Whatever Happened to Baby Wayne?

You are ten years old. Your stomach aches. Your grandfather's hand rests on your shoulder like a weathered leather glove-silent, steady, and more comforting than any advice ever spoken. You're in a JC Penney, dodging your grandmother's wart-picking scrutiny and your brother's thumb-sucking despair. You're in a swing, singing about your uncle, until he storms out with a belt like a black snake. You stop. You always stop. This is not a memoir. It is a field guide to survival in the rusted-out towns of New England, where the church bells ring and the pot roast simmers, but love is frozen solid in second-floor apartments. Where boys become men by slamming into each other on football fields, only to be spit out into factories and bars. Where the All-Star never makes it, the coach laughs when he hits you in the face, and the only glory is someone else's. You meet Jen in Walgreens. She hasn't eaten all day. You buy her candy. She calls you Duane. You don't correct her. You dream of Nietzsche, of Kerouac, of Bukowski on a bicycle at the Oscars. You write poems like postcards from the edge of memory, where the dead don't speak, but their silence is deafening. You are Baby Wayne. Or maybe you were. Or maybe you never were.