Super Karma

By Anders Flagstad

Darius Johnson, Los Angeles citizen, is a guy like any other guy. He loves his husband, is a prisoner to his mortgage, hustles like a crazy man at work on weekdays to keep his boss happy, lives for sweet freedom on his weekends once they finally roll his way, and is generally a man who tries to do the best he can by everybody with what he’s been given to work with here on this earthly plane. Yeah, he’s not an idiot with his karma. He figures what goes around REALLY DOES come around. He’s a responsible guy. But what if he were responsible, all of a sudden, for EVERYBODY’S karma? A whole planetful of karmic causes and effects? And it’s all been dumped on his head? All of it? What does a regular, LA citizen do then, as his marriage implodes, his job explodes, his friends and family back off in disappointment and even LA urban wildlife turn on him and attack? That, and other issues, like monogamy, repo men (and women), missing fish tacos, astronaut wannabe bosses and evil cell phones hastening the advent of the singularity are what Darius Johnson has to deal with today, the first day of the rest of his life, a hot Wednesday in July, in the City of Dreams on the coast of that mythical land called SoCal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anders Flagstad
• Release date: Dec 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005694494

Anders Flagstad

Anders lives as does Thoreau’s mass of men, a life of quiet desperation - sometimes less quiet, sometimes less desperate, but a life nonetheless. That’s what you have to remind yourself, when you least believe it, that you are, actually, living your life, and that it is quite the accomplishment, in and of itself, and that you should give yourself a pat on the back occasionally for doing it as well as you do, for as long as you have.There are many who never will make it as far as you’ve gone, and none who have lived what you have lived, so every once in a while, remember, it’s no sin to celebrate yourself, and give the desperation a rest. It will always be there. You can pick it up and shoulder it anytime you want and start walking again. Setting it down doesn’t mean you’re getting soft. It just means you’re setting it down. Try it, you’ll see.But maybe, one time, at a point of self-celebration, you’ll put the desperation down, party, pick yourself up afterwards and start walking and realize you have more energy and more (to use a four letter word) hope - that you’re walking with a spring in your step and you won’t know why and you don’t want to know why. It won’t even dawn on you that you’ve left something behind, that you lost something you thought you were going to have to lug behind you for the rest of your life – yes, your desperation. You won’t be desperate and it will feel strange – until you remember where you set your desperation down - and you go to retrieve it - but, with any luck you won’t remember – and never will – and from that point onwards, or at least for a while, without your desperation, you’ll no longer be one of the mass of men, you’ll just be you, yourself, a woman or a man who is alive, in the universe and walking about, here and there. And that’s allThat, at least, is the goal of Anders. Living in the first, frantically social and riotously connected decades of the 21st century, where the desperation flows as easily as the texting and maybe even easier, and is almost as unstoppable. Almost.

Book preview

Super

Karma

A Novel by

Anders Flagstad

Smashwords Edition

Bubble Eyes Publishing

San Diego, CA

www.BubbleEyesPublishing.com

www.AndersFlagstad.com

Copyright 2022 Anders Flagstad

Copyright 2022 Kenneth Anderson

All rights reserved.

ISBN: xxx-x-xxx-xxxxx-x

(Smashwords EPUB)

Published by BubbleEyes Publishing at Smashwords

(this book is available in print at most online retailers)

Illustrations and Design by K.P. Anderson

For L.S of course.

Smashwords Edtion, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading their book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for your support.

FRONTISPIECE

Unnatural occurrences. Put that way, well, you know, it didn’t make Dare feel good about his situation. But it kind of made him feel special. Just think! Unnatural things, the bizarre and the strange, were taking an interest in Mrs. Johnson’s child. That had to mean something. Didn’t it? Wasn’t that a sign of something? Wasn’t that a good sign?

Sure it was. Right? But a sign of what, exactly? Dare forgot about Nicey and contemplated his Impossible Wednesday and The Signs he’d been receiving as of late. He leaned forward, thinking, what did his ma say about birds and luck? What? Out of the corner of his eye, Dare saw something moving towards him.

He barely saw it. Then... KAPOW! In the condensation on the middle window, a concussive explosion of feathers shattered the glass. Pieces of window went flying. Luckily they all missed Dare. Tinkling sounds were everywhere. A confused and triumphant ball of sparrow fluttered around Dare’s head for a moment, flitting up and down, back and forth, then the little feathered missile of victory made a beeline for the bright morning light streaming in the broken window and suddenly Dare was alone again.

Shit!

from Part Three – A River That Almost Never Has Any Water In It

CONTENTS

Prologue - Live with Me and Be My Love...

Part One - Wormwood and Gall Salad with a Side of Honey Dressing

Part Two - Strange Was His Native Land

Part Three - A River that Almost Never Has Any Water in It

Part Four - Vastly Increased, Unlooked-for Cash Inflows

Part Five - If You Weren’t in the Middle of It

Part Six - Feeling Irrigation

Part Seven - Where Does All the Hurting Stop?

Part Eight - The Other Body Was Naked

Part Nine - In Which Mrs. S Neatly Injects, Jose (Nearly) Dabs, Dare Noticeably Irradiates, and Sheila Gets Her Very Own Intermezzo Together with Some Very Nice Multiple Epiphanies

Part Ten - I Want Him to Know, Deep Inside, This Is Love

Part Eleven - Innocent, Blank, Newly-born and Cute

Part Twelve - Trying to Wake Up from a Recurring Nightmare While Not Sleeping

Epilogue(s) - ...And We Will All the Pleasures Prove

About the Author

Also by Anders Flagstad

Super

Karma

PROLOGUE

LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY LOVE

AND WE WILL...

Darius was dreaming.

He knew he was dreaming because he was in a circus (and he’d never even BEEN to a circus before in his life) and he was performing under a kaleidoscopically, color-afflicted tent (and it didn’t seem strange at all to Darius at the time, it just seemed wearisome and tedious and kind of headache-inducing) and he was at least four people at once. Possibly more. He wasn’t sure exactly how many people he was. But at least four.

Four! Yes, Ladies and Germs, Count ‘em, Four people, More than four! For your Education and Delectation, in the Center Ring! Four! Persons! At Once! – a voice announced Darius over a staticky loudspeaker system, Darius sighed, multiply, pushed back a flap of heavy particolored burlap, bent his four foreheads forwards and shuffled his eight feet out and passed between two banks of seats filled with screaming children and slightly panic-stricken, dazed-looking adults, Darius straightened his backs and threw back his heads and pasted on any number of smiles and tried (mostly successfully) to stride purposefully and muscularly from out between the yelling crowds and push through the music and the hysteria and get out into the limelight and the sawdust and the dirt and the shit in the middle of the center ring, and even though he was exhausted, and even though it was ridiculously difficult, eventually, finally, Dare got there. He got to the center of it all. He tipped his many top hats at the boggled audience, and with that...

It was...

Showtime!

The Dares!

Were!

On!

Yeah, he was four or more Dariuses, all different yet all of them recognizably the same Darius. He was separate colored Dariuses, polychromatic Dariuses, multicolored shadows of a single Darius.

He was many. Like the rainbow colors spewing out of a ray of transparent sunlight, split by a hefty wedge of crystal. And he was one. Like the exact same rainbow colors erupting out of one unitary beam of sunlight, caught in the splitting powers of that same hefty wedge of crystal. Darius was a ray of colorless sunlight and a numberless multitude of shadow-colored Dariuses.

And he was a circus freak. Of sorts. And he was the center of attraction in the center ring. Well, he was the entertainment. And he was in charge of everything! Shit!. It wasn’t the easiest path a guy could choose, not the easiest life. Keeping folks happy and distracted. Managing the chaos. Keeping himself together. All his many-colored, many-split selves. Yeah, Dare was dancing as fast as he could just to stay in place. But he was so many people! So many!

He was a mother’s unexpected surprise, a spewing infant, a wonder-struck child, an unruly school-boy, a sullen high-schooler, a desperate young man, a struggling husband, a middle-aged marvel of a man, a fifty-something delight, a retired runaway, a senior re-inventing himself, and then a sick man, and then a triage ER statistic, and finally just a memory. He was all of those things. All at once. All very different. Yet all Dare.

The circus tent smelled of elephant and popcorn. The organ groaned and thundered. Dare was in purple tights under hot spotlights and swinging on trapezes and rolling out of clown cars and snapping whips at lions and tigers. He was every single person working in the circus. And he was the audience too. Everybody was Dare. Everybody in the world was Dare. All different. But all Dare.

Yeah.

He was scared shitless.

And he was panicking, he was out-of-his-mind anxious with sick fear and nauseous guilt and shame.

And, you know, those weren’t the nicest of feelings a guy could have, nope, that was for damn sure.

And, to make it even more fun, Dare was getting tired. Being everybody at once, well, Dare wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep that shit up. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

And then...

From out of the blue...

It hit him.

The circus didn’t matter. AND, it wasn’t what was happening to him that mattered. AND, it wasn’t what he was doing that mattered. Nope. Circus tricks, responsibilities, pleasure, pain – nope none of it mattered. So if nothing mattered, what was the point? Well, the point was, there was a person doing those things. There was a person that those things were happening to. That person mattered. And that person was... Dare. Not everybody. Just Dare. Just the Dare he was at the moment.

Dare mattered. Always Dare. Only Dare. Well, it wasn’t just Dare. It was the love that was in Dare that went out of him that mattered. He was a loving machine. He was built to do that shit. And he had so much love to give. So much. He really did.

Wait!

This was some important shit!

Remember this, Dare! Remember! Think! Remember!

Darius was dreaming.

And he was trying to remember something.

And then his alarm went off. It sounded like a siren of sorts (Dare had been watching some old colorized WWII movies last night just before bed), his alarm wailed as if it were a blitz klaxon klaxoning in London and incendiary bombs were spiraling downwards, screaming towards his sleeping head, and the sirens were screaming at Darius and even the air was screaming and Darius’s hand whipped out and bashed his cellphone into silence and he propelled himself from bed onto the hardwood floors of his bedroom and waited for his twenty-something heart to calm down to its normal twenty-something plodding regularity.

And yeah, it really wasn’t just a siren, it was some 21st century sound morph – an unbalancing blend of hyena laugh, clown guffaw and police car siren wail. It was crazy. It was disturbing. It was like Christine! Pure evil!

And...

Damn!

Just. Damn!

He needed to change that alarm sound!

And, shit! he’d been dreaming about something important, something necessary. Shit! It was right there. Almost. Almost, he could see it. It was... He could... He could... Then, he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember a damn thing! Shit!

It was Wednesday, July 10, 2019.

It was friggin’ 5:45 AM.

Darius had a life to live. He had a morning to start.

So he did just that. He lived it and he started it.

PART ONE

WORMWOOD AND GALL SALAD

WITH A SIDE OF HONEY DRESSING

1

Nicey-Nicey screamed at Darius Johnson. He let loose and screamed bloody murder.

It was as if one of those air raid sirens were going off (yes, more sirens this morning, Darius), the sound of an EBS announcement warning of imminent tornados, or tsunamis, or continent-wide nuclear bomb strikes. Or maybe it was more the sound of supercharged lightning bolts from a supercell thunderstorm repeatedly striking and obliterating trees you’re cowering next to. Or... Maybe...

Actually, the more Darius thought about it, it was none of those things. Screaming was just too weak a word for what Nicey was doing. The sound Nicey was making, well, it dissolved the hearer. It sprayed death and pain on all who felt it. It was a sulfuric acid, mind-melting, death weapon sort of shrieking and wailing, a broadcasting of the certainty of doom and destruction to all and sundry nearby. It was the sound of unadulterated, agonizing, apocalyptic obliteration approaching. Yup. That was a good description. That was what he was hearing. And it was directed at one person, and one person only.

And guess who that one person was?

Yup.

Right again.

Darius stumbled backwards, of course. He bumped and bruised himself, colliding with his dining room table. Shell-shocked and more than a little pissed he stood stock ‘til for a moment in eye-blinking, stunned silence. Damn! He had barely brushed those dining room drapes! The heavy, red velvety material had only slightly quivered and had only slightly creased at the tentative touch of Dare’s sleepy, fumbling fingertips.

And it wasn’t even a full fingertip! Dare had used just the tip of a fingertip! Just the tip. That was all! And you know, Dare was having a bad week anyways. Probably the beginning of a bad month and a bad year, maybe even a bad decade. So. Yeah. This was too much! Too much and too early and damn! Yes, it was! It was too damn early for this shit! Way the damn too early!

Was anybody listening (I’m looking at you, Universe). It’s TFE. Too. Friggin’. Early!

Darius rustled his fingers (carefully) over his dreadlocks, his mini-locs, (just ‘cause he liked how it felt, the locs brushed back against his hand in that friendly, consistent way they always did – their crispy springiness made him feel happy) and when he stopped bouncing his locs, Dare rubbed at his eyes and when he was done with his eyes, he scratched on his shoulder. Dare yawned. Lustily. Was the sun even up yet? It was comfortably dark in his house. He hoped (in vain) it would stay that way. Why was his existence so impossible lately? Why did his head feel so gloppy and muddy? And why was his life so freaking loud?

What had he done to deserve this? He waited for the Universe to give him an answer to all his questions. He leaned forwards. Nope. Nothing. No simple, obvious solutions dropped into the mud in his head. Darius sighed. Was Nicey tired yet? More screaming. Guess not. Darius sighed again.

He hadn’t done anything! Really! At least he hadn’t done anything yet. Not that he could remember, at least. Had he? Nah. So why all the anger and yelling? From a few jiggled window treatments? Those damn drapes shifted only the tiniest fraction of an inch towards the left side of the window whenever he leaned his hand against them. Just a shiver! Just a quiver! It wasn’t fair. Dare was sure that that drape-quiver had been the merest quantum of movement, the tiniest of motions, a drape reaction that only a well-maintained and properly configured electron microscope should have been able to register and measure. And yet, Nicey registered, Nicey screamed. How? Why? Dare had been so careful this morning!

Shit!

But, no. Apparently not.

Apparently, the quiver-shiver had been enough.

It had been, apparently, more than enough.

Nicey continued screaming.

2

Dare sighed.

Dare yawned.

Dare scratched.

Dare bounced his locs some more.

Dare stood inside his house, in his dining room, in front of the closed drapes, vibrating with sleepy displeasure, and listened to Nicey melting down outside.

Dare sighed again.

So. Yeah. One moment, silence. The next, an avian riot was in progress. Nicey-Nicey, a sparrow-sized object (sparrow-sized because he actually WAS a sparrow), was the self-appointed morals warden for Darius’ neighborhood, and he was building himself up to an out-of-control, moral tantrum out there this morning. Once again. Yup. Nicey did this tantrum-throwing A LOT. Like daily. It was sort of his thing. And he was good at it.

The tantrum this morning was louder and more penetrating than usual. It was strong. It was confident. It was one minuscule bird’s cry for justice and fair treatment in an unfeeling and patently false world. Nicey WANTED something. Badly. And Dare had no idea what it was – he had no clue as to what the badly-needed thing was that Nicey wanted.

Well... Not exactly. That wasn’t entirely true. Dare might have some idea. Maybe. Maybe, kinda, sorta. But that wasn’t stopping Nicey this morning. Nope. Nicey was all about decibels, not about excuses. Nicey-Nicey was determined that today his bird voice would be acknowledged and understood, even if he tweeted his bird-throat hoarse in order to accomplish it. All wrongs would be righted. The weak and innocent and downtrodden and beakéd masses would triumph and be vindicated. Yes, Nicey would be HEARD. This time it would be DIFFERENT. This time he would be NOTICED. Justice! Truth! Beauty! Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood! It was all going to happen, and it was all going to happen today!

Yeah, it must be nice to have such an uncomplicated view of good and evil, thought Dare. Really. It must feel good. It must feel comfortable and safe and make it easy to sleep at night. Even if justice and truth and all that shit were actually all an illusion. Yeah, it was all an eff’n fairy tale. All of it. Shit! Life was shit. Justice was shit. Dare hadn’t believed it before. But he did now. And if Dare sounded bitter, well, he had a reason for it. Multiple reasons (most of those reasons answered to the name of Mr. Jadyn Matthews, at present). Shit indeed! But Dare didn’t want to think about that now. Nope.

Nope.

Not going to think about it.

Not going to.

Nope.

OK. Nicey and the screaming? Well, actually, Darius was expecting it, as he’d already mentioned, he was rioted at almost every day at this time of the morning and he didn’t particularly like it, but hey! – this was Darius’ life in the Big Adult City with Big Adult City Relationships and Big Adult City Responsibilities and a Big Adult City backyard, with a ridiculous amount of garden parked on that backyard. Darius briefly considered how nice it would be to pour concrete over every square inch of land he and Jadyn owned and be rid of gardens and garden wildlife forever. Or maybe just pour all the concrete over Jadyn – he’d leave nose-holes and mouth-holes so Jadyn could breathe, he promised he would. Stop it, Dare, just stop it! Where do these ideas even come from Dare? Huh?

You were thinking about the garden, Dare. OK. Fine. Think about a concrete garden. Dare smiled to himself, broadly, easily, as he saw it in his mind’s eye. Clean, beige surfaces. No plants. No mess. No bother. Just beige. So nice. So quiet. So little work. So much clean, bright, flat, riot-less, bird-less beige, mute beige. It would be beautiful. It would be wondrous. They could put up a plaque and give their house a cutesy, homely name like folks seemed to do in England a lot – the plaque would read: Silent Beige. That’s what they’d call their newly cement-encrusted bungalow. Dare loved it. He loved the concept. He loved the image. He loved everything about it. Just loved it. Loved. It.

He adjusted his bathrobe, scratched himself, closed his eyes. Darius sighed. Again. It was what he did in the mornings, lately. He sighed. It (the sighing) didn’t help. But it sort of moved his mornings along in a vaguely forward-ish direction.

3

Darius considered surrounding his house with cement every day about this time, around half past sixish in the A of M. It was true. It was kind of a morning meditation of his. It brought him peace. A kind of joy. It was also a habit. But it was, in the end, a useless habit for Dare.

Jadyn, (who had a landscaping veto in this house) didn’t cotton to concrete. Jadyn didn’t hate it. But he didn’t love it either. Jadyn loved plants. And Jadyn loved gardens. But Jadyn hated gardening, (now, how did that work exactly? – love the end-product? – hate the work? – how convenient!). Anyways... Darius also grumbled to himself about Jadyn’s likes and dislikes every morning about this time as well. Dare would try (muzzily) to think of some way around Jadyn, fail, and then, just like clockwork, completely forget about Jadyn and Jadyn’s garden-philia and gardening-phobia and for the rest of the day afterwards he was much less bitter about Jadyn and gardening. Dare was good at forgetting uncomfortable thoughts. And especially uncomfortable Jadyn-thoughts. Well. Usually he was.

Yeah, Dare’s concrete/Jadyn/garden meditations were just another one of Dare’s (many) things. As is probably becoming evident by now. It was just one of Dare’s many routines, the routines that made his life feel comfortable and rational and the teensiest bit controllable. Dare liked his routines. And being in control (not that he really WAS in control of all that much in his life, just look at Jadyn!). But, hey! Not going to think about that now, are we Dare-boy? Nope. Not going to. So, yeah, Dare stuck to his routines. Usually. When he wasn’t busy not thinking about Jadyn’s treachery. And his deviousness.

Oh, c’mon man! For fuck’s sake! Dare! Give it up! Just give it a rest!

Fine.

Don’t think about it. Don’t even want to think about it. Nope. Don’t do it. Don’t think.

Yeah, Dare had a lot of things and routines going on in his life. And, well, he tried to forget about Jadyn this morning, just like he did every morning recently, but Dare was so mad (was that the emotion he was feeling? – really?) at Jadyn today, well, Dare was so mad that his brain was morphing despite his best intentions into a useless bubbling cesspool of red-hot mental waste-products, not a good feeling, not at all, and it just kept on getting stronger, all those Jadyn-induced hormonal boilings and scorchings – so, yeah, Dare was boiling in Jadyn-induced chemicals this morning, and Dare’s brain was Jadyn-obsessed and Jadyn-poisoned and he hated it and he couldn’t shake it and shit! Nope. He didn’t want to think about it. Nope. Not gonna think about it. Nope. Not going to do it.

Anyways... So, clearly, all the above meant one thing. Darius, who was not the gardening type in their household, did a lot of the household gardening. Wait. That wasn’t true. In fact, Dare did ALL of the household gardening. Both inside and out. Shit. All of it. Why? Good question! Dare just let Jadyn walk all over him. Funny thing, huh? How Dare flopped down and let Jadyn wipe his feet on him. Dare the Human Doormat! Funny how all that worked out, huh? Funny.

OK. Enough, Dare.

Fine.

But you’ve got to understand, Darius was not a hater, at least not a garden hater. Nope. He wasn’t that. It was just that, well, Dare had a fundamental problem with gardening. A logical problem. And that problem was – Dare was just too logical.

Gardening seemed so pointless to Dare. It all grew back, didn’t it? At some point? And then you had to start over and re-garden everything. Or it didn’t and it died. And then all your problems were the same – you had to start all over and re-garden everything. Yup. It was better NOT to try, better NOT to garden. No plants, no problems. Why insert yourself so painfully and laboriously into the whole gardening/growing/dying/re-gardening process. Why? Why do it? Didn’t make sense, did it? Not to a rational person, it didn’t.

But sometimes when you loved someone, (and Dare DID love Jadyn, sure he did, right? – shit! – yes, he did – and fuck! did that mean Dare was in deep shit!), well, anyways, sometimes when you loved someone, someone like Jadyn, you sometimes found yourself engaging enthusiastically in exhausting activities that only a few years before (had they been suggested to you) would’ve resulted in strenuous eye-rolling and sarcastic, incredulous laughter and a quick, sharp and permanent change of subject in the conversation. Yup. Sometimes a guy finds his sorry behind in situations like that. It happens.

Yeah.

Love.

Gotta love it, huh?

Shit!

Love.

Jadyn.

Dare really didn’t want to think about this. Didn’t want to think about any of this.

Nope.

Not gonna think about it.

4

Is that what Dare was feeling this morning? Love? If so, Dare couldn’t tell the difference between love and a severe case of the flu. Or maybe terminal appendicitis. His insides hurt. Something awful.

OK. Yeah. Dare loved Jadyn. There he’d said it. He did. He loved him.

Yes, love transports folks to strange, foreign lands and forces them to do even stranger, even more foreign activities. Not that Darius was complaining. Foreign was good, foreign was fine, as long as he was doing it with Jadyn (see? – did you notice that? – he was admitting it – he DID like the guy). Yeah. OK. The truth was – Jadyn was his right arm. He was his right arm, his right leg, his right eye (not that Dare had anything against left-handed persons, he was just making a poetic point here – Jadyn was big on poetic points, they had a wall of Jadyn’s books, many of them of the poetic sort, in the second bedroom to prove that, didn’t they?).

OK. Yeah. Dare loved Jadyn. Dare and Jadyn were this odd, impossible, composite organism now – half one person, half the other person, and more than both persons combined when you put the two persons together in the same place, in the same life. They were HUGE combined together. HUGE. That’s what they were. So, yeah, they’d known each other for forever and had been together for forever. At least it seemed that way, it felt that way. No, it WAS that way (wasn’t it? – sure it was). They had years and years and years of relationship under their belts at this point. Which in gay years, was the equivalent of lifetimes after lifetimes of years of relationship. And over those gay lifetimes of years of relationship they’d had together, they’d sort of melted into one another. Yup. They’d melted. It happened. It had happened to them. And it had happened to them all by itself. They’d sort of blurred their edges into the other guy’s edges, inadvertently at first, then with a passion. Like chalk pictures in a summer thunderstorm (Dare was thinking of Mary Poppins at this point – he had a weakness for musicals). They’d softened and flowed and their lives had run into each other and that had continued until today, until this very morning, and now they were basically one, psychedelically-streaked, chalk picture-puddle on the Great Sidewalk of 21st Century American Life.

Which was probably Dare’s problem, right? Generally. Wasn’t that the problem with his life this morning? He wasn’t sure he WANTED to be psychedelically blurred with Jadyn anymore. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to continue to puddle with Jadyn so strenuously. Maybe Dare wanted his own chalk back.

Did he? Really?

Well, maybe not totally.

Maybe not at all.

Really, it was fine.

Things were great.

Really.

Really!

Man! He didn’t want to think about this!

OK. Yeah. Although, lately maybe the things were great part wasn’t entirely true. Maybe, lately, even before THE EVENT (more on that later), they’d been having rough times. They’d been a chalk picture about to be erased by the feet of a marching band. Their huge relationship marched into dust-cloud oblivion. Or some chalk-astrophe like that. Yeah. Whatever crazy musical metaphor you wanted to use to describe the Dare-Jadyn relationship, well, they’d had problems. They had. They’d gotten lazy. They’d sort of been drifting about in neutral on autopilot, sort of sleepwalking through their lives together and their relationship, wandering here and there in random directions and bumping into walls and blinking and wondering what had changed and wondering why they felt bruised or bemused or bored sometimes for what seemed like no discernible reason at all. Sort of dazed and directionless and dizzy and black and blue. So to speak.

So, yeah, that had been going on.

But, really, it was fine. Really. Nothing had changed. Had it? No. It hadn’t. Well, their relationship didn’t feel as exceptional and heroic and epic and legendary and unique as it used to feel. Darius used to be proud of their couplehood. Two men. One mind. They owned marriage. Darius would compare their relationship to others, he’d look at how other couples lived and he’d feel a snarky disdain for what he saw. Darius and Jadyn got it. They got relationships. They were veteran relationship professionals. All the rest of those guys were clueless amateur wannabes. Was that still true, Darius? Yes? No? When had that changed? Or had it? Was he proud? Did he need to be proud? The point of loving someone was to love someone. Not to compare yourself as a model lover to other lovers. Love wasn’t a competitive sport. Was it?

And was it normal to want to bury your husband in a concrete pour?

Way too early in the morning for all this, boy!

Darius sighed.

You know, they hadn’t seen a lot of each other lately (Dare and Jadyn worked different shifts), and when they did see each other they didn’t seem to have anything to say to each other. Well, that had changed in the last two weeks. They’d gone out clubbing the last two weekends and both of them had seemed to enjoy it. Yeah. Until IT happened. But hey! All married folks went through phases like that, right? Changes. Rocky bits. Rough patches. It was normal. Change happened. Nothing to worry about, right? Change could be good. Darius certainly wasn’t worried. Was he? Nah. It was fine. Really. It was fine. Immobilizing your spouse in cement was probably a common fantasy. And, at best (or worst), only a passing fantasy. Sure it was. Sure.

Anyways... Jadyn must know that Darius would do anything for him. Anything. ANYTHING at all. Look at all the gardening that he really didn’t want to do, that he did anyway. All for Jadyn. But it was more than that. It was more than the gardening. Darius would throw his body cheerfully under a bus to save Jadyn’s body. Even though Jadyn was acting like a thug lately. Still. He would. He’d do it in a heartbeat. He’d do the throwing gladly. He’d do it whistling a jamming tune and saluting passersby as he slid under the bus’s front tires and got flattened into a chocolate-colored, gravel-encrusted, love-lorn pavement-waffle.

Jadyn knew that. Right? Sure. Sure he did. He did. Sure. Sure, he knew it. He had to. How could he NOT know it? He knew it. Sure he did. He knew it. He did. Right? Right? He did.

Well, he sure wasn’t acting that way though, was he?

Still too early for this, Darius.

5

Yeah, the last couple of days, Darius asked himself these questions every day at about 5:45 A.M. So far, he’d always convinced himself he knew what he was talking about. Everything was copacetic. It was fine. Really. It was. He loved Jadyn. Jadyn loved him. But then again, Darius was easily persuaded. When he wanted to be persuaded, that is. And Darius didn’t want to think about having problems in the Jadyn-Darius relationship department of his life. Nope. Wasn’t going to think about it. Not doing it. So, OK, he wouldn’t think about it. That was easy. Right? Right.

But... If he and Jadyn really WERE having problems, it would be like having cancer in your left lung. Even if your right lung was fine, you would still have a world of hurt ahead of you in that left lung. And getting back to normal? That would be hard work too, painful months/years of struggle trying to get back to health, more hard work, more struggle, maybe surgery, maybe even death in the end. Shit!

And who wants death? Or cancer? Who would choose those things? Not Darius. But, then again, who decides, who chooses ever to have cancer? Cancer, like shit, just happens. Right? You don’t want it, you don’t run after it and pant for it and lust for it? Right?

Where are you going with all this cancer talk, Dare?

Where are we going? He’d tell you where he was going. So, what if Jadyn didn’t want to get cured of cancer? What if he just wanted to surgically remove Dare like the diseased left lung that he was? What if he wanted to get rid of Dare? What if he wanted a left-lung-less life. Without Dare. What if that’s what was going on? A slow, but permanent surgery. What if that were true, Dare? What if...

Shit.

Stop it, D! Ain’t none of this going to help you any, even if you do have relationship cancer. Shit. Not gonna help.

But...

Think about it.

Do you have relationship cancer?

Do you?

UH...

Maybe, no?

Maybe Jadyn’s not really trying to get rid of me?

See?

You’re buggin’.

Get your shit together, man!

OK. If not cancer, then... what? Communications malfunctions? That sounded about right. It’s all about communication in a relationship. Right? That’s all it is. That’s what everybody says. So Dare and Jadyn are malfunctioning in the communications department.

Maybe.

But then again, maybe not.

Shit!

Have you thought about what Jadyn says? What if everything is fine? Like Jadyn keeps mentioning. Over and over again. What if all this fuss and worry is for nothing. Making yourself sick over imaginary problems. All this agony over communications? At least you don’t have problems in bed. Sex is still great. Right? You’re happy. Right? You know you are. Don’t lie. You’re just crazy-talking here. And the gardening isn’t all that much hassle, is it?

OK.

But...

But what?

Well, what if, maybe, you did something wrong, Darius? What if, maybe, you deserve this? This communications malfunctioning? Or whatever the hell thing it is that’s going on right now. If there is something going on, maybe you caused it. Maybe it’s payback time. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s the universe punishing you. It sure feels like punishment. Maybe it IS punishment. Cause and effect.

Think about it.

Cause – Dare.

Effect – punishment.

Simple. Easy to understand.

Stop, Dare.

Just.

Stop.

But...

Ain’t none of this going to help, D. None of it.

But what if...

None of it, D.

Darius rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his bathrobe, scratched himself, grimaced, sighed. He bristled his mini-locs. Took in a deep breath. Same questions lately. Every friggin’ 5:45 A.M. OK, Darius. Enough. He rubbed his eyes one more time with his bathrobe. Showtime, boy. Time to start another glorious Darius day! Get it up and running!

Darius held his breath, braced himself, and with one quick motion, jerked the bulky velvet drapes wide open.

6

Shit.

That shit was bright.

Darius squinted into the morning, scratching himself again.

The sun had just broken over the hills on the horizon as if it were a punctured egg yolk, leaking all over the city of LA. Gold light dripped over everything, everywhere. It was going to be another scorcher out there today. Darius could literally feel heat, radiating into the house, past the opening in the drapes, even though it was radiating through the dining room window’s dusty pane of glass and the sun was just a dollop of friendly fire entangled up there in his neighbor’s eucalyptus branches.

Friendly? Ha! Darius wasn’t fooled.

That sun was going to microwave the LA basin into a county-sized frying pan today!

Hard columns of yellow-white light lit up his tiny side yard as if it were a spotlight – the fence, the bush, the fountain, the bird in front of him. The light dominated everything. Yes, it was a piercingly blinding light to Darius, painful even, as he stood there, shuffling his feet, looking out at Nicey. But it was an encouraging, comforting light to the bird on the branch outside (Nicey), looking in, at his arch-nemesis, Darius.

As stated before, this light was the light of justice for Nicey. It was a godly light. Nicey frowned at Darius, feathery face a-scowling, and kept right on squawking and screaming at Darius. Darius winced and blinked and looked back at Nicey and shook his head, trying to get himself to wake up. Or trying to get his sleepy body back to sleep. One of the two. Dare didn’t care which one. Dare was too tired to care. Nicey screamed on.

Nicey-Nicey was feeling powerful in the sun’s warming rays. He liked heat. He was looking forward to another warm day of warm SoCal sun. He’d been up for hours already, he was feeling fine and he had his whole day of exciting bird activities before him, colloquies and flock maneuvers and foraging expeditions, a busy day of important events, it was all ahead of him, and it was all of it going to be intensely satisfying. He had it all planned out. He felt good. He felt strong. He was high on life. Ready for anything. Anything the day might throw at him. Nicey liked to think of himself as an optimist, as a bird-feeder-half-full sort of bird, and it really was true, he was carefree and optimistic and yes, nice, and full of energy for the most part, generally.

But today, Nicey the nice bird, wasn’t feeling particularly nice. Today Nicey was enraged. He was a bird of a different color today. Color him ANGRY. He felt alive. Sure. But he also felt abused and oppressed. He felt it keenly. He deeply felt the constant persecution and exploitation he endured here in the Johnson backyard. This house ignored his needs and made him suffer. It was a house of cruelty. So, today Nicey was a changed bird. He was a bird on a mission. Today was his day. Today he was going to make the madness stop. He had only one gripe, only one thing in his rich and full avian life that was preventing him from being perfectly happy and more than reasonably content. Only one miserable thing oppressed Nicey. That one miserable thing in Nicey’s opinion was one miserable person. And that one miserable person was, you guessed it, Darius.

Darius the Selfish! Darius the Torturer and Tormentor of Small Animals! Darius the Dehydrator! Great would be Darius’ downfall and weighty and magnificent Nicey’s victory this day of days. By this time tomorrow, Darius would taste humility. By God and all that flies, Darius would! He would know and acknowledge his sins and he would repent! This Nicey vowed, on the tail feathers of his forefathers!

Nicey squawked, puffed his chest out, hopped from foot to foot on his branch and glared at Darius. He screamed and moaned. He flew at the dining room window and dive-bombed Darius. Dare on the other hand, just stared out the window, sightlessly, hardly noticing what was going on in front of him, for the most part. It was the friggin’ crack of dawn, for crying out loud! And he couldn’t stop thinking about Jadyn and cancer operations. And his shoulder itched. But mostly Dare was thinking about how cool and dark his bedroom would be, if it happened that he wandered back into it.

Dare stood in front of Nicey-Nicey in that yolky light in front of the dining room window and scratched himself, yawning, trying to wake up. Yeah, he did this daily. Standing. Staring. It was one of his things. Dare was just in his underwear and socks. Well, that and a bathrobe. But the robe was just sort of draped, loosely open over his body. His raveled and holey bathrobe was loose and draped and open because he’d needed access to his upper body, he’d been scratching at that patch of poison oak on his shoulder for the last 10 minutes, ever since his alarm had gone off. Which, yes, was a stupid thing to do, scratching was bad, he understood that, he knew. But Dare was half-asleep and half-stupefied and so, yes, he was doing just that – attacking his scabby shoulder with his bare fingernails. There. He did it again. It felt good. It was a guilty pleasure. Dare blinked and scratched and tried to focus his tired eyeballs on Nicey-Nicey (unsuccessfully) as his mouth slowly swung open. Dare was stunned. By the sheer earliness of the hour.

OK. Dare admitted it. Dare was also stunned by the quantity of sound barraging his eardrums this morning. It was worse than usual. Way worse. And from such a small source! But the angry bird didn’t worry him. Nope. Not so much. What worried him was the fact that Dare couldn’t stop worrying at his brand-new angry red rash. Stop, already, boy! You already have way too much to worry about. Jadyn had threatened to tape oven mitts on his hands last night, before he went to work, if he didn’t leave the rash alone. Dare had paused for a little while (when he saw that Jadyn was serious). But it was so hard to stop. It felt so good. He’d started up again in private in the bathroom before he’d gone to bed. That was after Jadyn had left for work. Now the rash had spread. Some. Just a little bit, really. Not much. But, yes, the trend was concerning. So, yeah, Dare hadn’t spent the night with his hands bound in kitchen accoutrements, but maybe he should have.

Shit.

The rash was a recent gift from Mother Nature. He’d run into the sneaky, shiny-leaved poison oak crap while clearing the garden last weekend, and who the hell expected poison anything lurking in the tree shadows in their own backyard in the middle of the big city? Especially if the big city is called LA? Nothing grew in LA. Not by itself. LA was a desert. By itself, you got sagebrush. Dead grass. Maybe some spindly weeds. A poppy or two if you were lucky. That was about it. You had to garden seriously and garden hard to get junk to sprout and grow here. Or so he’d thought. Guess he’d been mistaken, huh? Darius had been as surprised as anyone to find out the painful, poisonous, awful truth about vindictive SoCal vegetation.

Shit.

Dare scratched and tugged at the pocket on his robe, the right pocket, while he got yelled at by Nicey-Nicey. His cell was hanging in there, hanging heavily, pulling his robe down irritatingly to one side and rubbing away on the rash on his shoulder. The heavy cell vibrated, begging for his attention. Without thinking, he hauled it out. He glanced down at the screen. He didn’t want to. But he was too sleepy (and too stupidly angry at life this morning) to exercise whatever limp willpower he had available to him, this early in the A.M., he just couldn’t muster the energy to think or to care, so yeah, Dare glanced down at his cell screen, just a quick glance, just once. The moment he glanced, it stopped vibrating and something colorful and squirrely flashed up at him, moving across the screen, and flaring up and out at him, it sort of slapped him in his eyeballs.

Phwap!

It was sudden. It was fierce.

Phwap!

Darius was being attacked!

Phwap! Pwhap!

By his own electronic devices!

In his own house?

Yup. Dare was being bitch-slapped in his own crib by a slap-happy cell app!

Shit!

7

Dare was startled.

Understandable. Totally.

He very nearly juggled the damn strobing, demonic metal rectangle right out of his hands and out onto the hard, hard hardwood floorboards below. Very nearly. It was a close thing.

As he fumbled at it, got it back into his hands and went to put the obnoxiously luminous box back into his pocket, the cell started up with that vibrating junk again. He itched to look. He swore to himself he wouldn’t, not this time. Manfully, he looked away, and struggled with it. He managed to move his hand down towards his waist and his robe pocket, with his cell in his hand, the little angry box un-looked at, ignored and un-glanced at. He got that far with it.

Dare managed even to insert the cell into the pocket. The cell started to disappear from sight down there in the nether regions of his robe. Mostly. Nearly. Almost. He’d gotten the cell to the point where he’d practically let go of the thing and gotten on with his life when the screen vomited more of those pleasing, shifting, sparkling colors up at his face, lighting up his abs and his forearms and a funky beat started throbbing out of the speakers and the cell seemed to be a living, breathing thing and that’s when Dare made his big mistake. A mistake that would change his life. Well, maybe that was a bit dramatic. Maybe his life didn’t morph completely into something entirely different at 5:45, no, it was 6 AM already (shit!), on that Wednesday in July. Maybe not. Maybe it didn’t completely change then. But. Changes WERE coming. They were effectively HERE.

Dare made his mistake and Dare was changed. Somewhat. Sort of. Well, at the very least, something definitely had a definite effect on him, a lasting, definite effect at that definite moment in time. Yup. At a minimum, one HAD to say that that much happened to Dare. There was a definitiveness. Of an effect. It definitely happened.

So, yeah, Dare made his Big Mistake. Dare paused. He glanced down. A second time. And that was all she wrote.

His cell won. Yet again. It got Dare’s full attention. He blinked, sleepily and moodily (his mind fumbling around with how best to react to all of this Jadyn drama crap erupting in his life and when would Nicey ever shut up and how had it gotten to be 6:03AM so quick, etc. etc.), and Dare watched as his cell strobed and chittered excitedly in his palm and he sighed, admitting defeat, staring attentively downwards as the lively thing in his hand yelling back upwards at him, communicating with him, scolding him, enticing him, hooking him and reeling him in. Dare was taken. Completely. In only a moment.

Dare sighed. Yet again. Although he didn’t realize he was sighing (which was actually kind of frightening, he was sad and his brain didn’t even register the fact anymore). The cell shone up at him. He sighed again, this sigh equally unnoticed. The screen flashed and blurted merrily up at his face. He sighed one more time. Words scrolled in front of his eyes.

Trending now – SUPER KARMA! What happens when you do one wrong thing, just one, but are connected to the internet and the rest of the world when you do it? Click Here To See What Happens Next!

Dare blinked a couple of times in the dusty, million-watt morning sunlight. He yawned. He scratched. Colors rampaged across his cell and into his retinas. Nicey screamed in the background. Dare clicked.

Everything happens to you, your whole life falls apart, that’s what happens. Why? It’s not just KARMA anymore. You’re connected to the globe. It’s SUPER KARMA NOW BABY! One bad thing going out into the universe triggers a million bad things coming back at you! SUPER. KARMA. ONE. MILLION. BAD. THINGS.

Dare went to put his cell away at that point. Even the music pumping tinnily out of his cell wasn’t keeping him awake anymore, and this SUPER KARMA! Shit, well... who could take that shit seriously? But then the ad (or notification, or whatever the hell it was) went into a sort of strobing, hysterical overdrive. It ambushed him. It agitated him. It dared him to ignore it. Against his better judgement, Dare brought the cell closer to his eyes. Cosmic exploding rainbows spun repeatedly in his face and flooded his irises with Important Information.

SUPER KARMA! It’s TRUE. You know it’s TRUE! You’ve EXPERIENCED it! EVERYONE has. Just ask your FRIENDS! It’s a perfect karmic STORM of hurtful BAD KARMA and it’s headed YOUR WAY. Right AT YOU. EVERY hour of EVERY day that you’re socially connected to world-wide Social Media. SUPER KARMA is heading towards YOU. Yes! Even YOU! Even RIGHT NOW! IT’S HERE! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! IT’S HERE! RIGHT HERE!

OK mumbled Dare to himself, so what does that mean to me, exactly? What do I do, RIGHT HERE, now that I know what I know?

Well. The cell had ideas about that. The screen started flashing up at Dare, encouragingly, soothingly, as if it were a friend who’d been accidentally eavesdropping on Dare’s most private and confidential self-conversations and his cell had all the answers for him and it couldn’t wait to tell him, tell him all the answers he’d ever wanted or might require, his cell had answers for all his problems and his cell was going to reveal those life-giving answers to all his life-depleting problems, it had solutions for all of them, just for him, and all he had to do was look, that’s all the action required on his part, just look, look and be healed, look and be whole! Look! Look!

More words scrolled past Dare’s face. More words tempted him to look. Dare yawned. Dare looked.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WHAT DOES SUPER KARMA REALLY MEAN TO YOU? AND WHAT DO YOU DO NOW? Well, THINK about it. You TRY to do GOOD. Everyone TRIES. But it’s not easy. And who can be GOOD all the time, ALL DAY LONG, 24-7? NO ONE can! You KNOW it’s TRUE! SUPER KARMA! It’s a 21st century problem, and it demands a 21st century solution. CLICK HERE to never experience SUPER KARMA again! CLICK HERE to learn this one ridiculously easy way to avoid SUPER KARMA! Click now! While you still have time! Go ahead! ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE! CLICK! DO IT! DO IT NOW! CLICK! CLICK NOW! CLICK HERE! CLICK! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO! CLICK HERE! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK NOW!

Dare looked. Dare yawned once more. Dare scratched again. Dare clicked.

He got a Viagra commercial.

Why would his friggin’ phone be thinking he needed friggin’ Viagra? He was only friggin’ 28! C’mon, cell! Really, cell? Really?

Dare scowled and swiped it off and stuck the offending cell back into his front pocket, the left one this time. It fell through (Shit!). He’d completely forgotten that hole he’d ripped in the left pocket carrying pruning shears around the house last week and the cell plummeted, heavily, in a straight line, right down onto his big toe. Damn! That junk hurt! He picked it up, rubbed his big toe, checked for broken bones, checked to see he still had a working cell screen, almost dropped his cell right back into his left front pocket again and back onto his big toe, but at the last possible millisecond he managed to hold onto the cell before he let go of it, and now, guess what? – he was wide-awake. Like a wet-finger-inserted-into-an-electrical-outlet kind of awake. Yeah, it was an electric wakefulness. Or maybe even more awake than that. No. Actually, pretty nearly, that was it. That was the feeling. Damn. Electrically waked. He hadn’t wanted to wake up quite that quick. Nobody should have to wake up that quick. Nobody! Shit.

SUPER KARMA and viagra. Just two more things to worry about, huh? What other disasters were waiting just around the corner for him?

As if Jadyn and his crazy ways weren’t enough disasters already!

What was Jadyn doing right now? Right this very minute?

Who was he with?

Nope.

Not going to think about it.

Not gonna do it.

Nope.

8

You know, at one point Dare had been a college student.

Yup.

It was true.

It hadn’t lasted long, though. Like 2-1/4 semesters. Then he’d sort of self-destructed. Academically, socially, every other –ally. That year or so, his year of higher education torture, hell! – it was just a blur to Dare now. Shit! He’d only been 18! At that age, he could barely walk and chew gum (successfully) at the same time.

Ah yes! College years! So long ago! That mythic, distant, half-remembered, prehistoric era of his extreme youth! Yeah, it was hard to believe he’d ever been that young. That he’d done all the things he’d done. That he’d let himself be carried off in so many bizarre directions. Now he was an elderly late 20-something. He was stable. He was responsible. He was having heart palpitations over marriage problems. He was another animal entirely. He was a boring adult now. Uber normal.

But, yeah, as a (late) teenager, college had turned out to be a rough and bumpy year and a half for Dare. A lot of life decisions made and unmade and re-made and unmade, again and again and again. Interesting times. But he did get one thing out of his lost academic year of living dangerously – a love affair with Introduction to Creative Writing 100, AND a compulsion to craft HAIKU poetry when he got stressed out, (well, there was this second thing, a second love affair he’d had, a 24 hour hormonal inferno of love, his first one night stand – with, of course, Jadyn – when they’d accidentally met behind the Student Union by the dumpsters and... but that’s another story for another time, anyways...).

So, yeah, HAIKU and Darius Johnson had first got acquainted in his rough-n-ready college year(s). And haiku was something he’d carried with him to this very day. It was another one of his things. Haiku. A stable, helpful routine. A funky, unexpected corner of beauty in his continuing and disorderly stab at mastering life. Haiku was cool. Haiku IS cool. Haiku just is.

9

Haiku is cool man!

How cool is haiku you ask?

Very cool, that’s how

10

Yup.

What more could you say?

But back to Dare’s college experiences. Dare remembered those times very well. School was brutal. School and school life always stressed Dare out. To the max, man! The pressure never really let up. Homework, tests, GPA, and then he’d come out as a gay man and the top blew off his head and he was going like crazy all day and all night long and he needed a break from his life, sometimes he just needed time to breathe and zone out and just be Dare. No men. No 100 pages to read. No endless sexting. No essays to write. That was the point (thankfully) when he’d stumbled onto cool haiku.

Dare had taken to, crafted constantly, and worked his haiku poetry as if he were a crack addict working on a long-planned, months-long binge. Yeah, the whole time he was taking classes and finding out how endlessly fascinating men were and not sleeping (alone) at night, he was also counting syllables in his head. It gave his over-thinking, over-sexed brain something else to do other than freak out and doze through classes and cruise the college campus. Yeah, Dare haiku’d. Hard. Assiduously even. It was a constant activity. Just like finding his next buff (or otherwise) partner. And yeah, it wasn’t, probably, Nobel-laureate-level haiku. Probably not. But it was Dare’s own haiku. It was HIS HAIKU. And that’s all that mattered when all was said and done, right? Right.

So. Dare haiku’d. He haiku’d so much, his roommate Wade had gotten concerned. Or, to be exact, Wade’s folks had gotten concerned. Dare apparently morphed overnight from innocent college freshman into unstoppable, malicious, career-destroying criminal – that was his influence on young Wade. At least, that was the way Wade’s parent’s referred to Dare (they particularly emphasized malicious). Not because of Dare’s men obsession. No. But because of Dare’s mania. Dare would turn on his desk light at 2AM, after returning to his dorm room, smelling of sweat and lube and cum (yeah he was crazy) and he’d start scribbling like mad for a few minutes, haiku-ing, go to bed, get up, turn on the light, scribble, go back to bed, get up, shower, scribble more haiku, check his phone to see if anybody was checking out his bio on his sex-sites, crack a textbook and (guiltily) take notes, go back to bed etc. etc., then he’d (the next morning) end up snoring through his first class (or two, or three) and not even known he’d done it. Wade, who hadn’t gotten back to sleep yet either, what with all the scribblings and the lights-turning-on-and off, and the fact that Dare got Wade doing late-night haiku writing competitions with him, and well, sometimes Wade began napping through his morning classes as well, exhausted from all that midnight syllable counting and that, apparently, was NOT OK roommate influencing or behavior, and, well, you can see where all that was heading.

To the adults observing all this from the sidelines, the issue was clear. Wade was being corrupted. By irresponsible, unshackled poetic expression. Something had to give. And something did.

Thus Dare’s new label: malicious came to be a part of Dare’s academic experience. The two of them, Dare and Wade, parted ways after a few weeks of sleepless nights, in their first semester together at college. They traded roommates.. Wade moved and got a Pre-Med student as a roommate so he never stopped studying and Wade’s parents were beside themselves with pleasure. Dare’s next roommate had a girlfriend and never slept in their dorm room, so Dare was beside himself with pleasure also, and was left alone to be as crazy undisciplined with his haiku and men and late night encounters as he liked. Which, yeah, probably wasn’t the best thing. By the end of his failed first year, he’d committed six three-ring notebooks to his frantic, calm-inducing haiku-ing. And he’d racked up an impressive C-/D+ GPA. And so, things were not good. Well, the one (sort of) good thing about it all was - at least he’d been spending (and wasting) his own money on college. It wasn’t his ma’s money he was wasting. He’d blown through six years of savings in one semester, and he’d gotten into debt for the last two semesters (and he was still paying on all that debt to this very day). So, yeah. That happened to Dare.

Yup.

Interesting times, huh?

You know, Dare still had a pile of those raggedy, somewhat illegible notebooks in the back of his underwear drawer filled to bursting with much heavy, throbbing, painful teenage haiku angst. Swollen, throbbing angst. Yup. He had a ton of it. He had like thousands of haiku tucked away under his socks. Thousands. Literally. Thousands. It was true (Dare wrote really, really small, his haiku-to-paper-volume-used ratio was impressive as hell).

So. Yeah. Dare hadn’t ever shown his haiku-ing to people. Not then. Not now. Nope. It was a Dare-only thing. It was for Dare’s Eyes Only. He hadn’t even shown them to Jadyn. Well, most of them he hadn’t. A select few he had. But only a select few. So, yeah, Jadyn hadn’t seen the entirety of the Darius Poetic Opus yet. Not even a fraction of it. And that was saying a lot. And yeah, with the way things were going, he probably NEVER would be showing them all to Jadyn. Not in this life. The fucker. Shit!

Let it go, Dare. Not thinking about Jadyn. Not doing it. Just Say No. Repeat after me... Just say...

All right, all right.

Got it.

Fine.

Great.

So...

Yup. Haiku. It’s short and sweet and potent. You know it, it’s that 3 line, 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable English version of a Japanese poem format – everyone does it, you see it everywhere these days, everywhere. Or at least, it seems that way to Dare. His guilty poetic obsession has gone virally trendy of late. Millions haiku. Millions of newborn haiku poems wander about the social-media-sphere. It’s almost like doodling. Something you do to keep your hands busy. Like a poetic Sudoku. Except with epiphanies.

So. Here’s Dare’s 1st haiku-ic attempt, 2 days after he’d started his ill-fated college career, the night after he’d had his first Creative Writing class, a month before he’d met Jadyn. Back when he was 18 and young and dumb and full of promise and poetic sap that was bursting to be free and flow all over the place and all over everyone and everything. Back when every second of every day of his life seemed to matter. Those fucking seconds mattered so much, they hurt.

So. Yeah. Lo these many years ago, here was the beginning of cool for Dare. Here is his first haiku.

11

Passing me the salt,

Tabasco too, danger’s my

middle name tonight.

12

OK. Yeah. As haiku went, it wasn’t what somebody might label as a classically haiku haiku. It wasn’t really classical. It wasn’t really anything. So fine. Great. Point made. Sue him. For egregious, outrageous poeticizing. But that haiku fucker was his, right? And it was cool. And it did make a point. It clearly did. And Dare liked it. He liked what it said. He liked everything it said. It said