1974


As another year came to its end and a new one began, I wondered how long we could keep pulling this off. God forbid one of the neighbors should see us together doing something inappropriate and decide to
tell my parents, I'm sure they would be out for blood. I guess if a child can somehow manage to hold down a relationship, then what is their problem?
If, however, either of them begin to hurt Harmony, I will have no other choice but to take my Mickey Mantle Louisville slugger and go to town on them, because at this point, it doesn't matter who. If they have to hurt someone, then I'll be there at the other end of the fist and broom spitting out blood. That I could forgive them for, but the penalty for hurting an angel is far more severe than I should attempt to bolster in mere words. If let's say for "whatever reason" my parents did somehow catch us in the middle of a passionate tryst, I am sure I could expect those beatings. I would then be forbidden to see the only person I ever truly loved, while they begin removing things from my room, I enjoy like my turntable, records, etc. Then finally, they would banish me to that room for months, probably without supper. During which time they would have the audacity to tell me that they are only doing this because they love me! People like that deserve to be put on fire!!! It is selfish and wrong! This life is not about you anymore, it's about us! Our happiness and well being! No one and I repeat, "No one" is going to bring that kind of pain into our lives. Not if
I can help it anyway! But the truth is they don't know, and they are good people. Just the same, they cannot be trusted until I come of age, and no matter how hard they try to gain my confidence, they ab-so-lute-ly can-not be told of this! No way!!! Not yet. That would be the only fatal flaw and believe me brother, it is not going to happen! There is an old saying that dates back to the time of Adam. You might even hear it said today.


"TRUST NO ONE"


As I sit shivering in a warm apartment, I can no longer control my emotions. It's my fault for resurrecting her, I should have known better. Everything I tried so dearly to keep buried has come back to haunt me, and I cannot get her image out of my mind. My chest feels like it is in a vice being slowly squeezed while my hands tremble so,
I can hardly type these words and this is torturing me to no end.

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Sometimes in the morning when I awaken, there is an interlude of silence and for that brief moment, I almost expect her to be lying near me. How something so wonderful and so perfect could ever come to this goes totally beyond the realm of any form of reason. Then, in that instant of a heartbeat I realize, someone is taking her place. During those seconds, it begins to dawn on me, she's just not the person I needed so much to be there.

*Then it gets bad*

You start to regress until you find that it's actually worse now,
than if there was nobody there at all. As you slowly fall victim to
the memories, you find yourself wading in a pool of tears, till you're nothing but a hand in an ocean going down. When I look at myself in the mirror, I do not see a person but rather a conscious entity standing inside a shell, trying to make sense of it all. I want to punch it, but it is not the mirror, I am angry with, it is time. Time has betrayed me in ways you could never understand. Like waiting for your wife at the airport and finding out that plane landed in 1974.

You missed her; you were sleeping.

Now, instead of reveling in each day like each day was a precious gift hand picked by God, you look forward to trying out a casket, while you sit in despair watching your skin turn into that of a rotting prune. I am not ashamed to admit I am frightened. In fact, I am terrified. Those wonderful memories have all become like a blade in a bone saw. Oh my love, how deep they wound. Yet, I would not cast out, even one moment we shared together. Harmony, if you're out there,
I can almost feel you by my side, guiding my hand in the writing of this book. Oh Harmony, I love you more than anyone, I always have. When it comes time to summon Dark Monday, I will be prepared, because summoning that nightmare again will be like reliving the worst possible day one can humanly imagine. Where every second apart from your sweet love, becomes a yearning that time cannot relate to. "But for you my darling, I will do this, one  last  time.

What I wouldn't do in this life, just to hold you in my arms once more. I would gladly burn this book if I knew it would bring you back, but what would burning the book do except have me lose you again, and that is something I am not strong enough to even think of."In truth, I just wanted to tell the world about Harmony and wrote a few extra pages. I got lost in a dream, and I never woke up. Who can say that each life is not its own separate universe? A place of purgatory for past sins. A world designed only for you that will die when you die, only to become a resurgent force all over again in a new body, with new pitfalls. Can you tell me otherwise? In the end, will anything really matter except the rejoining of her and I? I'm sorry baby, but I refuse to be put into the ground, knowing that you will be forgotten. I need the world to love you, as I have loved you.
To know you as I have known you. To remember you, the way I remember you, long after I have been discarded. Is that such a sin?

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For now it's Wednesday, July 17th, summertime. School is over until
the fall, but Harmony insists I brush up on my studies, and so I do. If I
have a problem, she is eager to help me with it. Overall she makes learning fun. Unlike my parents who both say "no one ever helped us with our homework" (((and))) "do it yourself or fail." Most of the time, I tried to forget about them and just live my life. I enveloped myself in Harmony, knowing she would always be there for me. Her door is always open, and I no longer have that terrible fear of her leaving me for someone else. I am more mature now. If I have a problem, I tell her about it, and she makes it go away. A woman more loving than Harmony would not be human and every day my love for her grows stronger. My grandparents on my mother's side, who lived down the beach on Boehm street, had begun
to wonder why I wasn't coming over to the pool anymore, and slowly, questions were being raised. Why just this morning, I heard my mother
on the dining room phone. "Oh mom, don't worry. He's all right and he's happier now than ever." Harmony's dwelling had become my haven, and we were doing everything together. Soon, we'll be able to flaunt our love
at will, for we will have won the game and how great that day is going to
be! I can almost taste it!!! Sweeter than anything known to man and
twice as gentle, this is my lover.

But the world was beginning to change in ways my tiny brain
would never be able to comprehend. . . Even after I went mad.

Soon it was Friday, October 25th. My parents were officially divorced, and I insisted on staying with Timmy, while my mother courted her new flame. In celebration of my 11th birthday today, Mother would allow me
to take off from school. Walking upstairs, I slammed the bathroom door, before dropping the thick plastic cup to the ceramic tiles, making it obvious I was in there. I then opened the door very quietly and crept into my parent's room where I dialed Harmony's number. I told her I was being forced into doing something I did not want to do and begged her fervently to come over and help me get out of it somehow. Because of the urgency in my voice, Harmony was outside ringing the doorbell almost faster
than I could get back into the bathroom again! As I came out,
I heard her downstairs crying and thought, oh my God, No!
What happened? As I came running down the stairs,
my mother told me I could stay. I was ecstatic!

Until my mother told me, what it was that Harmony said.

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"Charlie, I think you need to sit down." The sadness in my mother's voice made my stomach sick and my head dizzy. "I don't know how to say this to you honey, (holding my hands) but your friend is dying." I didn't even need a minute for it to sink in, it was already there. I jumped up hysterical shouting, don't say that! How could you say that? My mother embraced me and I wept like a baby in her arms. Two hours later at ten O'clock, we waved goodbye to them as they left that morning in my mother's brand new 1974 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. As the proud, bright orange car made its way up the street, confetti came raining down upon us in the
form of a passing shower. Like a ticker tape parade held in my honor!
I didn't care if they came back this Sunday, next week or the following
year. I would be alone with Harmony, and that's all that really mattered.

Upon entering the house, I confronted Harmony about what she had
said to my mother. Why would you say such a thing like that to her?
"You wanted to get out of going didn't you?" Yes, but not like that!
"Like how then? How else was I going to do it? You tell me how!!!"
I don't know how!!! I only know what they know; Timmy is dying!!!
That's all they know and if he dies, we die, cause then I can't stay here anymore! I was totally hysterical and couldn't catch my breath. If you don't think for us, we're doomed, cause I can't do it! She held me in
her arms and told me not to cry. "I did a real stupid thing, and I am so
sorry. Maybe with chemotherapy we could keep him around until you're seventeen. After that, no one will have any use for him anymore so he dies." You mean we just stop talking about him? "I mean, I go to my country for ten days to bury my brother." I wish I was as smart as you. "You are or I wouldn't be with you."

At around two Harmony walks into the kitchen and swings around seductively, her face half covered by her long wavy hair. "Today is
the day" she announces, before turning herself around and walking
away. I have to admit, these past couple of weeks I've been noticing
a marked change in her behavior. A subtle nuance in her attitude. It's
just some peculiar flaw that suddenly presented itself in her personality.
Simple things that used to make her laugh, now only make her smile,
and when she smiles, she is not smiling with me, but for me. Like she
has to, because she doesn't want to hurt my feelings. Lately, every time
she smiles, I get the distinct impression she does not want to smile at all, but rather, absorb herself in things that do not involve me. But still, the way she looks into my eyes is more loving. I don't understand it.

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At around three O'clock Harmony tells me she is ready to perform
a sacred ceremony. There was incense burning, soothing music playing and six strange looking mushrooms in a dish. "Prepare yourself my love, for we are about to embark on a transcendent journey through time and space. We will always be together in both body and spirit" she said to me in a low voice. "Are you sure you want to go through with this? You have to be absolutely certain." Yes, I said in an adult voice, while trying to command somewhat of an authority. "I am going out on a limb here. If something should go wrong..." Nothing will go wrong, I said, because I have you to save me. She smiled in that sad new way, and proceeded to light three medium sized round candles. One peach, her favorite color. One green, my favorite color and one brown. *Earth color - Stability*

She then told me to eat three of the six mushrooms until there was nothing left of them. This we did together. "In but a brief moment my little prince, I shall walk with you in the lair of the shadow dwellers, for I have found it is time." What made you change your mind? "My undying love for you."

Within an hour, I began to see my own voice emanating in the rarest of beautiful of colors, while only a stairstep away stood the most exquisite, most enchanting angel this world would ever know. The love I felt for her, had far surpassed that of infatuation and was now bordering on a point of worship. All that which is beautiful, and all that which is pure seemed to radiate around her, turning everything into a pool of love. Everything was now beginning to live! The refrigerator was suddenly happy. The cabinet was boasting its doors and trying earnestly to make me smile. Grass had started to grow like wildfire in the living room, and the pied pipers down
in the blue cavern were leading the band!

In my mind, I was no longer a little boy, but a man!

As I stood next to Harmony by the kitchen counter, I realized my potential
in life was limitless. I could be anything I choose to be, and am I really her prince? Toss a coin into the air. Should stop in mid-flight, then you will know how I felt for the duration of that whole entire night!

Standing in the threshold of time, I would find that my lover had made me immortal. I could do anything I wanted to do and no harm would come to me. I asked Harmony if this was true, and she told me that what I was experiencing was a lot like that of a dream. "Suppose you know you're in
a dream, and you wish to wake up. Do you throw yourself in front of a moving automobile? I should say not, what if you're sleepwalking? That would be cause and effect for your downfall! The same holds true when
you walk in the land of the Shadow Dwellers. You now have to be more aware of things than you would normally have to be aware of in waking
life, so no my little prince, we have to very careful here."

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I wasn't worried about the material world coming alive and hurting
me, because I felt very relaxed and comfortable in my new domain.
Everything around me was acting like it was my friend, and accepting
me for the person I was. Kind of like the way Harmony had been treating
me all these years. Meaning, I did not have to put on airs for even myself, let alone Harmony or my new found friends!

I must admit it felt really wild!

I knew these material objects, like Harmony, had the power to destroy
me if they so desired, but instead, it was almost as though they were
somehow trying to uplift my spirits by expressing themselves to me.
Not in an overtly childish manner like Janine at the dentist's office who
would make googly faces with rolling eyes as she spoke, as if every child
who entered the office was mentally deficient and would find themselves giggling at her. No, not like that!!! Like a favorite toy that has suddenly come alive and begins looking for ways of expressing himself to you!
That is the only way I can explain it, and of course I could only sense
this, however.

It felt like I had suddenly been thrown into wonderland
and would soon meet Alice and the mad hatter! Overall,
there wasn't an ounce of anything bad in all the land!!!

I would say, I was surrounded by a feeling of peace and well being.
When I closed my eyes, I told God how thankful I was for blessing me
with someone so sweet and kind. Most women that lovely would never have even given me a second look, but Harmony wasn't most women.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((No, Harmony was special)))))))))))))))))))))))))))

As I harkened to a sound beneath my feet, the color of the kitchen
began to offset my mind. Since it was a light pink, I kept thinking that
I was inside a dollhouse! How crazy is that? Lightning crackled in the darkening sky as the rain came down like a billion marbles, hammering
the roof. Hey wait, if I'm in a dollhouse, doesn't that make me about as
big as a toy soldier, and if I'm as big as a toy soldier, doesn't that mean that I'm really very small? Small enough to fall victim to a passing spider? When I told Harmony of this, she said to concentrate on her voice and touch, and that is what will define me. Soon, I was free again to explore the labyrinth of time!

To interpret and understand the mystical, and pop out
on the other side of a rabbit-hole. Through all this,
I could somehow still distinguish between right and wrong.

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❊ I then began to think of my dentist appointment last week. Every time
I found myself in that waiting room with my dad, Janine, the receptionist would ask me if I was ready to go to the moon. Yes I would say excitedly, but always regret it once I sat down in that chair. I knew what was coming, and nothing could be more horrible, I thought, than sitting in that chair while the nitrous oxide was being administered. That awful smell of burning tires pouring slowly into my nostrils, numbing my sensory perception. The only thing I could ever think of was pulling it from my face! Strange muzak funneling into my brain would slowly assemble
the pattern to a disturbing and dreadful hallucination.

After shuffling about the room, and moving the instruments of torture around in a straightforward fashion, he would pause to concern himself
in my affairs. With a dead tongue from the Novocaine, and what felt like an agglomeration of fossilized stones in my mouth, I was able to say,
"I feel fine." He would then leave me to the quiet of my discontent. Disconnected and drifting apart from the world. Help me!

When he left that tiny cubicle of a room, the lighted ceiling panels multiplied. The chair then raised itself up into the grandiose shadow
of this towering consternation, until my face was a bar of light. It was
on the third floor that I was elevated through them and stopped.

I later surmised this was when he brought the lamp to my face and
had already begun working on my teeth, long after I absconded.

There are presently no other life forms in this bizarre solar system for all
I have encountered consists of foreign matter, which has been displaced and dispersed all around me, so I am only able to see and hear bits and pieces of what once was. Soon, these odd memories will be all I am comprised of. Have I been deposited in Purgatory to be sorted through like old clothing? My mind is numb and airy and my body is somewhere down in the basement of thought. Have I always been here? What kind
of life form am I and where is Harmony? Even stranger, where is my dad? Why would he leave me in nothingness? God, this is so strange!

There was a loud jamming sound and a dull clunk. My vehicle of transport had gone too high for it had gotten stuck. Wow I said to myself, "if this
is the end of the ride, then I am knee deep in the shit because there is
no way on earth, I can find my way home from here! I don't even know
what planet my legs are on!!! I have to get them back so I can leave!

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Sensing this, the galaxy chair must have known we were in a fixed position and soon began to readjust its hydraulics. Then this lost barber chair sped me down a long corridor which was now longer than a hospital wing, until my toes battered the heavy plastic doors. Judging by how fast I was going and the amount of pressure exerted from those swinging doors, I would have to say they were packed with sand! In a very eerie room, the chair runs out of propellant, where some kind of activity is taking place.

I fear I am in the clutches of monsters. . .

The voices I am beginning to hear are non-threatening and that is a good sign. They seem to be studying me with the utmost precision and appear to be sewing something as Mocedades graces the airwaves with Eres tú. What a calm, wonderful song. Now I don't give a damn about anything!
I open my eyes to find they are unmistakably human and that is a better sign, but their language is garbled and warped, unlike mine, but they are learning!!!

Without warning this mad Asian, demon-dentist shocked me by dropping a metal object of deafening proportion on the iron table! From there,
he would repeat the same phrase and follow the same bodily movements again and again and again! While I watched him, in never end, I would
say my brain repeated the function about thirty times to fade out.
As I watch my demon-dentist perform in this strange show,
someone is building towns in my mouth.

Although he was very smiley and quite happy during the day, under the artificial light, he was tricky, and I had to be careful. In that crepuscular world, you were completely at his mercy. With X-ray vision and a tool
that whizzed by spitting air and water at me, I would slide deep down,
into the depths of a murky illusion and hide from an occasional piece
of flying gum. Often, it would fly out of the trench and into the world
of real time. Where things dressed in black that have no faces slither
down hallways, or the Gaurntruffle's that gather about the room!
How they always seemed to move, right before the dentist
can catch them in real time remains a mystery!

I heard someone caught one last year while huffing ether!
He talks to it all the time now.

Sometimes my dentist would crank open my wooden mouth, carving and snipping. Then sicken me by dropping flesh into my lap! That is the pure helplessness of life. Where the downtrodden sorrows fester in splendid isolation. That preposterous darkness. That thick soppy gloom is a lifeline to the floating head, which is now, all that is left of me. As my hands approached a near rigor mortis state, I found them to be welded to my own chest, my own heart. I-need to-go-now! I-can't open-my-hands!!!
Get me out of here, I screamed to no one! No one can survive in that world without guidance, and only a fool should wish to dabble in there. That blackened void reeks of death. ❊

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But being here with Harmony, I was safe for she had become my protector, and besides, how much worse could these mushrooms
really be?

This goddess standing before me who appeared to be dressed in fine webbings was now an extension of my own self. The most beautiful part of living was life with her! I cleaved unto harmony as a baby would cleave unto its own mother, and she guided me ever so gracefully through the experience. She would explain to me everything I was feeling in the
order of which they were being received.

As she rose up from the kitchen chair and advanced down the hallway,
I followed behind her like a servant following his master. I soon started
to feel like an animal of the forest reacting on instinct, while following
the scent of his soon to be mate. As she opened the bathroom door and proceeded to tinkle, she asked me how I was feeling. Fine, I said to her
as the incandescent glow of candles caused the air to flicker madly! You never looked more beautiful than you do right now. Will you marry me, I asked? She laughed and appeared star struck."Ask me that question in six years, and I'll say yes!" She then got up and gave me a loving embrace.

It's so amazing, I said, how we look with new eyes.

Harmony smiled. "Would you like to go upstairs with me?" Yes, I said without hesitation, feeling like a book was being written as we were living it! As we left the stillness of the bathroom and proceeded through the living room, it felt like we were walking in clouds! Did the whole house
just float away into the sky or are we now in a ninety story tree house? Whatever it was, it was truly wonderful!

At this very moment in time, I began to feel like that man. . .
The man who lives in the apartment on the ninety ninth floor of his block. He sits at home looking out the window imagining the world has stopped. You know the guy I'm referring to. In my mind, I pulled up
that window and began screaming at the world in my excitement;
"Hey-hey! You-you! Get off-my cloud!!!"

Entering my lover's bedroom, I paused as I so often do to look around. Today, the room is alive with energy and everything is so sharp and clear! Is it my eyes that have suddenly changed or is my mind processing my thoughts like it does in the land of dreams?

Strange mushrooms, they are neither vegetable nor mineral, yet they cause the world to change. There is no time for me to dwell on edible fungi now! One day perhaps, I will find out just what kind of magic lies inside them!

Casually, I advance toward the canopy bed to find Harmony in a seductive pose. To me, she appeared to be inspecting herself for flaws. Believe me when I tell you, there were none!!! I creep up to her from behind and
wrap my arms around her waist. From there I start kissing her arm, but am distracted. There is too much happening for me to concentrate solely on her! As I slowly begin to undress my lover, I let the articles of clothing fall to the floor, where the most interesting things were beginning to happen!

The rug was now overrun with strange looking idiosyncratic goblins,
who appeared to be dancing in a red forest while singing and bobbling
their heads. For the first time, my thoughts were diverted from Harmony.
I left her partially dressed, standing by the side of the bed while I ran my fingers through the red hairs of this shaggy fabric. They're all over the place, I said, getting down on my hands and knees. Upon hearing this,
she sat on the bed and began massaging my shoulders. She didn't exhibit
signs of being disappointed in the least and was soon down on her hands
and knees as well. Harmony pointed to some, while I pointed at others!

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