Charlie Dialectical Journal

The brisk trek through rough wilderness had taken its toll on the portly fog of a man. Now wheezing, he bowed low to prop up his arching frame on a knee high boulder on the side of the path. He watched with passive intrigue as giant sweat droplets fell to earth. Each one making a crater in the previously undisturbed soil carpeting the seldom used trail leading up to the Burbank overlook. He wanted nothing more than to feel the wind blow across his puffy face when he got to the top. He could almost feel it already, but his attention was being pulled downward by the weight of his loss and pain. He cursed the rock, as if it had been the one to put the bottle of Old Bell whiskey in his jacket pocket.

There was a bit of rush in Charlie’s blood. …show more content…
No, she would not be witness to Charlie’s renaissance; she was already gone. The affair was intoxicating and, while young, was certainly going somewhere. It had to; it was her escape. She, the innocently sweet teeny-bopper, had been swept off her feet the tall, impossibly fit, smooth talker. Charlie had an indomitable presence, but it was more his tenacious wit that put the doey eyed girl at ease. His imposing muscularity was just the icing. Patricia found Charlie genuinely hilarious, and would willfully lose herself in the stories that he told. Of course, with time his loquacity turned from infectious, during parties and the like, to disparaging when confined to their home. Charlie took his matrimonial loss in a righteous anger, lubricated with Speyside’s best single malt. He lacked the introspect needed to see his own contribution to Patricia’s not-so-holy exodus. Although, while lacking the ability to reflect on his own faults, poor Charlie also lacked the opportunity - the sickness moved swiftly across all strata of Los Angeles …show more content…
And they grew worse with every passing changing of the seasons. It had come to be understood that this was how life would be in the once sunny southern valleys of California. And it was under these circumstances that Charlie first met Joan - they were both seeking the solace of the old, burnt-out theater down on Verdugo. A band of raiders were on the prowl, and they helped each other out. Charlie offered to take her back to his home. Of course he could see, in spite of the shape of her now sunken cheeks, that she had been beautiful. But his interest weren’t merely carnal, per se. He lacked the companionship he’d enjoyed, albeit egotistically, ever since the separation and then subsequent disintegration of civilization. They partnered up- for survival, and for sanity’s