On my birthday in 1996 my dad said to me, "Jeff, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a great man." Even more startling to me than his conclusion was the fact that he called me Jeff. I don't know why, my name is not Jeff, its Greg. At least he got the syllable count right. Actually I was obliged to him for making that bit of information available to me. I really did not know he was a great man. I'm glad somebody knows who they are in this crazy world. Maybe one day I'll have my son on my knee and I'll say to him, "Worcestershire, I don't know if you know this, but I know how to butter toast."

     You see, I'm seven years old. Not the seven years old you're used to, no. I was born on February 29, 1972. And now twenty-eight years have passed and my birthday has come around seven times. I think I prefer things this way. The build up and hype for the event is four times that for a regular birthday. And my mom and dad are very strict about these things (I'm an only child). They wouldn't even speak to me on February 28 or March 1 in those three in between years, this way they wouldn't get my hopes up. That I saw them on those days was truly a miracle in itself.

     On my first birthday (I was actually four) they gave me a key to the house, a recipe for chicken parmigiana, and a copy of Romeo and Juliet. I was so happy on this day, I really was. Their only advice was to lock the door on the way out and the way in. With these three objects I was given free reign in the house. But when I say free reign I don't want you to get this confused with how I have heard other people reference it when they have said that their parents or loved ones left for the evening or maybe the weekend. You see the day my parents gave me these objects, February 28, they left the house and didn't return until July 4 (I think they are nationalists). Then on July 5 they embarked again for some location, maybe Verona to visit the Capulets or Montagues, and returned for All Saint's Day on November 1. From that day forward I was truly lucky because they stayed with me for a good part of the next four months, only leaving for a small portion of November (20 days), a good portion of December (30 days), and a greater portion of January (31 days), but they faithfully returned on Groundhog day and stayed with me for the entire month of February, only to leave once again on March 1. Yes, the house was all mine and I was only one year old.

     In this way my life has proceeded. But they are such faithful parents I tell myself, always present every time my birthday does occur.

     I had to admit that first time they left I was a little confused, but I knew each of the three objects would in time become very handy, because your parents love you. All I needed was the expertise to put each one to good use. First off, the key was no problem, so that left the cooking, (I'd have to get some money to buy the food first) and the reading. I was never taught how to read and the only time I heard anyone read out loud was one night when it thundered so much that I cried. My mother came into my room with a book. She said, "George, I'm going to read to you now so that you will be soothed into a sleep state." And I was so happy at this, being it was the first complete sentence she ever voiced to me. The closest she came was when I started to walk. She looked at me when I had made it all the way to her chair from my playpen and said, "Go over," and pointed at my father sitting in his chair across the room. Anyway that stormy night she opened the book and read to me a passage about lenticular clouds from The History of Meteorology by F.A. Higgins. She left immediately after reading the passage, seeing as I stopped crying. But I stayed up the whole night scared to death that something awful had come over my mother because she spoke for such a sustained period of time. The most my parents spoke to me before they left were about three sentences a day, usually imperatives like, "Eat," "Go," and "Sleep."

     One thing I did know was how to use the telephone. Every Friday night all through my six to nine month period (or my third year), my dad let me order pizza for the family. Always the same order, a small, thin crust pineapple pizza. I thought this pizza was for all three of us, but as my awareness grew, about mid-way through that year, I discovered that I was the only one actually eating the pizza. My parents would go into another room and I would hear high pitched wailing. Maybe they thought I would be so engrossed in the pizza that I wouldn't notice they weren't there. And for the first half of the year, they were right. But when I realized what was really happening as I ate every last slice, I felt a little funny about things. I even became a little calculating. As my mother screamed, "Oh Gabriel, oh Gabriel," (again I don't know why, my father's name is Dan) I began to muse as to why I was never asked what kinds of things I would like on the pizza, since I was the only one to eat it. In fact, pineapple always gave me an upset stomach and it burned the sores in my mouth every time I chewed it. But at this time in my life it seemed I could never put two and two together. Yes, they never asked me what I wanted on it, but they always got it for me. And there was the other nice gesture by my father, who would sometimes bring a stick in from outside for me to play with. For I never went outside until that day I got the key to the house, I was always curious though.

     So anyway, I used the phone to dial Uncle Marvin, who was the third person in the world I knew to exist at the time. (Well maybe there were two more, the pizza person I ordered from, and the author of that meteorology book.) By chance I saw Uncle Marvin’s number by the phone and connected the digits using my photographic memory. It rang four times (the pizza person always answered on two) then the line was picked up and in the background I heard that high pitched screaming again like I heard between my parents when I ate my pizza. I listened carefully and heard a woman say, "Oh David, oh David." I didn't know why she had said this, my Uncle's name was Marvin.

     After a few moments, a man's voice came on and said, "Hello." Now I had never spoken to Uncle Marvin before, so I didn't know what he sounded like. So I just said, "Uncle Marvin?" and the man said, "Yes?"

     "Oh," I said, "this is Greg."

     "Greg?"

     "Yes, Greg. You are my Uncle and I am Greg."

     "Really," he said, "who is your father?"

     "My father's name is Dan."

     "Oh," he said, and paused for a while.

     "How are you?" I said.

     "Oh, I'm keeping busy," Uncle Marvin said. Then Uncle Marvin started to breath heavily and said, "Francine, watch the teeth." That's funny, I thought, my mother's name is Francine.

     Then Uncle Marvin said, "How are you doing, Greg?"

     "Well, Uncle Marvin, I need help."

     "What kind of help?"

     "I need money to make chicken parmigiana and I need to know how to read."

     "I can't do anything for you right now,” Uncle Marvin said, “and tomorrow I'm leaving for Honduras and won't be back till July 4."

     "Oh," I said, "it was nice talking to you for the first time."

     "And listen Greg, be sure to keep away from those hydrogenated fats like they use for French fries, you got it?"

     "A-yeah,” I said, “okay." And I put down the phone.

     At this point I felt both scared and happy. I took the key, the recipe, and the book and went outside, locking the door behind me. My first impulse was to look up into the sky to see if any lenticular clouds were out. All I saw was a pure blue stretching in every direction. Then I walked over to a tree and touched it. It said, "Oooh." So I said, "Oooh." I walked over to another tree and touched it. And it said, "Ahhh." So I said, "Ahhh." And I looked around at everything outside and was very happy, so I smiled. I knew how to smile by remembering my father's reaction every time my mother told him she got her period.

     I walked up the stairs of the nearest neighbor's house and knocked (I remember needing to knock at the door of the bathroom when I was done so my mother would unlock the door and let me out). A young girl or woman (I didn't know which) came to the door. She didn't say anything, but just stood there and looked at me through the screen. Finally I said, "My name is Greg. I live in that house. I need help." She didn't say anything.

     Then I said, "Do you know how to talk?" Still she said nothing.

     "Okay, I guess I'll go." So I turned and walked down the porch steps. Suddenly I heard a female's voice say, "Oh, Greg." I turned around, but the young girl or woman was gone.

     Next I didn't know what to do, so I just walked. All the neighbors' houses looked the same. It was strange that as I looked into the front rooms of these houses the blinds would suddenly shut. Eventually, after a long time spent walking past houses, I walked into a bunch of trees and green. Later I would find out it was a park. I was the only one walking in it, though it seemed so huge that there should be more people than me. What I did see were cars parked in lots in which I heard people say things like, "Oh Devon," and "Oh Chelsea," as the cars twitched slightly. Again, I felt a little funny about this sort of thing, and I'd have to admit that more and more as I used my recently discovered memory, it seemed just this sort of thing was going on a lot.

     So I walked on and came up to this moving water. I saw an older man sitting nearby watching it. He had a big white beard. I went over to him and asked, “Where does the water go?”

     “Wouldn’t we like to know,” he said.

     Then I said, "My name is Greg. I need help."

     Something in me told me to show the man all my objects except for the key. So I held up the recipe for chicken parmigiana in one hand and the copy of Romeo and Juliet in the other. He took the copy of Romeo and Juliet and read it to me. This took a pretty long time. When he stopped he looked at me and said, "Come with me."

     We walked to this place where there was a long line of people waiting to go into a building. We waited in the line and when we got inside we were given plates and were served chicken parmigiana. Then we sat down with everyone and ate. While we were eating I looked over at him and said, "Thank you." He smiled and placed a cut piece of chicken into his mouth. We left and went back to the creek. It was almost dark out. We stood watching the water for a while. Then I said to him, "I think I'm going to go home."

     I turned and started to walk away when the man said, "Greg." I looked back at him. "Descartes was wrong," he said. I shook my head and left.

     For many days after that I returned to the park to see the old man and get dinner with him, and at the end of each day when we had reached the moving water he would offer a new admonition, some of which were, "Kant was wrong," "Nutrasweet was wrong," and "Aristotle was wrong." I always listened and remembered what he said. I knew in some way it would benefit me later in life and in fact I've never read those people to this day.

     That I spent about 89 percent of the year without my parents didn't bother me. I was sure things could be worse, but honestly I didn't know what they could be. I guess I could die like Romeo and Juliet, but I really didn't know if that was worse.

     Eventually a good portion of my time came to be spent at the rescue mission, the place where the old man showed me to eat. I started to go to breakfast there and then began to work there during the day, preparing for the dinner in the evening. Many people have told me a great many things during my service there, but what I remember the most is something the cooks, who had trouble with the ladies, told each other a lot: 'There are plenty of fish in the sea.' I really do prefer concrete facts to abstract notions and this was one of them. Being a person who had never been to the sea, I always wondered what it was like, and with this bit of information I could draw a small picture of what was going on in its deep waters.

     One day when I was five I was serving fruit soup to the people in line. A woman with a bucket on her head walked up to me and told me I was cute. I asked her what she meant and she said to come help her in the food storage room. She walked very fast and when I finally got to the room I saw she had taken all her clothes off. “Oh,” I said, “do you want me to help you put your clothes back on?”

     “No,” she said, “I want you to take your clothes off too.”

     “What if it gets cold?” I asked.

     “I’ll warm you, don’t worry,” she said with a laugh. So I took off my clothes and she started to rub her hands all over my body. I just kind of laughed because I remembered my dad doing the same sort of thing to my mom sometimes and she would just laugh too. The only difference was that mom would have a whip and dad would bark like a dog. Then this woman grabbed a hold of some part of my body. It was weird because I didn’t know which part. I thought I knew them all. She squeezed it hard and said, “This is your lovegun.”

     “Lovegun,” I repeated. I felt the lovegun getting heavy as it stood straight up. “Oh,” I said, “so this is kind of like Romeo and Juliet.”

     “That’s right,” she said, “your Romeo and I’m Juliet.”

     “And who is the lovegun?”

     “My dessert.”

     “You’re going to eat my lovegun?” I said.

     “I won’t chew, I promise,” she said. Then she put my lovegun into her mouth. I was very glad because she kind of warmed it up. I preferred it when her mouth covered my whole lovegun. I eventually became worried because she continued to go back and forth on my lovegun like she didn’t know what to do.

     So I said, “You seem confused. I like it when your mouth covers all of my lovegun.” She moved her head back very fast and my lovegun became cold again.

     “Are you giving me instructions on how to suck your dick?” she said.

     “Who is Dick?” I said.

     “Your dick,” she said.

     “No, I’m Greg,” I said.

     “You call your dick Greg?”

     “No, I call myself Greg. That’s my name.”

     “Just enjoy it,” she said.

     “And what’s your name?”

     “Deb.”

     “Well, thanks for eating my lovegun Deb, I always like new things.”

     “No problem,” she said. And then her mouth warmed my lovegun again.

     Every afternoon for quite a while Deb would take me to the food storage room. Sometimes she would call me her ‘Romeo,’ which made me think we were in a play, though I couldn’t remember Juliet ever eating Romeo’s lovegun.

     I guess Deb was important to me, because whenever she didn’t show up my stomach would feel sick. One time after Deb had been gone for over a week, something made me go up to one of the servers. Penny was her name and she had two white pens with strings hanging from them stuck up her nostrils. One of the cooks told me she had a problem with ‘dyslexia’ and that she didn’t know where to put her tampons. I didn’t know what he meant by this, but I thought everyone had something to offer and Penny was who I chose. When she was serving macaroni and cheese, I asked her, “Penny, would you like to go to the food storage room and eat my lovegun?” Instantly the two pens popped out of her nose into the macaroni and cheese. Penny didn’t talk much to me after that.

     On New Year's Eve day 1999 my parents weren't around, so I took a walk to the park. The old man hadn't been there in a while, but on this day I saw another man staring at the water. He was skinny, with long hair and a beard. He was wearing some kind of bathrobe and he was glowing. And this kind of interested me, because of all the people I had seen in my life, he was the only one that glowed. So I walked over to him and said, "Hi, my name is Greg."

     He turned to me and said, "I suffer the children to come unto me. How old are you?" "Well, I’m six years old."

     "Ah," he said, "the age of a child in his prime, you may come unto me." And he took me by the hand and we started to walk.

     "Where are we going?”

     "Jim,” he said, “we are going to a place of eternal joy."

     As far as I could see, eternal joy was white. Even my clothes, which had somehow changed, were white. All the people I saw there were dressed the same as me. All I could really see of them were their eyes and hair and they just laughed or walked around in circles.

     The glowing man with the beard would smile at everyone and remind them that in two hours the dance workshop would begin. “Does everyone dance here?” I asked him.

     “We try to encourage it as best we can,” he said.

     “I’ve never seen people dance much before.”

     “Yes,” he said. “Everyone tends to get the wrong idea about this place. Really it is for people that didn’t dance enough when they were on earth.”

     “What’s the name of this place?”

     “Well Jim, everyone know that.”

     We walked for a little while. Then he said, “Whenever someone comes here, the first thing they want to do is meet people from earth that they never had a chance to meet before. Who would you like to meet?”

     “Who’s here?”

     “Just about everyone, except those still living on earth.”

     “I don’t know, I guess mom and dad are still on earth right?” I asked.

     “Yes, that’s true. They seemed to have developed a knack for engaging in coitus in any climate. Right now they are in an igloo in Antarctica.”

     I couldn’t think of anyone, but then the glowing man said, “I know someone many people like to meet, come with me.”

     We walked over to a white building with big columns in front. Inside was a steaming pool of water. Many people sat in and around the pool. The glowing man brought me next to two men who were talking.. They both had beards too. One beard looked like the old man’s in the park and the other was cut somewhat so that only his chin was covered and his cheeks were bare.

     “Jim,” the glowing man said, “this is William Shakespeare,” and he put his hand on the shoulder of the man with the cut beard.

     “Oh, Romeo and Juliet,” I said. He nodded his head. “You know I played Romeo once, when Deb ate my lovegun.” The other bearded man bent over to Shakespeare and asked him something in a different language.

     “Who’s that?” I asked.

     “That’s Aristotle,” the glowing man said, “he refuses to learn English, but he dances the mashed potato pretty well.”

     “Oh,” I said as I pointed to Aristotle, “I know about you too, you were wrong.”

     The glowing man laughed and said, “I’m glad someone agrees with me.” Shakespeare told Aristotle what I said and then Aristotle put his hands around my throat and squeezed, but the glowing man told Aristotle about turning the cheek so he went and sat down in the pool of water.

     “I always have to remind them,” the glowing man said. “Sometimes I think I was born too late.”

     Shakespeare then looked at me and asked, “May I use that word you created, lovegun?”

     “Sure, but Deb is the one who taught it to me.”

     “Is there someone else you’d like to meet Jim?” the glowing man asked.

     “Yes, is F.A. Higgins here?”

     “Absolutely,” said the glowing man, “here he is right now.” F.A. Higgins had glasses on and a much smaller beard than the big, fluffy one that Aristotle had.

     “Professor, Jim here wanted to meet you,” the glowing man said.

     “Really,” F.A. Higgins said, “how old are you Jim?”

     “I’m six years old.”

     “And when was your birthday?” he asked.

     “February 29, 1972.”

     “Oh, boy,” he said. “I can’t believe it. Jesus got fooled again by one of those leap year babies.” He looked at the glowing man. “You’re still so gullible, that’s what classical education lacked - skepticism.”

     The glowing man looked at F.A. Higgins and said, “To hell with you.” And before I knew it I was back in the park.

     Well, now that I’m seven I’m beginning to learn more about how life works. You go to work, come home, and dance if you have the time. The people at the rescue mission are dancing more and more. I think they’re happy. As for my parents, they volunteered to be the first husband and wife to go to the moon. They really love to be together, and I’m glad. This place earth isn’t so bad. I prefer it to eternal joy.

     What’s in my future? I’m thinking of having kids. The next time I see my parents I’ll ask them how it's done. I probably won’t name my kids, but they sure will dance a lot.

_________________________________________________________

Greg Gerke currently lives in Buffalo . His work has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Hobartpulp, Thieves Jargon, Eyeshot, elimae, and others.   His website is www.greggerke.com

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