In 2007 or so I was sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by the following items:

• Ruler
• Graph paper
• Pencils
• Erasers
• Calculator

It was time to plan a new fenced area for my dogs. Something high enough that the smallest dog couldn’t get over. She was the one that could jump so high that I often asked her if she had a rocket launcher in her ass. The lighting was poor in my kitchen. I was hovered. Hovering. Hunched. Glasses on. Hair on top of my head. Pencil stuck in said hair on top of my head. I’d been at it for hours.

He entered the house downstairs, slammed the door, lumbered (while heavily mouth breathing) up the stairs, stood at the top of them, adjusted his bib overhauls. Just stood there. I stared at him. Why was he there? Why did I let that mass of a man into my home? My environment? My psyche? He told racist jokes and laughed heartily as I actively abhorred him for it. He casually ran into the ground every single organization I belonged to that had brought me peace or direction or helpful information. He rambled on with philosophies of life that made no sense to me. He spoke of a childhood that it was amazing he’d survived. He did so with the clarity of someone who had been in years of effective therapy, but actually did nothing about it and simply walked around fully broken.

I didn’t even know where he lived at that point. His truck? An actual home somewhere?

And I didn’t know where his wife had gone. Last time I’d seen her she had vomited rage over the fact that he’d disappeared again and then given me a long description of the many ways she was going to move on with her life, all while chain smoking Marlboro Reds.

I closed my eyes, lowered my head onto the graph paper on the table in front of me and actually considered how delicious it would be to nap right there even though it was only 10am.

“What’s all this?” he asked, walking heavily (as if he could walk any other way) to the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from me.

“Mmmmm,” I groaned.

He pulled on the pile of graph paper until I lifted my head just enough for him to pull it toward him. I rested my forehead on the table while listening to him shuffle the papers, mouth breath, grunt.

“What is this?” he asked.

“I’m building a fenced area with gates for the dogs.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Right there,” I said, lifting a finger and pointing it toward the window and into the back yard.

“But there’s nothing there,” he said.

“Well, I have to plan it,” I mumbled.

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, because I have to,” I mumbled.

“How long you been sittin’ here?” he asked.

“All morning? Starting last night? Forever?” I whispered into the table.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled under his breath, as he shuffled through the papers again.

He got up, went further into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, clanked around until he found his favorite cup (the big black one with a white outline of a hand giving someone the finger), slammed the cabinet shut, set his cup on the counter, pulled the carafe from the coffee maker, filled his favorite cup with coffee, clanged the carafe back into the coffee maker, then leaned heavily against the kitchen counter while he slurped his coffee and sighed.

I lifted my head and stared at the wall. He lumbered back to he seat across from me, so I stared at him. He slowly shook his head.

“Last week…” he started.

“Do I want to hear this?” I asked.

“Last week I was hired to stain a deck for some rich people down at the lake. I gave them a list of the supplies I would need and told them to have it there. I’ve never stained a deck before. But there’s YouTube, and the folks at Home Depot tell ya what to do anyway. So I get there and they’d gotten all of the supplies except the big mop lookin’ brush to put the stain on. I didn’t have my phone because it’s out of minutes anyway. So I couldn’t call nobody to tell them I needed the big mop lookin’ thing. And I ain’t got enough money to pay my gas home and go get the brush too. So I went into their lake house, found the bathroom, got some towels and used them to put the stain on. It looked really good when I was done. They called me and told me that when they was down there a few days later.”

“What about their towels?” I asked.

“They didn’t say nothin’ about their towels.”

“But…”

“I don’t give a shit about their towels. They don’t neither because they’re rich people. Plus it looked real good.”

“But…”

“Now I know how to stain a deck,” he said, with a smile.

“What if…”

“No.”

“But…”

“No.”

“I’m…”

“No you’re not.”

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

He stood up, pulled every last piece of paper from the table, wadded them up in his pork shoulder sized hands, walked to the trash can and threw them in.

“I gotta go,” he said.

He walked to the stairs and grabbed the hand rail because. He’d once told me he used all stair handrails because he was “afraid my fat ass will fall down these fuckers and nobody’ll ever get me up.” He lumbered (while heavily mouth breathing again) down the stairs.

“Fuck,” I said to the room, then put my forehead back down on the table.

Minutes later I got up. Walked through the living room. Let myself out onto the porch, closed the door behind me, walked to the rail, and wished I was up a few stories higher so I could throw myself off and just get the whole thing over with. Instead, I contemplated the ridiculously painful injuries I would sustain from a suicide attempt from just one story up.

“Fuck,” I said to the trees across the road.

I grabbed and squeezed the wooden railing with rage, wishing I was strong enough to crush the railing with my hands.

I turned, let myself back into the house, went through the living room, and stopped to stare at the remaining items on the kitchen table:

• Ruler
• Pencils
• Erasers
• Calculator

Everything in me wanted to retrieve the graph paper from the trash. Everything in me wanted to go to bed. Everything in me wanted to take time to gather up the ruler, pencils, erasers and calculator and carefully place them exactly where they belonged in the desk in the office that was placed in the room in the exact position that I swore made me experience the most inner creativity.

“Fuck,” I said to the table.

I went to the trash, rifled through the wadded up graph paper until I found the one with the basic measurements of the area I wanted to fence, and left the others in the trash. I walked quickly past the kitchen table, grabbing my purse along the way. I went down the stairs and out the door.

He was sitting in the driveway in his truck.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Tryin’ to convince myself to not go get any drugs,” he said.

“Don’t,” I said.

“It ain’t that easy,” he said.

“Yes it is. Just don’t.”

He rolled up his window, started his truck and left.

I got into my truck, started it, and followed him out of the driveway and down the road to the first stop sign.

He turned right. Not good. I knew everything there was to know about turning right onto that road and scoring drugs about 15 miles later.

I turned left, then turned left again and followed the path to Home Depot so they could tell me how to build a fence for my dogs.

The fence still stands.

Him? For now, he still stands as well.

And because of him I more often than not simply grab my purse, get in my truck, start it up and go do a bunch of shit I’ve never done before.