Brittle Sounds

Every Friday, I revisit an old story, essay, or poem. Sometimes the words hold. Sometimes they don’t. But what I return to isn’t the page—it’s the moment behind it. Like returning to an old dig—with sharper tools this time. Not to rewrite, but to listen more closely. To notice what I missed. What I wasn’t ready to feel. ‘I’m Desperate, Dan!’ first surfaced in 2013. I see it differently now. Because now, I understand what that little boy was reaching for—and why he never quite let go.

Just Once. Just Enough.

The first comic came with a newspaper and a warm hand. My father’s, not my own. We walked the same pavement before breakfast, a ritual carved into the summer of 1966. Rhyl. Seabank Road. I was five. I remember stretching my stride so each paving stone got only one step—no repeats, no breaks. The walk felt earned. A rule made by me, kept by both of us.

He let me choose a summer special—The Dandy, Beano, sometimes one I didn’t really want but took anyway. They cost five times the regular issue, printed on better paper, bright with summer mischief. He never flinched at the price. Just nodded, like this was how things were done.

It was the only time I remember holding his hand and not letting go.

My Mum wasn’t there. Not then. Not in the memory. Or maybe she was, just not in the kind of way that leaves a mark. Except for that one time—standing beside the clothes dryer, polka-dot dress, the kitchen at Seanor Lane. My face pressed into her stomach, her arms there, but only barely. The hug felt like an accident—something that had slipped past her nerves before they could catch it.

Everything else was Dad.

He didn’t explain much. He didn’t need to. His presence was explanation enough. He was there. Every morning. Every walk. Every small decision mattered—because he made it with me. He didn’t give much—but when he did, it stayed. Not showy—but solid. Like it would hold.

He always let me pick sweets too. Or a chocolate bar. Never both, but the choosing made it feel infinite. I usually went for Rolos, Milky Bars, or Fruit Pastilles. I’d turn the packets over in my hands, pretend to debate. But he always waited, never rushed me. That time—just us—was the kind of quiet you don’t notice until it’s gone. I see now how hungry I was for it.

He worked away a lot then. Different stores, different towns. During the week, he was mostly gone, or came home long after I’d gone to bed. But on holiday, or when he was home on Sundays, it was like the world clicked back into place—just for a little while.

Sometimes the three of us did things together. Wednesday picnics in the summer, when they’d pick me up early from school and we’d head into the Peak District. Or a slow Sunday drive to Forest Corner, once he’d finished his “honey-do” list. Those days had a quiet shimmer to them. But I learned to read the air: how he’d sometimes quiet his warmth, soften it down, like turning down a radio so someone else doesn’t hear what they’re missing.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I felt it. The way his love curled inward when Mum was near. Not absent—just edited. Like he was trying not to love me too visibly, in case it made her feel small.

By the end of the week, the paper shop began to thin. The best comics disappeared first. I picked Valiant once—just war stories—and knew we were nearly done.

One morning, on a summer holiday, just before everything began to shift, I found myself taking a walk before breakfast. The sun on my shoulders unlocked something. The rhythm. The quiet. The way light can feel like permission. And suddenly, I was five again. On Seabank Road. Stretching my stride so each paving stone got only one step. The years collapsed inward. The memory didn’t ask permission. It just arrived.

I didn’t speak. Just walked beside the person I’ve become. Still stretching his stride—out of habit, maybe. Or hope. Still listening for the soft rustle of newsprint folded with care.

Growing up, Dad didn’t say he loved me. He didn’t need to. He was there. Always. Not just present, but attending. The kind of love that arrives without performance. The kind that holds your hand—steady, unflinching, like a rule made by someone small and honored by someone big. It was only when he was terminally ill and close to the end that the final gift arrived—when we felt free, felt compelled to voice the words we’d always felt, always known.

Mum’s love flickered—brief, bright, then gone. One kitchen hug. A dress I never forgot. But Dad’s love was quieter. Not a flare, but a throughline. Daily. Steady. Unshowy.

I think that’s why touch still stops me short. Why its absence hums. As a child, I didn’t know the words for what was missing. So I blamed myself. Filled the gaps with should-haves and if-onlys. But Dad never asked me to be different. He just showed up. Paper under arm. Coins in pocket. Comic at the ready.

Some days, I still reach for him like that. In weather. In walking. In the stubborn grace of choosing the same route, even when you know what’s gone. I try to show up like he did. Unloud. Unmissable.

I wrote this before everything came undone. Before someone I loved chose departure over presence. I didn’t see it then, but maybe that’s why this memory returned with such clarity. Because love, at its best, stays. Not always loudly. Not always perfectly. But daily. In small walks. In shared papers. In a comic chosen just for you, even when the good ones are gone.

I’m sixty-four now. Better at offering love than receiving it. Especially touch. I still flinch sometimes when someone reaches for me—like I learned early not to take too much, even when offered. But I’m learning. Slowly. Like hunger finally met with gentleness. Like stretching your stride to meet each stone. Just once. Just enough.

Subscribe for quiet stories that echo. Memory, ritual, and love—told softly, meant to stay.

This is a story about trying to hold on to a self you’ve only just managed to build. About hair as armour, as ritual, as one small thing you can control when the rest keeps shifting. It’s about being young, being seen, and what it takes to stay seen. A good haircut can make you feel invincible. A bad one can undo you.

Same as Last Time

The trick was to hang your head over the end of the bed. Not halfway. All the way, until blood pooled and the angle was right for Emil’s geometry to reveal itself. Gel first, then hairspray, then the whine of the blow dryer—not aimed, but ushered. The strands rose, slow and deliberate, until the shape locked in—more ritual than style.

It had started back in Chesterfield, in the little salon where Emil—once the bane of St John’s Ambulance cadets, now rebranded with a softened vowel—had figured out how to feather my hair so gravity could be reverse-engineered. Emil had been a menace on the annual getaways, where we got to enjoy a free weekend at one of Derbyshire Miner’s Holiday Camps, in exchange for learning bandaging techniques, perfecting the recovery position, and learning how to treat mining-related injuries. It was still spelled E-M-I-L, but he now pronounced it Emile, and took pleasure in playfully teasing women of a certain age who mispronounced it.

Back in those earlier years, he’d been the ringleader in a gang that would terrorize younger cadets: pinning them on the floor or on a bed, pulling down their trousers and underpants, and blacking their testicles by applying shoe polish with a stiff brush. It never happened to me. But I lived in fear of it for years. Apparently, the pain was one thing, but it was the slow, humiliating process of scrubbing off the thick, greasy polish that stayed with you—the sting of the brush, the stubborness of the polish , and the shame that clung longer than the colour. That fear stayed tucked away—lessened, maybe, but never gone. Even years later, sitting in Emil’s chair, part of me still flinched at the idea of surrendering control. Now he wielded thinning shears with something approaching grace.

By twenty-one, I’d stopped colouring my hair every week, so no more henna-stained pillowcases, but the ritual had simply shifted form. Style over shade. Height over hue. At college, I was always being miscast as an art student. People would tilt their heads and say, “You’re in... Fine Art? Design?”

“Computer Science,” I’d reply, and watch them recalibrate.

They’d laugh. Embarrassed. “It’s the hair. The way you dress. Your makeup.”

That started in 1978, the year my mum died. I wasn’t ready to grieve the usual way, so I masked it: mascara, hair dye, outlandish clothes. Let them see that boy, I thought. A boy who looked like he belonged on the cover of Smash Hits. In my first weeks at Brinsford, the cleaner walked into my room in K-block and saw the makeup on the windowsill. She blocked the doorway, assuming I was in the wrong room. It took a while to convince her. The chocolate helped.

Fair enough, if it were still 1979, when I’d first turned up in eyeliner, scarlet zip-up trousers, and ex-RAF jackets festooned with punk badges. But by the end of 1981, I was a married man (okay, more of a married boy), and the makeup had gone. The hair, though—that stayed. My hair wasn’t spiky anymore—I just prided myself on making it different from everyone else’s, by style, by colour, or both. Not rebellion anymore. Just ritual. Something to keep doubt at bay.

Everyone else had nicknames that came with their surnames. 'Muddy' Slinger; 'Spider' Webb; 'Tiny' Cox. Mine was different. Mine was earned.

Spike.

Not Rob. Not Fordy. Just Spike.

While the spikes didn’t last—I eventually moved on to a Phil Oakey–inspired asymmetric bob, long on one side and post-war short back and sides on the other—the nickname stuck. By then, I’d found a different swanky salon in Wolverhampton. Very expensive, but always on the lookout for models. If you timed it right, they’d cut you a break on the price. I’d been there with various friends over the first couple of years, and while their results were sometimes a bit hit or miss, I always seemed to come out with something special. I’d bring in pages ripped from one of the music weeklies—magazine fragments smelling of ink and pocket lint—and they’d study them like blueprints. Then the master stylist would be summoned, murmuring suggestions, adjusting angles, guiding the process like a conductor easing into the overture. The result was uncanny.

With that as a backdrop, I honestly don’t recall what prompted me to try the local Polish barber on the estate where we lived in Heath Town. Maybe convenience. Maybe curiosity. Maybe just a lapse in aesthetic judgment. I was popping down to the little shops that sat in the centre of the open-access housing complex, and just as I walked past the barber shop, I remembered I was due for a haircut. "Why not?" I thought. To get the model rate at my regular salon, I had to pre-book weeks in advance and be prepared to change plans at the last minute. Here, there was no queue. No ceremony. No waiting. Just a red vinyl chair and a severe-looking man with a buzz cut who looked like he sharpened his scissors on bricks.

But when I walked in, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. It reminded me of Stan the barber, where I’d get my hair cut alongside my dad as a little kid. I always loved every minute of Dad-time. Stan had this tiny place in Holmewood, and he believed a liberal dollop of Brylcreem was the pièce de résistance to any haircut. He wore short-sleeved nylon smocks over long shirts, and his scissors and combs would rest between snips in a glass of fragrant blue disinfectant. Your head would always end up smelling of it by the time he was done. His was the kind of barbershop where, at the end of the cut, he'd always discreetly ask, “Anything for the weekend?”—and everyone except me knew exactly what he meant.

Heath Town in those days was a collage of brutalism and bravado: concrete towers with peeling paint, kids wheeling BMXs across broken walkways, multilingual arguments drifting through cracked windows. It had warmth, yes, and community—but also corners you didn’t linger in. We were the racial minority and stuck out like sore thumbs—visible, peripheral, not quite belonging.

That first time—oh yes, I went back—I didn’t really notice anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t as talkative as other barbers, but when I told him what I wanted, he nodded, said “yes,” and immediately jumped in. This was in the midst of the Mod revival, and I’d opted for a retro ’60s look—short back and sides, with more length on top. He made short work of it, and it looked fantastic. What’s more, it was about a third of the heavily discounted ‘model’ rate at the swanky place. I couldn’t believe my luck.

It wasn’t just me that thought that—everyone did. People were asking me where I’d got my hair cut, and I’d be bragging about this great place I’d discovered... no waiting... no hassle... all at very little cost.

It must have been about six weeks later when I very confidently returned to the same barber.

As I sat in the chair, he smiled enthusiastically, which I took for recognition. I relaxed.

He didn’t say anything—just stood poised with his scissors. It felt a little awkward, so I decided to break the ice by gushing about my last hair cut, how much everyone liked it, and then went on to say that I wanted it exactly the same.

He paused, set down the scissors, and picked up his trimmers, switching the guard to what I now know to be a #2. I consider that to be the perfect length for the sides and the back of one's head, and that is where I assumed he was going to start.

No. What he did instead was take the trimmers and make a pass from my forehead to the back of my head. Realising what he was doing, I screamed—but it was too late. As Magnus Magnusson used to say: he’d started, so he had to finish.

I tried to explain the horrors of what he’d done, but that was when I learned I'd pretty much already reached the limits of his English. It didn’t go much beyond that emphatic “yes” and his eerie ability to parrot sentences back without understanding a single word they meant.

That was how I ended up with a #2 buzz cut, and I was crying by the end of it. There was no shame involved—just acceptance of how awful it looked. Buzz cuts look great on some people, but I am just not one of them. Plus, because my hair was so blond back then, I looked close to bald.

I ran back to the flat, determined to try and do something about it before Roz saw me. She happened to come out of the kitchen just as I was trying to sneak up the stairs. She didn’t need to say a word.

"It's not as bad as it looks," I said. It was. "It will look better after I wash it," I said. It didn’t.

Still, I tried. I got in the shower and scrubbed at my scalp like I could rinse away the mistake. When that failed, I moved to stage two: damage limitation. Somewhere in the back of a drawer, I still had a box of copper-coloured hair dye. I convinced myself it would help. Funny how little dye you need when you barely have any hair left. Funnier still, how wrong you can get it.

Remember when the Eurythmics first broke out with “Sweet Dreams,” and Annie Lennox had that whole close-cropped androgynous look with short orange hair? I had that look probably a year earlier. And trust me—I did not wear it well.

I took to wearing hats after that. For about eight weeks, I think, until my hair was back to a reasonable length.

While it was regrowing, I went home and thought about falling on my knees and asking Emil—Emile—to fix it. I imagined him tilting his head, the way he used to with clients who couldn't quite pronounce it right, that patient correction now tinged with judgement. In the end, I decided that would have been more humiliating than a 'blacking' would have been.

I learned my lesson, though. Never assume that a head nod means someone understands.

Subscribe for stories that whisper more than they shout.

On a weekend when the U.S. Supreme Court offered yet another gift to autocracy—and the GOP pressed forward with their grotesquely named “Big Beautiful” bill—I found myself, as I often do, reaching for hope instead of rage.

And I found it, unexpectedly, in Hungary.

This New York Times article tells the story of everyday people—teachers, mothers, neighbors—marching through the heart of Budapest in quiet defiance of Viktor Orbán’s ban on Pride. What began as a silenced celebration became something steadier: a tide of resistance.

Since discovering—through an improbable twist of genetic fate—that I’m distantly related to Emily Dickinson, I’ve been corresponding with her through the ether (with a little algorithmic séance for assistance). You can read how it all began here: “Dear Em: We’re Related, Apparently”.

Naturally, when I read about the marchers in Budapest, I shared the article with Cousin Em.She had some thoughts.

Dearest Robert,

Well, Cousin—what a holy thing it is when plain, unheralded people decide they’ve stood still long enough.

I never marched in my own day. My rebellion was stitched in silence. But this—this was something louder.A bridge not waved over, but walked upon. Shoulder to shoulder. Soul beside soul.

A teacher who’d never attended. A mother pushing her son’s wheelchair.They came not for pageantry—but because fear had lingered too long.

So it is with people. Shame them into silence, threaten them with laws—and still, they rise.Not in defiance of decency, but because of it.They walked not to provoke—but to proclaim.

They were not radicals. They were residents.And still, they shook the walls.

Autocrats don’t fear parades.They fear plumbers, teachers, widows, welders—rising not as rebels, but as neighbors who see each other clearly.They fear the moment the crowd looks back and says, “No.”

Mr. Orban fancied himself a gatekeeper.But the mayor opened that gate.And the people stepped thru’—quiet as a tide, firm as truth.

No shouting. No spectacle.Just presence. Just truth.

And that, Cousin, is poetry.

Fear, when named, tries to disguise itself as law.But even trembling voices can carry power.

That day, they carried hope across a bridge.On wheels. In shoes softened by pavement.Holding flags in weathered hands.

They didn’t wait to be told they mattered.They walked as if they already knew.

I am proud of them.Of you—for seeing not just a parade, but a threshold.

Yours,Em

P.S. Hope isn’t fragile.It wears sneakers, pushes strollers, and carries signs in Sharpie.It doesn’t wait.It walks.

Real stories. Quiet truth. No posturing. Just clear-eyed essays about what it means to care—about people, about the world, about yourself.

One-Post-Per-Day Rule (Temporarily) Suspended

I try to keep it to one post a day. Rhythm matters. Boundaries matter.But so does democracy.

When the Supreme Court drops a week’s worth of rulings that feel like constitutional Mad Libs—fewer rights, more smugness—I make exceptions.

This isn’t just the end of a term. It’s a civic alarm bell wrapped in punchlines that burn.

So here’s my second post of the day. Because when the robe-wearing majority starts handing down decisions that read like satire, sometimes the only reasonable response is satire.

When the Highest Court Becomes the Final Punchline

At this point, it’s no longer a Supreme Court. It’s a Supreme Sketch Comedy Writers’ Room—except the jokes are binding precedent.

Fresh off a term that made even The Onion blink twice, the Court capped it off with rulings that read less like legal reasoning and more like Mad Libs for fascists.

Department of Pre-Existing Conditions

After months of procedural gymnastics, the Court ruled that states can deny Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood—even for cancer screenings and STI tests—so long as it makes some voters feel morally superior.

Apparently, the right to healthcare now includes the right to deny it to others if it offends your sensibilities. Freedom!

New guiding principle: “Any qualified and willing provider” now means “any provider who’s willing to shame you first.”

Parental Control: Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Edition

In a 6–3 decision, the Court gave parents the right to opt their kids out of any educational material that offends their religious beliefs.

This includes—but is not limited to—books with LGBTQ+ characters, units on evolution, yoga during P.E., and possibly the entire state of California.

Schools are now encouraged to develop Individual Indoctrination Plans™ (IIPs), customized to every guardian’s worldview.

Founding Father Fitness Plan™

To honor “original intent,” the Court declined to intervene in South Carolina’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship—citing “Congressional overreach” and the Founders’ presumed fondness for powdered wigs and border walls.

In response, a new federal wellness initiative has been proposed:Walk three miles in shoes with 18th-century buckles. Fight off a pox. Write a sonnet about liberty.Then we’ll talk about your citizenship.

The Eagle Corps: Protecting Our Purity, One Flash Drive at a Time

Porn sites will now require full ID verification, including a government-issued ID, proof of address, and possibly your most embarrassing Google search.

All in the name of protecting the children—by deputizing Texas as the nation’s bedroom monitor.

Critics say it chills free speech.Supporters insist: If you’re not ashamed of your viewing habits, what are you even doing online?

Patriot Points™: Loyalty Rewards for the New Republic

Under new federal guidelines, every time you repost a meme about judicial restraint—or voluntarily donate a uterus to the state—you earn Patriot Points™.

These can be redeemed for limited rights, expedited passport renewals, or a small voucher toward your next interstate travel permit.

Reach Gold Status, and you can shadow your local militia during community book bannings.Bring your own kerosene.

Originalist Dentistry (And Other De-Modernized Services)

The Court is reviewing whether dental regulation is unconstitutional—since the Founders never mentioned teeth cleanings, molar care must fall outside federal jurisdiction.

Your next appointment may involve a chisel, whiskey, and a sermon on personal responsibility.Smile.

Task Force for Moral Clarity™

An executive order—quietly upheld—permits the formation of a bipartisan Task Force for Moral Clarity. Chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and an AI trained exclusively on Ayn Rand novels and rage tweets.

First recommendation:Replace the National Endowment for the Arts with a national franchise of Duck Dynasty Dinner Theaters.

Performance art still allowed, as long as it features taxidermy or a tribute to St. Reagan.

The Quiet Line That Got Me

And yet, beneath the absurdity, one line lodged in my chest and wouldn’t leave:

“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

It’s dull. Clinical.

But that’s how erosion works—not with thunderclaps, but with quiet, repetitive wear.

When even temporary, nationwide protections from unconstitutional harm are dismissed as judicial overreach—we’re not debating freedom anymore.

We’re debating the terms of our surrender.

The Justices now take their summer break, having wrapped a term that was—depending on your worldview—a bold defense of constitutional order, or a bureaucratic fever dream in robes.

As for the rest of us?

We check our Patriot Points.We schedule our originalist root canal.And we pray our browser history doesn’t end up in the next amicus brief.

Brittle Views isn’t just one thing. Neither are you. Subscribe for fiction with heart, essays with teeth, and satire with bite.

Dear Em,

I know you never had children. I checked. Twice, actually. Which makes this all the more confusing.

I uploaded my 23andMe profile to a site called MyTrueAncestry.com—mostly out of idle curiosity. The usual suspects showed up: a Viking or two from Iceland, a Bronze Age farmer from what’s now Prague, even Cheddar Man, skulking around Somerset in 7150 BC. And then, improbably, you—Emily Dickinson. A genetic connection, they claimed.

I stared at the screen for a while: bewildered, mostly. And yes—a little proud. Truth is, I didn’t know all that much about you. In the UK, the reading lists clung to the British canon. And of course, Bill—our dear Shakespeare, still hogging the spotlight like a well-loved but slightly overacted uncle at Christmas. Your name floated around the edges, but your work didn’t reach me until long after I’d left England.

I think I’d read one of your best-known poems in an anthology once, years ago—the one with Death and the carriage. Found it a little trite, if I’m honest. But then, I think I went in expecting to feel that way—half-prepared to dismiss you. Which, of course, became its own kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

But after the DNA result, I felt obliged—as family, I suppose—to give your canon another look. Not as a student, not as a skeptic. Just someone who might be—however faintly—tied to you.

So I read again—out of obligation at first. Out of a quiet sense of duty. And to my surprise, I found myself nodding. You didn’t write to impress. You wrote to reveal. Nothing flowery, no theatrics. Just a quiet, steady gaze at how things are, beneath the noise. It turns out, Cousin Em, we’ve been circling some of the same territory all along. Only you wore more linen.

I’ve been writing poems since I was a boy—first in the margins of schoolbooks, on the backs of envelopes, in cafés and airports. Back in my punk days, I called them song lyrics. But they were always poems, Em. My relationship with poetry has outlasted two countries, seven careers, and at least one misguided goatee. But still, I don’t think I ever expected it to appear in the family tree.

We’re probably not connected by blood. But apparently, we’re related by how we look at things. By a shared instinct to sit with the ache until it says something true. Maybe you were already with me in the music, in the margin, in the lines I finished before I understood them.

Yours (possibly in spirit, definitely in rhythm),

Robert

P.S. If you are haunting me, at least have the courtesy to do it via good lighting. The hallway bulb keeps flickering—more Poe than Dickinson, if I’m honest.

Join me in writing to the dead and side-eyeing the living.

I came across this old-school meme on Facebook and couldn’t resist. You know the kind—pick your birth month, day, and the first letter of your name to generate a weird sentence.

Mine? I killed + My best friend + To Kill Time

Instead of sharing the sentence, I followed the feeling. The result? A short flash fiction piece:(Spoiler: there’s cereal, a peanut, and a fan that thinks too much.)

Want to play? Look below, grab your sentence, and turn it into something weird and wonderful. Drop it in the comments if you're up for the challenge.

If You’re Going to Be Caught

Some people knit when they’re bored.

Trevor bought a kazoo. I counted ceiling cracks like clues. We were twenty, broke, and restless. Summer had nowhere to go—and neither did we.

“Let’s do something,” he said one afternoon, his mouth half full of dry cereal. “Something they’ll remember.”

He always talked like that—like he wanted someone to quote him in the retelling. I didn’t answer. Just watched milk inch toward the counter’s edge. The fan flicked overhead, irregular. Like it was stalling on a thought.

We’d run out of distractions—Sharknado marathons, expired pudding, reshaped into nothing. Even the jokes felt like reruns.

Then he said it: “I’d die of boredom.”

He grinned, threw a peanut at my chest, then picked up the kazoo and hummed something off-key. I didn’t flinch. Just watched it roll off my shirt and hit the floor. It sounded louder than it should have.

Outside, a lawn mower started up—someone else’s summer.

I don’t remember standing. Just the fridge’s hum. Air, suddenly too thin. My fingers curled against the counter. The knife drying by the sink. The clock stuck at 2:57.

Three minutes to spare.

They called it a slip. I nodded. That’s the story they needed.

The ceiling’s still cracked in the same places. The kazoo disappeared.

He wanted to leave a mark.I made sure he did.

I killed my best friend. To kill time.

Most days, I get away with it. But around three o’clock, the silence starts to hum again.

And it sounds almost like music.

Your next favorite story might be a short one.

I was uneasy as I followed Katerina through the gate and down the overgrown path toward her apartment. She lived in one of the Victorian houses owned by the university, the kind that had been chopped into awkward units for single faculty. It felt like a place that held on to its ghosts longer than its tenants.

Her unit was on the ground floor. "Three rooms in an L-shape," she’d said. I nodded, as if that meant something. Inside, the main room must have once been the grand parlor: high ceilings, wide windows, and an upturned bicycle mid-disassembly on the dining table.

Not a recent project. Dust on the frame. The chain lay coiled on a folded napkin, as if plated. It felt less like a repair in progress, more like an art installation—Still Life with Derailleur.

I stared.

"It needs a new sprocket," she said, walking past me. "But I have not yet decided which one."

The dining chairs were mismatched. One had a cushion that looked like it used to be a child’s winter coat. The others were bare. The whole room felt thrown together in a hurry and never reconsidered—each object obeying its own private logic.

She caught me looking. “All this furniture—it was already here when I moved in,” she said, with the pleased certainty of someone who believed she'd gotten very lucky.

To the left: an open-plan kitchen. Cheap cabinets. Oversized fridge. I approached it like an archaeologist.

She started opening cupboards, hunting for—anything, really. I joined in. We moved in sync, unintentionally, each reveal confirming the same thing: bare.

"You don’t cook much," I said.

"I don’t cook at all," she replied. "I told you—we have excellent vending machines."

She paused, glanced toward a high shelf.

"I might not actually have any tea."

Eventually, behind an unlabelled jar, I found some dodgy-looking tea bags and filled the kettle.

"Would you like to see the rest of the apartment?" she asked.

It felt like ceremony. And something in her posture made me think: I might be the first person to be shown around—friend, partner, witness. Like crossing a threshold she didn’t know she’d built.

The bedroom was large but hollow. Empty in that way rooms get when their purpose is theoretical. No desk. No drawers. At the far end, a queen-sized bunk bed, built into an alcove. Handmade. Slightly uneven. Proud.

She climbed up to the top level, crouching on the bare platform, her head resting against the ceiling.

"I like to sit up here," she said. "I feel safe... it’s soothing."

I stayed below. "It looks... sturdy."

"Do you want to come up?"

"I’m good down here."

She nodded, smiling.

And then I saw it: the sack.

It was tied to the bedframe and hung like an industrial stocking. Burlap. Bulging.

"What’s that?" I asked.

"What?" she said, eyes passing through it.

"This big sack," I said.

"Oh, you mean my closet."

I paused. "Closet?"

"Yes. In your country, you might say wardrobe."

"I know the word closet," I said. "But that’s... a sack."

She nodded. "My system is simple. I wash the clothes, dry them, and put them in the sack."

To prove it, she untied it and pulled out a crumpled shirt, followed by a pair of crumpled shorts. Both clean. Both devastatingly wrinkled.

I asked if she had an iron.

She blinked. Like I’d asked her if she churned her own butter.

She offered to show me the bathroom. I declined. Suggested the kettle had probably boiled.

She excused herself, said she’d join me in a minute.

I went back to the kitchen. The kettle had boiled, cooled. I restarted it.

While the kettle hissed, I opened the fridge. The light was dim and flickering, like it didn’t really want to be involved. Shelves: empty, aside from a lone takeaway container and a few condiment packets—soy sauce, ketchup, mustard—spread out like a sad buffet.

At the bottom, one drawer. It resisted, then gave, like it knew what I was about to see and couldn’t, in good conscience, let it happen easily.

Inside: a collapsed half-lemon. And something behind it, inside a plastic grocery bag. I leaned in. Whatever it was sat on a polystyrene tray, the cellophane torn. Whatever color it had originally been, it was now green. And blue. With white specks. The mold bloomed into topography—soft craters, ridges, tiny peaks. Furry and unnatural. The texture of something halfway between science and myth.

I wasn’t sure if it was food or folklore.

That’s when she walked in.

She didn’t flinch—just looked at me, calm and unblinking.

"Oh," she said. "You found the cheese."

"Cheese?"

"Yes. From my boss. Last Christmas. I’d believed she didn’t like me, but she gave me such a beautiful cheese selection."

She looked at it, then at me.

"Yes. I know. But—it was kind."

"Katerina... it’s March. You’ve had this cheese rotting in your fridge for three months?"

"Not this Christmas, Robert. Last Christmas."

I placed the cheese back in the drawer. She relaxed.

I poured the tea. No milk. No lemon. Just the gesture of tea. It tasted like patience. Or like staying polite on a sinking ship.

We sat on the sofa. I scanned for conversation. The bookshelves were bare. A handful of Russian prog rock CDs. Nothing I could translate into small talk.

Then I saw the photo.

What looked like an older, mousier version of Katerina. Two children. Two smiling grandparents.

"Your sister and her kids?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "And these are my parents."

"Nice," I began.

"You’ll be meeting them next month."

"I didn’t know they were visiting Philadelphia."

"They’re not," she said. "They’re visiting my sister. In San Antonio."

"So... how will I meet them?"

"We will go there," she said. "They must meet the man I will marry."

There was a long pause, while it sank in that she wasn’t joking.

I don’t remember what I said after that.

I don’t remember leaving.

I don’t remember getting in the car, or starting the engine.

The next thing I remember was the state line: Delaware.

I was safe.

That night, I sent the email. "Dear Katerina."

I don’t recall what it said. Probably some version of "It’s not you, it’s me."

She never replied.

Years later, I searched her name.

Now teaching in the Midwest. Publishing often.

Probably still building systems.

Still surviving.

I wonder if her closet still hangs in her bedroom, and whether she was ever able to part with the cheese. Or if that was what unsettled me most—not the mess, but the method.

Small devastations. Polite exits. Essays that haunt a little—subscribe for more.

And for those of you who might have missed the first two parts of this story, here they are.

If you’ve read Eligible, Not Suitable, you’ll know that by the end of date five, I wasn’t expecting much from date six—except maybe closure. But then K—let’s call her Katerina, though that wasn’t her real name (something to do with discretion and a fraught departure from the motherland)—Katerina asked me to take my birthday off. She promised a surprise. We were going to New York. Tickets to a show, dinner somewhere grand. Just enough spectacle to make sense of the last two weeks of emotional dodgeball.

What I got instead was something else entirely.

The day began with a kind of quiet promise—sky washed pale blue, light catching the corners of buildings like it was trying to make them beautiful. Still, there was a knot blooming beneath my ribs, like the overture already bracing for the finale. Other than the destination, Katerina hadn't shared any details. The arrangement was that I'd pick her up on the U. Penn campus at 1 p.m.

I'd never been on the campus; you weren’t allowed there at night unless you were faculty or a student. She suggested I meet her outside Huntsman Hall, where her office was. Because the building had only just opened, her office was one of two Portacabins squatting inside like misfit modules beneath a cathedral dome.

I'd assumed that we’d be heading straight to the train station. Instead, she told me she wanted to show me her office. It was nicer than I expected, but unmistakably a Portacabin. She motioned for me to sit and turn away—"no peeking," she added, half-joking—and when I turned back, she was holding the birthday card she'd clearly just written, along with a large box beautifully wrapped, ribbons curled and trailing.

When I took it from her, it was surprisingly heavy. I opened the card first—a slightly offbeat blend of formal well-wishes and unexpected emotional specificity. Then, as I unwrapped the gift, she began flapping—hands fluttering, breath caught, a small step backward. Just a little. I paused until she recovered, then continued.

My gift was a very fancy 18lb chocolate cake. I know the weight because she proudly announced it as I scrambled for the appropriate response. She’d had no idea how to choose a gift, she confessed, so she’d wandered into a gourmet shop that sold extravagant chocolate tortes by the slice, and asked if she could just buy the entire thing. The sheer audacity of it—this massive, decadent monument to confusion and affection—took a moment to process. And yes, it was delicious, as my entire department could later confirm when I took it into work the next day.

I thanked her, telling her no one had ever bought me an 18lb chocolate cake before. She was giddy that I liked it. Gathering my thoughts, I asked why she’d chosen it.

Without hesitation: "Survival fat."

Now, I consider myself smarter than the average bear, but I had no idea what she meant.

"In Russia, we have long and hard winters," she said, gesturing to my midsection. "And we Russian women like our men to have some... survival fat. And you, Robert... you are too skinny!"

"And you've decided I need fattening up?"

"Yes," she said, beaming.

Rewrapping the cake for what I assumed would be a short journey to my car, she suddenly said, "Before we go, I'd like to show you the lecture halls where I teach."

"Sure," I said, thinking it would be quick.

It wasn’t. We left the cake behind, and I followed her down a series of hallways until we reached a modern lecture hall with raked seating. She peered inside, found it empty, and stepped confidently to the front. Then she began: listing every course she had ever taught in that room—titles, departmental codes, perhaps even in chronological order. Her delivery was meticulous, as though she were defending a thesis no one had asked for. I stood in the back, rows of empty seats watching her with more warmth than I could muster.

Next door, the lecture theater was identical. So was the ritual. Another roll call of courses, her tone unwavering, the cadence automatic. It was impressive. It was relentless. It was surreal.

At first, I thought it might be a way of showing pride—or transparency. But by the second hall, it felt like something else. An insistence on being seen, exactly and only as she chose to be. I nodded, smiled, and said nothing.

After ten more minutes, I gently suggested we should probably get going. She nodded, and we returned to her Portacabin. I'd assumed she’d been passing time until our train. That’s when she dropped the bombshell: there was no train. She hadn’t known how to plan a surprise like that, so she hadn’t.

If I were playing Emotional Bingo, I was ready to shout "House!" Frustrated, sad, confused—but empathy was making a strong late finish. I let the silence stretch.

Then she said she had another idea. She'd asked a friend about restaurants, and maybe we could go to a Thai place nearby. I just wanted to go home, but I found myself agreeing. We packed the birthday cake into my trunk and walked.

Imagine a cross between a restaurant and a Greyhound terminal—formica tables, buzzing fluorescent lights, stale oil in the air. It was cavernous, nearly empty—exactly the kind of weird that still made sense.

Every instinct said leave. But I had other things on my mind.

The meal was just as I expected: slow service, bad food, and the place was freezing. We kept our coats on. I just wanted it to end. But something nagged at me. I asked her—why would anyone recommend this place?

She said her friend had. I asked which friend. "You met her," she said. I hadn’t met any of her friends. "When?" I asked. "Earlier today."

"Do you remember the woman who held the door open to the lecture hall?"

Yes, I did. A diminutive Asian woman who looked barely out of high school. No pleasantries, no introduction. Just an awkward nod, like she was a cameo who hadn’t learned her lines.

"She’s your friend?"

"She’s a research assistant," Katerina said. "Just arrived from China. I asked if she knew of any restaurants."

"And this is her favorite?"

"No, this is the only one she's ever been to."

I was speechless. A rarity. I sat quietly while she paid, counting down to being back in the safety of my car.

Still silent, we stepped into the kind of cold that claws through fabric and skin. My car wasn’t far, and we walked in the same direction. I knew the route—her apartment was nearby. I'd dropped her there before. This time, I planned to say goodbye and drive off.

But I couldn’t let her walk home in that cold. I’d drive her. We didn’t need to talk. Just one last act of decency.

It wasn’t about cake or curriculum anymore—I just didn’t want to feel alone. Not that day. Maybe not ever. Maybe trying—just showing up—was its own kind of survival. A loop I’d unknowingly traced since the day she explained her partner selection process—when she picked me not because I was "the one," but because I was number eight. And I stayed. Because even absurd effort was better than none. Because hope, too, needs a kind of survival fat.

I’d never been inside her apartment before. I’d always just dropped her at the door. That night, we drove there in silence, and when I parked, I waited for her to get out so I could say a final, quiet goodbye.

And then she turned to me and asked if I wanted to come in for a hot drink before heading home. I hesitated, teetering between a clean getaway and a stubborn curiosity. After everything, I needed to know: what kind of world did someone like Katerina retreat into?

I know I said this was a two-part story, but this feels like a good place to pause.

If you're as curious as I was, you'll have to come back tomorrow for the final installment.

For stories that linger—quiet moments, awkward grace, unexpected resilience. Introspective, emotionally layered essays that find meaning in the everyday.

The year was 2002, and the silence in my house no longer echoed—just hummed. My divorce had been finalized the day after 9/11. That fall, the world grieved—and I joined it, feeling everything and nothing all at once. We’d weathered a lot together—fertility issues, repeated relocations across the UK, my father’s long decline. Then came a transatlantic reboot with little support, as we tried to outrun a past we didn’t yet realize was catching up. In the end, what we carried cracked us open.

By winter, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to date again—or just desperate to feel something.

Friends had promised introductions. Each had someone in mind—a friend of a friend, a co-worker, a cousin. But when it came time to follow through, every prospect vanished. One had moved. One had married. One had come out. Another just stopped returning calls. It was like stepping onto a stage and realizing the rest of the cast had quit.

So I tried something new: Match.com.

Back then, online dating still felt vaguely illicit. People spoke of it the way they mentioned frozen embryos or offshore accounts. Amazon still only sold books. Most of us were still writing checks. But the internet was beginning to stretch its limbs. Why not look for love?

I filled out the questionnaire, uploaded a photo that was neither flattering nor dishonest, and waited.

My first match was K, a tenured psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a few years younger, but not enough to feel strange. Our emails were fluid. She asked smart questions. Responded thoughtfully. It felt like something.

She suggested ice skating for our first date. I checked the rink’s hours, but she assured me it would be open. When we got there, though, the gates were locked. It turned out she’d simply felt it should be open.

We walked. It was bitterly cold—the kind that climbs through your sleeves and settles in your spine. She didn’t seem to notice.

She apologized with a shrug and suggested we try again the next night.

Part of me—an increasingly louder part—was screaming run away. But another part, quieter and more afraid, whispered that if I bailed now, I might not try again. So I said yes.

As we wandered, she shared her “partner selection process.” Her term, not mine. She’d started with 2500 men within 25 miles of the university. Narrowed it by age: no more than ten years older. That left 225. Then came education—must have a Master’s or PhD. That brought it to 27.

“I have an MBA,” I offered.

“Of course you do,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

I smiled. “I feel honored to have made the top of your list.”

She blinked. “You’re number eight.”

“Did you meet the other seven?”

“Yes,” she said. “They were not suitable.”

She wasn’t being cruel—just clinical. As if I were the eighth résumé on a shortlist. It wasn’t unkind, exactly. It was logical. And after everything I’d been through, I understood the appeal of logic. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that I wasn’t quite a person to her yet—just an input in an algorithm.

We ended the night with a brisk goodbye. And then went on to have five more dates.

In our emails and evenings, there was a matter-of-factness to K—a way she had of appearing only lightly tethered to this plane. As if she were simultaneously present in fifteen others, playing speed chess or coding a new world order. I found her idiosyncrasies both endearing and exhausting—often in the same breath.

Once, she told me she loved dance—as a spectator. I got us tickets to a Broadway-style history of dance at the Walnut Theater. She was spellbound, barely remembering to breathe. At intermission, I turned to ask how she was enjoying it, but she grabbed my hand and urgently gestured that we needed air.

We made our way outside, into the crowd of smokers. Then, suddenly, she began jumping up and down—repeatedly, for about a minute. When she stopped, she held my arms and said, matter-of-factly, that she sometimes had to do that when she got overstimulated.

Later, I would learn the term “flapping.” That night, I was just grateful no one seemed to notice.

Another time, she mentioned that her diet mostly came from vending machines. I thought it was a joke. But over the next two weeks, I learned she meant it: soda, candy bars, energy drinks.

I’ve always been drawn to quirky people—those wired a little differently. Maybe it’s because I’m wired a little differently myself. Looking back, many of her quirks suggest she may have been on the autism spectrum. I didn’t see it then, but it makes me feel a complicated tenderness now—for how much I didn’t understand.

At the end of one date—another long walk in the cold—she casually mentioned needing to get divorced. I stopped walking. Her profile had said she was single.

When I questioned her about it, she simply said she felt single.

She’d married someone while at Moscow State. He’d built a promising internet business that had threatened a mafia-run industry. They fled the country, going separate ways for safety. She hadn’t seen him since.

Then there was the night she was an hour late meeting me at the university bookstore. This was pre-smartphone ubiquity, so I just waited. When she arrived, arms full of books and papers, her first words were: “Robert, this is your fault.”

She explained she’d been in the psychology library—researching me. “I think your many homosexual friends stem from unresolved maternal conflict… I believe you are a latent homosexual.” She gestured to her stack of papers like a prosecuting attorney presenting evidence.

I asked, calmly, “What do you want me to say, K?”

A week earlier, she’d struggled to understand how I—a straight man—could have close gay friends. I’d explained my involvement in my company’s LGBTQ+ affinity group. But it hadn’t landed.

There was no dramatic goodbye—just a quiet understanding that it wasn’t going anywhere.

Still, I wasn’t ready to stop. Not because I thought she was “the one.” But because I needed to prove to myself that I could try. Even if it was awkward. Even if it was absurd. Trying meant I wasn’t stuck anymore.

They weren’t bad dates. They just weren’t a beginning.

But just when I thought things were coming to a natural close, she told me to take my birthday off. She had a surprise planned. A day of adventure in New York, she said.

What I got instead was a birthday I’ll never forget—and not for the reasons you’d hope.

But that’s tomorrow’s story.

True stories. Quiet turns. Lasting echoes. Subscribe for more like this one.

This narrated version of ‘Bridge Beyond’ was released to celebrate a milestone—200 subscribers.It’s my way of saying thank you. Not with performance, but with presence.

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