Bars, wars, the man

who pours,

they all adore and

settle old scores.

He stands at the ready

with a bottle of Cutty,

aloofness is his pleasure,

enfolding warmth

in equal measure.

A dispenser he is

of liquid pleasure,

they gaze upon his

rows of bottled

treasure.

Ready with a smile,

or a towel 'til

it's time to close.

'One last call for alcohol',

the final stanza of the play,

clean the mats, wipe the

bottles and bar,

and come back

another day.

disowned.

pwned.

I’ve realized that I’m alone,

My seat of stone

A private throne

I’ve come undone

The end of my run

She showed your ID

So very proudly

A new job, great

I feel sudden hate

For Suddenly, Rowan F

Was Rowan T

The last straw of all

My name to return

Like your sweet sweet

Brother

May he burn

Burn with the rivers

Of hate

that now burn me

My soul

Suddenly light

Suddenly light because

I’ve ceased to care

My fatherhood,

Vanished

Into thin air

I’m just a man again after

All

Nowhere further for me

To fall

Don’t pity me

Or come back later

Find another

Familius pater

That ship has sailed

Into the dark

That story has reached

Its final arc

There is no greater

Act of disdain

Than to give the old man

Back his name

Connie, my ex, and I have developed at least a functional relationship in the nearly five years since we parted. It was a bad ending. I had been increasingly aware by 2017 when Con had a breakdown, meltdown, complete retreat from the family. Rowan our daughter was in an out of the mental health care system for suicide attempts and other forms of self-harm. Kai, the youngest, he just seemed to regard me with a cold serpentine loathing.

I was burned out completely by the end of 2017. Found myself sitting in a chair for days at a time. Not showering. Not dressing. Not talking to them. Covered in a blanket, sometimes borrowing Rowan’s weighted blanket and feeling like dying. ER visits for extreme anxiety (thought I was having a heart attack, several times…my blood pressure was spiking to 180 from my mind’s dark powers). I finally got out of that chair and saw a psychiatrist, A. Tran in San Jose, California, where I was living since 2009. I got on the right medication, Prozac worked well for me as it turned out. Tran was not just a pill dispenser, he was a fine human being with deep discernment and listening skills like a golden retriever. Over the next year and half, he brought me out of the darkness and back to my self, not my old self, a new man who I began to get to know.

In parallel, my second cousin Trudy had ended up in federal prison in 2017 for selling weed. 2 years for over a pound, popped for distribution. The family largely ignored her when she was in. We had been close her whole life, she and her identical twin Brenda are thirteen years younger than me and I had changed their diapers. They should not have lived past three days old, they had been born with holes in their hearts. Open heart surgery for both at three days old. Sitting on pins and needles waiting for news. They lived. They thrived. As they grew, I was a man and moved into manly things, going to school for premed, getting kicked out for drugs and alcohol abuse, becoming a chef, getting in and out of relationships with alacrity. By the time I was 25 years old I finally felt like a real person, the man I would be more or less for the rest of my life. Trudy was a teenager, blooming, and the twins were being raised by my mom, much better than she has raised me. Old age had taken the edge off of her narcissism and addictions. She was finally the mother I had needed, to them. I saw the girls frequently when I visited mom. Something about Trudy’s gaze was vaguely disturbing, I didn’t, couldn’t put a name to it at that time. Brenda was so different from her, not as smart, or creative, or cool. Trudy and I always felt like brother and sister and Brenda always felt like a stranger.

I went on with my life, got back in school for engineering, initially as a civil engineering student. I had a huge hard-on for bridges. I read books and collected photos of the famous bridges, and lighthouses, of the world. These things fascinated me at a visceral level. I went on to Cal Poly, SLO and ended up in Mechanical Engineering. The civil department was run by old men with whiskey bottles in the drawers of their desks. I didn’t feel comfortable trusting my future to them. And I got As in every ME course I took, the material fascinated me. I caught on fire.

I worked restaurants still to pay my way. My dad had bailed out of paying my way, understandably, after the pre-med debacle. I worked at a place called Hudson’s Grill, back in Ventura, California where I had returned to junior college in 1986. I picked up a job at the Hudson’s in SLO as a result, bartender and cook. It brought in enough to pay most of my bills for living and school. I took out loans for the rest. I was on a good track, frequently on the dean’s list, leading homework groups, active in clubs, and partying responsibly with great friends. I even sang in a rock band, and had some great times belting out metal and soft rock classics with the boys, Doug, Johnny and Dave the Hell-rider. We never amounted to much but it was hella fun.

I met a buxom and charismatic waitress at the restaurant, one thing led to another. She was six years older, claimed to be barren, but along about the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I proved that wrong. I graduated on June 12, 1992, married Grendel (not her real name) on June 13, 1992. I had an internship in Torrance California that summer, as Grendel’s belly began to grow, and worked for a turbocharger manufacturer down in Torrance California, roomed with my friend Jorge from Cal Poly in El Segundo. I built good relationships at Garrett Turbochargers, and it turned into a paid master’s degree back at Cal Poly, with a sponsored thesis project that would ultimately really help Garrett to improve the efficiency of their turbos with simple changes to the shape of castings. I was apparently a wizard at fluid and thermal mechanics. Who knew? The marriage was shit from the start, Grendel was a narcissist. She had a unique ability to act like who you wanted her to be when it suited her, a dark empathy…Her mother (Grendel’s Mother LOL) had described her as a ‘sha-meleon’. No shit. I did not correct her pronunciation, and asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it before we were married with children. She reckoned it was my job to figure that out for myself. Fair. I finished the master’s, took a good job for a company in SLO and LA, a design office started by my thesis advisor when he found himself suddenly unwelcome in the ME department. His brother ran the plant down in LA, we built heavy machinery and large astronomical telescopes. The plant was loaded with relics, huge machine tools for making huge machines, acquired for a song when WW II ended and never moved since. The sight of shop cats puking up hairballs lingers in my mind’s eye to this day… I met Rick there at L&F. We had been students at the same time, but he was a year ahead and had started just before me at L&F. He mentored me, as he had years of industrial experience before coming back to Cal Poly. He had worked at a company called Ballard Battery up in Burnaby BC, famous for its incendiary night vision goggle lithium-ion batteries. They had not been a big hit with the soldiers on the the ground. Ballard had moved on to hydrogen fuel cells in the early 90s, and Rick had moved on to Ballard in 1995. He offered me a job in 1996, and that’s where the story picks up in “Rock Creek Park”. This chapter ends here, if there is interest I will add subsequent chapters to this engineer’s memoir.Connie, my ex, and I have developed at least a functional relationship in the nearly five years since we parted. It was a bad ending. I had been increasingly aware by 2017 when Con had a breakdown, meltdown, complete retreat from the family. Rowan our daughter was in an out of the mental health care system for suicide attempts and other forms of self-harm. Kai, the youngest, he just seemed to regard me with a cold serpentine loathing.

I was burned out completely by the end of 2017. Found myself sitting in a chair for days at a time. Not showering. Not dressing. Not talking to them. Covered in a blanket, sometimes borrowing Rowan’s weighted blanket and feeling like dying. ER visits for extreme anxiety (thought I was having a heart attack, several times…my blood pressure was spiking to 180 from my mind’s dark powers). I finally got out of that chair and saw a psychiatrist, A. Tran in San Jose, California, where I was living since 2009. I got on the right medication, Prozac worked well for me as it turned out. Tran was not just a pill dispenser, he was a fine human being with deep discernment and listening skills like a golden retriever. Over the next year and half, he brought me out of the darkness and back to my self, not my old self, a new man who I began to get to know.

In parallel, my second cousin Trudy had ended up in federal prison in 2017 for selling weed. 2 years for over a pound, popped for distribution. The family largely ignored her when she was in. We had been close her whole life, she and her identical twin Brenda are thirteen years younger than me and I had changed their diapers. They should not have lived past three days old, they had been born with holes in their hearts. Open heart surgery for both at three days old. Sitting on pins and needles waiting for news. They lived. They thrived. As they grew, I was a man and moved into manly things, going to school for premed, getting kicked out for drugs and alcohol abuse, becoming a chef, getting in and out of relationships with alacrity. By the time I was 25 years old I finally felt like a real person, the man I would be more or less for the rest of my life. Trudy was a teenager, blooming, and the twins were being raised by my mom, much better than she has raised me. Old age had taken the edge off of her narcissism and addictions. She was finally the mother I had needed, to them. I saw the girls frequently when I visited mom. Something about Trudy’s gaze was vaguely disturbing, I didn’t, couldn’t put a name to it at that time. Brenda was so different from her, not as smart, or creative, or cool. Trudy and I always felt like brother and sister and Brenda always felt like a stranger.

I went on with my life, got back in school for engineering, initially as a civil engineering student. I had a huge hard-on for bridges. I read books and collected photos of the famous bridges, and lighthouses, of the world. These things fascinated me at a visceral level. I went on to Cal Poly, SLO and ended up in Mechanical Engineering. The civil department was run by old men with whiskey bottles in the drawers of their desks. I didn’t feel comfortable trusting my future to them. And I got As in every ME course I took, the material fascinated me. I caught on fire.

I worked restaurants still to pay my way. My dad had bailed out of paying my way, understandably, after the pre-med debacle. I worked at a place called Hudson’s Grill, back in Ventura, California where I had returned to junior college in 1986. I picked up a job at the Hudson’s in SLO as a result, bartender and cook. It brought in enough to pay most of my bills for living and school. I took out loans for the rest. I was on a good track, frequently on the dean’s list, leading homework groups, active in clubs, and partying responsibly with great friends. I even sang in a rock band, and had some great times belting out metal and soft rock classics with the boys, Doug, Johnny and Dave the Hell-rider. We never amounted to much but it was hella fun.

I met a buxom and charismatic waitress at the restaurant, one thing led to another. She was six years older, claimed to be barren, but along about the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I proved that wrong. I graduated on June 12, 1992, married Grendel (not her real name) on June 13, 1992. I had an internship in Torrance California that summer, as Grendel’s belly began to grow, and worked for a turbocharger manufacturer down in Torrance California, roomed with my friend Jorge from Cal Poly in El Segundo. I built good relationships at Garrett Turbochargers, and it turned into a paid master’s degree back at Cal Poly, with a sponsored thesis project that would ultimately really help Garrett to improve the efficiency of their turbos with simple changes to the shape of castings. I was apparently a wizard at fluid and thermal mechanics. Who knew? The marriage was shit from the start, Grendel was a narcissist. She had a unique ability to act like who you wanted her to be when it suited her, a dark empathy…Her mother (Grendel’s Mother LOL) had described her as a ‘sha-meleon’. No shit. I did not correct her pronunciation, and asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it before we were married with children. She reckoned it was my job to figure that out for myself. Fair. I finished the master’s, took a good job for a company in SLO and LA, a design office started by my thesis advisor when he found himself suddenly unwelcome in the ME department. His brother ran the plant down in LA, we built heavy machinery and large astronomical telescopes. The plant was loaded with relics, huge machine tools for making huge machines, acquired for a song when WW II ended and never moved since. The sight of shop cats puking up hairballs lingers in my mind’s eye to this day… I met Rick there at L&F. We had been students at the same time, but he was a year ahead and had started just before me at L&F. He mentored me, as he had years of industrial experience before coming back to Cal Poly. He had worked at a company called Ballard Battery up in Burnaby BC, famous for its incendiary night vision goggle lithium-ion batteries. They had not been a big hit with the soldiers on the the ground. Ballard had moved on to hydrogen fuel cells in the early 90s, and Rick had moved on to Ballard in 1995. He offered me a job in 1996, and that’s where the story picks up in “Rock Creek Park”. This chapter ends here, if there is interest I will add subsequent chapters to this engineer’s memoir.

I had met Connie seemingly at random, October 18th, 1996. I was recently separated from a very bad thing, two sons taken far, far away, lost and drifting, and doing a very new and important job.

I worked in Poway California for a small (I was actually the first hire in June) fuel cell car company. The first program, the raison d'etre for the company, was a contract with Georgetown University's energy program to develop a 40 foot hybrid fuel cell bus. This was a new thing at the time. I felt honored to be the first hire, to go to Vancouver BC to the Mother Ship, to be trained very much like a bootcamp in a technology which I had loved from afar for years...The wife had told me, yes, take the job, and had promptly left me and absconded with my babies to Washington state, while I was in the middle of 'boot'.

In early October, Rick C., the honcho and the man who had believed in me, still does, said 'hey John, I need to you to do a thing for me in a few weeks. I was eager to please and he filled me in on the details...

"You just need to go meet the team and be yourself. You're going to do great."

I showed up in DC the day before, late. Didn't sleep well. Wrote a poem about/to Rory the elder of my sons at 3AM. Tossed in the anonymous hotel bed almost until dawn. Got up early, hopped into the rental and jetted cautiously to Tysons' Corner Virginia to meet the twenty or so men who comprised the sub-contracting team on the bus program. Battery guys, bus coach guys, power electronics guys, and the fuel cell guy, me. Like riding a bicycle...

07:45, October 18, 1996. I met Sam Romano, a legend, the former program manager of the Lunar Rover projects, now the head of the Energy Program at GU. Jim Larkins, his capable and affable second, a former Air Force Major who had managed airborne laser programs for DARPA. These guys were the shit. They welcomed me, but from the first there seemed to be something hanging in the air, and the nervous and jumpy Romano said

"Where are your materials? You seem to be traveling a little light".

What is he talking about? Over the next minutes it became clear that Rick had failed to communicate to me that I was on the hook for a four hour presentation of the fuel cell technology, PEM fuel cell technology in general, the specifics of our engine design...I and a couple of engineers had only been making the diagrams and drawings for the engine for three months. I felt like an immediate impostor. Adrenaline exuded from my pores. I had a moment of panic, and mastered it. My face must have looked blurry for a moment as I went through this rapid series of emotions and settled on the relaxed smile of a West Texas boy, complete with cowboy boots, jeans tucked neatly in.

"No problem, Sam. I got this. I need some acetate sheets and a sharpie. I need a lot of black coffee. I will reproduce the materials in the next twenty minutes and we will do this thing."

Thanking the gods for a photographic memory, which had been a curse in times of sorrow, I disengorged the complete design drawings and process flow diagrams onto eight or nine 11"x17" acetate sheets and said the only prayers I could remember.

I told them I was ready at 10 after 8. I faked a confident saunter into the large, ornate conference room, with tables arranged in a horseshoe, twenty three men I didn't know, and a lectern in the hot zone, with a really fancy overhead projector at its side.

The panic threatened to rise, and then I saw her.

There was one woman in the room, seated in the middle at the back. A vision in a plum sweater, brown hair and eyes, a broad smile that genuinely seemed to encourage me directly, eager curious eyes, wanting to know what I had to say...

Four hours later I was spent. She had been my anchor for the whole thing. I locked onto that smile, those hungry and curious eyes, and gave an amazing presentation. I flirted with technical details, expounded, expanded, responded to good questions and stupid ones with respect. By the end I knew the faces, names, voices and personalities of the men I would work with for the next four years to make this beast roll.

I didn't yet know her name. She hadn't been introduced. As it all wrapped, and Sam and Jim congratulated me and gave my directions to the Silver Diner where we would have lunch (I had bonked in the process of the morning, I thought there would be snacks...), I locked onto the fine young woman making her way out. Sam caught my laser-like focus on the feminine divine, and introduced me. He had the great good sense to make himself scarce at that point, plus he was just a very busy man. Always on to the next thing.

"Hi, I'm John Fisher. I really appreciated you being here."

"I'm Connie Tath, the program accountant, and contract administrator for the GU Energy Program! It's so nice to meet you! You really know this stuff. I've never been to one of these before and I was just really impressed with your knowledge."

"Aww, thanks. If you're not busy, I would love it if you could show me around Georgetown tonight."

It was Friday night, and Connie accepted with a very cute and vulnerable smile.

We spent the entire weekend talking and eating and making love. It was the best weekend of my life to that point. Not just sex. Not even the sex. The intimacy, another human valuing me for who I was...intoxicating. I had it bad.

Over the next months we fell deeply in love, writing each other several times a week, sending photographs (remember those?). I came back to see her for the first time at Christmas. I had been in Tacoma, WA visiting the boys, in my ex's house just prior, was trapped on the wrong side of Tacoma Narrows Bridge by the Ice Storm of 1996 for five days in Wendy's house. Misery and pain. I escaped, a cold night turned the icicles on the Narrows Bridge, which had been deadly spears dropping to the deck, into an epic holiday tree decoration. I made it out and caught a plane to DC, and arrived at Connie's one room efficiency in North Arlington, VA. We spend six days together and by the end I knew this woman would be my second wife, eventually.

We went to Rock Creek Park to roller-blade, it was a dry winter in DC and the conditions were perfect. The trail was thankfully immaculately paved, and wide. Connie had her own skates, she worked out five days a week, three hours at a time. Her heavy muscles were a huge turn-on, she was not a dainty girl. She did yoga as well and had taken me to a class, I was hooked on that and her. I bought my first roller blades that day, and we went for it. The hills were a challenge, inline technique was new to me. I had only ever been on four wheel skates for birthday parties and street hockey in Brooklyn, and I was generally quite lame that day. Connie didn't care about that. We held hands and went until my hips and ass ached (more). Hours later, the pain became a rhythm, and I forgot about it with Con by my side...

The skates, and the better ones I got later became a fixture in our relationship until maybe 2002. We moved in together in Mission Hills (San Diego), CA in April. Drove across country together across the south. Skated in many towns and along southern highways. Kept her kitty dosed. Saw so many things with our own eyes and through each other's eyes. Skated regularly together for hours around the little lake in San Diego. We married in 2000, the divorce from Wendy was protracted by legal shitstorms, Con stuck by me. The skates, inline, moving forward with power, hand in hand, side by each, were the metaphor for our best years.

I wish I could say it went on forever. It didn't.

I sit here knowing I have a story to tell, paralyzed by choices. Shall I type on the old Underwood? Long hand with a fountain pen? Directly into this soulless contraption?

Does it matter? I'm reasonably sure there is a different muse on a computer, analytical and clinical. Very judgmental. The muse of the Underwood smokes cigarettes in a long holder, says "drat" when she is frustrated, glitters with impatience. The muse of the foutain pen is a langorous hippy with generous lips and bosom, rear end for days on end.

What is my process and does it even matter? I am feeling, and somehow, some combination of words will make it stop. It needs to stop.

And there I have done it...on a soulless contraption.

Who’da thought I was a man of action

not long ago bound in spiritual traction

I was drifting down the drain my whole life behind me

couldn't believe a word that was given kindly

met a girl name Naomi and her brother bebop-a- Rudy

while I was getting on my nosh at a place called Bootsy

saw them again with her papa in front of the main market

was headed for my truck therefore to unpark it

Saw Naomi running out towards the traffic

the vision in my head was gory graphic

A scream came to my mind before my lips

Don’t take this baby lord from her mama’s crib

Second turned to minutes, minutes turned to hours

As I negotiated with my higher power

She said unto me it’s y’all’s turn Jack

Watcha gonna do with the life I gave you back?

lemme lend a little hint while you ponder on your fax

the harming of a child is an unnatural act

Don’t get hung up Arjuna as you ponder on your dharma

ya owe me more than one kid, this is your karma

Kurukshetra lies ahead and dark acts will be done

I may yet call upon you to take up the gun again, son

shouted out whoa girl and she froze in her tracks

no one had to witness a killing act

I'm an angel of mercy and a stepping razor

living each day of life with grace for

the people On the street I meet and I care for

sometimes my hearts to open the bear for

Now two lives go forward, this is our burden

God has said to me protect the children

I have a new god-daughter til the end of my time

So sayeth the lord in her voice divine.

My story is highly complicated.

By law enforcement it won’t be remediated.

My girl she’s the only one who gets me.

And she gets me she gets me she gets me.

Most days I think I’m invisible.

Faithful that my heart is indivisible.

When they see me, hear my songs, their faces are quizzical.

They get hung up on the metaphysical.

My baby, my baby, my baby she gets me.

She gets to me she gets me she gets to me good.

Sometimes she’s a child.

She’s always a child. I am her father, her son, her best friend.

She’s seen all the scars I am, she seen me barely hold together in the storm. And yes, she’s always there to keep me warm.

I’ve ended a thousand lives

I’ve left behind two

wives

Everywhere I see the knives.

My baby, my baby, my baby she jives .

My baby, my baby, my baby, she always gets me.

My baby she gets to me, she gets to me, she gets to my heart so good

Baby, you’ve always known my lust is a virtue,

You weren’t always sure that I would never hurt you. My baby, my baby my baby I get you my baby I get to you I get to you so good I get you on top I get you underneath, I get you in the light,

And in the dark of night take you like a thief

She is my muse, my muse, the woman I will never ever ever abuse

She brightens my day.

She darkens my night.

She takes my hand and brings me to the light.

When I remember those, I have fought

She captures my heart with a single thought. A thought of love for me.

My lust is a virtue baby

Baby, wait at home for me

And keep the porch light on.

Please keep the coffee hot.

I’m on my way back home.

My baby, my baby, she gets that my lust is my only virtue

That’s something they don’t teach in church y’all

Sex blood mud love

Fire fear death bruh

Life is pain remain remain

The gift to remind remind remain

I feel the pain the pain in vain

It drains the brain and I remain

To give a home to your refrain

Party to this empty brain

Cut a bitch

Scratch that itch

Escape the pain

Flow down the drain

I’m not insane or unable to frame

This reality in which I deign

The king is dead

Long may he reign

Sex blood mud love fire fear death bruh

We can’t really seem to get enough y’all