezes them together around a brass pole near the far end of the stage. Before an uncomfortable silence settles between Tammy and me, a funky dance groove jumps through the club. In a treble-heavy voice, the DJ announces the first song in a three-for-the-price-of-one promotion.

Tammy stands up, turns her back to me and smoothly unfastens her halter top using her thumb and two fingers. Without turning, she tosses her top onto the coach behind her. It lands to my right. Now she turns and kneels before me. She looks up at me. You want completely nude?

Uh, no. Just topless is fine. I know a topless lap dance costs $20. Completely nude is $40.

We could go to the Players Lounge, she suggests. You know how that works?

My friend told me about the Players Lounge, a private dancing area. In theory, you pay for a booth and couch totally secluded from the rest of the club. In practice, you pay for sex. Dancers charge $100 for twenty minutes. After that, you negotiate a price for what you want.

Here, far outside the Players Lounge, Tammy advances on bare knees, wedging her torso between my legs. Her breasts, the size of sun-ripened tangelos, press against my stomach. They are warm and firm. A silver hoop dangles from her pierced, left nipple. Her nipples are small, crouching in delicate pink circles the