The following piece of creative non-fiction by Brian Eckert was originally published in The Nervous Breakdown, but was removed from TNB’s website after Brian expressed concerns about the publication’s editorial direction. Brian was not notified prior to the work’s removal, nor was he given an explanation for why it was pulled. We’re republishing it as part of an ongoing series of unpublished (and otherwise censored) works.

I.

I Live in a Seaside Motel

I live in a seaside motel. On nights the ocean is lively I can lie in bed and hear it murmur midnight elegies. When I’m having trouble sleeping the sounds of the sea’s salty breath draws me out into the darkness wearing my LED headlamp. I cross Route 1A, scramble over the Army Corps of Engineer-constructed berm, and stand before the Atlantic.

The ocean during the day inspires thoughts of nature’s majesty and human frailty. This does not change at night, but the darkness lends a sense that the massive, writhing body of water is sinister.

After I’ve stood for a spell and looked out over the black expanse I turn and walk back to the Pebble Cove Motel. Every time, as I scramble over the berm and my feet touch concrete, I begin to run, as if unseen enemies are giving chase. The ocean’s booming and roaring sounds mocking, telling me to go back to my little box and carry on being a silly human. In obeisance, I slip back into Room 3 and lock the door behind me.

II.

A Modern American Family

I responded to an advertisement on craigslist offering “winter studio efficiency.” The man on the other end of the phone suggested I drive to the coast and take a look at a vacant unit. A silver-haired, no-nonsense type of guy named Steve greeted me in the parking lot and gave the tour. 

Having recently broken off my wedding engagement, I needed a place right away. With no other short-term rental options, I decided on the spot to take the room. I gave Steve a check for one month’s rent plus a security deposit, and he told me I wouldn’t regret it, that the Pebble Cove was like a little family.

Perhaps, if your family is a group of transients who get kicked to the curb come June 1^st so that well-off vacationers can occupy the rooms for the peak summer months. Where the Pebble Cove diaspora goes I do not know. I will go to Beijing because I have nothing and nobody to stick around for. 

Living in the unit to the left of mine is my middle-aged sister named either Jill or Lisa who works at either Pier One or Pottery Barn. On the other side is Ulrich, my 60-something-year-old drunken, heating-man, moonlighting-Nazi of a grandfather.

Aside from them and Steve, the acting father of this little clan, I don’t know any of my other family members except by face and vehicle. There’s Green Explorer Chick, Silver Honda Van Dude, Maroon Chrysler Van Guy, White Civic Lady, Young Asian Corolla Dude, New Jeep Cherokee Older Guy, and Gold Mazda 626 Man.

To them, I am no doubt Blue Subaru Forester Dude.

It strikes me as being very American to know one another by the vehicles we drive.

III.

Excerpts From the Diary of the Woman Next Door as Imagined By Me When I’m Feeling Conscious of How Thin the Walls Are 

Dear Diary: 

I was hoping to sleep in this morning, my only day off this week, but the guy next door woke me up banging and clanging pots and pans. 

Does he even work? His Subaru is always in the parking lot. I mean, it’s not like I do much besides go back and forth to the store, but it’s something at least. His car never moves from its spot. Maybe he’s on disability. He doesn’t look disabled, but it could be mental or psychological or something. I had an uncle who got disability for PTSD. Somebody at his work shot the place up. My uncle said he couldn’t get over it, but I don’t know, he never struck me as a particularly sensitive person. 

I can’t say I blame him. If I could, I’d get on disability. 

They say to follow your dreams. But what if your dream is to sit on your ass all day? What if your dreams involve murder and rape? 

There’s an assumption that everybody is good at something and can contribute to society, when in reality, most of us are interchangeable. I mean, take my job. You don’t have to possess a special kind of genius to answer a bunch of stupid fucking questions about whether a bowl is dishwasher safe or an end table is Fair Trade Certified or whether these fake flowers are made from real or imitation silk. How the hell should I know? They don’t pay me enough to know stuff like that. 

The other day, a woman came in to the store looking for blackout curtains. She said the curtains were for her grandson’s nursery. They had to be non-toxic, non-VOC emitting. Absolutely nothing known to the State of California to cause cancer. So I gathered up all our blackout curtains and proceeded to unpackage them for the woman and we read the tags. I couldn’t tell if any were non-toxic. All the while the woman was telling me the importance of a chemical-free environment, about how during the first few months of life any exposure can cause allergies and harm development. 

I can’t say I’ve ever felt anything other than humiliation in “paying my own way.” On my one day off a week I’m lucky to catch a few extra Zs, unless of course the jerkoff next door wakes me up at 7 am crashing shit around. Yeah, I’d be better off on disability. 

Dear Diary: 

The neighbor next door (the guy on disability, not the Asian guy who cooks the weird-smelling things) woke me up again. It sounds like he had a girl over at his place, although she wasn’t there for very long—and she seemed to be leave in quite a huff. I peeked through the blinks as she was leaving. I think I may have seen her at the store once, shopping for scented candles. Or maybe it was bath oils. 

Anyway, there he goes again at almost 1:30 in the morning with that stupid light on his head. I saw him one night while I was outside unloading something from my trunk and he came sprinting across the highway. There’s something seriously wrong with this guy. Oh, and he might be a fucking Nazi too! I heard some Hitler speeches or something coming from his place. Just great. FML. He’s living like literally two feet from me. It’s so bizarre when you think about it. I mean, not just him being a Nazi freak, but the whole thing, that we’re all living like feet apart from each other, yet totally separate. Then sometimes I start thinking too about how there’s this huge ass ocean right there and I mean what the fuck is even in that thing? And we’re just on this orb plant thing spinning in space. It’s best not to think about these things, I guess, but sometimes I can’t help it. Thinking about the way life really is makes it too fucked up to deal with. I guess some people like to feel small, but I feel small enough already. If I was any smaller, I’d disappear completely. 

IV.

Saturday Night Blitzkrieg

I should have suspected that Ulrich works in the trades by the way he backs into his parking spot every evening. All of these handy types of guys—men’s men—back into parking spaces.

Ulrich is a heating man. I’m pretty sure I heard him say, “Hello, this is the heating man,” on the phone. He might have said “beating man,” though. Or “eating man.” Maybe even “cheating man.” I’d like to think he said “fleeting man” but Ulrich doesn’t strike me as much of a poet.

It must have been a tough day at the office, whether heating or beating or eating, because ol’ Ulrich moved straight into the fleeting, into the beer, and is finishing them off at a clip of roughly one per twelve minutes.

I hear the fridge door open and the rattling of bottles. I hear the psssst of a bottle top popping. I hear Ulrich’s bed sag as he falls onto it. I hear the clanking of glass as the empty gets tossed into the bin. I know where this night is headed.

I should probably get out of here for a few. I head to the new martini bar down the road. There’s something about the blonde girl sitting by herself in the corner. Availability is smeared across her face like too much foundation.

She asks where I live and I tell her the Pebble Cove, because it sounds like a charming place where successful people live, not a brick motel built in the early 1970s that rents to a collection of Recession-products, deadbeats, and drifters during the off-season. 

We arrive there and start fooling around. Ulrich cranks the TV up. I hear strafing machine guns and a narrator’s voice saying something like, “Hitler’s forces turned upon France in May of 1940 and using Blitzkrieg tactics were able to occupy Paris by June.”

Hitler’s voice rattles, distorted, through the flimsy TV speakers as my tongue encircles nipple. Then come the sounds of artillery being fired, a portion of a Wagner composition, boots marching in step.

“What is that?” she asks, sitting up.

“My neighbor likes to get drunk and watch Nazi documentaries,” I say.

“Oh. Like, a lot?”

“Like every weekend.”

I had a small window to fire her up to the sexual point of no return, where she could ignore the fact that she’s gone home with a stranger to his motel room. Now I can sense that there’s some serious doubt creeping in; doubt that’s compounded by the sounds of the Nazi Blitzkrieg. 

The way she looks around the room tells me this thing is doomed. I give her nipple one last lick.

“What did you say you do? You’re a blogger or something?”

“I write affiliate marketing content for businesses that sell leads to other businesses.”

“What does that mean?”

“Basically, it’s a pyramid scheme.”

She gets out of bed and puts on her clothes to the sound of Hitler’s fiery oration.

“You know,” I say, “I’ve always suspected that some Germans, even though they can’t admit it, take great pride in the whole Nazi thing. I bet you they view World War Two and the Holocaust in particular as the ultimate expression of German industriousness, orderliness, thoroughness, and efficiency—the very cultural traits that make Germans proud, even arrogantly so.”

“Um, I’m Jewish,” she says, buttoning her blue overcoat and pulling on a pair of brown UGG boots.

She slams the door and leaves in her Volkswagen Beetle. Imagine that, the indignant little Jewess in her German coupe, a car commissioned by none other than the Führer himself. 

I hear gravel crunching under her tires as she pulls away and then the only sounds are of alcohol abuse and Nazi domination.

V.

Of Troglodytes and Men

I know how much forklifts cost. Warehouse forklifts, narrow aisle machines, telescopic forklifts, telehandler forklifts, straight mast, electric, internal combustion, fuel cell, with inflatable tires, pneumatic tires, heavy-duty off-road tires. I know how much point of sales (POS) systems for night clubs, restaurants, retail stores, and pizza shops cost. I know the major suppliers of phone systems and how much they cost, the difference between PBX and VoIP systems, and how each can help your business streamline its communications, improve customer service, and boost its bottom line.

What I can’t tell you is what I’m doing with my life.

I know how much air compressors, ATM machines, trade show displays, and digital copiers cost (although individual prices may vary based on location, requirements, and individual vendors). I can give you price quotes for home improvement projects ranging from plumbing to construction to hiring an interior designer. I can explain the benefits and drawbacks of various countertop, roofing, fencing, and flooring materials. And I can tell you without question that if the negligent actions of another caused your injury, you may be entitled to compensation.

What I don’t know is why I called off my wedding, abandoned the only woman I ever loved, moved into a motel, and booked a one-way ticket to China.

I take a break and go for a walk. I step out my front door and shoo away a male cardinal that is attacking itself in my car’s driver side mirror. 

At first, when I moved in to Pebble Cove, I thought the handsome red bird perched atop my mirror was a good omen. These days, he mostly annoys me because he scratches the glass and shits on the door. But I can also relate to him. He is attacking himself, making an enemy of his own reflection. His instincts have been perverted. They have failed him. 

I walk the ½ mile to Odiorne Point State Park, the site of an abandoned World War II battery. I come upon the remaining concrete fortifications, partially buried under a secondary forest. Graffiti-tagged grey stonework peeks out from fresh spring greens. 

In the side of the entombed structure there’s a hole in a sealed metal door leading into the casemate. I stick my head past the rift but can’t see more than a few feet.

That night, a humid late-May evening, I’m unable to sleep. Lying in bed, listening to the ocean hum and haw, I put on my headlamp and walk back to the bunker.

I contort past the jagged-cornered opening and find myself in a cold and musty cave-like environment; a demonic Lascaux. Panning the light from side to side reveals rusted pipes and ceiling artillery tracks. Duct work, beer cans, bottles, and trash are strewn across the ground. Each swing of the light reveals ghoulish, spray-painted characters made more sinister by the vertiginous shifting shadows.

Off of the main hall are several rooms, one of which leads down to a wide-chambered basement. I can see my breath in the nebulous light. I descend an oxidized ladder to a small passageway that I squeeze through in the squatting position. Even here, in the sepulchral depths of the dank, asbestos-ridden chamber, crude artwork stains the walls.

I switch the light off and sit in the darkness with my flashlight and my flesh and my instincts, wondering why I did what I did; why I left her, in the way that I did, two months before our wedding. 

The first of June is nigh. Turning the page on the calendar will mean turning the page on the next stage of my life. As the vacationers arrive to enjoy the finest New England weather, I, the troglodyte, slink back into the shadows. I hole up in a Chinese ghetto to fester in the heat of summer. The same instincts that tell me to do this told me to leave her and stare down the barrel of life alone. 

I may simply be self-sabotaging and self-destructing; a cardinal attacking its own reflection. My instincts are no longer reliable. They have failed me. I’ve made a breach with nature. I am alone in the universe. 

On the return walk to the motel I stop at my usual overlook and watch a sliver of moonlight tap-dance on the heaving chest of the sea. I turn around and head back towards room 3 at the Pebble Cove. This time, I don’t run.