Wake (Part III)

I'm Awake Now

Chuck strolled down the sun-drenched sidewalk during the bright August late afternoon. His mind was replaying his day. He felt pretty good. He had to fast all day prior to having his blood drawn for some tests his doctor had ordered, but it never crossed his mind. Not having a lunch break at work kept him focused. He had worked with a greater purpose than usual and was efficient beyond what he had ever deemed necessary. He was inspired by the idea of leaving work a little early and getting over to northwest to wander around and enjoy the neighborhood. It had been a quiet and determined Friday that would hopefully end with some fun.


That night Team Torgo was set to congregate at the Gypsy for drinks and to plan about how to go about finding a sub for The Orange for the state wide tournament in September. He would not be available. The dream was to have Gordy join us, but the prevailing leader in the clubhouse seemed to be the borrowing of the overly intense and often angry Robo Bowler, but who would be the one to approach him?

Chuck massaged the bandage wrapped too tightly around his right arm and turned into Escape from New York Pizza. A slice of pizza would be a perfect springboard into the evening. He could head over to Music Millennium and check on the latest releases before getting down to the Gypsy and grabbing a drink or two ahead of everyone else’s post work arrival.

The brightness of the sun had him blinded for a moment as he walked into the pizza place. Once he gathered his senses, he looked to the counter to his left and scanned the options for slices. He always looked at each option carefully despite always ordering either a slice of cheese or a slice of pepperoni.

“May I help you?” a voice asked him as he focused on the different flavors of pizza in front of him.

“Um, yeah,” he hesitated, and looked around and noticed that he was the only customer; “I think I’ll go big and get a slice of the pepperoni and a medium soda.”

“Chuck? Hey, it’s been forever!”

“Sandy!” he realized too slowly.

“Oh, I forgot that you said that you’d call me by that name,” she said, as she rolled her eyes. “Did you donate blood today?” she asked, indicating the bandage on his arm.

“Sort of,” Chuck looked at his arm as he responded. He noticed that the hair on his arm was standing up. “It has been a long time. “I haven’t seen or heard of you all summer. What’s been going on?” Chuck couldn’t help but notice that Sandray looked better than he’d remembered.

“It’s been a rough summer, to be honest. Jason and I broke up just as I lost my receptionist job,” she told him over her shoulder as she placed a slice of pepperoni pizza into the oven. “I’ve had to find a new apartment and I didn’t have any income,” she added and slammed the oven door with a crash.

“Oh, no!”

“Yeah, no fun, but you don’t need to hear about it,” she smiled and blew her dangling dark brown bangs up with a quick blow from her lips. She walked around the counter and faced Chuck who was bouncing an empty plastic red cup against the palm of his hand. “What have you been up to?”

“Bowling and working, mainly,” he mumbled, realizing that there’s no way he can explain that for him he has had an adventurous and crazy summer, because it was full of moments that are more about running inside jokes that are not based in actual concrete events. His social life would be completely empty if he didn’t have his close friends who were willing to hang out with him. This suddenly depressed him. He couldn’t shake the realization that he was lonely and seeing the happily married, but still flirty Melissa at bowling every Sunday evening exacerbated his feelings of always being the third or fifth or seventh wheel when he was out and about trying to be a normal social person.

“What’s wrong? Bowling sounds fun. Are you in a league?” she encouraged.

“Yes, we just finished it in first place and now we’re going to move on for a state tournament,” he tried to sound enthusiastic, but felt like he was bragging about something that meant so little to him. The bowling was about being wacky and hanging out. He and the guys didn’t particularly care about the tournament. In fact, they were all dreading it, because the excitement of the league had run its course by the end of July.

“Your pizza!” shouted Sandray as she lightly touched his arm and the spun around back toward the pizza oven. She expertly used the paddle to toss his slice onto a whicker basket with a white piece of wax paper sitting on it.

Chuck wandered back to a table not far from the counter and she brought the slice out and set it down and joined him at the table. He couldn’t believe how much he had missed her smile. He could feel his heart racing and remembered that he had always tried to find a way to be alone with her, but it had only happened for a few minutes once before. This is what he had wanted to happen for the last year and he wasn’t sure what to do. He looked down at the pizza, but didn’t want to eat it. He didn’t want to make his inevitable mess in front of her. Instead he fiddled with his cup of orange soda and twirled it around nervously.

“How are Gary and Amanda doing? I’ve been meaning to stop by and visit,” she broke the awkward silence.

“Well, they aren’t doing well. Amanda has moved out. It’s been pretty rough.” Chuck explained and then added, “but you know how that goes,” realizing that she too had been through a recent break up. He didn’t know what to do with this information. He was personally glad to know that Jason was out of her life, but he didn’t know what she saw in him either. She seemed happier and looked brighter than he had seen her when she was with Jason.

“Hi, I was hoping to order some pizza,” a guy interrupted from behind Sandray. She quickly stood up and slid back behind the counter while rubbing her hands together anxiously into her apron. Chuck hadn’t noticed that anyone had come in. He took a couple of quick bites from his pizza and slurped down a drink of fizzy orange soda. He over poured and some of the sticky beverage slipped around the cup and his mouth and down the sides of his cheeks. He sheepishly grabbed a couple of napkins and wiped his face as quickly as possible, hoping that Sandray hadn’t seen him. He was breathing too fast and a surge of energy ran through him, causing him to vibrate. He couldn’t think of what to do. With his old social circle breaking apart and collapsing, he realized that this could be the last time he would ever see Sandray again.

A line began to form at the counter and another employee appeared from the back to help Sandy out. The sounds that had seemed absent before had all returned. The chatter of conversation and clanking plates and pans and the oven door opening and closing, along with the faint sound of Sonic Youth’s “Tunic” buzzing from a couple of speakers above. Chuck half-heartedly took a couple of more bites from his pizza and fiddled with the latest culture weekly, staring at the upcoming shows, but not really reading them. He was killing time, trying to find a moment when he could try to talk with her, but was losing patience. He could always come back in a week or so and try again. Maybe then he could have a plan and could ask her out.

With that he grabbed his stuff and tossed his napkin pile and half-eaten slice and tossed them into the trash, while placing the ice filled cup and basket into the brown bus tub. He slowly walked over to the few people still lingering around the counter and waved to catch Sandray’s attention.

“It was good to see you Chuck,” she smiled and nodded, before turning her attention back to the woman who was asking about ordering for her son’s baseball team’s pizza party.

Chuck waved in return and tried to force a smile through his clenched jaw. She did not see it. He lowered his head and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk. He dodged a couple of fast walking people and spun around and stopped on the far side of the walkway directly outside the pizza place. He knew this was a mistake. He needed to say more. He needed to at least try. With his luck, he would never see her again and would spend every Friday for the rest of his life hoping that Sandray would finally be back behind that counter to take his order. He walked back inside. Sandy and her co-worker both had their backs to the counter making a couple of fresh pizzas and one man was waiting to place an order.

“I’ll be right with you sir,” she said without looking up. She turned and faced the man waiting, but was looking at Chuck with her mouth open and her eyes looking curious. It felt to Chuck that this man’s order took forever as he stared at Sandy intently trying to be as patient as possible for the transaction to end. Finally, the man stepped aside and reached for his beverage cup, and Chuck jumped in front of Sandy.

“What brings you back?”

“Um, I wanted to ask you something,” his resolve immediately began to crumble as all of his hopes with her were now going to be decided one way or another. He went silent. The smile and look of expectation on her face melted him. She was amazing. She had been struggling and she still managed to make him feel good every time he was in the same room as her. Her presence had always lingered with him. He always felt boosted with an added enthusiasm for several days after simply seeing her in passing. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out sometime. If you like to grab some coffee and catch up.”

Chuck saw a flush of red immediately fill Sandray’s cheeks. He had embarrassed her in front of an unsuspecting public. He was convinced that she would say no. That she would be nice about it, but would now have to let him off easy. He knew how little of a prize he was.

“I’d love to Chuck! There’s nothing else I’d rather do!” she smiled brightly and began writing onto an order pad. “Here’s my number. Call me any time!” she added with excited enthusiasm. A guy that had come in behind this scene patted Chuck on the shoulder and said “Nice work, brother,” as Chuck reached for the sheet of paper.

“I’ll call you this weekend!” he shouted a lot louder than he had planned and stepped back out into the sunshine. He took a long slow deep breath in and exhaled for nearly an entire minute. Her electricity was inside of him. He walked deliberately and as calmly as he could across the street on his way to the record store. He couldn’t wait to join his friends.




Find Part I here
Find Part II here

Wake (Part II)

Deep Black

Chuck and the Orange sat down on the curved bench changing their shoes. They had both just turned 23 and decided to gather a few of their friends and join a summer bowling league. This was week one. If this May was a sign, then this summer might be a hot one. Chuck and Ryan, or as he had become known that week: the Orange, had grown up doing junior leagues together as kids and thought it might be fun to do a short twelve week league for some fun. It was good for Chuck to get away from the increasingly suffocating scene of his normal routine, which often included Sandray and Jason on the periphery of his social life. It was too much for him to take. He needed to escape, in order to find a way to have fun and maybe meet new people. He had always loved bowling and with Harrison, D and Chris on the team, it looked to be a promising idea.


The league was mostly made up of older people, which surprised everyone at first. Gordy, a tall fat old man with huge bags under his eyes and a giant cigar dangling from his lips pounded by this rookie team and grumbled incoherently to himself as he carried two black bowling balls upright by the finger holes to his team’s appointed lane. Harrison overheard him grumble something again and then begin to wheeze violently, which caught the attention of everyone else. No one was sure if they needed to run over and prepare to enact CPR, or if things would settle down. It turned out that he was laughing and all was okay.

Everyone else, having tightened their bowling shoes with the 1980s Velcro straps, wandered off to buy several pitchers of beer for the first game, leaving Chuck to try and figure out how to enter in each player’s names onto the electronic scorekeeping system. The last time he had bowled in the small town he grew up in, scorekeeping was still done by hand. He was not sure what to make of this. Little by little the names went in. They had already decided on the team name and the order they would bowl in. He typed in TORGO for the team name. Torgo is the stumbling bumbling bellhop from the terrible movie “Manos: the Hands of Fate.” Torgo looked like he had pillows shoved down his pants and stuttered odd things about “the master” as he bounded slowly through life. The Orange would be the lead off man, he requested to be Chin Ho or Wo Fat from Hawaii Five-O, but The Orange is the name he got for wearing an orange shirt one day – the same day we saw a man standing in a decommissioned telephone booth off of 39th Avenue with an orange crate placed over his head. D was an easy type in for the second slot. Harrison was often known as the Iron Fist dating back to a threat he made against Ox who had made him miss his chance to talk with the ravishing Julie Woo earlier that year so Chuck typed “The Fist.” He looked around and saw that Chris had come back from the bar or bathroom or somewhere and was commenting about the intense smell of Pine Sol that was making his eyes water.

“What do you want to be tonight?” Chuck asked Chris. He had only recently met him, as he was a friend of the Orange’s from college.

“How about ‘Doug E. Fresh?” responded Chris, as everyone else filtered in around the scorer’s desk.

“Perfect.” Chuck replied, as he typed in “Dougie.”

Chuck was set to be the anchor and he hadn’t thought of a name for himself. He looked over at Gordy in the adjacent lane, who was once again wheezing loudly. The alley had opened up the lanes for practice bowling and one of Gordy’s teammates had just missed a spare shot. Gordy shouted out “I’ll give you a T for Trying” and launched into another extended death defying throat clearing gasp for life. Chuck typed in “Gordo.” He glanced up at the screen above the lanes. Team Torgo was set to bowl against Steve, Mandy, Bill, Wendy and Tom from the Mike’s Café team.

Chuck stood up and took in the surroundings and felt strangely energized by the horrifically loud crashing of pins crashing from all sides. It’s no wonder everyone that works at bowling alleys wear hearing aids. He glanced back at his new hero Gordy and started contemplating the idea of taking up cigar smoking. His teammates were all similar to him, but not as gregarious, or huge or loud. They looked to be bowling against a Filipino family going off as Team El Tigre. It would’ve taken at least three of their teammates to measure up to the sheer girth that was Gordy’s mid section. In the other adjacent lanes to their right, Chuck watched as a couple walked up to the lanes. They looked to be a married couple maybe in their early 30s, both of them clad in blue jeans and matching T-shirts. They were introduced to their much older teammates and began to get themselves ready. Chuck watched as someone typed Melissa up on the screen. He didn’t pay any attention to her husband’s name. Chuck stood there with his mouth open and all the silly chatter and odd running commentaries from his teammates faded away. Melissa had shapes that Chuck had never seen in person before. It seemed as if all of her assets were always on the verge of bursting free from her tight well-worn clothes and he silently rooted for them to do so. Her jeans were skin tight and starting to split just underneath her shapely backside. Her white T-shirt hugged her waist and was around her chest.  Not leaving much to his imagination.  She reminded him of 70s TV star Adrienne Barbeau.

Chuck never did bowl a practice ball, as he watched Melissa without ever averting his gaze. He watched her roll her bowling ball and it made him nervous and self conscious.

“There’s a hunger inside you!” Harrison screamed, as he slapped Chuck hard across the back, as he dropped a Snickers candy bar onto the scoring desk. “Are you fired up? I’m fired up!” He shouted and they began a hand bleeding series of hand slaps over and over as the Fist repeated his fired up mantra.

Everything became a blur for Chuck and he began to sweat and become nauseous. He frantically rolled his first ball and scored a messy strike. He looked back over at Melissa who was leaning over and talking to her husband who was sitting on the bench framing their two lanes. Chuck felt like he was sweating pure testosterone, as he was struck with pure lust.

Another crashing strike flashed before Chuck’s eyes, as he heard a loud turkey gobble call from behind, along with shouts of “Annie Oakley” and “Blood in the water” all from his teammates. Chuck had opened with five straight strikes and all the shouting was gaining the attention of the other teams. Chuck turned around, essentially oblivious of what was happening. He saw that Melissa was smiling at him and he lost himself into a daydream of her running over and smothering him with hugs and kisses. He could feel saliva pooling up inside his mouth as he walked toward the back of the lanes high-fiving people all along the way including an intricate rehearsed celebratory greeting with D. He had lost the ability to swallow.

In the sixth frame, the rest of the team was riding the momentum. All four of them had rolled powerful strikes and it was up to Chuck to score a perfect star frame for the team and a sixth straight to start the league. He had never bowled six straight strikes before. He still had not. This time, he left the five & eight pins in the middle and quickly rolled a simple spare. As he walked off the lane, Melissa applauded his start and high fived him as he went by. Her husband was in the back buying some beer. Chuck stomped by his teammates and shrugged off their comments about dropping the mashed potatoes and slipping on spilled gravy and how there had been too much butter on his biscuits. He threw his shoes off and went outside into the warm dry air after a scorching hot day. The evening had started to cool the edge off a touch, but it was still just as warm outside as it was inside the stuffy old bowling alley. He sat down against the side of the building, beneath the tiled figures of people-like shapes purportedly heading toward the entrance into the alley. He took a few deep breaths watched the traffic streak by and felt himself calming down a bit – at least enough to regain some composure.

After returning to the fray, Chuck managed to finish the two and a half remaining games without having to leave again, but was still driven to distraction by the presence of Melissa nearby. Team Torgo was on fire and Chuck led the way with all three games coming in above 200, easily the best bowling of his life. The real Gordy even wheezed his approval for the new Gordo.

Chuck felt his senses returning to him after he had watched Melissa walk out the door with her husband and with his friend’s and teammates all wandering around trying to decide what to do next. They had all piled uncomfortably into Chuck’s car, so they all had to agree about what to do. They’d all decided to grab a bite to eat at Sir Loin’s off of Sandy Boulevard, but there would have to be stops at bank machines and convenience stores for smokes and such.

Chuck turned the ignition and “Deep Black” by the Smithereens was still playing from the ride over.

“Deep black jealousy

Every time you look at me”

These were the first words they all heard and Chuck turned the volume way down.

By the time they reached their third brand of bank, it was Chuck’s turn to grab some cash. He stepped out and wandered up toward the ATM with his head down. He knew someone was getting cash ahead of him, so he wanted to look and act as harmless and possible - likely making him more conspicuous. What he was soon to realize is that this person was Melissa from bowling. She smiled when she recognized him.

“Hey, fancy meeting you here!” she smiled. “Great bowling tonight!” She glanced over his shoulder and could see his teammates all standing around outside his ’83 Ford Ltd. Smoking cigarettes and attempting to figure out if Sir Loin would be open and if so, what exactly what we would find inside. She waved to them.

“Thanks, it was quite a surprise,” he replied, embarrassed.

She touched his forearm as she said that she looked forward to seeing him next week and trotted off to her car. Chuck watched her bound all the way there in the dim twilight. She waved again as she sped off out of the bank’s parking lot. His teammates all watching her leave as well.

Chuck turned to the ATM and stuck his bank card inside the slot. It asked for his pin number and despite having had the exact same account since his mom had helped him sign up for a checking account when he was in the 8th grade, he could not think of what it was. He typed in the first thing he thought of. He tried another when that failed. He began to sweat again and attempted another set of numbers with futility after the machine had spit his card back out. This time it did not return his card. His three strikes were used up. He was now on record as a man trying to steal from his own account.

Melissa had wiped his mind clean.



Part I can be read here
Part III can be read here