This Nagging At the Back of My Eyes

Writer's note: This Story was published in the spring 2008 edition of the Northridge Review. It was written after my Father died. Last year, July 10th 2007. This is the one year anniversary, and I present this to you in honor of my Dad, Richard N. Bashara Esq...


Somewhere in time I am driving. I am holding three CD's in my right hand instead of my steering wheel, and I'm eyeing them for the last time. The heat is sweltering, complete with wet tracks of sweat, hot and sticky, and here I am sitting in my undershirt, jeans rolled up to my knees, in an old Honda with no a/c and hardly enough engine power to make it up this hill anyhow. With the windows rolled down, a breeze sifts its way through my faded upholstery carriage, but it's the backhand of some crazy desert devil whipping me across my cheek and wisping through my hair that is far too long for this wretched heat wave.

I decide on one of the discs, mostly because the sun reflecting off those spinners sears my eyes. I am listening to: soothing guitar, background fireworks, children, and laughing saxophone memories. It's a cold thing to hear but I can bear it, I think. The Honda chugs up the hill, leaving a lingering reminder of the cost of transportation with the thirsty sideways smirk of the fuel level gauge.

The hills cap off with a view of a valley paved in semis and the glistening rooftops of miscellaneously dated Camrys.


Somewhere in time I am at a bar. A local joint in the valley, and there is treble blasting out of speakers I cannot see. I am thinking of home in this overcrowded blast of noise, and I must shout directly into my own brain to think. I'm too drunk to drive; condemned to this dank pit of metal headed malarkey.

Maybe it was the ultraviolet red to purple warping through the walls, or perhaps it was the three whiskeys I had between all of those bud lights. Either way, I find myself outside with the world bleeding in on itself and dribbling it's entrails all over me. Someone offers me a smoke, and in a state of self regression I accept it, sucking sweetly at that ashy tit. I become smoke, my eyes betraying their own stare. Somewhere in my pockets there are keys to a car, got to find them. Got to get out of here.


By the grace of God go I.

Arrived at home, drunk as a skunk and about as appreciated, the stumble to my room is a blur of sidle steps I hardly remember as I slip myself in to bed.

During the night, I puke on myself repeatedly.


Somewhere in time I am crying. I am leaning over the casket of my grandfather crying, not because I feel very much, because I feel I ought to. I knew the man, sure, I have sparse memories. I'm eyeing my grandmother, she does not see me, and perhaps never will. My father sits with his head bowed; this is the first time I see him cry. A single tear, then he picks up and walks out.


Somewhere in time I am screaming at my mother because she has taken things too fucking far, and I've about had enough of her insolence. How she enrages me with her blind accusations, and slanderous babbling! She chips away at my beliefs, and my family. I have broken a coffee mug and forcibly removed her from my apartment by way of tossing her bags out into the hallway and telling her to get the fuck out.

She tells me that everything I knew is gone. She tells me that the things I believed about my life are over.


Somewhere in time I am not holding three CD's. I am holding my father, my brother, and my grandfather. Somewhere in those mirrored music makers I am looking back at myself.

The sheen is so bright, it blinds. I look up from the discs in time to see this beautiful collie with patches of black and white hair, so well highlighted by the morning sun, look directly into my eyes as if to ask me why I'd already chosen to keep on going. I say that I am sorry, and I start to cry, even before my car shakes with the force of the impact.

It's ok.

I smoke a cigarette. I haven't done that in a while, but I figure I ought to.


Somewhere in time, I am letting go of those CD's. Some one is listening to them, maybe even now I wonder. Sometimes, what is most beautiful is learning to let go of the tangible in favor of the story.

I sit on my patio and smoke cigarettes.