I clearly remember him, and later her, looking at me and saying, “I just want to be normal.”
The sorry soul, wasted, sobs for sanity.
Traumatized longs to just get back to normal — that steamy, soapy tub we ache to soak our grubby souls in once again.
Rub-a-dub-dub-ten-kids-in-a-tub — so many choices, so much bad grub.
Sordid chemistry, heart-breaking abandonments, hidden betrayals, personal illegalities, corporate illicities, national infamies — getting back to safe, to that boring, flat-road scenery we love to drive home through is so, so, so fine!
A warm bed, no nightmares, no hangover, the same wife, no jail time, eight hours of sleep, a Chai tea latte, hot oatmeal, school lunches, the cat on the couch beside us as we watch TV, the morning news about another shooting in a mall or airport — normal is a speeding target swerving.
But that doesn’t make it of any less amazing.
Sane, sober and safe will always be the same kind of good. Gang-banging, bullying, doping, betraying, benumbing, or firing hot bullets into other people is not good or even remotely any kind of good-bad.
It’s good to get up everyday, go to work, come home to the same place at night, sleep with the same person, eat good food, not drink too much, to hope, choose, speed, swerve, and hang on to all the normal we can get — smashed down, shaken together and running out of our own taps.
Normal; it’s good.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 