Josh Czuba

Train your brain to think and communicate clearly.

Every night I wake up at 4:48 on the dot.
I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t. I’m drenched in cold sweat. My heartbeat is loud in my ears. It’s fast and arrhythmic. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t “walk it off.” It won’t be light outside for many hours. And my legs are shaking.
I’m aware this is maybe not the best way to begin a conversation, but we don’t have time.
What I hold in my hand right here is a bottle of the strongest sleep medication you’ve never heard of. I just took three capsules. Before you got here. That’s a macro dose. In a tight 15-20, my eyes will shut tight and they won’t open again. I’ll return to the real world.
This stuff right here is not your standard issue Ambien. I moved on from that months ago. You develop a tolerance. No, this, you won’t find at your local pharmacy. No doctor can prescribe it. Won’t be on the FDA’s radar for another 6 months. Even I don’t know what it’s made of. All I know is that it will work. Of that, I am certain. I am certain because I believe.
Don’t be afraid of that word. There are worse things to fear.
If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you too, might grow desperate enough to believe. In something, anything. You too might feel like a stranger to Normal people.
Try telling your boss you’re pushing four hundred something nights of the same bad dream.
Your work friends, your colleagues, Mom, and Dad.
They say they understand, they get it, they’re here for you. But they don’t, and they’re not. How could they. They’ll say “Poor you,” and “How can we help,” and “Maybe try laying off the stimulants?” But this performance lasts only so long. Sympathy’s got a shelf life.
And can you blame them, really.
Even my licensed clinical therapist doesn’t know what’s wrong with me.
And before you start spouting off suggestions, like meditation or yoga or medical mary jane, I’ve tried it all. Falling asleep isn’t the problem. Au contraire, doctor. Insomnia would be a relief. Normal people can wrap their brains around insomnia.
But try being a grown adult male who turns into bed every evening at 9 sharp, and still wakes up exhausted. Who can’t put his socks on in the morning without trembling. Who, sure, gets seven square hours of shut eye a night but still fails to reply in a timely manner.
His hands are shaking.
Try going about the today in a cold sweat panic, knowing full well what’s waiting for you tonight. Try sitting through the Monday morning status meeting without peeling the skin from your hands. Whispering to yourself the daily laundry list of empty litanies.
Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe tonight will be different. Things could change.
But deep down, you know the truth. Nothing in this world changes.
You are Who you are What you are Where you are.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
After I absorb the medicine I’ve swallowed, I’ll shut my eyes tight and lay down in the clothes I am wearing. I will not open my eyes again. But I will be far from dead.
I don’t expect you to understand. Not if you’re Normal.
If that sounds like you, then I offer one warning. Once you know these things, you cannot un-know them. Your ears will hear the Music. Your eyes will see only Signs. You will never be Normal again. You’ll be like me.
Consider this your disclaimer on the back of the bottle.
It’s up to you, the consumer, to do what you wish.
My sole hope is that you choose wisely.
Then maybe you’ll wake up too.
This all started maybe a year ago.
I was an entry level sales rep at an up-and-coming ad agency. My task was to promote a new brand of melatonin gummies, fresh on the market. Sleep Jellies, they were called. Something silly like that. To do my job, I thought I’d try the product myself. I did this a number of times.
That was my first mistake.
If only I had known. There’s no use complaining now. Hindsight and spilled milk and whatnot. Water under any number of metaphorical bridges. Spare me. I used the stuff for little more than a week before the dreams began. And once they started, they did not stop.
Every night, it’s the same.
I am seated in a waiting room. I am waiting for something but I don’t know what. The walls are tan, yellow, or beige. Something in between. I can hear the lights above me. The room is lined wall to wall with faded leather chairs. There are two doors. One behind me, and one in front of me. I am the only one here. In the dream I need help for something urgent. If I don’t get help, I will perish. Sometimes in dreams you just know things.
In this dream, I am certain something is very, very wrong. But I cannot for the life of me remember what’s wrong. That is part of the reason I’m here. To learn what’s wrong with me and get help. The room is a degree or two too hot. I am sweating, but only slightly. I’m wearing my work clothes, the clothes I wore to the office. There’s a digital clock on the wall in front of me. It always reads 4:48. No AM or PM designation. The numbers do not change, but it makes a ticking sound. The clock and the lights above me. These are the only sounds in the room.
To my right, is a woman at a desk behind a screen. Her face is blurred behind the screen. I can’t tell if she’s looking at me. I stand up and go to the desk behind the screen to ask the woman why I’m here, and how long I’ve been here, and if I’ll ever be seen and helped, but before I can get the words out, she hands me a clipboard and a thick stack of forms. She tells me to sit down and fill them out. There’s a pen fixed to the clipboard by a long, umbilical chain of metal spheres. I sit back down in a faded leather chair, and in the very same moment, I hear the rotary telephone cry out somewhere behind the screen. The woman rises to soothe it. I don’t see where she goes. The phone keeps ringing. The woman never comes back.
I am alone in the room. The clock does not change. Nothing ever changes.
In most Normal people’s dreams, time follows a loose set of guidelines. Hours go by unnoticed. But in my dream, I feel every second. Every tick of that great, unchanging clock on the wall in front of me. The door in front of me stands as tall as two of me. It’s made of steel the same color as the walls so it blends right in. It’s got a lever handle in the shape of an L, the kind that turns down to ninety degrees before it opens. If someone comes for me they will pass through this door in front of me. In the dream I know this.
I sit there waiting.
I tell myself it can’t be much longer before someone comes. I think, Maybe I’ll flip through a magazine while I wait. But there are none to read. I stand up to pace the room and then sit down again. No one comes in.
The telephone is ringing. The lights are singing. Their bulbs are out of key.
It must be an hour or two of waiting before I stand up to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ll come back another time. Whatever my problem is, I’ll live with it. I walk over to the door behind me. The door behind me is shorter than I am. I’d have to crouch to get out. It’s a wooden door painted yellow, and the paint is peeling. Its knob is round and brass. There’s a sign on the door that reads: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. I put both hands on the doorknob. My hands are shaking. It occurs to me I have no earthly clue what’s waiting behind this door. I look at the sign again. It reads, clear as day, DO NOT OPEN DOOR OR ALARM WILL SOUND. I turn the handle to see if the door is locked. The knob turns with me. I could push slightly and the door would open. I could leave. I could walk right out. I look at the sign and the sign reads, clear as day, WRONG WAY, TURN BACK. It occurs to me if I walk through this door, I will be going the WRONG WAY. I will be going against the clear as day directions of the sign. Something bad will happen. In the dream I know this.
I sit back down in a faded leather chair. Always there is the hum or whine or scream of the overhead fluorescent lights. I cover my ears with my hands. The hum is the same as it was before. Nothing changes. But it is this very absence of change that makes the sound deafening. The sameness itself becomes the killing thing. I stand up again. I cannot bear to sit. I pace the room with my ears in my hands. My clothes smell and feel three days old. They are not soiled. But they are stale, tired, spent. They itch. I unbutton and remove my shirt and then my pants and then my briefs and then stand there in the waiting room, naked.
Somehow I am still too hot.
It is at this point I might break into a fit of hopeless tears if it were not for the sudden click clack of a woman’s heels resounding from behind the second door. The door in front of me. The clicks are slow and measured. The clacks follow close behind. It’s louder than you’re imagining. Dial it up a notch. The sound is getting closer. The door could open any moment.
I am now confronted by an altogether different fear. Here I am, naked, splayed, in a public place where I should not be naked and splayed. We’ve all had this dream.
Why is it we only come to our senses when its already too late?
I scramble to re-dress myself. Briefs, pants, belt, shirt. My hands are shaking. In the frenzy, I never pause to consider why the click clack of heels rings out so very loud and clear from behind the closed, locked steel door in front of me. The heels are now so close their sound might be coming from within my body. This cannot be the case. But in dreams you write these things off. You let details fade from view. It’s only later on the pieces come together.
When I get my clothes back on I sit down in the chair I’ve been waiting in. The click clacks are right in front of my nose. I cross one leg over the other. I un-cross it. I place both my hands flat on my thighs and wait. It occurs to me the sound of the heels has stopped but the door has not been opened. I am possessed by the distinct sense that whatever I’ve been waiting for is, in fact, waiting for me behind that door. The music of the overhead lights has either cut out completely or I have simply stopped hearing it. Now the dream is silent.
I am waiting for the door to open.
The L-shaped lever handle of the door begins to turn down. Its motion makes no sound. The handle turns counter-clockwise, leftward. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. The handle reaches ninety degrees and stops. That’s as far as it should go. This is where the door should open and I should see what’s behind it. But somehow, impossibly, the knob keeps turning. It winds round and round. It turns past the South Pole of its fixed orbit and ever leftward still. Slow, silent, round, and round. It is only now that I begin to scream. No sound escapes my lips.
That’s when the door opens, revealing, finally, what’s waited for me all along.
The figure is several feet behind the door. Down the long hallway with no light. A shadow upon shadows. It stumbles forward, out of rhythm. The woman in heels. The click clack of her feet doesn’t match her steps. Her movements lag behind. She is coming for me.
It occurs to me I should not be here. I should have left this place when I had the chance. The door behind me was unlocked. I had my moment and the moment is gone. She is coming closer. She is nearly at the tunnel’s mouth. She is nearly through the door where she’ll soon be lit by the panels above. I’ll see the true nature of her face.
I spring from the chair and rush to the door behind me, the door that is NOT AN EXIT. Even so late in the day, I pray. I pray the door is still unlocked, that some cruel trick has not been played against me. I get my hand on the knob and turn, and Thank God it turns, and I pull it back to flee, and right behind the door, of course, right in front of me, a foot from my face, is the figure, the shade, the woman in heels.
I see the true nature of her face.
Her arms reach out towards me. Her hands are older than the rest of her. Not a drop of blood inside them. Her face is broken in smile. It hurts to hold herself like this. She has been like this for a long, long time. In the dream I know this. Her eyes are lidless, bloodshot, screaming eyes. She has been in this place longer than I have. I see what has happened to her. I see what I will become. When she reaches for me, it happens slow. It might be a minute or an hour. But I cannot pull myself away. It’s as her fingers reach my throat that I wake in bed, alone.
The clock reads 4:48. It’s dark outside the window. The only remnant from that place is my heart, still loud in my ears. I am embalmed in sweat. My body’s rigid shape, its flaccid geometry, printed, or etched, in the mattress below. Like the white chalk silhouette of a corpse on a crime scene. I lay there motionless for many minutes more. Until I’m certain I am awake. Every night it takes a little longer. My arms and legs shake with so much force I cannot even begin to consider getting up to relieve myself. I stay like that long after the war drum of my heart recedes. After my fingers and toes unclench and the sweat dries.
And every night, I wait there, hoping, praying to drift off again. I wait til I feel that downward pull, the lightness of skull and body that precedes sleep. And it’s every night, as I begin to fade once again into blissful dark, that the morning alarm rings out. A loud, penetrating cry.
Its melody is the default sound.
It’s time to get out of bed.
Today is a new day.
It’s been four hundred something days and nights of this.
I’ve learned to live with my ailment. As all cursed people do. We swallow our pride.
We carry on.
It was three days ago something changed. I was at the office. I had reached the bottom of my 97th bottle of over-the-counter sedatives. At the bottom of the bottle I found a small white scrap of lined paper, torn jaggedly on all five sides. I don’t know how it got there, but at this point I lacked the energy to ask questions. On it was a message assembled from the cut out letters of a popular self help magazine.
“Having Trouble Sleeping?”
I flipped the scrap over to read a sequence of 10 digits separated by dashes. I scrambled to my rotary telephone and dialed the number. Put the receiver to my ear. The phone rang and rang. I stayed on the line. When colleagues walked past my desk, I pretended I was on with a client. I waited for someone to pick up. I had to wait. I knew if I did not wait, if I hung up the phone before someone answered, I would never have another chance. If I called the number again, the phone might not even ring. Sometimes you just know things.
It was after forty or fifty rings, there came a long crackling sound and a young man’s voice broke through the other end of the line.
“Top of the morning to you.”
It was 4:48 in the PM. The voice was faint, squeezed through a tiny hole in a distant wall. The connection was poor.
“Hello. I found this number on a slip of paper at the bottom of my bottle of sleeping pills. It asked me if I was having trouble sleeping. I suppose you could say, I am.”
The crackle was louder than the voice. But if I squinted I could hear words.
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“I have bad dreams. Sorry, dream. Singular. This has been going on for a year. Maybe more. If it goes on any longer, I’m not sure I will. Go on. I wake every night at the same time each night, always embalmed in sweat. Visceral terror. Can you help me?”
“I’ll just ask you a few questions and see if we can assist you. That sound alright?”
“That sounds alright.”
“Describe the dream for me. Do you find yourself trapped inside a small box? Or are you standing at the sheer edge of a tall building in the sky, looking down? Or are you cast adrift in a vast ocean? Or something else. To say something else, you can dial 1 or say something else.”
“Something else.”
“I see. I’m guessing you’re a Waiter.”
“Actually, I’m an Account Representative at an up-and-coming ad agency.”
“In the dream, I mean. Stop me if this sounds familiar. Every night you find yourself alone in a yellow room. Waiting for hours on end to get help for something you can’t name. Does that sound about right?”
“That sounds about right. How did you know?”
“It’s not so uncommon in those who come to us.”
“Us?”
“We’d be happy to assist you with your trouble. Your medication will be waiting at your doorstep when you arrive home this evening.”
“How do you know where I live?”
The line had been disconnected.
I put down the phone and shut off my computer. I sat there staring straight ahead for a minute or two. Then I got up and left the office. I drove straight home. Sitting outside my apartment door was a single envelope addressed to no one. It bore no message or return address. Only a stamp in the lower left corner. A black and white photo of a moth, fluttering at a streetlamp. I stared at this image for a minute or two. Then I crossed over into my apartment, tore open the envelope, and found a small bottle of pills, unlabeled. Inside the bottle was a scrap of jagged paper. A message made from cut-out letters.
Instructions:
Take one capsule per night. Do not exceed one capsule every 12 hours.
I twisted the bottle. I struggled for some time with the Child Safety cap. When I got it open, I shook out a blue oblong pill and placed it in my mouth. I swallowed with my own saliva. Then I floated into the bedroom and sat on my bed in my work clothes.
I laid down. I closed my eyes. I waited.
When I open them again I am in a different bedroom.
Everything about the room is the same. The plants. The total lack of wall hangings. The rug. But it is somehow different. That much, I know. I look to my left and there is a woman in bed next to me, sleeping. Martina. The receptionist from work with the copper curls, who doodles at her desk all day, who I turn to glance at every quarter minute or so between the hours of nine and five. This dream occurs to me in flashes. I blink and we’re kissing. Clothes come off in waves. I blink and we’re at the breakfast table over plates of poached eggs. The surfaces of the kitchen are marble or quartz. Smooth and shiny. I blink and I’m driving fast on the highway in a black matte Jaguar. I have an expensive looking rose gold watch on my wrist. I blink and I’m at work. Its the same workplace I go to every day of my life but its cleaner. Nicer. Everything in its right place. In this dream, I lead the status meeting. I have my own office with my name on the door and the desk. I blink and I’m back home with Martina. The walls of the house are made of glass and there are trees outside, everywhere. Martina is about to tell me something. Something beautiful and crucial. It’s as she opens her mouth, I blink.
And I wake in my bed, alone.
I could hear my heart in my ears. I was embalmed in sweat. But I was not afraid.
I looked at the clock and saw it was 8:48 AM. I had slept through the night. And then some. I was late for work. I sprang from bed and drove to the office in the same set of clothes. I had not shit, showered, or shaved. I sat through the Friday morning status meeting with the dream images coursing through my mind. Then I sat at my desk and did the same thing. Many hours went by unnoticed. I could not bring myself to work. Could not reply to one email in a timely manner. Not after last night. The fabric of this day was artificial, false. Polyester when it should’ve been cotton. It didn’t feel real. Not quite.
At some point, Martina stopped by my desk to ask if I was alright. Looked like I’d had a rough night, she said. She was being friendly. I told her No, actually, I slept great. Then I asked if she was free for dinner the following evening. She was taken aback by this. Her eyes went wide.
She said, Took you long enough to ask.
Meet me at California Pizza Kitchen at 8:48, I said. PM, I said.
Yeah, duh, she said. It was cute the way she said it.
I left work early that day and drove 15 over the limit to get home. I wanted to get back to sleep. When I got home, I poured out another blue pill and placed it in my mouth. I swallowed with spit. I sat on my bed in my work clothes. I closed my eyes. I waited. But when I didn’t feel that downward pull, the lightness of skull and body that precedes sleep, I figured I’d better take another. So I took another. One more couldn’t hurt.
I sat, I laid, I waited. I closed my eyes.
When I open them again, I am in the house of glass. There are trees everywhere. I look and smell like a man in a commercial. The walls are made of polished stone. The dream tonight does not occur in fragments. Life is one continuous chain of cause and effect.
Martina is about to tell me something. Something beautiful and crucial. We talk about getting married. I drive to work and receive the promotion I’m up for. Martina and I get dinner at California Pizza Kitchen for the third time this week. We talk about life, and bringing new life into it. I’m an Account Executive now, and hey, why not bring a little guy or gal into the picture? Martina and I make love. We make love three times a week but no one’s counting. We’re painting the second bedroom tan or yellow or beige. We will impose neither blue nor pink on our little munchkin. Let them choose for themselves. I am promoted again. The agency now services every consumer packaged health brand in the Western hemisphere. And we are expanding East. Martina and I take in a rescue pup named Oskar, a Dachsund/Great Dane cross breed. On our first family Christmas, I stand at the head of the table to make a toast. Martina looks across at me from the other end. The long table is lined with relatives I’ve never met. I cannot see their faces. They are like the grown ups in children’s television programs. They exist but not fully. They are concepts. Martina smiles at me with full moon eyes. Then there’s the sound of a small splattering under the table. Her water is broken. We’ve got to get to the hospital. Its as my son, my baby boy, comes into the world that everything fades to black.
And I wake once again in my bedroom, alone.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:48. PM. I had overslept. Thank God it was a weekend. I had less than 4 hours before my date with Martina.
I scrambled out of bed to get to the rotary phone. I dialed the number. It rang only once.
“Top of the morning to you.”
“Hi. Hello. This is the gentleman with the same dream every night. We spoke the other day. I found your number at the bottom of a bottle of sleeping pills.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Right. Of course. Well, listen, there’s a problem here. I just awoke from a dream that lasted a full year. Maybe longer. I was married, I had a life. It was more real than anything I’ve ever felt. And now it’s over. Just like that. I’m awake but I don’t feel awake.”
“How many capsules did you take?”
“Two.”
“And how many capsules did the instructions instruct you to take?”
“One capsule every 12 hours.”
“So you’re seeing, I hope, the faint outline of the problem here.”
“OK, yes. Responsibility taken. But responsibility aside, I need to get back to my life. My real life. I need to get back to the dream.”
“Are you ready to commit?”
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“If you’re ready to commit to your real, true life, take three capsules. Do it tonight.”
“Three capsules. Got it. I can do that.”
“But I have to warn you of something. Consider this your disclaimer on the back of the bottle. If you take three capsules, you won’t come back.”
“What do you mean I won’t come back?”
“The life you return to will become your true one. The world you’re calling from now will be a faint dream you chose to forget. You’ll never again rise from bed unrested. If you take your new life to be your true one, you’ll always be awake.”
“If I said I wasn’t following you before, that is nothing compared to the lack of following I’m experiencing now.”
“What I’m telling you, good sir, is if you take the macro dose, you’ll sink into a sleep you’ll never wake from.”
“You’re saying I’ll die.”
“That’s not what I said. What I said was, You’ll never again open your eyes this side of the dream divide.”
“So I’ll die.”
“Has it ever once felt that way when you’ve woken from a dream?”
I said nothing to this. I just listened to the crackle on the other end of the line. The sound was not unlike the cacophony hum of overhead lights.
“Alright. I think I’m following you. Three pills. Tonight. I’m ready to commit.”
“We’re glad to hear it. When you get here, I’ll make sure to come by and say hello. For a proper introduction.”
“Wait. You never told me who you are.”
But the line was dead. I hung up the phone for the last time.
I began to to make arrangements. I went through the motions of shutting down my life. I hand-washed all the dishes in the sink. I took out the trash for the last time. I did not call Martina to let her know I wouldn’t make it to dinner. I would be seeing her shortly. I drew the blinds and locked the front door and barricaded the front door with furniture. Then I watered the plants. I swallowed the pills and floated into the bedroom. I locked the door behind me.
I sat on the bed in my work clothes. I closed my eyes. I waited.
When I opened my eyes again, I was alive.

Happy Saturday :)
Here’s the latest short story.
18 year old Jeremy has a thing for older women. That becomes clear when he falls in love with his neighbor. You’ve heard of “the girl next door.”
This is about the girl next door’s Mom.
Strap in.
You can watch it on YouTube or Spotify if you prefer.
And here’s a link to get the book, the podcast, and everything else I do.
Now, let’s get into the weirdest love story you’ve heard this week. Maybe ever.
Love Potion
I.
I fell in love with the forty nine year old woman who lives next door.
Her name is Julianne Mallard. She’s got a husband and a daughter about my age. I can’t remember her name. Her daughter’s name. Julie’s who I want.
It’s not easy being in love.
Love is complicated. Also: Costly. Painful. Distracting.
I have more important things to worry about.
I’m a young man in the prime of my life.
I can’t afford to lose sleep over this. And I am losing sleep over this.
If I was not heads-over-tails in love with my next door neighbor, I could focus on what matters: getting into college. Graduating with a 4.0. Finalizing my valedictorian speech.
Instead, I’m up every night til the torturous rise of the sun straining my poor blistered fingers to write hundreds of hopeless letters I’ll never find the stones to even send.
If I wasn’t in love, I wouldn’t be acting strange.
I wouldn’t do things like press my face against the upstairs bathroom window for 30 to 40 minutes each morning, trying to get a glimpse. I wouldn’t spend every conscious minute of every day formulating plans. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here telling you about it.
But here we are. I have to face the facts.
Her name is Julie. She’ll be fifty next month. She wears business clothes, often pinstriped, and a pair of designer heels that go click clack click clack in perfect rhythm. She holds a high paying job in an office building downtown. She drives a Range Rover sport she payed for herself. She has a husband and a daughter. A pension. A cat. Her hubby teaches high school chemistry. Mr. Mallard. He wears a fanny pack at almost all times and keeps a sticker of the periodic table on the back windshield of his used Subaru.
How a guy like that pulls Julie Mallard, I’ll never understand.
But who am I to talk. I’m no Casanova.
My real name is Jeremy. Jeremy Briefcase. The pleasure’s mine.
I am 18 years old and have never once held carnal relations with a woman. Although that depends on how you define ‘carnal relations.’ Recall: there are zero universal accepted standards for first, second, third, or home base. Everyone’s got their own ideas. Ask 20 people, get 20 different answers. My main goal in life right now is to have my first carnal relation with a woman before I begin my studies at the University of Milan, Ohio, where I’ll double major in Human Resources Management and Improv.
In my life I have kissed three girls, touched bosoms and backsides of the same three girls, deployed my tongue in two of those interactions, and received tongue-and-cheeks attention from one of those two. This occurred last April in the backseat of Mom’s Honda HR-V in an empty parking lot, at night. Although I was not exactly, shall we say, vascularly present for the experience. My blood vessels down south did not cooperate. So it was only a few minutes until Isabelle Fountaingreen grew weary of fondling what must have felt like an over-boiled gnocchi dumpling in her mouth, and let the soft, noodle-y thing slip out from her oral cavity, before asking its owner politely to drive her home. I drove her home.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why it happens. Why I go flaccid, dormant, limp, whenever I get even a little bit close to carnal relations.
Maybe I’m cursed.
The only other time I came reasonably close to sealing the carnal deal, I was so afraid of becoming vascularly absent at the critical moment, that ahead of time, I ordered and imbibed a masculine enhancement supplement I’d seen on a TV commercial. It was a blue oblong pill that came in a small black package. It cost me a week’s worth of mowing lawns. But even that didn’t work. When I picked up Clarice Menard from her house, I could already feel my total lack of blood down south, so I just drove her around the block three times, then pretended I was late for a dental appointment I’d forgotten, and dropped her off again. We didn’t even kiss. Then I ran three red lights back to back on my way to the family endocrinologist to get my testosterone tested, and when my bloodwork came back normal, I was sent home empty-handed, apart from a Post-Visit summary that told me my problem was probably: psychological.
But that’s enough about me.
II.
I fell in love with Julie Mallard the day I first laid eyes on her. This was last week.
How it happened was I walked across the street to mow their lawn. I own and operate a successful neighborhood landscaping business. I offer a number of boutique services. I walk dogs and feed cats. I sit babies.
I knocked on the door and put on my best business smile. Mr. Mallard opened the door and said, “Well, hi there Jeremy. Funny seeing you here.”
I told him I wanted to offer to mow his lawn. As a way of saying, Welcome to the neighborhood.
He asked me how much it would cost him.
I told him this one’s on the house. But if he liked the service he could purchase the biweekly package.
“I’ll even throw in the Friends and Family discount,” I said.
He agreed, shook my hand, and that was that was that. I got to work. Couldn’t have been seven minutes into mowing, I heard her voice call out behind me.
“Care for a cold drink?”
I turned to see her. Julianne Elizabeth Mallard. The first and last woman I’ll ever truly love.
Her body was made of the most delicious geometry. Curves in all the right places. She was shaped like a treble clef. She held up a glass of colored fluid, rapidly condensating. She was dressed for work. Pinstripes. Heels. Her hair pulled back in a tall bun, on its tippy toes. What I think I found so enticing about her, and I’ve thought about this many hundreds of times since then, was that Julie was far from perfect. She was not optimal. She did not have the body of some 20 year old something who’s never known struggle.
No.
Here was a woman who’s brought life into the world. Who’s birthed, bathed, and nursed a child. Felt the weight of motherhood press down upon her like an industrial steel piston. Felt it crush her dreams to paste. A woman who’s kept that pain to herself, because how could she, a mother, possibly feel this way. Here’s a woman who’s maintained a lucrative career in a male-dominated field while raising from scratch her precious ray of oppositional defiant sunshine. A woman who’s clawed her way to the top of the ladder while still being the Mom who does it all. Who’s driven her little gal to soccer practice, dance class, jazz, ballet, and tap, week over week over month over year. A woman who’s been primary breadwinner for going on 14 calendar years. Who tells herself she doesn’t mind, it doesn’t matter, but is growing tired of convincing herself. Here’s a woman with flaws. Rough edges. Grey hairs from time and from stress. Stretch marks she’s earned and bled for. Pre-menopausal heat flashes she’s being real brave about. Here’s a woman who can feel the years passing through her fingers like dry sand. Who knows too well that bottom-of-belly dread on her first visit to the specialists’ office the very same day the crow’s feet appear. Who leaves the consult saying she’ll hold off for now. But every day since, looks closer and closer at the corners of her eyes, scanning the stained-glass mirror, squinting for signs of age, the scar tissue of time. A woman who, every day, applies a brave face and takes her pills before dis-embarking the bathroom to make her daughter breakfast. Then out the door to face the next series of fires.
“Are you alright?” I heard Julie say from the porch.
It occurred to me I had not moved or said anything for many several dozens of seconds.
How long had I been standing there.
I tried to speak but only hiccuped. I tried again and coughed.
Then I managed to croak out, “Yep, I’m fine.”
Julie descended the steps like an angel from heaven, floated up close to me and held out the sweating glass. She smiled. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.
It took every fluid ounce of focus to keep my legs from shaking. Knees from buckling. I could still not move. Guys tend to freeze up when brought face to face with the feminine ideal. This is a well-documented fact.
Aphrodite drove the Sea God’s sons to madness.
Medusa turned men to stone.
And Julie Mallard, Executive Marketing Manager, managed to pull off both.
She extended her hand to me. “Julie Mallard,” she said.
“Jeremy Briefcase,” I said.
Her hand was smooth from lotion but not damp. The exact perfect ratio of moisture to skin. She smelled like old lady perfume. It occurred to me my blood vessels had kicked into full gear. Overdrive. I was extremely vascularly engaged. This whole time, there was nothing wrong with me. I just needed the right woman. I needed Julie Mallard. There was now so much blood coursing through the South Pole of my body I had to pull my shirt down so as not to come on too strong. These things take time.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Julie said.
“Trust me,” I said. “The pleasure’s mine.”
Julie looked me up and down. She smiled once more. Then she got in her SUV and drove off.
That was the day my life changed forever.
I finished mowing the Mallard lawn and thought of nothing else.
I began to formulate the plan.
It had to be airtight. True love is no accident. You have to prepare. Fail to prepare and you prepare to fail. I had that printed on a poster on my bedroom wall where that afternoon I wrote out a logical sequence of steps. Strategic actions. Things that needed doing.
Step One: I had to learn the mechanics of love itself.
Now, you might say to me, mechanics of love? Love can’t be engineered. It’s a natural thing.
But how about, let’s, you and I, cut the cow-dung.
Love is not some great mystery.
It’s a scientific phenomenon. A survival strategy. An adaptive trait that served the species well. It’s what kept us humping through the Stone Ages, the Dark Ages, the Reagan eighties. Love is not some magical gift bestowed by a heavenly Father. It’s Mommy Nature’s insurance plan to keep us reproducing on schedule. Amidst famine, pestilence, and plague.
You see: romance, passion, “love.”
I see: a delicate union of neurotransmitters in the brain. You may feel butterflies in your stomach, apples in your eyes, but at the end of the day folks, it really is all in your head.
Dopamine. Serotonin. Oxytocin. Norepinephrine.
Mix those bad boys together in the melting pot of your central nervous system and that is every first crush, summer fling, and destination wedding you could ever dream of. That’s what compelled your parents to produce you, and their parents produce them, and so on and so on, way back into humanity’s ancient past.
Here was the key to everything. I didn’t need to sweep Julie off her feet.
No quantity of handwritten letters could do that.
I just needed to sweep Julie’s neural pathways off their feet. Their dendrites. Whatever.
This is really a great segue into:
Step Two: I had to create a love potion.
That was the first real snag.
Recall for a moment: I was on track to be a Human Resources major.
I knew nothing of chemistry.
But lucky for me, I knew just the person to ask.
III.
“Mr. Mallard, thanks for meeting with me.”
I had stayed after class to ask a question. About an independent learning project.
Mr. Mallard, I could tell, had always dreamed this day might come. The day a student would approach him on their own time, to inquire about something from a place of true, academic curiosity. No ulterior motive. He leaned over his desk with his fingers steepled, like that.
I asked him, “How’s your lawn looking these days?”
This was not my personal question. But I had to break the ice.
Mr. Mallard’s eyes twinkled, kind of.
“Let’s see, since you mowed it yesterday afternoon?” he said. “No complaints from me.”
He laughed. His fingers were steepled with such force I could see red hot blood pooling in his nails. “You mentioned you had a question about neurochemistry,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said. I”’m working on a hypothesis. For the upcoming State Science Fair. I’m looking to create a chemical model of the human love response.”
“A chemical model of the human love response? What, like a love potion?” he said.
“Huh. That’s funny,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. But I suppose you’re right. A love potion. Would you be open to helping me with that?”
He was open to helping me with that.
Mr. Mallard leaned back in his ergonomic rollie chair, folded his still-steepled fingers behind his head and imparted to me the exact chemical procedure I needed to manufacture love. He seemed almost too prepared for this. Like he had thought about it ahead of time.
I nodded and smiled as he talked. I said Mhm in all the right places. I scribbled notes on a pad of paper. Then I thanked him for his help. Told him I’d better get to it. But just as I turned to leave, I remembered something else and said to him, “Mr. Mallard, as a token of appreciation for your help, I’d like to offer to mow your lawn, on the house, today. This very afternoon. And then, maybe, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of every week?”
And he said, “Isn’t that, like, way too many times per week to cut grass? Surely it can’t grow back that quick.”
But I told him I believed in being thorough. He seemed to accept that. After all, I was the local expert on suburban landscaping. He thanked me for the generosity.
In the hallway, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a tall girl in a long black dress that covered every inch of her body, down to her feet. She wore one fingerless glove on her left hand and had black makeup caked on so heavy, the whites of her eyes shined like emergency vehicle headlights. Her unwashed hair hung low to the linoleum in a million lonely strands.
This was Julie’s daughter.
“Hi Jeremy,” she said.
“Hi… buddy,” I said.
I can never remember her name.
Julie’s daughter spoke in a dead, flat monotone. She did not blink.
“Do you have plans after school"?” she said. “I just got a new cat named Astaroth and I want to introduce you. He’s suffering some pretty shocking digestive symptoms. In response to a new brand of wet food, I think. I know you work with cats. So I just figured I’d ask.”
This was the fourth time this month Julie’s daughter was trying to make a move on me. It was well past the point of obnoxious. How a woman so perfect as Julie Mallard could produce a daughter as strange and off-putting as Julie’s daughter is beyond me.
I said to Julie’s daughter, “No. Sorry. I have plans.”
“Plans?” she said. “That sounds fun. What kind of plans?”
Some people can never take a hint. It’s enough to drive a man to the brink.
“I’m working on a project,” I said. “A really serious, complicated science project with lots of steps and dangerous compounds involved. So I do really have to go. If you’ll excuse me.”
I jerked my body bizarrely to the left to swivel around the shadowy mass of Julie’s daughter. I could feel her eyes piercing through my backpack, into my kidneys, as I booked it for the doors.
But I had no time or available brain space to worry about it.
I had to get to the local wholesale chemical supply store before they closed.
I had work to do.
IV.
Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for:
How to create a real life love potion.
It’s really not so complicated if you follow the instructions and a handful of household chemicals.
If I can do it, anyone can. The recipe is simple.
First you need to extract dopamine and serotonin.
These two alone can make a person addicted to you.
To do this, you’ll need toluene.
It’s a colorless, highly flammable liquid commonly used as paint solvent. One spurt to the nose shoots dopamine levels 300% above baseline.
Then you get your hands on some nitrous oxide. This is the laughing gas they give you at the dentist. Mix it with a healthy dose of Esketamine, a nasal spray they use for treatment resistant depression. Makes you dizzy, light headed, sedated. The very same symptoms, you’ll note, as feeling “love sick.”
Then you’ll need to add some adrenaline to the pot. Got to get Julie’s heart racing.
True love should feel like you’re always right on the edge of fight or flight.
Pay a visit to your local pharmacy, pick up your standard issue asthma inhaler and tear it to pieces with a pair of pliers you’ll find in your father’s tool bag. Inside the inhaler you’ll find a cartridge of pure, concentrated epinephrine.
Lastly, and most elusive of all: oxytocin.
The love chemical. The warm and fuzzies. This one’s impossible to fake. You can only truly get it from the loving touch of another human being. Is what I thought til I performed an internet search for synthetic oxytocin and navigated to SHOPPING. It also comes as a nasal spray, funny enough. It’s used to treat social anxiety and postpartum bleeding. Which lucky for me, I suffer one of those things. I secured a ninety day prescription after a five minute consultation with the automated chat feature.
I paid twenty dollars extra for same day, within-the-hour delivery.
There was no time to waste.
V.
By 1830 hours that evening I was marching back up to the Mallard estate.
I switched on the lawnmower and began my work. There was very little grass to mow because I had just done this yesterday so I switched off the machine and pushed it up and down the lawn in straight, alternating lines.
By 1839 hours, a lime green Range Rover sport pulled into the driveway. Five minutes ahead of schedule. I had broken into a light sheen of sweat. Julie stepped out of the car wearing a different pinstriped pantsuit. Just laying eyes on her was nearly enough to wipe my brain of the plan entirely and drop me to the short grass in a seizure. Love will do that to you.
But I kept myself focused.
Julie said from the car, “I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”
I told her, “I believe in being thorough.”
I walked up to the car. I walked very slowly. I’d rehearsed this part of the plan many times in my head over the last several hours. It was as Julie closed the driver’s side door that I produced the bottle of Bleu de Chanel full of translucent fluid that was not Bleu de Chanel. Julie turned to face me and I pressed down on the bottle, releasing one fast spurt of aerosol love across the window of empty space between us. I watched it drift across her perfect face. Her crow’s feet were really quite charming, actually. Julie took a step back into the closed door of the car. Her eyes went wide. Her pupils dilated. Her face went pale and then red. Like, really red. The lawnmower stood silent behind me. There was the distant sound of automatic water sprinklers coming from somewhere down the block. Julie’s pupils were now so large they had eclipsed all of her iris. Just two black-tar pools that saw nothing but me. She was breathing hard.
I found myself not knowing what to say. I had not thought this far ahead. Julie’s breath was fast, now. I could hear voice in her breath. A low moan, a guttural thing. Then she began to laugh. She laughed hard, out of control. She did not blink while she laughed. I was afraid her pupils might grow even larger until they would eclipse even the whites of her eyes. That they would then become two all-consuming obsidian voids, animal eyes, estranged from verbal thought, human things.
Julie was laughing like an insane person. So hard her chest and lungs might burst.
I was laughing now too.
Is this true love?
Then, all at once, Julie stopped laughing and crumpled to the lawn below in a jumbled, flaccid pile. It was around this time Mr. Mallard pulled his used Subaru into the driveway.
“Julie,” I said. “Julie, are you alright?”
Her eyelids were shut tight and fluttering. She released short, fast breaths, not with ease. Mr. Mallard was out of the car and standing behind me.
“Jeremy, lawn’s looking just stupendous!”
Then he saw his wife on the ground.
“Oh God, Julie, what’s happened? Is she OK?”
My voice came out very calm.
“We should go to the hospital,” I said.
“What happened to her?” said Mr. Mallard.
“I saw the whole thing happen, I said. She got out of the car and she fainted to the ground. She needs to go to the hospital.”
One of my better qualities is my ability to remain incredibly calm under pressure.
Mr. Mallard picked Julie up by her arms and I took her legs and we carried her like that to the car. We deposited her in the back seat. Mr. Mallard got behind the wheel and slammed on the ignition. I rode shotgun.
It was a nine minute drive to the ER. Conversation was sparse. There wasn’t much to say. Mr. Mallard was navigating what I figured to be clinical shock. His face was blank, unreadable, but his eyes were real wide. If you’ve ever seen those black and white photos of soldiers returning from war, you’ll have some idea of what I mean.
In this state, all he managed to ask me was “How’s your project coming along?”
I told him I’d run into some problems. That early testing had not been successful.
“That’s alright,” he said to me. “Early experimental trials always fail. It takes time to get the results you’re after. Just promise me you won’t give up.”
I promised.
Julie made no sound from the backseat or if she did, we did not hear it.
VI.
Julie woke at 2300 hours. She was in a hospital bed in the intensive care unit. The coma was breaking. I was right there waiting for her when her eyes opened.
Sixty seconds earlier, the jury was still out on whether she’d pull through or not, and Julie’s daughter sat next to me in a plastic chair. I wished she wasn’t there, but was really in no position to ask her to leave.
If I could’ve, I would’ve. Such is life.
Julie’s daughter said to me, “I think it’s really brave how you were there for my Mom.”
“Oh it’s nothing,” I said. “I did what anyone would have done.”
“I’m just glad you were there,” she said.
Then she placed her hand on my quadricep, lightly. She squeezed.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said.
Oh God. Not now. Of all times.
“I have feelings for you, Jeremy. Strong feelings. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”
As if she was any good at hiding it. Jesus.
“Would you maybe want to, go to homecoming with me?”
Then she just looked at me like that. Unblinking, expressionless, blank.
It was right then the fever of the day broke. I was a man pushed to the brink.
“Listen,” I said to Julie’s daughter. “I really think it’s better if we stay friends. You know, with us being neighbors and all. And plus, I’m really focused on that science project I told you about earlier. Your Dad’s helping me with it.”
Mr. Mallard coughed or tried to cough. He was in the room with us. Standing by the window. He tried to look even harder out the window, if such a thing was possible. Julie’s daughter sat there with her mouth in an open grimace so unambiguous it made my stomach churn.
“Do you not like me?” she said.
Mr. Mallard sneezed or tried to sneeze. Then he turned to leave the room.
“I’m gonna grab a pretzel bag from the vending machine,” he said. “Does anyone want anything?” The door closed behind him the very next second.
“You can tell me the truth,” Julie’s daughter said.
So I told her the truth. No sense in hiding it anymore.
“I have feelings for someone else,” I said. “Strong feelings. And I intend to pursue those strong feelings with every ounce of my being. Her name is —”
Julie’s daughter held up her half-gloved hand to stop me.
“It’s OK,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I get it.”
And then she too stormed from the room.
It was right then that Julie’s eyes fluttered. She let out a murmur from the inclined bed. There was a series of beeps from the machine she was connected to.
“Julie?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
I sprang to my feet and stood above her. Her eyes opened halfway. She squinted in the overhead fluorescent light, blinked, saw me. Her pupils had returned to their default radius. The color of her face was normal, maybe a little pale.
There was something new in her face though.
Only the slightest thing. Something different.
“Jeremy?” she said. “Is that you?”
“It’s me,” I said. “Are you alright?”
“I think so,” she said. She stretched her arms up, rubbed her eyes.
“What happened to me?”
I told her what she needed to hear.
“You fainted. On the lawn this afternoon. Do you remember anything?”
“I just remember laughing,” she said. “Something so funny, I couldn’t handle it. I can’t recall what it was. You were there though, weren’t you?”
Julie squinted. She studied my face, my jaw.
“Must have been something I said,” I said.
I concentrated hard and tried to assemble my face into a boyish smirk.
“I remember your cologne.”
“My cologne?”
“What was it you were wearing? It made me…”
“Yes? Made you what?”
Julie’s eyes bounced left and right about the ceiling above her. Then they landed on me again. “I’m not sure I have the words for it,” she said. “Where’s my husband?”
“He’s not here right now,” I said. “But don’t worry. I’m here Julie. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
We stayed quiet for a long time. I had my fingers crossed on both hands hoping neither Mr. Mallard nor Julie’s daughter would walk into the room. I had a strong suspicion this would be the critical moment. My blood vessels performed exactly as designed. I had never been more vascularly present in my life.
Finally Julie spoke again.
“Do you think you could wear it again? The cologne. The next time you come to cut the grass.”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s real expensive stuff.”
I uncrossed my fingers and let them graze Julie’s left hand, dangling over the bed. This was the critical moment. That moment where all of time and fate compresses into a narrow sequence of tiny actions with the potential to change everything, forever.
The clock on the wall ticked.
Every half inch of my physical body surged with blood.
There were beeps from the machine Julie was connected to.
The crow’s feet around her eyes were more pronounced than they were before. But they were perfect. She was perfect. I could pass from this earth right then and there and die a happy man.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Julie said. “I’ll give you what you want.”
The fingers of her dangling hand clasped down on my own and stayed there as the door opened once again behind us.
“Don’t worry Julie,” I said. “There’s so much more where that came from.”