Ralph Pullins

 It is Saturday morning in Feburary and here in Michigan it is clear and cold.  The sun has risen a while ago but there are still streaks of red in the sky, lighting up the clouds, high and wispy.  I am standing by my car after completing some chore, cleaning something or retrieving something and I am slow breathing, trying to calm my heart. It has been a difficult week. My son has a fight tonight, full contact MMA, his first, and I am full of conflict and anxiety about it. Not because I don't believe he will do well, because I know he is as prepared as anyone can be for such a thing, but because I am a father and I feel like I should be protecting him from the violence of the world. Even though he turns nineteen in a few weeks and is stronger both physically and mentally than I could ever hope to be, he is still my boy, and I am scared for him. My other son is fifteen and this week was embroiled in some stupid conflict at school, a misunderstanding that had led to meetin...

In the stifling heat my breath comes fast and heavy. What the fuck am I even doing here? What the fuck am I trying to accomplish? I'm sitting on the mat, maybe dying, a forty something dad playacting at being a fighter. This is my mid-life crisis, this is so, so stupid. This has to be the end for me, assuming I can get my heartbeat under control, assuming I don't just peg out here on the mat.  I can't do this anymore. "It's okay man, it's okay, you just need to breathe through it. You're fine, you're okay." The voice of my training partner, gentle and kind. My partner, the maniac that drove me to such a state, that I think I might die, he sits next to me and shows me how to breathe, how to calm my body. He teaches and guides me through it, and in a few minutes I actually am okay, the panic settles down, and maybe this isn't my last class after all. "You're alright?  Okay. Now lets get back to work."  And back to work we go. There ...

You have painted over everything and now the room is white, a clean slate, a fresh start and you sit in the middle of the floor content, but then it appears, a stain bleeding through, lurid, a violation. You go to the paint store, you buy better paint, different paint, stronger, and you lay it on thick and true. It covers the stain and you are content. And then one day you go into the room and the stain is back, like it never left, like you hadn't painted at all and you go back to the paint store and you get the best paint you can, the most stain resistant, the most sealant, the absolute top of the line, and you bring it to the front and the clerk eyes you nervously.  He says, "You must have something terrible to cover up, huh?" You go back to the room, you paint again with the top of the line stuff, and before you can even feel content this time, before you even get to sit down to rest, the stain, it shows, and you keep painting and it keeps coming back. You realize it...

 Dude I went to see Dr Strange w the fam this weekend and it was pretty good.  I always liked Sam Raimi's style, and it worked pretty well here, w the incorporated horror-adjacent elements.  I dont know about the MCU gettign involved in multiverse nonsense tho; it removes the stakes a bit, no, like oh shit Spider-Man died.  welp I guess were just gonna have to go and get a different one from an another universe eh?  thats why I bailed on the Flash show; all that time travel nonsense always sucks ass   Yo Man you gotta get back to me and assure me that all gun people arent absolute fucking lunatics, okay?  or are you too busy yanking it to the latest issue of AKs and Hoes?  I bet its that, ya fuckin perv Oh shit I saw a movie called Men tthe other day and it is absolutely batshit bananas.  the dude that did Ex Machina and Annihilation made it.  Alex Garland.  its a bit artsy in spots and absolutely gross in others, but it stayed with...

So I have been sitting on this one for quite a while, the reason being is that I feel it is publishable in my humble opinion, and if I post it here it is no longer, since most journals and magazines and whathave you make it extremely clear that they only want original unpublished works, and my having posted this on my website counts in a way as publishing.  But I reasoned that since I'm not subbing it anywhere anyway, who cares if I render it unpublishable? I wrote this a while ago, and I quite like it.  I have sent it to a few people, family and friends, and other untrustworthy folk, and have gotten a mixed response, which I am certainly used to by now.   I identify quite a bit with Mr Millar, in that I am not a serious man either, and I tend to sing while I work and make up stories if my mind is left idle too long. Oh, and I named him after my high school principal for no particular reason other than it amused me at the time to do so. Anyway, this is Millar's Song ...

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I ...