Knock On Wood

That fuckin’ couch. Healthy as a horse. Fortified with vitamins and minerals, a shot in the arm. On track, on point, a gazillion megahertz pumped and juiced. Jet-propelled turbo-charged dual-overhead cam locomotive solid rocket booster three-foot tree trunk penis. Spread-legged bare-bellied squirming super-sized testicles hanging over the edge of the cushion like a sack of Christmas toys itching to be opened to spill its goods with arms outstretched to palm the greasy
basketball and a hand on either side and a hand on either side pump-action, pump-action. Jaw drop eyes rolling back heart pounding and oh god he came all over himself and the floral print fabric. And in a moment, after a moment he ran his hand over his stomach to scoop some up and brought it to his mouth and licked, he licked it off and went back for more. He felt it on his tongue and savored the taste, savored the taste and swallowed. It’s so good to be alive. He was fucking alive, he was fucking life.

It really is so very simple. It’s the simple things, its everything. Life: simple things followed by other simple things. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in groups, but mostly in long chains. The path a person takes in life might be seen as a rope made of simple things. When there is a tangle in the rope, it might look difficult to navigate, but it really isn’t: it’s just simple things turned upside down and around, take another look. Or, a person’s life might be seen as an
extra large piece of graph paper with each square a single simple thing. Each time you learn something, you fill in a square. Learning trigonometry may take up a thousand connected squares, but it’s only a thousand simple things. If you don’t think so, you are mistaken. You’ll see. Gandy did.

He had been approaching a great big knot in his rope. The closer he came to it the bigger it looked and less he understood it. Big knots have a funny quality about them. The rope can travel around and around and up and through and down and over a hundred times and then finally come out straight and tangle-free right next to where it all started to go crazy. You might follow the rope along for a long time and get turned inside-out and not know what the hell is going on or where the hell you’re headed, and when you get through it and see you’re right back where you started it might not seem like you’ve made any progress at all. But you have. And after awhile you’ll realize it was all just a series of simple things on the way to the end of your rope.

Back at Baker’s Hollow after all these years. All of that and yet there he was again. And it started to make sense. It really was so simple.