A Year Goes By Fast

Without even knowing it, it's been a year since I posted on this blog. Shame on me, right? I said I'd start a video blog, but that fell through. Honestly, who the hell wants to see me just talk anyway? I think I was just excited about my new iPhone. It's still here, minus a piece or plastic or two missing from the back. And the home button sucks.

I've still been writing. My first thought is to say not as much as I want to, but that's not completely true. Not as focused as I want to is more accurate. I've written a number of short stories (10+) since last year, and have started a new novel. Not to mention I went through the hell of trying to get a book published last year. I got a few agents to request more pages, and one (or two) agents even requested to read the whole thing. At the time I was excited, but now I figure they must have been half-crazy. Still, it's a stepping stone. I might be back at square one, but it's like getting halfway through a video game and having someone hit the reset button. You have to go through all that shit again, but you know how to get to where you left off faster.

There are a number of changes in my life worth noting:

1) I'm engaged. I popped the question in June and I'm getting married in December (yes, this December...there's a very logical explanation on why it's so close, I promise!). I couldn't be happier....well, if weddings were about $15k cheaper I could be a tad happier.

2) I'm taking classes to apply to medical school. I'm actually writing this post from a Starbucks in Sacramento. I'm doing a Pre-Medical Surgical Internship at UC Davis Medical School. In about 90 minutes I'm going in for a 7-12 hour shift to shadow trauma doctors and surgeons. Cool, huh?

3) I'm writing children stories for this new company. I can't say much about it (hell, because I hardly know that much), but I'm getting paid $100 a story and they should launch later this year. I'll definitely be promoting my work on it when it's made public. All I know is that the stories I'm writing will be illustrated. How cool is that?

4) I'm working on a new novel. I wrote 80 pages long-hand, decided it sucked, and started over at the beginning. Now I'm actually planning out the novel and the characters. I'm excited about it, and I'm even more excited about the idea I have for the one after this.

With those changes, I think that this blog might transform into a chronicling of both my writing journey and my medical journey. I don't want to think of them as separate, necessarily, because they both blend to define the most important journey: my journey. My experiences in the medical field will no doubt influence my writing, and my creativity and the way I view the world will no doubt influence my impact on the world.

So here....we...GO!

New Video Blog, to be posted here

What's up world. I haven't been doing my blog justice, and it's for a good reason. I've been writing pretty diligently, so sometimes it is hard to sit down and write some more. Hopefully this new feature/aspect will add some vivacity to this blog so that it doesn't die.

Let me know what you think about the video...it's my first, so be easy.

The Teacher

“Get the fuck out the car.”

I cursed. It wasn’t at the cold of the handgun pressed against my temple—that could turn sizzling hot at any second, and then who would I be to complain? It was damn near four in the morning and I had been just about ready to call it a night. Had my hand on the key and the key in the ignition. Now it seemed like I’d be up to see the sunset afterall.

Then again, I might not.

“I said get the fuck out the car!”

I looked up at the tense hand hovering just outside my window. He was black, like me. His finger was wrapped around the trigger, tight and ready. That could mean that either he was more than willing to turn my thinking station into a bowl of torn flesh if I didn’t comply, or that this whole experience was just as scary for him as it was for me.

I put up my hands, slowly. Quick movements get you shot.

“Look, buddy. Whatever you want.” But I didn’t move. I looked past the gun and to the man behind it. His face was paranoid, but angry. This was taking too long, already.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. His voice was firm enough, but I could detect some doubt there. It was the voice of someone who meant business but might not actually know what business meant.

But instead of turning away, I looked past him. My eyes grew wide. In a moment that could have very possibly startled a bullet into my head, I leaned forward and yelled, “Help! Police! Over here!”

“Shit!” The gunslinger whirled his torso but kept the gun surprisingly steady. Before he could realize his mistake, I reached between the car seat and the door, where I kept Susan. I had practiced the movement dozens of times, but never with my heart pushing to overdrive. It felt like forever to me. If the gunslinger had been watching, to him it would have been over faster than a bullet from a chamber.

Ah, the relativity of time.

A few days ago I’d researched what happens to human muscles when damaged—more specifically, when a bullet rips through at the speed of ‘you’re fucked.’ Research may be the wrong word, as my process consisted of a string of Google queries. The only answers I found in my short romp were from a plethora of Internet experts, in other words, pubescent teenage boys who read Wikipedia all day long in between looking at porn. Half the experts said that a bullet through the wrist of a gun-wielding hand would fire for sure and half said that there was only a 50% chance that the muscles would constrict and a 50% chance that everything would go stiff.

I thought they were good odds.

The blast of the gun left a ringing in my ears for days, but then I swear I hardly heard it. It was immediately followed by cursing. I didn’t waste time: I pushed out of the car, the door hitting the wounded predator turned pray on the hip and knocking him over with such ease it could have been comical. But I was in no mood to laugh. In those seconds between staring down the barrel of a gun and standing over this wounded predator with his weapon pointed at his head, a fire had blazed in my chest and my brain had frozen over. It all came together to a hard lump in my throat and with every throb of that lump, my anger grew and grew and my sanity melted.

I waited for the man to stop screaming and cursing. He was rocking on the ground like a ladybug turned on to its back. He was clutching a bloody hand, which now only had three fingers, possibly one and a half. I couldn’t tell if the middle finger was just capped with blood or capped with nothing. His gun had dropped into my car—I’d heard it. I made a mental note to share my real-life experience with the internet professors.

The initial shock was passing—or, at least, flowing out with the tide—and the man began to squirm away.

“You try to rob me?” I said. “You stick a gun in my face and try to rob me?” The man turned and began to awkwardly crawl on his knees while trying to cradle one hand. He looked like a wounded animal, which is pretty much what he was. It was although he had forgotten I was there and there was in the world was the pavement, the night, and the scream in his hand. That just angered me more.

I kicked him hard in the ribs. He cursed and fell over like an upturned beetle.

“I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.” The intent was all there and more, but he believed the validity of his words just as much as I did. I was the one with the gun and I’d already proven I had what it takes to use it. He hadn’t. Maybe in some other time and place he had passed initiation, but in my world he was still a juvenile.

“Get in the car,” I said.  The man just looked at me. His hand was gushing more blood than I’d ever seen outside of television and movies.

There was a second when everything hanged in the balance. The only movement was the puddle of blood expanding from where his chest met the concrete. I don’t even think either one of us breathed. (also his eyes moved). He debated behind those eyes, went through more than a dozen possibilities, but all of them came back to the same optionless moment. And we switched places. I was on the ground, gushing blood, only instead of standing with the gun cocked, the man with the gun was perusing the pockets of my coat, my pants, my life, not caring that I was bleeding to death. And instead of telling me to get in to the car, in my fading universe I could hear the rumble of the engine I’d been hearing every morning for seven years.

Then the moment passed.

I lowered the gun, sighed, and weakly gestured toward the car. “Get in.”

The man obeyed.

Dear Mother

(Note: No, I do not need to get on anti-depressants. This is actually the start of an idea for a novel)


You did nothing wrong. I've carried around this piece of paper for days wondering how to start it. This is the only way that feels right. You raised me, invested your time in to me, and to see 20 years of your life's work fail must do nothing but leave that deadly question: what did I do wrong?

Nothing.

This was inevitable. I know it has never felt that way. I went to a good school, got a good job, and just got married! You and aunt Terry alwyas talk about how I bright my outlook on life is. I've hid my emotions well. Part of it has been because I love you all and I know my pain wouldn't just be my pain. Most of it is becuae I just wouldn't be able to explain why. Do you understand? My whole existence is a marathon on an internal hell I can't seem to climb out of and for he longest time I had no clue why.

Now I do.

Attached to this letter is Dr. Milligan's diagnosis. There is an imbalance in my brain that makes it hard for me to feel joy and easy for the other way around. This is not becuase of drugs or upbringing, just a random disorder that clicked in to my world sometime around sophormore year. Nothing helps. Believe me, I've tried. Milliford doesn't agree with my way of solving it, but he admits there's nothing else I can do.

This is selfish of me, I know. I've thought about that, too, and so I've made arrangements. You had me young and lord knows you sacrificed everything for me, so I want you to have the chance to see your only son become a man, have a family of his own, be happy.

I found someone who's willing to help. Her name is katrice, and she's extraordinarily become an integral part of my life throuh this process. She's attended my sessions, and i've lead her to believe I will be okay. But the arrangements have been made. She's pregnant with my child and when he's born, he'll be yours. His name is Michael. My condition is not genetic, but rather an anamoly, and katrice's family's medical history is spotless. You're still young and I hope you can come to think of him as your own. Come to think of him as me. I already do. My second chance.

I don't think even I can imagine the pain this is causing you. But I've done everything to make sure you will feel happiness again one day, something I just cannot do. Please take my gift and know that, if anything, I am finally happy.

To second chances,
-Michael

Daniel (Draft)

Earth Angel, Earth Angel, will you be mine?

I love this song. I first heard it at my high school dance, where I had my first kiss and the rest of my life became set. Do you remember that moment for you? When you knew the rest of your life was determined--not exactly that you knew what that life would be, just that the path was set and you're ticket was booked for the ride. That's how I felt that night. The beat of the music, his gentle and cutely awkward sway, the soft touch of lips...it was magical.

I wish Daniel could know how grateful I am for that moment. I wish he could know that he was my first, no, not in the way that most people past a certain age talk about their first, but in the way that your heart always remembers. I never had the chance to tell him how glad I was he decided to save the last dance for himself out of respect for me, and how it made me shine inside even the more to be able to fill that void when I decided to show. I never had the chance to tell him how special he made me feel. I never got the chance to tell him that his singing of the words--

(Earth Angel, Earth Angel, the one I adore)

--while looking into my eyes defined my existence. I never got the chance to tell him I loved him.

And I never will.

I sometimes stare up at the stars and wish the dead and the living could talk. The embroidery of light in the black sky knows my frustrating--billions of stars visible in the same span of two eyes (one when I decide to close one and not the other, which I do often when looking at stars) yet they are cut off from each other by a barrier which I can see, but they cannot. The space between them so small I can put my finger over it, yet so inscrutably intraversable.

This is how I feel. That something so simple as the shutting down of the machine that is the body, as easily done as taking the engine out of car, could cease the development of two lovers. Yes, I loved him before I had the chance to love, beyond the point where he could even be loved.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I miss Daniel. And I always will.

But--

Earth Angel

I smile and look upon the stars again. I close my eyes and put myself back on that dance floor, the perfect moment. I am there again, knowing my haphazardous life has finally clicked into place on a puzzle I can't wait to finish. Knowing the kiss will come, loving when it does. Knowing that he wants to touch me, pull me closer, but he doesn't because he's a gentleman, even when we kiss, he's a gentleman.

I don't think about the end of the song. The end of ends, a thing inevitable for all. I don't think about how when it is over I will have to leave and Daniel will still be there. I don't think about the moment would have defined my life, and how impossible it was for it to then. I don't think about that he can't feel me, or I can't feel him, or that he can't see me. I tell myself he knows I am here. I don't think about how I will have to pass over after the dance, how this will be my last moment. I don't think about the car slamming into my body the day before. These things are out of my mind, because that's what happens when you define your life, even if that life is too late.

All I focus on is Earth Angel, and how that is me.

A story a day will keep the (brain) doctors at bay.

SO, I haven't NOT been writing. I've actually been writing a good deal. I'm typing up my long-ass manuscript that still has no name (Afraid of the Dark = pending, but that's kind of cliche). I hope to finish it this week so I can read right through it this weekend and start on that second draft.




Reading, too. I finished Ghost Story by Peter Straub, almost done with Dark Tower II by Stephen King, and have listened to Mossflower by Brian Jacques, Duma Key by Stephen King (bomb) and am currently listening to Hell House by Richard Matheson (also bomb).



But enough about the past. To quote Jay-Z (another writer, he just doesn't use a pen), loiterers should be arrested. So on to the next one....



And the next one for me is that I have to stay fresh. I need to write everyday and even though I am doing that with typing up my story, I think I also need to write something NEW everyday. So, I have committed to writing a short story everyday. I've already started with today's six-sentence long contribution: Michael. As you can guess, length will vary. Also, I might do it so that a story goes on over multiple days, but I'm at least shooting for a different one every week.



So, dear reader, stay tuned.

Michael

by. Justin C. Key

A brown shoe in the middle of the road. Behind, the sirens whirr, the crowd is confused, and the hysterics of the loved will echo long after the day is done. With its toddler Nike sign and glow in the dark strings, the forgotten shoe is the antithesis of joy, yet it holds the happiest memories. The car's dank oil travels the tar and circles around the sole, but never touches. Night will fall before a suit takes it away. Goosing his skin, behind him sad wind whispers through insightful trees: Michael.