12/30/12

Soul Bowl
By Eric Suhem


Milo worked at the bowling alley, troubleshooting problems with the ball-return machines, shelving the bowling balls at the end of the night, and performing various maintenance duties. Until a couple of weeks ago, he had been an accountant in the big city. Suddenly Milo quit his job at the accounting firm, left the city, and started working at the bowling alley in a non-descript town. Milo loved working at the bowling alley, as the crash of pins seemed to trigger various pleasant memories in his subconscious.

About six months ago, Milo had started slipping into strange bowling-related trances. When visiting a museum, he would enjoy contemplating the fire extinguisher on the museum wall, as it seemed to resemble a large bowling pin. The blackberries, plums, cherries, and tomatoes in still-life and landscape paintings also soon represented, to Milo, nothing but multi-colored bowling balls.

Milo decided to see a psychiatrist about his bowling obsession. On his first visit, while looking at the diplomas and certificates on the wall, Milo couldn’t help noticing the bowling trophies that were situated about the doctor’s office in a pattern that he found hostile and aggressive. The psychiatrist had launched into a pseudo-Freudian theory involving penis envy, indicating that bowling pins represented an unconscious compensation by Milo for his small endowment. Milo emphatically rejected this theory, and had stopped seeing the psychiatrist.

In his new job at the bowling alley, Milo answered his cell phone, which had a ring-tone of crashing bowling pins. It was his former boss from the accounting firm, Maura. “Milo, we need you back here at the firm, let’s talk tomorrow,” said Maura. Milo began to answer, but slipped into a pleasant reverie upon hearing the 16 lb. bowling balls roll along the maple wood. He clicked his cell phone off.

The next day, Maura approached Milo at the bowling alley as he was excavating a stuck Brunswick from a malfunctioning ball return machine. “Why Maura, what a surprise!” exclaimed Milo, knowing that she would appear sooner or later. “Let’s talk while I work,” said Milo as he completed toiling on the ball return machine, and proceeded to lie down on a bench in the bowling area, reaching underneath to tighten screws and hinges that had come loose.

Maura pulled up a green plastic chair, “Milo, I don’t understand why you left the office to work here…” started Maura, but her voice trailed off as she began to feel the hypnotic effect of the bowling alley: the crashing pins, the balls rolling on wood, the chatter throughout. Milo looked on knowingly as Maura slipped off into a bowling-induced trance, where images of her childhood in the suburbs drifted into her mind….There were aqua-marine swimming pools situated in the backyards of houses with pastel automobiles parked in front, rubber tires lodged against the heated summertime asphalt. 11-year old Maura and her friends were in a bowling league. The cold air conditioning at the bowling alley felt so good in the hot summer...she wanted to be there... Maura awoke refreshed hours later in the parking lot, as Milo had brought her outside for some fresh air.

Within days, Maura quit the accounting firm and got a job at the bowling alley where Milo worked. As she and Milo took a cigarette break out in the parking lot, a large family was walking back to their car from the sporting goods store, most of the children clad in Little League baseball uniforms, when one of the non-uniformed kids, an 11-year old girl named Marcia, felt drawn towards the bowling alley, in the path of Milo and Maura. “This is for me, I’m home,” said Marcia dreamily, as the parents looked on in alarm, but oddly yielding.

Maura and Milo reached for her hand, saying, “Come closer child, follow us.” And she did.


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Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer.