Sine Qua Non

I am now a grown-up. At thirty-four years old, I’ve somehow managed to avoid the pitfalls of encroaching adulthood and sidestep the devious placement of its various landmines for over three decades now, but it’s finally caught up to me. Sure, I’ve known that it’s been gaining ground for months now, but I always managed to outrun it before and I could do it again – or so I thought.

It almost caught up with me several years ago, back when I married the woman who would become my ex-wife, but her obstinate refusal to even look up the word “responsibility” in the dictionary helped me to put some ground between myself and adulthood. Granted, I was the breadwinner and supporter of a wife – which alone should have triggered an early onset of grown-upitude – but it’s not as if we were ever a family. I’d come home and find her either asleep or playing video games, the house would be a wreck, and somehow it would all be my fault. Later, when I was helping to put her through school, her reciprocity consisted only of educating me on the finer points of life in Wannabe College, where students were lost boys and professors were pirates. Mostly, it involved a little studying, a lot of partying, and me heavily editing and revising (or writing) a lot of papers. All the while, the house was always cluttered, I was always cooking dinner, and I shouldered the full burden of blame for the slightest and grandest of the world’s problems. It was not a pleasant time, but a necessary one. I could not have arrived here without going through there, so in a strange and unsettling way, I’m grateful to my ex. Weird.

So anyway, while I had responsibility thrust upon me during five miserable years that finally came to a bitter and lunatic end, I never actually felt like an adult. I went through the motions, of course, but somehow I always knew that it was all temporary. Everything has always felt temporary to me. My jobs, my education, my relationships – every single aspect of my life has always been in flux and transient. I drift along and go where the current takes me, regardless of how white-watered and treacherous the river gets. Becoming an adult would mean picking up the oars and directing my own path for once and, for whatever reason, that was never something that I felt like doing. Leastways, not until now.

I found myself in the grocery store the other day, deep into the dark and carbonated corridors of the soda aisle. Normally, I breeze through this particular section with diligent speed and careless determination, as I pick up a twelve-pack of Coca Cola and go on my merry way. This is something that I have always done, ever since my first day away from the parental teat. Mom and Dad kept the home refrigerator stocked with big plastic bottles, but I chose the convenient portability of the aluminum can – and it was always cans for me – sometimes twelve packs, sometimes twenty-four – but always cans. On this particular day, however, I found myself staring at the row of two-liter bottles: a previously unthinkable alternative to those twelve seductive cylinders of cola-filled aluminum that I was used to buying. It made more sense, I told myself, to buy a few bottles and pour only as much as I want to drink, rather than waste the bottom third of a can that has gone too warm. I’d always avoided them in the past, because I grew up with two-liter bottles of soda. They felt homey to me. Nostalgic. Parental.

And then it hit me: I had grown up. Not just because I was suddenly loading two-liter bottles of soda into my cart four at a time (hey, they were on sale!), but because I suddenly realized that nothing is temporary anymore. In a month, I’ll officially be the head of a really real family, with a loving wife, a faithful husband, and a bright center of the universe we call our son. For the first time in my life, I find myself making plans for a future I never thought I’d have, but that I’ve secretly always longed for. I don’t mind buying the two-liters now, because I want to feel homey again. I want my nostalgia to transcend into Trey’s future memories, and I know now that I have a future, simply because I have finally become a part of something larger than myself. I am husband to a wife with whom I will grow old and wrinkled and ugly, and I am father to a son who will outgrow me and who will eventually leave us to seek out his own adventures elsewhere, while we stay behind and wither away into the dimmed and twilighted time of our lives. I can see myself as an old and happy man now, rather than the unsustainable youth I’ve always been. And, maybe someday when I’m a crazy old codger with legions of grandchildren running around and destroying my house, I’ll smile and remember when I thought I had it all figured out, and how wrong I was about everything. Maybe then I’ll turn and look at Brittany and steal a glance from a grown-up Trey, and I’ll thank them both for that day so long ago, when they came into my life and granted me the gift of a future worth looking forward to. Every day from that day, and every moment from right now, I am a husband. A father. A family man.

I will never call Trey my stepson, unless he comes to me one day and asks me to, presumably out of some random teen-angst need to feel he’s part of a Dickens novel. As far as I’m concerned, for the past year or so, Trey has been my son – and he will forever continue to be. I will not saddle him with the barbed-edged stigma of a label like stepson, and I’ll have no truck with anyone who thinks otherwise. He may grow to add a prefix to the Daddy Kris he calls me now, but that is his choice. If he wants to call me his stepfather one day, I won’t argue the point. Trey, after all, has two fathers: one biological, the other by marriage. Hopefully, he’ll call us both exactly the names we want to hear, but I’ll let him make up his own mind. I don’t have a genetic right to the Daddy title. If I want it, I have to earn it.

Now, when I think about the future, it’s no longer some distant shimmering glint of promise nestled in the swaying reeds of a faraway hill. It’s right next to me. It’s on the other side of every door, at the turn of every corner, and the end of every street. It’s next year and next month and next week. It’s tomorrow. It’s five minutes from now. It’s today. For the first time in my life, I have a real sense of purpose and the motivation to put a couple of oars in the water and start paddling. I’ll supply the drive, Brittany will take the rudder, and Trey will sit forward on the bow, facing ahead and plotting our course. I just hope I give him a good map…

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
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Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.