LOSS AND FOUND

Short fiction

Back in 1993, I wrote a short poem about a man going to bed alone on Christmas Eve. He climbs the old stairs and gets ready for bed. He brushes his teeth and looks at himself in the mirror. The dull bathroom light. He sees his first spot of kaposi’s sarcoma. The poem was titled A Lesion for Christmas. 

I wrote a few more poems about this man and he eventually became known as Roy Horwich. Then the poems evolved into a story. Soon I had a manuscript about Roy meeting Bruce. Then the story took a different turn and it was no longer about Roy and his illness. It was about Bruce and his desperate need for redemption.

Fast forward 20 something years. I'm returning to these men. Much has happened to me since then. I've grown, survived and experienced a lot over the years. I have abandoned many beliefs and embraced a tremendous amount of change. And Roy and Bruce have always been in the back of my mind. So I dusted them off and decided to focus on just one long weekend down on the cape. In the dunes and on the long empty beaches late in the season. When they go to do some house repairs. That manuscript is called The Distance. 

These shorter stories and sketches on this website are ideas and tangents. Experiments in writing about emotions, loss and lust. Writing for a real audience has made a tremendous difference.

For me, writing is the combination of inspiration and discipline. The ideas come and it takes effort to craft them into understandable strings of words. Sentences that convey emotions and reactions and the past and present. 

These stories are not always happy. Both men are grieving and experiencing suffocating loneliness. But united together, one man extends the hand of redemption to another. Panic attacks give way to hope. Scars become invisible.

A Lesion for Christmas

So after the Christmas Mass you climb the creaking stairs to find John sound asleep and you tip toe into the tiny bathroom

You brush your teeth and undress in the thin light, the bare bulb burning out. And running your fingers across your face, down your hairy chest, thinking about the warm bed, about waking him, when something in the mirror, on your arm, catches your eye

Your stomach pitches. Your eyesight flinches

You grab cold porcelain. Can't breathe. Cold sweat beads. Frozen minutes standing still staring at the dim reflection 

You crawl into bed. Full of fear. Silent night 

ROBERT CRAIG

I'm the quiet one in the room. The melancholy scrappy guy listening and paying attention, but not saying much. I need loud, boisterous extroverts to pull me out of myself. 

I am awful at public speaking because I say things are that are genuine and true, but come out muddled from over thinking. Spontaneity at its worse. I require time to think, process and polish. 

I am a writer and photographer with a background in working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Helping people overcome the trauma in their lives and the horrific effects it has on us. Helping people make better choices to cope with reality. From all these years talking to thousands and thousands of survivors, one thing I have learned: we are all normal. We are not broken. We are just normal. 

I live with my partner and a lot of plants. I collect Star Wars figures. Build Lego. I write stories about stuff to share with others to help them understand their own individual beauty. 

I'm normal. You're normal. And in the distance is who we want to be. The hope between here and there is real. One step at a time. Forward with me.



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