Places I Haven't Been To/ Shoreline
By Asher Guthertz (Photo: Kenji Muramoto)
I have never been to Atlanta, Georgia. When I die I suppose a blue bird will fly through my daughter’s window and tell her the places I have been, and the places I never dared to go. There was a man on Top Chef from Atlanta. He enjoyed shooting liquid nitrogen at his food.
“I DIDN’T GET TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOU. Everyone was too busy telling me how awesome you are. I know this already. Come to Atlanta.”
I have never been to Atlanta, Georgia and I don’t suppose I ever will.
The blue bird tells her everything she needs to know. I hope that when he tells her about how scared to death I was of her for the first few years, he’ll make it sound sweet, like I was the dumb but loveable Dad.
I am dumb but I am not loveable.
There is a place that I will go when I am no longer in the place that I am now.
It was nice of her to say those things about me. For some reason, that week I was caught in a draft of kindness. It didn’t last and J is gone.
There will be a time when I will love my daughter’s mother. We will hike on trails in the hot sun, in places that I will be told are “just spectacular.” We will wear ugly matching shorts, and carry metal water bottles that clank as we walk. I will hate it so much. I will not care about the spotted bird that only lives in Nothern California and I will not want to wait while she looks for it in her guide.
For a while this will be all be fine and good because I will love her, and I will believe that I love her so much that all of this that I would normally hate has become incredible. I will believe it but it will not be true.
I will lose custody.
One summer I will meet a girl who will change my life. I’m sorry, I’m confusing tenses. One summer I have already met the girl who will change my life.
My daughter’s window will not be open to the blue bird, but that’s ok because birds have beaks.
“Peck peck peck peck” until she opens the window. She will not be scared, in spite of my particular cowardice, because she will have been raised by a strong mother. Children with strong female figures are statistically proven to be
Cop Out is the name of a movie with Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis. It is also a life philosophy.
Can I see her every other weekend? Jeesus, you know I’m allowed to see her every other weekend.
When Samantha has the first baby on Bewitched, Darrin is smoking nervously in the waiting room, I think.
I will not do as much with my life as I had will have wanted to.
The blue bird probably has a scroll. He hands it to her and she unrolls it. I want to tell her the places I have been the places I never dared to go before the blue bird does.
I think she’ll enjoy knowing that I went to Vegas once with her mother. We won enough money to pay for a nice dinner at the Bellagio.
Will my daughter want to know about my first college girlfriend, and the road trip we took to her Dad’s house in Minnesota? Will my daughter care, or will she think it unmannered of me to talk about girlfriends after what I did to her mom?
Minnesota is beautiful in the winter. That’s all I remember.
I always wanted a rocking chair. I would put it in our house by the window and my daughter would leave a stuffed rabbit on it before she went to bed, caught up in the commotion of bedtime stories and nightlights. I would pretend to be mad at her in the morning, but when I found it I would smile and tear up a little bit, because my fear of death would cause me to flash forward to my future death, when holding hands with my daughter and my wife would still not be able to stop me from screaming. I would take the rabbit off the chair and I would listen with the love of my life to Tom Waits as we watched the sunset.
Isn’t it strange? They’ve put a price on the sunset.
The grandma of my child, the mother of the woman I love, would get sick in October, just as the teachers are starting to assign the real homework. We would take a few weeks off, trying unsuccessfully to explain to our daughter’s teachers that the death of a grandma is a hard time in one’s life. We would go even though Ms. Lindsay thinks that our daughter is just starting to flourish as a young thinker and that this would be highly detrimental to her learning. We would go to Elaine’s (or nana as my daughter would call her) house in the suburbs, and I would walk through every room, imagining my love grow up there. I would imagine her trying unsuccessfully to bake a cake and her parents forcing themselves to eat whatever the hell had come out of that oven. I would see things and most of it wouldn’t be true.
But that’s okay. Elaine would die four days after we arrived, and we would all cry and cry. We would stay in the house for a few more days. One night I would wake up in the middle of a dream about aging backwards to hear rustling in the kitchen. The women I love more than anything would be sobbing, trying unsuccessfully to bake a cake.
I will die in Florida, having retired there after an almost entirely unsuccessful career. My daughter will be driven up by Luke, the better man, sometimes. Certainly not every other weekend. She will not be there when I die in a small hospital bed, but as I lose consciousness I will feel the bluebird spreading its wings.
There is a place that I will go when I am no longer in the place that I am now. I hear Atlanta, Georgia is beautiful in the spring.
