Stories... (Warning possible high word count ahead)

I, on occasion have short stories I would like to tell publicly. I realize this forum is not exactly the right place for that, but I don't know where the exact right place might be. So at the risk of upsetting some, (hopefully not Amber), I am starting this thread.

The first story was first an idea for a thread I had planed to call, "Shreds of Shame". It would be a place for ppl to confess things they had done in the past that they felt some lingering shame over.

I PMed someone with the story outline, and idea for their thoughts. I explained that the story was about a young man who discovers he can pick up more than just police/fire/emergency calls on his police scanner. How he intercepts first the calls of a woman on a cordless phone every day for a while when she calls into a sex chat forum. Later he hears a transmission from a baby monitor in a room across the hall from the child's mother and BF. He then discovers that the child's mother has become aware of his eavesdropping, and struggles with his understand that he should not be listening, and his over powering desire to continue this voyeurism.

I was asked how the mother knew of the eavesdropping?

camstory said:

Saw you on, and thought I would tell you how I was caught.

First of all I lived in a motorhome directly across the street from the couple. I had been eavesdropping for about two or three weekends. I got home from a very late night move. (I was working as a mover at the time) I rushed into the motorhome, through off my shoes, pants and shirt and grabbing my scanner dove up into bed. Laying on my belly I held the scanner in front of my face as I listened for any sound of activity. (BTW they had the most incredible sex, often culminating in her yelling, "Oh God yes fuck me in the ass") I had the bed area light on above my head when a blink of light accompanied by the beep of a horn caught my attention, stage right. The motorhome was a cab over set up, and backed into my buddies drive way, it sat facing the driveway of the home across the street. I looked to see the curtains pulled back on my front window, something I had not noticed when I flew into bed. Across the street was the ladies black Honda accord backed into her drive as she made her way into the house.

I was a bit startled, but thought nothing of it. Most ppl don't know a scanner from a transistor radio, and tho I knew she had been sitting in the car, I had only been exposed for just a minute or two, now having drawn the curtains closed. I only became alarmed when I very shortly heard someone come into the room with the monitor and pull the plug or switch it off. This was very odd as I had never heard the monitor off even when there had been no one at home, or any time. At that point I got a little panicky, quickly hid the scanner, locked the door and shut out all the lights, - waiting for the irate man person to come looking to kick my ass, or the cops.... Oh fuck, I jumped back out of bed where I had been hiding and raced back to the cabinet where I had hidden the scanner, and there on my knees quickly erased all the programmed frequencies that related to baby monitors or cordless phones. Rehid the scanner and crept back into bed.

(A bit of pointless trivia, - at the time it was not illegal to intercept private video broadcasts as that technology was new and no legislation had been enacted. It was on the other hand illegal to intercept private audio broadcast.)

About an hour later I crept back to the cabinet and there again on my knees manually punched in the monitor frequency. I was surprised to hear the monitor back on and the couple just finishing for the night. I switched off the scanner and replaced it in the cabinet, I think. I know I remained a bit unnerved by the whole chain of events.

The next workweek came and went, and after what seemed to be an especially wild weekend of sex, I saw the lady leaving for work on Monday morning. We would often be heading out about the same time, and we would glance, say hi and go our ways. This morning my hi was countered with, "Have you been listening to anything good lately?" I was so not ready for that, and replied in a stutter, "Umm, yea, I listen to plans at night sometimes..." WTF, I did sometimes tune into the nearby flight tower, and listed to the tower/pilot chatter at night, but it was morning, and we had never said more than hi to one another. She had a blank flat look on her face, - no smile, and no anger, just a look that said, ' I know what the fuck you have been doing.'

It was one of those things that haunts you, all day, in fact all week, I kept going back to it in my mind. Why hadn't i said something that made sense, or better yet, dummied up. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, I kept saying to myself. Then I would try to console myself by saying, "she doesn't care or she would have called the cops, or something", or, "if she cared why did she leave the monitor on with the door open?" Both, true enough, but that was not the point, - You blew it, and I knew I had.

The weekend sessions continued with some bondage, and considerable ass fucking, (with the exception of the few weekends when her boy was not gone for the visitations). Friday & Saturday nights were my time alone, just the three of us in that motorhome. She even once almost got into a fight over leaving the boys door open, when he complained, why did you open Robbie's door there is no need to heat that room with him gone. She snapped, she wanted the door opened to air the fucking room out!!! Once or twice I tried to grin when saying hi/good morning as we left at the same time, and now her look said, 'You're not cute, but I'll allow you', that was it.

I did my best to never catch any of their private conversation before or after, I was only there for the sex, and hearing any other details made me feel dirty or sneaky. It all ended about 5 months after the first time I tuned in when they moved. I always wondered where they had moved to exactly, but was glad I didn't. The motorhome was on wheels after all......

Eric/Cam

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This story was originally written last fall as an email to Little Red Haired Girl/Jane. I was feeling very down at the time, and knew somehow just writing her would help. It is almost exactly as it was sent, with the exception of adding Tasha's name to the list of those who have been very honest with me.

Losing a friend hurts, finding happiness.​

We were once very close and talked almost daily after she quite MFC. She was very down. The poor judgment to hook up with a member who came for a visit and stayed for a month and a half, had been instrumental in the chain of events that ended in the loss of her full time day job. I like to think I helped her through a pretty deep depression, but even if i was no help, I was there.

She frightened me once during this time when she sent me a long e-mail about a weekend home visiting her parents. She told of walking through the woods with her grandfathers old stub nose S&W .38cal pistol. How she had shot 10 rounds and with each one felt the power as the gun twitched in her hand. She said she had it packed in her bag before leaving, and planed to put it in her mouth and pull the trigger when she got home. She had keep it in her bag until the last minute knowing she would not follow through. Then after a long drive home and the failure to clear her mind of all that seemed so dismal, she had stopped at a gun shop, and found she had enough money to buy a cheep handgun and rounds. This was followed by two days of contemplation before she gave up on the idea for good. The end of the e-mail was a short paragraph in which she said she was fine now, but it still left me very concerned.

This time was followed by a doldrums of spirit in which she often did not get out of bed for days. Her replies to my e-mails gave me some indication of her mood. Perhaps the best indication was when there were none for a few days. Day three or four was more than I could handle, and would trigger a phone call. She almost always answered, when she didn't there would be an e-mail within a few hours.

It felt like we had been through a lot, and when she started to search online for work things felt different. Our e-mails were no longer the short tit for tat exchanges of emotionless words that seemed only to say, "Hey are you still there?" and, "Yea I'm still here". Now they became much more regular and hardly ever contained anything other than a summery of that day's job search. I felt she needed the structure this provided her, so almost every night I would get a progress report, even if it was only to say there had been none. The spirit and emotion still seemed mostly absent, though in the job search things were forward looking.

The news that she had left her apartment to buy food came a few days after the last pizza I could manage for the month had been delivered. It also seemed to mark the return of emotion, most often short burst of anger. These then would be followed in the very next mail by much longer rants on the same point. It was as if she was saying, "This bothers me." To which I would ask, "What is it about that that bothers you." In this way she would ask, is it OK, and I would say, yes go ahead.

What had been dammed up spilled out in 5or6 emails a day sometimes. It quickly became obvious that almost everything she was now venting was directly or indirectly connected in some way to the 5 months of camming in general, and to her failure to reach some consistent level of earning that would allow independence from the 9 to 5 work she had been doing since she was 19. as she tore through the clutter piled on top, this one thing, this failure became more and more clear, until finally that was pulled from the bottom of the box.

The anger was short run, and our e-mails were no longer separated by hours, but by days. She had started looking for work in the real-world and would send out two or three completed aps and resumes each morning before driving to to other possible places of employment, or to an interview that had been secured.

Finally there was an interview, that lead to a second, and this to the promise of near certain employment. Everything had to be OKed by the company General Manager who would be returning from Europe in 10 or 12 days. It was just a formality, she was told, and besides the GM would want to instruct her on exactly how he wanted the clinics billing processed.

It was the ides of March when I got the good news of this second interview. The ten days that followed were marked by very few e-mails - I think no more than two or three. It seemed there was little to say. I knew things were going to be very much different once she started back to work. For her there were no more daily progress reports to send, as we both silently held our breath.

She wrote late Friday the 23rd to let me know the money from SoTxBob had come in the mail. He had sent $60, ten more than he owed me for the pressure cooker. Had he made a mistake? No, this was SoTxBob the guy that came and hung out with me for most of the day in my failed member room when ScarletRaven and RadiantNea were doing their 24 hour Cancer Awareness tipathon. No, no mistake, just Bob being Bob.

After meeting with the GM Saturday afternoon I got an e-mail, she would start Monday the 26th, and without asking or even suggesting she needed it, she had been offered a $250 draw against her first pay check. It was wonderful news. It had been just more than a month since she had got up and went out for the first time. Just over a month since she had turned that corner and started away from the darkness.

When I was going to bike from CA. - TX, and interview models and members along the way last summer, I was going to stop in New Mexico for a week. We had even planed it to coincide with a national spoken word championship. It was the only firm date, as I started to work out the itinerary.

Last week i emailed her b/c it had been a while. i didn't get a reply so i tried to call, but her phone # was no longer good. I sent a second e-mail, and waited. Yesterday I got an email, she was back with her husband and things were good. she felt bad and had not known how to tell me. She didn't want him to know about the camming and did not know how she would explain our friendship. Did I understand?

I did, was all I could let myself feel as I clicked the reply button - the subject line read, "Say no more, best wishes", the text inside, "Live well my friend." and that, was that.

The kicker is, she didn't sound confident herself. All the words were correct but the tone was like that of someone who hopes paying lip service to a notion will make it so, yet has no belief it will be.

There is a selfish me who is sad for my loss. But mostly what i feel bad about is that as much as i hope it is a good thing, I can't really believe it can be, if even half of what she had told me about her abusive husband was true. Forget she had told me anything about him, the fact that she felt she needed to sacrifice our friendship was evidence enough of his character. She had no secrets, shearing with me things most would never tell anyone for fear of judgment. She had told me a thing or two about myself that I had been unaware of. Things that most would not tell even a friend for fear they would not like the observation and go away. I did not like the observations, but they were 100% accurate, and I loved her for the truth. And for unknown reasons she loved me, or said she did. Something about it had felt genuine, and the first time she signed off an email with, "I love you" I didn't question it then or any time after - I love you, had become our parting words from then on.

She remains the benchmark to which I measure the great honesty of other friends like, ladyLuna,Roxie, VC, and now Tasha.

She has just turned 40 and I think worried she would not have anyone to grow old with. We talked about the different kinds of crazy sex we would have when we meet, nethe of us had any thought beyond that. She had even made up this fantasy that she would live above her candle, and tie-dye shirt shop with 4 or 5 huge cats along the coast. I would come through town once or twice a year and that would be all the intimate contact she would need. (intimacy, something MFC could never provide and she missed badly) I told her that was silly b/c her shop would be somewhere from Santa Cruz to Moss Beach a 50 mile strip of coast that is my heaven. Every time through town I would hook her up with a new beach disciple or surf angel, and about the time she had that one wore out i would be back around to line up another. Hell, "there are enough burned out, washed up, and fogged in, fair weather fishermen, and once was, breaker takers any given sun set between the Flying Fish Bar and Mavericks Surf Shop to keep the randious ex camstress a month of sundays deep in johns", I'd told her. Then i would ask her to describe the cats again.

There were two gray tiger strip fellas, and one big assed old beat up orange tom she called MotherFucker cuz that's what he got used to, and wouldn't come to anything else. He started feral, been there when she took the place over. Living on roof rats and the occasional sick seagull. she had slowly tried to coax him inside with bits of chopped liver and condensed milk. She said he became very fond of the offering but becoming a house cat wasn't in the cards, and she gave up after a while. Old MotherFucker never would settle for anything but cubed up liver and condensed milk, and enjoyed it just about dark, two, sometimes three nights a week. He took his meals out of an old pie tin out back where she would set it along the narrow board walk that ran around the three un-streeted sides of the tiny two story victorian.

There was a calico that was fixed. I corected her, saying broken made much better sense. She had, before being fixed, given burth to a single litter of kittens. Of these two appeared to be as simees as any cat could be. though she already had four cats, my friend told me she keept one of the simees b/c she thought the candle shop should have one attractive cat to lounge around and attract the attention of potencial patrins. Less than three months later the half grown kitten suddendly dissapeared one very busy memorial day weekend. She said she had wanted to keep both simees but had to offer up the other to get someone to take the runt. The runt she explained was ugly, its head being about twice the size it should have been. I laughed, thinking of that big head avatar kitten of Loslonelyboy.

She had named the calico Alice, because of the movie, Alice's Resterant. I asked her if there was a cat in that movie that looked like her calico? She looked puzzled, and said, 'no, not that she had noticed'

I loved hearing about those cats, and old MotherFucker in particular, so it went every time the candle shop would come up, I'd ask about those cats. It seemed every time I did, she would remember a little more she had thought up to tell me.

I imagine, now that the ex cam lady has abandoned the candle shop, that old MotherFucker no longer spends his days sprawled out in the cool sand beneath the Victorian, but he and the others instead must for now share some dank cave somewhere along the coast with a dragon named puff. I never wanted to grow up, and unlike Jackie Paper i will be waiting to great her and her cats if ever they should return.

Yea, how can you not be happy that you had that sort of shit. In telling you this i have found the happiness, and the sadness is not so bad any more. This is what I need from a friend at times.

EdgarAllenWhoa said:

I really liked it Cam...its got that sweet touch of sad in it.
Happy that you got to say Goodbye and the hope that she is on her feet again and making things work for herself.
Sad, that you had to say good bye the way you did, but, you were good enough to respect her wishes.

Thanks for putting that out there.

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Thank You Very Much

southsamurai said:

ok, this isnt really a short story. hell its not even properly finished and edited since i never do more than spell check as im working on something. this project got derailed id guess about 10 years ago. the further i got to the present i was living at the time the more damn depressing the whole thing got. i got the first few chapters done and got to the point in my history where the stories stopped being nostalgic and humorous and started being ugly and painful. but i cracked the file open last night and scanned it for the first time in years. the first two or three stories, while poorly written, had a certain simple joy to them that i was able to muster at the time. i guess enough time spent with the dying clouds your vision of life. or maybe im just so damn broken now that the innocent, good kid i was seems like something someone else wrote instead of something that happened. but in the spirit of reclaiming some small part of me that was decent i want to share this story of the me that was. maybe keep him alive and safe and pure at heart when it couldnt be done for real. so it goes, so it goes

When I first started taking health occupations as a fat, dorky kid, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Maybe I should have done that instead. Now I just don’t know. I do know that my aunt was my idealized mother figure, my Oedipal figure. She was a nurse. An R.N. An angel in white. I didn’t figure out the impact she had on me until much later in life. But my respect and love for her, who had put band-aids on me to make me happy (and to give her time to get dressed for her dates, school, etc) made me want to do what she had done. Dive in and get my hands dirty. Make a difference in the life of someone living in his or her worst moment. To, by god, heal. Soooo when I got into my clinical rotations I fell in love with it. Sure, I was wiping old people’s backsides and not even getting paid, but oh, the joy, the pride that came with it! The gentleman who was my guide and proctor taught me well. He was a short guy with skin like wooden leather. His skin was Dark brown, with tight curly hairs on his massive forearms. Since this is a book, I’ll call him Ronald, though that’s not his real name. He was from the Caribbean St. Croix I think. There were several other islanders there too with skins like the shades of the earth. Tan, beige, mahogany, coffee, mocha, ebony. Ronald’s voice was almost hypnotic, a deep baritone, turning instructions on how to feed through an N.G. tube into a song. He smiled easily, and laughed with almost any provocation. I wish I had recorded some of those times so you could hear how happy he could make others just by speaking.

There was also Alicia, whose patois was so lyrical that I would smile when she would harangue her boyfriend over the phone. She always wore these huge gold hoop earrings and her nails were lacquered perfection. And even with inch long nails, she never did scratch a patient. I loved her from the moment she scratched my back.

Ronald was there the day I got my true initiation as a CNA. I’d been doing clinicals for a few days, about one hour in the mornings during my first class period of my senior year. I was already covering a third of the caseload by myself, five patients out of fifteen. My classmate and occasional partner in crime, Chris, had five of his own. I went into a patient’s room to begin waking and feeding the guys living there.
Like most generic nursing home rooms everywhere, at least on “skilled” units, the door had a large black number 201 smack in the middle of it and a slick round polished doorknob so that feeble old hands can’t get out without help. I knocked on the door, pushing it open at the same time. Both of the piss yellow “privacy” curtains were drawn; so, I crossed to the first one and pulled it back to see one of our Alzheimer’s patients. “Mr. G, good morning!” He opened up his rheumy eyes, his cataracts paling out the deep royal blue of his eyes around the edge of the iris. He had been a farmer before being turned over to the tender mercies of the hard case side of a charitable nursing chain. He still was able to get up and dressed then, and he still wore overalls and flannels every day. He was 92 then and quite beyond remembering his own name most days. “Heyo thur” he said. I went over to his bedside so he could see and hear as much as he could. He smiled up at me and winked a bit. Of course, he didn’t remember me from the day before, but he seemed happy to see me all the same. I sat down the towels and washcloths that were my constant companions in those days. I pulled my hair (a quite well quoiffed mullet thank you) back and bound it with an elastic band. I chattered away telling him that breakfast was on the way and we’d get a quick shave in while we waited for the carts to arrive. Poor guy had drool crusted in his stubble anyway. I even went so far as to make a joke about not needing to myself, since I was on my way to looking like a chubby mulleted Amish guy. Hey, when you’re seventeen you let it grow and call It a beard. I walked over with the can of shave cream to begin prepping. He smiled real big and reached out his hand to me. I went to sit the can down to return his grasp, always ready to share in the dimly focused joy of the senile. That’s when I felt a light pressure on my testicles and heard a voice say, “You sure are pretty darlin, can I get sum luv?”. Last I heard my health occupations teacher still uses that story in class.

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I asked the fella with the big guns and sward to post here, - I had read his poem from HS and was sure he was a good writer. Well, even though I have not read his second offering yet, (these are not forum post, but something that deserve savored consumption), I am sure it will not disappoint.

When I raced dirt bikes as a youth, I came to quickly understand that skill was learned trying to keep up with the fast guys. Jumping classes from beginner, to novice, to armature, and then expert more quickly than you were required to was how you got better, even if it served no strategy to fill the trophy case. It was gritty and tasted like the mud on your teeth, yet happily licked away by passion between motos. Cheery pickin filled the case, but was the realm of the passionless. The aroma of passion is just this side of the sweet sent of a woman, and in writing I am still afforded some opportunity to lay with one.

As it stands, I get to pick second for gate possession. Walking the course, I know there are not enough yet registered to fill a class. I find myself standing atop berms, the crest of a drop off, looking toward the horizon in the hopes I'll see some of the other fast guys showing to post. Maybe one of the Bobs, that fella framed in neon, or a rogue rider. There are some quick powder puffs too that might be hard to keep up with, though I'd love to see show up.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! it looks like I have some reading to catch up on. Don't know if I have ever been so anxious to forget all else for a time just to enjoy for a bit. :-D

I thank you all, who have come to post here. I am really enjoying reading what has storied this thread so far. I am leaving South Sam's last for later; it is something I am sure I will enjoy, and so hold it in reserve for when I return to, wade back into the pointless and unanswerable debate of how many bad cops, are there really? A question/debate that I am sure I will muddy my feet with on my return, in all its pointlessness. So having another post to return to @stories thread as a nice, happy place to go, will be reassuring.

As for now I must memorize some lines, as there is a show to go on, and there is a beautiful leading lady who has memorized her's and waits on me.

The work of fiction below is not exactly as I would like it to be. I plan to write several more that will fill in a chronology of about five years. This was the first I have written because it was the one that occurred to me to be the most exciting. It is not a bad representation of what I was trying to tell, but it ends much more weakly than it was first imprinted to memory. In my mind's eye I know the finale of this story is the most exciting part, but I have not been able to articulate that as well as I would like. Even so, I think it is interesting reading, but at near 5K words it may well be more than most will care to spend the time on. I would ask if you are not sure to read the first paragraph or two, then decide.

I looked at my watch, it was 04:40 and I needed to be out the back door by no later than 05:30. Fuck I was running late, always, - this time no different. I had eight large garbage bags staged at the back door, three up front behind the counter where I had filled them, laying on my side and raking each shelf clean with my hand and forearm.

Peaking into the showroom I scanned the parking lot beyond for head lights. I saw none, took a deep breath and stepped through the door from the stock room, and manger's office into the dark showroom. Moving quickly across the back, and down the far wall to the sales counter, I kept my eyes pinned up front watching for lights. I didn't look down once, I was confident I didn't have to. Eleven strides, - pulling my eyes down at ten, eleven, I was at the front counter. Dropping to my knees behind the counter next to the hefty bags, I quickly tied the openings closed with one big overhand knot. Pushing the bags in front of me back toward the open end of the counter my eye caught the brass glint of a cabinet lock. I noticed there were four long flat drawers that ran along the bottom edge of the counter. I had been so focused on quickly dragging everything from the inside of the front counter display, while watching the parking lot for headlights, I had totally missed these drawers.

My heart raced from 150 beats to 180 as adrenalin splashed across me, It was 10 minutes to 5am, just more than 5 hours since that first spray of adrenalin caught fire in me. The events of the 2 hours that followed would see that fire grow, fueled by a mix of frustration, urgency, and ever more adrenalin. Twelve 3/8 inch nuts that secured the shroud over the rooftop HVAC unit provided the frustration. Tared over by a thoughtless roofer, it took more than an hour to remove all of them. The frustration and finding myself more than an hour behind right from the start, provided the urgency, and the adrenalin, well fear and the race it's self provided the adrenalin.

It was after 02:00 and I had just made entry, lowering myself down onto two suspended lateral supports for the sub-ceiling. The frustration, and urgency were washed away for a moment by the rushing thrill of being in. That moment of entry is always a huge thrill. It is the relief of comparative safety that you are no longer vulnerable out in the open, along with the excitement of commitment, - the realization that this thing is underway, that always brings more adrenalin. A body and head rush that seems to start at the base of your neck and spreads down, and up to the top of the skull in a hot tingling wave, stoking the fire. That fire was brought to a roaring white hot blaze when I fell from the false ceiling after a cable securing it broke under my weight, the blast of adrenalin that slammed in to me as I slammed down on the hard floor had made my heart rate soar to 250 beats a minute. Since then I doubt it ever dropped below 150. my system now saturated with the pale yellow primal speed I had become addicted to before I hit puberty.

I was only 9 when racing motocross had been my first fix. More than 20 years later, my addiction had only grown stronger, and with it had grown the engines of action. A single armed robbery had been the top fuel ride of my life, and I would never stage that again. No, I had become a top driver of the less frantic race that was commercial burglary. Measured in hours rather than minutes it suited me much better, both in temperament, and in conscious.

It was December 26 and I was doing this job still having some money from the last. I had even put a little money away, but I had been working hard, constantly in some stage of the process over the last two years. What had been as tough as anything was coming up with working excuses for missing family gatherings - all but the first burg three years past now, and one other pulled on a major holiday. I still wonder what the stats are on that. If the % of commercial burglaries is higher on major holidays. I'm sure it must be, - I don't think I am the only one who realized the clear advantages of doing so. My realization of that had nearly cost me my freedom.

It happened during the first burg, also an electronics store, when I had exited the back of the store with two bags of electronics. I had just lowered them into the store's dumpster, when I heard the sound of foot steps echoing off cement. It was some one coming down the cut through between the electronics store and the grocery store next to it. It was just after 2am, this must be someone walking home drunk from one of the many nearby downtown bars, I thought. The cut through was commonly used by ppl walking from the downtown area, and headed into the large neighborhood that started right behind the strip mall where the electronics store and the grocery store were located. I stood quietly just inside the dumpster area waiting for the walker to pass by.

The dumpsters were walled in on three sides, with an opening not much wider than a standard chimerical doorway on the back wall closest to the building. The far side that faced away from the back of the building was open, but had two large gates that came together like french doors. As long as I stayed inside the dumpster area and in the corner the only way I could be seen would be if some one looked in around the corner.

Just then a man in a bakery smock stepped into the dumpster area with a bag of garbage in each hand, and turned and looked directly at me. I froze, already running lies through my head that might explain why I was hiding next to a dumpster dressed in black jeans, black long sleeve turtle neck, black knit beanie, blue latex gloves, and a wire running from a police scanner on my hip up under my shirt and out the neck to my ear.

It didn't matter what I said, I was going to have to try to bowl him over so I could get through the opening in the back wall that he was blocking. Before I could move he tossed both bags in the dumpster simultaneously and spun around and walked out the way he had come. Somehow he had not seen me. I am not sure how, but I have learned a lot since then, and what I learned right then was, that you could not count on things playing out as planed.

I had thought of the chance that someone from the grocery store might be dumping garbage in their dumpster. The grocery story dumpster shared the dumpster area with the electronics store dumpster – the dumpster where I would stash the hefty bags of electronics. I would bring them out two at a time, and later I could go around the corner where I had left the van – drive up to the dumpster – load them and go. Things being what they should, I would have been warned of the presence of a grocery store employ, because the back door of the grocery was a metal, chain reel, roll up door, that you could hear a mile away, and gave you loads of time to get back inside or out of sight. But this baker had come from the front of the store and walked up along the side, something I had not anticipated. I had long since known that even the best planed job still had an element of risk, but it was imprinted in me that morning, and it was in those unexpected, or unimagined freak occurrences that the risk lied.

I also learned that once inside, stay inside until you are ready to go. Sure you would spend more time getting everything out all at once than you would any one of the 5 or 6 times bringing the stuff out piece meal, but the risk of being seen one of those times was greater than if it was done all at once.

The most important thing I had learned that morning was, the more possible opportunities for random unexpected things to happen that you could eliminate, the less the risk that one would. (sounds obvious, but from then on I would devote hours and hours to running scenarios of possible deviations from the course, and then I would try to wall off as many of those points of deviation as I could.) Had there been no employes in the grocery store, I would not have had to rely on the roll up door to alert me of their presence. And failing that, nearly been found out.

That is why I was on my knees with my heart racing, robbing an electronics store at 5am December 26th. The grocery that actually shared a common wall with this electronics store would not open for another 3 hours – hopefully 2 hours after I was gone.

Adrenalin speeds up everything just like synthetic speed, but allows you to think much clearer than the street drugs I used in between these races I enter myself in every 3 or 4 months. Reaching for the drawer next to my knee, I had already remembered that my pic set was in my breast packet, had determined that these locks on the front of the drawers were wafer locks and could be opened as quickly as if you had the key, and that I would take time to open them, all before my hand reached the cut-away handle on the drawers face.

The drawer was unlocked, hitching backwards on my knees I slid it opened reveled two Sony Vaios just released and the hottest sub-note on the market. Yes! These drawers were very flat, probably only 5 inches tall, but very deep and wide, and I could see two more boxes behind the two up front. There were four drawers in all, and if all of them contained similar items I could not leave them behind. I was running out of time, and I knew it.

Sweating profusely, my heart racing ever faster. Staring at the Vaios, I was in a near state of panic, brought on by the conflict of knowing I had to empty this drawer and probably the others while also knowing I absolutely could not push my exit time back any further. (My plan had been to be out by 04:30, though I always built in 30-45 minutes that were unaccounted for and you always needed them) Those two thoughts fighting like cats in my head, I had locked up. I knew this feeling too well by now, and I knew how to get past it. And I had to get past it, because it is debilitating, costing time in the worst way, and I had none to spare.

It happens when the brain is running in hyper drive and you lose focus on the course of action. When something happens and you are suddenly faced with multiple options, the brain in this state starts firing possible next moves to every option at you so fast, you can't grab on to any one course of action. You can literally be immobilized by this for 10, 20, minutes, frozen doing nothing while thoughts fly past you in a blur. Your mind is in a Fight, or Flight state, and its ability to work out complex thoughts beyond one or two moves ahead has been sacrificed in exchange for the lightning quick ability to deal out real time moves one after the other.

I Closed my eyes and tilted my head back, taking a deep breath. Trying to think about only one thing my breathing, I rolled my head back and fourth on my neck. The panic was trying to fight in, and I knew I had to push it out and breathe, breathe deep breaths. I needed to get the drawers emptied, I needed to get all this stuff to the back door, I needed to hurry. I needed to hurry, fuck, fuck, fuck. I kept my eyes closed, and focused on calming my panic. I told myself, I would leave what ever I had to, that it was as easy as that, and I could feel the calming of that thought. Another minute of breathing, while I imagined every breath coming in as ice cold blue energy filling my lungs and spreading through my body to cool me. Exhaling soft white energy that rolled slowly out and dissolved above me as I rocked my head back and fourth.

Taking one final deep breath, I tilted my head back forward and slowly opened my eyes. My mind still racing, but no longer in a state of panic, I knew exactly the right course of action. I pushed the three bags in front of me to the opening at the end of the counter. Raising up on my knees, I twisted and looked out over the counter top and scanned the parking lot. It looked good and I rose to my feet, grabbing a bag in each hand, and started walking along the wall toward to back. I knew from watching the manager lock up from the parking lot several times, that once I was about half way back along the wall I would be covered by a large display in the front window on one side, and merchandise racks that cut off the line of sight as they angled across the middle of the showroom.

Turning the knob and pushing the hand truck in front of me and out into the showroom the distant sky had started the fade to dawn. Cutting directly across the showroom floor I no longer cared about what anyone was doing outside, I had now set myself a different frame of mind; one that soon would be tested to its fullest.

I don't want to call it a game, but for lack of a better way to describe it, I will. It is when you do something out in the open that would appear to be, what it is, an illegal act, but it is done with such obvious attention to only the job at hand, it appears to be legit. Why I call it a game, is because that is how it plays in the head. For it to work, you have to be 100% convinced you are meant to be there, - in your head, you have to own your legitimacy in what you are doing. It is the only way certain things will work. If you have put yourself on front street and you are doing something that will be seen as suspicious, the only way those observing you are going to see it differently is if you can sell it as being legit. And the only way to do that is to lose any sense that it is not legit.

Costumes and props can help, and here's how it works. Two guys dressed in dark blue work shirts with names patched on the front enter a 7-11 shortly after (Greg) the day manager has left for the night. One guy walks up to the clerk, and passes a clipboard toward him, and says, “Greg, right?” Meanwhile the other fella is paying no attention to the first and he is unplugging and strapping the new Pole Position video game to a refer dolly. The first guy is pissing and moaning about running late and still having to return with a replacement video machine before he is done for the night. Hopefully, a customer or two is now waiting on the somewhat uneasy clerk. This is the point where the game is won or lost. If I, as the guy holding the clip board, pulls it back and says, “we'll have you sign for it when we come back”, then game over,- the clerk will be on the phone to Greg, or the cops before you can turn around. On the other hand, if you wait patiently, impatiently, for the clerk to wait on his customers, and then get his signature and give him a recipe for the arcade machine you are picking up, because you know you have to have his signature, he understands you are doing your job, and everything is fine.

This was the mind set I had assumed when I grabbed the hand truck out of the stock room. With three empty merchandise tubs stacked on the dolly, I wheeled around the remaining hefty bag and to the far end of the front counter. It was almost quarter after five, and it took almost 20 minutes to empty the drawers contents into the tubs and re-stack them on the dolly. Checking my watch it was exactly 05:35 as I hoisted the hefty bag up and set it atop the tubs. Tilting the dolly back toward me and starting off for the door at the back of the showroom, I resisted the urge to look around out the front windows, remember you are doing a job and don't care anything about anything else. Excited about what I had found in the other drawers, that included four more sub-notes, four laptops, and one drawer full of Fluke test meters, I also had to resist the feeling of elation that one gets when finished with such a night. I had only to get everything out the back door and into the van parked right outside the back door and out of the parking lot and I was home free, but staying focused was as important now as any time.

I had not planed on using the dolly and had to spend a few minutes clearing a path wide enough to get the dolly to the back door. Pushing it open, I stepped out into the dim gray blue of early dawn. The chill that hit me brought an audible gasp up as I was looking at the side of a tractor trailer backed into the loading dock of the grocery store. When I looked to my right, where the van was parked I was horrified to see that just beyond the van there sat a bakery delivery truck pulled across the the nose of the grocery truck and cutting off my path of escape. No one was in sight, but I could hear the sound of two men talking.

OK I thought, deal with it. I reached down and wedged the door open with the wooden block I had found just inside the back door. Quietly wheeling the dolly over to the back of the van, unlocking the back doors and unloading the hefty bag and the three tubs into the back of the van, I looked through the front windshield at the gap between the bakery truck and the side of the building, - was there enough room to squeeze the van through? No, I didn't think there was. Sitting on the back of the van I quickly pulled off my gloves, green and tan lama skin U.S. Air Force fighter pilot issue, there was nothing better, but they would stand out, and not at all fit the dress of who I was going to have to be. I also striped off my long-sleeved black t-shirt that I had sewed four button pockets to the front of, and tossed it toward the front of the van. Reaching behind the spare tire I pulled out a rolled up blue Dickies work shirt and orange nylon work vest. Just then a dispatch crackled in my ear, Suspicious Circumstance, but the other side of town. I un-clipped the scanner from my side, and removed the ear phone, - switching it off I tucked it right inside the back door. I pulled on the shirt, looked down to see my name was Steve, and stuffed the vest back behind the tire.

I hated having to be with out the scanner. It had saved me more than once. One time I had heard a dispatch directing any available unit to my location. I had started toward the exit of the lot I was in, - it was an L shaped lot, and as I headed toward the corner of the lot I heard a patrol unit radio in 97, - 97 was the code for 'on scene', they were already entering the lot around the corner from me. I made a sharp left over a curb and through a section of ice-plant down an embankment that ripped off the front bumper and punctured the right front tire as I bounced out across a neighborhood basketball court. I limped through the neighborhood several blocks away, parked, and got away from the van. I returned hours later to find the van had not been discovered, changed the tire, and cautiously made my way home. That was only one time the scanner had saved my ass, and I hated being deaf now.

The voices were coming from around the front of the big rig, and when I stuck my head around the side of the bakery truck I saw two drivers clutching coffee mugs shooting the shit.
I said, “hey I'm going to need one of you to let me out here in a minute.” in a strong matter of fact voice.
They both looked over smiling and the one closest to me said, “we might look like doughboys, but the fella you want went around front to see if he could get someone to open up back here.”
“OK, its going to be a few minutes before I'll be leaving”, I said, and then, “I don't think he's going to have a lot of luck, I think they don't come back online til 8 this morning.”
I turned around and as I was walking back to the open back door, I could hear the two of em debating whether I was right or not, and belly aching that if I was how they could have slept in.

There was nothing to do but get the van loaded. I paid attention to making sure I didn't touch anything as I stepped inside and grabbed the hefty bags two at a time. As I headed back from the van for the third time I heard someone yell, “Steve” and then, “Hey guy”. I realized I was “Steve” and had blown it by not responding right off. I spun around and said, “I bet you mean me” with a big smile, “actually it's Scott, new service got it screwed up.” The short, balding fella I was looking at surely might have been the pillsbury doughboy come to life.
“Hey you need me to let you out?” He asked.
“Yea, that would be nice” I replied.
“Let me know when ever your ready, and I pull up for you. I can't even load a rack yet cuz there all locked inside, so I'll be sittin it the cab.”
I finished loading the van, and with a rag in my hand I pushed the dolly back inside, kicked the wedge from under the door, and let it swing shut. Back at the van I reached in the drivers door and started the engine. And then I saw the padlock I had picked off the ladder cage gate, laying on the passenger floor. (Access to the roof was by a ladder running up the outside of the building, and was in-caged with a gate padlocked at the bottom.) In that instant the growing joy I had been feeling was dashed away completely. This was it, this was the one too many. I was fucked. I had left the tools on the roof. This under any other circumstance would not have been a problem. I had a routine of carefully spraying each and every tool I would be using down with WD-40 and wiping them clean of any prints they might have as I loaded them into the tool bag. This time had been no different, and I had no problem sacrificing $300 worth of tools. The reason I was fucked, was because there was one tool on the roof that would hang me.

When I had run into the problem with the nuts on the roof unit, I had drained the battery on my cordless nut driver. Remembering I had a fully charged battery in the van I had retrieved it to get the remaining nuts off. That battery could be clean of prints and it would still hang me, and worse the person it belonged to. It was a friend's battery and had his first initial and full last name stenciled on it. It would not even be any work matching the name to a person, not only was it less than ordinary, it was also well known by local law enforcement.

The doughboy slide the door opened on the side of his bread truck and hollered, “You ready?”
“No, not yet, I still have a bag of garbage topside I have to grab. I'm just warming her up” I bellowed back.
I had no option, though I was fucked ether way, I had to get that battery off the roof. Once I was half way up that ladder I would be visible to not only the happy little doughboy, but to the other two fellas as well. If they did not think to try to stop me from leaving, they would get my license plate #, and I would be had anyway. As I pulled on a pair of work gloves, I became determined to sell this better than I had ever sold anything. I was going to climb that ladder, get those tools, and come back off that roof like I owned that fucking building.

I moved with purpose, stuffing the small book bag I had carried the tools up in with the nut driver, battery, wrenches, sockets, and small wrecking bar, leaving the coiled 15 meter length of static line aside. The book bag I then rolled tightly in duct insulation I had pulled off the 3 foot 30 inch diameter section of ventilation ducting I had removed to make entry. (I am not sure why I did this, but I think it was because I had said I had garbage to remove from the roof, and in my focus to do what I had said, to sell this act completely, garbage needed to be part of what I retrieved from the roof.) This in turn, I secured in a hefty bag, and carried over to the side of the building. I then threw two loops in the end of the static line and passed one under the other forming a clove hitch, that I dropped over the knot in the hefty. I quickly threw two more half hitches over the top of the bag and lowered it to the ground hand over hand. Yelling, “heads up” I tossed the remaining length of line over the edge of the building.

Stepping down on to the ground and swinging the gate closed, I reached into my pocket for the lock, which I clicked closed on the hasp of the gate. I turned to see the doughboy standing in the doorway of his truck looking at me. I smiled and said, “Ok guy, I'm outa here, thanks” He smiled back and jumped into the drivers seat and backed his truck down so I could slowly make my way out past him and the other two fellas, who I smiled and nodded at as I went by.

The release from the battle I had been engaged in for more than six hours left me in a cold sweat as suddenly as if I had been filled with high pressure steam, and a valve the size of an elephant's ass had been thrown open. As I exited the lot out the steep drive way of the service lane that ran behind the complex of buildings, my legs were shaking so explosively I had to place my left foot atop my right and stand on the break to come to a complete stop, before pulling on to the street.

About an hour later I would hear the dispatch of a possible burglary, called in by a person walking by who saw the ceiling panel hanging down, and the discovery of the police that it was indeed a confirmed burglary. exhausted, I would sleep for most of the next 24 hours, and I would not be sure for 2 or 3 days no one had taken down my license plate #. I might not have been certain then, if I had not been somewhat convinced I gave the performance of my life in the last few minutes of that morning. I still have my buddies battery, - it's all that remains of those days. Easy come, Easy go. But that, now worthless battery, is my own little Oscar.

This was such a revealing story of the human condition i had to post it somewhere.

I woke up in post-op, complaining about the pain, I was medicated enough that the next time I woke, was when I was being transferred back into the bed in my room. The pain was considerable,(the body radiates its protest to the termination of a major limb.) I needed pain meds and my nurse produced a 4 mg. Dilaudid tablet. There was no way this would do, I told her. Well, I was also ordered Dilaudid Oral in the form of a liquid, which I was told would work faster, so I had her go for that. The pain was becoming quite extreme by the time she had returned. I was assured that this would do the trick, being handed the small plastic cup of red liquid. It did not work even a little bit, and I imagined the trick she was talking about, was the one she had pulled on me.

I don't do pain well, and what's more, for me pain management has always been about finding a med that does something, and then throwing larger quantities than are typical at my pain. Within minutes of taking the liquid I was experiencing the worst pain of my life. Calling the nurse, I was told there was nothing she could do, but that she would put a page in to the duty Doc, and would request my orders be modified to include stronger pain meds. After laying there writhing in pain for what seemed an hour, but was probably more like 20 minutes, I picked up the call box, and screaming into it, I insisted I needed more pain meds now!!!! Adding to this the statement that I had morphine pills in my jacket, and if they could not help me, they could come hand me my jacket. 10 minutes later I was hopping on one leg across the small room to get my jacket. This was extremely painful above and beyond b/c with each hop the pain was magnified, and shot through me, as I screamed out. This brought my nurse and two others, who arrived just as I was ripping my trench coat of the hanger in the closet. Two nurses Stayed helping me back to the bed and trying to talk me into giving up my coat, which I held onto tightly, and refused to surrender. Only after the my nurse had returned with a shot of morphine did I give up the coat and the small zip lock baggie in the inside pocket which held 10-12 small morphine-sulphate pills, which they confiscated. (I don't think I got them back either, can't remember.) The next time I woke I was hooked up to a self administered morphine pump. The next two days I would not let go of that red button, waking often before the next dose was do, I'd lay there pushing that button like I was on jeopardy and frantic to get my answer/question in.

In the weeks, months, and years that followed, I would experience every type of phantom pain. The frequency of which decreasing over the 8 years that have passed. The most common and frequent of these, in the time immediately following the amputation, (first 18 months) were what I refer to as classic phantom pains. (the type I had always imagined - that of feeling something in some part of the limb that was no longer there.) These would most often manifest in the form of the pain I had lived with for the 7 years previous to the amputation, - the pain I had at the site of the ulcer on the heal of the right foot. Less common were the times these phantom pains would feel like my foot was cramping, - either that type that makes your toes curl up, or the type that runs across the arch of the foot, and you feel like you have to point your toes to the sky and push your heal as far as possible away from your ass. All of these phantoms for me were more nuance than real pain. It is, however, a very strange feeling to perceive a feeling where there is nothing, and there was even a time or two when in a half sleep state I reached down to rub the cramp out of the missing foot. These were nearly gone two years after the amputation, and it has been probably 4 years since I experienced any such phantom.

Much more debilitating and persistent, both in duration and longevity, are the phantom pains that occur at the site of the amputation, that is to say at the termination point of the residual limb. These phantoms have also decreased in frequency, but have not shown any sign of going the way of the others. They occur at intervals of approximately every 6 months. They can last from a few hours to a few days. (I am currently experiencing one of these phantoms that is now going on day two, and has caused me to save this post to draft two times thus far.)

These phantoms That I still have every once in a while, I won't call pain. They are in fact worse than pain. The best way I have found to describe them, is like being shocked with cattle prod. If you have every been zapped by anything electrical the feeling is very much the same. The way these phantoms occur is in blast that last anywhere from 3 to 20 seconds. Almost always closer to the 3-5 second range, they are separated by periods of complete calm that last from 20 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes. Almost always these periods of calm are closer to the 20-30 second range. There is absolutely not a second of precursor to these violent shocking spasms. They cause the limb from the kneed down to shake as if it were practicing for some drum roll solo. It also induces a sort of turrets syndrome, where the best I can manage is to clinch my teeth somewhat to muffle the obscenity, or just aahaaahaaaa nnnniinn waaaa goooo fuuuukin stoooop noise that comes out. when this happens for hours on end every 30 seconds or so you can imagine I am not the best company. This is also extremely exhausting, because for those 3-5 seconds my whole being is clinched. It is as if doing isometric exorcise with every muscle in your body all at the same time. Though I have come back to this after the 3 draft save, and these phantoms have passed, I am sore at every muscle region of the torso, and upper body.

I have talked a lot about my limb, and not a word about any meditation. I have tried everything from weed, to different kinds of anti seizure meds, pain killers of every sort, to alcohol. With the exception of the latter none have worked, and where I have managed to drink myself asleep a time or two, I always wake within a few hours to continued spasms, and hung over too.

I recalled a course I had taken in bio-feedback, in which I had caused the temperature at the tip of my finger to change by .8 a degree by simply thinking about it being cold, and then about it being hot. I knew I could slow my heart rate simply by thinking about it. I also recalled the deep state of meditation I had archived many years ago, after I had learned how to follow a guided meditation. I now wondered if I could pull myself into that same state and think away these phantoms.

Having gone outside, at my roommates' request because she was trying to watch TV and even from the other room my turrets was making that impossible. I closed my eyes, shifted around, let my arms fall to my sides, and became as comfortable as I could. Then a spasm hit & passed, I again closed my eyes, took some deep breaths and started to see the energy of these phantoms as a white stream of light flowing down my leg to the stump, and out the bottom. Another started to hit, and I focused on watching it flow out the bottom of my stump, and the pain died as I watched it spill out on to the ground. I sat there for the next hour, eyes closed and thought past the phantom. It was such a feeling of complete tranquillity to be able to finally have some control over this.

Though, I have no doubt that it was the meditation at work as I repeated it several times in the past two days, it is not the dream cure I had thought it was sitting outside that first hour. first, it takes being in an environment free of any distraction. This I realized when once or twice one of the dogs had come outside to check on me. As soon as I lost concentration a spasm would come. This was particular frustrating when later that night, exhausted, I again brought myself back into that state of meditation laying in my bed and ready for sleep. At least a dozen times I reached that place that is right in between wake and sleep, and as many times I was jerked back, - my phantom did not sleep. Second, the mind does not do production work very well. Concentrating on the same thing for more than an hour I found impossible. The mind would find distraction if only in other thought. I could combat this some by varying the thought a little, maybe having the white pain energy spray out like from a sprinkler, rather than just pour out, or change the color of the energy, but the extension to my concentration was not much enhanced by these little changes.

I am sure that with some work I could better my meditation skills, and maybe someday be able to totally insulate my self from these phantoms, tho it is hard to imagine a way to sleep while under attack. But I see no reason not to work on it, a fix that works somewhat is better than none at all. Can you say Ohmmm, Ohmmm...