Welcome back.

All that happens must happen simultaneously.

I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop. I am one of eleven people inside of the coffee shop. Eleven if and only if you count the gentlemen in the bathroom whose notebook computer is a single table in front of me and if you count the gentlemen who is, at present time, but not at all times, the barista of the coffee shop. Right now the barista of the coffee shop is the barista of a coffee shop as well as a father and a brother and a son but he is also running laps around a track, riding his bicycle, playing basketball, having premarital sex, having sex with his wife, having sex with a woman who is not his wife. In fact, all of the people in the coffee shop are doing and not doing exactly what they are doing at precisely right now. I am taking a drink of my coffee, is is Colombian French Roast, and I am also sleeping in my bed. Two people have just walked out of the coffee shop although the items that they brought with them are still here. One of the people who left is the person whose notebook computer is directly in front of my table. Alongside his notebook computer are criminal justice books. One of the people who had walked out of the coffee shop but left the things he brought with him has returned, but he is not the person who left his notebook computer unattended. While the man whose computer is unattended left the coffee shop he was also leaving the bar, leaving his house, leaving the classroom, leaving his wife, leaving his family for the first time, leaving for Europe, and leaving the earth all at the same time. There are but nine patrons of the coffee shop now, myself and the barista still included. The middle-aged women in the north-east corner of the room are having a discussion about the PTO in their area but they are also participating in a PTO meeting, visiting a classy restaurant, observing their children playing with Lego building blocks, and filing papers at the office. I am sipping my coffee again but also discussing with a friend the fact that I have thrown out the manual to the toaster and subsequently burned her toast, and I am driving my car across state lines to visit family in Illinois, and I am going to Six Flags amusement park with friends. A girl is discussing the hearing loss of her father thanks to working at General Motors, time spent in the military and time spent at the rifle range. Her father is presently working at General Motors, participating in a military campaign and practicing his aim at the Field & Stream range just outside of Saginaw, Michigan.

At the doctor’s office I am in the waiting room but also waiting for my birth and death, waiting for my Cephalexin prescription at the grocery store, waiting in the rain in a cul-de-sac for the girl I want to date, waiting at a stop light, and waiting to pounce out from behind the wall in order to scare my roommate. In the waiting room I am asked to fill out forms and therefore I am filling out forms that ask me if I’ve ever done any drugs and if so how frequently and which ones and do I smoke, which I say yes to, and do I drink and what drinks do I like (i.e. whiskey or beer) and how often do I drink them but I am also at the bar drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette while attending a going away party for a coworker, and I have also quit smoking because the good doctor has recommended that I do just that, and I am smoking again because money is tight and despite the cost, five dollars per pack, I purchase them because my stress level is so high. The doctor informs me that my BMI is not especially endearing and that I am overweight. He is practicing here but, he is also a medical student at Michigan State University, but he is riding his motorcycle straight to California right now and he is driving his Toyota Prius through downtown Chicago for a shopping trip with his wife. The doctor says that my weight has amassed around my belly and he doesn’t believe that I don’t usually smoke marijuana, that really it was a one time deal, but while I was smoking marijuana that one time I was also cuddling with my high school sweetheart, crying in first grade when I was frustrated with the teacher, viewing my picture in the hometown newspaper after a photographer snapped me up on film and a journalist wrote an article about third graders and colonial days, and lastly I am at my grandfather’s funeral which was in June, after school had ended. My cousin flew in from Florida for the funeral but he was also at the hospital for the birth of his niece, at the chapel for his sister’s wedding, at his father’s side after his first stroke, and driving me home from Sanford so that I could go watch professional wrestling with friends. The doctor’s name is Dr. Tom and there is a woman in the waiting room who is waiting at 3:35 to see him at 3:40 but she is also seeing Dr. Tom, walking the streets of this city, traveling with her first son who would later be abused by his father, and she is grieving over the loss of her mother which she did not learn of until after her mother had been deceased for fourteen months. Her son, who was abused, is alive and well in a foster family but also living with his mother in that one bedroom efficiency apartment on the lower east side, and he is with the authorities because he has been removed from the care of his biological parents for their negligence, and he is a grown man going back on his word to his boyfriend and meeting somebody else at the bar when he said he was going to visit his foster mother. The doctor prescribes me a prescription of my infected arm though I had hoped for amputation, to at least make it fashionable, but as he prescribes my prescription he also prescribes Xanax to a patient suffering from depression, while prescribing himself sleeping medication because insomnia still plagues him, and prescribing medication for erectile disfunction.

Refilling my coffee mug at a coffee shop in Baltimore, MD, I am reminded that it has been hours since I have eaten any sort of substance but even now I am eating. I am eating a lobster dinner with my good friend’s for my 23rd birthday and it is their gift to me, I am eating pizza in New York City while on tour with my friends, I am eating crab ravioli at a ritzy restaurant located on the river with an ex-girlfriend and her father and step-mother and her brothers and sisters and even now we are still dating though I am presently single and although I’m presently single I’m simultaneously married but also going through a divorce all while maintaining a necessary crush on multiple girls.

When you are sleeping I am staring at the nape of your neck. When you are sleeping I am staring at the eyelids that have not yet been washed clean of the days makeup. When you are sleeping I am awake and reading The Slaughterhouse-Five by the deceased and alive and writing Kurt Vonnegut. When you are sleeping I am sleeping in a bed by myself because we haven’t met yet even though you’re presently sleeping in my bed. When you are sleeping in your bed and I am sleeping in my bed you are awake kissing the tip of my nose with your hand on my hip trying to wake me up because you awoke from a dream thinking of nothing but sex. When you are sleeping in your bed and I am awake and alone in my bed you are awake by my side in a bed that we both share, which we received as a gift from your parents as a wedding present while we moved into our first house. While we were living in that house together I was at a coffee shop drinking Colombia French Roast and you were attending college courses and I was listening to my favorite band play at a tiny venue in Detroit while you were biting your fingernails and I was driving my car home from the house of my first serious girlfriend and you were moving into your first apartment. When I am sleeping you are at art museum but when you finally sleep I am alone at the art museum, just as you were before me. And when I am sleeping and you are at the art museum I am also at the art museum.

You and I, we share a mutual friend. When you met this friend I was asleep but I was also awake meeting this friend and you were also asleep but you were also getting married to that man you dated after college. You met that man when you were on a business trip in Okinawa but while on that business trip you were also vacationing in the Canadian province of British Columbia in the city of Vancouver with your boyfriend of the time who just so happened to cheat on you but it ended up being irrelevant because when he cheated on you he was also making love to you and you were also trying on your wedding gown after the man in Okinawa proposed to you and you were asleep in my bed after the retribution sex you had no choice but to commit after your serious boyfriend cheated on you but while you were sleeping we were having sex and while we were having sex I was still an embryo growing inside the belly of my mother, who at the time was a child and a grandmother and an aunt and a wife because she too got married, on the same day that you got married and on the same day that I got married. In fact we were all married, by we, I, of course mean, my mother and father, you and the man you met in Okinawa, your ex-boyfriend who took a trip with you to Vancouver who cheated on you causing you to have sex with me, and I also got married to a girl that I met one sunny afternoon while she was walking her dog through the park but she was also sleeping in the same bed with her younger sister when she was seven years old.

When I met the woman that I married while she was walking her dog on a sunny day it was also raining and I was having sex with you after you returned from Vancouver where your boyfriend cheated on you and I was having sex with my wife and she got pregnant that time we were having sex but she was, at the same time, three months pregnant and my mother was pregnant with me at that time all while my grandmother was pregnant with my mother and the mother of my father was pregnant with my father and she was also pregnant with his brothers. And in the times that the following people were pregnant my sister was pregnant and you were pregnant with the child of the man you met in Okinawa. The man from Okinawa, whom you met when you were on a business trip but also sleeping in my bed after the already mentioned time, was born on the same day that I was born and the same day that you were born and on the same day as my father and his brothers and, of course, my mother. And let us not forget that he was born on the same day as my brother as well as your brother. All of the hospitals in all of the world were incredibly busy.

I wounded my knee but I was also drinking coffee in my favorite coffee shop but also, at that very moment, drinking orange-mango tea with the blonde haired girl that I lived with for a short period in time in the fall of 2007 and I am still living with her now and she is also living in New York and in Taiwan and at her parent’s home in a rural Michigan town. When I lived with the blonde haired girl I was getting tea and you were in Okinawa and the woman’s son who went back on his word to his boyfriend was diagnosed with HIV and we were all sleeping. While we were sleeping I was awake and at the grocery store waiting for a prescription that I ended up getting for free and I was waiting in line to collect my check from unemployment. I spent that money on my wife. When I spent that money on my wife I spent money on you and I, us, so that we could have safe sex, and I spent money on a book for my brother that I thought he would enjoy. When I went shopping for my brother’s birthday present I shopped for the birthday presents of every being that I ever bought a present for. When I paid for my brother’s birthday present I paid for the gift that I was too scared to give to you.

When I was too scared to give you the gift I bought you I was also too scared to say that I loved you and I was also missing you and I was getting married while you were getting married to the man from Okinawa and my brother was married on that very same day. My parents and grandparents were married on this day as well. And the very next day we all died. I died of old age, my grandfather died of a stroke, my grandmother died of pneumonia, my mother passed away of lung cancer and regrettably my father passed away from cancer of the liver. You passed away of old age on the same day that my family passed away. Your husband from Okinawa passed away on that very day because humankind had passed away on that very day and he was stricken with loneliness. Your brother passed away after being murdered by a serial killer who was never caught. Your parents died in their sleep. While your parents were dying in their sleep you and I were asleep in my bed after the first and only time we made love. And while we made love your boyfriend cheated on you and you married a man from Okinawa. I married a woman I met in the park on a sunny afternoon while she walked her dog, which was a labrador retriever named Comet. Comet died on the day that my wife died on the day that you died and on the day that I died and on the day that your husband, your family, and my family died. Comet died on the day that my childhood dog died, which coincided with Christmas day, which coincided with the Ides of March, New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter Sunday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Boxer Day, World War’s I and II, the war in Vietnam, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Let us not forget, July 4th 1985, President’s Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Hanukkah (each day), and more Holidays than I care to list.

On the day that your casket was lowered into the ground my casket was lowered into the ground and my grandfather’s casket was lowered into the ground and there was a boy there who played the trumpet while two other uniformed men folded a flag and placed it in his grave. When we were buried I was getting coffee and drinking tea and working at my workbench making a guitar and you were in the classroom learning, in the classroom teaching, on a train to Washington D.C. and crying. On our death days we find comfort in our birthdays and vice versa and on those very days were are sipping coffee together the morning after the one and only time we were together and we were both witnessing the births of our first children and we were kicking soccer balls and reading scrapbooks and taking final examinations and graduating college. On the day that I died, the day that you died, the day that your husband and my wife died, the day that our parents died and the day that mankind died we are living every moment of our lives.