Johnathon Gray was comfortably depressed. He had settled into his Iowa life where there was no excitement. There were no surprises. There was just safe apathy towards his job, his wife, his kids, his life.
It was a Friday, and he walked toward the parking garage. His steps were slow. He didn't shuffle, but only a millimeter separated his drawn-out gait from the death march of a condemned man. His shoulders slouched. He was three inches taller than he appeared, but in his current state of mind, he could not bring himself to raise his body up. His hands were in his pockets clutching the key to the car he would drive to his home. To what, he believed, was his second job.
Through the security gates, he walked. 'Have a good weekend," the security guard said. Johnathon fumbled with a reply which came out quieter than he wanted, but he continued to walk after his failed remark. The elevator bank was on his left, but he continued past them to the door to the outside. Once in the stairwell, he breathed. The coldness filled his body with air, the temperature of how he felt. Up the stairs, he walked. He was on the third floor. His car was on the ninth. In a fit of possible inspiration, he had decided to park on a different level to commemorate the New Year. Perhaps it would stir a new feeling within him. His hope of breaking out of his funk had been unsuccessful. It was March. He was still comfortably depressed.
At his car, he opened the door and let himself in. It was new. It smelled new. Had new technology to make his life easier. He, however, found the car lacked the joy of his old car. It was sterile and held no memories. It contained only the feeling of his slumped body fighting against the lumbar support as he backed out.
Once on the road, his attention was diverted to what the night and weekend would have planned for him. His life's pattern was obvious and sterile.
He would arrive home after stopping at the daycare to pick up his youngest child. When she would see him, she would scream that scream that made his height shrink a little more. He would politely plead for her to stop the screaming and she would agree. But, like most things in his life, the promise of another would be broken, and he would find himself dealing with his inability to shrink further.
After arriving at home, he would search the pantry and the refrigerator, trying to compile the list of possible ingredients that would make a healthy dinner for his family of five. His concentration would be hindered by questions of the youngest for something to eat NOW, or a question from one of his older children that inevitably was about what they would be having for dinner.
"I don't know yet," he would say even though he had most of the meal planned during the day while he worked at his repetitive, unimpressive job.
As he pulled into the grocery store parking lot, he knew his wife would arrive late for the meal he made. Even though he had learned to watch the movements of her phone on his phone so he could time her arrival with dinner being made, on most nights she would be early. Johnathon would have to scramble to get the meal on the table before she retired to the home office for her nightly high stakes game of Internet poker. If he were late, his wife would lead the rebellion to have the family meal in separate rooms of the house instead of the dinner table.
Walking down the vegetable aisle, Johnathan smiled briefly. Even though the youngest would hate everything he cooked, and no one would finish their plate, he found he somewhat enjoyed the evening meals. He had something tangible to show for his struggle and his work.
Jonathan bought groceries, collected his youngest and arrived home to begin preparing dinner. The bright spot for the day, his meal was ready on time and the family gathered at the table to discuss their days and consume the meal he had prepared. Throughout dinner, he did not say a word.
After dinner, having cleared the dishes, he found himself outside in the cold night air. He was busy filling the five-gallon heated water bucket for his Mastiff puppy. The wind was chilling him, and he inadvertently splashed some liquid on his exposed hands. Just enough to dampen them and give the northerly wind a place to make him appreciate the cold a little more.
His outdoor animals stored for the night, Johnathon reentered his house. He showered to warm himself, staring at his naked image in the mirror and wondering where his youth had gone. In bed, he waited for his wife. She appeared hours later. Still awake, Johnathon tried to excite his wife into encouraging his day, even though he knew what the answer to his affection would be.
"Not now," she said yawning, rolling over, and going to sleep.
Johnathon lay and stared at the dark shadow of the ceiling fan. It looked like a silhouette of Bart Simpson, but it brought him no joy. His day ending but the weekend only beginning, Johnathon rolled onto his left side and started his sleep process. It was the same every night. It started on his left side, three minutes later he rested on his back, two minutes later on his right side. A few minutes after that, he rolled entirely over and ended where he had begun. His mind started to fill with dreams of wanton lust or superheroes. The thoughts would allow him to enter a slumber.
Johnathon Gray was comfortably asleep.
Sleep went fast for him. In his night dream life, he had found the girl that wanted him more than he wanted her. He had found the job where people knew he had skills beyond their own. He had gotten a back rub. But he was a light sleeper, and the appearance of the four-year-old at the foot of the bed forced him awake. The dream world left; his living world demanded action.
"I need a tissue," his child said. He twisted his body, putting his feet on the floor. A sharp pain shot from the ball of his foot. He stood, limped the child back to her room and promised a tissue in the morning. She was asleep before he shut her door.
Back in his room, he listened to the sounds of his wife snoring. It was 1:32 AM. He knew he would get back to sleep, but that would be a couple of hours from now. His mind would not embrace the fantasies he had used earlier to fall asleep. Instead, it filled him with ideas of how to pay for college for his oldest. It was only four years away. What of the credit card debt which grew by the month and never seemed to disappear? His mind dodged and weaved through his life exposing pieces to fear, pieces to make his heart jump, pieces to make his mind race and stop his sleep from coming. The sound of air vibrating over tonsils next to him was a constant reminder that what he knew, he knew. No one else cared. The weight of the world was not on his shoulders; it was his shoulders.
An hour later he was downstairs in front of the fridge. He pulled the gallon jug of milk out, unscrewed the cap and took a drink. He remembered before the kids, he would do this naked, flashing the neighbors who liked to walk late at night in front of his non-curtained house. Now, he stood with white briefs, the waistband baconing around his belly. They were old and stained. He put the milk back after taking another swig. The coldness rushed down his throat to give his body a feeling. It dissipated and then it was only him, standing in his underwear, in his kitchen, at 2:36 AM.
Back in bed, he felt a need to cry. Crank out a tear, jerk his body in a sob, scream for help. Instead, he rolled on his left side, and awaited the morning light, embracing the insomnia as a man who had no other option.
At 5:03 AM, Johnathon decided he had tried to sleep long enough. He lowered his feet onto the floor, letting the sharp pain remind him that every day started with some pain. But like his day, the pain would dull itself away.
By the time his middle child had awakened and come downstairs, Johnathon had met his two-cup-of-coffee-a-day limit and was preparing to create a breakfast that he would not eat. Bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast welcomed the other family members from their slumber. He served them and let them eat while he put on his clothes for the day. Outside, he fed and watered the goats, llamas, and cats that needed attention. By the time he was done, the family was engaged in their activities to start their day.
Johnathon unloaded the dishwasher and reloaded it with the dishes from breakfast. While the others planned geek out sessions where they played computer games, watched streaming videos and did not attend to the youngest, Johnathon began to think of what to cook for lunch, what to cook for dinner. If he did it right, dinner would be something that would take hours slow roasting in the oven or the crock pot so he would not have to spend his Saturday managing the meal. If he was successful, it meant he could finally sit at his computer and read about nothing in particular.
After he drove to the store, located and bought groceries, loaded the groceries into his car, unloaded them, by himself, into his home, distributed the groceries to their places in the house, cut various fresh vegetables, placed them in a crock pot, got his youngest a drink, got his wife a drink, filled the water bowl for the indoor cats, Johnathon found himself sitting in his desk chair. The padding on the seat was worn down, and there was a screw sticking up through the fabric.
In a past life, he had imagined himself a writer of worlds. Was it twenty years since his last and only short story had been published? A short tale of an aborted baby who would have destroyed the world if she had lived. The memory made him smile as he reached for his reading glasses. While TV in the other room played too loudly for him to think clearly, he went about entering receipts into his computer. The tax season was upon him, and he needed to document his yearly expenses. His day disappeared in a fantastic display of his nine keypad skill; a skill learned while working at the smallest grocery store in town, way before barcode scanning.
By the time Johnathon was done entering a year worth of receipts, strung over hours due to multiple interruptions from the other family members wanting something to eat, drink, computer tech support. Dinner was done. He served the meal, trying to make the presentation similar to what he had seen on the cooking shows he watched alone in bed at night. The layering of colors, with the angular presentation of the sides, made him smile -- until he realized he was the only one who had noticed.
The meal lightly consumed, since everyone had been snacking throughout the day, meant plenty of work for him to do in clearing the table, putting the scraps in the garbage, rinsing the dishes, unloading and loading the dishwasher and beginning the task he had not done all day.
The laundry had piled up over the week. Two of the three children still believed anything, not in a drawer, taken from a drawer, or worn inside one day, was dirty. It all went into the hampers, and all needed a re-cleaning. It added up, and if he did not clean it this week, it would end up doubling next week. The cycle would not end.
But there was no laundry detergent.
"Get me more beer," his wife said when she found out that he had to make another trip to the store. "Love you," she murmured returning her attention to her poker game.
He loved beer. He had fallen in love with beer the first year of college before all the laws required a person to be 21 to drink. He had been eighteen when he first tasted it. Twenty-five years later, he was still in love with beer. It was always there for him when he felt down. The depressive nature of alcohol lightened his mood. How he yearned to have his mood lightened.
As he drove to the end of his driveway and turned left towards the store, he thought of the drunken wager he had made with his daughter. If he drank another beer before she was eighteen, the bet said, he would pay her ten thousand dollars. It was a bad bet, but it was for the best. His beer consumption cost too much money and caused too many sleep-filled nights.
Ahh, sleep. Johnathon suddenly realized how tired he was. Perhaps he would only do one load of laundry tonight and let himself fall asleep early tonight. The family placated, and as long as the laundry got done tomorrow, no one would be the wiser.
A deer leaped from the side of the road and appeared in front of his car. It stopped on a dime. Johnathon saw the deer. He processed that the deer was in his path. The other lane was open. He could swerve. But the deer could jump there too. He had only one option. Johnathon slammed on the brakes.
The anti-lock brake system chugged and ground beneath his feet and fought Johnathon's desire to stop the car on a dime. His body flew forward, the seat belt catching his body as his head snapped forward.
SMACK!
The car stopped. Johnathon regained his recognition of his reality. The deer was no longer present. His forehead throbbed. Due to the abrupt stop, his forehead had impacted the overhead visor which was slightly down. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. There was a line already forming where the blood was rushing to the impact zone to indicate what had just occurred.
Johnathon sighed. The pain in his head seemed to go deeper than just the flesh, but his wife wanted more beer, and he needed the laundry soap, or he wouldn't be able to take some personal time tomorrow after dinner. He removed his foot from the brake, placed it on the gas, and went to the store.
While he wondered what others might be thinking about his growing line of a bruise across his forehead, Johnathon went about collecting his grocery list. What had been two items, grew close to twenty. He had decided to get everything he needed for Sunday's meals. He knew, as he always knew, he would forget a much needed ingredient which would cause him to visit the supermarket again tomorrow. But tonight, he would make an effort.
"I didn't want this beer," his wife said as he went about unbagging the groceries. "Johnathon, what happened to your head?"
Johnathon began telling the tale of a mystic deer which appeared from nowhere to cause his car to loose gas mileage and his forehead to be branded with the mark of the minivan, but he only got as far as he was driving when the present family members' attention was distracted by a call to review the newest viral web video. They left Johnathon alone.
Johnathon finished putting the groceries away.
The laundry started, Johnathon turned his attention to finding something that might soothe the pain that ached behind his eye. The medicine drawer was filled with athlete's foot remedies and various other children's cold medicines, but nothing that seemed appropriate for a man battling a mild concussion. He decided to lay down, watch some TV, and hopefully feel better before the washing machine demanded his attention.
Still in the clothes he had worn that day, he fell into the bed. The remote was under him, but he was able to fish it out. He fumbled to turn on the TV, but either the batteries were dying, or his aim for the infrared was off. The TV would not turn on.
Laying on his right side, Johnathon held the remote. The room was dark. His head throbbed. He closed his eyes. Even though the washer screamed for attention and his wife turned on every light in his room and then the TV, Johnathon Gray was asleep. Asleep. And dreaming.
The dream was vivid. Colors popped, and Johnathon could smell! He had had a perpetual stuffed nose from allergies from the first day he set foot in Iowa, but in his dreams, he could smell. He was standing at the checkout line of his local grocery store, and he could smell that the baby in the cart in front of him had soiled himself. Johnathon breathed in, the smell of digested meat and baby powder wafting into his nostrils. He smiled. It was a smile. He felt his cheeks move, the skin around his eyes creasing. Such a wondrous dream, he thought.
To a point, he could control his dreams. He always had. No, he could not change the whole checkout line into a rumpus orgy with unicorns prancing upside down on the ceiling. No, he couldn't do that. But there were little things he could do.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a little wall hook for sale in the impulse buy racks. He remembered seeing it the previous day when he had gone to buy the family the dinner that they didn't eat. The hook, he had thought, would be perfect for him to put on the wall by the door of his house and hang his keys. It would solve the daily task of trying to find his keys. He would be able to place his keys high enough that his four-year-old would not be able to reach them and he would always know where they were. But, as with most purchases whose sole purpose was to help himself, he decided against it. The kids and the wife had bought that $300 cat, and he was still trying to figure how he could pay off the cat, the credit card, the car, the house, and three children's college educations.
Unlike his awake state self, though, Johnathon decided to make the purchase. It was a dream, he thought. His smile grew even more extensive.
"Was that the goats?" Johnathon's wife asked him, shaking his arm as she did. He sprang awake. "No, never mind," she said turning over and going back to sleep.
Johnathon was awake. His dream had been halted just as he had purchased the hook. He closed his eyes and imaged being in line, buying the hook, smelling the distant fragrance of soiled baby bottom, and perhaps the soap the cashier had used. But, like most nights, his dreams were interrupted by his reality. His mind quickly replaced the notion of a smile with the worry of how to pay for the braces for multiple kids.
He looked up. 12:35 AM. It was going to be a long night.
The following morning, Johnathon awoke when the sun came up. Because of his sleepless struggle, he always planned on waking early and using the lonely hours for himself. As he crept out his room, slowly pulling the door shut so to not disturb his sleeping wife, he heard his four-year-old stirring. A dog down in the basement yipped, and the unmistakable patter of little feet sounded behind the door across the hallway. His time was replaced with a request for breakfast.
Johnathon made fruit and yogurt parfaits, one at a time, concurrent with the arrival of each of his family members. He took out the two different kinds of yogurt from the fridge, retrieved the granola from the cupboard and gathered a disposable red cup to make the treat. He found a knife and sliced a banana and a strawberry and mixed the appropriate portions together. He did this four times. He always had the time to put the yogurt back, the granola back, the knife, having cleaned it, back four times.
When his wife appeared, she asked for coffee, before saying good morning, which she did not say. He got her coffee, mixed in the creamer he got from the fridge and tried to smile as he started to gather for the last time the makings for the Sunday breakfast.
He did not eat.
Around nine in the morning, he discovered he had no onions in the house for the crock pot meal he was getting ready to cook all day. He put on his shoes (he had but one pair), told his wife he needed to go to the store to get onions and then began the task of finding his keys. It started, as it did most days, by interviewing the four-year-old if she had seen his keys. She said she had not, and after a few more questions and denials, Johnathon commenced his manual hunt for his keys.
"It's on that damn hook you bought yesterday," his loving wife yelled to him from behind her tablet computer.
"Hook?" he said, the corners of his mouth starting to raise. He popped up from his crouched position next to the couch and rushed to the exact place he had thought he would have put the hook if he had bought it the day before.
And there it was. A white plastic hook held fast to the wall by an epoxy material which promised not to stain the underlying paint. It glistened and reflected the ring which hung from it and his lips parted, baring teeth when he saw his keys-- the keys he had already spent ten minutes looking for-- hanging from the hook. They were six feet off the ground, right by the door where he had dreamed he would put them. Trembling, he reached to touch the shiny keys.
"And get some tampons!" his wife yelled from the other room.
The day went by as slowly, as they usually did. He had no hobbies or distractions other than to prepare the meals, clean the house, fix the fences, mow the yard and take out the weekly can of garbage. As he stood in the shower, enjoying his only real alone time, he thought of the hook. He did not remember buying it the day before, but he did remember dreaming he had. He let himself lightly laugh as he thought of the power of his dreams made flesh. "And with the great power, the God gets a place to put his car keys," he said, turning off the water and exiting the shower.
As he dried himself, he thought of the next day. Tomorrow was Monday. There was nothing planned for him at work, but the start of the week held promise that something would be different. He had hoped that very idea for months and years. It didn't matter. He knew there would be nothing for him to pass his time the following day at work.
He stood and looked at himself in the mirror. He began to apply shaving cream to his face. The bruise on his forehead was still there, the angular line slightly askew from his eyebrows. Maybe this would be a conversation starter. It would engage his co-workers and bring them closer together and allow him to join other projects and fill his work day with so much work that he would forget to eat. He chuckled. Probably not.
Johnathon shaved his face, took his allergy medicine (which unbeknownst to him had a side effect of crippling depression), and brushed his teeth. By the time he got into his bed, his wife was snoring. The TV was still illuminating the room, and the remote was nowhere to be seen. He stood, went to the TV, pushed the wrong button and changed the channel, and then pushed another button which turned the TV off. In the darkness, he walked slowly back to his bed. He took small steps, bumping into a basket of clothes he had not folded yet, and kicking the mandatory cat who had appeared from the dark abyss of the bathroom.
In bed, he laid on his left side and closed his eyes. His mind allowed itself to think of the possibilities of his life where he was a great author and a revered baseball coach. He thought of having a superpower which allowed him to use electricity to control other people's minds and the TV from across the room. His mind settled on a bar image where people danced as he walked amongst them on the prowl. He was a hunter, an alpha male in search of his nightly conquest.
And then he was asleep. Dreaming.
"Get a room," a stranger said to Johnathon who had found himself with a blond in his arms. He was kissing her, his eyes wide open to take in every detail of the activity. The taste, the smell, the vision. It was all so familiar, he thought. There was a taste of sulfur and beer. He knew this bitter taste. He disengaged his kiss and leaned back. In this dream, he was remembering the first kiss he had ever had with his wife. He saw in her eyes, and he felt in his groin, the kiss was welcome and enjoyable. Strange, he thought, to dream of the very moment that started the relationship that created one life from two and expanded to create three new ones.
He decided to try it again. He leaned in and touched the lips of his future wife and played with her tongue as she played with his. She pulled him close as if trying to force their skin together right through the very fabric of their clothes. It was unsuccessful but transferred the heat and desire that he had come to miss and learned to relive when he was alone.
"And why did I need to come?" a voice said in the direction of Johnathon and his future wife. They disengaged their kissing and turned their collective attention to the sound. It was his future wife's best friend who they had picked up and brought out to the nondescript bar to enjoy the night. His wife said something he could not hear, but then an idea came into his mind. This was a dream. What would happen if he said...?
"So you can be part of our threesome!"
The dream went black, and as Socrates said, Johnathon slept like he was dead, death being state of dreamless sleep, relaxing and seeming never to end.
His eyes flickered open in almost complete darkness. There was silence around him as well. He could smell wintergreen and jasmine and wondered where the scent came from. He rolled to his side and saw he was alone in the bed. He raised himself up, and the sheets fluttered down his body like silk was made to do. Had his wife bought new sheets and not told him about it?
He moved to the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the ground. There was the pain and the ache. Good morning, Johnathon, his body said. He stood and went to the adjoining bathroom but walked into a closet. He had become somewhat disoriented it seemed. He stopped before he went too deep into the suits, but turned and without much thought, flicked on a light. The light was five feet above his head and illuminated a bunch of clothes he did not immediately recognize.
"You're up early," a voice said from behind him. "Here's your coffee."
Johnathon turned to look at the source of the voice. There was a woman, dressed in a red silk robe that was loose at the top and short at the bottom and she smiled at him as she handed him a large cup in a porcelain toilet, just like the one his daughter gave him for Christmas years ago. Her face was heart-shaped, and she was without makeup, but, from the lack of lines and the glow of her skin, he could tell she was much more his junior than any woman he had spoken to in several years.
"I'm uh.." was all he could say before the coffee was in his hand and the memories of the night before flooded into his brain, as did the memories of a life that had changed the moment he had offered his future wife's best friend the opportunity to join them in a m�nage a' Trois. The woman in front of him was Clareece Rodgers, attorney to many but lover to himself and a few selective women. He was her dick, too use when she needed it. He was hers because he had had an abundance of women before and had found the grind of having a relationship something he did not have time for. His life required him to be gone from his home for weeks on end. The content of his speeches was necessitated listening for most of the world's populace. He spoke on business, on life and death and on making choices which can change everyone's life. Many people in the world found his words inspiring and life-giving, even in death.
His previous life with his little family living the quiet life was a fuzzy memory he chose not to think about.
"The only thing we have to do today," Clareece said, turning and letting the robe she wore fall to the floor, "is each other." She turned her head and looked over her shoulder. He saw the glow of her feminine shape, the shadow of her butt cheek across the other, the darkness that was slightly below. "Johnny, you game?"
The rest of Johnathon's day involved exploring the body of his friend Clareece. When the sun set, they went to a posh restaurant and had an elegant meal together. As Clareece paid the bill for the meal, a stunning red-haired woman joined them for espresso. Clareece insisted on not telling Johnathon their new companion's name. A quick drive home and the three of them fell into bed together and did things adults do when adults want to do things out of the desire in their soul and not as the requirement of a relationship.
Spent, Johnathon laid on his side while the two women next to him nuzzled each other and giggled. He thought of the day he had had. Johnathon thought of who he was and what he had become. He thought of the happiness he felt and the contentment that seemed to permeate his confidant soul. And then he thought of a picture he had taken of his oldest child next to some vegetarian food. He remembered asking her to pose next to the Seitan. She smiled after reading the label and turned to face him, her fingers extended like the sign of the devil, her tongue stuck out as far as she could.
But she didn't exist in this world. Her sisters didn't exist in this world. His wife didn't exist in the world. She could, but not as his wife. And the memories he had of living in a big yellow house on the hill; a life built by his submitting himself to elevate them; it was a life that no more existed than Santa Claus. In this world, dozing next to a naked Clareece and a woman with no name, he was elevated, celebrated and wanted. He yawned and fell asleep.
His dream started randomly enough. He was in his car, the new car he had bought in a previous life. It smelled of new car smell and feet. His daughter's soccer bag was in the passenger seat. He put the key in the ignition and heard the sounds of a radio station echo through the car, only to be replaced by the guttural growls of his happy death metal music. He put the car in reverse, looked at the dashcam to see if anything, or anyone, was behind him. Assured there was not, Johnathon backed the vehicle to redirect it so he could drive straight down his quarter of a mile driveway, from his old yellow house on the hill. He pulled between the open space of two Giant Thule trees, which were not giant, but merely ten feet tall. He recalled him and his wife planting them from a seedling of barely 6 inches. Over the ensuing years, they incorporated tomato catchers to prevent themselves from running over the trees. Some did not survive due to drought; some the lawn mower had consumed. He smiled slightly and put the car in drive and headed down the driveway. Along the length of the path, there was a wooden fence to the right, a split rail fence with posts set eight feet apart. Each, he had planted in the ground, sometimes with the use of a one-person auger and some, when the earth was too hard from drought or too wet from rain, he used a manual post hole digger. Beyond the fence, his herd of domesticated farm animals ignored him. There were five llamas, who hung around each other, and his wife's miniature donkey and her foal lounged on the ground some distance from the other animals.
As he drove, a bunny ran in front of his car, then ran away from the vehicle in the direction of least resistance, which was, of course, down the driveway. Johnathon slowed the car waiting for the rabbit to make the needed right or left turn to free itself from doom. It eventually did.
At the bottom of the fence, at the bottom of his property, but one hundred yards from the road, a pink bicycle leaned against the fence. It was worn, both from weather and use. One of his daughters, the middle child no doubt, had left the bike propped up against the fence, waiting for either the snow of winter to bury it from memory, or for her dad to come to move it back up the driveway to where she would be able to ride it once again.
But this was only a dream. Johnathon did not have any daughters in his new life. He had women who wanted him, who desired to make him happy. He had a career instead of a job; a life's work which he found profoundly satisfying and promised years of new experiences and diversity in his life. His life which he had created for himself was surely the envy of all who knew him, even though he knew few people who knew him. People knew of him, like a silhouette on a distant hill which people superimpose the features of the person on only to find out that when they get closer, a different creature existed than what they were expecting. Clareece knew him, wanted him, and pleased him. According to the years of memories that had flooded his mind the previous day, she also kept her distance. His wife, in his old life, whom he had replaced with a simple request for a threesome, knew his foibles and habits and desires and she cared little for him to have a secret since she did not have time for it. Her career required time and the kids required time, and her hobbies required time. Johnathon got what was left.
There was little time left for Johnathon.
Still, the bike reminded him of how he had taught each of the children to ride without training wheels, except for the youngest, who viewed a bike as something too complicated and not immediately gratifying enough to be worth the challenge of learning the pedal motion that was required. She would take years to teach. He smiled when he thought of her at ten, finally getting the training wheels taken off. It would surely happen because she would have a friend who rode with only two wheels and she wouldn't want to be a little girl anymore. Oh, the power of peer pressure could do magical things a dad could not.
Those moments with his daughters made the hours and days of supportive monotony worth it. To see the smile on their face when he gave them something they desired, to hear the whispered "love you," to kiss the four-tear-old goodnight. His old life had some appeal.
But he was not dad. He was no longer a dad. He was Jonny Gray, founder of ThinkingIsForever, LLC, millionaire, author, speaker, businessman, stand-in penis for a lesbian. He was a nomad, flying to the far reaches of the world to experience freedom few mortals could dream of, and fewer could have. He was uniquely himself and so self-actualized that he needed no one to validate his existence.
At the bottom of the driveway, he stopped the car. He looked to the right. There were no cars. He turned his gaze to the left. There were no cars. Johnathon realized, in this dream, he needed to go to the store and buy laundry detergent. And beer for his wife.
If he went left, would he find a deer? What if he went left? It seemed he was in a dream and in his dreams, he affected his reality. This he knew. He smiled and shook his head. The fork in the road of his life was in front of him.
Johnathon pressed the gas and turned the wheel.
