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brunch

January 23, 2026 by Soaky The Clown

Soaky told it as a brunch story because people listen better when they think they’re being fed, especially on mornings that arrive too early and ask too much of the body.

The year turned the way it always does, the last one ending with champagne and tequila, the new one beginning with Bloody Marias and Mimosas. Morning drinks designed to soften the morning the way last night was meant to soften the year. The kind of drinks you arrive at around noon, when waking up early feels unnecessary, and waking up later feels like giving up. A toast to the new year, offered carefully, without committing to it. Glasses were raised not to hope, but to survival.

Everyone understood that part. The drinks moved freely through a crowd, grateful for the dulling, then by some unseen direction, the service began.

First came the bread. Toasted. Warm. Dry enough to need what came next. It arrived unrequested, butter soft and loose, ready to be lathered on, soothing, never quite filling, an emptiness shaped by abundance without intention. The kind of opening gesture that makes what follows feel unavoidable. No one asks who decided bread should come first. It just does.

Soaky said this was where shoulders dropped. Where voices warmed. Where laughter arrived early and stayed longer than it should have. Comfort has a way of sounding like agreement.

After that came the eggs, folded neatly, containing the leftovers of the past year, arranged so forgetting looked like remembrance, holding together just well enough to look intentional. What was left of the year was set gently on the plate. A knife pressed into one yolk, and it spread slowly, obediently, finding the lowest places on the plate. Some called it a mess. Others shrugged and blamed the knife or the plate, never the user. Most watched quietly as it spread.

This was the moment, Soaky said, when the menu changed.

Not announced. Not debated. Just a second page, laminated and clean, slipped in where no one remembered asking for it. It explained things plainly. How doors could be opened. How authority worked best when you were calm. How the same hand that filled out the form could also decide who stayed out.

Administrative, the menu called it.
Reasonable.
Necessary.
Eventually imperative.

Someone asked for more coffee. Someone else asked about substitutions. The server smiled and nodded; some adjustments were possible. Accommodating. Professional. The system worked beautifully as long as you didn’t imagine something else.

Outside the story, and Soaky was careful to say outside, snow fell the way power prefers to arrive. Quiet. Patient. Confident it would be allowed to remain.

By the time dessert came, most people were already full. Sugar has a way of convincing people that nothing important is missing. Plates were cleared quickly. Efficiently. Without debate.

Soaky said that was always the trick to make compliance feel like comfort.

At the end, a bowl of fruit was set out. Something for everyone, they said. Some reached for what they recognized the familiar colors, familiar names. Some took only the cream. Others avoided the unfamiliar pieces altogether, careful not to touch what might stain or linger. Everyone left having chosen something. No one mentioned what remained.

Soaky let the story sit there, like an aftertaste no one could quite place, and took a quiet sip of whatever was left in his glass.

Under the Tent Pamphlet Series
Found stapled on trees, diner booths, and car windshields nationwide.

[SATIRE FOR AMERICA]
Printed and left anonymously. Like the best truths.

Face Paint Fades. Memory shouldn’t
-SxC

The tent was real enough,
though some of the words were whispered by a machine.
I just helped them find their meaning

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soapboxes

January 13, 2026 by Soaky The Clown

Soaky climbed onto the milk crate because the floor was sticky and the crate was not.
That’s still how most awakenings begin, traction problems and poor planning.

He didn’t ask for attention. He never does. Attention arrives anyway when a man in a clown nose stands above eye level holding a notebook that looks like it’s survived several administrations and at least one flood.

Sandy slid him a tepid beer and set a single shot glass beside it, no label, no ceremony.

Soaky looked at the glass, nodded once, and left it untouched.
“Later,” he said. “Hope should never be rushed.”

A few people looked up with the cautious interest reserved for things that don’t announce what they’re about to become.

“Relax,” he told the room, wobbling slightly. “I’m not here to convince anyone. Convincing is what salesmen do. I’m just here to read the warning label out loud.”

Someone laughed. Someone leaned in. Someone crossed their arms, the universal posture of I already know how this ends.

Soaky opened the notebook.

“Once upon a time,” he read, “some very serious men sat in the ruins of a city and argued about rules. Not because rules had worked but because nothing else had.”

He paused, picked up the shot, held it up like a tiny lantern.

“This,” he said, “is for the idea that rules still mattered after everything else failed.”

He tossed it back. No cheer. Just a swallow and a breath.

“They’d just beaten the worst monsters the modern world could assemble,” he continued. “And the strange thing is, nobody was debating whether the monsters were real. They were debating how fast they were allowed to deal with them.”

A man at the bar muttered, “Different times.”

Soaky nodded eagerly. “Exactly. That’s always the phrase. Different times. History loves that one.”

Sandy quietly replaced the shot glass. Soaky didn’t look down this time.

“You see,” Soaky said, “power hates waiting. It hates hearings. It hates being told to slow down when it’s already sure it’s right. Power prefers urgency. Power prefers efficiency. Power prefers believers.”

A woman frowned. “Believers in what?”

Soaky smiled gently. “In the story. Any story will do.”

He gestured around the bar.

“Believers say, This has to happen.
Sycophants say, You’re right to do it.
And the lost…” he paused, “…the lost say nothing at all. They just hope it won’t involve them.”

Soaky picked up the second shot.

“This one,” he said, “is for the lost.”

He drank it slower. Like it might argue back.

“So those men back then,” he went on, “they had every excuse to skip the boring parts. The bodies were stacked high. The evidence filled warehouses. If anyone could’ve said trust us, it was them.”

He tapped the notebook.

“And that’s the absurd part. They didn’t.”

Someone scoffed. “So what, they were saints?”

Soaky laughed. “God no. They were lawyers. Which is worse in different ways.”

He took a sip of beer, then glanced at the newly filled shot glass.

“They said if we go fast, we teach the world speed matters more than justice.
If we go sloppy, we teach the world truth is flexible.
If we only apply the rules to the people we beat, we teach the world that law is just another costume.”

A man in a campaign hat shifted on his stool. A woman scrolling through her phone stopped scrolling.

“The dangerous people,” Soaky said quietly now, “aren’t the ones who shout. It’s the ones who nod. The ones who say this is necessary. The ones who say this is different. The ones who say for now.”

He lifted the third shot, studied it.

“This one,” he said, “is not a toast.”

He tossed it back anyway.

“Every bad idea wears the same hat,” he continued.
“It says, Relax. This is temporary.
History keeps that hat in a museum labeled Forever.”

Someone asked if he was comparing anyone to Nazis.

Soaky shook his head slowly. “No. That’s lazy.”

“I’m comparing us,” he said, “to ourselves when we’re in a hurry.”

Sandy placed another shot on the bar, reachable, unavoidable.

“Here’s the part nobody likes,” Soaky said. “It wasn’t about being good or bad. That’s kindergarten stuff. It was about what happens when being sure makes you stop being careful.”

He looked around the room, believers clenched and hopeful, sycophants polished and alert for applause cues, the lost staring into drinks like answers might surface.

“The most dangerous sentence in any language,” Soaky said,
“is trust me, I’m following the process.
It sounds responsible. It sounds modern. It comes with charts.”

He picked up the shot but didn’t drink it yet.

“Back then,” he continued, “they had a shorter version. Very efficient.
We decided it was rude and replaced it with something that feels better in the mouth.”

A glass clinked. Someone swallowed.

“Funny thing is,” Soaky said, finally drinking the shot,
“the sentence still does the same job. It moves the weight off your shoulders and into the room.”

He closed the notebook.

“The process doesn’t absolve you,” he added. “It just gives you company.”

No one spoke.

“Winning,” Soaky said, reaching for the beer now,
“is a terrible teacher. It convinces you that whatever worked was also right.”

He stepped down from the soapbox.

“They thought the lesson back then was about monsters,” he said, almost to himself, adjusting the forget-me-not.
“Mostly it was paperwork, confidence, and the kind of certainty that doesn’t look back.”

Soaky slid back onto his stool, lined up his empty shot glasses like old friends who had said their piece, and drank his beer.

He left the notebook closed.
He left the flower behind.

afterwards….

Sandy gathered the empty shot glasses and stacked them with care, the way you do when you want to pretend order still counts for something.

The last one she didn’t touch.

It sat alone near the edge of the bar — clear, waiting, saying nothing.

She glanced at it, then at the forget-me-not Soaky had left behind.
It sat in a small glass she’d repurposed into a vase, the stem crooked, the blue stubborn.

Someone asked her what she thought about all of it.

Sandy shrugged. “I think most people just want a life.”

She wiped the bar again, slower now.

“They want to work, go home, sleep. They want their kids bored. They want tomorrow to feel normal enough to ignore.”

She looked back at the untouched shot.

“I don’t know about monsters,” she said. “I just know people come in here hoping nothing gets worse while they’re inside.”

The room settled. Coins clinked. A stool scraped. The night resumed its ordinary labor.

Sandy turned off the overheads one by one — not closing, just quieting — until only a single light remained over the bar.

It caught the glass.
It caught the flower.
It caught what hadn’t been decided yet.

She left it on.

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the problem started when it Was fixed

January 12, 2026 by Soaky The Clown

Sunday night didn’t bring much with it.

The bar wasn’t empty, just thin. A few regulars spread out like they’d already spent their arguments for the week. The TV was on mute. Sandy wiped the counter more than it needed. Monday was close enough to feel.

Soaky sat with his tablet open, scrolling without urgency until he stopped dead.

Didn’t blink.
Didn’t scroll back.

“What the fuck,” he said.

Not loud. Not soft. Certain.

Sandy looked up. That tone meant something cracked.

He turned the tablet so she could see.

Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’.

She read it once. Then again.

“Oh,” she said, resigned. “So we’re saying that part out loud now.”

Soaky didn’t answer right away. He set the tablet down harder than necessary and lined up two shot glasses in front of him. His counselors. He needed them close tonight.

“I’ve heard this voice,” he said.

He lifted the shot glass, watching the color hold steady, the small meniscus clinging to the rim. He tipped it back. The bitterness hit first, then the burn, dulling the edge but not the meaning.

“Not his. The other one. The podcast one. The clean haircut. The confidence.”

A guy a few stools down looked over. Thirties. Hoodie. Tired eyes.

“What’s the argument?” the guy asked. “Like… what’s the angle?”

Soaky tapped the headline with one finger. “That the fix was the crime,” he said. “That once you stopped something ugly, the ugliness magically started there.”

The guy frowned. “But they didn’t pass that law for fun.”

Sandy shook her head. “People couldn’t vote. Couldn’t buy houses. Couldn’t get hired. That wasn’t vibes—that was policy.”

“So why say this now?” the guy asked.

Soaky leaned back, exhaled through his nose.

“Because it works,” he said. “It feels good to say you didn’t win, you were robbed.”

He picked up his beer. It was flat. He drank it anyway.

“You notice,” he continued, “how nobody ever talks about what was happening before the law? Like history starts at inconvenience.”

The bar stayed quiet. No one felt accused. That mattered.

The guy nodded slowly. “Probably didn’t feel like a problem when it wasn’t touching them.”

“There it is,” Soaky said. “That’s the whole trick.”

Sandy slid a fresh beer toward him. “You okay?”

Soaky stared at the condensation forming on the glass.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just hate watching the past get re-edited in real time.”

Outside, a car passed. Inside, someone laughed at something unrelated. Life kept moving.

Soaky flipped the tablet face-down.

He looked around the bar and said, “If nothing was wrong back then… why did they have to write it into law?”

No one answered.

Sandy rang the bell for last call. No one rushed. No one left early.

Soaky pulled his notebook from his coat, wrote carefully, then closed it.

Notebook tag, Sunday night:

When a law written to stop abuse is remembered only as an abuse itself,
The past has been edited,
The victim reassigned,
and the lie no longer needs force
only repetition.
———————————————————————————-

Link – New York Times story : “Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’.

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thursday……..

January 9, 2026 by Soaky The Clown

The bar wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t relaxed either. That in-between hum, where glasses clink too sharply and people laugh a second late.

Soaky sat with his tepid beer and his familiar row of empty shot glasses, lined up like witnesses who’d already testified. Sandy wiped the counter in slow, deliberate strokes, listening more than cleaning.

“Minneapolis,” someone said, finally. Not accusatory. Just weary.

A man in a red hat—frayed brim, sweat-stained band—stiffened. He didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. Just stared at the condensation sliding down his glass like it was racing the clock.

“She’s dead,” a woman near the jukebox said. “A woman. Let’s not get that wrong.”

Soaky nodded once.
“Words matter early,” he said. “That’s when they’re still alive.”

The red hat shifted. “I saw it,” he said. “I ain’t denying that. What I can’t get past is how fast everything else showed up.”

“What do you mean?” Sandy asked, setting down a beer she hadn’t been asked for.

“I mean,” he said, choosing carefully, “before the body was even cold, the administration told us what it was. What it meant. Who was guilty. Who was complicit. Whole thing wrapped up neat as a press release.”

A man down the bar scoffed. “You saying we should wait to call it what it is?”

Soaky raised a finger—not to interrupt, just to slow the room.
“He’s not saying wait forever,” he said. “He’s saying he didn’t get a minute.”

The red hat exhaled, grateful. “Exactly. I didn’t get a minute to just… see her as a person. Before it turned into a lesson. Or a loyalty test.”

“She didn’t get a minute either,” someone snapped.

“No,” he said quietly. “She didn’t.”

That landed heavier than shouting would have.

Soaky picked up one of the shot glasses and turned it slowly.
“There’s a difference,” he said, “between accountability and proclamation. One asks questions. The other announces conclusions.”

He took a sip of his beer and grimaced at the warmth.
“When power speaks first, grief gets crowded out. And some folks, especially folks who don’t trust power start backing away. Not because they don’t care… but because they don’t like being told how to care.”

The red hat nodded. “Feels like if I don’t repeat the verdict word for word, I’m assumed to be defending the act. Like there’s no room for horror and hesitation.”

Sandy leaned in slightly. “What’s the hesitation?”

He swallowed. “That truth shouldn’t need a script. That justice shouldn’t sound like branding. And that when the White House speaks before the city does—before the family does—it starts feeling less like mourning and more like management.”

The bar went quiet. Not hostile. Thinking.

“So,” Soaky said softly, lining the shot glasses back up, “maybe the fracture isn’t about whether a woman died. She did. That’s real. Maybe the fracture is about who gets to speak first—and who’s expected to echo.”

He looked down the bar, then back at the red hat.
“Some people don’t reject the truth. They reject being drafted.”

No one argued.

Someone paid their tab. Someone else ordered another round.

And for a brief moment, the woman from Minneapolis wasn’t a headline, or a verdict, or a weapon.

She was just what she should have been first.

A life.

From the Notebook

A woman is dead.

That is not a position.
It is a weight.

Tragedy does not ask for our speed or our certainty.
It asks for our restraint.

When we rush to name, to judge, to declare,
we trade mourning for motion
and call it virtue.

The Stoics warned against mistaking impulse for wisdom.
They believed clarity arrives only after the mind stops flinching.

Grief, like truth, does not improve when hurried.

So I will sit with what is knowable:
a life ended,
a family broken,
and a world too loud to notice the difference.

What comes next should be slower than anger
and sturdier than slogans.

Anything else is noise passing for care.

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wednesday afternoon

December 10, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

The bar was half full or half empty, depending on who needed the metaphor.
Some nights it leaned toward comfort, while other nights it leaned toward warning. Tonight it sat right on the fence, like a country unsure which way to tip. Soaky had his three counselors lined up shot glasses polished from long service. One had already been dismissed for incompetence. Two stood ready to disappoint him. His beer had gone warm, as if it too had given up on pretending things were under control.

The muted TV ran a familiar crawl of agitation:

NOEM QUESTIONS WHETHER MAMDANI BROKE THE CONSTITUTION BY INFORMING MIGRANTS OF THEIR RIGHTS

Joe, in his fading red hat, let out a low whistle.
“That’s what happens when you start tellin’ people how to get around ICE,” he said. “Same crap AOC pulled last year. Remember that webinar?”

Mark nodded beside him.
“Yeah, when she told folks what tactics ICE uses. Homan went on TV sayin’ she might get investigated. DOJ even poked at it.”

Emily from Legal Aid lifted her glass, weary.
“She told people their rights. That’s her job. Same with Mamdani. Knowing the law isn’t obstruction.”

Joe grunted. “Feels like coaching to me.”

Sandy looked up from where she was stacking clean glasses, her tone steady.
“Joe, wanting proof before someone walks into your home isn’t avoiding the law. It’s your right. Same for anyone else.”

Joe shifted, eyes drifting back to the headline like it might blink first.

Soaky rolled his clown nose between his fingers.
“Let me ask something,” he said quietly. “If someone teaches you your rights, does it feel like they’re helping you break the law? Or making sure the law doesn’t break you?”

Mark snorted.
“There he goes… philosophy class.”

“No class,” Soaky said, shrugging. “Just questions. People usually answer themselves if you give ’em the space.”

Emily nodded slightly.

Joe leaned on the bar.
“Still feels like politicians care more about folks who just got here than people who’ve been busting their backs forever.”

Soaky didn’t argue.
“That’s a real feeling,” he said. “But does taking someone else’s rights fix that? Or just give the government practice for taking more?”

Joe scratched his jaw. “You saying we’re handing over power without noticing?”

Soaky lifted his second counselor and downed it.
“Happens all the time. Fear’s a hell of a salesperson. And power loves a discount.”

Mark exhaled.
“Feels like everything’s slipping, man. The whole damn country.”

The jukebox kicked on—something slow, steel guitar, a little lonesome.

Sandy poured Soaky’s final counselor and nudged it toward him.
“You’re quieter tonight.”

Soaky looked around the room—tired faces, red hats, legal pins, people disagreeing but still sharing a roof and a Wednesday night.
“Just thinking,” he said. “About how rights don’t usually vanish in big moments. They fray at the edges when no one’s looking.”

He downed the last shot, rested his hand on the glass, and took a long drink of his lukewarm beer.

Notebook Fragment

Rights don’t vanish all at once.
They thin out at the edges,
often where we’re not looking.

Tonight reminded me of something simple:
a right taken from one person
is practice for taking it from everyone.

If you’re reading this,
ask yourself—

Which of your freedoms is being tested right now,
and are you paying close enough attention to notice?

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words first

December 2, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

It was 3:30 on a Tuesday, and the sun was giving up
not setting in the usual way,
but withdrawing, inch by inch,
like it didn’t want to watch what was about to unfold on the news.

About an hour left before it vanished behind the bluff,
retreating the way decent language retreats
When leaders start calling people “garbage.”

The bar was holding onto the last scraps of daylight like a tired ship taking on water.
Soft amber patches clung to the floorboards, the tabletops, the spine of a forgotten menu.
Everything else was sliding into that half-light that only bars and back alleys understand.

Sandy was wiping down the taps in slow circles.
Two old-timers in the corner murmured about the ice conditions on the lake.
An exhausted student scrolled through job listings like they were reading their own obituary.
It was the hour when nothing dramatic ever happened
until it did.

Soaky’s beer sat sweating on the counter, tracing quiet halos on the wood.
The shots beside it, his loyal council of glass elders, stood in an orderly row,
their tiny shoulders catching the last bits of sunlight like relics of a kinder age.

The TV was on above the bar, volume low, voices distant and metallic.
A headline crawled across the bottom like a sorrowful little creature:

PRESIDENT ESCALATES RHETORIC AGAINST SOMALI IMMIGRANTS

And then Soaky’s phone lit up with cold, blue light,
the kind of light that makes everything look guilty.

He lifted it.
Didn’t press play.
He didn’t need the audio.
The words were already screaming silently from the captions:

“garbage”…
“send them back”…
“their country stinks”…

He set the phone down face-first.
Gently.
Like covering the eyes of a child during a violent scene in a movie.

The bar didn’t fall silent all at once
it was more like the silence seeped in through the walls,
a draft of awareness,
a hush that nobody ordered.

Soaky reached for the first shot.

“You know,” he said, voice low,
“It’s funny how people think the danger starts with the action.”

He swirled the amber liquid, watching it catch the dimming light.

“But that’s never where the story begins.
The story begins here.”
He tapped his temple.
“Or here.”
He tapped the rim of the phone, still glowing, faintly like a trapped ghost.

“Words,” he said, lifting the shot glass.
“These small little bullets.
These ordinary syllables with extraordinary aim.”

He didn’t drink yet.
Just looked at the bar around him
at the faces pretending not to listen,
at the TV mouthing cruelty in closed-captioned silence,
at the sunlight limping toward the door.

“You call a whole people ‘garbage,’” he said,
“and something in the room temperature changes.
Does anyone feel it?
That invisible drop?
That’s the first cold front of dehumanization blowing in.”

He finally took the shot.
It burned all the way down, the good kind of hurt.

“History never starts with broken bones,” he said.
“It starts with broken metaphors.
Break the language,
break the truth,
break the dignity.
Everything else is just gravity doing what gravity does.”

The TV droned on.
Names. Statements. Headlines.
The sun bled lower, slipping behind the bluff, a slow retreat into night.

Soaky cleared his throat.
“But here’s the thing, folks.
Once you teach a crowd to call someone ‘garbage,’
you’ve already told them what can be done with garbage:
Burn it.
Bury it.
Forget it.”

He lined up the empty shot glass with the others
a neat row of spent arguments
and reached for the next.

“You think it’s the ICE raids that scare me?” he said softly.
“No.
It’s the rehearsal.
It’s the language softening us up,
loosening the bolts on the moral hinges.
It’s the warm-up act for cruelty.”

He lifted the second shot.
Paused.

“The sun gave up today,” he said.
“Funny thing is,
I can’t blame it.”

He drank.
Set the glass down with a quiet click.

“Because when a country starts dimming its own light,” he whispered,
“Even the daylight doesn’t want to watch.”

Sandy stopped wiping.
The student stopped scrolling.
Even the lake guys paused mid-story.

The blue of the phone glowed again, insistent, hollow.

Soaky didn’t look at it.

He just reached for his beer,
took a long pull,
and let the early darkness finish settling over the bar
a darkness not caused by the sun,
but by the words
we allow to eclipse one another.

Epilogue:

History doesn’t repeat because we forget it.
It repeats because someone finds the old words
and decides to use them again—
and because we, somehow,
have forgotten why those words were dangerous.

Strip a people of their name,
replace it with something disposable,
and the rest of the cruelty becomes effortless.
Words are the first permissions we grant ourselves.

Tonight the sun gave up early,
and I understood why.

The language dimmed first.
It always does.

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truth, revised

November 21, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

The cold outside clung to the bar’s windows, a dry metallic hint of snow hanging in the air but refusing to fall. Inside, warmth gathered in the soft hum of voices, the muted clink of glass, and the low glow of the old flatscreen TV above the liquor shelf.

Sandy kept the volume low, but it didn’t matter tonight. The bar wasn’t talking. The bar was watching.

Soaky sat at the very end of the bar, his usual post where the whole room lay in soft panorama. Before him, five shot glasses stood in a neat row, ready companions. Beside them sat a mug of cool beer, a thin line of condensation trailing down its side. He lifted it occasionally, slow and thoughtful, eyes fixed on the screen.

On the TV, the chyron drifted under a panel of stiff, uncomfortable faces:

COAST GUARD RECONSIDERS CLASSIFICATION OF SWASTIKA, NOOSE

Rick from the conspiracy table let out a low whistle.
“That’s not a headline. That’s a distress signal.”

A rare ripple of agreement passed through the bar — people who normally wouldn’t share an opinion now sharing a moment of collective disbelief.

The bar door opened, letting in a knife-edge of cold air.

And in stepped Jennifer from the Historical Society.
The one who teaches fourth-graders how to tell the difference between folklore and actual history.
The one who can recite the entire founding of of the town with the ease of reading a recipe.
The one who once told Soaky that “facts are fragile things, like dragonflies, beautiful, but easy to crush.”

She saw the room’s frozen posture and followed their gaze to the TV.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “They’re actually debating this.”

Sandy shrugged with the remote in her hand.
“It came on. We just… didn’t turn it off.”

Jennifer slid onto a stool near Soaky, ordered a cider, and watched with an expression Soaky recognized the look of someone watching the present begin to sabotage the past.

“That’s not what history is for,” she said, more to herself than the bar.
“History is supposed to give us clarity. Patterns. Warnings.
Not excuses to pretend we don’t know what symbols mean.”

On the screen, a Coast Guard spokesperson was explaining how certain symbols needed “contextual reevaluation.”

The bar groaned as one.

Marsha the librarian rubbed her forehead.
“Contextual reevaluation? For a noose? What’s the good context — rustic home décor?”

Someone near the dartboard muttered, “Maybe the swastika’s now a bold geometric pattern.”

Laughter spread — the kind that leaks out when the absurd becomes too much.

Soaky lifted the first shot, let the TV’s glow shimmer across its surface, and whispered, “To the death of obvious things.”
He drank, chased with cool beer, and set the glass down softly.

A panelist insisted the symbols needed to be viewed “through a modern lens.”

Jennifer blinked hard.
“No. You don’t modernize hate. You don’t repaint a warning sign and pretend the danger moved on.”

Rick shrugged slightly, eyes still fixed on the screen.
“Maybe definitions have just… gotten more fluid.”

Laughter again, thin but honest.

Soaky raised the second shot.
“To the contortionists of meaning,” he said, then took it down.
“That tasted like denial,” he muttered after a cooling sip of beer.

Then it happened.

The TV host asked, “Is it possible the noose could be reinterpreted in a contemporary context?”

The entire bar answered in a single breath:
“No!”

Sandy swore under her breath.
Jennifer slammed her palm on the counter, cider trembling.

“That’s not reinterpretation,” she said.
“That’s erasing history. You can’t sand down a symbol of terror and pretend it’s smooth.
It dishonors those who perished, those who suffered, and those who survived.
It forgets the memory of the past until denial becomes acceptable.”

Silence fell, heavy, unified.

Soaky lifted the third shot.
“To Jennifer,” he said.

She blinked. “Why me?”

“For having the courage to say what everyone else is choking on.”

He drank, finished with a long sip from his mug, and exhaled slowly.

Mike, the retired Navy man finally spoke.
“What scares me is someone in uniform thought this was a good idea.”

Jennifer nodded.
“When institutions stop naming evil, they don’t protect anyone.
They just dim the lights so nobody notices the shadows.”

Soaky raised the fourth shot.
“To the ones who refuse to dim the lights.”
He drank.

Sandy muted the TV.
“So… where does this go?” she asked.

All eyes drifted to the end of the bar.

Soaky picked up the final shot, held it between his fingers like a small truth.

“Absurdity doesn’t arrive in chaos,” he said.
“It starts with a softened word. A blurred meaning. A truth allowed to wobble.”

He looked around at the faces, strangers, friends, skeptics, believers. All gathered in the same stunned clarity.

“And once that starts,” he said quietly,
“the whole house tilts.”

He drank.
Finished his beer.
Set the glass down gently.

“But a room full of people who agree on something?” he added.
“That’s warmth, even without snow.”

Jennifer lifted her cider.
“To sanity.”

The glasses that followed clinked imperfectly, but unanimously.

Later, when the bar emptied and the lights dimmed, Soaky took out his notebook and wrote:

It’s never the big break that ruins a society.
It’s the quiet edits.

One softened word.
One blurred meaning.
One truth allowed to bend.

By the time anyone notices,
the damage is already done.

appended 11/22/2025

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hollow…….

November 21, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

The bar felt crowded even though there were empty stools. It was the kind of night where everyone talked softer but meant things harder. Outside, the Mississippi wind rattled the windows, but inside, the only noise came from the muted TV flashing the latest outrage:
PRESIDENT CALLS LAWMAKERS “TRAITORS… PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.”

Sandy clicked the sound off before it infected the room.

Hank, a Vietnam vet, still carrying the posture of command, stared at the screen with a frown carved in granite.

“Every time that man gets cornered,” he muttered, “he starts swinging. Epstein, the cost of living… now he’s calling for hanging people who tell troops to obey the law?”

Marisol, scarf still around her neck from the cold, let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“He needed a foil. He always does. Pick a fight, light a fuse, hope everyone forgets the mess he made this week.”

Sandy smirked. “He’s like a guy who starts a bar brawl every time his own tab shows up.”

Hank pointed to the TV.
“But what those lawmakers did by telling soldiers they don’t have to follow illegal orders, that’s… that’s tricky business.”

Marisol leaned forward. “Tricky, yes. Wrong? No. Every service member swears to the Constitution before they swear to a president.”

Hank sighed. “Try sorting that out with bullets flying, or politics flying. Fog of war, fog of Washington, both’ll blind you.”

Sandy set down two drinks with a soft clink. “Pressure’s pressure. Doesn’t matter if it’s a drill sergeant or a boss or a politician on a tirade.”

Soaky, sitting a little apart with his tepid beer and his four shot glasses arranged like an odd little council, had been listening quietly. His notebook lay open in front of him like a half-awake witness.

“You ever notice,” he said, voice low and gentle, “how men who fear exposure build the biggest spotlights?”

Hank huffed. “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” Soaky said, turning a page, “shout ‘treason’ loud enough and people stop asking what you’re running from.”

Marisol nodded slowly. “That’s exactly what this is. Stir up a firestorm to hide the smoke.”

The bar hummed with that uneasy agreement that settles in when everyone is tired of being surprised.

Hank took a sip. “Still, you can’t have Congress telling troops to ignore orders.”

“And you can’t have presidents issuing illegal ones,” Marisol countered.

Silence followed. Not defensive, reflective.

Soaky looked up at them with a tired softness.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Everyone talks like people are just heads and guts. They have brains to rationalize, stomachs to want.”

Marisol tilted her head. “What are you getting at? Morals? Empathy?”

Soaky shook his head faintly.
“The middle space,” he said. “The thing between thinking and wanting.
The part that lets you feel the weight of a choice before you make it.”

Hank stared at his drink. “Whatever that is, we’re running short on it.”

Soaky nodded.

“Short supply. High demand. Dangerous combination.”

Marisol warmed her hands on her glass. “Some folks follow orders because they believe. Others follow because they’re afraid. But the ones who scare me? The ones who follow because there’s nothing inside them to question anything.”

Hank tapped the bar. “I knew guys like that in uniform. Hollow behind the eyes. Did whatever you told them without a flicker.”

“And in politics,” Sandy said, “you can spot ’em a mile away. Empty suits with big megaphones.”

Soaky closed his notebook gently.
“Hollow men love a Ministry of War,” he said. “It fills the emptiness. Gives them enemies, missions, and direction. Makes them feel purposeful without ever having to ask if what they’re doing is right.”

He pointed with his chin toward the TV, still showing the president’s furious face.

“When a leader talks like that,” he said quietly, “he’s telling hollow people exactly what shape their emptiness should take.”

A long moment settled over the bar, not heavy, just honest. The kind of silence that invites truth without demanding it.

Then Sandy raised her glass.

“To the folks who’ve still got something beating in the middle.”

Hank lifted his. “To the ones trying to grow it back.”

Marisol clinked lightly. “And to the ones who teach it by example.”

Soaky touched his beer to all three.

“And to the good trouble,” he said, “of knowing when to disobey.”

The wind rattled the windows again, but inside the bar, something steadier held firm, a small, stubborn warmth in a hollowing world.

Notebook entry – reflections

Closing time. Chairs flipped. Sandy counting the till. Wind pushing at the windows like it wants in.
Strange how the room feels fuller after everyone leaves.

We spent half the night trying to name that thing people carry, or have lost.
Not the mind.
Not the gut.
That other place. The middle.

I still don’t have the right word for it.

Call it soul, maybe.
Call it conscience.
Call it that voice in the night that won’t let you sleep until you’ve sat with whatever truth you’ve been avoiding.

Whatever it is, I can feel when it’s missing in some
Like a floorboard gone hollow.
Makes every step uncertain.

Maybe that’s why the world feels drafty lately,
too many empty spaces where something steady used to live.

If these pages ever find another pair of hands, I hope you check your own middle now and then.
Not to judge it.
Just to see what’s still awake in there.

— SxC

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friday

November 14, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

Friday night rolled in thick as river fog off the Mississippi
an unseasonably warm November evening that felt wrong on the skin,
like the month itself had stepped out of character.

Maybe that warmth loosened something in people.
Because everyone seemed to wander out tonight:

Couples who hadn’t gone out since July.
College kids home early.
Old-timers searching for noise instead of silence.
Parents escaping the weight of their own thoughts.
The lonely, the restless, the ones afraid to sit with themselves.

The unnamed bar, a stubborn old survivor, swelled the way a miniature world does:
compressed, loud, and honest.
Every kind of American ache, opinion, and contradiction under one roof.

Sandy worked it like a conductor in a symphony of chaos.

First at the door, checking IDs with that raised eyebrow that turned bravado into apology.
Then behind the bar, sliding beers and lining up shots, managing the crowd with a mix of sharpness and affection that kept the whole room tethered.

Stephanie wove through the bodies with a tray of empties —
dropping off a shot here and there for Soaky without breaking stride,
the gesture half-habit, half-companionship.
She scooped up glasses before they cemented themselves to the tables and ferried beers like a steady pulse.

Another cluster of underagers pushed through the door, all chest and no years.

Sandy didn’t even have to speak.
One look from her and they wilted.

“You’ll thank me next year,” she told the last one gently.
“Come back when you’ve grown into yourselves.”

They slunk back outside into the warm night.

Soaky watched from his corner stool — warm beer in hand, battered notebook open, his red clown nose tilted just a little left.
A man built to listen, not to interrupt.

Tonight, the bar spoke plenty.

Bits of conversation floated like broken signals in the humid air.

At the rail:

“College is a scam. Trades pay real money.”

Near the jukebox:

“If you come here, you speak English. That’s how it works.”

From a booth of loud, half-drunk young men:

“Fifteen’s not that young. It’s not like she’s a little kid.”

And from the old regulars:

“Schools ain’t right no more… can’t trust what they’re teaching.”

Fear disguised as certainty.
Certainty standing in for understanding.

Stephanie brushed by again, dropping a fresh shot in front of Soaky with a soft clink.

“Busy night,” she said.
“Lots of noise. Not much substance.”

Soaky smiled and let the pen find the page.

Notebook fragments:

People shine bright tonight,
but hollow when you tap them.

Voices full of opinions,
hearts worn thin.

Schools used to fill the inner rooms:
geometry that shaped the mind,
stories that shaped the soul,
questions that stretched the imagination,
wonder that softened the edges of growing up.

Then piece by piece,
those rooms emptied.

Until school became a time clock,
a training line for factory work that barely exists.

Bell rings.
Sit here.
Move there.
Memorize.
Repeat.

How you teach becomes what you teach.
Turn classrooms into machines, and people will echo the shape.

A voice cracked across the bar:

“Immigrants get everything free! Nobody gave me anything!”

Not anger.
Hunger wearing anger’s coat.

Soaky heard the fracture inside it.

At the far end of the bar sat a mother.

Alone, fingers curled around a half-finished beer.

She whispered more to the rim of the glass than to anyone else:

“I’m scared my daughter’s gonna get lost.”
“World’s too damn big… too sharp for her.”

She took a shaky sip.

“Crazy, isn’t it?”
“I worry she’ll end up in a bar on a Friday night
while I’m in a bar on a Friday night.”

Sandy slid her a water without a word.
Stephanie brushed her shoulder gently as she passed, a quiet mercy.

Soaky felt the contradiction settle into him like a weight he’d been carrying his whole life:

parents desperate to protect their kids
from the same wounds they themselves hadn’t healed.

He wrote:

Parents don’t clutch tight because they’re cruel.
They clutch because the world slips through their fingers,
and they’re terrified their kids will fall through the same cracks.

Control is worry wearing armor.
But armor gets heavy.
And parents get tired.

Then another thought surfaced, something deeper, older:

When the inner rooms go empty,
what becomes of humanity?

Strip away wonder, curiosity, courage…
and what’s left walking around?

A voice without warmth.
A body with habits.
An outline of a person with nothing behind the ribs to light it.

Humanity isn’t the skin or the breath or the noise.
It’s the part that feels the lives of others as real.

Empty that out… and the shape remains,
but the human slips away.

Last call arrived like a tide pulling back.

Sandy’s voice rose above the din.
Stephanie swept glasses with practiced speed.
The crowd spilled into the warm November night
laughing, stumbling, carrying unseen heaviness.

When the final body left, Sandy locked the door with a sigh.

“Write something decent tonight,” she told Soaky.
“Folks’ve had their share of ugly.”

The lights dimmed to that late-night hum the bar kept for itself.

Soaky finished his beer.
And wrote the last lines of the night.

Reflection:

Funny how it starts small:
one dropped class,
one ‘useless’ subject,
one old book shelved for good.

Then the bells replace curiosity,
the schedules replace wonder,
and kids learn obedience instead of becoming themselves.

Teach them like machines,
and don’t be surprised when the world
fills with people starving for something
they no longer even know how to name.

A hunger behind the ribs,
pressed flat and wordless.

Those old lessons the ones they shrug off now
were never meant to make you wealthy.

They were meant to make you human.

Not to carry a soul…
but to have one.

He closed the notebook carefully,
as if the words inside needed sleep too.

Stepped out into the warm November night.
Breathed it in like a question without an answer.

And for just a moment,
the world felt tender —
as if it remembered what people keep forgetting.

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November 12, 2025 by Soaky The Clown

Wednesday night, the kind of night where the sidewalks hum their own tired hymns, Soaky found himself staring at a flyer left crooked on the bar, bright colors, sharp fonts, made to catch the eye of someone younger, angrier, or more hopeful than him.

TURNING POINT USA PRESENTS:
DANI LINDSAY , GOD, TRUTH & WOMEN’S SPORTS

Provocative enough to make a clown wander.

Sandy raised an eyebrow as she tucked a couple shot glasses in a neat row, like kids sitting cross-legged for story hour.
“Gonna go stir something up?” she asked.
Soaky shook his head. “Just curious what’s stirring.”

And so he went.

The campus sat quiet under the November cold, the limestone buildings holding their breath the way churches do before a wedding. Soaky paused at the edge of the quad, letting the stillness settle into him. He always felt a kind of reverence on school grounds, these places built for becoming, where potential hadn’t yet been bullied into choosing sides.

He had once believed in places like that. Maybe he still did.

Inside the auditorium, the crowd pressed in like a storm front, students, locals, a few older faces looking for something to cheer for or rage against. Security ringed the walls, and more than a few of them gave Soaky a nod of familiarity.

“Evening, Soak,” one murmured while rummaging through a student’s bag.
“You armed?”
“Just the usual,” Soaky said, patting the worn notebook under his arm.
“And a flask?”
Soaky shrugged. “It’s Wednesday.”

They let him through. You can trust a man who drinks openly but hides his thoughts.

He claimed a seat in the back row, where there’s always just enough room for a small metal flask and a place to write without spectacle. He set the memory of his usual shot glasses on the armrest, old companions in absent form, and opened the notebook.

From the stage came the speaker’s voice: strong, young, driven, carved by pain and polished by revival. The crowd leaned forward. Soaky leaned back.

His pen hovered.

Let’s see what the ink tries to catch, he thought.
A voice about God and Truth and womanhood, from a girl who says, “The body can break, but the spirit does not have to.” A girl who calls her recovery a miracle but stands here because she crawled, limped, and learned to walk again.

The pen scratched:

“Funny how some folks survive on grit and call it grace,
while others survive on grace and call it grit.
Either way, they’re still standing. But it matters who they thank for it.”

Another line carried across the room:
“Truth is objective, and you can only find truth in Jesus Christ.”

Soaky’s pen moved:

“Truth is a shy creature,
slipping between what we see and what we swear by.
Sometimes it hides in a person’s courage,
sometimes in their contradiction.”

Then she spoke of immigrants and prisoners—even murderers—as still human beings “made in the image of God.”
Soaky nodded. Finally something human.

He wrote:

“At last—someone not afraid to see the stranger as kin.”

But her tone shifted, women made to glorify the Lord, women meant to be protected, women meant for “the most beautiful job: motherhood.”

Soaky watched her on that stage, working, traveling, leading, blazing her own path while preaching the domestic one.

He wrote:

“The ones who preach stay-in-your-lane
are always the ones driving three of them at once.”

Then came the praise of Charlie Kirk. Cheering. Amening.
Soaky just sipped from the flask.

He wrote:

“A man’s halo is measured by the shadows he casts.
Some folks call those shadows ‘truth.’
Others can smell the smoke.”

The Q&A

The room loosened when the questions began—half relief, half combustion.

A young woman stood first:
“How do we defend fairness and compassion? I want both.”
Soaky felt something like hope crack open.

Then came the louder voices.

“What’s the point of being a Christian if the country doesn’t follow Christian values?”
“Aren’t we supposed to fight?”
“How do we stop the left from destroying America?”
“How do we win the culture war?”

Soaky scribbled:

“They’re so young to feel so hunted.
So lost for people who’ve barely begun the path.
Somebody taught them to fear their neighbors before they ever met them.”

The Walk Back

He slipped out before the applause.

The night air hit his cheeks sharp and cold. The campus glowed behind him, all that potential waiting to be discovered, misused, or ignored.

“Where’s the middle anymore?” he whispered.

No answer, except the warm light ahead.

Sandy greeted him with a beer and the usual ritual of setting shot glasses like small saints along the counter.

“You look like a man who’s heard too much truth,” she said.

“More like too much Truth™,” he replied.

Notebook Entry

There was a time,
not long ago, when “the Right” meant a direction,
not a destination with a bouncer at the door.

Folks used to argue like carpenters:
measure twice, cut once, don’t swing a hammer unless you know what you’re fixing.
Now it feels more like swordplay, less about building, more about drawing blood.

I keep looking for the middle out there.
Not the mushy kind. Not the coward’s fence.
The honest middle, where a person can stand without swearing fealty to a man who waves his own name like a flag.

But the middle’s gone quiet. Buried under the shouting.
Hard to hear a moral compass when someone keeps slapping magnets on it.

Funny thing about politics:
it used to follow principles.
Now it follows personalities, pilgrims chasing a traveling saint who blesses only the people who clap loudest.

It’s a strange religion, the kind where the shepherd needs the sheep to protect him.

So where’s the middle?
Maybe hiding in the same place truth hides when the torches come out:
in the ordinary people who don’t chant, don’t pledge allegiance, don’t need a hero on a T-shirt to tell them what’s right.

Maybe the middle isn’t lost.
Maybe it’s just tired, tired of being shouted over by people who mistake volume for virtue.

And maybe, just maybe, the compass still works.
You just have to set it down somewhere quiet,
away from the crowds,
away from the stage lights,
away from the man who keeps calling himself North.

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