Not Dead, Merely Hilarious

Sorry, not dead, merely hilarious.

Ok, on Tuesday at about 3am, our new kitten Loki catches a bat in the fucking house.

Repeat, Houston, there's a bat in the fucking house. Not on the outside of the fucking house, mission control, like that poor schmuck space bat who latched onto the space shuttle. Inside.

Loki.Caught.A.Bat.Inside.The.

Fucking.House.

So, naturally, I'm at work.

Working the night shift gives us some great benefits. I'm a natural insomniac, so if I get home at 4, I can get up again at 8, feed the kids, and take them to school, no problem. I can watch our littlest, A, if she is around, do errands or house work, pick kids up from school, and watch them after. We save a lot of time and money this way and the advantages preceding are only some of many.

But on the downside, my job doesn't let me be home if there's a bat in the fucking house.
Al-bayti lehse halal, in Arabic.
El casa assignante, so say the Spanish.
Click whistle fucking click click, in the language of the Congolese Pygmies.

So S, my wife, grabs Loki, bat still very much alive and screaming whatever passes for his ass off in sonar

Aside: how do bats poo? They hang upside down, and bat caves are notoriously full of dung. Do they wait all day or just crap all over themselves? Enquiring minds want to know. We ought one day to speculate on Alfred's greatest of duties, not keeping Bruce Wayne's secrets, nor impromptu surgery, nor even the upkeep of the manor, but rather the enviable task of washing forty-three pounds of dung off of the batmobile each evening. He'd be all like "Damn Batman, couldn't have his hideout in the wine cave or the centerfold-cave, nooooo. He had to have the batcave, and so I'm scrubbing this machine down for the eighth time today while he's upstairs 'training' with Robin. I'm so telling the Joker where he'll be tonight... AGAIN."

S shakes the hunter and the hunted until the bat soars into a spare bedroom. She closes the door, and puts Loki in the laundry room in case he's been bitten, has blood on him, or is contaminated by guano that the bat forgot to poo onto himself before going out that evening. Then she calls me, totally calmly, and tells me that everything is taken care of and not to worry or come home in opposite world.

I hasten myself on home and upon arrival, search my trunk for the weapons I am sure must be in there. Doubtless a machete lies just next to the tire iron. Fate will decree that a tennis racket, butterfly net, and some debilitating aerosol are fortuitously at hand. I open the trunk and find instead a Frisbee and a lunchbox. I'm so hosed.

I enter the house and proceed with ninja-like stealth up the stairs, pausing only briefly to step on a Barbie and then nearly launch my intrepid Frisbee at one of my wedding photos.

Sappers, those brave souls who clear mines and munitions from combat zones, have never entered a room so silently or cautiously as I do at the top of the stairs there. I don't inch the door open, I nano-meter it. With every fractional widening of the aperture, I check the door, the ceiling, the floor, and my underclothes for signs of trouble. I ease myself into the room, and used SWAT-inspired motions to clear behind the door and give myself a safe corner from which to operate. It takes me a minute to scan the room and find the beast, sweat beading on my forehead and a girlish squeal ready constantly in my throat.

Finally, I spot the interloper and, using sheer pluck and a wanton disregard for my own life, drop the lunchbox onto all three inches of his murderous, home-invading, self-soiling body. Victory!

Then, emboldened by my success and giddy with triumph, I proceed to set a book on top of the lunchbox and them attempt to perform a winner's back flip out of the second-story window when battykins, roused from torpor and irate at his imprisonment, suddenly begins to squeak and thump about. Luckily, another Barbie and my own clumsiness prevent me from completing this suicidal acrobatic routine and I merely bid a coward's retreat from the bat in my fucking house.

Le maison d'intercoursay, in French.
Una villa de makka de bigga famillia, in nearly obscene Italian stereotyping.
Das housen du spanken und gropen und inundoutundinundout ja ja, in the Teutonic accent.
Nous surrenderons, also in French, after hearing the Germans.

I pause to wash my hands two or three or fourteen times, and then fall wearily into bed, resplendent in my own magnificence and assuring my wife that all will be well in the morning. Her admiration and gratitude shine from her radiant smile and she praises my courage and intrepid resourcefulness in opposite world.

I am roused from my slumber in the morning by a girl from animal control. At thirty something, I don't know if I yet have the right to call this lady, doubtless a professional, trained, licensed, and certified, a girl, but nonetheless she is very young-looking, has jewelry poking from her face in a youthful fashion, calls me 'sir', and I could swear that she eyes the Barbies with interest as we head upstairs.

Now, although I have re-shut, the bedroom door, I am all at my ease as I show this woman, who seems mere minutes older than my eldest daughter, in to remove the bat. She puts on her gloves, readies her 'bat box', an empty Twizzlers can, and removes my makeshift prison. I stand behind her, an experienced and macho grin on my face, ready to help if she swoons a bit at the sight of this vicious opponent.

He isn't there.

I shall lay awake in my bed for years attempting to craft an expletive forceful enough to describe the fear that runs up my spine as I realize that, assured of my quarry's entrapment, I have cast myself as every nameless prison guard in every movie I've ever seen where the hapless jailer enters the cell and realizes too late, that the convict stands hidden in the shadows, about to pounce.

Princess Spikeface, whose real name I may have forgotten, takes one step to look for the dread critter and I, heart in my throat and fearing for my life, attempt to preserve my fast-dwindling supply of masculinity by counter-stepping. In doing so, I make it appear that I am merely assisting in the search when really I am trying to stand back to back and hope that this mere wisp of a girl will save me.

She does, suddenly leaning down and plucking the winged vermin, still very alive and deadly, from next to my quivering, fearful foot and puts it into her candy box as though it were a Barbie and I was a big wuss.

That completed, she gives me a receipt and a number to call the next day, and leaves, calling me 'sir' again, the smug little pincushion. The bat has left the fucking house.

Wode Jongwen hun buhao, in Chinese.
Komen, ronin nigiri seppuke, in untelligible Japanese.
Him fella, big fukfuk house, as one says in the pidgin of New Guinea.

***
The next day our worst fears are realized when we learn that the bat has tested positive for rabies.

S must be vaccinated.
The cats all must get boosters.
I must be vaccinated.
Our kids, who weren't even in the house for days before or after the transgression must be vaccinated.

And we're scheduled to leave the next morning to visit Susan's relatives in Iowa.

Rapture.

So we go and spend approximately three years at the hospital where, in lovely counterpoint to Mademoiselle Piercing's admirable quickness, we are assigned the oldest nurse still practicing medicine less than six feet underground.

Now, rabies vaccines have come a long way since the days of Louis Pasteur, who this nurse probably knew when he was a kid and she was only 73. Anyone who has heard tales of dozens of abdominal injections will be relieved to learn that the vaccine itself is administered intra-muscularly to the deltoids, a simple shot in the arm. But to prevent the onset of rabies, a weighted injection to the gluteal region of globulin is indicated. That means shots in the ass. Right before three hours on a plane.

But wait, there's more!

Arm shots are almost painless, but one's bum is more sensitive, it seems, and so the kids will need some encouragement and a good example. So, not only do I have to go first, but facing the family and with the nurse who is essentially one big wrinkle behind me, I must expose an inch or so of what can be called only with great euphemism and irony and lying my 'lower back' for her to jab . Five times.

When I'm getting home, I'm so calling Alfred.

Nous surrenderons.

If you've been holding your breath, you're probably a fish.

The news that I have changed will come as no surprise to my few readers.



That I have had adventures and dramatic goings-on, again, should shock neither of you three.



Even despite these cautions and disclaimers, I must stress that the following revelation continues to shock even me.



I recently woke up to find myself living in the suburbs, worrying about washing machines, a father to no fewer than four children, and by all evidence wholeheartedly content. I am not making this up.



This is not metaphor, exaggeration, or hallucination.



The suburban home is a three-story townhouse.


The washing machine rumbles and bucks on all but the very lowest of settings.


The children... well perhaps I am not their father in the strictest sense, but the I think the hyperbole to be forgivable. I fell in love with their mother and cheerfully accepted them into the bargain.



Indeed, I chauffeur the tykes around, apply the magic poultices that are band-aids, offer insight into the mysteries of multiplication, and am as at-home at a tea party hosted by a puppet as I once was debating existentialism with hippie bikers. The conversation is at least as scintillating with the stuffed animals as it was during the absinthe-fueled thunderstorms of yesteryear. Gone are the puddymunchers and goblins in the corners of my vision -- or if they are there I am too busy with issues such as car seats and girl-scout cookies to notice. I still 'read' insofar as I listen to books while driving, this to drown out the dulcet tones of nursery rhymes, pre-k poetry, and the very latest in kid-safe edutainment.


So if not biologically paternal, I am at least a dutiful surrogate.


I can ascribe blame regarding this change to no one but myself. When one is as wildly moody, as erraticly employed, and as haphazardly experimental as I have been, there is always the danger of plunging tidal-wavingly and (should my luck hold) irreversibly into domestic bliss.



I have not abandoned the principles by which I have lived, but must admit that a great deal of the growing-up for which I had waited so long has (to all appearances) at least begun.

xoxo
-PC

You are you know who you are you know who you are...

It is at 8:06 on the 20th of March as I begin this entry and I will write through tomorrow morning, possibly watching the spring's first sunrise as I finish. I won't be able to write for all of that time, because of this new job and its' nocturnal nature, but still, I want to write to you from this last minute of winter and into spring.

The spring and winter here have been at odds these last few weeks. One day will be lusciously warm, full of the breezes and smells and sounds of spring, and the next will be icy and desolate as any forlorn February ever was. But things are changing still, and the bloom of the new season will arrive in earnest any day now.

You might not recognize me now compared to who I was even a year ago. I've been living clean, am (to my constant amazement) muscled, and have been letting all my reading germinate and metamorphose within my still solitary chrysalis. But like the spring, I think this change is eminently for the better, and that my current transformation is, at least to me, delightfully new and different from any previous cusps I've imagined. At least this one has biceps.

With the spring comes always, for me, hope, and delight, and wonder, and wanderlust. I long to pick up my bags and find some new place just blooming and watch as many new sunrises and sunsets as I can and to drink in the cold ambrosia of the world re-waking. This is also a newness for me, who has for so many years sat quietly and in solitude, to want to reach out and find again and anew and alit or backlit by the shade of tree petals upon some freshly greened lawn.

I have to go for a bit now, but I will think of what more to write you as I am about my labors, and will send up a silent song into the heavens that your dreams are warm and wild and wonderful.

***
(Later)

Lao-Tsu, the almost mythical author of the Tao Te Ching, wrote:

Thirty spokes meet at a hub;
Because of the hole we may use the wheel.

Clay is moulded into a vessel;
Because of the hollow we may use the cup.

Walls are built around a hearth;
Because of the doors we may use the house.

Thus tools come from what exists,
But use from what does not.

... We're an odd bunch, we night workers. True, our job takes all types, but we are still all of us characters in our own little ways. There are the providers, moonlighting to be able to give a little extra to their families. There are students, paying for their learning with a nightly workout. Then there are the insomniacs like me, with our jokes and our sarcasms and our consistently varied backgrounds.

If ever the idiosyncrasies of the latter category were combined into a single individual, that one would most certainly have been 'Steve'. Grizzled and white of hair, motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, gun-enthusiast, cowboy philosopher and jack-of-all-trades, Steve could always be counted upon to do the work and to bring up some esoteric discipline to discuss with anyone who would listen.

In the time that I knew him, I heard Steve expound on particle physics, zen archery, pornography, conspiracy theories, computer programming, home improvement, and the carnal pleasures of life. He was always looking for more to read, more to know, and was particularly interested in one of my own intellectual hobbies: semantics. On those occasions that we would find ourselves adequately proximate, Steve and I would exchange ideas about the meaning within meaning and the precarious line of thought that examines the nature of where words and actuality intersected.

It was Steve who, a few days ago, quoted to me those lines by Lao Tsu as we bantered about some quibbling aspect of philosophical minutiae. Steve hadn't been in to work over the last couple of days, and during this night' shift we learned that he'd had a heart attack, and died.

Khalil Gibran wrote:

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

So perhaps, what I am feeling now is something between the center of the wheel, and the hollow of the flute. Steve wasn't a great friend, by any means. We argued good-naturedly together as we lifted heavy things, and that was it. I'd never met him outside of work. I knew nothing of his origins or aspirations. I don't even know his last name. But I miss him.

Where are we in all of this? Is this thing called time just some way we've made up to perceive things? If I could see you in this moment, would I know you or would I have already known you? If I looked at the light upon your eyes, or smelled your hair, would it be for the first time or merely again or is it always happening? Suddenly, I miss you too, deeply, and I long to know you again or meet for the first time and, or, the last. I don't want this little correspondence.

My heart is filled with the shapes of people, and it may only be now that I can recognize, through its' emptiness, the place therein where Steve, however improbably, had made his occupation. I have as few illusions as I can manage, and I do not think I shall ever know you fully, but I do not want to learn what you mean to me through your loss. I can see some of your edges within my heart, but each time I look deeper, and read your words or catch your perfume in the air or sit across from you at a table, I am overcome with the nebulous complexity of you, and the perturbing depth to your being.

I am sad, and exhausted. The sun will be up any minute now. I cannot know what visions will dance in my dreams, but I hope that somehow, I can wish Steve farewell, that I can see you for the first time, possibly again.

Happy Equinox.
-You know who you are who you know who you are.....

A Knife In The Ice

I found a knife with a folding blade, open, in the ice this morning.

I have this penchant for finding knives, it seems, although years go by between the discoveries. I usually find them in parking lots, and always they are the folding variety. This one has a long blade with a serrated bit near the joint. Behind some cheap plastic on the battered grip is a woodland scene with a bear, a deer, and a mountain lion prominent before mountains and trees. There is a clip on the other side of the handle, too big to be for cash, so probably intended as a means to attach the knife to a belt or pocket. Previous finds have included a buck knife with a wooden handle and a little pocket knife, rusty and with a strange blade rounded on the dull edge.

Who thought up the folding knife? It's an idea far more complicated than the cutting edge, which must almost have been accidental as some ancient ancient ancestor flailed out with a rock and some spark of understanding lit the fuel of the future.

Who made this knife? Did some woman, tired and bleary eyed, affix the woodland scene and the cheap plastic cover? Did some foreman glance over the shoulder of the worker who smelled always of ground steel as the blade showered sparks from the whetstone? Did some man who longed for the smell of the forest unpack the knife from its cardboard box and sigh, thinking of mist among trees in the morning?

I've no way of knowing.

Against all odds, this February is wonderful. I am terrified, both by the state of things and by this admission. I feel sure that the gods of irony will smite me for this confession, and yet in this moment it is so monumentally true that I cannot deny the quality of my recent moments. This ice and these blades don't cut in the same ways, and spring is rushing towards me instead of limping slowly nearer as it did so often in past years.

Something is different. Something that some ancestor within me invented, that melancholy and angst, has been superseded. I've incorporated the lessons over the generations of days and I think some improvements must have been made without my being directly aware of them. I won't let myself think that it is better, but with the difference I hope there is a bit of perspective.

I work in the nights now. It's a little rough this work work, and taxing mentally and physically, but with more opportunity and promise than any position I've had in years. I've grown to know the night a little better, and have discovered a new world of fitness as I've grown leaner and stronger than I think I've ever been. Because of this job I'm learning a new language and that too is unfolding like a knife within me. After so long away from the classroom and formal learning, I find that I'm more motivated than I was for some time during my last days as a student, which seem like a long time ago.

I wonder if all of life is cyclical, and if I'll fall into the same depression of season that I've felt so often before, but I happy enough and optimistic enough right now to hope not. I sometimes think that a human life can be represented as a point, and one's path a circle. Choices are circles tangential or intersecting the first circle, and an infinite number of sheaves can intersect the whole, making a sort of three-dimensional venn diagram within which one floats. There's a difference between the description and the thing itself, of course. A paradox usually means that within either the language one uses or one's use of the language, some flaw or limitation exists. There is nothing below zero, and it might help to think of electrons as positively charged. There is no going back, yesterday is 181,191,839,656 miles away.

I'm well. Excited and at peace, learning new lessons and learning what I already know, sated and still more hungry, confused and sure.

I'll put this knife with the others. Lord knows why, since I almost never need to cut anything. But I'll make this little collection, especially as the blades seem to becoming larger with time. Perhaps I'll discover a folding katana or a collapsible scimitar next. Here's hoping.

Thank you.

No, I Do Not Like Biscotti

Rika has said that she owes me an Inter-Oceanic Coffee. I owe her about one thousand two hundred fifty seven such or similar beverages for all her inspiration over the years, and to sweeten the deal I will add every gross biscotti she of which she is willing to rid the world. (Gross here meaning either unpalatable or dozen dozen.)

To whit:

Dear, please take away these biscotti,
A confection I never have liked, though I've tried
They present a conundrum quite knotty
When I see them I want to run and hide.

It's not that I fear anaerobic
Infestation, nor their shape so ovoid,
Their perfume is what gets me phobic
Not their form nor menace bacterioid.

In my youth I read too many stories
Wherein the dread toxicant Prussian
Was found in the dark inventories
Of poisoners Brit, Yank and Russian.

So please, dear, remove these biscotti,
I've told you why they make me feel ill
I know about them that you are quite dotty
But for me they do not fit the bill.

In the cafes boutique
I know they're quite chic
Among the cogniscenti
There are fans of them plenty
They're eaten in tons
By Franks, Belgians and Huns
Despite these accolades
Occuring in heaps and spades
They still make me feel blue,
As though I have the flu
In their almond flavour
I find nothing to savour,
I have wept and I've cried
I have moaned and I've sighed
Still, I cannot them abide
For I fear cyanide.

Where I've been...

This has been one of the best winters I can remember, so far.

Work is good, school is good, life, inexplicably, is good.

Poetry, I must admit, seems to be lying a bit low of late within me, but perhaps that is a good thing. Too often I've thought of verse as the effluvia of the soul and this respite, however welcome, does not feel like metaphysical constipation.

Oh sure, there are poets capable of achingly beautiful verbal juxtapositions, but they are few and far between.

I've felt few and far between often enough in recent years. Not so recently.

It is a change, to be certain. I've been accustomed to angst, doubt, and terminal introspection and this interval of peace is by its very nature unsettling. But only slightly.

This work has something to do with it. Having for so many years worked as a support, regulator of, or service to industry, it's quite a change being part of the real production chain, however far removed. International clients and tight timetables mean that I'm often working at night, and the work is precise enough and grueling enough that I sleep soundly when I return to my bed.

My bed is still empty, save for me, a situation of which I do not despair. This new job, nocturnal though it be, is less expensive than trying to court Morpheus in bars, and less trouble than trying to court romance in the same locales.

There is an edge of wonder that I miss, the hair along the sword's blade of a less stable existence. But stability has its advantages too, and I believe that, as always has been the case before, I am merely germinating some new insanity that will bring the spice of chaos back to my world.

I've been looking for new poets, lately. Rumi, Blake, and Longfellow will always be first among my affections, with Williams a not infrequent paramour and Tolkien coddling me regularly in the bosom of his nerdiness. But despite the startling and haunting syntaxes of the modern free-versers, I remain endeared to rhyme, meter, and that lovely teetering between music and language. There is something of the heartbeat within iambs and dithyrambs, something of our first yearnings to find meaning within the uncertainty.

Another year passes easily enough. This numerology is just a way of keeping track of the inevitable slipping of time. It is not without meaning, but that meaning is a product of our own yearnings and fears. Maybe part of marking time is a way of cocooning within the silk of our perceptions, an effort towards becoming stable enough to metamorphose into something capable of flying through the storm. I don't know.

Cheers, everyone, anyone. See you soon, I hope. Happy new year.

-Harbin, Pete, Jean, and all the others in my noggin.

E=Mc Shared

We're born bloody
We die gasping.
We're all of us muddy,
Alone and rasping.

A hundred years, more or less
Ago there raged an great debate
Twixt' sages trying to express
Light in wave versus lin-e-ar state.

Then Albert E. came along,
With his wild hair and accent German;
He spoke briefly to the throng,
Upsetting all their previous learnin'.

E, he said, equals emm cee squared
So forth,so on, and so you see
Light moves in waves from here to there
Albeit quite lin-e-arly.

This shocking news led the way,
So the story goes and went,
To lasers, bombs, and DNA,
And all such horrors subsequent.

But whereas bombs cause conflagration,
And DNA denies free will,
Lasers, for your information,
Challenge solitude's stark chill.

With lasers, unlike other sources,
Of elec-tro-magnetic radiation,
Photons all line up in their courses,
Wavelengths in perfect integration.

Herein is an allegory,
I aver, assert, and contend,
We fly with longer, brighter glory,
With ally, analogue, or friend.

The race we run and path we tread
Are ours and sadly ours alone;
Good friends, though, mitigate the dread,
Of life too fast, and end unknown.

Continuum for Rika

(Revised from the original comment)

We are all roaring seas inside,
We're full of highs and lows
Replete with primordial tide,
Celestial ebbs and flows.

We are also all stars inside,
We're made up of the blast
Of suns that burned and lived and died
Aeons in the past.

We are all galaxies inside
We spin and glow and soar
Hoping our seas of suns subside
Upon some friendly shore.

Cusp

What's this? The cold I've long eschewed,
No longer seems so harsh and rude.

Moreover, under, inside-out,
I've no desire to flop about,

Bewailing each plummeting leaf
Crying out with puerile grief

At autumn morning's first-seen breath
At fallen seeds, or summer's death.

I've greeted coats and hats with glee,
Reveling in their insulatary,

Warmth, which now seems not so distant,
At least I'm happy for an instant.

Fall Jig

I'll wear slippers
You wear socks
Hurry up
It's equinox.

Everything gets spun around,
The big and the lilliputian
Yellowed, orange-red, and browned,
By our planet's revolution.

Spin and twirl
Show off your talents
In this day of
Perfect balance.

Our slippery slippered stocking feet,
Dancing, whirling, tapping, spinning,
Will make up for fading heat
Take us back to the beginning.

Who you've been...

This town is at armistice with winter.
Stone houses hold bright windows.
Crooked streets lined with bare, silvery trees,
A bag on my shoulder, and an address in hand.

You live in this cheerful little maze,
The residents of which plant herbs next to flowers,
So that in summer, the colors mix with the scent
Of growth and the hum of bees and the only flavor : ripeness.

As dusk gathers, I've asked directions more than twice,
Each time defeated because
My French, which I thought pristine,
Is useless outside of France.

Your door isn't crooked, but somehow
Askew, your lintel and threshold at odds
With time and space, your hinges in a
Nearby, but different dimension.

You've been so much to me,
Oh never-met friend,
Pirate and professor,
Confessor and co-conspirator.

We can't possibly meet here,
At your fantastic door, in your
Perfumed, cold quaint town,
Where no one (rightly) speaks French.

We'll have to arrange our first encounter
In an abandoned castle, or some nook in a
Great library, or some
Cheap bar, full of wood and neon.

You've been a greater comfort than you may realize, and
More reassuring than I've given you credit.
I hope you are well.
You've been missed.

-PC

On Waking

Abruptly, the charming scene vanishes.
Bedclothes are twisted like serpents around me.
Little cracks of light shoot through the curtains.
Day is about to break.

What happpened to beautiful stranger who needed help?
Those two accountants, did they make their delivery?
Who was the chef who scolded me?
Where have I seen him before.

Slowly, I extricate myself from the coils of the blanket-snake.
My mouth feels as though I've spoken for decades.
The still-dark air is cool and dry.
As I sit up, the bed and I creak together.

Was there some sort of villan?
What happened after the ... ski lodge?
Why was I planting wild rice?
Where was that winding road?

Eventually, I pull my robe on.
Limp downstairs.
Boil water.
Forget.

Too cool for me...

Look at you,
With your retro-post-modern pop punk baroque ashtrays;
With your deliciously eerie music from pirates in the Bay of Bengal;
With your sweet, minty drinks and that obscene outfit you made one day...
When you were bored.

You're too cool for me.

You're too cool for me with your masked parties; and
Your exposed concrete wall treatments; and
Your brilliant rooftop bar that I've passed twenty times, but never noticed.

You're too cool for me with your subtle wordplay; and
Your charming, chatty friends; and
Your smooth, happy weed.

You're much too cool for me.

You're too cool when you slip into different languages like changing shoes;
You're too cool when you know every bartender we meet;
You're too fucking cool with your piercingly soft voice;
You're too cool, friend.

You're too cool when you say the only reason you're not naked is that you respect me...

When I correct you, my drunk, sweating, perfumed angel,
When I insist that the only reason you're not naked is that
I respect you so much, you giggle, and say I'm the cool one.

But I'm not. I haven't put me on a pedestal like I have you.

I'm going to tuck you in, sweetie, and stumble out past your
Excellent
Nude self-portraits.

I've got to get out of here.

You're just too cool for me.

Still Hazy After All These Years

My mind wanders. I've more than enough to do, but it wanders, disobedient. I sit and my thoughts traipse away over cloudy, sandy beaches, wisp through the brisk, cool air of far-off mountains, and dance back through poppy fields. All the while, strange songs are the soundtrack; they are melodic, acoustic, and driven by music that sings of the promise of the sky, freedom, and love.

Nothing's quite enough right now.
I have what I need to survive, but Lear reminds me that need isn't always the best standard.

Rumi tells me that the desire is more beautiful and wanted than the thing itself.
I love Rumi, but hate him in this moment, not knowing whether he is right or wrong.

Desire is such a beautiful concept, isn't it? At any moment, that constant pushing pulsing wanting can erupt in me, and I don't care that Buddha is shaking his head over my left shoulder.

While Blake dances merrily naked in the backyard of my consciousness, I hear him applaud the infinitives on which I dwell.

To take.

To be taken.

To give.

To hold.

To fall.

Exercise, intoxication, masturbation, only mute slightly the blaring and constant re-playing of those moments on the edge of passion, when the chasm looms and tipping turns so slowly and sweetly, falling as though by perfect design over the edge, the feet taking an eternity to leave the earth. Is this falling, floating, or becoming a victim of desire?

Will I find you? All rooms seem empty without you in them. I feel like a ghost, restless and unable to make more than the slightest rustle. Flann O'Brien chortles at me, advises strong drink, and suggests an arboreal hermitage.

Within me, I stand face to face with you. In this waking dream, our lips meet and I have the courage to stay still, by you, with you, inside you... until that moment when we fall, when we tumble together in spinning circles and make a moving, whirling tunnel of ourselves.

These moments counterbalance the numbness I feel in the 'real'. Proust advises a retreat into memory. I remind him that it was the tasting that activated his reverie. Besides, I've never liked Madelines. Madeline, sure, but not the plural. Our plural is all I'm longing for: that single duality, those precious seconds of reunion.

Gibran reminds me that Love is a dungeon master. He says that beyond obsession and lust is the other side of desire, the dark, knowing immensity of the other. Kahlil helps me with the wisdom or platitude, take your pick, that only a master can keep a bird in the hand without killing or losing it.

In this limbo, there is no telling which way is up. I think that I have caught some little glimmer of you, then exalt that I might have you and in that instant you're gone. Once, I tasted you for long, delicious moments. Now, I'm left with my lips parched, my tongue ready to taste you and encountering only dry, stale air instead.

Must I continue to await your return, rebirth, reawakening? Have I any other choice?

Soon, I tell myself, the long, slow dance will begin. In my visions, you yearn for me even as I disengage from you, exhausted. I see within you the desire to consume of me, unlocking how much I want you. Soon, my hope promises, you will be back.

There is a need that cuts and burns and refuses to be tempered.

When you finally return, I will be ready.

It is at this point that Dashiell Hammet tells me to chin up.

Hunter Thompson recommends the little red pills.

Gabe Garcia points me to the jungle.

Hawthorne says 'build a house, then shut it up.'

Bierce thinks I'm being haunted.

Dickens is of no assistance whatsoever.

Is it depression? Malaise?

My ideas are become outrageous, my passions may have boiled too long.

Durrell and Quamen tell me that something deep and secret happens at the end of summer ; something deep in trees and underground and in caves and inside we mammals too. All is drawn inward, concentrated, refined and made ready for spring when blossoms and bears and butterflies return to the world made new.

Perhaps this is just ripening.

There's a fuel being made somewhere inside, maybe.

Lao-Tzu reminds me that the sage resides in the fruit, not just the flower.

Erica Jong assures me that neuroses other than mine exist.

The Bible reminds me to look at my own face at midday.

Willa Cather gently suggests that all this will pass.

Steinbeck thinks that's just the way it is.

Fitzgerald won't listen.

Hemingway just gives me a knowing look.

Where are you? Where have you been?

I miss you, and I have no idea who you are.

August Prayer

This is the dry melting,
The long hot.

Bones warm in the sun for only
A few minutes at a time.

Time speeds up,
Night sneaks in sooner.

Under trees, green on
Green shade dances.

Clouds and rain tiptoe between
Vague and distant memory.

A chill begins, faint as the rustle of
A single blade in a field.

We all know
What will happen next.

We can all see that this summer is fading
Though the emerald shade is still vivid, for now.

Let us find some noble blue or imperial purple
Within this long dusk.

Let us be captured by the smoke and sweat
Of a well-executed season.

I wouldn't mind being a part of
This starlight; it's good enough.

I think I could live as a moment of color
Accompanied by the clink of bottles and the whisper of cold.

Warm night at the Hotel St. George

Maybe I'm distracted because it's just the two of them in this palatial room while three guys (myself included) are crammed into that 12x12 postage stamp. Maybe it's the goblins. Three star hotel my ass. The damn place is overrun with imps and kobolds. I'm safe, though. I brush after every meal so there are no fillings for the little bastards to steal.

Where am I?

Ah yes.

The bathroom.

What am I doing here?

Oh yes.

Speaking of which, I think their bathroom is larger than our whole room. We have only a shower, not this massive cast-iron tub. Their tiles look newer, their light bulbs brighter.

Their bags are on the floor next to the sink with the bright silver-chrome fixtures. The bags are open. I can only see the green rubber handle of a hairbrush in the black bag and a bottle of hairspray in the other. I'm sure Laura and Diane wouldn't notice if I zipped them up. In the condition they're in, those girls probably cannot even see the little demons everywhere.

Ha.

Women.

Part of me wants desperately to close the bags, knowing that cosmeticites will make a mess of everything if I leave them as they are. But I don't think bending over is a good idea right now. I might not make it back up. I make my way towards myself and myself in the door's mirror makes my way toward me. I just brushed my teeth and still the smell of the wine is surging up with each respiration over my tongue.

The goblins are doing their dance-at-the-edge-of-my-vision gavotte, but I all I ascertain for now is that these froggy little bastards have decked themselves out in Berets.

WhereamIwherewasI? What. Is. Happening?

Oh yeah,

Gettin' plastered.

I should probably start more towards the beginning.

In Paris.

Summer 1994.

I am sixteen years old.

Not yet properly drunk for the first time, but about to be.

It's so exciting, this foray into what, at home, will be forbidden for a little more than four years.

It begins at a liquor store near our hotel. We are on our summer-before-senior-year-trip, and we really shouldn't be here. Consequences, if we are discovered, may be dire: our booze could be confiscated.

The shop is very casual. The floors are green tile and all the racks are made from thick chrome wire. The bottles vibrate slightly as we pass. With the combination of glass and shiny metal, I estimate that eight hundred and fifty four thousand of our reflections are crowding into the shop with us.

Good thing we skipped dinner.

The shop clerk is watching a soap opera on a black and white television. He is exactly what one might expect from a liquor store clerk in Paris on a Sunday. Average height, dark hair, olive Mediterranean skin, slightly bald, white shirt partly unbuttoned and green corduroy pants.

"This should be fun." Says Diane, holding up a bluish bottle with strange letters on the label.

Diane is the only one of us with experience. She's also the youngest. Go figure. She is a cheerleader, quite short, with shoulder-length sandy hair and a small, slightly upturned nose. She got sunburn when she fell asleep on the bus between Tours and Chartres.

Diane announced on one of the first evenings of the trip that she would not be going to any beaches because, to borrow her ladylike euphemism, the sharks would get her for sure.

Those are big bottles she's putting in the basket.

"Oooh, Laura, you HAVE to try this."

Laura, not a cheerleader, is one of the starlets of the high school musical theatre scene. She has long, dirty blonde hair and an affinity for shiny accessories bought at the mall. Possessed of a magnificent voice, Laura is frustrated with her theatrical career because, as she puts it "that bitch (the director and head of the choir) keeps casting me in all the pretty, stupid parts." Laura longs for a part in one of the non-musical plays but has been stymied so far because the male drama teacher keeps choosing plays with few female roles. Thus, while very pretty, Laura must compete with many other girls, many of whom want parts so badly that they dress as sluts for the auditions. Or so Laura says. Repeatedly.

I pass by a row of bottles, each of which contains a dark brown liquid and some arthropodic creature, presumably lifeless, lying at the bottom.

How much is 50 francs in dollars?

"Six-pack of Heineken," Diane announces authoritatively, "absolute necessity."

I can feel my heart beating as we head towards the counter. Maybe they changed the French drinking laws I had studied so carefully before the trip. Maybe we'll get carded and sent to French prison. I saw M. Butterfly last year and in it a beautiful woman tricked Jeremy Irons who was sent to prison where he dressed in drag and then killed himself.

PleaseletmenotbeJeremyIronspleaseletmenotbeJeremyIronspleaseletmenotbeJeremyIronspleaseletmenotbeJeremyIrons...

No.

I am not Jeremy Irons.

I am, however, the most fluent in French of any of us so I am put in charge of paying for this bonanza of booze. I can't quite understand what the cashier is saying, but luckily, the numbers are displayed in a dull green digital display on the register. I pay him and pick up the clinky paper bags, noticing that he takes the time to eye the girls before turning back to his television. I've been doing my best not to eye the girls during this trip. I find it helps.

Halfway back to the hotel, I have to put the bags down on the curb and wipe the sweat from my eyes. It is quite hot tonight in Paris.

The girls left the windows of their room closed when we left and Diane opens them as I put everything down and pull out a bottle of pink wine. Laura has extracted three plastic cups from the set of ten we bought. My super Swiss army knife comes to the rescue. I use the corkscrew for the first time ever.

I am MacGyver.

We are all too thirsty after three blocks in this heat. As I have indicated, the rest of the tour group is having the extended dinner we should be using to buffer this alcohol. Then, they are going on an evening's cruise of the Seine. They won't be back for hours and hours. So we drink much too quickly. As one does.

The bottle makes glub-glup-gok noises when poured. That should have been my first warning.

That is the mating call of the modern goblin.

Laura and Diane sit on one bed while I sit on the floor and put my back against the opposing mattress. I'm sweating. Diane pulls her shirt quickly towards and away from her chest in order to fan herself.

They both have their backs to the window. The setting sun fills part of the room. Their silhouettes must be falling on me. Already, a whirring has begun.

"�Do you guys know about 'I never'?" Diane asks.

Laura and I admit that we do not.

It used to be incredibly hot and although the air is now feeling cooler, my body feels warmer.

Goddamn these laws of thermodynamics.

Diane continues, "It's a drinking game. You have to start with 'I never did whatever' and then whoever has done that has to take a drink." A brief period of clarification follows and we refill our glasses.

"Someone has moved the chips," I think.

No, something.

There are the chips! Behind that chair! I must guard them! The chips will guide me!

I begin to eat my guide.

Diane begins with the obvious "I never had sex." She drinks, but neither Laura nor I do. Laura and I glance at each other expectantly. I suppose I'm not surprised that Laura hasn't and only slightly that Diane has.

Diane looks at me.

"Pete, you realize you're probably breaking some kind of guy rule by admitting that."

"I don't think this game would work if I lied, Diane. Besides, I'm not great at lying." I say, lying.

"Okay, I forgot another rule, if only one person drinks they have to tell about it"

This seems reasonable, and I point out to Diane that she is the only one who has drunk so far.

The curtains ripple.

A breeze?

Or invaders?

"What do you want to hear about it? I've done it everywhere with Brian. In his car, on his boat, on his parent's couch."

"Enough!" Interrupts Laura "Let's just keep playing."

A clowbragger is just out of my line of vision, next to the bed, about to pounce. He senses me and turns himself into a crumpled bedspread. Without explaining myself, to the girls, as though it is the most natural thing in the world, I pick him up and put him in the center of the carpet. Where I can watch him.

I return to my place.

It's my turn, I decide. Since Diane has done it everywhere I figure this next one is safe.

"I never had oral ...surgery."

Right on cue Diane and I both take a swig.

Have I finished mine already? Where did it go?

Funny. I don't feel drunk yet, only stronger, and possibly more hilarious.

I waggle my eyebrows. Diane sputters and must brush some wine from her chin.

Yes, definitely more hilarious.

Below Diane, platoons of muzzwinks enjoy a fermented grape shower for a moment. They fade into the rug before I can do anything.

Laura does not drink, and exclaims, "I am just no good at this damn game."

"You bastard!" � Huffs Diane, still recovering, "I thought you meant oral sex!"

Diane is feeling her vino, but she is not yet as hilarious as I, Captain Giggles.

"Oral what?" Says Laura.

"Sex." Says Diane.

"Surgery." I proclaim.

"Oh fuck," says Laura "I didn't hear right. Do braces count?"

The girls started swearing around the middle of the second day of this trip. While other males my age are technically a part of our tour group, I’m the only one from our high school.

That's right, I'm the only guy who signed up for this trip. Elated by this male-to-female ratio before we sallied forth, I have had to resign myself to certain realities of traveling with eight women. For instance, I haven't seen so much as a nipple. Not from my classmates, not at the pool, not even on French television. One of my roommates, a guy from another high school, is a preacher's son and, contrary to the assertions made in popular song, is not a woman pleasing badass. He watches sports, mainly. The bastard.

Even the beach we visited was a disappointment. I'd read up on French beaches as well as the liquor laws, and was enthused to visit one; all the better to espy the topless sunbathers my research suggested would be in plentiful supply.

There were no topless sunbathers.

It was a deserted expanse of sand and rocks.

On an overcast morning.

With only myself, and a sign, which read: Attention! Sangliers!

Which, in my native tongue, translates to: Beware of the wild boars!

Also, it was Omaha beach.

Where D-Day happened.

I didn't see any wild boars, either.

Since I didn't know anyone from the other tour group with whom we were paired, I started hanging around with the girls from my school. Soon, they had dropped all pretenses and began to talk about everything from the merits of different types of underwear to cute European men right in front of me. It felt nice to be included, but it also felt as though each young lady thought of me as a combination of protector, translator, and brother.

Rapture. Just what every teenage male wants. Twice four ladies, ranging in attractiveness from reasonable to very pretty, and all of them have me pegged as a 'nice guy'. I've resolved to buy a leather jacket and start smoking at the first opportunity. This is ridiculous.

Diane's small cheerleader's frame is already being affected by the booze. She's dressed in khaki shorts and a white t-shirt. Her sunglasses still sit on top of her head. She rolls her head around until her dirty blond hair covers her sunburnt nose and the sunglasses fall to the floor. Clearly, she has no idea that she is tempting all the sillilumenakophages in the area with those tasty tidbits, the sunglasses. No one really loses sunglasses. They are eaten.

Diane pokes her head up and not even her nose appears through the tresses.

Tresses?

What the hell? Maybe this stuff is getting to me too. My language should not be that flowery. Primal knowledge is beginning to manifest in me and I think:

"Have I been stung by a hyperloquak? Perhaps. Say nothing and drink more. Surefire cure."

I've been trying not to drink except when required to by the drinking game, which is ongoing. But my glass has been mysteriously emptying itself. I inspect it carefully to make sure that it isn't some creature in disguise. It isn't...

Goddamned glass.

Or maybe it's this heat. Tonight is a very hot night in Paris. I've lost count of what I've had to drink so far. The ‘I never’ topics have covered various sexual practices, the telling of lies, and some of the most common teenage peccadilloes like shoplifting, curfew violations, and public urination. Laura, surprisingly, had the best story for the latter.

We broke open the hard liquor some time ago.

My mind wanders, and I begin to contemplate how one might communicate with the legions of sprites that surround us and negotiate a ransom for my chips of wisdom, which have gone missing again.

"How the hell do you do it, though?" Laura, much taller than Diane, and almost as tall as me asks.

Her body must be more resistant to this.... pink stuff.

Do what? Where were we? Was that suitcase open before? No, I'm sure I would have remembered that bra! Something is rotten in the state of whatever state Paris is in!

Something is happening. I can detect flickers of movement in the corners and behind the doors.

"It smells weird." Laura's is either describing something very personal or talking about her babysitting jobs. In either event, I can't be bothered to listen to her prattle on; there are puddymunchers afoot.

Diane laughs into her cup but does not spill any. "It takes some getting used to. You can't just go out and take the first one that you see. And you have to be careful until you've had some practice. But don't go near that thing if it stinks; you at least want a guy who keeps it clean."

Oh, they are talking about sex again. I know that I should be interested, but frankly, the knowledge that they are as attracted to me as they would be to, say, a fichus takes the edge off of the salaciousness. Plus, my hearing is eight times as powerful as it has ever been. I am currently listening to a cadre of scrubnubbers plot to steal and hide the room keys.

I root around, rescue my chips from under a suspicious looking plastic bag, and eat more of them.

For wisdom.

I undo another button on my shirt because it is so unbelievably hot in this room in Paris and this stuff in my cup tastes like coke but smells like grandpa.

This heat from these jeans is killing me. They may be attempting to fry my boy parts off. I think perhaps that my pants have been infested by a school of asscrackulous gnomes, the kind that make pants not breathe properly.

It is from these creatures that we get the term "asscrakulously" which modifies an adjective, to underscore the severity of an unpleasant sensation.

As in:

"It is asscrackulously hot in this attic. Why did we not wait till nightfall to move this table up here?"

"I am asscrackulously cold down here. Buzz me in or I shall surely freeze my boy parts off."�

"What an asscrackulously long movie. My rump fell asleep long ago and now I cannot feel my bum."

And so on.

Contingents of debrismongers are massing under one of the beds.

Damn.

I return my attention to the conversation.

"No, Laura, you can wrap your lips around your teeth. Well sort of. Or you can open your mouth real wide."

What on earth have I missed?

While I'm giving lectures in my head, important and potentially arousing conversation is occurring

Or was occurring.

The two of them see that I have returned from my reverie and begin to chuckle.

They have tricked me. Pretended to talk about lurid activities to see if I was listening.

Add to the list of monsters in this room tipsy human females and squorks. The former are troublemakers and one cannot do anything about it because of their beguiling feminine charms. The latter are simply annoying for humming snatches of music in my ears but omitting the words, so that I cannot identify the song. Damn them both.

“It’s your turn, Pete.” says Diane.

“Oh, well. Right then. Let’s see, ummmm. I’ve never done a drug other than alcohol.”

Diane and Laura both drink.

I will not think of goblins. I will not think of goblins. I will not thing of goblins.

“Oh yeah!” Says Diane, who is always ready with an eminently suitable bon mot.

“What did you do?” Asks Laura.

“Oh, only pot. You?” Says Diane, as she keeps nodding and nodding and nodding.

“I did acid with Tommie.” Laura says, almost quietly, almost softly.

Tangent begins.

Tommie is Laura’s on again-off-again spittoon of a boyfriend. He is the variety of child whose parents have deeply held beliefs about letting their children grow without restriction. As a result, he is a total bastard. The type who copies homework, cheats on tests, and spends the rest of his time looking for people to harass.

At this juncture, I would like to point out that I am, at this age, 5’10” in height, 170 pounds in weight, and I have six months to go before my examination for the first of my black belts. Really. I am not one of the people Tommie harasses. I am one of those regular Joes (or, in my case, Petes) who can do nothing but watch and scratch his head as Laura, a paragon of female pulchritude, dates a succession of slimeballs like him.

Tangent ends.

Diane gasps, “No. You. Did. Not!” A pillow serves as Diane’s exclamation point. Diane is, as I have mentioned before, an eminent grammarian with advanced degrees in punctuation.

The hyperloquack’s venom must have weakened my resolve not to make boorish statements, because from between my lips, the words “Cool! Pillow fight!” spring unbidden.

“Shut up Pete!” Hisses Diane, again with the goose down emphatic full stop.

She has hit me with a pillow.

Yes.

That is why the lights are now out.

At least I’m not in danger of snarkwadders.

‘Cause it isn’t Thursday.

This is a very cheap hotel; they need badly to replace the shocks in these rooms. The whole thing's shaking.

I think I may have fallen backward when the feather-filled sack made impact. May plagues beset these… wait, no. No goblins are responsible for this; it’s just because I’m drunk.

I. Am. Drunk… Yay!

I right myself after only a few unsuccessful movements in the wrong direction, remove the pillow from my head, and beam proudly at the room in general.

Squadrons of veebilefeisters encircle me, but I scarcely mind. I begin to say something, but forget what, and just grin.

Laura abruptly stumbles into the bathroom and after a brief re-training with the knob, successfully closes the door.

“Were you listening to that?” Diane asks. She seems shocked.

“Wuzfightinwiffapillow!” Is my earnest reply.

“Pete, listen, Laura is really upset,” Diane says, able to pull herself together in a manner that proves impossible for me. “Didn’t you hear her? Tommie slipped something into Laura’s drink at an end-of-year party. She started freaking out and seeing all kinds of crazy things. Tommie said he thought it was E and said he felt bad so he took some too.”

Laura upset. Tommie put acid in drink. Took some too. Both trippin'. No one in charge. Freakout.

Got it.

With great force of will I focus on Diane, and say:

“Oh?”

Diane disappears. I look at the bed, wondering if something has gotten her and whether I should go in for the rescue. Nah. She’s feisty.

Diane re-enters my field of vision and stumbles over to the bedside table where the beers have migrated.

That's the problem with Parisian beer, I decide, you never know where it'll turn up.

Now I am unsure whether Diane was ever in danger or if she staged the whole thing.

Sneaky Diane.

She pops the beer open, and resumes her previous position on the edge of the bed opposite me.

“She said that she thinks he was trying to get her really messed up and then screw her when she passed out and that she’s still really upset by it,” Diane barrels on. “Now she’s in the bathroom.”

“I know,” I aver, “That’s where I came back in.”

Diane, inebriated too, shakes her head ever so slightly, blinks, and says:

“Pete, you drunken ass, you’ve been here the whole time.”

“Not so,” I counter, “Part of the time, I was under the pillow.”

The bathroom door has opened. Laura stands there, leaning against the frame, arms crossed.

I attempt to soothe her with a friendly wave, and nearly lose my balance.

Diane has apparently not heard the door open, because when she sees me gesturing, she whips her head around, puts a little too much muscle into it, and spins off of the bed.

As she falls onto the floor she lets out a single, surprised hiccup.

Laura’s mouth contorts, her lips flex, and suddenly she is giggling and I too am falling off of the bed, holding my stomach and laughing so hard that no sound comes out or air gets in. We are rolling on the floor, crushing countless imps and demons, unable to stop.

After several minutes we calm down and I begin the long, complicated process of sitting up.

I am roasting.

They've secretly moved Paris to one of the hot parts of hell, I decide.

They have also moved the entire contents of Lake Baikal into my bladder.

Sneaky Russians. Hiding Lake Baikal in my vodka.

I manage to stand and, swaying, make my way to the bathroom door. The journey of five feet is perilous, and I encounter many horned puckwudgies on the way. I dispel them by humming show tunes. It's a tried-and-true defense. I arrive at my destination greatly tired, but alive.

Before I close the portal behind me, I address Laura, who is giggling drunkenly to herself on the floor.

“Laura! Please moooove the legs. Gottapi! S’deepest lake in the world!” Her feet prevent the door from closing.

In addition to offering a lesson in geography, I am attempting to warn Laura that a gottapi, that tiny sinuous fiend who tickles the thighs of people for whom the calls from nature are becoming more and more urgent, has latched onto me.

But my words are too complicated for one so drunk as Laura.

“Mooovegottapi!Mooovemoovelegsgottapi!” She chants in her impressive chamber choir vibrato.

Gently, I pick up her legs and move them off of the marble that marks the threshold.

With a click, the door closes and after taking a moment to refresh my understanding of men’s underwear and my own anatomy, blessed relief washes over, or possibly out of, me.

I finish, flush and flushed. I wash my hands, my face, and as an afterthought, my teeth.

Now it is now, where this began. I am still moving towards me in the mirror. Myself, a young male of sixteen with curly brown hair and skin tanned by the trip and my summer life guarding job, wobbles before me. I open the door and step back into the room.

I make my way cautiously to the corner of the bed, stepping gingerly among the fallen pixies and women.

I survey the carnage. This room is becoming messy. Opposing forces of verknits and sloobs have fortified their positions with the girls’ clothing, which is everywhere.

It’s still bloody hot tonight, in Paris. I undo the last buttons of my shirt and let it hang open.

That's better.

It's wearing off, the buzz, that is. The camaraderie is still here, as is this awful heat.

In earlier tellings of this tale, as well as in my adolescent imagination, the evening ended pornographically.

In reality, this was not the case.

No one disrobed, although Diane did remove her shorts, revealing the surprisingly modest swimsuit beneath.

Laura continued to sing, at one point belting out Ave Maria from the balcony, much to the delight of passersby below. A polite but firm call from the front desk requesting that she stop and informing her of several marriage proposals ended her serenade.

I stood on my hands and did press-ups at one point, but collapsed when an inverted Diane whispered “Pillow!” at me.

The chips of wisdom were completely obliterated.

There was much more laughter, a few more tears, and several stories longer than this one told, in that room, on that hot night in Paris.

The next morning I had my first hangover.

The goblins were nowhere to be found. Presumably, they were feeling wretched too.

Serves them right. Sneaky bastards.

Smiles,

-PC

Covert Operation

We dressed in black.

Black boots, jeans, sweaters, and gloves. Black balaclavas and hats too. Nothing loose. Nothing to catch on anything. No wallets, no IDs, only a car key.

We left our room via different routes, James* took the side stairwell, and I took the elevator to the basement, walked past the laundry rooms, and out the service entrance.

James was waiting with his 1990 Ford Escort. As I climbed in and felt the automatic seat belt secure itself at my shoulder, I looked over at James. He looked back at me with icy determination. We nodded to each other.

"Prepare sonic bullet.” He mouthed at me. I put my earplugs in; James was wearing his already.

With that, in the abandoned back lot of the dormitory, a shrill, pealing, wail of a screech erupted in the vehicle. We knew we had to eliminate anyone who was listening to us. Even so, from then on out we would communicate exclusively via hand gestures, albeit often obscene ones.

The humor was our way of coping with the seriousness of what we were doing. We'd decided that the situation was intolerable, that the university was guilty of cruelty and needless suffering. We couldn't save them all, of course. But we could help a few of them. We'd scouted the area for the past week, noting entrances and exits, experimenting with workarounds to the security system, and gauging the response time between an alarm trigger and the arrival of campus police.

Police, we reminded ourselves, not security. A crime spree in the early 70's had prompted the legislature to install a state police barracks on campus. The force supplemented itself with campus patrols picked from the population of students interested in law enforcement. As a perk, a class for credit was offered to the patrols students. I wasn't on the patrol, but I had a friend who'd gotten me into the class. I learned a lot about how security worked on campus, and I was going to use all of it that night.

Other groups had made the watchers wary, and I thought back to my research on PETA, Greenpeace, and the student occupations of the 60’s. We knew our enemy and how he would react. Our only goal now was to carry out the plan exactly as we had intended.

As we entered the parking lot, James let the engine die, switched off his headlights, and rolled into a parking space. We'd chosen this exact space because it was right in front of the door, equidistant from two exits, and the street light overhead was broken. I'd finally gotten to use the slingshot my dad had given me when I was 14.

We didn't go in through the door though. We hadn’t been able to test our work-around, and if we set off the alarm while leaving, it would be between five and eight minutes before a patrol showed up. Ample to escape, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We went around to the side and into the courtyard.

The courtyard was the result of two buildings having been essentially built into each other via additions prompted by the need for more classroom space as the university grew, but a small alleyway meant that pedestrians could gain access without entering either of the buildings. A haphazard series of catwalks and fire stairs formed a black metal framework along the interior walls. Picturesque, it wasn't. To us, it was gorgeous.

We climbed the fire stairs in tandem, keeping low and out of sight of the cameras on the bell tower on the building opposite. I had barely been able to believe, during the patrol class's tour of the video security center, that so obvious an area was not monitored. I even left my pen behind so that I could go back and double check. We had our insertion point.

At the top of the stairs, the fire doors were locked and alarmed, precisely as we had expected. However the window to the classroom next to the stairs was only about two feet away, and I had stopped by on my way back from class that afternoon to make sure that it was unlocked.

Leaning out over about forty feet of air with nothing but concrete subsequent will put a twinge down in anyone's gut. As I slid the window up, I twinged excruciatingly. Once open, traversing the sill was accomplished by us both in less than ten seconds. We closed the window silently, and locked it.

We were inside at last.

The classroom was dark, lit primarily by a glow from the hallway. The desks were neatly arranged and we noted with satisfaction that the campus newspapers I had put in the wastebasket had been removed. The cleaning crews had been through already. James took a position on the left side of the door, and I stationed myself on the right. He was right handed and I left, so each of us had our less able arms against the wall.

He nodded.

I nodded.

He flipped me off.

I flashed the double bird back at him.

We moved, removing hats and gloves as we did so, taking off our sweaters and tying them around our waists.

Now, any casual observer who happened to be late would remember only two guys dressed similarly but whose t-shirts were the most memorable things about them.

Mine was grey and said in bright yellow lettering:

“Cant sleep! Clowns Will Eat Me!”

James’s, a burgundy garment with green lettering asked readers to:

“Kiss me under the mistletoe.”

Towards the navel of James’s shirt, a graphic of green leaves with white berries had been silk-screened.

I was glad I’d vetoed James’s plan to wear fatigues and camouflage face paint.

The hallways were empty, and the only noise was the slight squeak of our shoes on the linoleum and the buzz from the fluorescent lights. This was still an old building, despite the attempts at refurbishment. Archways loomed improperly where they couldn’t be hidden; the brickwork in the classrooms was rough, irregular, and paint had only made it shiny; a must that pine-scented cleaners couldn’t eradicate lurked around us.

We approached our targets.

The remodeling meant that the motion sensors weren’t functioning and we could get in and out easily. We pushed past the thick plastic curtain and James gasped involuntarily. He and I were only two of a handful of people who knew about it on the campus. I could see why the administration didn’t want to advertise something like this.

I hadn’t let James see the room before we entered. I knew he’d be shaken when he entered, disgusted by the scene but he’d have tried to do something in broad daylight, and have been caught.

His eyes widened. He walked over to the dry-erase board, grabbed a blue marker, and wrote:

“Oh, dude.”

I took a red marker and wrote back:

“Dude, I know.”

We erased our words and wiped the surfaces clean of our prints. We weren’t taking any chances.

They were in better shape than I expected, all things considered. It turned my stomach what had been done to them, but I knew we could make them well again, make them whole and return to them the majestic beauty they once possessed.

James waved at me, gesturing excitedly at two more shapes in the corner.

I tiptoed over, and had to brace myself on his arm.

“Oh, no, “ I thought, “No, no, no, no no. We can’t take them, there isn’t room, there isn’t time. We can’t make two trips.” A wave of heartbreak washed over me.

Sensing my thoughts, James mouthed to me “We can save them. We’ll roll them out.”

At times, James was a genius. There were dolleys and pushcarts everywhere. If any were misplaced and found later in another part of the building, no foul play would be expected. This near to the Thanksgiving holiday, I had to hope that our handiwork would not immediately be noticed.

Carefully, nestling our poor hurt charges in our arms, we made our way carefully to the exit. They were so well behaved. None of them made the slightest noise, though by all rights they should have been overjoyed to be moving after so long a confinement.

At the door, we resumed our black garb.

I took a deep breath, and stuck the little steel panel I’d made in between the two sensors. Most door alarms, this one included, operate by employing two magnets set about half an inch apart. One magnet is affixed to the door itself. The second magnet, this one with sensors attached, was stuck into the frame. When two magnets move near each other, an electrical charge can be passed along wires attached. This is how a dynamo works. However some clever bugger years back figured out that if the sensors detect a large enough current, as generated by the opening and closing of the doors, that electrical blip could be used to activate an alarm. We couldn’t leave through windows, so we’d had to find some way to prevent the current from running.

So I’d made the panel. The little rectangle of thin steel, about the size of a stick of chewing gum, had on it three neodymium magnets. Neodymium magnets are very strong and very tiny. Professional shoplifters have been using them for years, attaching them to security sensors to prevent the alarm from sounding when the object is smuggled out of the store. As I eased the panel into the space between the two other magnets, I felt it lock onto the top, wired sensor and hold firm.

I nodded.

James nodded.

I flipped James off.

James, with remarkable economy of motion, made a gesture suggesting that I was a communist and that I molested sheep.

We shouldered the door open, and swept out into the night.

But for James’s car, the parking lot was empty.

James sped ahead, opening the doors and popping the trunk.

I had a problem.

My charges weren’t co-operating. One of them seemed to be limping; the other didn’t want to move. I had no time to think about it. I picked them up and ran, although I was impeded in my movement and, indeed, sight.

We eased them into the car, and got in ourselves. Time was now of the essence.

We were silent and tense as we rode back to our dorm. There was no noise from the back seat and no cacophony from the trunk. James let me off in front of the building. I trotted in, and went down stairs. Again, he was waiting for me next to the loading bay.

He looked tired. The adrenaline had run out.

He helped me ease them into the hallway, and went to park the car. A few minutes later he returned and together we got the darlings rounded up and into the elevator.

Most everyone had gone home already for the holiday. The hallways were quiet.

We entered our room and locked the door behind us.

“No longer will the asses of the administration grow plump and mottled while innocents suffer!” declared James, radiant with success.

“No longer will the blameless be subject to virtual enslavement, and lord only-knows-what manner of experimentation and torture.” I cried.

“A few stitches, a good brushing, and you’ll be as good as new. Welcome home!” James finished, addressing the two executive style leatherette rolling chairs we’d just stolen from the College of Arts and Humanities’s Graduate Lounge.

“And you,“ I said, turning my attention to the two pay phones that had been removed when a wall was demolished, “You shall no longer be fed change only to have the coins ripped from your bellies! You are FREE!”

Years later, on the night before James’s wedding, we threw the dismantled remains of the phones off a bridge into a river 300 feet below.

But that is another story.

Smiles,

-PC

*Not his full name.

Gresham's Law

Ethridge Night is on one side of me,
Rilke on the other,
As I stumble down
The subway stairs.

It's hard.
It's had to face the fact
That
The heart is here; and
The body is here; and
The mind is here; and
The soul is here; but
The self is not.

I keep discovering little pieces of myself,
Shards of a mirror
Beautiful and sharp.

I'm not beautiful now.
Not sharp either.

I'm dull, and easily cut.

There's a quarter shining near the rail.
I don't grab it.

Once, long ago, my sister

dropped

Her change outside the Museum of Natural History.

A storm was coming.

Wind rushed by.

I ran to her, gave the ice cream man a dollar, and told
my sister

To examine her money more closely.

Shining in that afternoon gloom,
Next to million-year-old ghosts,
In my sister's hand,
Was a 1964 quarter.

After 1964, they changed the
Content
Of those coins.

After 1964, there was much less
Silver.

When she dropped her change,
Before the rains came,
My sister's quarter
Rang like a bell.

That's the
Quick way
To find an old quarter:

Throw it on the concrete.

It will ring like a bell.

On one side of me, Ethridge is fucking everything in sight.
On the other side, Rilke is circling God.
Below me is the quarter, maybe thrown
Hastily,
By some treasure hunter.

Above me, it smells like rain.

-PC

September Prayer

I think the light is changing now.
Wisps of cold dance through the air.
Where did the heat of summer go?
My sweaters are still packed away.

Wisps of cold come more and more.
I crave only a body's heat.
My sweaters smell of cedar now.
I saw a yellow leaf today.

I want a hot palm against mine.
Flowers now bloom just in stores.
I saw a yellow leaf today.
I dreamed of kisses in fall sunlight.

The flowers are now gone till spring
I want to press my mouth to yours.
Yours were the sighs of my dreams.
I want to rub your neck's soft nape.

I to feel your lips on mine.
My fingertips upon your jaw.
Your hair under an autumn moon.
We hold the green between our tongues.

Let me cartograph your cheek's soft curves.
I don't care what happens after that.
Summer lives in one hot flare.
I don't want any more than this.

The future doesn't worry me.
Your eyes are all I'm looking at.
Your kiss is all I want right now.
Just one, before the real cold comes.

***

So let me kiss you once today.
Before summer shuts the door.
This will not lead our minds astray.
Minds don't much matter anymore.

Soon green is gone, and sun's light cold.
Winter's dark too much like death.
Here, in our teeth we hold
This September's last warm breath.
-PC

Blue Genes

Jeans and genes can rip and fade,
No matter what you want or do;
Denim and DNA degrade
Hers are happy, mine are blue.

Zipper, pocket, button flies,
Hold the waist and kiss the thighs.

Mine never sat in famous laps,
Hers didn't walk across hot coals
They're not yet worn out and, perhaps
Best fitting for our parts and wholes.

Cuff and seam, rung and rail,
Beginning lost and end forgotten;
We read their battle scars like braille,
Our passwords 'cytosine and cotton'.

Generations in our pants,
Stomp a turning, weaving dance.

Genes and jeans go on and off,
They fill and cover us up, too;
Still with us whether clothed or buff,
Hers are happy, mine are blue.

-PC

Twirling, twirling, twirling...

(fiction)

I oughtn't be here.

Here, meaning this unlit, glass strewn alley near midnight, in the city.

It's hot. It may rain. The air is full of the smell of the humidity and the sour beer and the forgotten trash.

I would not like for it to rain, just now. I'm in no mood to see naked women.

If I were trying to write something funny, I would probably be drunk and peeing about now. I'd muse on the alley. Had any famous people peed here ever? I'd muse on the glass. I suppose technically the glass is cutting the stream. There's a stream at the bottom of the grand canyon, or is it a river? I bet someone famous has peed in that! I wonder, assuming windless conditions and a direct shot, so to speak, how long one would have to pee in order to have a continuous stream of urine from the top of the grand canyon to the bottom. Let's see, it's a mile down, 9.something meters per second, squared.... minus friction.... at least sixteen more beers. Wow. Then to conclude the narrative, I would be frightened by a passerby on the sidewalk or by some shadow or some rodent and come dangerously close to soiling myself. I would finish, step into the street, jump back into shadow to make sure I'd zipped up properly, and, my decency assured, would stumble back out into the night.

But I'm not going for comedy here, and while I enjoy the female form, I am not in the mood for tits right now.

If I were essaying a serious existentialist piece, I would muse on the alley and make a number of dark metaphors about life.

Hot. Dark. Confined. Moving from dim light to the uncertainty of the parking lot.

I'd see lives in the shattered glass, whole towns in the weeds, and nations in the cracks in the walls. I'd muse on the futility of effort. Here the bottlemaker's work is shattered. There the mason's handiwork covered with misspelled graffiti. The patches in the cement ground uneven and careless. I would indict the sky, accusing the clouds that glow pink in the city's luminescence of conspiring with the smog and the smell and the soot. I would conclude bitterly, wondering if it made any sense to go forward or back at all.

Thank goodness I'm not writing an existentialist piece. Thank goodness the cloud cover seems to be breaking a little. It's difficult to avoid a little boredom when the fourth 'naughty schoolgirl' of the evening removes her panties.

If I were writing a fantastical, magical, adventure story full of horses and swords and enough leather to make Guy de Masoch blush, I would find a strange door in the alley wall and go through it into a mysterious land. I would meet dark strangers, fight huge monsters, befriend a ne'er do well with a heart of gold, and rescue some fair maiden, recover some tremendous treasure, or stop some evil magic, possibly all three. I would then have the choice of returning to the alley or staying in the new fantastic kingdom. I would most likely stay, despite magical kingdoms' notorious dearth of plumbing, medicine, electricity, and sanitation.

I'm certainly very lucky that this is not a tale of mystical adventure. I'm also lucky that I'm now approaching the end of the alley because I'm running out of plausible genres. Also, as I mention above, I am somewhat disquieted by women with whom I am unfamiliar showing me their naughty bits.

If I were a poet, I'd attempt a few lines about the night air, the heat, the sounds on the street, and how the broken glass is reflecting the stars. Something like :
The street roars at the alley's mouth,
Uphill north, downhill south,
The air full of sluggish heat,
And glass lies broken in the street....

Only more horrible, so we're all quite fortunate that I'm not writing poetry.

Also, it's rather difficult to come up with off-the-cuff rhymes for 'pole' 'booty' and 'g-string' . The best I can think of is bee-sting, which would be a real stretch.

If this story were a children's story, it would be very short. It would consist only of the following admonition : "Get to bed you horrible little heathens! I said at the beginning it was bleeding midnight! You ought to be asleep!"

Heaven forefend. Moreover the music is just too loud and the smell of cheap perfume too cloying.

If this were an action novel, I'd be attacked by ninjas.

If this were a spy novel a shadowy figure would pass me the microfilm.

In a horror tale, I would be stalking one of the dancers.

In a romance I'd bump into my one true love.

This story, in case you haven't sussed it out already, is none of those.

I don't rightly know what this story is.

I exit the alley and step out onto the sidewalk.

A great church looms over me to the left. A long decline to my rights leads to brackish water. Brackish. Such a good word, and so little opportunity to use it. In front of me, sailors watch the new moon. Behind me stretches America itself.

I turn left. Not to the church; that's several blocks away. I turn left, and left again into a dark, quiet bar. There are only a few people sitting on the stools. The brightest light illuminates an unused pool table. There is a small stage of sorts. A young woman is playing an acoustic guitar and singing while no one pays much attention.

I get a beer. I grab a table. I sit down to drink, and think, and I hear the woman's words. Her guitar-playing is quite competent, no complaints, but her lyrics are stunning. She sings about lost uncles and striped socks. She sings about rainy days and sunny afternoons. Her words are so shockingly wonderful that I fall into reverie. I finish my beer, she finishes her set. I clap. No one else does.

My phone rings. I nod to the bartender and the young lady, and stroll outside.

I'm not normally out this late. I'm not a comedian, physicist, philosopher, assassin, poet, nor, I grumble, watching the pretty young lady walk off hand-in-hand with her musician boyfriend, able to play any instrument whatsoever.

I answer my phone.

I am on this peculiar errand at the behest of an old friend. Witty, articulate, epicurean, and stunningly beautiful, she is finishing a masters degree in art history and is married to one of the most charming, amiable, and above all famous people that I have ever met. He is a musician too, damn him. No, I will not tell you who.

She dances a few nights a week, for what reason I cannot quite fathom, since he must make a very good living. I don't think that she does it for the money, since the few times I have visited them, I have seen literal mounds of cash lying around their elegant, faux-bohemian (new word : fauxhemian) apartment.

We never dated, she and I. Never so much as kissed. We were grade-school pals who kept bumping into each other until the friendship took. It was the sort of camaraderie that couldn't be sexual. I tell her that I'm a few doors away, and will be there soon, and I turn off the phone.

You might think it an upshot, having a stripper friend. It isn't. You learn about the horrors of shaving 'there', about the sleazy things men whisper as they drop the bills on the stage, about the calluses from the pole and the real reason for the cloying perfume : so men with wives won't touch.

I enter the club, which is filled with red and pink lights. You may think that's to create a sexy and alluring mood. It isn't. They use red, pink, and purple so that razor bumps and blemishes don't show up. It's all illusion.

The bouncer checks my ID, and motions me to a table. I sit with my back to the wall, as far from the stage as I can manage. Strippers call the seats closest to the stage 'perverts' row'. For obvious reasons.

The place smells of smoke and whiskey and bargain-bin pharmacy perfume. This is one of the nicer, more upscale clubs in the city. There are no lap dances or private rooms here. This is the place men bring their girlfriends to 'spice things up', where the drinks are expensive but the food is cheap and very good, where suits and t-shirts mingle.

Tracy (not her real name, not even close, not even rhyming or containing the same number of syllables) sweeps up to me in a matter of moments.

"What kept you?" She queries, sitting next to me and taking out a cigarette. She makes me hate that I quit.

I grab a pack of matches from the table. They are emblazoned with the club's name, address, phone number, and the outline of a naked woman. I've often wondered how many irate wives call.

"Lounge singer." I reply, lighting her smoke. In the flare of the match, she's my fifth grade lab partner again.

She rolls her eyes, sucks on the jack, and exhales.

"Thank you so much for this."

"No problem, really."

We chat for a while, and then she gets up on stage and slowly takes all her clothes off. I glance at her from time to time, only slightly more comfortable since her husband dragged me here some months ago. She is lithe, slender, and like all dancers, wears ridiculous shoes that make her appear six inches taller than she really is. When she thinks no one else is looking, she makes faces at me.

Then the night is nearly over. She dashes upstairs to change and I finish my second beer. Then she is back, two enormous bags slung over her shoulders, almost comically shorter without the shoes. I grab one of them from her, ignoring her protests, and we step back out into the night.

We cross the street. My dark bar is darker now, and silent. I don't subject her to the alley, instead we walk farther up to a properly lit side street and from there, down to my car.

Bags stowed, we pull off into the night. On the way we talk about art, how Gauguin was crap for technique but genius for mood, how Picasso is overrated and how whoever it was did the 'painting' of the old woman that looks like a photo from far away but is really just fingerprints.

Eventually, we reach the airport. I drop her off at the skycap for the international concourse. She's going to meet up with her man, first to Canada and then to Iceland.

I've always wanted to go to Iceland.

She thanks me again, air-kisses my cheek, and bounces off to catch the last red-eye.

If this had been a mystery novel, there would have been a body in the trunk.

If this had been science fiction, she would be on a starship now.

In the form of the Sufi mystics, we would have drank and danced and reached out to divinity through the worship of desire.

This story has no genre, no good theme.

There isn't any moral or lesson, except maybe that we lose hundreds of adventures every day. We miss those hidden doors, ignore the microfilm, and fail to defile national monuments only by the slightest chance. We miss that great love by inches, or chords. We get lost in the lyrics and the heat, in the song and the flesh, and promises of rides to the airport always win out over near-misses with better stories. Maybe friendships are more important than intrigue, or maybe the end isn't as important as how we get there.

At any rate my friend arrived safely to her husband, glass still lies scattered in that alley for all I know, and I hope, I really hope that if I swagger just so or miss the wrong light, that I will fall into one of those greater tales.

It's that, or learn to play the damned guitar.

Sweet Dreams.

I went down there....

I went down there,
To see if I could understand.

I took no leap,
Just a three year plunge,
With both feet
Firmly planted.

Someday I will arrive,
Some morning I will
Fall into a moving beauty,
Be caught up in
A delicious timeflow,
And emerge,
Glistening,
In a field of jewels.

I've done my research thoroughly;
Read every word and
Cut my fingers on
The rounded pages.

It's time to land.
It's time to land.

Once we were twice...

Give me that long, slow embrace.
Let me feel the warmth of your body,
Melting me,
In the middle of the night.

Once I thought that I could do this.
But here and now, the stories have
Boiled away,
Leaving only the too-loud ticking of the clock.

It's quiet here.
This plush stillness is safe, warm, and
Too, too dreary.
With enough sleep, I will be fine.

With enough sleep, I will be fine.

-PC

When he finally poked his head out...

He was grumpy, unshaven, and bleary-eyed.

"I will write a post detailing actual events in my life."

He grumbled.

"I will not discuss angst, goblins, conspiracies, or other inanities."

He vowed.

"This might take a little while."

He admitted.

-HQ

It's almost over.

They're predicting snow tonight.
This quiet month will become more slient still.
I've been staring a lot.
I stare at walls, and sky and at books.

This quiet month will be more slient still.
The smallest tasks require the greatest concentration.
I stare at walls, and sky, and at books.
Where are the smells of spring?

The smallest tasks require the greatest concentration.
I couldn't gallop downhill any faster.
Where are the smells of spring?
I've got to get a better grip.

I couldn't gallop downhill any faster.
February's almost up.
I've got to get a better grip.
Four to seven inches, the weatherman says.

February's almost up.
I don't like what I've become.
Four to seven inches, blah blah blah.
This isn't good enough anymore.

-HQ

Scratch

We can't go down, down
There isn't enough time.

Have we been this way,
Up, and through this path?

I remember the statues,
But where is the bridge?

If we found the campsite,
We could eat licorice root.

There's this leafy woman who
Swings next to me as I drive.

Why can't I hear the air?

Who is it in this room?

When does the dance begin?

How can we move again?

Shout in the street.
Stamp your feet.
Throw a stone.
Gnaw a bone.
Find delight.
Sing all night.
Smell a mountain.
Drink a fountain.
Swim in a museum.
Pretend you don't see 'em.

For hearth and kin,
For wine and bread,
For ending sin,
For heart and head,

For health and home,
For love's caress,
We beg that you will us now
Bless.

-HQ

Quizling.

How well do you REALLY know me?

Miserable

It's cold here
Under the asphalt.

It's full of chemicals
And glass.

I'm always clawing,
At little bits of air.

The sun is too far away,
The moon is new and dark.

Under the asphalt,
I've torn somewhere.

Little bits of air,
Puff all about.

The new dark moon means
Happy valenmardigroundhogschinesenewyear.

There's this hope at which,
I'm always clawing.

This sore isn't getting better,
It's full of February.

-HQ

Pondering...

What's the point?

Thinking

Every day of your life is both

a smaller fraction of your total existence
and,
a greater chunk of your time remaining.

Then and later.

It is rainy here.

Sigh.

In other news, and by that I mean 'on the same topic', the downpour seems to have affected the other inhabitants of my city as much or more than it has me.

I mean, four drivers attempted to commit suicide by cutting me off, running lights, straddling the lane divides, and stopping suddenly.

What, in the poetry of the modern vernacular, the fuck?

In proper other news, I dreamt of Peiking ducks and toystores.

In the universe of my sommnolent mind the birds were exactly as one sees them hanging in the stores of chinatown: glistening and golden and featherless.

The ducks were all couple ducks, shopping for their crunchy offspring and hundred year old eggs. They had the little shopping baskets on their wings and every so often one of the couples would get into an altercation and attempt to devour each other.

They would stop when they saw me looking, though.

Nothing is so embarassing as domestic cannibalisim in the ultra-pink Barbie aisle.

In my dream, I left the store and walked into a dark parking lot on a cold night.

A city sprang up around me.

I peered through a chain-link fence and onto the surface of a lake.

When I woke up, I had ice cream for breakfast because, dude, after a dream like that you might as well skip straight to dessert.

I took my raincoat before I left, because although I had not once glanced out the window since waking, I could hear the raindrops pattering on the roof as I brushed my teeth.

Then the drivers attempted the vehicular hari-kiri.

Then I typed this up.

Then I sent it out to be read.

Only this was then, meaning last Friday.

It is currently snowing.

Last night, I dreamt of insomnia, and awoke exhausted.

Smiles,
-HQ

What I did over the winter sprang-foontle.

I'm afraid I seem to be going a bit mad.

Not to fear, no one seems to be able to tell, so far.

Except the cat, who accepts me with that weary resignation that cats exude to try to look cool.

Living alone, as I do, and speaking primarily to animals, as I also do, I've begun to make up dialogues with nonsense words added liberally to every conversation.

I mean it.

Pure gibberish.


For example, a typical morning's doalogue might go like this:

ME: Hallo, duchess. You seem to have missed me. I'm
sorry, I meant to wash quickly, but I forgot where I
was in the lather-rinse-repeat process and had to
start all over again. My sil-wive-broing will look
nice for the office, though.

CAT: Meow.

ME: I agree! But one can't be too careful. I'd turn
beet red if someone said "Gia-fa-ga-nana" to me.
Better safe than quirsplootled.

CAT: Meow.

ME: Say that if you like, I don't care. There, all
dressed and ready. Be good while I'm at work, and no
inviting any squib-bonglers over. They drink all the
milk.

***
SEE WHAT I MEAN? The worst part is that the damned beast seems to enjoy it, responding almost exclusively to my neologistical yammering now.

It's worse when I'm drunk.

Forget meaningful exchanges when I've had a few scotch and sodas. Or vodka and gatorades. Or rum and rums.

When inebriation sets in, I go into lecture mode and the feline, nonchalant like all of her bloody species, curls into a ball and dozes at me.

I, intoxicated, sermonize, sometimes illustrating my made up points with crayons and printer paper. I awoke one morning, hung over as all hell, to the imp's incessant caterwauling to discover a veritable thesis detailing a geometric proof for Fermat's last therom.

It started strongly enough, but my hopes faded when I realized that all of my triangles had, at a minimum, four sides.

I've also expounded on literature, once offering a neat lecture on how Melville and Hawthorne, both contemporaries and neighbors, were also linked by their intense hatred of spazhum-leebers.

Religon has not been left out of my rambling diatribes, and one night I stumbled around the
apartment intoning what I was sure, at the time, was the Tibetian Book of the dead, untranslated. I recorded that one, and my subsequent, sober investigations proved that I was not only far from the mark, but that none of the sounds I used even existed in the Tibetan language.

Most troublesome has been my tendancy, when tipsy, to make pronouncements and elocutions regarding history and myth. I've outlined the Svvrdniq conflict, opined on the Trebleensian legend of Shirkafoo and its influence on 6th century badminton farms, and suggested that Rome may not have fallen, had the government simply given the barbarians a box of
Robnitsckers. Each.

I know that this is all due to lonliness and the darkness of the season. I can also rationally
recognize that and that each day technically brings more light and the promise of springtime.
Nonetheless, Februrary, my least favorite month, will soon be upon us and I fear that the inner workings of my mind will continue to malfunction before any repair can be made.

I need a vacation.

I need warmth and sun and a peer group.

I need a set of people who are willing to play Uno in bars, who enjoy beachclimbing and who will streak for charity.

I need a job closer to home, a globe with a liquor cabinet inside, and another one so that I can see where I am even when the world is spinning.

I need inspiration.

I need fascination.

I need a dog.

Cheers,

HQ

Postscript:

To the dynamic duo, the wonder-sisters, whose textual prodding got me up off my arse and blogging again: You are both beautiful, intelligent, and lovely ladies, paragons of your gender and proud testaments to all of humanity that is good and light.

Thank you for your kind notes. Good thoughts and warm wishes from me to you.

My Goddamned Holiday Shopping Guide.

1) When walking in the mall, remember to amble.

Take long, leisurely steps and stop suddenly without warning. There isn't a single soul out there who needs to travel any faster than you and who isn't delighted by the way your apparently drunken weaving makes it impossible to pass by you, you filthy, dirty, moron.

2) When traveling in a group, remember to spread out across the entire concourse.

There is nothing more uplifting than seeing a family holding hands, even if it does obstruct pedestrian traffic. Be sure to have little children along too. You'll want them to dart around with holiday spirit. Thank goodness there aren't large groups of people carrying potentially fragile merchandise for which their is no return around nearby, you slack-jawed, sub-Neanderthal scum.

3) The best place to stop is in an intersection.

Whether you need to make a cell phone call, inspect a potential purchase, converse with one of the above-mentioned spoilt, hyperactive brats you've brought with you to make people trip and break their presents and their legs, a bottleneck is always the most ideal place to pause. Even if you are doing nothing more than tying your shoelace or staring like a cretin into space, be sure that you obstruct at least two lanes of foot traffic whenever possible. This will ensure that you are able to lurch haphazardly in whatever direction your walnut (dwarf) sized brain randomly indicates.

Rest assured that each and every other shopper experiences awe and reverence as you block both rack and counter alike, scratching yourself and breaking wind none-too-silently. Any apoplexies your dim skull may register around you are simply admirers, succumbing to the rapture of being entirely impeded by you while the parking meter ran out ten minutes ago, you bloated waste of your father's watery seed.

4) Tell your life story.

Each and every salesperson has but one job this season, to serve you and to hang upon your each and every word. As such, make sure you only have a vague idea of what you wish to buy, and be certain that you give store employees as much information as you can about that thing you saw in that one catalog when you were at your cousin's house in, what year was it?

Long-winded discourse on unavailable colors, full exposition and character sketches for every potential recipient as well as an enumeration of your own ailments and indeed, genealogy, are critical data that the cashier needs before he can sell you that B- movie, video game, or basketball. When in doubt, elaborate, you obese, snaggletoothed old cow. Mooooo!

5) Practice parking safety.

Finally, remember that everyone wants a safe shopping experience. Of course, when you arrived at the mall, you trolled the lanes until you found a person about to leave. Since the safest way to get into a spot is to turn in from the center of the lane, you naturally waited for the impending spot from the middle of the aisle. Rest assured that none of your fellow shoppers were inconvenienced by your automotive embolism; each of them understood that you were merely seeking the least risky way to ensconce your fetid land-yacht in that handicapped economy car space.

When departing, remember to check all mirrors, doors, oil and tire pressure, and to rotate the tires. The person hyperventilating from the carbon monoxide your exhaust is pouring out is only the author, white knuckled and cyanotic with aneurysms of seasonal joy.

I wish each and every one of you fat, tasteless, vapid bastards a filthy, oily, rude, and above all shallow holiday season.

Please fondle my...

I can't find the train station.

Even if I could, I wouldn't know where to go.

Destination anywhere.

Even if I found a desired endpoint, I suspect that just before my arrival I would, like in the film Chaplin, learn that my objective had been decimated years earlier.

Speaking of which, one of the sweetest moments of Robert Downey, Jr.'s depiction of Charlie Chaplin comes at the end of the film when, after detailing the majority of his life in good detail, the action suddenly flashes forward twenty years.

The explanation? "We (his wife) were in love."

I love people who are in love. I let them ahead of me in the checkout lines of stores and make room so that they can sit together in bars. If they invite me to, I suffer myself to be in their company and visit with them.

But just because I love them doesn't mean that I like them.

I don't want to be around people who have already found happiness.
I'm not one of these lotus eaters.
Don't you see?
Your Shangri-la is to me an isle off of Ithica.
If I stay here, I will become a pig, or worse.

I'm not Ulysees, although dogs remember me.
I'm not ready for contentment.
Let me learn arcane disciplines and invade long-abandoned sanctuaries.
Let me cuss and vomit and drink and wake up on beaches without names.
Let me wander until I can find some adequate triumph.

Then, mother, I may find myself a nice girl and get married.

Noxious Oxide

After devouring clowns, do cannibals get laughing gas? Discuss.

Barman, a pint of kitten, please!

Announcement

I will be getting drunk this evening.

I have a large bottle of vodka and crystal light in a lovely assortment of flavors.

I also have rum, gin, schnapps, and irish cream.

I will have a few shots, to get me going, and then mix myself taller drinks to sip on until I pass out.

I will be playing video games, and eating macaroni and cheese. I will not transfer the macaroni from the pot in which I made it to a bowl. I will eat it directly from the pot as I watch TV.

I will not speak to anyone unless I choose to.

In the event that I do decide to have a conversation, I will not discuss my feelings nor my thoughts in any way.

I may walk about the apartment wearing only an unfastened pink bathrobe. The bathrobe has a hood. I think it likely that if I do don said robe, I will wear only the hood and run about my apartment with my arms outstretched making airplane noises.

I will talk to, argue with, and mutter against myself.

It will be delightful.

I am a bachelor.

I do not have internet at my new place yet, so I shall not be able to correspond with any of you until tomorrow.

I will be hung over, but I will also have a mini-tape recorder that I will use to store my thoughts.

I expect there will be a lot of airplane noises.

Please rest assured that I am not starved of attention these days and that I do not wish to receive any comments to this or any of my carefully crafted previous posts.

Nor do I like people who cannot identify the stark, wailing sarcasm contained in the last sentence.

I bid you all a very pleasant good evening.

Amazonissippiam... Phagus Fillius

Eat the damn river, son.
You filthy little cur.
Don't you hide and don't you run,
My vision's gonna blur.

Eat the damn river, son.
You shiftless, lazy spoon.
Get out your napkin and dig in,
I'm going under soon.

Eat the damn river, son.
I'll hex your idle bones!
Faster, faster, eat it up,
They've weighed me down with stones.

Eat the damn river, son.
I'll give you such a whack.
Shovel that there thalweg in,
The scene is going black.

Eat the damn river, son.
Curse you in many tongues.
Consume it to the delta, boy,
It's filling up my lungs.

Eat the damn river son.
Bitch, punk, dunce, cad, pervert!
Eat and eat till it is gone,
The ocean's for dessert.

The Church of No Pants

5:45am-Couch
In this old Tutturo film called Brain Donors, one of the characters would shut off his alarm clock every morning with a giant mallet, smashing it to pieces. He would then sweep the debris into the garbage and pull a fresh alarm clock, still in the box, from a drawer, wind it, and proceed to his morning toilet.

How I wish that I could affect a scheme like that.

6:00am-Couch, in bathrobe, drying.
The weather is surprisingly cool today, and the cigarette smoke is helping to bring me into a more proper sort of consciousness. Water too, is totally key to the whole process of not falling back asleep. Morning news. What’s happening now? Shit, if traffic is that good, I might be able to take the beltway instead of deplorable route 29 to nasty route 410 to horrid Wisconsin to soul-pillaging Nebraska to ass-hammering Arizona to orphan-punching MacArthur.

6:15- At door.
Do I have everything? Keys? Lunch? Smokes? Yep Yep Yep. Where the hell is my car? That’s right, I parked over there last night. Reach into bag, take can of nasty soup that I found while cleaning last night. Evil woman and her damn Italian Wedding soup. Ass n’Sewage soup, more like it. I would let myself be the lucky Pierre for Luciano and Boris Yeltsin before I permit that soup ever to befoul my home again. Toss can in dumpster. Excellent. Why am I all distracted today? I mean, more than normal. I mean, I can’t even pay attention to NPR which is normally TRY SIGNALLING YOU GODDAMNED ACCORD my favorite way not to think but not today. It may have something also to do with the fact that I’m going into work two hours early today and that I am hungrier than usual but I cannot decide what I want at all since McDonald’s is too much and fruit is too little and diners are too filling and I feel like being a little empty when I’m done but oh for the love of pencil sharpeners everywhere how the hell is there a backup this early? Forget this, I’m going to deplorable 29. I know, I’ll put on music instead of talk radio and I know just the CD I’ll put on too because I really like the non theme music on the o brother soundtrack and especially that one where they talk about going down or into the river. Dee dee dee dum. I like that song.

6:25 –Deplorable route 29
Now they’re talking on the radio again about snakeheaded fish in the Potomac and I think that a really cool way to take care of them would be to introduce otters into the environment because otters are like awesome like those ones in the Amazon that are three or four feet long and why does everything get so much bigger in south America anyway? I mean, I’m pretty sure I was a documentary once about these giant armadillos and anteaters they have on the Brazilian tundra. Wait, is that right, tundra? In Brazil? Maybe that was a Discovery channel show. Walking with the Gigantic Beasts of the Pre-historic Brazilian Tundra, or some such thing. Good effects if it was. Wait, no. Because a capybara is definitely a real creature and that is huge and also from the South America and I’ve seen those live only where was it? Must have been in San Diego. There was some sort of train ride or something? Yes. That was a trip worth forgetting, except for the Zoo, which was cool, and Vegas, which rocked.

6:40 –Horrid Wisconsin
I should do this more often. It takes about as long, but there are so many fewer cars out that the drive is much more pleasant. I remember this intersection back when it was just a four way stop and that McDonalds was first a pizza place and then a Roy Rogers and then what the hell happened to Roy Rogers anyway? I mean you used to see them everywhere and now I’m surprised if I come across one and I really can’t remember any of their food at all but I bet it was all right and I wonder if I’m doing this the best way I could because it seems to me that I should be able to at least get close to where I’m going by heading down 16th street and then turning somewhere. I won’t try that right now though, who knows where I might end up? I remember that one time I accidentally ended up on ‘the road to nowhere’ out in Virginia and literally had to travel for miles and miles and miles before I could turn. That sucked.

6:50 Soul-Pillaging Nebraska
Signs signs everywhere signs. No Turn on Red. Best Rooms, Low Rates. Help Wanted. We pay big commissions if you find someone who wants to buy[blank]. Homes bought. Low Price Carpet. Try Our New Menu Items. Bodega Scorpion. Construction Ends. Construction Begins. Detour. No Turns. No Turn on Red. No turn on red between 6:30-9:30. DC Seat Belt Law. Try XM radio. My other car is a tank. My other car is a bike. My other car is my feet. ENA 913, FZT QBT, YAG 770, CHERCHI, 2ND TRY, GIMMIE, T1HZ WA. Tihz wa? Ties one? Thais, waa? These wa…something? Oh. I get it. T H 1 Z W A= AW ZH1T. Funny.

7:00 Ass-hammering Arizona
On what far-off planet infested with what strange and backward culture did all delivery drivers originate? I mean, block after block has these large trucks idling casually in the right lane as some teaspoon-sized package is taken, inevitably, to the twelfth floor. All I do is merge or let others merge. What in the name of all the relics of all the donkeys that carried the saints mothers to church is the point or service entrances and back alleys? Twelfth floor. There really aren’t many buildings in the area with more than twelve floors, so far as I know. Dammed Washington monument. Who in their dexterous cerebellum decided that it would be a good idea to limit the height of buildings in the capital of the current world superpower to five hundred fifty-five, five feet four inches? Blast me to Bermuda.

7:15 –Parking lot
At last, I can park and walk into my workplace. Sheesh. No, not that space. I learned my lesson last week, Mr. Pooping tree. Perhaps if my vehicle were naturally the color of bird shit and water-chestnut rinds, I would take advantage of your shade. But no, my Saturn is a creamy white, no thanks to you. Bastard.

There’s that dry cleaners. I don’t feel at all badly about never returning there. While the elderly gentleman and his cross-eyed niece were very pleasant, something about the way they lost my shirts for three days turned me off a little. Ahh. Breakfast.

Damien, my angel, my culinary love. Yes, please, make one of your toasted bacon, egg and Swiss cheese sandwiches on a buttered croissant. Deliciousness 1, Arteries 0.

Gnmph, yum, oh who was the gorgeous creature that invented breakfast?

Computer on. Yay. What’s been happening in the world.

Death, disease, human rights abuses, celebrities having or ending affairs. The usual.

What’s funny today? Hmmm.

How is George W. Bush different from Hitler?

Hitler was elected.

I’ve read that before.

Still true, though.

Ah, a re-hashing of the old Leviticus saw updated for the gay-marriage issue.

Yes, the bible does prescribe the same punishments for eating shellfish, wearing alloys and mixed-fabric garments, and disrespect to parents as it does for homosexuality.

Again, still true.

Does the bible proscribe cross-dressing, I wonder?

Click click click. I now have three versions of the bible at my disposal.

Search: Uhhh… ‘as women’. Click.

No, nope, uh-unh. Nothing.

‘Dressed’, woah, too many.

I know, ‘pants’.

What do you mean my search string was not found. I just looked for pants is all.

There are no pants in the bible.

Type type type. Click click click.

No trousers, no slacks, nothing I can find to suggest the barest reference to two legged attire.

Can this be true.

Whee! Spin around in chair.

10:17 Desk
I should probably try to pace myself a little more. Getting everything done by early midmorning makes the rest of the day go…by……so…..slowly.

11:30 Desk
I’m glad I deleted solitaire, though.

I wonder what it is about the world, that every time I begin to explain my solitaire theory, people interrupt me and change the subject. I can’t imagine why. If they listened, they’d hear that there is nothing we can do about it, and that it is an instance of purely harmless schizophrenia.

I mean, if the solitaire randomization protocols did re-enforce a basic artificial intelligence protocol, and if that protocol, having only the game with which to communicate, attempted to make contact with the user via a tantalizing ‘near miss’ and ‘why didn’t that card come up two turns ago’ scenarios, then it would follow that the program, having no memory files to speak of, would have to start over every time it was run.

Solitaire as a companion.

God I need to get out of this basement, if only for a little while.

1:45 Damn Desk
I remember when I interviewed for this job and misjudged how far it was to the nearest metro and decided to walk and what a nice day it was and how I saw a great many houses that I shall never set foot in and many others that I would not wish to. I remember how I walked through Georgetown and saw all those spots I know of and decided to take a side street like some goddamned tourist and it took so much longer and I saw the funniest little old church tucked into the corner of a courtyard. I remember how it looked old and maybe like the congregation was quite small and the stained glass was dingy and the plaque that said ‘The Church of the Two Worlds’ and how I wondered, as I trudged past it, what the story with that one was. Was it built long ago? It certainly looked like it had been. Were the parishioners old, blue-haired, and did senility make very little difference in their batty world outlook?

I remember how I finally got onto the train and went home and how when I got home, my legs ached so badly and I looked at my shoes and the outer edges of the heels were worn down half an inch shorter that the insides. What soreness I had then.

I want to start a church. A real church, not that fiasco with two members. What did I call that one? The Temple of Convenience, that was it. That was the one where the tenets were that time was subjective and so we could all improve the quality of our lives by arranging our lives with convenience in mind. Set up unpleasant tasks to end quickly, and pay very little attention to them. That was what I wanted my flock to do.

I want a smoke, and then I want to become a minister.

2:15 Damn Dirty Desk
I remember it like it was fifteen minutes ago which, conveniently, it was. I went from the bottom of the building to the top and emerged on the carpark of the roof. Sun. Shade. Clouds. A view. Everything my hovel in the bowels of this building lacks.

B was up there, as cute as ever. I put on the sardonic bachelor personality for her, as it seems to brighten her day when I do.

“My grandmother dying has ruined my decorating scheme.” I averred, as I lit her cigarette, and then my own.

“Has it?” was her wide eyed reply.

“Indeed,” I continued “I’ve been stuck with a ton of her furniture and it is quite a big change. For instance, the sofa and the bed-frame are quite high. I suppose this is so that bending could be kept to a minimum and arising could be done with a minimum of effort.

“Nonetheless, as I am five foot eleven inches tall, and twenty-six years of age, it has been some time since I sat upon a piece of furniture wherein my feet did not make contact with the floor.”

“It could be worse” She chuckled.

“Oh it is,” was my retort “Especially given her fondness for glass and porcelain. I now have five glass topped tables, assorted lamps, and one ceramic, hand painted, Vietnamese elephant statue three feet tall. As I am normally in the habit of stumbling around the place in a drunken fashion, this new style of décor puts me in a good deal of physical danger. Moreover, when fistfights, makeout sessions, wrestling matches, and thumb wars break out, nearly every surface becomes a hazard. All parties are familiar with these risks though, as I live alone.”

She laughed and we changed the subject.


2:20 Damn deplorable disgusting dirty desk.
Now to become a minister.

2:25 Ordained Desk.
Well, that was easy. Funny. I don’t feel holier.

3:30 Driving Home.
Damn my industry and mental illness. I had to go and send out those emails when I got here. Get the heck out of here, he said, with a huge grin on his face. You’ve earned it, he proclaimed, beaming.

Fuck, shit, piss, and monkey vomit.

I opt for the quiet solitude of my cell at work early one morning, and my rarely present boss notices on an email I cc’d him on that I was finishing the big project at 7:30. Suddenly, I’m a go-fucking-getter. I am an example of work ethic. I am to be rewarded.

Take the rest of the day off, he orders, his smile nearly bisecting his cranium.

Asshole.

5:30 –Bottom line pub.
Drunk drunk drunkity drunk drunk drunk.

Well, tipsy anyway.

Smart stupid idea I had, to drive home and then walk the three blocks to the bar.

I’ll have to time this just right when I leave, or it’ll be another episode of public urination. Those are never fun on the side of a four lane road.

Yay beer!

This book is becoming quite the page turner. I admit, I sometimes worry that I have this habit of reading in bars. It seems to reduce greatly my chances of getting lucky.

Of course, the average interval between such occasions for me is something on the order of eight months. People say I’m stand offish. I don’t think so. I just wait to speak until spoken to. In the meantime, I blow smoke rings.

Some day, some lady will ask me what the smoke rings are all about and I will reply:

“A good man knows when to use his tongue.”

It probably won’t work as a line, but if it ever does.



Sadly, everyone here seems to have taken Sonnet 138


(When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.)

to heart, and I would rather stumble home alone and dream of eager mouths and genuine passion, than to ‘make do’ with the companionship available here. I’m hungry for a quickened heartbeat and the sort of orgasms that feel as though a firing pin has just struck the mortar that was my body. I want wholesome fucking. I want the sort of kiss that involves the use of both hands and at least one leg. This confused fumbling with buttons that should be torn off just won’t work for me.

I need to find another venue.

I need to establish the terms with everyone I encounter.

I will start a church, then.

I’m a non-denominational minister, after all.

I will call it ‘The Church of No Pants”.

I don’t know how tonight will end.

I’d better write that down.

I just did.

5:45am-Couch
In this old Tutturo film called Brain Donors…..

Level Seven, Bondage Gear, Religous Decorations, Walkmen.

My mother tells the story of her grandmother's house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was a large Victorian structure, with porches and pantries and cellars and wavy-glass windows. The slate roof boasted a series of blunt, chevron-shaped metal wedges near the bottom, to prevent snow and ice from sliding off too quickly. Winter storms could be fierce, and so the lawn was treeless. As a result, the house was always very bright in the summers when my mother would visit.

One morning, before the heat had made the attic into a sauna, my mother was exploring among the trunks and boxes that abounded in the dust near the eaves. Some boxes, she knew, had been placed off-limits to her and her siblings. No explanation had been given for the prohibition, and curiosity had naturally asserted itself. What fragile treasures or delicate objects were inside these containers, she had no idea, only that the siren song of the forbidden was calling her closer.

When she found the boxes and opened them, what she found was a disappointment to her for about fifteen years.

In my mother's juvenile opinion, the contents of the treasure trove were far less exciting than the visions of wonder in her mind's eye. There were some old photographs of people she didn't know. There were some letters she couldn't read. There was a candlestick. That was all. She put everything back and went back downstairs.

It was not until she went to college that she understood what she had seen.

Given that she grew up in the somewhat isolated environment of the 50's and 60's, it's not surprising that my mother had never seen a menorah before. Yet on her first winter in the dorms, her roommate had to get a dispensation to light her Hanukah candles in the room. The moment, she saw her roommate’s eight tapers standing in their too-familiar holder, the ‘candlestick’ she had found in that attic was transformed once again into an object of mystery and power.

The current theory is that the great-great grand family, upon arriving in these United States, realized that it might be more advantageous to them, or at least less dangerous, to hide their religious origins.

My family celebrates Christmas and Easter these days and the closest most of them comes to Judaism is the kosher deli.

However under Talmudic law, if my understanding is correct, one may claim to be born into the religion by matrilineal succession. The covenant of Israel, and here I am relying on a few minutes of web research and some novels I read years ago, is thought to be passed to the newborn via the mother’s milk.

So, technically, I think I could argue that I’m Jewish, and in some ways this is very comforting. The reason I find reassurance in the legacy of fear my ancestors seem to have suffered lies in another aspect of Judaic philosophy that, again, I can claim only the barest acquaintance with.

Basically, my understanding is that there is a karmic element to traditional Hebrew belief. That is to say, one suffers for one’s sins while alive on earth. Hell is here, hell is now. I find this to be much more satisfying than the dogmas of other religions that maintain that I have to wait until I’m dead to suffer.

That won't work, I'll be all cross about being deceased and won't be able to enjoy it.

I mean, if I’m dead, how am I supposed to feel the endless anguish, it in the first place? Does the soul have nerves, and if so, why?

Moreover, I don’t believe that any supreme being would judge creatures for a relative instant, and then consign them to some fiery torment for the rest of eternity. To adhere to such a belief belies a rather low opinion of the Creator.

So, yes, hell here. Hell now. No wonder I’ve been so uncomfortable.

As to why I’ve told you all this, dear reader, the reason is far simpler than the preceding narrative:

A friend asked me if I was reading her old journal entries. I went back and found one of the earliest ones I could find. It had the test below on it. I took the test, just to show her royal wonderfulness that I really was reading.

So there.




The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Moderate
Level 7 (Violent)	Extreme
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Atria

The heart has more than four chambers.
Breathe in, and think of your first kiss,
Where sweetness and fear melted into
An exploration of the lips of another.

Then, a room was built,
Lit with the
Feeling remembered;
The miracle of joy returned.

The heart has more than four chambers,
It is a mansion of its own memory where,
Spring cleaning is a
Year-round task.

Trap-doors and unexpected passages lead
Suddenly to the distant self, which is both strong and
Fragile. Here in these dusty ballrooms, we glide along:
Ghosts within our own bodies, self possessed.

The heart has more than four chambers,
It is a city with warring factions
Strange, colourful chronicles, intrigue,
Libraries, parks, boulevards, and slums.

In the heart's ghettoes,
Shame and self reproach sit as
Tenement landlords. In these windowless
Warehouses, decay is the golden rule.

The heart has more than four chambers,
It is the enclosure of our reincarnations.
We live like Gautma in bright gardens,
We work our way out of the flavellas.

We toil in our ever growing metropolis,
Which seems sometimes like a cluster of huts,
But sometimes like a brilliant, glowing
El Dorado: Mythic in its richness.

The heart has more than four chambers

Love on MacArthur Boulevard

She has to stop halfway through. The phone is ringing.

I stare at the ceiling while she talks. It's one of those beautiful tin print jobs that you only find anymore in old, unrenovated buildings or in the homes of the very, very wealthy. Fleur de lises are surrounded by intersecting circles again and again. The geometry is such that ovals, squares, and thin chains appear at will before the eye. One section is unevenly patched, another corner sags. She is not wealthy.

"No, I don't do that," she replies after a short pause "But I know a girl who does. You come over here later, I take you to her. She is just half-block away."

Her Mexican accent is palpable. I reposition myself so that she can do her work more easily.

Her name is CoCo, and the way she pronounces it makes the ear aware of the second capital 'C'. She isn't young, but her hands are amazingly strong. She moves me when she needs to, raising or lowering me to find the best angle.

Already I'm feeling better.

Amazingly, she talks to me while she works. So many times before I've merely reclined while it was happening. I'd felt that the professional's silence imposed itself on me too. I certainly didn't want to distract any of them; teeth like those can hurt.

Not CoCo, though. She gabs the whole time and while she does, I think that the way she's the arranged the mirrors, so that I can see everything she does, is a bit of genius. I can't help but grin when she tickles me or finds just the right spot.

Finally, we're done and I stand up. Straightening my clothes, I look at myself in the mirror and imagine that I am somehow thinner, lighter, and younger now, as though what she did to me rewound some internal clockwork spring that jutted invisibly from my back. It's become rather hot, and my lunch hour is almost over. So convenient.

I pay her, giving her a little extra because it was my first time with her and because she did such a good job.

I walk out onto the sidewalk and am almost instantly another anonymous man strolling down the street in Washington, D.C.

I make my way back to my office. In my imagination, passersby can tell what I've been up to. The businessmen seem to nod slightly more approvingly. The women glance at me a moment or two longer than normal, as though they suspect what CoCo and I have just done.

Before I enter my building, I check for any telltale sign of my excursion during the prandial hour. No stains, no spots, nothing. I look great and have three minutes to spare. Wonderful.

I just adore a good haircut.

An open response to the comment on the sex discussion board.

I participate in a very progressive web discussion forum. After one post, where I mentioned that I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue, a female (who I'll call Lady X) member of the group gave me the following instructions:

Starting with the woman in closest proximity to you, you must...

Go to her home and pleasure her like she's never been pleasured before. Then you are to move on to the next victim woman and repeat step one until you have covered (so to speak) all the women on SS[the site in question]. Then and only then are you to return to the capital [I live/work in DC] and resume your duties.

This is your mission. Do not fail or there will be dire consequences.

This message will self destruct in an un-named amount of time. [/b]

I was a touch perplexed, having no idea in what state most of the women on the site lived. I imagined myself going door to door until I found each of them and as I did so, an amusing thought occurred to me.

So I wrote up a progress report of my first day's work on the instrucitons I'd been given.


Dear All,

Acting on Lady X's orders, I proceeded to visit the woman in closest proximity.

The widow Jenkins was somewhat surprised to see me. Not at my arrival, for indeed I assist her with household tasks and some light yard work from time to time, she being my elderly next door neighbor. She was surprised to see me because normally her cataracts are too cloudy to allow her eyesight beyond the most general distinctions between light and dark. This is no great inconvenience to her as she has lived in the same house for the last forty years and prefers radio to television.

I explained that I was there to please her as no one had pleased her before.

Her reply: "You mean to fix my air conditioner? Don't bother dear, it's none too warm."

I responded: "No, Mrs. Jenkins, not 'freeze'you, 'please'you."

"No no! I'm fine," she exclaimed "I haven't had a cough in weeks. I'm just a little short of breath sometimes."

"Not wheeze, Mrs. Jenkins, p-l-e-a-s-e!"

She began to chuckle. "Oh I see now, sir, I thought you were only having a little 'tease'. Still, it's very nice of you visit an old lady to check up on her. Such a gentleman."

"You daft cow!"

"Of course there's a draft now, you're halfway out the door! Good night!"

I have come back to my computer to re-compose myself, regroup, and plan a fresh course of attack. While Lady X's orders were quite clear, I cannot help but wonder if they are entirely practical.

For instance, the next closest women are two ladies I have never met, but whom Mrs. Jenkins told me were 'those new neighbors, the actresses'.

As I am now aware that my aged widow neighbor's hearing is, at best, as good as her eyesight, I am completely petrified that these ladies are in fact lesbians, and not, as Rachel Jenkins thought she heard, thespians.

My question is: Must I please them as they have never been pleased before despite the fact that they may very well eschew the company of men entirely? I suppose that any pleasure I was able to give to them, assuming they were practitioners of Sapphic love, would be pleasure that no man had given them before, and yet I find it unlikely that they would be altogether receptive to my advances.

I only bring this up because according to Lady X's instructions, I must continue to please all women as they have never been pleased before until I can establish with certainty that I have pleased each female member of the SS community, again as they have never been pleased before.

Since this means that (assuming that all ladies involved with SS are American) I will need to bed approximately one hundred and twenty million women (each of them as they have never been pleased before) and since my personal record for climaxes is six in a twenty-four hour period, I calculate that it will take just a little less than fifty-five thousand years to accomplish my mission.

As my lease is up at the end of the month anyway, I believe I will have to opt for storage rather than look for more permanent accommodations.

If anyone can suggest some way to somehow reduce the pool of eligible ladies for me to please as they have never been pleased before, I would be most exceedingly grateful. You can reach me at my new web site www.thewanderingscrew.com. While there, you can check my visitation schedule and at the same time view how many women I actually have pleased as they have never been pleased before. I will be in Washington, D.C. for about the next nine hundred and thirteen years, after which time I will move on to the suburbs.

I'll be leaving shortly, just as soon as I check on the strange series of beeps emanating from Lady X's previous message.

Smiles,

HQ

Postscript: As I indicated above, I was checking on the source of the sonnation when my computer keyboard exploded. I can only assume that the self-destruct sequence Lady X mentioned chose that moment to detonate.

Unfortunately, I had laid my keyboard in my lap, the better with which to type, when the aforementioned pyroclastic event took place.

I am not sure that I will be able to please any women as they have never been pleased before for some time. At the very least I believe that I should wait until my male organs re-emerge from my abdomen where, not unlike Daffy Duck's head when he is shot by Elmer Fudd with a twelve gauge shotgun at point blank range, they secreted themselves during the blast.

I am greatly hopeful that, upon their return to their proper position, my genitals are at most comically blackened and not, as I fear will be the case, going to disentigrate into a small pile of ash, as the Tasmanian Devil does when Bugs Bunny tricks him into smoking a dynamite cigar.

I shall offer up further progress reports as events warrant.

No Exit. Hateful, Self-Flattering Poetry.

It was a real thing,
That room made of mirrors
All, floor, ceiling, wall,
bed, toilet window, door.

Once I saw it,
I knew myself, and
Kept it with me,
Remembered the

Countless selves reflected each other;
I could not move without
A multitude of me shifting
Back and toward and through the edges.

Once ensconced, there was only
The me's and space between the me's.
The window was a refection of itself, and
In the absence of a doorway, there was still a door.

She asked me, years before I stopped
Speaking to her
For her own good,
What my thoughts were.

There was an us,
I'd tell her now,
If I still spoke to her,
There we were.

I saw a multitude of we's,
The spaces between us
Caused by gaps in the world,
Not how close we were.

I lived in a million
Billion lives of us, and
When she left, I closed
The mirrored door, and let no others in.

That was all I saw.
That is all I know.
That is still there,
In the absence of the doorway.

February Prayer

Send me an elixir vitae;
Something warm and full of light.

Let me dunk my head in an
Aqua vita
For an hour or so in either direction.

I'm tired of this here.
I see beautiful pictures
Of people and places elsewhere.

I look here.
I mean, I look hard.

But this place is just
wet and
cold and
dark and
I'm not sure if there's anyone here at all.

Send me away with the conquistadores.
Let me search for the Fountain of Youth.

I'll help rape the natives,
Hunt the wildlife to extinction,
And spread disease and war,

If you'll just put me in some conveyance that goes south and west, towards the sun.


I won't miss the miracles here, when they arrive weeks from now. I won't mind being absent when the budding commences and verdance begins.

This hunger hurts too much now.

Give me manna,
Not this steaming flesh I've been eating.
Provide me with something firm and cool and green and
So full of water that I must eat and drink at the same time.

Show me where to find it and I'll go myself, and pick it from whatever tree or vine it grows.

Give me leave, let me leave, lease me leave again and then again and then re-lease me.

Un-pen me. I won't need a stylus.

I can write all this again and again
with my toes in the sand of some far off shore.

Where there is only the sound of breath and water

An Open Letter to the Dating Service that Rejected Me

Some time ago, I went to an internet dating site. You had to make a profile just to look around and I did so, attempting to infuse some wit into my bio, as you will read below.

They rejected the profile.

Here's the letter I wrote to them.


Dear Sir or Madam,

I'm sure that you receive many rude, obscene, or inflammatory emails to this address, and I hope mine will be none of these. I'm writing to let you know why I just cancelled my account.

I quote the following line from an email sent to me by [this dating site] this morning:

"We cannot accept your profile because your profile indicates that you are seeking a specific individual.

You stated, '(I'm) Lawrence Tureaud and Elenora Fagan's secret love child.'"

Well, perhaps I was attempting to be funny, but the fact that I was suggesting that my real parents were Mr. T and Billie Holiday does not mean that I'm looking to hook up with either of them. I had only meant to indicate my spiritual affinity to these two entertainers, not to suggest that I was claiming actual relation or romantic interest in either.

Then I thought, perhaps libel was your real concern. However, even if you objected to my suggestion that these celebrities were my parents, I believe that this is mitigated by the sheer impossibility of this intentionally ludicrous idea.

To begin with, I am twenty-nine years old. As you may, or may not be aware, Mr. T was born in 1952, and Ms. Holiday died in 1959.

Even if six-year old Lawrence was able to jibber-jabber his way into forty-three year-old Eleanora's affections, I personally pity the fool who cannot see that:

2007 minus 1959 equals 48, not twenty nine. So I could not possibly be their offspring on that account alone.

Furthermore, even if Billie Holiday had lived and remained fertile until 1977(the year I was born) , I would still have a hard time convincing anyone that I was the child of either of them as I am (severely) white.

Some of my friends say that I am the whitest person they know.

Both celebrities that I named were, as you may know, of African descent and rightly proud of their heritage.

Just to make this ridiculously clear:


The Talented and Wonderful Billie Holiday



The man himself, Mr. T.



Me.





That's right. Nothing there for my picture. I don't show up on a blank background. That's how white I am. I need never fear polar bears, could never be found in a blizzard, and am never scared of bleach. Me. Whitey.


I apologize if any of these issues became confused by the wording of my profile. I had thought that by using the names these cultural icons were born with, I might seem brainier and thus more attractive to the women in my area.

Now, my modest hopes of finding a nice girl are dashed. Indeed, I fear that I will never now find my one true love owing to my complete and utter lack of faith in humanity.

Sheesh.

I realize that you, the reader, are probably not responsible for the rejection of my profile. However I hope you will pass on to whomever is in charge of such matters my comments, in the hopes that others will not be prompted to leave what is otherwise, a well-designed and charming web site.

I myself am outta here like free beer.

Thank you almost very much for your time,

You are loved.

I like cartoons.

Especially these new ani-sitcoms like the Simpson's, King of the
Hill, Family Guy, and Futurama.

I saw an episode of Futurama the other night that was perhaps the
most important television program I have ever seen.

Fry, the pizza delivery boy who is accidentally cryogenically frozen
for 1,000 years has been adjusting nicely to his new world until one
day he enters a museum to discover his old workplace has been
discovered in an archeological dig, and is on display.

There is the old counter, the walls, and mislabeled 'calzone' is
Fry's dog. Through flashbacks, we learn how Fry befriended the stray
and how the relationship was that of any average dog and its owner.

In the Future, science has progressed to the point that the dog can
be cloned, complete with his old memories.

Only there's a glitch. The sophisticated machinery indicates that
the pooch lived to fifteen. Fry decides that his dog's long life is
proof that the pup forgot him. Fry decides not to reanimate his pet.

A flashback then follows the dog as it attempts to find its owner and
we see the animal, after a fruitless search, return to the pizza shop
and wait expectantly outside the door for a dozen years. Connie
Francis sings "I will wait for you" in the background, in case there
are any remaining dry eyes. It's a phenomenal episode and the
members of the Emmy committee are a bunch of sister-molesting
telemarketers for not giving it the animation award.

But I digress, there's something important in all this.

In some ways, it was easy. All dog stories are, in my opinion,
ultimately sad. The narrative strength of this episode lies in the
hero's (Fry's) belief in another story. He convinces himself that
Seymour's longevity means the dog could and did survive without him
and that this means the dog was happy.

The audience knows the truth, and the average viewer wants to scream
at Fry and explain his mistake. But Fry is convinced that he (Fry)
isn't Ulysses, and that twelve years would have erased any memory of
him from Seymour's mind. That's where the real tragedy lies, and
where the important 'message' of the story shines through.

The audience feels the pangs of desire nearly achieved, deep
understanding barely missed, and true happiness narrowly avoided.

The tragedy is taut, attenuated and presents a mistake so
heartbreaking as to be almost on par with Romeo drinking poison a
moment before Juliet awakes.

In Hamlet, the Danish prince advises a troupe of traveling actors to
remember that 'The true purpose of playing was and is to hold as
t'were a mirror up to life'.

He would have been proud of this episode.

Don't be afraid of your mistakes, each of us cuts a huge swath
through the world with every breath we take.

Be afraid of the unconscious damage you do.

Fear not-reaching-out.

Develop a phobia about not-connecting.

Friendships fade, relationships end, and parents die.

If you stay home all the time, you're avoiding the joyous rush of the
beginning.

If you stay in a loveless life, you're avoiding the sadness of loss
and disappointment.

If you don't cry at a funeral, you're burying part of yourself alive.

If you don't do the whole thing all over again, you'll never learn.

You are cherished.
You are yourself.
You are loved.

Now is the middle.

In the beginning, it was the middle.

Alternatively, it was the center.

Or centre.

The midpoint, if you will.

Whatever, it was the middle.

The point is that first, there was nothing, then things started, and
when they did, it was now.

Now is the middle.

If you think about it.

Perhaps I should tell this in story form.

Today I saw a group of children being escorted around the city by a
young woman. Whether she was a babysitter, nanny, or stepmother, I
could not tell, but since the children seemed to be white, black, and
Asian, I felt it was unlikely that she was their natural mother.

The children were laughing, playing, and pointing all around them.
They formed a chain with their hands. They seemed totally at ease
with one another.

I thought of Dr. King's speech, about children of all races holding
hands together and playing together.

"When some people point to the lamentable state of race relations," I
thought, "they often fail to take into account how far we've come."

"Reach back far enough into history and you'll usually find something
horrible to detract from the present." This was my more optimistic
self talking.

"But," my internal cynic countered, "if you only look at the
immediate present, anything bad is awful, terrible without a
reference point to counter-balance it."

"But then," my angelic advocate pointed out: "The inverse must also
be true. Civilization is always falling and declining from one point
of view or another. And if you erase all memory of the past, now is
the most sublime moment ever." An angelic advocate (the last in this
pantheon of split intellectualities) is like a devil's advocate, only
the former is saccharine where the latter is salt. Salty, I mean.
Salty.

"But they cancel each other out." my inner cynic interjected. "If
everything is as good and as bad as possible at present, then it's
just average. Moreover, since we're describing movement along a
spectrum in the inclusive set of variables, it can't all be average.
Similarly, restricting the pattern to only right now means 'average'
doesn't apply since by definition average is the sum of all values
divided by the number of incidences. Taken along a positive-negative
representation of the general quality of things, with a hundred being
a perfect score and negative one hundred being total chaos, it
becomes zero, which doesn't make sense."

Again, my angelic advocate spoke up: "Not average. Middle. If both
conditions exist in equal extremes at the same time, what you have is
not nonsense. What you have is balance."

At this point, a bus nearly hit me.

I could tell that this line of thought was becoming interesting.

After I had re-established my pulse and climbed down from the
lightpost I'd found myself mysteriously at the top of, my cynic,
breathing hard said:

"Isn't that convenient? Now is the middle. Buddha would be so proud
of you. You've figured it out. Whoop-de do!"

"Yes," my AA responded "In this one now-moment there is perfect
balance of everything, whether we like it or not. It's just
important to recognize that." Angelic Advocates have no sense of
humor, the bastards.

"Damn, I never thought of that." was the cynic's reply, and he
promptly vanished taking everyone else with him.

Except me.

In the middle, everything is one.

A harmony resonates naturally.

Entropy ceases.

There is a sort of constant bloom.

Here, in the middle, every second is new and exciting.

Perhaps another story now, shorter this time.

When I was a child, I once found a piece of rock and dashed it as
hard as I could at the sidewalk, hoping to break it. I don't know
why I did this. Probably, I was young, destructive, and still
unwilling to do anything productive. Since I didn't have a Nintendo,
I did the next best thing: I smashed stuff.

When the rock fractured, and the shrapnel had cleared, I inspected
the new facet I had created.

I became aware that I was looking at something that no one had ever
seen before.

That face of the stone had been hidden for millions of years and I
was the first one to gaze upon it.

It seemed very ordinary.

I filed the memory away.

Years later, I remembered the rock face and looked around, seeing a
new world create itself a thousand times every second.

This time, fusion had caused the revelation.

I was me.

It was now.

Now was the middle.

It still is.

About an hour of free-association

Bing.
Ding.
Boom.

Hello.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What do I mean by 'Who am I"?

In.

Down.

Through.

Between.

Around.

Past.

Tired awakenings in the middle of the afternoon. Sweaters andsitting alone in chairs waiting for all the synapses to return tonormal proximity.

Dan doesn't keep Chocolate any more. I can't bring myself to ask him what happened. Chocolate still exists, if only as a cloud of possibilities. He's Schrodinger's dog now.

Is my heart at ease about this?
No.

But I'm also not freaking out and losing sleep either.

It isn't much of a trade off either way. Sometimes not knowing is the best way to stop time.

KIA's families get to mourn right away. MIAs never resolve. There are bedrooms of boys whose 18th birthday is thirty years past,exactly as they left them.

This isn't a good thing.

Think of the moment before something bad happened, whether it was bad news or the confirmation of an awful suspicion or waiting for someone or something to be dead.

Now multiply that by 60, for each minute, and then 60 again for each hour and then by 24 for each day and then by 7,12, or 365 for the weeks, months, and years of that feeling.

Not knowing sucks.

Sure, things may suck as badly once you finally do know, but at least it's over and you can go get a drink. Two Drinks in front of me: Coffee (double shot french roast espresso;the strongest the machine will make), and Coke, with lots and lots of ice.

Coffee-flavored coke?
Blech.
Coke-flavored coffee?
Also blech.

Gatorade in the drawer. And deo-der-ant. And a toothbrush. And shoe polish and hand sanitizer and after-shave and, blast an email adds three minutes to the clock when I have to stop.

Fricking work.
Fricking School.
Why can't I just stay home all the time?
I'll call up all the late night infomercial numbers and make my fortune selling houses and cars and stocks and figurines made from fresh donkey crap on eBay.

Then, I'll type with one hand while I take a sip of coffee, then a sip of coke with the other.

This is a new computer, and it's fast.

It has a lot of space, too. I use up little of that space, and I don't take advantage of the space. I'm space-friendly. Sort of like my brain.

I think, that if I were to use an automotive metaphor to describe mycerebellum, it would have to include some mention of the faulty transmission. I must switch gears very carefully in order to keep from switching into neutral or stalling.

Sunlight begins to be a surprise. I'm indoors so much that I rarely see the big ball of gas unless it's rising or setting.

I suppose that last should indicate that I am also becoming something of an early riser and late um...go-to-bedder.

There's just nothing there.

It's not meaningless, of that there is no doubt.

Almost every day I experience new revelations and insights that move me along.

But to where?

There are points in travel where time hangs and everything falls silent. Whether it's in trains, or buses, or boats, or planes, eventually, it's all been done and everyone is just waiting to disembark.

I remember English countryside flying past as we all sat quietly, unable to think of another thing to do or say until Stonehenge arrived. I've done this in every vehicle I've ever been in.

Gone quiet, and still, even while moving. But I haven't gone anywhere for quite a long time now.

I haven't lived vicariously, and I haven't included others in whatever it is I'm doing. There's no real ending, or beginning, and yet this isn't the Satyricon. This isn't Fellini. E la does not Nave Va here and there's no rhino in my rowboat.

What do you mean be patient?
I'm the king of patience!
I'm the monarch of waiting quietly!

I've perfected it and let me tell you something:

Patience is a shitty little backwater kingdom.

The people who advocate patience are like people who can say'It's only money.

'Fuck them all. Fuck their money. Fuck their patience. Fuck their high-school sweethearts.

They've gotten what's important to them out of the way and live like the too-fat Buddha, made of gold and unworried about tarnish.

Gold doesn't tarnish, but I'm an alloy, not gold.

I'm not even one metal, but

Iron,and slag, and brass, and lead, and silver and,other metals in the periodic table that would sound cool if I had been paying attention years ago in chemistry class.

Find me an alchemist.

Find me a philosopher's stone.

Let me be changed into just one thing.

Patient?

Fuck you.

You may be patient, but I for one intend to make you wait as long as I can for whatever you're waiting for.

The problem with impatience, however, is that you still need a vision. In order to capitalize on your jitteriness, your inability to sit still, to be satisfied, there needs to be, well need.

It's fruitless to sit down and ask yourself what you need, what you want, because if you knew that, you wouldn't be there and if you were patient enough to engage in that sort of self-inventory, you also would not be there.

So, you go out wandering.

Bars, bookstores, billiard halls, they're all the same. They don't even have to start with B.

You go to clubs, and shops, you prowl the streets and back alleys, you strike up conversations, have one-night-stands, moon over strangers, forget to call your mother, swim in the ocean, find old friends, meditate, quit, rejoin, quit again, master games of skill, go to Vegas, lose, win, grieve, run laps, do push ups, lie, steal, come clean, make amends, make films, make greeting cards, laugh, cry, piss out the camp fire, pray, writhe, break your fever and,before you know it, it's time for lunch.

Only twelve hours left in the day.
Why?

Where does this wanderlust take us? Why can't there be any sort of map, or guide, or at least more comfortable shoes?

I don't think I'm old.

In fact, what I want to know is when I became so very young?

When did I transform from a regular person with goals and friends and ideas into this, reluctant loner, this constant mover, this way-overdramatic whining asshole?

I can feel that there's a point, and it's driving me crazy that I don't know what it is.

I can tell that I'm missing something here, but is it outside or in?

I've lived on the lip of insanity, you know.
I was starving for reasons.
I was pounding on a door.
It opened.
I'd been knocking from inside.

Sorry Rumi.

Things like this can't go on.
Eventually, in order to get past the anxiety and the stress and the loneliness and the heavy burden that all white middle class American males must face, you have to cut bait.

The winter is critical to the trees' growing process.
There is a respite from the constant expansion.
There is breathing room, and spring brings not only greenness, but new growth and fresh possibility.

I knew a girl once who would react to pain about three seconds before it occurred. Every bump and unexpected touch caused a squeal, in case she was in pain, and didn't know it.

And still, it makes precious little sense. I can do so many things, but I'm doing practically nothing.

There has to be a better way that doesn't involve developing a killer vocabulary, or a photographic memory. Or financial freedom. Or perfectly chiseled abdominal muscles.

For now, though, there's only one way through this.

I figured it out last Monday, in a revolving door.

I can't make friends show up.

Can't win the lottery by buying a ticket.

Can't heal the sick.

Can't feed the hungry.

But I can love.

There's that capacity in me, and until something better comes along,I'm just pouring out every bit of love I can on whoever I meet until things get better or I'm all out.

What else to do?

What else to say?

That's all there is, right now.

Preserve

Preserve.
Restoration is difficult.
Craftmanship is often required.
And patience.
And Money.
All so that you can get something back to the way it was
Twenty,
Fifty,
One hundred years ago.

Preservation is more convenient.
You begin with what you already have.
You polish.
You maintain.
You improve.

Schloom Schloom Schloom.

I've been thinking about the saying :

No man is an island.

Not quite true in the bathtub, is it?

An open letter to the gentleman who stocks the vending machine.

Dear Sir,

I am writing to offer my comments and suggestions regarding your method of vending machine stocking, product selection, and package placement.

To begin with, the cherry pastries, lemon cookies, and 'honey crunch' pretzels are extremely nasty. You provide us with many other disgusting products, but these are by far the most offensive. The only reason anyone buys them is that we are occasionally here at the office so late that even the takeout places have closed and it's a choice between one of those vile comestibles or death by starvation.

Also, due to alcohol and/or drug addiction, there are others of us who, towards the end of the month, must purchase such nutrition as we are able to afford with coins scrounged from beneath the cushions of the couches in the reception area. Such individuals are, thus, presented with a limited number of choices. I would name names, but John in Compliance insists it was just the one time when he forgot his wallet.

As if.

Were not your visits so geologically intermittent you might be able to take notice of the more and less popular items and plan your selections accordingly. Instead, you wait until only one last bag of the unendurable 'Barby-Q Snax' remain before swooping in with the stealth and speed of a master ninja. In the blink of an eye, the rows of chrome coils will be teeming with suspicious and often inedible products of some industrial bakery in a far off land, or possibly planet. Why you insist on staying away so long when the task apparently requires mere nanoseconds leaves many of us here bewildered.

More maddening still is your remarkable ability to tantalize us with the doubly unattainable. There have been instances when my heart has shot upward with elation before shattering with dismay when I have gazed upon your decisions in the field of product selection and seen them combined with your stunning ineptitude in the arena of placement within the damned machine.

The few decent selections that you make are hidden behind a wall of products ranging from the insipid to the downright toxic. Why? Is there some hidden logic to this strategy? Why must I wait for Carl down the hall to ingest eight, fart-provoking bags of his 'Cheeze Bites' before I can attempt to purchase one of the three bags of peanut M&M's you choose to stock? For Christmas this year, some of us are getting Carl a book about the history of Portugal, and underlining the bits about corks, if you follow my meaning.

Even when I am able to fend off the other starved M&M afficinados in this office, and am not overcome by the vapours wafting from Carl's office, you put the damn package at the very top so that the delicious rainbow of peanut-ty goodness suffers , by my calculations, a 63% breakage rate. Do you think pulverised candy shells mixed with tears of chagrin are more delicious when licked from the bottom of the yellow bag ? Well, they're not.

Lastly, let me bring to your attention the issue of the selection of chewing gums. I realise that, by all outward appearances, our workspace may seem to be inhabited by young children who relish stale chicle, but this is not entirely true.

Admittedly, Joyce, our receptionist, is quite young and her affinity for your bannaberry split brand choice puts those who speak to her in mind of an outlet store for sugary and artifically flavored products. Many of us in this office are of the opinion that the flavor isn't the only artifical thing associated with Joyce, if you are able to follow that subtle euphimism.

It has been said by shadowy figures around the water cooler that Joyce owes her employment to the fact that she is some relation of our Director, Mr. O'Neal. I doubt that last, myself. Drunk and criminally incompetent though he may be, I doubt that even a dirty Irishman such as O'Neal would disappear with his niece into the storage closet during lunch three days a week.

Suffice it to say that when Mrs. O'Neal learns of her unknown sister's unknown child, you will have little market for that horrid flavour. The other gums are only mildly detestable in comparasion.

To conclude, I realize that yours is often a boring and thankless job, but perhaps there is a reason for this. Why not survey the office to find out about our snack preferences instead of imposing your own despicable tastes upon us? We have done you no harm. We're not all bad people, although Doug in marketing is technically a bigamist and Linda in consumer affairs sugared Stacey in sales' gas tank in a jealous rage after their threesome with Juan in the mail room. But that's just friendly office banter, compared to some of the things I've heard here.

At the very least, we might have a few more peanut M&M's. And do put them on the bottom row, please.

Sincerely,
Harbin Quadrangle,
Staff Psychologist

Bearable Nocturnal Yetis

How did I get here?

Where did I put my keys?

Do frogs hibernate?

One would assume so. They're never about in the winter. One day, ostensibly, a super-frog will evolve and be able to tolerate any climate. Arctic frogs will grow to the size of small boats and patrol under the ice cap, snatching up food with tongues that are yards in length and icy cold.

Where is the jam?

Where the toast?

Any rhinoceri about?

Good.

Hm, frogs. Are there any stories in which a frog is the hero? I think there was a series called commander toad. There was the singing frog in cartoons, of course, but he was an antagonist. There was the jumping frog of Calevaras County, but he was a victim. Still, commander toad counts.

There have been prominent rhinoceri as well.

And badgers. And ducks. And monkeys, of course.

There have been no stories about yetis, to the best of my knowledge.

No wait. Harry and the Hendersons. Damn you, John Lithgow.

We're all pulled towards the core. Everyone's falling in the same direction.

Where were we?

Stuck. Stopped. Stationery.

I remember when I walked so far, so far for gel pens. They were new then, and the tiny shop that sold them was blocks and blocks and blocks away. I made it more, by accident, but found the graveyard in the valley at the same time.

People have thought of so many different things.

Faucets, wire-mesh, motion sensors, springs, lighthouses, compressed air.

Where did all the jumble book sales go? There used to be so many at schools and churches. Now, I'm lucky to find one a year. I remember when I was young I found a copy of 'everything you ever wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask' and hid it between two other novels, purchasing the lot without showing my illicit and shameful purchase. That was an awful book; inaccurate, unsupported, and with no pictures to boot.

Boot. Boots. Give the boot. Re-boot. To boot. Car boot.

Carbolic. Grapefruit.

Takes more calories to digest than it contains, they say. Grandpa liked it. I can't handle it; too acidic.

Grandpa had the oddest palate. He was a meat and potatoes kind of guy, with a particular fondness for scalloped potatoes and ham. You'd think that would have killed him; but it didn't. I have his golf clubs over there, next to the bookcase. Grandpa had a sweet tooth too. He would bake cookies and pies and even did chocolate cakes for a while. He died on tax day. The last thing I remember him ever saying to me was that I should do well in school. I had reached that awkward age when I was assumed to be standoffish to adults, and I thought that he looked at me with apprehension and concern. I always helped him test the water in the pool in the mornings. I would dive into the deep end to fill the little beakers and sit with him on the patio, dripping, as we added dyes and reactants, debating whether the pH was too high or not.

Next to the steps leading into the pool, there was a little tube with a rubber stopper on top. Un-corking the tube would aerate the jet there and a quasi-spa would shoot millions of bubbles around my legs and tickle my belly. Unclear on issues of size, and on the ability of sea life to survive in a chlorinated environment, my younger self would worry that the deep end held, in it's seven feet of water, a great white shark. The walls of the pool were white, see, and somehow have the impression that there was no vertical horizon, to coin a phrase, down there.

By ten am, my grandfather would have broken out the cookies. He liked chocolate chip and butterscotch chip, but it never occurred to either of us to create an amalgam. Come to think of it, he kept his foods separate on his plate too.

Some people think that it's fussiness that prompts children to stick to certain foods and to create demilitarized zones between the peas and the mashed potatoes. It isn't. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Sigafoose, told the class that when we were evolving, children had to become accustomed to whatever food sources were prevalent, and so our noses and tongues were naturally more sensitive than adults. The more sensitive the palate, the more horrible the prospect of the macaroni sauce touching the hot dog bun.

By age 67, my grandfather's tongue was leathery, and his voice gruff. Every evening at 5pm on the dot, he would put a heaping scoop of powdered Gatorade into an insulated plastic glass, and add whiskey, vodka, water, and ice. He liked the green Gatorade. It was years before I learned that they didn't sell a different brand of powdered Gatorade in Florida, one that smelled like liquor.

Muriatic acid is a bitch. It arrived in 55-gallon drums during the annual pre-opening cleanup of the pool where I worked summers before and during college. We used it to burn away the sludge and slime that had grown in the still water all winter. One of us, wearing thick rubber gloves, would dip a plastic watering can into an open drum, and then walk along the now-empty pool walls pouring the bright, clear, yellow-green down the sides. It would begin to fizz instantly, foaming and popping audible and giving up a great invisible wave of caustic fumes that, despite the face masks and protective glasses, choked the breath and brought tears to the eyes.

Behind the pourer, several guards and pool members would scrub the acid into the walls with long handled brushes that had been new when the day began and were bleached nearly white by noon. Bringing up the rear, a last worker armed with a hose would rinse the residue away. The slight incline of the pool meant that the acid would stream downhill before taking a right turn into the L-shape of the well, 12 feet deep, above which the diving boards, their fiberglass bodies freshly scrubbed, had been reinstalled after a winter spent hibernating in the storage shed. There, an electric pump was sucking up all the liquid and via a hose, appeared to be depositing the same into the woods next to the pool property. It was April 20th, 1995. Earth Day.

My uncle, a pool member and too parsimonious to pay the fifty dollars that would have exempted him from cleanup duty, sat on the bench of a picnic table next to me. We were taking a mid-afternoon break from the acid scrubbing, and sat under the corrugated awning that, come summer, would be inhabited every day by a dozen or so juveniles that had nothing better to do than swim, buy ice cream, and play countless games of cards, monopoly, and backgammon.

“How are you doing?” My uncle asked, his long legs stretching into the sunlight. Around the ankles of his jeans, white spots, maybe a little greenish, gleamed against the blue.

“Fine.” I replied, a trifle confused. He was looking at me questioningly, with that same look of concerned intrigue that my grandfather had used when talking about school.

What did he mean, I wondered. I’m working at the pool. I’m going to college in the fall. I’m graduating soon. Did my mother tell him that I’m not going to prom? Why would she? She knows I haven’t gone to a dance since that fiasco at homecoming freshman year. She got flowers earlier this week, from her friend, Renee. I had a crush on her when I was little. She worked at Bloomingdale’s then and my mother and I would visit her some evenings. We had cake once, I remember. Chocolate.

I looked out at the waterless pool, full of sunlight and acid.

“Man,” I said, standing up and reaching for my brush, “That acid looks like Grandpa’s Gatorade, and smells about the same.”

He laughed, slapped me on the back, and we put on our protective glasses and face masks, and went back to work.

Sometimes, when someone speaks to me when I am in bed, I can carry on full conversations, even sitting up and opening my eyes and, by all reports, appearing lucid and alert. This is a farce. Inevitably, I collapse at the end of the conversation and when I awake properly, have no memory of the exchange.

I hope that is what happened.

I hope that my mother entered my bedroom sometime late in the night or early in the morning and told me that my grandfather had passed away and that I, in my deceptive slumber, seemed to understand and take in the information that I cannot now recall.

I have his golf clubs here, next to the bookcase. I have a box with some pictures of us, and some of his cufflinks and tie-clips. I have his old sideboard here, where the china was kept. I don’t know who got the china. My cousin got the fiesta-ware. I have a ceramic elephant he picked up in Vietnam in the early 60’s. My cousin has its twin. We have a tontine on them, an agreement that stipulates whoever lives longest gets both of them. Sometimes, I think we’re both racing to lose.

I have the car my grandmother got when she traded in grandpa’s old Oldsmobile. It’s outside, in the parking lot of my apartment building now, and will not start. I have been waiting a long time for the tow truck to show up and am restless.

Where am I?

I’m somewhere between the acid and the sharks, around the cookies and under the tongue, amid bubbles, awash in sunlight, and fairly sure that I’m awake. I’ve been drinking green Gatorade, but have not added any alcohol, as it is not yet 5pm exactly.

I hope he approves.

I think he would.

Smiles,

-HQ

Rebloombirth.

No breath.

No pulse.

No heat.

No sight.

No hearing.

No smell.

No touch.

No taste.

Until....
The man behind the counter gave me a free eggnog latte.

Then, under the auspices of warm, nutmeg-y caffeine...

A surge of warmth and taste and widening of the eyes, deep inhalation and the joy of respiration mixed with the blast of the vapors rising hot off the foam and the sudden surging thump of the hearbeat and delight in the indescribable aching beauty of this most luscious beverage.

I am so very happy right now.

Yours in bliss,
Harbin Quadrangle

Please save me....

From my webcam and the video editing program on my computer.

I thought I was going to be needed late at work last night, and hung around until I found out that the conference call had been canceled and everyone else had gone home.

I was bored.

I was punch-drunk and slap-happy.

I wasn't on the clock.

I began to make a movie.

With my office supplies as the characters.

The movie became a soap opera.

Currently, filming has concluded on the first scene, wherein Mr. Blue Highlighter meets Ms. Yellow Higlighter and they fall in love.

Junior Green Highlighter, the result of their tryst, will make his appearance soon, and Mr. Blue will discover Ms. Yellow with her top off getting a white-out facial from Mr. Pencil.

Enraged, Mr. Blue will cut the brake lines of their stapler-station wagon, but the pair will cheat death.

Meanwhile, Junior Green will rebel against his dysfunctional parents and get a paper-clip piercing.

Suggestions for further plot developments are welcome.

Smiles,
-HQ

Postscript: Since my computer does not have a microphone, the entire production will represent a revival of the silent film genre.

Eat your heart out, Lillian Gish

Response to comment.

In a previous blog, I once described the following scenario.

The comment was:

"Why are you reading my journal??? I Do not know you, you are like 30 aaaah dont read my journal!!"

My reply was:

My apologies, miss. As this will be what I can only hope is our final communication, please allow me to address some of the issues you raised in your recent missive.

1) 2004-1977=26

2) If you click on 'My Account' on the blog homepage, you will be presented with a number of options. One of these, and here the web site designers ought to be applauded for naming the feature so accurately, is entitled 'random'.

By clicking on said link, you are magically transported to a journal picked from all the journals at... (are you ready for this?) rrrandom.

3) While I may, in the course of a great many rrrrrandom clicks, have been directed to your journal, I can assure you that I did not linger there.

4) When I am out rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrandoming it up, I make a point of checking on the age of the author upon whose journal I have landed unannounced, because there are so many bloggers out there whose ages are too distant from mine to be comfortable. I must have rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrandomed into your journal, seen that I am nearly twice as old as you, (more than that, by your arithmetic) and left.

5) Mindsay records recent visitors regardless of how briefly they visited your journal. I am only sad that I will appear again in your 'recent' list, as I had to look you up to figure out who the heck you were.

As I close this reply, I would like to thank you for occupying my attention for these last ten minutes. I certainly had no better use for my time nor am I in the least chagrined that I will never get those precious moments back.

I wish you the best of success in all your future endeavors, and assure you that I will not take the least notice nor interest in any of them.

Warm regards,
-PC


Postscript:
While I now live many hundreds of miles away from the Tar Heel State, North Carolina is where I was born and where my kin are buried.

Please pay attention to punctuation, simple mathematics, and the generally accepted rules of capitalization, all of which will serve you well if you practice them.

Since I cannot recall reading any of your journal entries, I must base this advice on the note you left in my journal. This is not so much wisdom, as it is a desire that my birthplace not appear to be peopled by subtraction-impaired young ladies who, apparently, are unable to fathom the mysteries of the apostrophe.

Regards –HQ

Post-postscript:
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRandom!

Fourteen Precepts....Of Bars.

Some tips on being alone in bars.
-A primer comprised of fourteen guidelines for single men.

1) Treat every outing as precious alone time.
Every time you stroll into a publican house with no strings, no team mates, no plans attached (for the evening or the next day), it means that in the end, you call, excuse the pun, the shots.

You don’t have to show any interest in anyone if you don’t want to.

You don’t have to tell anyone how you’ve been doing or what you did on your fucking summer vacation. You can just sit and, if you so desire, get so drunk that you fall off your stool and must search out a booth. As God intended.

If this booth happens to be at a local diner, and you do not know how you arrived there nor, now that you come to think of it, what or if you ordered, then you will thank yourself for having studied item number eight, which deals with foresight in payment.

If you do not choose to inebriate yourself to this degree, you may still prosper by keeping in mind the very real fact that when drinking alone you will have strangely proportioned blocks of time on your hands to do with as you see fit.

So…

2) Bring something to read.
The only times that you should be watching the federally mandated ESPN coverage in a bar are:

a) When your favorite team is playing in a championship event; and
b) When you’re draining your pint glass (see item 3).

Otherwise, have material handy that will entertain you. Ideally, you want this fare to be diverting enough to hold your attention but not so engrossing that you can’t use it to make conversation, should the need arise. Magazines, especially Esquire, GQ, and Vanity Fair are always winners as they are stylish, topical, and you won’t mind when you forget them somewhere (see item 4). Time and Newsweek should be avoided, as they are too thin to last for an entire serious drinking session. Maxim and Stuff will only garner you drinking buddies, and those will only want to discuss college fraternity memories. Men’s Health should only be used if one desires to give a very specific impression indeed.

3) Buy Pints
It is harder for your bartenders to see that your dark brown bottle is empty that it is for them to notice that you are pointing at an empty imperial pint glass and sobbing. Pints are more easily distinguished sitting among others along a wooden bartop (see item 5) than fourteen near-empty bottles of some bland American Pilsner, you palate-less, unimaginative asshole.

But more importantly, there is something much more decent and substantial about a pint glass. Partly, there is the impression it gives to someone you’ve just met. The color of the stout, the care with which you consume it, and the appearance of your hands (see item seven) are just some of the factors that a potential sexual partner will probably evaluate within the first thirty seconds of interaction. In the event that you think you may want to cut short your night out alone and opt instead for an evening of heavy petting and possibly light bondage, you’ll want to appear as charming and co-ordinated as possible.

The other reason for pint glasses is purely martial. That is martial, meaning of or pertaining to warfare, not ‘marital’, as in marriage, you illiterate man-tit. (Note to women: please do not interpret my last sentence as insulting your anatomy in any way. Who am I to cast aspersions on the loveliness that is the female body? No one, that’s who. Still, you’ll have to admit, there are few parts of the body more vestigial and useless than the male nipple. So, to call someone that-as I do above-is intended only to chide my readers endowed with a y chromosome into putting in a little more goddamned effort. You girls are consistently priceless and I have only good words and feelings for you. Just don’t drink White Zinfandel or White Russians. In a bar, those are slut drinks.)

A pint is marital because, unlike a bottle, it is a purely defensive object. You can throw it, and thus increase the distance between you and an attacker, and you can throw the contents at an opponent. This last offers you the opportunity to blind some irate bull of a dockworker that has taken unjust umbrage at you. In the moment that this behemoth is clearing the suds from his eyes, you should be able to run away, or at least ask the barkeep for the loan of his baseball bat.

Never fight when you can run. Don’t be a macho ass-clown about this one. The idea is to drink only alcohol, not all of your meals.

4) Nothing fancy, nothing lost.
I have owned the same beat up pair of sunglasses and the same threadbare umbrella for years and together they cost less than $10. Still, I never manage to lose them because the demons of tragedy and irony can see no torment for in misplacing what is nearly worthless garbage. If I were to bring a fancy cell phone, a digital camera, or a first edition of Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to a watering hole, they would vanish almost upon the moment my foot hit the threshold.

5) Stake out your space
Try to put the maximum amount of space between you and everyone else and make more room on either side of you. This will mean that people have to approach you, and will further meant that you will have opportunity to ‘make room’ for a group of attractive persons who want to sit next to you. Having space available to give is important.

6) Do not drink wine.
What are you, trying to impress everyone? Attempting to stain the clothing of everyone you encounter? Wanting to have the inevitable reaction when the wine reacts badly with the hard liquor you will drink, (see item 10)? Lord on high, did the martyrs die for nothing?

7) Keep it short, dumbass.
Learn from, and avoid your brethren. Don’t understand? Go to a bar and watch the men drinking alone. They will fall into one of two distinct groups: talkers or the quiet type.

Now, as you may have figured out by now, you’re going to have to encounter others during these outings. When you are forced, or choose, to talk to someone other than the bartender or, if you are really trashed, your hand, you’ll need to moderate the length of your responses. I am a perfect example of this. You readers can tell that I tend to write a longish entry when I am so inclined, that is to say, when I am conscious.

But when I am in a bar, I will reduce the number of words I am allowed to say in a row based upon how much I’ve consumed. By the end of the evening, I’m usually permitted only three consecutive words.

Ibid est:
Where are we?
Who are you?
Where am I?
Who am I?
Where’re my pants?
What (hic) happened?

You want to be way less gabby than the guys who’ll say something like “That’s a good watch you have there. Let me tell you how it was made, beginning with the fusion in the heart of an ancient sun that created the iron…” and a little more gabby than I am at the end of the night.

8) Wash up.
My target audience for this post is straight males (to receive educational information), straight females (to be entertained) and queer females (because hey, that’s hot).

As such, boys listen up and girls back me up here.

You never know just whom you are going to meet in a bar.

Whether it’s your soul-mate, your long lost cousin (pray this is discovered early in the evening) your new best friend, or your dental hygienist, the people you encounter will determine your romantic future, rat on you to your parents, tease you endlessly, or, and this last is not necessarily respective of the list preceding, decide just what gets put into whose mouth.

Would you want smudged, smelly fingers coming at you, with rich, black, alluvial deposits of under-nail gunk?

No. No you would not. Nor would she. Cousin-humper.

Wash up.

Oh, and keep breath mints handy too, Mr. Fumes.

9) Tab up front
It’s easy. You go in, you sit down. You order a drink. You give the bartender one of the TWO methods of payment you’ve brought, and you proceed to hammer your brain into teeny tiny leetle pieces.

Why two methods?
a) If you do walk out and ‘forget’ to pay, the bartenders will just run your card. They will not be as mad at you, and they will probably not put urine in your shots the next time you patronize their fine establishment.
b) If you find yourself at another venue, you will not suddenly be faced with the prospect of a ‘dine and stumble’. These rarely succeed.
Why leetle pieces?
a) To forget the overwhelming pain and loneliness that dogs your every step; and
b) Because it is very, very fun.

10) Beer Beer Beer Water Shot Water Evaluate
This may not be your ideal formula, but it works for me. Never evaluate the situation sober. Being drunk is largely about making staggeringly incorrect decisions, often while staggering about. The water will not improve your judgment in any way, but it will make the hangover a little less painful (see item 12).

11) Pregame
DO NOT DRINK WHILE WORKING!
Do, however, bring a hip flask, filled with cheap vodka, to your desk the morning before this grand outing. Also arrange for a tub of powdered Gatorade to be handy (see item 12). Do not touch it until everyone is gone or until you are reasonably sure that no one will talk to you.

Mix, at most, two shots of the vodka with the Gatorade, add water.

This will give you a nice little buzz to begin with, and since vodka is less aromatic than, say, rotgut, you will run less of a risk of being fired for being drunk at work.

12) Pre-pregame
Do you want a hangover? It that what you are looking for?
No. No it is not.
As such, treat every day as though you might drink yourself sensible in the evening.
Eat a good lunch.
Drink eight cups of water before five pm each day.
Take a multivitamin in the morning.
Drink Gatorade in the afternoon.
If you know you’re going out, have a coffee in the afternoon.
Sleepy drunks are only amusing as the object of pranks.

13) Inquire
Bartenders will treat you well, serve you quicker, and generally look out for you if you ask, on a regular basis, “Am I all good?” before departing the premises for points elsewhere. You’re telling them that you want to make sure that you aren’t screwing them over, and that goes a long way to establishing a good working relationship. Then, when you decide it’s a good idea to pour your pint down your pants (see item 10) kiss the owner’s daughter (see item 3), and pee out the window (works very badly in basement bars), he’ll just tell you that you’re all good and that you should go talk to Mr. Bouncer (see item 7).


14) Know when to call it a night.
To determine whether you have had enough and should settle up and depart, use the simple checklist below. I’ve had mine tattooed to my arm. That way, I can use a pen, a marker, or a maraschino cherry to tick off those items I am able to still accomplish.

1) Can I stand?
2) Without support?
3) Can I read the checklist?
4) Am I wearing clothing?
5) Is it the clothing I arrived here in?
6) Do I know where ‘here’ is?
7) Is this ‘here’ the same one I started drinking in?
8) Can I say “One more please” without slurring or giggling?
9) Has last call been announced?
10)Have I lied in answering any of the questions above?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you are at least in a position to be carried out gently, not thrown like the drunken fool you are.

Best of luck.

Halfway done.

Halfway done.

Three cigarettes, four beers, and one distressing phone call later, I decide to jerk off to the 1962 version of the Manchurian Candidate.

If I time it right, I can ejaculate just as that pretty blonde takes a bullet in the forehead. If I can't manage by then, Angela Lansbury dies later on and I can try to sync up with that instead.

Just so that you know, I don't get off on violence towards women. Really.

I don't even understand the allure of S&M.

Spankee no thankee, as I often say to myself.

It's just that it has been about a week since I cleaned the pipes (far longer since anyone helped), and the aforementioned phone call from my ex got me really worked up. Add to that the fact that she has, just today, removed the last of her belongings from my apartment, and you may begin to understand my predicament.

She took the remote, the bed, and the one good chair.

The channel buttons on the television do not work, so without the remote, the device is stuck on the public television channel for the foreseeable future.

They must be playing this because the re-release is about to open, or possibly because of the upcoming convention. Whatever the reason, Frank Sinatra and company are my only video jerk off material, at present.

On the screen, blondie gets it between the eyes, but I've yet to spurt. I'd like to take a moment here to re-enforce my assertion that I am conducting a somewhat drunken exercise designed to help me better time my onanistic releases. The shootings are the only things in the movie I can remember from when I watched it fifteen years ago.

The phone call was distressing because apparently, she thinks it's okay to discuss the fact that she's seeing other people. We're friends, she reasons, and so we should share info like that. Sadly, I cultivated in that one a tendency for rather graphic language, and now that's biting me on my ass.

Normally, a pretty girl telling me over the phone how a party hookup went well and that everything that could have gone right did, perfectly, would have been all I needed to pop. But as I listened, I could not be sure whether she was so genuinely happy (oblivious) that she didn't stop to consider to what degree her comments might be appropriate (not at all), or if she was attempting to rub her wonderful life in my face (bitch).

Whatever it was, I mumbled something about having some work to do, and hung up. I then took the phone off the hook and turned my cell phone off. I sat on the sofa (bed) and considered my situation.

Item: Movie.
Analysis: Frank's getting worried, his buddy should have called in by now.

Item : Beer.
Quantity: Lots.
Analysis: Never buy a little beer. Beer good.

Item : Smokes.
Quantity: Some.
Analysis: Ultra-light menthols.

Perhaps she left a dress behind that I could wear as I smoke these.

Item : Take out.
Quantity: Vast
Analysis: Next time eat first, then drink. Leftovers for weeks forseen.

Item : Erection.
Quantity: One, thank you Lord Jesus.
Analysis: Operational but non-compliant. Efforts to achieve completion on time for second deadline have met with mixed results. Variations of speed, pressure, and lubrication have done nothing to ensure success. Visual material may be retarding orgasm. Frank Sinatra not of preferred gender, Angela Lansbury not hot even at age 37.

Speaking of Angela, I find there to be a sinister and inescapable element to her long-running 'Murder She Wrote' series. I mean, everywhere this lady went, people ended up dead. Sure, she was cleverly able to suggest these rather far-fetched scenarios in which an unlikely suspect seemed guilty. But come on, really, how many episodes would it have taken until people caught on to the obvious truth? Jessica Fletcher was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. I heard they moved her to New York towards the end of the show because there were only six people left in Cabot Cove. I think...

I think....

I think.......

It's this hot feeling that starts just at the tip of the glans about five seconds before the eruption begins. Pressure begins to grow, flooding down the shaft and spreading to the buttocks, thighs, stomach, and eventually the chest. By the time I flex my pecs, shots of watery-milk coloured fluid are arcing over my wrist and impacting upon the tee shirt that is my last vestment.

There is a humming without vibration or sound behind my eyes and for a moment, the top of my head opens up and I mingle with the universe.

Jessica Fletcher, impossibly young in middle-age, slumps to the ground.

I stand, wobbling, and pull off the shirt. I walk out of the room as Frank Sinatra gazes out onto New York City through a rain-splattered hotel window. I toss the shirt into the washing machine, and press the buttons that will soak, agitate, rinse, soak, agitate, and finally rinse it again.

I wash my hands, face, and teeth.

I turn out the lights and return with a bathrobe to the sofa.

The credits are rolling as I nestle into the couch-bed, and I flip through the channels in my mind, watching Jay Leno and Will and Grace and Infomercials for the Amazing Oven Marmot 18 in 1 kitchen tool.

I reach over and press the power switch. The room is suddenly darker. Previews for the Antiques Roadshow dance across my retinas for a moment or two. I turn away from the TV, and fall asleep (dreamless).

Schrodinger's Chocolate

Think back to the Superbowl before Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

Now think of the day after.

That is where we are.

In Washington, D.C., the day is achingly, bitterly cold.

A cold front, described by excited meteorologists as an 'Arctic Blast', has swept down from Canada and were there any moisture in the air there would be snow.

But there is no moisture, only waterless clouds and wind.

It is a dry, icy cold, roaring morning.

On Washington's metro system, the cold cannot enter once the train has gone underground, and so I am able to thaw myself and concentrate on my hangover. It's more than a hangover, really. It's a hangover and cheap pizza and too little sleep conspiring against me. My stomach hates me and my liver wants a divorce. The swaying of the train doesn't help.

The doors open.

People get on.

People get off.

The doors close.

The doors open.

People get on.

People get off.

The doors close.

This happens several more times.

Finally, I arrive at my station.

The doors open.

I get off.

The doors close.

Owing to a bad exposure and the pneumatic properties of train tunnels, the wind is already blowing very hard before I reach the escalators at my station. It's essentially a mini-wind tunnel, only without those really cool wisps of smoke to demonstrate aerodynamics. It is the sort of wind that, if it were a child, would punch other children in the gut and then spit on them.

Above ground, it is worse.

D.C. has no skyscrapers. An obscure law declares that no building can be higher than the Washington monument and so the office blocks are just high enough to catch the wind and divert it. Downward. Onto me.

I would say that it was diverted onto others as well, but for the life of me I cannot recall another soul on the street with me on that arctic Monday morning. I am hunched over in my overcoat and have a fleece cap pulled down over my ears, my gloved hands in my coat-pockets. My eyes water and all I can think about is making it the two blocks to my office, where there will be coffee and aspirin and Alka-Seltzer: the holy trinity of hangovers.

The wind is rushing forward so fast now that leaves and bits of debris are carried horizontally for hundreds of feet. The cold is finding all the little holes in my hat and overcoat. It is rushing up my pants legs, chilling the change in my pockets, and sucking my breath away as soon as I exhale.

As I fight my way to the office, battling againse the jetsam and the the wind, I realise that my brain is trying to tell me something. I've been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, and so do not know, at first, what my brain is talking about.

I turn, and with my back to the wind I am suddenly able to see, to lift my head, and to look around.

Rounding a corner, hunched over, and pushing a shopping cart is a man. He is almost certainly homeless, wearing mismatched boots and a too-large blue coat. Attached to the shopping cart by a knotted piece of green rope, is a brown dog.

Large, shaggy, and apparently unconcerned with the weather, the dog trots slowly next to the cart and man, sometimes looking ahead, and sometimes looking up at his companion.

I turn around.

I don't want to see.

I don't want to think.

I don't want to hear.

I walk half a block more, and turn around again.

With the roaring wind at my back it takes me no time at all to get back to the corner where I saw the pair. I am wide eyed and suddenly warm; flushed with adrenaline.

Naturally, the man and dog and cart have vanished.

I look up the block, and then down. In retrospect, I don't remember seeing another pedestrian anywhere on the streets around me. In all my years of living in DC, I have never seen the streets of this city so deserted during daylight hours.

I perform another U-turn, and begin once again to force myself towards my office.

At my desk, something is wrong.

It isn't just the mild headache, the fatigue, and the upset liver. I am upset with myself.

I'm upset because I'd let them pass me. What, are my problems so important that I can't see suffering around me anymore? How many others have I passed without knowing? Where, in other words, the bloody hell is my fucking decency?

I'm upset because it is cold.

I'm upset because someone who has nothing is doing a better job than I at making a connection. Without a roof over his head or a dime in his pocket, that man recognised another being and found a way to form bond of trust and affection. He let himself be an outlet for the universe's infinite compassion, and so was able to comfort another. I can't remember the last time I comforted anyone.

I'm upset that no one has done anything to help them. I'm upset that shelters probably don't let dogs in.

I'm upset that 'they' are 'they' at all.

I take lunch early, and go to a nearby drug store.

Buying food for someone who lives on the streets is like equipping a hiker. You want the lightest, most nutritionally dense food you can find.

I get beef jerky, crackers, chocolate, granola, power bars, and Twinkies. I also pick up some dry puppy chow. In this weather, a dog needs all the extra calories it can get. Anything the man doesn't want, he can give to the dog.

I grab some handi-wipes, hand sanitizer, and band-aids on my way to the checkout. No one wants to feel grimy or wounded.

I head out into the ice-cold city again, and can not find them.

I walk past Ford's theatre, where Lincoln was shot.

I walk past the Department of Justice and the IRS.

I walk past the Smithsonian's Museums of Natural and American History.

Nothing.

I haul my erstatz care package back to work, and put it in a cupboard.

That evening before I go home, I carry the food and supplies with me. It is dark early, and the wind hasn't let up. The streets are still deserted. I look around steam vents and in alcoves and everywhere else I can think of. There is no sign of the man and his dog anywhere that I look. I carry the food bags home with me. I'll look again in the morning on my way in.

There is no trace of them on Tuesday, or on Wednesday.

I leave my bag of food at the office Wednesday night, so naturally I see the blue-coated man when I get off the train on Thursday morning.

It is a only a slightly warmer day than Monday. I have brought my mp3 player with me, partly for the music, and partly for the warmth the headphones afford my ears.

I am walking along, lost in music, when my brain clears its throat again.

I turn around.

There, on a bench near the Navy Memorial, is the man in the blue coat.

I hurry on, not to escape, but to retrieve my care package from my office. I will be upset with myself later, I promise, for having lost my momentum, lost hope, lost my lost homeless man and his dog, in other words.

Three breathless blocks later, plastic bag in hand, I realise that I do not know what I will say.

I have augmented the contents of the bag with gloves, a scarf, and a small throw blanket.

I want that dog to have a chance at warmth.

But as I approach the bench, I don't see the dog.

The man appears to be sitting by himself.

I pause, wondering if this might be a different person, but decide to push forward.

"Excuse me," I say, my voice shaking slightly, "I noticed you the other day and wondered if you might need any of this. I wouldn't want to offend you, but in this weather, I thought that you might be able to use a little help."

From under the bench comes a single, deep 'Woof'.

With a capital W.

The dog emerges.

Or rather, it unfolds.

The man puts his hand out, and the dog�the very large dog, understanding that I am not a threat, relaxes, and allows me to pet him. He is really a very pretty dog, brown with yellow eyes. Some mix of retrievers.

I hold out the bag.

The man stands, and takes it from me.

"Thank you sir," he says, looking me straight in the eye, and not at the bag at all, "I'm Dan, and this is Chocolate."

Hearing his name, Chocolate thumps his tail on the ground.

I shake Dan's hand. Dan has grey hair, no teeth visibly missing, and speaks in a soft, clear voice. He hasn't been drinking, doesnt' smell too bad, and his eyes look soft and tired.

"I really did not want to offend--" I begin to repeat myself.

"Never apologize for helping someone." Dan says gently, interrupting me.

I tell him that I have to leave, and he thanks me again for the bag.

I don't turn around. I do not want to take pleasure, nor subject myself to more pain, when he inspects the contents. I'm balanced on a needle, and could tumble with the slightest push right now.

Back at the office, I experience no elation. I'm not proud of myself nor do I bask in the glow of a good deed done. I'm less upset, more able to work. That's all. I begin to understand the sentiments of Mother Theresa, Monsieur Beinvenue, Padre Pio, and the other saints of history and literature. Charity doesn't make me happy; it just makes things suck a little bit less.

I can feel guilt washing over me as I lather the soft soap on my hands in the bathroom. Shame squeaks at my heels as I trod over the marble floors in my thick,rubber-soled shoes. I'm not hungry.

I want strong drink, and lots of it.

So, that evening, I go out and tie one on. I head to a walkup bar where a jovial black bartender wears a cowboy hat and takes Polaroids of the guests. He staples the polaroids to the wall. When he isn't busy, he sings country music songs, accompanying himself on a little keyboard.

I don't talk to him, except to order more drinks. I don't talk to anyone else.

I sit and drink and smoke and read some cheap serial mystery.

By the time I'm ready to leave, I almost feel human. Wobbly, but nearly human.

In the subsequent months, I develop an occasional acquaintance with Dan and Chocolate. I bring them care packages similar to the one I'd dropped off the first time. Once, Dan mentions that he drinks tea, so I get him a box of Lipton and an old Starbucks steel mug. I put a ten dollar bill in the mug and again, don't wait around to see him open the bag.

Dan never asks for anything, never panhandles. He just sits and watches people go by.

Chocolate rarely recognizes me, but he always lets me pet him once Dan gives him the all clear.

I notice that Dan has an electric guitar in a case nestled in his shopping cart. He tells me that he used to play, but doesn't want to anymore, and has lost the amplifier anyway.

A few days later, I notice that the guitar is gone. Dan says he broke it into pieces and threw it away. He doesn't explain any further. When Dan says things like this, I always feel as though he has seen oceans and mountains and swamps and deserts. I get the impression he's been places and is waiting, waiting for something before he moves on again. I never ask.

***

When spring comes, I am relieved, both because Dan and Chocolate have made it through a tough winter and because the blossoming of spring is my favorite time of year.

Light abounds, and the fragrances of warmth and pollen mix together in the morning air. The humidity, which will become a tyrant by the end of summer, now only serves to reawaken the nose and renew the spirit. Cafes begin to open their doors on afternoons and the smell of coffee and bread and melting cheese waft out onto the streets. Fashions change, and we are no longer dim figures wrapped in layer upon layer layer of fabric. Soon, the soft, beautiful heat and verdance of May will be upon us.

June arrives. I haven't seen the pair for a few weeks when, coming back from a meeting in a cab, I pass by Dan's usual spot near the Navy Memorial. He is walking along the road with his shopping cart. It seems emptier.

Chocolate does not seem to be with him.

I get to my office, concerned but not upset as I had been during the winter when I first met them. I know that Dan takes care of Chocolate; I always check the dog's coat and ribs when I see Dan on his bench. Chocolate eats, and decently enough. Dan is thin as a rake, but apart from a certain canine mustiness, nothing ever seems amiss with Chocolate.

Dan takes care of his pet.

So where is Chocolate?

I begin to observe Dan surreptitiously on my way into work. He has made a habit of sitting at his bench, the same one I first met him on, each morning. I don't know where he goes when night falls. Dan still sits on his bench. He still watches people.

But Chocolate is definitely not with him.

This is worse than January. My emotions swirl around me. I am possessed first by rage, then by anger, then by fear, by sadness, over and over again until I cannot tell one feeling from another.

I want to run up to Dan. I imagine myself dashing up to the man, grabbing him by the frayed lapels of the blue coat he still wears, and demanding to know what happened to that soft, kind dog.

Was he hit by a car?
Did animal control catch him?
Was he attacked by thugs or cruel children?
Did Dan give him away to some kind stranger who would take care of him?
Did Chocolate succumb to some disease I could not see?
Did he simply not wake up one morning?
Chocolate didn't look old.

What happened?

What happened? What happened? What. Happened?

I can't know.

I can't let myself find out.

I never talk to Dan again.

It is childish, I know, and cowardly.

If I don't talk to Dan, I won't know.

I won't know if there is anything I could have done.

I won't hear about the truck that ran the red light.

I won't hear about the animal control officers were just doing their jobs but you can get your dog back... if you have an address and ID and can pay the fines and license fees.

I won't have to listen to Dan tell me, so softly, so softly, about the youths with knives who laughed and egged each other on.

The sound of a cough that got worse won't echo in my mind.

The image of Chocolate in some suburban house with kids and a yard isn't too plausible. I don't let myself jerk off emotionally to that scene.

I change my route.

I change jobs.

I drink less.

The last time I see Dan, the August heat index is over a hundred degrees. He is sitting on his bench in his shirt sleeves, sweating slightly and watching people.

He has traded in his shopping cart for a smaller, two-wheeled grocery trolley. He's gotten rid of more things.

His blue coat sits next to him on the left.

On his right is the steel mug I gave him.

I'm sorry, Dan.

-Pete Cyclone

The threads of us.

We live in a tapestry of vingettes;
Short stories of varying size
Sewn together
With shorter ones.

And some are thick and bright
Like a perfumed spring evening
Or a lover's touch
Or a hot bath.

And some are sore and sour,
Like parting,
Or bad news
Or a long thirst.

We find patches here and there,
Weddings and fender-benders,
Appedectomies and discos,
All-nighters and lazy sundays,

Parties, funerals, and camping trips,
Graduations, influenza, traffic jams,
Birthdays, gardening, and the first taste of beer,
Sex, love, and skinnydipping,

And we weave them all together with
Sitting at work and standing in line,
Bathing, shaving, and sleep
And it is always a tapestry, and never a quilt.