I was thinking about cleaning the kitchen when I got home.

I was thinking about how long it had been since I’d had sex. I was thinking about finding or not finding a job that would take me away from Oklahoma. I found the butt in the pocket during the wedding the day before and didn’t know what to do with it, so I stashed it in the garment bag. On my way to the city, I was thinking about stopping at the record store in Bricktown, which isn’t there anymore, now, and ended up being closed that day, anyway, and I was thinking about the butt end of a blunt in the outer pocket of my tux’s garment bag. The day after Joshua and Jess got married, I was distracted. In Oklahoma, respecting the weather means being cautious and alert and hopeful while one goes about his business. If one, living in Oklahoma, were to put his life on hold every time the weather might turn dangerous, one might never accomplish anything for most of the spring. The forecast for this particular day, though, was all about tornadoes.Īnd just as living in Oklahoma makes one learn to respect forecasts of storms, especially when those forecasts involve tornadoes and hail, one also learns to live with those forecasts because they are inevitable. Even when the expectations of tornadoes or hail are low, we respect the wind, the lightning that cracks the sky for miles in every direction, the brief, blinding torrents of rain that the drought-scorched ground is too dry to absorb.

Living in Oklahoma, one learns to respect forecasts of storms. There were going to be storms late in the afternoon, early evening, maybe, but when I left, just after lunch, the sun was bright and hot. I piled the wedding party’s tuxes into the trunk of my car and drove from Stillwater to the mall in Oklahoma City. This was the day after Joshua and Jess got married.

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