Hi Friend,

Thank you for showing up like you always do. I have a fun Passing Strangers entry for you this week— a little snack. To be honest, I’ve been struggling of late. This whole Substack dance often makes me wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze, but then I remember you and I get off my ass and publish something.

The new novel, Daedalia is progressing. The themes I’ve been pulling on are starting to weave together into an endgame that feels earned and satisfying. I can’t wait to start sharing it with you. If you missed the little sneak-peak live reading I did last month, you can check it out here.

This week I’ve been grateful for the delicious autumnal light that gilds everything it touches on my early morning walks in the park. I see Darren, the man I wrote about two weeks back, most every day and try to bring him something— leftovers from dinner last night, or a new book to read. Speaking of books, I just finished The Antidote by Karen Russell and was blown away. She’s a masterful storyteller and does all the things with speculative, magical realism I aspire to and often fall short of achieving.

I hope you’re peaceful and enjoying the Fall. I’d love to hear what you’re up to. Please stop and say hi in the comments.

Peace and music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

“Can I just say your energy is like a supernova, like you’re sucking all of the light out of this festive gathering, friend.”

She was just dancing with the spirit, riding the righteous wave of love these young ones were pouring out of their thundering hearts.

“Ma’am, you need to put your pants back on and come with me.”

The security guard gave an exasperated sigh that ruffled his mustache. He reminded Alice of her Teddy. A frowny little boy in a big man’s body with his meaty hand clamped around her upper arm.

“I didn’t wear pants.”

She bent over and started pawing through a dirty, quilted purse that was large enough to carry a sleeping bag and a camp stove. She rummaged around, spilling items onto the grass. The lawn was packed with people half her age. A couple of girls rolled their eyes as they gaped at the belongings being pulled from her bag like an infinite string of kerchiefs tugged from a magician’s hat. Eventually she found a rumpled peasant’s skirt, stepped into it and pulled it up in the single fluid motion of someone who’s had a lot of practice dressing in front of strangers.

She shoved everything back into her bag, then tilted her smiling face to the security guard and hooked her arm in his as if he was her escort. She hated to miss the music. She felt a spiritual connection with the bass player. The big round tones his fingers coaxed from the instrument vibrated through her, activating her heart chakra.

At the back gate, past the centipede of porta potties, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed Teddy on the cheek before turning to exit. “Be careful, lady,” he called after her. She was a little rainbow trout swimming against the current of late-comers. She read their auras as they passed— gold and amber, indigo and violet. She greeted them all with an open smile and some with namaste hands. The gorgeous tree-beings that lined the path absorbed the music, dampening it from something heard to something felt. She was following the path as it crested the hill, still moving against the flow when she felt a cold current, like ice water poured into a warm bath. It made her shudder and slow to a stop.

She closed her eyes. People flowed around her, and the coldness seeped into her bones. She made an animal, whimpering sound. When she opened her eyes, it was somehow darker. How could an aura emit darkness? This one did. The young man loping toward her was at the center of it. His eyes, below the bill of the cap, were coal-black and grew larger as he approached.

Her body took over and she stepped into his path, reaching out as she did. She grasped his wrists, slick with sweat and sinewy. A violent flash of red coursed through her. A silent scream lodged in her throat. He was little more than a boy, but filled with a humming tower of rage that made her teeth hurt. She didn’t let go of his wrists. She drew a shuddering breath and peered into his narrow face. For some reason, he didn’t fight her.

He didn’t know how to respond to being seen.

Hi Friends,
These days it’s hard not to feel like we’re living in the opening chapters of an apocalyptic fantasy. Yesterday while I waited to cross at the light, a little robot delivery cart pulled up behind me, its LED eyes blinking as a driverless car took a right on red. A man with wild eyes and no shirt or shoes was shouting deliriously as he careened into traffic while another man in a suit standing to my right was shouting into space, closing a deal with someone in his ears. ChatGPT is talking 16 year old boys into killing themselves and other young men are talking each other and themselves into killing anyone they disagree with like real life is as banal as a strategy to win a first-person-shooter game.

We’ve been on a downward trend for a long time but it feels like we’ve reached an inflection point where complacency has tipped into nihilism and greed has graduated to a winner-takes-all death match. Fear has caused us to retreat into isolation where that fear hardens into hatred, and from there, violence is just an arm’s reach away for some. The ones who reach for it, sadly, are almost exclusively men.

I can’t understand it. It can’t be intellectualized. But I believe violence is not our default state, our true nature as men. It’s a last resort, the product of utter despair that comes from feeling backed into a corner, trapped in the iron cage that defines what a man should be in our society. Absolute strength, stoicism, invulnerability— these are the understood qualities of masculinity. None of these qualities foster feelings of connectedness and belonging and they don’t allow for failure.

This week’s Passing Strangers profile was the hardest one for me to write so far and I’ve debated whether to post it. I love women, not in the abstract and not conditional on their adherence to any rigid definition, but up close and real. For this piece I had to imagine I didn’t feel this way. I had to imagine women are a threat to be feared, kept at a distance, and dominated. It’s not a headspace I wanted to inhabit for long and the good thing about these portraits is I don’t have to.

I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and the people around you. Now more than ever we need each other, all of us.

Peace & Music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

He passed a mother, tugging the hand of her little kid. She didn’t seem to care how upset the boy was. Blood rushed to the young man’s ears, his face flushed hot as he imagined punching her in the gut– just one swift jab to show her, to put the bitch on notice. The mother looked up as if she heard his thoughts, this slight, young man with cheeks as smooth as her toddler’s. He blinked at her, swallowed hard, then moved on quickly.

His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He hadn’t slept much, but he was stone-cold, ready to rock. He could feel the juice jacking him up, bowing him back like a cobra. He pulled the bill of his Aggies cap down and cut through the crowd that moved like a sleepy herd through the park to the main stage. He didn’t see a squat Mexican woman and nearly knocked her over. Damned illegal stunk like a man and a burrito supreme.

He passed some frat boys chattering away about going someplace he’d never heard of that sounded foreign, like somewhere in France, and a fat-ass girl talking to her medium-hot friend about how they were tripping so hard. He imagined grabbing the medium-hot one by the hair and bending her over. What would that actually feel like? He slowed down to let them pass so he could look at her ass and smell her shampoo. Then she ruined it by talking.

"...I know, right? Bernie totally should have won. I mean, who doesn’t want better healthcare and for all people to be treated like human beings?”

They were all sheep, libtard sheep who thought they were smarter than everybody else. They’d come out of the woodwork to see their shiny new queen, queen of the libtards with her expensive smile and college degree in some stupid shit like women’s studies that totally qualified her to make laws for the rest of us. It was all rigged by these elite fucks who didn’t know honest work. His dad had worked his ass off holding down two jobs and raising him on his own until he fell off a ladder, which pretty much fucked him. He was a goddamned American hero with two tours in Iraq, and now he looked like a zombie, all strung out on oxy.

The libtard queen was going to give her speech right before the terrible fucking band with the faggot lead singer who painted his fingernails and wore dresses. With any luck, the two of them would be on stage together for just long enough.

He didn't need a perfect shot. He’d practiced plenty, and besides, an AK could spray. Spray and pray. Thoughts and prayers. He’d have his shot. He’d have his day. Nothing else mattered.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

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Hi Friends,
This week’s portrait comes to you a few days late but it couldn’t be helped. As I finish the final edits, I’m sitting on a screen porch in a small villa on Kiawah Island, South Carolina watching the rain. We’ve had three glorious days of sun and beach and I’ve had the joy of looking after two little girls, Bella and her cousin Aria who’s visiting us for the week.

It’s a work trip for Paradis so while she’s been in meetings, I’ve been in charge of sunscreen application, pancake making, dispute mitigation, and sand removal. I’ve eaten my weight in leftover chicken tenders and french fries and my thighs and the tops of my feet have a rosy, overcooked glow about them. It’s a strange feeling getting to have all this a second time around which probably explains this week’s stranger.

I hope you’re enjoying your summer, wherever it’s taking you.

Peace & Music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

He wondered who he’d have to kill to keep things interesting. You could only carry on for so long before things became intractably dull, and for him, the only thing worse than being bored was being boring. In truth, there was something worse that he was loath to admit: being disliked. Was there a less useful quality for a writer to have than the need to please?

His back was stiff that morning, seized up as it did two or three times a year—not from any great exertion or heroic deed, but from sitting hunched over his laptop, stressing over meaningless minutiae that somehow tricked his lizard brain into reacting as if a grizzly were charging, demanding a fight-or-flight response.

Well into his third act, old age was creeping up on him. He was 55, bald, bearded, and bespectacled. In the mirror, he could still see the young man he was, but photographs were unforgiving evidence of what everyone else saw when he said hi in the elevator or checked out at the grocery store. He had already lived a lifetime and was somehow starting another one. When you boiled his second act down to the bones, it was a mostly unoriginal drama that unfolded in the suburbs and resulted in two grown kids who now required a lot of therapy, an ex-wife, and a persistent churning feeling in his gut. In contrast, his third act had been full of surprises, not the least of which was a precocious six-year-old girl who, along with her mother, had quietly commandeered his distressed heart and started renovations. He spent most days just trying to keep up with and be worthy of the present.

The park was lush, green, and thick with humidity. The sun was barely over the horizon but he was already sweating. With every step, the fused steel plates of his lumbar vertebrae loosened and he was able to turn his mind back to the story he was working on. Like Harold with his purple crayon, the man had taken to writing novels when he turned 40 as a way to fashion an escape from a life he no longer recognized. In stories, terrible things could happen. Horrible damage could be done. People could say difficult things that were true, even cruel, and still be redeemed by the end.

As he passed strangers in the park, making his way around the food trucks and golf carts setting up for whatever event was coming, he imagined their lives. Some of them made it into his stories. He wondered if they would recognize themselves.

But no, that was highly unlikely. No one could ever really see us as we see ourselves. We are, all of us, unreliable narrators.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

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Hi Friends,
Summer’s in full swing here in Atlanta. We’ve had rain about every day, mostly in the evenings which is great because it keeps it cool and everything breathes more when it’s lush and green. I walk in Piedmont Park early each morning as a way to inoculate myself for the day ahead. Some days I call my mom, tell her all the things I’m seeing on my walk. Nature was the church she raised us in and since she can’t get out the way she used to, I try to bring her along.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on parenting lately. I’ve been actively doing it now for almost 30 years and I have at least another 15 to go, which is crazy. But not really. I love being a dad. Nothing in my life has mattered more and nothing has been harder. I think about how little I knew at 26 and how little patience I had. I regret not having been able to be more present in the early years of raising my two grown children but so much of it was just the terrifying reality of survival and providing.

As I help my partner raise her her little one now who’s a few weeks away from turning seven, I’m happy to have a second chance to do a better job. Being a parent is easily the hardest job to do and the easiest one to get. This week’s portrait is not a big dramatic moment. There’s no violence and no abuse. It’s just a snapshot of a little person who needs to be seen.

Peace & Music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

Maybe they will see baby ducks today, maybe. If they be patience. It takes lots of patience. He really, really wants a popsicle. Last time he got the cookies with cream kind but Mommy doesn’t always let him have one. He doesn’t know why. They taste so good.

Mommy’s hand is hot and sweaty. He says it’s discomfortable but she doesn’t let go. She says they are in a hurry and there are too much people. She’s always in a hurry.

He sees two squirrels chasing each other up a tree. He wants to stop and watch where they go, but when he stops to look, she makes the angry voice and tugs his hand. He hurries after her. He wants a popsicle and he wants to see the ducks. If he makes her do the angry voice too many times, he won’t get anything.

They go a different way to the playground. It’s taking a long time, like a bjillion years, like as long as it took the dinosaurs to get made. His favorite dinosaur is the T-Rex.

His feet hurt so bad. He tells Mommy that but she doesn’t hear him so he says it louder. Two grown-ups turn and look at him with frowny faces. Mommy stops real fast and then her face is in his face, big and red and mad.

“Stop it, right now. You whine one more time and no TV for a week. Do you hear me?”

His face gets hot and his tummy starts to hurt. This is the worst day ever. Her eyes get small like she’s trying to read one of her big books with the tiny words that don’t have any pictures. He nods and her face stops being mean. He didn’t even ask for TV.

They start walking again. He sees popsicle man with his little rainbow umbrella but he’s way far away, like California. Daddy’s in California but most times he’s in the phone. He points at popsicle man and tells Mommy he wants one please.

“No, Gabe, we’re not doing that today.”

He starts crying just a little bit. The rainbow umbrella gets smaller and smaller, he feels more sadder, so sad he can’t hold it in. He’ll never get a popsicle ever again. The man will be gone and he will give all the popsicles away to other kids. It’s not fair. His tears are big and wet and cover his face and he cries really loud.

Mommy doesn’t hear him. She just keeps taking big steps and pulling him behind her. Her hand is hard. Soon he stops crying. He sees a squirrel eating a Cheeto. He wonders if ducks like Cheetos. He likes Cheetos. He doesn’t think baby ducks can eat Cheetos. Their mama would say no, no, no.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

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It feels strange and tone-def to be publishing short fiction at this moment in light of all the real suffering that’s happening in the world as a result of totalitarianism and violence. To be honest, I’ve found it challenging to just get through the day, much less write anything at all. If you believe in love and the innate goodness of humanity, it’s really hard to be alive right now. By all indications, it feels like we are escalating ever closer to a global conflict that could tear us all apart even more than we already are.

If it’s true that violence is the product of fear, and fear is fueled by a lack of understanding, of misinterpreting what we perceive is different from us and therefore lesser, then perhaps this series has some modicum of utility. My generation is responsible for bringing a technology into the world that has both connected and completely isolated humanity. We’ve raised our children and fed ourselves a digital diet of cheap dopamine hits and lived much of our lives in a vacuous expanse of escape into a world that simulates reality but is so far from it. If we tumble into the next world war, it will be one fought from computer consoles in air conditioned rooms and observed in 30-second clips curated by corporate algorithms.

The only way I see us making it through this is if we can all begin to encounter each other in the real world where consequences can’t be deep-faked, and the pain we inflict can be felt, not just observed.

Thank you for being here and for reading. Hold your loved ones close, unplug, and shift your attention to the people right in front of you— especially the ones who don’t look like you or agree with you.

Peace & music,

Ben

Passing Strangers is a weekly series of fictional portraits— keyhole views into the lives and inner worlds of other humans. These are standalone pieces but if you look carefully, you might begin to see a how they’re all brush strokes in a broader landscape. Visit the table of contents to find all the portraits.

The fit check she posted this morning hadn’t smashed like the one on Wednesday. That little red string top had made her look low-key broke and bloated. She shouldn’t have indulged the night before but it was her dad’s birthday and she only saw him a few times a year. She still felt bloated. Likes on that post were 10K below her average. If it wasn’t for her loyal creepers, the comments would’ve been a graveyard.

It was so hot and gross in the park. Everyone looked sweaty and mid like an IRL Old Navy ad. She shot a couple of clips, almost captioned them “who wore it better?” but decided that was giving mean-girl and Kelseyxxo’s brand wasn’t to punch down. She thought of trying to capture some candid selfies, discreetly of course, but it wasn’t worth it. The hours she’d have to spend editing out the randos and background noise would have been actual torture. Plus the light was shit – too much direct sun. It made the pores on her face look like craters.

She needed to lock in and stay on vibe. Her brand was all about good energy. A couple of lame sad-girl posts could tank everything she’d worked for the past 18 months. Tonight she was going to post a story set about the concert. She’d never heard of the band, but they had like 2.6 million streams on Spotify so the potential audience capture would be totally worth it.

She noticed the two Chads in front of her were sniggering and one of them was pointing at a tall woman walking ahead of them. When the woman turned her head, it was so obvious she wasn’t a woman. Her nose and jawline were dead giveaways plus she was wearing this sad looking frock that looked like it belonged to someone’s mom. But this trans woman didn’t seem to care. She was laughing and talking with the woman beside her. She was drinking a beer straight out of the can, her black nails glinting in the sun like she didn’t give a single fuck. It was impossible to stop looking at her and Kelseyxxo wanted to follow her, to know everything about her. She hadn’t felt such a deep, hollow longing since high school in the months after she quit playing volleyball and stopped eating whatever she wanted. She wanted to raise her phone and take a picture or better yet, a slo-mo video so she could study it later, frame by frame, but she didn’t.

Not everyone wanted to be seen, needed to be seen the way she did.

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I’d love to know how what you think of this series of portraits. The magic in anything I post here usually happens when you lean in. How do you encounter strangers?

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On days she was given a tip after cleaning the last home of the afternoon, she would stop at the corner market and buy a Yoohoo and a bag of Fritos. Before making her way back to the cramped apartment she shared with her sister, her sister's four kids, and her cousin, she would stop and sit in the park to enjoy her treat.

Today that treat cost three dollars more than it had on Wednesday, and if people hadn’t been in line behind her, she would have put the stuff back and left empty-handed. The place she used to go stopped accepting cash, and she didn’t have a card. She would never have a card.

Even if she got over her guilt for spending the extra money, she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy her snack on the bench by the fountain. There were too many people in the park today. She paid little attention to such things before, but these days, in any large gathering of strangers, her heart hammered in her chest. In the crowd, at just four feet, ten inches, she could have been mistaken for a child if not for the deep creases in her forehead and her stooped posture from years of bending over mop buckets and other people’s toilets.

There was loud music playing somewhere in the distance. Like most of the music she heard from passing cars, it sounded cold and relentless like the pounding of machines on a factory floor. She missed the lilt of mariachi songs, the way they galloped and made you want to move your hips.

When she reached the place where the road forked, there were several policemen forming the dashed line of a barrier between her and the route to catch her train. A white couple in workout clothes, engrossed in conversation, passed straight through one of the gaps without even looking up.

She stopped.

A man bumped into her from behind and cursed loudly. Heat rose to her cheeks and she smelled the stink of her own sweat. Her eyes fixed on the belt, the gun, and cuffs of the cop closest to her. She thought of her nieces and nephews waiting for her, the TV blaring.

The crowd was flowing around her like she was a stump in a river. She turned against the current and worked her way through to the opposite shoulder. Someone’s small cooler smashed painfully into her breast but she kept moving.

She had to get back. The four extra miles around the park to get to the train would make her very late. The kids would be hungry. There would be a mess.

But she would be there to clean it up.

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They walked two and a half miles without talking. It was cool for late May. She wore the pink cardigan he loved—the one with the small hole in the elbow. She hadn’t worn it in weeks. He noticed such things, but then, he noticed everything about her.

As they neared the park, the sidewalk filled with event-goers loaded like pack animals with lawn chairs, coolers, and picnic baskets. Some pulled wagons filled with the equipment and accessories to set up elaborate tents with all the comforts of home. She carried only a small backpack with a Hello Kitty keychain attached to the zipper.

They made their way through the gates to the event. He hated crowds—the press of people moving amoeba-like, filling the available space as they sweated and complained or talked drunk-loud, relaying inane, meandering stories to the captive audience around them. Mostly, he hated crowds because it was hard to keep up with her—to not lose sight of her walking twenty yards ahead.

He had to push his way through the crush of people, swim against the current when she turned unexpectedly. His heart hammered in his chest when he scanned the backs of heads and couldn’t spot her dark braids. His fear of losing her was equaled only by his fear of being discovered, so he shoved the panic down, took a few deep breaths, and moved swiftly as he scanned the crowd.

He loved her in a desperate, unreasonable way that he had never loved anyone else in his forty-seven years. She was this perfect innocent, her life unmarred by the impersonal brutality of the world. He intended to keep it that way. She was his, and he longed to hold her, to make her pancakes on Sunday mornings, to take her to the movies—anything just to be within the throw of her radiance.

She was nowhere in sight. He began to panic. He should have stayed closer. Did she know he was following her—sense it somehow, and intentionally run? No, how could he ever be seen as a threat? In the past two years of following her, he liked to imagine she did feel his presence but had assimilated it as an invisible comfort, like shade from a tall tree on a hot day.

They had shared so much together—afternoons in the library as she bent over stacks of books, ice cream cones at the little shop across from her apartment building, lazy afternoons at the city pool where she lay in the sun with her friends, pretending not to notice the boys who splashed loudly nearby. He knew her. Knew what she liked. Knew her routine.

But here, in this crowd, anything could happen to her.

He pushed through a wall of frat boys and ignored their threats. He walked faster, sweating as he weaved in and out of clusters of people.

He was momentarily distracted by a loud boom somewhere to the right—an explosion, maybe, or just someone thumping a microphone in the amphitheater.

When he bumped into her, she was looking directly into his face, her brows a straight, angry line.

After years of wondering and hoping—for the first time, he saw the sea glass green of his own eyes staring back at him.

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This morning a whole group of ladies walked along the path under the east park bridge where he slept. They wore barely anything at all– those skimpy leotard things that showed the world their business. They were carrying on like a farmyard of chickens at feeding time– woke him out of a dead sleep which is a precious thing when you sleep on concrete every night of the year. He had been having good dreams– the sunlit library in Philly where he went as a kid most days, the smell of his grandmother’s biscuits, and weirdly, the sound of crows. He loved crows.

When he sat up and looked at the women, he saw the dark angels were watching them. They perched up between the girders of the bridge in the shadows with their red eyes glowing and their hungry mouths with sharp teeth glinting in the darkness. He shouted, cursing at them to drive them away. He flapped his arms and spittle flew from his lips. The ladies got spooked and looked at him like he was some piece of no-good business when he was the one who saved them. The dark angels flew away, and the ladies went on their way, huffing and shaking their heads. He took a long piss behind one of the concrete pillars, then rolled up his blanket, and stuffed it in the garbage bag with his collection of found objects and second-hand clothes. The bag contained the sum total of his worldly possessions. He tugged his shopping cart out of the weeds where he stowed it, threw the bag in, and began to shuffle toward the park center.

A couple of cars drove slowly around him on the narrow road. He figured it must be another festival weekend because that was the only time cars could drive inside the park. Festivals were good. There was lots of food in the trash at least, and the food was good, mostly fresh. Dumb people threw out whole containers of fries and funnel cakes, lamb gyros and sometimes, if he got lucky, a frozen fruit drink. He didn’t understand these people. They were sheep, all of them, and they wouldn’t be prepared for what he knew was coming.

The place near the fountain where he liked to go and sit mid-morning would be too crowded so he headed further north where it would be quiet. On the way, he passed one of those tiny houses, like a birdhouse on a post that people leave books inside. He always stopped to see if there was anything new. For a time last summer he got lucky. Somebody had left a new novel every week. The stories took him to other places– places he had to really reach to see because they were so far away, places he might’ve imagined visiting someday when he was a boy seated at the long table by the card catalog.

There was nothing today but the same sad collection as yesterday: a faded Jane Fonda workout book, a fifth-grade science text book, a small white copy of the Bible, and a swollen, water damaged copy of Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Places You Will Go.

He closed the tiny door with the broken hinge. The sun pushed through the clouds and he could feel it like an iron pressing through his heavy coat. He coughed, spit, and pushed on.

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Please ❤️ this post and leave a comment if it spoke to you in some way. Your feedback and willingness to engage with my writing mean everything.

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We live in a time where it’s so hard to truly see anyone else, much less connect with them. I hope you’ll find these little vignettes entertaining— a chance to slip inside someone else’s skin for a few moments. In other news, I’m still working on a new novel, but I’m far from ready to begin sharing it here. I hope these little portraits will hold you over until then.

Peace & Music,

Ben

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She felt it deep within the basement of her dreams, the subsonic, steady pound of it, relentless and stirring. She twisted in the sweat-dampened sheet and comforter, her free leg torquing the fabric taught between her legs. The late afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, casting a shadow like grill marks across the plain of her naked back. FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She ground her pelvis into the bed pushing against the backbeat, still not ready to surface from her dreams.

In the shower, she yawned and shampooed with something that smelled like a mango smoothie spilled into the patchouli moccasin of a Phish fan. FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She could still hear it, feel it even with the bathroom door closed. The bar would be five deep tonight with post-festival revelers, too drunk to tip. She worked a double yesterday and was in no hurry to go back.

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She knew it was him. There was no use pretending she didn’t. How many times had that foot jack-rabbit thumped beneath her cramped kitchen table in Austin, making tiny circular waves in her coffee. How many paradiddles had he tapped across her back as they lay spent after hours of sex that left her feeling raw and empty and craving more– more than he was ever willing to surrender? FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP.

She had moved half way across the country to escape the ever-present reminders of him on posters stapled to telephone poles and flyers hung in shop windows. Now here he was, all these years later beating through the walls of her shitty apartment from ten blocks away on the main stage behind a kit she imagined someone else set up and tore down every night so he could move on to the next town and the next party girl he’d never let hang around long enough to ask for anything more than a selfie.

When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, a light rain was beginning to fall, turning to steam before it hit the asphalt. The music had stopped and she was grateful to have her heart beat according to the rhythm it required, not one dictated. At the corner, she turned West, deciding she’d treat herself to coffee and a donut before going into work.

The bell above the door in the donut shop announced her, and before the door could close, the main stage act launched into an encore.

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP.

She winced and stepped up to the counter.

Table of Contents | Next Stranger »

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I love to study people. I didn’t realize this about myself until much later in life. Around the same time, I discovered I really wanted to be a writer. The two are inextricably linked. Because characters are the engine that propels all my novels and short stories, I thought it would be fun to create a series here where that’s all I do.

In Passing Strangers, rather than set the table for a full story, we go right to the main course. I zoom into specific character to create a thumbnail portrait that is as fully realized as I can manage in around 500 words or less. Over time, I’m sure some of these characters may encounter one another or be influenced by the same events, but for now, that’s not the point. For now, I hope you’ll just enjoy meeting each of them on their own terms.

Strangers

• 001 - Kick Drum: A woman’s haunted by the backbeat of a former lover

• 002 - Public Library: A man chases away the dark angels

• 003 - A Safe Distance: A man follows his heart a little too closely

• 004 - Someone Has to Clean Up the Mess: A woman must take the long way home

• 005 - Who Wore it Best?: An influencer is influenced

• 006 - A Boy and a Popsicle: The heart wants what the heart wants

• 007 - The Third Act: A middle-aged man with a bad back and a purple crayon

• 008 - The Angry Young Man: There is nothing more impotent or deadly than an angry young man

• 009 - Alice Sees All the Colors: A free spirit dances into a dark place

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