Seed NewsvineThere is a reason for this too. If you are a reader of my blog. I've always asked you to visit my sponsors. Well in this case I don't request that at all. I want you to PLEASE leave comments. I want your feedback, I don't care what it is, just offer your thoughts.
What is Mantrap about? It's a story of a man whom for all his apparent street smarts is used by a foreigner for the soul purpose of having an baby and leaving him. Due to possible legal concerns that could arise from this, Mantrap will most likely have all the names and locations changed.
So with that I offer you this small excerpt from the chapter, "Younger Days" chronicling a time in my life:
Yeah my list of hundreds of girlfriends was in fact mostly a list of girl friends. I was famous for wasting my time talking to really beautiful girls that really only needed to talk to me about music and innocuous things but never to date. What guy hasn’t gone through this experience? I’d say half my list of girls were those that put me in the friend zone and I was too stupid to realize I was never breaking through.
In terms of male relationships, I had a few buddies. I wasn’t blessed with wit and the lack of guy
friends in my earlier youth meant I wasn’t entirely in the know of how to
manage friendships. For instance in my Sophomore year of school I met Dana. This guy was an oddball. Everyone thought he was cool by his ability
to make them laugh. He had a charisma
that made him excel at using people for his own gain. This took time to evolve
so early on I was his sounding board. So
I thought I was lucky when we became a duo of sorts. He latched onto my odd interests and I was
glad to have a friend. My kick was the
spy lifestyle. I was into spies and
detectives. Not the hokey James Bond of the 70’s through 90’s but
the throwback spy.
For me spies and detectives were the ultimate in what men could be. It required you to be utterly self-assured of whom you were because the world around you could never know who was on the inside.
To say a spy is a man that lives a double life is too easy. Sure a man such is this is a cool loner. Sure he is alone too, but a spy lives an isolated life by choice; in order to be free of confusion. Regardless of their setting they could be in a crowd but alone in their mind. That isolated individuality allows them to focus on seeing the world around them on a deeper level. They could be married and their wife wouldn’t even know them. Every word uttered by a spy is meant to protect him, his double speak keeps him safe from harm while communicating. The lexicon of a spy is fueled by shrewd intellect.
Hollywood rarely captures the true essence of a spy. These men live the greatest life of sacrifice, they do what they do for money and their country and if they are caught behind enemy lines, they are lost in time because their own country will deny they exist. Ultimately the cool loner lifestyle has little if any appeal outside of a movie or book. The real men living these lives are stoic. Somehow nature programmed them to be unfeeling and without the same need for human companionship they rest of us enjoy.
While in my opinion the hardest job in the world is that of a spy, there is also the cold hearted view detectives take on the world. Similarly to a spy, these men are no nonsense. Of course they have seen it all; in fact they also see things everyone else overlooks. Oh yes, they ‘see’ it all. A detective won’t look at a woman, he’ll hear her words. Not just the words she says but the force of those words. He knows if she believes in her words. Detectives will watch you cross the room and see the power in your step, your confidence or lack thereof.
These are the men I admired at age 16 and Dana appreciated my perspective and began to share in my interests of spies and detectives. He was the funny guy, I was the wise guy. For all his outgoing behavior, I think I wanted to be more like him and my attempts to be outgoing fell flat. All I was good at was expressing my romantic view of the world to women. Dana never lifted a finger to help me improve my social standing; he never advised me or gave anything back to our relationship as friends. He was a taker, and not the type that just took a sweatshirt or hat or favorite album through the act of ‘borrowing’ without the intention of ever returning it. No he stole. He stole skates to jewelry. Nothing was beyond his immoral grasp. Once I found my class ring in his bed room on a piece of coral on his dresser. It had been gone almost a year. It should have been funny, “Hey, my class ring!” His response? “Oh yeah, I found that in my driveway. I didn’t know it was yours.”
Why did I put up with this? Well, I didn’t. Over time our duo status was fractured again and again. But he was the closest I had for a guy friend. We never shared secrets, I never asked big favors. I just needed him to hang out with. Still, I really expanded his world through my varied interests and I’m certain that was my appeal to him as a friend.
Then one day I met Mike. Mike was a ladies man. Yes at 17 he was a guy that as far as I could tell slept with countless girls. He was always telling the most amazing stories such as how a guy tried to give him a ride once and made a pass at him so he punched the guy from the passenger seat, then got out of the car and took a two-by-four to his windshield. These stories were common and I always wondered if they were true, after all they never happened with me. Well sorta. I have to say in my interest of having Mike as a friend I was always looking for something to vandalize or steal for the sake of doing something in the name of ‘fun’. Yes, I was an idiot for thinking in these terms, although I did have my limits and for as idiotic as my behavior was I knew not to do things that hurt people.
So it may come as a shock to you that I met Mike on a church ski trip. On the bus we got to talking and unlike Dana, Mike and I talked about girls, love and romance. Mike was the friend Dana never could be. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to introduce Mike to Dana because I felt it may hurt my better relationship with Mike. Sure enough when the day came that I got us all together to hang out I became the third wheel. not always but enough that if we were making anyone the butt of jokes – I was the one. Sure enough I resented it too, but we had enough good times that I accepted it. The three of us were inseparable though. I kept a diary in a time when a guy keeping a diary would be unheard of. I was writing my diary, not typing. We’d be at the beach and I’d be on a blanket penning my resentment for how they had ignored me on the boardwalk earlier. Or I’d be retelling how Mike cheated on his girlfriend with yet another girl that wasn’t half as beautiful as his girlfriend. All the while I was thinking of my ideal couple Chip and Beth at the school cafeteria remembering how I wanted a girl like her. That Beth-like girl I whom would be there for me at the lunch table every day. Sure enough I was at the beach laying in the sun with girls all around me, but I was thinking I just want ONE girl. I won’t cheat on her. Just give me one girl God. Yeah, I prayed. It was a different time in my life. I’m not that boy anymore; even then I recall something Mike said to me one night after I struck out with an older woman that had every intention of sleeping with me until I made her cry and go back to her husband for the sake of love. Mike said, “You have so much power over women, if you’d just learn how to use it.” Mike if you are reading this now, I learned how to use it. But I’m still that dumb ass that won't cheat or make someone else cheat.
I must digress a moment. Years later I met a girl named Lisa
Butler. She was married. For months we
worked 30 feet from each other. She grew
to really want me. She was one the of most sexiest creatures I ever crossed paths with. I was truly a dumb
ass. We made a date a year later when
she was most likely going to leave her husband. But the date… it wasn’t a date for
kissing. At least I didn’t think
so. It was a date so that everyone could
see me out with an amazingly attractive and sexy looking woman. A friend date of mutual benefit. Sure I wanted her, but she was married. For me, I wished she was single but figured
marriage was holy ground you didn’t step on.
That night we ended up sitting on the edge of my bed. It was totally by accident, I was grabbing something
and we would go out. Or… as we sat a
moment and caught each others eyes… we could kiss. And if we did – well we were
already on my bed. We would have had sex
– a long time coming. Well, that gaze of
her eyes took my breath away, literally.
If there was ever a moment of weakness this was it. And I must admit, if she leaned into kiss me,
I was a goner. But she didn’t. She was waiting for me to kiss her. You must believe me, I was there, she wanted
me to make the first move. And that
suddenly I broke her stare as a train of thought running at mach speed gave me
cause to leave her be. I thought of all
things, her husband. I remember for
months beating myself up saying, “I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to my wife.” Ironic that years later someone would do that to my wife.
But as I mentioned… I digress. Mike was my mentor in understanding women. I understood love and romance. Mike, he brought me up to speed on how women tick. Yes the sexual knowledge I lacked was Mike’s area of expertise. I was truly astonished at his ability to fuck just about any girl he wanted. I resented some of his conquests as I felt they’d have been better off with me, but they never seen me. They just saw Mikes charm. I was a wingman at best.
As for Mike, I truly liked him as a friend. He was to me a lost soul that didn’t have a great family life and at the age of 17 he didn’t have a home. My own father let Mike live with us for the better part of a year. I drove Mike to his school in Elkton Maryland and then drove myself to school only to pick him later. On weekends Mike, Dana and I would drive to the beach. We didn’t have money so we slept in the car. For kicks we had a BB gun and parked behind grocery stores and shot out the street lights so we would have darkness to sleep; laughing of course as we did it. Our drug was stealing signs. Once in our Senior year of school we drove to Rehoboth Beach in May. The summer season had not yet started. The beach was quiet. To make it even more desolate, it was a Sunday night. It was 11:00 PM. There was NO ONE on the boardwalk but us. Innocuously I walked along with Mike as Dana trailed us by 20 feet. I was talking about Spider-Man of all things and Mike didn’t understand. So I jumped up and tapped the Boardwalk 5 & 10 sign only to find it swaying loosely back and forth upon hitting it. But as I dropped to the ground I slyly said to Mike, “Spider-Man.” And he looked at me and said, “Yeah, Spider-Man..” Boom! We looked back and there was Dana picking up the Boardwalk 5 & 10 sign off of the boardwalk and attempting to tuck this 18 foot behemoth of the a sign under his armpit like a surfboard. Dana had noticed from my touching it that it wasn't secured tightly. So from his years of Kenpo lessons he had jumped up and performed a double hammer strike to bring it down. With his hilarious delivery said to us... “Quick! Get the car!” Mike and turned at each other and laughed. Then just as quick, we ran towards Dana to help him carry the sign because the weight was forcing itself back and forth like a see-saw in his arms. He couldn’t manage it on his own. It was huge!
Next we began to run through the streets of Rehoboth like the Keystone Cops as the three of us seemed to run straight up the street but in different directions twisting each others' path not knowing how to run together with it as a group. Even we sensed the hilarity of it. We laughed at ourselves the whole way to the car.
Now you’d think this would be the end of the story. Nope, with us it was never over. It seemed there was always this unknown need to raise the stakes. We had a hatchback and like idiots we never even considered how obvious the sign sticking a good 8 to 10 feet out the back of car looked. We had our loot and as a far as we were concerned, there was no getting caught. It was common for us to explain anything. If we got stopped, Dana would coolly look at the officer and say, “We found it.” Thankfully it never came to that. So as we pulled out of Rehoboth I felt a sense of relief. “Pull over!” Yelled Dana. No! I thought. Sure enough as we stopped at a gas station these two knuckle heads are taking two flat head screw drivers to a soda machine. Pepsi to be exact. After a few minutes, I’m realizing. Fuck! We have a Boardwalk 5 & 10 sign sticking halfway back to Rehoboth out the back of my car! “Will you come on!” I yelled in a whisper as if that would help us not get caught. “Almost got it…” Says one of them. And then, evil laughter. They slid the sign out of its grooves and what happened next almost defies description. Let me just say this, do you know how much light is needed to make those thick opaque Plexiglas sheets look striking and vivid? Well I’m about to tell you. As they lifted the part out, the gas station was set ablaze with light as if an entirely lit baseball stadium was dropped on top of it. I can’t remember what I said exactly, but I can tell you I didn’t need to encourage them to hurry any longer. They were in the car faster than I can remember any two white men moving. As we drove away from the gas station north on Route 1, I looked at in my rear view mirror in awe. The gas station was glowing as if a UFO had landed there. I could tell you numerous stories such as these but this was sadly one my better memories of guy friends.
Yes, we three were trouble makers and this is perhaps why we were close. But for all that trouble we were not geeks or goofs. The three of us together were formidable. It was my Senior year in school and now I had arrived as a person of interest. The three of us created an aura of envy. Dana, he was the funny guy and everyone loved him. Mike the ladies man, and me, I was the Johnny Silent. Still for all that envy, we kept to ourselves. If we were invited to parties, we’d still do our own thing. We had each other and strangely that was what we enjoyed. When we found a brand of jacket called a “Spy Jacket” that reversed we all had to own one, but we never wore them together. Yeah that spy thing ended up something all three of us latched onto.
We were athletic. I was always athletic and learned from a very young age how to avoid being tackled in football like the plague. At age 10 kids in our neighborhood played a game called “smear the queer”. It was an easy game. If you held the football, EVERYONE tackled you. I had a problem. I never wanted to toss the football away and I didn’t enjoy being gang tackled by 10 to 20 other kids so I became good at dodging, and ripping away from tackles. Dana, Mike and I played football each Sunday religiously. After church I’d race to Christiana High School where dozens of guys would meet to play and games were locked fast leaving many onlookers to try and form games at the soccer fields. Here, I was the man. Or at least one of them. Not only did I get the ball, I was respected when I carried it.
There were times we’d travel about looking to play in other games. I can’t say why, but we did. This is when my name at school among the guys became accepted. I was no longer an outsider. These guys were your typical jocks that played on the school football team on Saturday. They had no respect for us and less love for me. I was a guy that dressed well at school and was even referred to as ‘best dressed’ by some on the year book staff. I wasn’t a baller. Not to them. I was meat. I was a guy they wanted to enthusiastically hurt. And I was fine with that, because just like the shy and quiet kid that when placed on stage in a musical he transformed into a confident and bigger than life character, when I laced up my cleats, I was ready to stiff arm you into the dirt.
The first punt was to me. They wanted it that way and I recall to this day thinking, “big mistake fellas”. Now to say I blew past them isn’t how it works in sand lot football. It’s a cluster fuck and few guys block for you. Oh they want to, but six out of ten won’t do more than get in the way of the defensive players as they rocket towards you. But this was what worked for me. My talent was always my ability to slam my feet down and cut back without hardly ever giving up my full speed. So as the punt dropped down into my arms I heard Jack Samuels yell, “Kill Hindsley!” Now I won’t say you that didn’t faze me, what I can say is that it made the idea of not being tackled at all, that much more important to me. I can’t remember every move, I’d be a liar if I said I recall the play. But I do recall seeing daylight and emerging from many many attempts to tackle me and scoring a touchdown from the get-go. This happened no less than three times and by the end of the day, these guys liked me. Because I’m an idiot and principals mean so much to me, I was an ass and never attempted to buddy up with any of these guys. I was just glad to be respected. For years, and I mean years new people would show up and consider me their doppelganger instructing others to put a hurting on me or they'd threaten me themselves only to gain respect for me in the end. As the years wore on, I lived in regret. I hated myself for never going out for the high school football team. It was at this time I realized, these guys (on the team) may be bullies, they may be tough guys that could kick my ass in a fight, but I’m a better football player and I had every right and reason to be out there making a name for myself. This is one of my true regrets in life. It has always been on my mind as I watch certain professional football players perform. I’ll never be that guy that the cheerleaders adored. No, the reality is I was a guy that was afraid to go out for the football team for fear of being picked on. My rebellious attitude didn’t help. I wasn’t yet at a point in my life were I knew how to or even ‘to’ stand up for myself. My solution was always to avoid conflict or win on my terms. I have to say, I think even to this day it’s how I operate.
This is just a very small part of a chapter going over the youth of my life. That time of my life could be it's own story, but I don't know if that is what people would be interested in. After all, Mantrap is about a woman using a man to further her own diabolical agenda. How much of my youth does anyone need as a back story to enjoy the larger story of what Mantrap is all about?
