Growing Up Miles, Part 3a: The Espionage Days

In fifth grade I wanted to be the Miles version of Harriet the Spy. (If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it.) Despite my nearly boundless imagination, I almost slavishly tried to copy Harriet. This led to difficulties.

For reasons I can't recall, I wanted a spy outfit identical to Harriet's. This would have required:

• a flashlight I could hook onto a belt,
• wearing a sweatshirt year round in El Paso, Texas,
• convincing my mom to never wash a certain pair of jeans,
• using my allowance for notebooks instead of comics, and
• trying to sneak around a completely flat neighborhood consisting of wide open front yards and completely fenced in back yards, with no other cover at all.

I solved the flashlight problem by making a hook from a piece of wire. Of course, I then had the problem of sneaking my Dad's flashlight out and looking like a goofus because I pretty much couldn't' go anywhere at night. A flashlight is somewhat conspicuous at 4 in the afternoon in broad daylight. Even if I could have snuck around at night with a flashlight this was extremely west Texas in the 60s. I'd probably have been shot or eaten by dogs.

I also gave up on the sweatshirt, deciding that tee shirts were anonymous enough and would attract less attention than passing out from heat stroke. (West Texas, remember?)

I also decided that dirty, smelly jeans might not be required spy gear. Spies in the movies seldom wore dirty jeans in the suburbs, so I might just get away with it.

We had no alleyways to skulk through. Peeking in windows or going over walls in plain view of an entire neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else seemed like a good way to get my backside tanned. Once per neighbor who caught me and a second time at home when they called my folks.

This left only the problem of... The Notebook. If you have read the story, you know that notebooks are the heart and soul of a spy's life. Poking around the house I realized that while we didn't have a surfeit of notebooks (I wasn't willing to touch my comic book money) we did have lots of 3x5 index cards. I found some wax paper envelopes just the right size to hold several 3x5 cards, which would make organization easy-- at least until I had a lot of notes on a subject. This was probably when I started writing in very small letters.

Every spy has to start somewhere. I started by taking notes on my family, neighbors, school mates, and teachers-- just like Harriet did. Faithfully following my hero's example, my notes were generally derogatory. I might, for example, have written that "Fred Mickle is mean and ugly. If I were that mean and ugly I'd have myself hung as a horse thief." (That name is completely fictitious.) I'd like to hope that I hadn't yet finished the book and seen where this would get Harriet, but I probably just thought I was safe since I could put my cards in my pocket.

I'd been a spy for a couple of weeks when Mom ran across my notes while I was out playing. After I explained what they were she read some of them out loud.

"How would these make you feel if your family and friends had writing these about you?", she asked.

"But Mom, they aren't about me!"

Eventually I got her point, and it all hit home.

This left me out of a job. I had no idea what else a spy might write about other than communists (this was, after all, 1965 or 1966). I was pretty sure I didn't know any commies because they all looked evil and foreign in the comic books. I didn't know anybody like that. I destroyed the cards and hung up my spy gear, a has been at 10 or 11, a forlorn, minuscule footnote in the annals of spydom. I hoped I'd never meet Harriet, or that if I did my failed career wouldn't come up. Thankfully, we never met outside her book.

I still reread her book about once a year.

Tesseract Me, Baby

If you look really closely at the end of the movie you'll realize that Asgard entrusted the tesseract to me.

Essentially infinite energy!

I could drop a whole herd of pregnant elephants on your house quicker than your Mini Cooper gets away from a stop light, and it wouldn't cost me a plastic penny.

It does attract the odd alien invasion but that's what the Avengers are for.

Grown Up Miles- Adventures in Musicland, Part I

After years of not playing guitar much I got serious about playing again in 2009. This was prompted by a need for live music at church (singing along with CDs can only take you so far). I realized that the prospect of playing in front of the congregation didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. That was a fairly big (if happy) shock. To find out why, let's hop into our 1967 Shelby Time Machine (the muscle car years were also the glory years for time machines, despite Doc Brown's later work with Deloreans).

---

The first time I can recall playing guitar and singing in front of more than two people was at the Midtown Mission in Atlanta. I'd practiced one of my songs on my electric, but at the last minute chickened out of playing an electric in front of this particular group of people (who would have undoubtedly been fine with it, but I apparently needed things to be nervous about). So I borrowed Will Bozeman's brand new acoustic. As I walked up to the music stand (too nervous to trust my memory for the lyrics) I whacked the guitar really hard against the massive, steel, music stand. I tried not to think about what Will was going to say about the dent in his new guitar.

When I started to sing the music stand collapsed on itself. I nervously mumbled the first thing that came to mind, something about the magic stand I brought as a joke. I somehow made it through the song despite wondering how I could afford to replace this lovely guitar. My knees were knocking, my voice developed a tremolo, and I was sweating so much I figured the people on the front row were ready to build an ark. Everyone was shocked later when I told them how nervous I had been. ("You seemed so relaxed, making jokes and stuff!") And the guitar was intact. It was a couple of years before I played outside my living room again...

---

I met a guy named Alan who wanted to start a band. We jammed a little and decided to practice some songs together (I had a couple and he had a couple of dozen). After two or three months, when I was just beginning to think that some day I might be good enough to play in public, Alan says, "I got us a gig next week." The phrase "panic attack" hadn't been invented yet, but I had one, anyway. "Oh, don't worry, it's just a small party at a friend's house. They'll have food, and we'll just play 20 or 30 minutes while people hang out. No big deal."

I practiced like a driven man the next few days. By the day of the party I was confident I could play a set for 15 or 20 random strangers who were all concentrating on their food and talking to each other. Background music, no big deal. We arrive at a pretty big house... and there are 20 to 30 cars.

"What's all this?" I asked

"Don't worry, maybe it's a little bigger party than we thought."

We carry the first load of gear in (two amps, a small PA, a few guitars). There's a stage set up with drums, keys, a half dozen amps and stacks of guitar cases nearby! There are 40 to 50 chairs set up in front of the stage.

"Alan???"

"Um, well, I didn't want you to be nervous, so I never got around to mentioning that everyone here is a musician, and they'll all be playing tonight." Further questioning revealed that the other bands had all been playing together for years.

Years.

We were on first. Of course.

Alan and I had worked out an introduction with a little stage patter. I have a vague recollection of forgetting everything and ad libbing something as Alan stuck to his lines. (I had the script on my music stand, but momentarily forgot how to read.) I fumbled the intro to the first song (Alan's song, my lead part). The next song was one of mine, and just as I started to sing, the mic cut out. Vague jokes, panic, somehow we got things working again. Maybe someone swapped mics; it's all a hellish, vague memory. As we started again, a string broke. Swap guitars, start AGAIN. I don't really remember the rest of the set except that the room was very attentive, much too attentive, rare specimen under glass attentive. My vocal tremolo returned. I don't recall ever flubbing anything so horribly in public. I was sure the applause after the set was either for Alan or sheer relief it was over. As we started to remove our amps and guitars for the next act to go on, I excused myself to go put some of the gear in the van. I stowed the gear, then stowed myself on the van floor where I sat in misery for a few hours.

Alan finally brought the rest of our gear out. "Where have you been? Everyone wanted to meet you and tell you what a great job you did!" We hardly talked on the way home. Eventually he convinced me that I did fine, that everyone felt that way some days ("though not to the extent of hiding and snubbing the hosts and guests"), and that if I ever did that again he would feed me my guitar and maybe my amp.

We had some crazy gigs after that (and I had plenty more running sound for a couple of bands), but no matter how weird things got, after these first two times playing in public, the others were all much, much easier.

---

If there are lessons to be learned here, I guess they are:

1. It's not nearly as bad as you thought it was. It might even have been good.
2. Get over yourself.
3. Don't embarrass Alan unless you are prepared to eat a guitar and maybe an amp.

For the record, I never had to eat my guitar or amp.

Kissing The Twins

One afternoon shortly after Sharon and I were formally engaged, I'd gone to her dorm to pick her up. Guys were not allowed upstairs so after calling to let her know I had arrived, I waited downstairs at the pool table. I was playing eight ball, solo. I forget whether I was winning.

After a few minutes Karen (Sharon's identical twin) came up behind me and said, "Hey, honey." This was not unusual; we were in the deep south and everyone talked like this. Additionally, Karen often called me this as a joke. I had never had any problem telling them apart, but she sometimes pretended we were together, just to mess with people.

Concentrating on a tricky bank shot, I said, "Hey, Karen". I took the shot, sunk the last solid, and smiled over my shoulder at her. But she was disappearing back around the corner. A couple of seconds later I heard giggling. I knew instantly.

They had plotted together to fool me. "This!", I thought in a Daffy Duck voice, "This! Means! WARRR!"

I called the eight ball in the side pocket and sunk it, mostly on luck. (I still don't recall if I won, or the other me won.) I laid the cue on the table (there was no rack) and headed around the same corner Karen where Karen had disappeared. The twins stood side by side, grinning. I gave them my biggest smile and looked at Sharon.

"Nice try! If you ever do that again, I will act like you fooled me and give her," (here I nodded toward Karen), "a bigger kiss than I have ever given you... Are we ready to go?"

They never tried it again. Sharon swears to this day it was just because there was no point (I had never had any trouble telling them apart). And that may be the truth, or most of it. But I know they both looked a bit nervous at the time!

Would I have done it? I can't honestly say whether at the time I would have tried to give Karen that kiss or not. I can say Sharon would have gotten an even bigger one. But it was a moot point. They've never tried to fool me again. At least in person. On the phone they sound very alike, so I'm never sure whether it's intentional or not.

Bu that's OK. I'd rather wage love than war, so I let it slide. Plus, I'm totally content with Sharon's kisses. Never look a gifted kisser in the mouth; just hold on and kiss back.

Dental company excepted.

Treasonous Leaks

The light came on without warning.

As usual.

It blinded Eric.

As usual.

Mike picked him up but paused almost immediately.

"Uh oh. Looks like you peed all over the place."

"I don't pee. I leak!"

"Whatever. Let me get you a diaper and clean this up."

"What? I don't need a diaper!"

Mike ignored the protests. Not finding what he wanted, he wrapped Eric's nether regions in plastic wrap, held on loosely with a large rubber band.

Settling Eric on the counter a moment,. Mike wet a dish cloth and cleaned the shelf. Picking Eric up, he poured some milk into his coffee, then returned Eric to the fridge. "Well, Mr. Mooden, I hope you weren't abused too badly in your past. I assume that's why you lost control. I'm so sorry."

Eric seethed. "I was not abused! I choose to leak these things, you pompous..."

But the door had closed, the dark returned. He was alone again.

Naturally.

He went back to sleep, disgruntled. Leaking into a "diaper" was pointless. And Mike had wasted his recent leak-- a day's work down the drain with a rinsed dish cloth. A single tear, which Mike would have thought mere condensation, slid slowly down Eric's face.

Mike tasted his coffee and sighed happily, then turned back to the sink. Dirty dishes called.

But something caught his eye, motion on the periphery of his vision. Something dark out the window. On the back porch, much too big to be Gizmo, the neighborhood cat. Much too dark to be one of the deer that occasionally came up on the porch to nibble the plants.

Drying his hands he stepped outside to investigate. He kept one hand on his Glock, snug in its concealed holster. he could find nothing amiss.

Again something tugged at his peripheral vision, this time from inside the house. A light went out, a light that should not have been on. A light from the fridge. A hint-- just a hint-- of darkness fled the kitchen.

Glock in hand, Mike moved quietly back inside. As he reached the back of the house, he heard a familiar voice. Eric Mooden sreamed. "Nooo! I..." It faded quickly, eerily, as if Eric had fallen asleep mid-scream.

The front door shut.

Mike darted to the front window and eased the blinds aside a smidgen with the Glock. Two men in black, one holding a black bag, both holding black guns, each wrapped a black rope around an arm and a leg. Before he could react, they darted skyward.

Rushing outside Mike caught sight of feet disappearing over his house. A muffled sound like a large fan nagged at his hearing. He darted into the yard, dropped and rolled, ending on his knees, pistol aimed high, turning to look over his roof...

A black helicopter-- one of the blackest things he had ever seen-- was disappearing quickly beyond the tree line. Two men disappeared into a nondescript blackness in its side.

It was gone, nothing but the scent of jet exhaust marking its passing.

Taking no chances Mike methodically searched the house, ready to shoot anything black, anything that moved. But there was no one there, no trace anyone had been there.

Deep in thought, he wandered back to the kitchen. He eased the refrigerator door open, Glock ready. He laughed. Was he expecting a spook inside? Nevertheless he kept the pistol in hand, finger near the trigger.

There was no milk. Carton, diaper, and all, Eric Mooden and all his terrible secrets were gone.

It was a relief, really. Eric (and the secrets) were no longer his responsibility. He hadn't examined the leaks closely, having neither a security clearance nor the desire to know. "What you don't know can't be subpoenaed," he had reminded himself only moments ago.

He holstered the Glock.

For a moment Mike felt guilty. After all, the milk carton, a guest in his home, was now in federal custody. And not just any federal custody, but Eric was in the hands of a black ops team.

His knees nearly buckled. His heart, which had finally slowed to normal speed, returned to Formula One mode. A black ops team! In his house! In his kitchen! In his fridge! And they had Mooden and his milk!

And Mike had pulled a gun on them.

He needed to sit down.

The sink. He stared at it. "What's wrong? Something's wrong. What are you trying to tell me?"

Oh. The dish cloth was gone, too. They had the dish cloth he had used to clean up the leaks. His head pounded in time to his heart.

Mike called in sick, staggered to his room, and fell into his waterbed's warm embrace. Despite the coffee, sleep came quickly.

In his dreams, Mooden appeared alternately as Neo and Kevin Anderson, sometimes watching suspicious messages on an ancient computer terminal, sometimes futilely attempting to flee men in black.

Nobody showed up to save him.

Sunlight registered somewhere in Mike's brain. After blinking for a few minutes he got up. The guilt was gone; Mooden should have told him exactly what was going on. Mike knew Eric had secrets but had no idea of their magnitude. Mooden had brought this on himself.

But still... Black helicopters. Spooks. His milk and dish cloth whisked off to some federal facility that might as well not exist. He walked into the bathroom and stared in the mirror."Well, what do I do now? Go on as if nothing happened? Run?" Seeing his expression, he finally laughed.

"You watch too many movies. This isn't the Matrix or Jason Bourne's world. Chill out."

Smiling for the first time since finding Mooden's leak, he sat at his computer and typed his password. His desktop appeared, then disappeared. "Great. Now my computer is crashing." He waited for a restart message.

Instead, green letters began to appear on the black background, noisily as if he were typing on an old school terminal. They appeared a few at a time. He froze, unable to breathe.

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE.

He heard a noise, a distant, muffled fan, at the threshold of hearing. The roof creaked. He refused to look at the windows or the bedroom doorway. He most definitely didn't reach for the Glock. A suggestion of a breeze wafted past. Something like a mosquito bit his neck. Everything faded.

 

The light came on without warning.

As usual.

It blinded Mike.

As usual.

Someone started to lift his head but paused almost immediately.

"Uh oh. Looks like you peed all over the place."

"I don't pee. I leak!" He didn't say it, but the thought bounced around in his mind until slipping into darkness.

He waited for the diaper and the inevitable abuse as they demanded to know what Mooden had told him. He understood now what the fuss over waterboarding was about,

Mike had one last, sane thought. "What you don't know can't be subpoenaed, but it can get you disappeared."

Madness beckoned; for the first time in his life, he found her beautiful. He weighed the alternatives, grinned, hugged her tightly and kissed her full on the lips.

When they came up for air, Madness giggled. "I can't wait to see what they make of this!"

Hand in hand, they wandered off into the vibrant chaos.

Room Without a View

(Originally: Zik and the Salad Lesbians Rent a House)

In case you don't know, there is a weird city called Stin.

Stin is proud to be weird.

There are not too many rules in Stin, but one rule is that names have to be monosyllabic. (The irony is not lost on anyone.)

One day in Stin three Mexster friends decided to set up housekeeping.

Ha ha ha! Stin is in Texas, not Merrie Oulde England. People in Texas do not set up housekeeping. They just find a house and move in.

Dee was a barista and had been away from home the longest. She had a small dog. She also had a roommate with a dog bigger than Dee's car. This dog might as well have been a factory. All day long it manufactured hair, which it faithfully delivered onto every surface of the apartment, including Dee's coffee cups. Even the full ones. Oddly enough, Dee wanted a change.

Lo, the youngest, had only been on her own a short time. She taught dance. She loved to dance. She even danced while she vacuumed. Often nude. Lo liked the music really loud while she did this. Her favorite time for vacuum dancing was in the middle of the day.

Zik was the oldest but had never lived on his own. He threw boxes around for a living. No one knows why but this pays pretty well. Zik felt if he was old enough to get paid to throw boxes and to buy a Harley he was old enough to move out. Zik worked at night and slept during the day. He suggested Lo invest in a pair of ear buds, and wear clothes while dance vacuuming.

 

Lo found the perfect house. Apparently she was a good salesperson because she convinced Dee and Zik to sign the contract before seeing the house.

Lo explained the house to her friends. "It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It has a back yard. It has room for dogs... and a garden... and cars and a motorcycle. It's perfect!"

"How big are the bedrooms?" Dee asked.

"Huge!" said Lo. "Well, one is a wee bit smaller. I think Zik should take that because he doesn't have as many clothes."

"How much smaller?" Zik wondered.

Lo laughed. "Only a smidgen. You'll hardly notice."

The big day came, and they met at their new home. Lo showed Dee and Zik the house, and where she would dance and vacuum ("with ear buds," she laughed) and where they would park, and the yard, and where they would have a garden, and where Dee's dog could chase birds and squirrels.

"Ear buds good," Zik smiled. "Clothes good, too."

"Clothes good, too!" Lo laughed back.

Zik stopped abruptly in the middle of where the dog would chase things, wearing a confused expression.

"Wait. I only saw two bedrooms. One was yours and one was yours. Where is mine?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Lo took his hand and pulled him toward the house.

"It's not a closet under the stairs like Harry Potter's? With spiders?"

"Of course not, silly. We don't have stairs."

"What about spiders?"

"No spiders."

"Oh. OK."

They stopped in the kitchen. Lo pointed. "It's in there."

"Where? Under the sink?" Zik laughed.

Lo opened a cabinet door. "Exactly!"

"That's not a bedroom! It's a cabinet! Under a sink!"

"But I put a pillow and blanket in for you!"

Dee stooped and looked in. "It's a lot more room than Kreacher had."

Zik crossed his arms. "That's silly."

There was a brief scuffle. Doors slammed. Dee and Lo stood panting against the cabinets. A muffled cry came from the sink. "Let me out! Spiders!"

 

Eventually Zik got used to his new room.

But he always refused to pay more than 10% of the rent, and every morning he looked hopefully toward the mail slot. Sadly, not a single owl ever came through.

Months later, Zik moved back in with his parents. At least there he had half a linen closet. THE END

X

Author's forward: this was written when I first started getting really down and dirty with X. R2 was just out, there was very little documentation, I was working way too late...

Dedicated to Tyler Stevens (tyler@tigger.colorado.edu) who said, 'Actually, you are permitted to call X "poetry".'

(metzo forte. with feeling)

   You can call X "poetry".
   But I have seen the X held high
   and bright as a symbol of pride
   and arrogance.

   And you may call it "lines",
   for lines it is, twain lines,
   criss-crossing about their navels,
   a lewd romance.

   But I call X 11
   as does its creator, the vast
   and sprawling complex known as MIT,
   that makes the windows dance.

(metzo spaghetti. droning.)

   So oft have I watched your glowing
   (radioactive) cursors flowing,
   blowing, snowing
   across the grey'd out background of a thousand
   clients dead,
   or asleep, perchance, adreaming they are going,
   watching the mice crowing,
   slowing, throwing
   their electronic tails capriciously across my desk
   with dread.

(With apologies to Carl Sandburg, and the X Development folk.)

 

Copyright 1989, 2013 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.