There had been other girls since Gabriella, Lori, and since Annika last summer. Those three were the rare few I had imagined my future with. The kind of girl you dream about dreaming with, about tomorrows—together. Debbie was not that kind; she had been my neighbor when I lived in those crummy apartments across from campus. Because of my loneliness the night after the two Janes left for Vancouver I needed her, and she somehow needed me. Then a few weeks later she falls for a guy from Ft. Peirce who took a group of us boating on the Intracoastal Waterway on his father’s power yacht, and soon he was her new boyfriend.
Excerpt from, Mexican Sunset
September 4, 2023
The Guide
September 4, 2023
Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World is my Next book to be released.
T Turning to pleasure, even briefly, to satisfy a thirst that is never quenched, I chose shallow alternatives to real intimacy—barbaric acts of desperation. Some form of primal violence against a higher moral order. Wild kingdom stuff that leaves me hollow and endlessly craving romantic love and instead settling for an unfulfilling counterfeit version repeatedly.
T here were always possibilities. I think about tomorrow’s party in Palm Beach, those palatial homes on the water, and the castles of Manalapan and Gulf Stream. Princes and princesses of the kingdoms and realms where I might have belonged if life had been different. And still, I imagine myself somedays living that bigger life. My fantasies sometimes go too far, only giving way to darker and disappointing versions of who I was; hope taken over by fears—when dream castles crumble into the vortex of doubt.
I remember when I was eleven, nearly drowning at the bottom of that waterfall, then being spit out by the current. I had been spared. It’s now 1:00 a.m. and a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon of my mind’s eye where I see the swirling energy from the stars, behind the shadow of the big cedar like in the painting. My pulse begins to slow. My fatigue takes over and I finally drift off to the wonder of those gigantic translucent waves leading the storm like an army taking a beach. That memory imprinted from early memories on the beach with my dad, monster waves, and the relentless and unstoppable cycles of nature.
Excerpt from, A Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World.
