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diff --git a/veryold/Paranoid City/paranoid city.txt b/veryold/Paranoid City/paranoid city.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7ab223 --- /dev/null +++ b/veryold/Paranoid City/paranoid city.txt @@ -0,0 +1,218 @@ +paranoid city + + ItÕs the way the afternoon light filters through the rubber trees and gently grazes the white wrought iron railing that made her love the apartment. ItÕs an attic really, second story entrance up a staircase which was added some years ago when the old house was renovated and subdivided to take advantage of the escalating price of apartments. + It was her friend Halley that found the place several years ago. Then, when Halley moved to Paris, Andrea took over the lease and, for a time, had the place to herself. Then around Christmas time last year a persistent boy kept asking her out on dates and she finally said yes. To make a long story short, the boy professed his undying love for her and moved in. It all happened so fast that she never really had time to processes it all, and unfortunately she never put her foot down and said no. After a month or so she tried to end it with him, but everything turned ugly and messy and he cried and cried, clinging to her legs in the most pathetic of prostrations and she just couldnÕt handle it. + Would you have done any better? ItÕs much easier to give in to whims and, quite frankly, she would do anything to keep the poor bastard from crying like that again. It wasnÕt all bad. She had regular sex at her disposal, although curiously she was always the one who initiated it, which left her strangely unfulfilled no matter how powerful her orgasms might be. There is something, as much as the strong feminist streak in her protested, to be said for a man who will grab you from behind, catch you unawares and fuck the shit out of you. But hey you canÕt have everything, she told herself as she lit another cigarette. And what do I have? I have a great roommate, someone to cover half the bills, someone that is willing to accommodate my style and sense of place. +But still, on these afternoons when the sun streamed gently through the rubber plants and warmed her face as she smoked, she missed the solitude that she had once had. There was now an ever-present stress in the back of her mind, not a tension, nothing that concrete, but simply the knowledge that he would be coming home from work soon and quite frankly, while it had nothing to do with him, liking or not liking his presence, she didnÕt want to deal with it. She simply wanted to be alone for the remainder of the evening. She didnÕt want anyone asking how her day was, she didnÕt want anyone telling her how much their job sucked, she didnÕt want anyone asking her what she wanted for dinner. She didnÕt want anything at all, save to sit here in silence and feel the sun caressing her face, a touch much gentler and more beautiful than any human hand could ever be. It was here, amidst that geraniums and ivy that sprouted out of mossy basket on the wall above her, that she felt most alive and most at peace. She had never picked up those books that adorn the front tables of the enormous chain bookstores, which purport to tell you how to find sanity and a personal space with in the world, but she was pretty sure that this porch/balcony was in fact the sort of thing that said books would encourage. This bothered her somewhat. It cheapened the sanctuary that she had created and in some sense made it not so much hers, but everyoneÕs. This thought however, was quickly shoved aside. + She propped her legs up on the railing, nestling her heels in two depressions of the wrought iron pattern that seemed to have been bent expressive for this purpose. She pulled her dress up over her waist and let it bunch up on her stomach. Her legs were brown and smooth. She shifted to pick her underwear out of her butt and readjusted herself unselfconsciously positioning her underwear to match the tan lines of her bikini. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. + The truth of the matter was that excitement was coursing through her veins. He was coming into town. She hadnÕt seen him in over three years, though lately she talked to him all the time on the internet. She told herself a million times that she was over him, that she only wanted to see him because the were friends after all, but deep down she wasnÕt so sure about it as she let on. She knew that she would drop everything and go with him if he asked, but she also knew he wasnÕt going to ask. She sighed deeply and took a swig of her flat tasteless Mexican beer. She lit another cigarette and tried not to think about him. + She surrendered and went inside. She picked up the phone and dialed his number. She knew he was still on an airplane and she knew he wouldnÕt answer the phone. She left a message with her number even though he already knew it. She hung up the phone feeling sheepish and silly. It isnÕt going to be like you want she told herself. And why, she wondered did she want to go back to him? He had broken her heart, utterly destroyed her emotionally. She had punched him square in the face the last time she had seen him. She laughed to herself at the memory. The look on his face. + But the laughter quickly dissipated because she missed him and not just him, but their life together the whole thing, she had been very happy. She thought that they would get married, but then something in him freaked out and he had just up and left. She still didnÕt understand why. She hated him for all the nights she had laid in bed crying, wondering what she had done wrong. In the end she knew it had nothing to do with her, he had left for reasons of his own, reasons she could not fathom, did not want to fathom. + And now he was coming back. She had to balance him against the relationship she was in now, which lately had seemed increasingly like a burden, like baby-sitting. She was always going out of her way to make sure that John was happy and comfortable and secure. They rarely went out. John didnÕt like crowds, didnÕt like people much at all. They went to parties and he sat in the corner glaring at her for having a good time. She tried to encourage him to mingle, but he refused. He was tight lipped, wouldnÕt let his hair down so to speak, he was reserved with his emotions and his affections, and it left her feeling empty and wanting. But then there were the good times, and when they had good times everything seemed perfect and she had even for a while thought that perhaps they would get married. After all she was not getting any younger and she wanted to have children. Perhaps they still would get married. + It was quarter till five. She didnÕt want to be home when John got home. She didnÕt want to talk to him. She wanted to be alone, to continue to sit undisturbed on this porch, but she couldnÕt. She decided to go for a walk. She thought she needed the exercise anyway. She needed to loose a couple of pounds before she got rid of him. This thought made her smile briefly in the face of her own inner honesty, but she felt bad immediately. It was going to crush his spirit; there was nothing funny about that. She turned off the stereo, closed napster and shut down the computer. She made sure to delete the message that Scott had sent her the day before. She had never told John her passwords, but she still wasnÕt taking any chances. Strange, she thought, that she would sooner marry him than reveal her passwords. ThatÕs the real measure of trust in a relationship, the true measure of how open an honest you are. +* * * * + +She crushes out her cigarette and walks inside to throw the empty bottle of beer in the recycling bin, because that is the sort of woman that she is. She changed into a t-shirt and jeans and sat meditatively down to pee. Is the world always going to be this hard? Does it ever become clearer? At say eighty does the light finally shine? Or do older people just seem wiser because they have learned to keep their mouths shut? +She stood up and flushed the toilet, catching her reflection in the mirror as she walked out of the bathroom. She stopped for moment and contemplated her reflection. Not bad she thinks running fingers through silky hair, a few laugh lines on her cheek she noticed ruefully, but what the hell that just means you smile a lot right? ThatÕs good right? Kind of sexy even. Mean I have a good time. Means I know how to not take things too seriously. I need a walk. A good stretching of the legs. +The sun is just disappearing behind the rubber trees when she desends the steep and somewhat rickety stairs. Her pace is quick, almost a run; she wants to get around the corner and down 19th street before JohnÕs car happens across her. The sidewalks are neatly trimmed and hard, bold lines divide the grass lawns from the sterility of the ground underfoot, but even the lawns are sterile, perfect, smartly trimmed and hyperreal iridescent green. +The city is made of concrete, the sidewalk is made of concrete a half mile south the ocean is paved cerulean concrete. Cement pilings hold up concrete piers. At the club with the concrete walls men circle around some sex goddess like flies trying to untangle from a spiderÕs honey web. She is completely indifferent to their attention. She lives upstairs in the old dance hall. Its been shut down for years. Only open on Saturday nights like these, when the red velvet gets hung from the ceilings and covers the cold concrete walls, but wait where are we? WeÕre in Los Angeles the twenty first century and it is cold in Los Angeles. It is cold in Los Angeles and hot in New York. In New York the walls are pulsing with same music. Music from a party that we have never been to. A party that lurks just beyond the event horizon, that party that is always ending just as you arriveÉ wanting to take your partner by the hand and walk out on to the dance floor and morph into the indifferent sex goddessÉ to ignore all that which is not worth paying attention to, to that which is stuck and dying, suffocating in warm, sticky honey, blood, death. + But the truth is that she is only going for a walk. She is not really think9ing of parties which none of us have ever been to. She is only walking under the cool evening of spring. But it is Los Angeles and yet it is not, it is only Costa Mesa, a sad suburb, the tail end of dream. Not a beach resort not a thriving metropolis, just a little nowhere block, just a quiet street, just a small house or two. And inside maybe she dreams of big cities and maybe she is walking on cobblestones in Paris or maybe it is only Tribeca. Maybe she dreams of eating at a Tapas restaurant on Canal where the flamenco guitar player flicks his strings like kissing cigarette ash and maybe she is dancing in a swirling dress head filled with sangria and after midnight fantasies of Spanish men. Maybe but she is on the small street in the small town. Everything is beautiful here. She is here her head is nowhere but here, but she id deeply confused. She is feeling too many things all at once. The paper the essay the words about the words about the wordsÉ that was the echo loop into which she had lost herself for the majority of the day that was the endless feedback lope of prerecorded tape in which she found however temporarily a way to get her mind off it. So to speak. Or perhaps so you donÕt speak as the case may be. DonÕt think. +Just walk. DonÕt think. No thinking. No think. No shirt no shoes no think. No shirt. No shoes. No think. No think. We do not serve that here senorita. +A little boy with bags over his shoulder is walking in slow motion up a flight of stairs. Several weeks ago downtown where Vignes crosses over the railroad tracks. It is Ned's house it is backed up against the railyards in shadow of the Vignes bridge. It is not a house at all it is a loft, it is subdivision of an old immense meatpacking plant. She does not know that never need to, she knows that Ned lives here. She knows that she is here to see Ned, but she is drunk and standing outside the front door watching the crazy boy with two large sacks counterbalanced over his left shoulder. He is climbing the concrete stairs that lead up the side of the Vignes St. bridge. He does not seem aware of her. She is standing fifty yards away in the flooding yellow light of the sodium doorway. The boy is singing a song to himself as he climbs the steps. ItÕs a Spanish song, very rhythmic and soothing, but she does not speak Spanish. Little boy with bags slung over his shoulders slowly marches up the water stained stairs, his hair flutters in the backwash of diesel busses roaring over head; the bags sway with each step. His head is bowed intently studying the various oblique shapes of black that were once gum in somebodyÕs mouth. One hand balancing him on the green wrought iron railing, he stops, briefly his head bobs lightly left to right, and then one foot in front of the other until he reaches the top. The boy stops at the top of the concrete steps and laughs out loud. Laughs at nothing she thinks. Laughs at something only he can see. She does not see anything funny. He laughs because he can. After looking both ways his shape disappears across the bridge. He is gone. He will never be seen again and she is laughing now. Laughing because she can, laughing because she does not know what else to do. And then there is the flood of music washing out the door as it open and John emerges from the party. What are doing out here he asks? She doesnÕt know she says. I really donÕt know. She tries to kiss him, but he wants to bring her back inside. Fuck me she says, fuck me right here in the middle of street. Fuck me under the warm sodium lights. Fuck me where the boy with balanced sacks can see us. Fuck me under the glow of moonlight. Fuck me right here on the concrete steps with concrete sidewalk under our feet. Fuck me standing up so I can feel the solid ground underneath me. Fuck me so that I can feel the concrete lightposts splitting me in two. Fuck me so that the telephone pole crucifixes can cry warm tears of blood from the conversations of saints and martyrs flying through the wires. Fuck me so that we can laugh. Fuck me because I canÕt stop laughing. +But he wants to go inside. He only snickers at the suggestion. He thinks she is kidding. He wonÕt fuck her here on the street, the concrete is dirty, there are no trees, there is not life everything is paved over there is nothing fecund and warm to make him think of sex; everything is cool, smooth, but rough and causing rashes when rubbed against and there is the screaming teeth of trains grinding to halt in the rail yard behind the building and this is not a sexy place he thinks. This girl is out of her head he thinks. This is not where I want to make love to her; this is not where I want to fuck. There is no love here there is only hard, painful surfaces. This is not a place for sex. This light is so mineral and harsh and full of hate like Indian killing prospectors, murders fighting over pyrite. This light is criminal. This light is not warm, it does not bath us, it scraps at our skin, it does not want to see us naked, it wants to sear our flesh and serve us on a bed of nails with a side dish of fetish and snuff salad. +But there is beauty in this hard cold world she says. Can you not see it? Can you not see the way men have fought battles here and shed blood and sweat tears and given their lives to create this hard metallurgic light and much thought and hope and prayer has gone to create the concrete wonderland for us to play in and everything that is here is a work of glorious art. Everything here is pleasure. Everything here is begging to fuck. The telephone poles are fucking the sidewalk and pylons of the bridge are fucking secretly, fingering the ground between tracks, and the wires are licking the whipping the air with cat-o-nine tails and everything here is fucking but us. We are outside. We are free. Please she begs why wonÕt you fuck me? +But he didnÕt fuck her and it made her think. It swam in among other drunken thoughts. Thoughts that one only has when one is drunk and now as she crosses Irvine Ave and heads down toward the bluffs where there is park that overlooks the upper Newport bay ecological reserve, she is wondering if drunken thoughts are her true thoughts, her true feeling freed by alcohol or if they are some kind of demon thoughts conjured out of a narcotic haze? But is alcohol narcotic? If its not, are they true thoughts? She smoked a bit of marijuana before she left the house and so she is in the sort of trance state that forces one to think endlessly in unanswerable questions, annoying loops of thought that always return back exactly where they started. Why are we here? What does it mean? This sort of nonsense but she is older and does not ask questions like that anymore. She has moved on to personal introspective questions. She is a twenty something struggling to define herself and her place in the world. She is prone to aimless walks. She sees a figure approaching on the opposite side of the street. She quickens her pace slightly and does not look over as they pass each other on opposite sides of the street. Out of the corner of her eye she sees that it is a boy about her own age, but she can not tell if he cute or not. + + + + + + +Send her on walk go a little detail +Work in that she walks a lot these days +Set myself up for the same when I walk home from bar +We run into each other walking and use the thing where leah and I fucked in the house under construction up in palo verde + + + +John is sitting on the 405 freeway somewhere near the Laguna Canyon Road off ramp, cursing the gridlocked evening traffic and wishing that he could be anywhere but here. All day the line Ņshe had custom colored eyes/ and smiles when she sighsÓ has been running through his head. This sort of thing happens to him a lot, line pop out of know where and circle about his mind until he finds somewhere to put them. This allows him to think of himself as a writer. That the line Ņspreads her thighsÓ also fits his rhyme scheme has not occurred to him and very likely never will. +He desperately wants a cigarette, but possesses a strange self flagellating mind that gives him overwhelming (though, as Claire would say, non denominational) guilt that overrides his brains pleasure centers which, as we said, are desperately craving a cigarette. Cigarettes make him feel dirty and he hates the fact that he is addicted to them. John likes to pride himself on his fierce sense of independence and anything that makes him feel dependent is to be avoided. + Of course John does not actually think of things this way. Like the rest of us, he covers these underlying motivators and concerns with carefully constructed veneers, which allow him to look in the mirror at four in the morning and smile. He is wise to do so. These are trying times and we all like to smile at ourselves in the mirror; he thinks what he has to think. + Right now, as we are so brazenly deconstructing him, John is lost in the rearview mirror, watching a beautiful Persian girl touching up her makeup in the car behind him. She makes him think about a website that he visits every Tuesday and Thursday while April is at night school: persiankitty.com. Persian women have the most beautiful, pristine skin, he thinks absently, wondering as he does what it would be like to nibble at her earlobes and bite the tender flesh of her delicately carved neck. He thinks that perhaps he has a fetish for Persian women, but this thought causes that non denominational guilt to kick in again, because he does not see himself as the sort of man that judges women solely on their appearance. That is he does not want to be the sort of man who judges women on their appearance. John likes to think of himself as sincere and understands, able to relate to women on a deep emotional level. He was not raised to think of women as sexual beings, and culture has only taught him how to see them as sexual objects. Thus with these conflicting emotions he completely rejects the sexuality, seeing as he does all sexuality as objectifying, and chooses instead to relate to them emotionally. Typically in high school this earned him the moniker: pussy. + Fucking jocks. + Fucking traffic + Fucking grown up jocks causing this traffic because there in a rush to get home to objectify their wives who donÕt really love them and are only in the marriage for the financial comfort and stability that it offers them. + These are thoughts that raise through our friend JohnÕs head as he slowly creeps north toward the 55 freeway where he will head west, stop at the signal at 19th street, turn left and then left again on Fullerton avenue and arrive home to find his girlfriend gone. +But John does not know this because he only possesses limited omniscience, which in the case of this book means that he does not know what is about to happen to him, but in real life, as it were, this means that he does not have control over anyoneÕs thoughts but his own, and even that is somewhat debatable depending on the extent of your education and tolerance for philosophers whose end points ultimately mean nothing when youÕre sitting on the toilet staring a picture of Latieca Casta in lingerie. In either case he doesnÕt yet know that she is gone. Coincidentally, as you know, she is not yet gone. She is fact on the phone. But she will be gone. We are quite sure of that now arenÕt we? ItÕs easy for us to feel superior. ItÕs just a story, but this poor bastard John really has to go home and really has to find his house empty. Now how would that make you feel? +Would is make you notice the girl in line next to you while youÕre ordering a chicken dinner; would you pay a little closer attention to her? SheÕs someone too. A whole life that you know nothing about. Would you have even gotten off the freeway at Jamboree and gone to that chicken restaurant that coincidentally is owned by one of AprilÕs ex-boyfriends? John doesnÕt think about that as he parks in the last available spot, in fact he doesnÕt even know that April and Ned dated because April never thought of them as dating and therefore left him out of the conversation that John started that night while they were listening to Modest Mouse, sitting outside on the balcony watching the stars and smoking cigarettes. ŅHow many people have you slept with?Ó ŅUm, I donÕt know. Not a lot. Why do you want to know that?Ó She looked at him puzzled, annoyedŃthe ultimate early relationship faux pas. ŅI dunnoÓ +No you wouldnÕt think of it either. You wouldnÕt be paying to much attention to details because it is just another day. An ordinary day. Nothing special about it. It was just like this yesterday, it will be just like this tomorrow. You might be thinking, as John is, that stopping to pick up dinner is nice thing to do. You might be thinking that April would really like that because she worked hard all day long and she has to go to school tonight and sheÕs probably tired and doesnÕt want to cook. You might be thinking that this will be one small way to show her that even on an ordinary day like this one, you love her and you care about her and you take the time to show her that. You might even feel a passing moment of self-righteous (but fully condonable) pride for being the sort of person who can stop and water the roses, so to speak. +IsnÕt it such an ordinary group of people standing in line with you? So ordinary that you can not see them. They register only as noise, static on the radio. They blend into the background of your life like the innocuous paintings on the wall behind you, paintings you did not even notice because they are so well chosen. They are not too striking, not too dull, they fill the emptiness of the wall but they do not draw attention to themselves. Like the people in line with carefully chosen muted gray or blue suits, prosaic dull-colored shirts with matching, understated ties, blending them into careful homogeny. +You might have noticed the girl next to you if she had been wearing her helmet, but she left it with the cat in the sidecar of her motorcycle. +It takes something out of the ordinary to catch JohnÕs attention at this point. He is tired he has been paying attention to things all day at work, he has filled out forms, run flow charts, emailed and phoned important clients, his blood sugar levels are too low to be receptive to the full range and diversity of the thriving society that surrounds him. At some level it is just too overwhelming, and to his mind, not worth the time. Perhaps if he had eaten more protein at lunch he might have noticed the girl with the dark hair and severe bangs ordering at the register next to him. +He might have noticed that she too was order two meals to go. He might have seen the common bond between them, that they are both the kind of people that go out of their way to do nice things for other people. Or, as we pointed out earlier, if she had been wearing her helmet with its blinking lights and extended rearview mirrors sticking out the sides, he would surely have noticed her. Certainly if he had seen her on the motorcycle with the cat in the sidecar his head would have turned. Perhaps then he would have slowed a bit on the onramp to get a better look and perhaps by then April would have been back from her walk and things would have turned out very different than they did. +But John just ordered two chicken plates with steamed broccoli and spinach soufflˇ and paid for them and then milled around the square, thoroughly uninspired, trash bins, glancing at the headlines on a disorderly stack of newspapers, and keeping his head down to avoid making eye contact with anyone. Everyone around him, all those also waiting on orders, keep their heads down as well. No one makes eye contact with anyone around them. They are tired. we are all tired. + + * * * * + +Claire ordering food for herself. She is ordering two meals worth because she owns a microwave and does not want to leave the house tomorrow. Claire lives alone. she like to be alone. she job means she spends every working hour around people, strangers even, and she does not like to be around them in her spare timeŃunless that is her specific choosing to do so. She is not antisocial nor is she hideously ugly. She is in fact very pretty. She has the look of a rockabilly girl, but she is not a rockabilly girl. She has long black hair with bangs as was fashionable in the 1950Õs and as it still is today in circles which are generally refered to as rockabilly by those that are not part of them. Those that are part of them do not call themselves anything, except perhaps their names. Claire knows all this as well as any of the rockabilly kids because she used to be one of them. She did not one day choose to be one of them, nor did she one day stop being one of them. She simply has friends, many many friends, which is why she so dearly loves to be alone. +Claire is ill, she has a sickness. She has learned to live with her illness. She has been to the hospital. Twice she has been to a hospital. There she learned that she was different than most people, she was hit on by the orderlies who were unaccustomed to having what they called Ņsuch a hot chick in here.Ó What are you in here for darling? When are you getting out? Do you need a ride home? How about you and I get a drink when you get out and I get off? I bet I can arrange it so that those two things happen at the same timeÓ His breath smelled like corned beef or meatloaf or pate or some other mashed beef product, but he was sort of cute and he made her smile with his earnest sincere, and yes, stupid, attempts to pick up on her. She blew him off, not because she didnÕt like him but because in the context it was the only decent thing to do. +The doctors were sympathetic people. They wanted to understand her. They wanted her to feel like more than just a chart, but they worked for the state. They did not make a lot of money, they did not drive Mercedes Benzes; they had not been able to afford the nice medical schools whose graduates do not have to work in state funded hospital. They wanted to understand but they were tired. Claire came along at the end of the day. And they could tell that her wrists were not too deeply cut. They did not think that she wanted to die. She did not want to die. Nor did she want attention. She want to see what death felt like. She wanted to feel herself dying. she was curious. She had voices in her head that asked questions. Lots and lots of questions. She read a lot. She wrote. She was ill. +Claire had a cat named Bob. He wore motorcycle goggles and road in the sidecar of ClaireÕs motorcycle. Bob like to feel the rush of the wind through his fur. He liked to listen to conversations at the stoplights. He could hear people talking and fighting and fucking two blocks away. Cats have very good hearing and Bob was no exception. He meowed for her to speed up when they road on the toll roads where Bob knew there would be no cops lurking in the bushes. Bob loved to ride in the motorcycle. +Claire and Bob met when Claire was getting out of the hospital the second time. He was stalking a mouse in the bushes, he was just about to pounce when Claire came through the sliding doors and startled him and mouse took the opportunity to dart inside the doorway. Claire felt bad and took Bob in her arms and walked with him to the supermarket and bought him a can of food. She sat on the curb and watched him eat it. She petted him for a while and when she got on her motorcycle to leave Bob jumped on the back and refused to get down. Later she bought him goggles and then a sidecar so that he could see better. +Claire noticed John standing next to her in line at Koo Koo Roo. She had seen him in pictures. He was at NedÕs house up in LA. He was dating April. She knew this because Bill was friends with April and Bill was also one of ClaireÕs lovers. But Claire did not say anything to John because it was easier not to. She wanted to be alone. She did not want to talk to him. She did not think she liked him. He looked timid. Something in the way he carried himself implied a meekness that instinctively turned her off. Claire did not believe that the meek shall inherit the earth. She believed that this was something that meek people told themselves to make them feel better when the got their asses beat. Claire was not meek, she was guilt, but not meek. We are all guilt. +But she did not keep her eyes on the ground or pretend to be absorbed in the indistinguishable painting on the wall. She studied John intently. She watched him out of the corner of her eye careful not to stare and attract his attention. She watched him like a hawk, like hawk on a wall. + + * * * * + +She watched the rest of the patrons as well. It felt to her like they were all trapped together in an elevator. A midget with coke bottle glasses and little sniffle was pulling the lever the elevator lifted them upward. ŅFifth floor. Ladies shoes, perfumes, gardening supplies and home electronics.Ó ŅSixth floor. Pedophiles, accountants, brokers, and ladies handbagsÓ And so on through the eternity the it takes to cut to wings and legs off a chicken dish up some sides into those neat little subdivided styrofoam trays with fold over lids and secure closing flaps that had been thought of by a man named Timothy, who lived with a wife and two and half children in Irvine CA. The half child was a bloody mess and had to be re-bandaged nearly every day lest he become infected. He committed suicide in spite of the fact that he was heir to the fortune that his father had received for inventing the neat little subdivided styrofoam trays with the folding lids and the secure flaps. His name was timothy jr and all he ever wanted out of life was to go to the senior prom with Sara Warmington the most beautiful girl in school, but she did not want to go with the bloody half a boy. she laughed and he pulled the trigger shortly thereafter only to find that there was no bullet in the chamber. He locked the door to his room and did not change his bandages. His father knocked the door down, but it was too late, the gangrene had already set in. +ŅMiss? Miss? Your order?Ó +Claire gets her over active imagination from her mother, who, god rest her soul, departed the earth when Claire was still a little girl. Her job as a conversational prosititute has done little to tame her imagination, quite the opposite it gave her the opportunity to so something constructive with it. Well, at least she makes money off it. Conversational prostitute is not her official title, but it is somewhat more descriptive than hostess, which traditionally implies a restaurant atmosphere when in fact Claire works a club. A club that caters to older wealthy gentlemen looking not so much for sex, but for a companion, someone to talk to, men who long ago lost the desire to chase after beautiful women, but nevertheless enjoy the company of beautiful women. It is not Claire is quick to point out, a strip club, nor is it a whorehouse, in fact those girls that do try to take on extra ciriculare work are promptly dismissed. It is a club modeled after many others like it in the far east, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Casablanca just happens to be in West Hollywood. +The ad said: wanted attractive blond females for hostess position. Call Madame Shuiroo. The rest, as they say without perhaps understanding what they are saying, is history. + + + * * * * + +Have you ever gotten a blowjob from a pregnant woman? Perhaps you have. Charles is getting his first. She is quite skilled. She is also his wife, which eases CharlesÕs conscience somewhat because he like many people considers motherhood a sanctified chapel of purity and does not like to think that perhaps once his mother swallowed his fatherÕs load and thus certain proteins may well have entered his own prenatal blood stream. He puts the thought out of his head and is soon adding his own protein to his unwitting childÕs blood stream. His wifeÕs head stops bobbing and he can feel himself go limp in her mouth. She raises her head and curls her lips mischievously. He groans something idiotic and thankful and she stands up and smiles at him. Her teeth are coated in a creamy glaze. She kisses him and they crack the storeroom door and when they are sure no one is around they sneak out. Charles is not technically paid to get blowjobs, he is rather paid to serve addictive legal drugs. Hope stopped by for a bite to eat and since the bar was nearly deserted and the owner not around they had sneaked off for the aforementioned blowjob, but now she had errands to run and so after another kiss or two and some words of affection, Hope stepped out into the hazy sunshine of Venice beach. +Her belly still made normal motions extremely awkward. Getting into the crammed drivers seat of her late model Jetta was an act of unusual strain. She wondered if at some point in the next three months she would adjust to this condition. She always referred to it as a condition, very matter of fact as if it were something that would not have been helped. Truth is that it could have been avoided, Hope knew the exact moment at which it had occurred. Christmas party at her office, they were a little drunk and wanted to do it on the copy machine, they hadnÕt thought to bring protection. Protection. Hope was pretty sure that she did not need protection from Charles. In any case that was how they got pregnant. And, as in the case with any loving couple, they got pregnant together. Charles was the love of her life and it never bothered her that she was unmarried and perhaps some might think young. Her parents even, despite their conservative approach to life and moralistic tendencies had not so much as batted an eye. In the true fashion of parental insanity they had flipped their lids when she and Charles bought a house and moved in. Pregnant out of wedlock was apparently no great obstacle to their morals, but living together before marriage was more than they could swallow. ŅBut dad,Ó she had pleaded ŅI mean isnÕt it kind of pointless not to move in? I am pregnantÉ you heard that part right?Ó +Strange rules govern parental unit behavior in matters such as these, rules that Hope did not care to learn or understand. She and her parents were not on speaking terms, but she knew they would come around, what choice did they have? They certainly werenÕt going to be shut out of there only childÕs life forever. Such overly dramatic behavior is limited to fools and celluloid fantasies neither of which describe Hope or her family situation. They will come around. +She pulled out of the parking lot of the bar where Charles made more money than lots of college graduates and turned left on Venice boulevard heading south toward their new house. Afternoon fog was hovering off the coastline, trapped somewhere between the coast and Catalina island. The sun sliced through in ray of light that looked as if they ought to be falling on church spire or Gethsemane itself, but instead and perhaps more beautifully they struck the black depths of the Pacific and illuminated patches of water creating cerulean puddles of light on the churning sea. It reminded Hope of the perfect moment when Charles had proposed to her. They had gone on a quick trip to the mountains, it was just after she told him she was pregnant. He had surprised her by picking her up for lunch and promptly driving high up the Angeles Crest where at the top of a short trail, he had dropped to one knee. The sun had been stabbing rays of light behind him, she was so transfixed by the sight she didnÕt notice that he had knelt. He tugged her arm, ŅHope?Ó +ŅOh my god.Ó + + * * * * + +John rounds the corner of 19th street and does not notice April walking swiftly in the opposite direction. The entirety of his being is consumed in the mouth watering smell of grilled chicken. He is glancing at the floor of the passengers seat to make sure that the Styrofoam trays have not slid around or fallen over in the course of turning when he passes April. He continues down the street and turns left on Fullerton and parks in front of the old house under the jackeranda trees. The yard is a sea of little blue flowers. John does not put the car cover on even though he is fully aware of the fact that it will be covered in little blue flowers and hideous black sap before morning. He is too hungry and tired to bother with the car cover. The cement light posts are just turning on behind him as he runs up the driveway, he is full of hope and love as he begins up the stairs. So full in fact that he attempts to skip several and does for most of the way, but at the top, that inevitable last step, his feet fail him and he misses. The bag of chicken goes flying from his hand and skids across the porch scattering pieces of chicken, pumpkin soufflˇ and beans from one end to the other. His forearms crash into the edge of the top step and his face splats on the porch with a sickening thud. He cries out in shock and pain, but then again even louder and with some less than literary embellishments bore of a tremendous sense of frustration. The cat bounds from its perch on the far end of the porch scattering to the relative safety of the roof. + + + + I would like to say that Ņit was a cold and wet December day when the plane touched down at JFK,Ó but was reasonably warm, fairly dry and the plane touched down three thousand miles west of JFK, in a pathetic little suburban community bearing the innocuous moniker: Orange County. Nevertheless, I always like BonoÕs line about cold and wet December days. I think about it every time I fly. TodayÕs flight was uneventful, a few minutes in Chicago where I was forced to wander what felt like miles through a darvoset haze to the opposite end of the terminal where the continuing flight to Orange County waited. I nearly missed the last boarding call when I stopped to check out aldjfdf .com to see how likely it was that it would be crashing between Chicago and OC. They have a little search engine on the site that purports to weigh such factors as weather and plane maintenance schedules, but more likely it just trigger a graphic and then randomly selects a rating number based on some generic algorithm whose results are solely designed to scare the shit out of those of us with morbid curiosities that force us to do such things. My flightÕs prognosis was generally favorable, but once on the aircraft, I took another darvoset just to make sure I wouldnÕt feel the horrific plummet to death. I do not fear death, mind you, I fear dying. I figure if I can avoid the whole dying process with a few simple pills then, hey, why not? + Thus you find me here in Orange County International airport, not five miles from my childhood home gnawing desperately at disgusting peppery piece of nicorette and cursing myself for quitting smoking two days ago. IÕm not quitting for health reasons or money or loved ones or any other do-gooder crap, IÕm quitting because I want to prove that I can. Once IÕve proved it IÕm going to go out and reward myself with nice pack of Black Death, with the skull and crossed bone emblem on the front. +I canÕt tell if my head is spinning from the lack of nicotine or the darvocet or the banality of the travelers around me. Generally airports are the most fascinating people watching spectacles in the world, but here everybody looks the same. The travelers at Orange County International are homogenized milk fat, but really secretly they all have names and they all have stories and they are all beautiful peopleÉ they just happen to resemble each other in particularly innocuous ways. I hate them all. In spite of the fact that they all have names and stories and are all beautiful people. I wish that this was Beirut and there were sand bagged gun turrets pointing at all our heads. I wish that I could then leap over the sandbags and seize the guns and start shooting and not stop until there was nothing left alive, except for the girl that sat two rows in front of me on the flight who was very cute. And then when the shooting stops and the dust settles she would come running over and put her arms around me and we would kiss and walk off into the sunset and make babies in the thatched hut in Rangiroa andŃ where the fuck is Bill? +Bill is notoriously late. I should never have saddled him with this responsibility. I should never have depended on his worthless ass. I should never have thought for one minute that he could be anything other than totally unreliable and worthless goddamn it. +Oh there he is. +ŅScott.Ó Bill is standing against a pillar arms folded. +Here we are going to embrace, but I wonÕt describe it. ItÕs really kind of awkward. Neither of us is the touchy feely type, but neither of us are cold hearted assholes either. The question is to hug or not? There are maybe fifteen paces separating us, decisions have to be made, nothing is worse than one person trying to shake and the other hugging. (14 paces) I have a bag over my shoulder, could I be forgiven for a simple extension of the arm? But no perhaps he would think that too little, not appreciative of his effort, or feel that I did not really miss him, which I did. (13.3 paces) Besides I could drop the bag, in fact dropping the bag would be perfect, it would demonstrate a distinct lack of concern for material possessions on my part. It will show that I am concerned with people and not things, which of course I am. Yes 12.4 paces left and a decision has been made, hugging, it will definitely be hugging, but then when hugging, how much force should be applied? There is, for instance, a different amount of force applied when saying goodbye to a lover who will never be seen again, as opposed to hugging a disgusting hare-lipped aunt that you wish you would never have to see again. And here with Bill and I in the airport in less than 9.6 paces I have to find that happy medium. I canÕt stand the pressure. There is also the issue of slapping the back or patting or neither? Some find slapping to be distasteful as if secretly apologetic for hugging when one would really rather be shaking hands or is otherwise not comfortable with the hug. (6.7 paces) Others find it a male bonding show of affection and therefore a good thing; they tend to be closeted homosexuals (known more commonly as frat boys or occasionally: businessmen) and neither of us are closeted about anything. (5 paces) Patting I supposed is really more reserved for grandmothers and hare lipped aunts to remind them when itÕs time for the embrace to end, so the question is slap the back or no? 4É(no I suppose not) 3É(only if he does it first) 2É(but then will that look unoriginal?) 1É I notice as we hug that Bill has worked out roughly the same pressure application formula as me. Neither of us slaps the otherÕs back. Neither of us is gay. Decisions have been made. We stand back slowly and I notice that he is clean shaven. Last time we saw each other he was grizzly, depressed, a broken hearted man. Now he looks refreshed, reborn even. He looks like Nixon back from the Bahamas. No tan though. Better looking than Nixon too. Actually he looks nothing like Nixon, I just wanted to work that line in because I thought it might be funny. It was funny right? Right. +ŅGood to see youÓ +ŅGood to see you too Bill.Ó +ŅYou have luggage?Ó +ŅOh hell no.Ó +ŅGood man. LetÕs get the fuck out of here, airports arouse my jealousy...Ó +ŅYou up for a drink?Ó +ŅAm I up for a drink?Ó Bill arches his eyes. Remember, SARCASM: IT WORKS. +ŅOkay good.Ó +As we walk down the stair and out into the underground parking structure I am suddenly struck with the idea that next time I will do a slow motion prance across the room to Bill, like in Chariots of Fire, that is should we ever happen to meet again in an airport after a long separation. It will be gloriously funny. I hope you are there to see it. You should be. You should travel more. Stop buying all that stuff that weighs you down. And stop taking the advice of writers youÕve never metŃbuy all the stuff you want. +I travel extensively, but I rarely leave the house. This is an exception. This is an interlude in reality; a slight tear in the fabric of life. This is happening because of Ned. Yes his name is really Nedward. IÕm not making this up, if I were making this up I would be a writer, and IÕm not a writer IÕm just some guy that you only met two pages ago. And, look at you, already thinking that IÕm lying, that IÕm inventing all of this to amuse you, to entertain you, to Infinite Jest you, shame on you. IÕm hurt. I need a tissue. Have some decency. Let me at least explain. +I have no idea why Ned. Hell we arenÕt his parents are we? ItÕs a good enough name I guess. A little strange perhapsÉ I guess Ed would have been too run of the mill. Anyway itÕs not important. His name being Ned I mean, what is important is that heÕs getting married next weekend, yes my friends, that is very important. That is life altering. It is huge. It is the biggest thing that Ned will ever do until thirty years from now when the first kidney stone breaks loose and begins itÕs cruel, jagged journey down the urethra. Marriage is big. +I guess. +IÕm not married so I really have no way to judge the affair, but it seems big enough that IÕve dragged myself three thousand miles to light two candles and bear witness to the scene. It is big. Bill thinks itÕs big. But itÕs not that big because Bill did it once and then undid it two months later. So itÕs not as big as the kidney stone will be. There is no undoing the kidney stone. Pissing blood is pissing blood; there is no way around that. (Although I like to think that someone is working on a way around it.) +Still marriage is big enough. Ned is breaking from the pack. Ned is going to nest and make babies and do the sorts of things that Bill and I find unfathomable. (Though I also find it unfathomable that Bill finds is unfathomable since he has been married and has a daughter (not with the same woman eitherŃshame shame or wink wink depending on your religious orientation and general outlook on life), but Bill dreams his way through life. Nothing that happens to him is very real for him. It happens. He watches. He moves on.) Ned is going to join in holy matrimony with a woman named Georgina. They will be Ned and Georgina Mooslin. They will live in Los Angeles and make babies and be happy. If all goes according to plan. And it will because thatÕs why we have plans so that everything will go according to them. (Here the writer is again making use of sarcasm. Because it works.) +Ned is two years older than Bill and I making him a staggering thirty-three (which is nothing next to Strom Thurmond who is a whopping ninety-eight and still works for the good but stupid people of North Carolina). Ned is older than we are, he is always where we will be hence (although we tend to usually think of it in less shakespearean phrases). Ned has always been where I know I will be, though this marriage thing is throwing a monkey wrench in the whole scene. It is highly unlikely that I will be married in two years. I donÕt even have a girlfriend. I forget what itÕs like to have a girlfriend, an intimate, someone who shares your head with you. Someone that gets under your skin, someone you canÕt live without. I thought about getting married once along time ago, but I never got around to it and we drifted apart. BillÕs single too, but heÕs weird about women. Obsessive some would say. Bill could well be married again tomorrow. With him I never know. +So big things are afoot, but right now all we know is that I want a drink and I want to catch up with Bill. Although, actually, since we tend to spend at least two hours a day on the IM, there is very little to catch up on. The chief difference tonight will be that weÕre talking in the same room. Since both bill and I are the writing types, communication with mouths and tongues is often not a high priority. We speak very rarely and only after much twisting and turning internal debate over how to best phrase something. Or in our case how to make sure that whatever were saying doesnÕt have a hideously exposed backdoor through which the other can launch a surprise attack. Which is not to say that we argue a lot, but rather that we demand precise language because we know that words can be twisted and turned and interpreted however the listener chooses. Whether or not you understand these words written in this style with this tone of voice is just as much dependant on you as it is on my delivery of them. Bill would say more so on you. +We pile in BillÕs nondescript Japanese import and head out for The Helm, the one redneck bar in all of Orange County. Well actually thatÕs not true thereÕs plenty of white trash redneck bars in orange county, The helm happens to be the only one I like. And not entirely by coincidence it happens to be within walking distance from my parentÕs house, which will be nice later when I slipped into a near comatose drunken stupor. The Helm is also the one bar in the area that I know no one I know will set foot in. Not that I have enemies, but I have friends and sometimes thatÕs much much worse. +Bill orders a round and I secure a corner table. Always sit in the corner the very back corner with my back against the wall, the DonÕs seat. The seat that every guy in the bar secretly wants to be in. The corner implies power, quiet strength, a donÕt-fuck-with-me superiority that more often than not is highly misplaced. Corner dweller like to think that they are mafia Dons or aloof tough guys, but the truth is Mafia DonÕs reside in the even more elusive back-room-behind-closed-doors and aloof tough guys donÕt hang out in bars because if they did they would turn into friendly drunken slobs like the rest of the folks milling about in the Helm. Enough already. Tonight is a cause for celebration, it is Sunday, the sabbath, the day the lord createth Ńand taketh away shortly there after. See I have been living in the south, in the thick of bible belt and believe it or not, even now in the twenty first century, you still can not drink liquor on the sabbath. This is home though, this is Los Angeles (or close enough) we are debauched, unholy, drunken, satanic, statutory rapists (yes roman polaski is back) and donÕt give a rats ass what day of the week it is. God is dead. The movie of his life just wrapped, and a more accurate accountŃworking title: ŅGOD: I WORKÓŃ(shot mock documentary style) is still in the works. We just want a drink and by god (lowercase not referring to his passed Almightyness) the good woman with missing teeth who is pouring our drinks understand this. Or maybe she doesnÕt maybe she takes it all for granted whoÕs to say really? It is good to be back amongst my people. I take a deep slow breath through my nose sucking in all the cigarette smoke and stale sloshed beer vapors I can fit in my newly smoke free lungs. (its true you really can breath better even after only two days) +Bill sets down my bourbon and climbs up on the stool next to me. He shoots me a loaded glance. ŅSo have you ever said anything to Ned?Ó +ŅHell no. And you?Ó +ŅOf course not.Ó +ŅI guess we take that to the grave huh?Ó +ŅYa I think thatÕs for the best.Ó +We lapse into silence. This is how we catch up. We sit in silence and stare at the patrons milling about. Playing pool or pinball or feeding money in the jukebox. Occasionally one of us breaks the silence to comment on someoneÕs resemblance to a movie star or a friend, Bill asks absently what I have been up to, but knows that there is really nothing to tell. What is anyone up to? I could tell him about my job. ItÕs there. I do it. ThatÕs about all I have to say. I donÕt like or dislike it. IÕm not dating anyone so thereÕs no racy stories to tell. I have a few half baked plans whirling in the back of my mind, but I see no real reason to bring them out into the light of day until they solidify, take on relevance or substance. You speak an idea too soon and it dies like a preme poped out at mere six months. Ideas have gestation periods, best to keep them to yourself and only give birth to them when there time has come. Ideas have expiration dates too, but weÕll get to that later. +Bill could tell me about his life. He could tell me that he works everyday from 8 am to 5 pm, he could tell me that his job is not that bad, but heÕd rather not need it. He could tell me that heÕs seeing an emaciated rockabilly girl named Rachel. He could tell me that their relationship is more playing house than anything. ItÕs even true that he could pull out a few ideas whirling about that back of his head. We could discuss the weather. We could plan some trip that weÕll never get around to. It possible that we could discuss politics. I could (some might say should) invent some conversation and use witty dialogue as a means to convey some idea to you the reader. Some idea which I feel the need to show both sides of and I could use Bill to argue one side and me to argue that other and then there would be something right here at the beginning that critics might call literary ambitions. But IÕd rather not insult your intelligence. The truth is weÕre just two guys sitting in the corner of a bar drinking beer and people watching. The truth is the important thing, even when itÕs not glamorous. +We steadfastly avoid the truth of our lives most of the time. We live in alternate universes, we live vicariously through the television, through movies, magazines and books. We imagine ourselves to be famous, to be staring in our own movie, to be a spotlighted figure on our own little stage, but weÕre not. We are simply human. Nothing less. +Bill pantomimes something amounting to do you want another beer. I nod. I am thinking about plot development, how to inject something of interest into out evening. As one who works with words I rarely think of things to do, places to go, I think rather in terms of how to move the plot. My life and yours are after all at times high brow novels and then b-movies and then sitcoms and then magazine articles. Tonight will be a newspaper article built mainly of the reports filed by the white house press pool. +ŅHey I think IÕm gonna call Andrea and go ahead and get a little trouble stirringŃyou mind?Ó I ask because my article is my article and I always hesitate to force it on the public at large. We would much prefer the evening news to preface itself thus: Tonight ladies and gentleman we have a story of murder death and blight Inc.Õs latest foray in the streets of [insert your town here], followed by a touching, heartwarming story of two slum tenants who overcame great legal and financial odds to put their corrupt landlord in prison and start a watchdog collective for an inner city housing project, after which we will discuss yet another finding in health and science (which will be contradicted by a segment weÕre running next week), and, lucky viewer, throughout the entire broadcast we will be advertising a tantalizing story of sexual scandal which we will hype for the next twenty minutes, but not air until the last five and then it will be rather shoddy and not live up the hype we gave itÉ That way you could flip through the channels and only hear the stories that interest you, but that would be bad for business. Flipping the channels does not generate revenue; honesty is bad for business and we donÕt want to make things bad for business do we? +ŅOf course not. Andrea and I are friendsÉ you do whatever you want to doÉÓ Ah Bill how adult of you, how admirable we might say, that he would set aside his own designs for the evening and allow my terribly childish ones to dominate. We love Bill donÕt we? We do but secretly we wish he would stop us because we canÕt stop ourselves sometimes. +I finish the beer and dial up Andrea. Andrea and I have known each other since Junior high. Well kind of, I lusted after her throughout high school (she did not know I existed) she lusted after me after high school (I forgot that she existed). One night be both existed at the same point in space and time. We lived together for four or five years (hazy nowÉ). Anyway the point is we know each other about as well as two people can, or at least as well as IÕd ever want to know another person. We donÕt keep in touch as much as we should, but lately we have been hooking up through that most modern of communication toolsŃthe Instant Messenger. Mainly I talk about how great my life is going and she talks about how poorly hers is going. The cast majority of her problems seem to revolve around her boyfriend. John is a long story and I refuse to dignify him with much space in this chapter, but suffice to say that John and Andrea get along rather um, poorly shall we say. But they are in loveÉ yep we all been there. John. Poor bastard. HeÕs really a nice guy, but heÕs so easy to pick on none of us can stop ourselves. HeÕs a poet. HeÕs a poet in all the ugly clichˇ ways that one can be a poet. He doesnÕt wear a beret, but IÕm convinced he has one somewhere in the closet that he pulls out when no oneÕs around and masturbates with it cocked to one side, reading Ginsberg aloud and drinking port from the bottle. You can see how much fun it would be to make fun of someone like that. Now compound that with him dating your ex-girlfriendÉ youÕre telling me youÕd pass that up? YouÕre lying damn it. No one passes that up. ItÕs like shooting fish in a barrel, it shouldnÕt be fun, but it is, itÕs okay you can admit it. We wonÕt tell. +Several things must be kept in mind when one is about to see the ex, one, she is single, even when her boyfriend is standing right next to her she is still single. She is single because you want her to be single, because youÕre not entirely sure why it is that you arenÕt with her. +Single. Dating. Married. Words, just words. Words designed to make sense out of world that is not so black and white. But a world where things must have clear delineation so that we can tell the difference between them. +The second thing you must keep in mind is that you do not want to have a relationship with her again. Ever. Ever ever? Ever ever ever? Yes. You want the pleasure of picking her up in a bar, you want this very much, but you do not want to be (ser or with her. No matter how much that little voice in the back of your head says otherwise you do not really want to be with her. If you really wanted to be with her you would never have broken up with her in the first place, and you did, and there was a good reason for it. Even if you donÕt recall what it was, trust me, it was a good reason. +Okay I canÕt help it, more about John. Now see in every circle of friends there is the troll. By troll I donÕt mean short guy living under a bridge, I mean he who trolls through the scarlet waters of heartbreak heaving aboard the wrecked souls of recently dumped women. In our circle this character is ably portrayed by John Sutton (WEEPY EYED POETS and ANGRY YOUNG MAN co-starring Ian McKay). For instance, when Bill broke up with his girlfriend, John, the beret masturbating poet, swooped in, lent her a shoulder to cry on, and was soon in bed with her. They had a happy little relationship for six months, built out the crumbs and droppings of her relationship with Bill. Then she woke up, realized what had happened and ditched the poet. Fast forward six months (1999 if I remember properly), I broke up with Andrea the situation repeated itself. Once is forgivable, twice despicableŃevidence of habits and patterns. John loves broken wings. Women in the midst of emotional instability, women vulnerable, women who have temporarily lost their bearings on lifeŃbroken wings. If youÕre a woman and need a rebound, heÕs great for that, but the trouble is that once youÕre back to feeling good, he gets jealous, he canÕt stand an emotionally health woman, a strong woman, a woman like that could devour him over a light salad, get tired of waiting for the meal and split while heÕs in the toilet. WeÕve all dated broken wings. John is not some spectacularly evil creature; heÕs just immature and insecure. I have taken this opportunity to point this out because of the fact that we have all been there, but we have moved on and in doing so earned the right to vindictively mock those who have not. (which is also something I have moved on for and therefore have the right to write the aside vindictively mocking myself for being so immature and childish as to take pleasure in the discomfort of others. Despicable damn it I amŃas Dr. Suess must have felt every time he put down the brush and step backed to admire his latest work of erotic art. An author a childrenÕs book painting naked ladies in his spare timeÉ IÕm not condemning IÕm just saying it makes you wonder, or, if youÕre a cynical bastard ,it makes you sayŃI knew it. But in his defense let us here add that those were some particularily twisted childrenÕs books. IÕm not sure if that makes it worse or better.) +But back to John and his broken wings. Some men fish for broken wings others follow around beautiful birds and wait patiently for their demise. Michael too loves broken wings. HeÕs dated enough of them to open his own KFC franchise. But Michael finds his own broken wings (orders them from a distributor in the midwest I believe) he doesnÕt stalk them with the patience of a saint. John is a troll, a Colonel looking for a dead bird to fry up for dinner. You can chock it up to jealousy if you want, but really, I dumped her, I have no jealousy, only pity, disgust and smug amusement (which again, I find despicable and hate myself for). +Andrea arrives sans masturbating beret poet, which is just as well because by the time she arrives the Bourbon has taken hold and thereÕs no telling what sort of mischief might have ensued with Bill and I well sauced in the presence of a known poet. +As it is things are bad enough. My resolve and willpower are withering in the face of shiny blond hair, moist, succulent lips, heaving breastsÉ sir pleaseÉ try to maintain decorumÉ? My chief of staffŃalways there to get my back. He directs my attention to the teleprompter scrolling in the window. +ŅHow are you hon?Ó I give her a tender but not too tender embrace extrapolated without too much debate from the memory of my greeting with Bill. She responds by clutching tightly to my neck for what feels like an eternity. I want to break away, but I donÕt. My Security adviser fidgets nervously in the wings. The chief of staff whispers in my ear: just roll with it for now. WeÕre still gathering up all the reports. We havenÕt had time to synthesize all the dataÉ +Right. Good. Roll with it. . I am thinking of employing the grandma back pat, but just when I am ready to resort to that she backs away, kissing my cheek lightly. +She gives Bill a hug and sits down. +ŅIÕm alright, to answer your question.Ó Luminous green eyes bore into me. ŅJohn and I were fighting again. He really didnÕt want me to come down hereÉ but you guys are my friends; if he has a problem with that than thatÕs his problem. You know?Ó she looks back and forth at us as if needing some reassurance. +We have no idea what such a thing would be like, but we nod anyway. +ŅHe should have come down too,Ó Bill says. +ŅUh I donÕt think that would have been good. I wouldnÕt be able to be myself you know?Ó More nodding. +ŅOkay screw your boyfriend, how are you? You need a drink?Ó +ŅIÕd love one?Ó +ŅWild turkey?Ó +ŅUh no, IÕd love a beer though.Ó +I go to the bar to get more drinks for all of us. +Sir why did you offer to buy her bourbon? You arenÕt thinking to get her drunk and take advantage of that are you? Because as your chief of staff I can say that that would be a tremendously bad idea. +Uh hrugh? +Sir you have been in town all of one hour and youÕre already hitting on your exÉ I find this troubling. The senate is not going to approve any kind of executive action at a time like this. +Fuck those bureaucratic bastards thatÕs why weÕre in charge. +Sir I agree with the sentiment, but this is a delicate situation. She has a boyfriend. He is a friend of yours right? +Well ya, but I got too many friends around here anyway. +ŅWhat can I get for you?Ó the bartendressÕ nasally voice cuts through that debate and demands attention. I place my order trying hard not to stare at the gap on the side of her smile where several cuspids and at least one molar have decided to retire early. She doesnÕt seem to understand the concept of neat bourbon. I reach behind the bar and pull up a two-ounce glass. Just pour a double shot in this glass please. She shrugs and nods. +Incidentally sir this is why weÕve be pushing for the development of a portable sterilization deviseÉ +Look Chief youÕre outta line. You donÕt know her, just because she doesnÕt know the term neat and happens to be missing a few teeth does not mean she has to be eliminated from the gene pool. ThatÕs just mean. Ugly dirty and mean. I canÕt support that kind of legislation. Though, at times I do admit I get a cheap laugh out of it. But I always feel guilt afterwards. +Whatever. YouÕre avoiding the issue. +Hey you brought it up +I know, but it was only a passing comment. The issue at hand is Andrea. +Oh. yes I know. +I want your word on this one sir, before we go back in there. I need to know that youÕre not going to do anything rash tonight. +Okay. Nothing rash. Now step aside damn it. +Your word? +I give you my word. +Okay. +I gather up the three beers and take them back to the table. The bourbon I let sit on the bar in all itÕs mahogany glory. +Andrea and Bill are deep in the midst of a conversation that seems heavily laced with sexual innundoes. I go back for the bourbon hoping theyÕll be done by the time I get back. But the first thing I hear is: Ņso when are you going to bend me over the table?Ó +I try to lean against the wall and maintain an ambivalence about all of it. I try to maintain the distance that I have always created between myself and what is happening around me. +I was four when I started kindergarten, my parents believe that I was ready for school, they believed I was an EXCEPTIONAL CHILD and should do exceptional things. Up until that point I had only one friend, his name was Richie and I remember next to nothing about him. His parents moved to Colorado and opened a campground for seniors that year. Later when I was about twelve we were in colorado camping in the rockies and my parents thought it would be nice for me to visit him. It turned out that he was away for the summer. I remember looking at the photos of him on the mantelpiece and drawing a complete blank. But none of that is very important, the point was that I had very few friends. One. And so walking to my first day of kindergarten at the tender young age of four I was terrified. Terrified at the thought of having to be around other children. I didnÕt like children. I didnÕt have anything to do with them, they were all rather silly vapid creatures in my opinion, but being only four I didnÕt think of it that way. I only knew that I didnÕt like to be around them, because I had to do things, I had to play, I had to well do stuff that I didnÕt want to do. it seemed like they were always laughig and playing and doing things while I was not. I played by myself (later I learned to play with myself, but that is a different story, and I admit a cheap and predictable place to insert this rather juvenile and assinine aside, the sort of thing that would be left out of a great piece of literature, axed by an image conscious editor or style minded agent). So in order to deal with my rabid and irrational fear of my peers I created an inner monologue a kind of metanarrator in my head. It allowed me to detach myself from myself. To see myself in the third person and with this tool, gradually refined through the subsquent years I was able to get so distance from myself and behave in ways that ŅIÓ would never have been able to do without it. Essentially I started writing very early, though I did not know that was what I was doing. I only knew that it was easier for me to have fun and be involved with other people when I was not actually myself, when I could see it all from the readers perspective so to speak. +Psychologists call this sort of thing disassosiative behavior and consider it to be a vague beginning of neurosis, but to hell with pschologists, damn drop out med students anyway. Freud: hell of an author, terrible scientist. Nevertheless I will be the first to admit that this distance from the self, the ability to act and live from the third person viewpoint is a very rare thing. So rare in fact that I have only met two other people that even understood what I was talking about. Bill is one of them. Bill has been living this way for nearly as long as I have, and like me he is trying to stop. But knows (because he is third person omniscent in his own life) that he never will be able to stop it. He like me, can only hope to channel it in what might beŃto somebodyÕs way of thinkingŃslightly more constructive, or at least creative, areas. That there is a clear example of exess verbiage. It would have been much simpler to state that Bill is also a writer. This would have been the preferred method of editors who live by the strunk and white implied motto that less is more. Most certainly such people would be absolutely horriefied that not only did it take me so long to explain that Bill is also a writer, but then I went on to do this, explain why I needed to be long winded. That I am going to go further and explain why I think it is that one ought to be long winded (but not before announcing as I just did that I am going to do it) will no doubt find them hurtling this book across the room. [But not you dear reader, you are sticking with it because you understand, because you too weÕre an eceptional child andyou too have many many voices running amuck in your head. And because you spent a fair amount of meny on this book and all your friends told it was great (except for that one guyŃalways has to be one guyŃwho was already too cool for it, who sort of snicked whenyou mentioned that you wanted to read itÉ Just like youÕll be doing in a few years when you get what you are going to get out of it and move on, cruelly mocking me for what I have written, but its aright, I understand, IÕve done it a million times myself. You should move on eventually. I am not so arragant as to believe that I am capable of standing the test of time. After all the authors of our favorite books moved onw whenthey were done, shouldnÕt we?] as for being long winded, well take a look around youÉ is life short and simple and concise? Is it easily reduced to subject verb predicate and what not? Or is it more likely to have some hilarious dangling modifiers and horrendous emotionally scarred fragments? Complete sentences are not. The only possible way to tell the story. Are they? +You can probably by now begin to see how three decades of this incoherent inner narration has left me at something of distance from most of my fellow humans. Many people esteem this sort of inner cacophony, they call it genius, they call it creativity, the call it drive or brilliance, they admire it and wish that they had it. They are the true fools. The hangers on, the unafflicted, the healthy and whole they want so bad to have this ceaseless voice torturing them. Fools. I would give my left nut to science (or anyone else with a justifiable use for it) to get rid of this voice, it is a curse, a ruin, a plague on my chances of ever being happily assimilated into society. Sure when I was younger and dumber and playing earnest heartfelt folk music I thought that I was blessed to be different, better even. Far superior. Now IÕm older and I know that I am truly and deeply fucked. My ownly chance of survival now is to assume that everyone was lying to me, that I am not and never was different. That we all have this inner cacophany or if not all at least enough to find some common ground on which to bond. IÕm a mammal youÕre a mammal isnÕt that enough? It is for my dog, but he never reads. No matter how many beef treats I leave sticking out of the dictionary he just never seems to take an interest. +But enough of this digression let us get back to the scene at hand for now everything has fettered away. Andrea and Bill are not talking about sex anymore, although from the look in her eye I suspect that she is still thinking about it. +(For the record: I did not ever see myself as an exceptional child, smart yes, but revolutionaryÉ most certainly not. Cheated through high school spanish, never really understood physics and dropped out of college after only two years. This is not an exceptional child or if I was than I insisted on growing up into an unexceptional adult. And so far have succeeded quite nicely) +Okay no more digressions I promise. And yes as all this time has passed we were having conversations, but they were really not all that interesting. Andrea and I were talking about what we do for a living, in our spare time, when no one is looking, that sort of thing. Bill is picking songs on the jukebox. Andrea and I have fallen silent, we are both staring at each other each without realizing that we or the other are doing so. When we do become aware that this has happened we chuckle nervously and smile sheepishly and blush and do things that two people still in love tend to do after years and years. But love be damned this is life and we donÕt live it with each other any more, but yes I guess we still are in love, just to many irreproachable differences between us. She would have me do as Ned is doing, get married, nest have babies that sort of thing, which as I get older I am not necessarily opposed to, but still make habitual efforts to avoid. +There is a moment of awkwardness into which I try to inject a little self depreciating humor by asking her is she ever noticed that I have no chin. + ŅWhat do mean you have no chin?Ó Claire laughs and bites on the end of her straw. +ŅWell look.Ó I turn my head to give her a profile view +ItÕs true, I have no chin. Not that I have no chin in the way Mark Pledger's younger brother Dave has no chin, because Dave really has no chin, Triumph speed tripleŃOrtega highwayŃcrouched forwardŃlowŃdeep in the pocketŃknees inches off the asphalt and then a rock (or could it have been an acorn?), and then no more pocket and then helmet first onto the concrete, breaking kevlar safety platingŃlawsuit pendingŃhelicopter airliftŃthe whole ugly messy bit. At the hospital one of the doctors was so horrified he threw up and someone took a picture and it all ended up on rotten.com. Dave has no chin. He has no mouth either. ItÕs all some sort of plastics and maxiofacial genius that allows him to continue living. +When I say I have no chin I mean simply that it doesnÕt come to a defining point, it just kind of vague indistinctly merges into my neck which has led me over the years to grow a lot of strange facial hair patterns designed to heighten the appearance of having a chin. To add definition. Like makeup. +My no chin routine is an old one though Andrea never heard it. I made it up one night when I was living in New York with Claire. It was after we broke up and we were doing the meet on polite terms for a drink thing that women insist on doing to remind you of the pain that you have so carefully and recently extracted from yourself. +Claire and I were in kllfjlkdjf a trendy new hot spot in Manhattan. The place was all blue lights and private booths with black curtains robing off the surrounding room. Private. Sexual, but not. Stupid really, but with the one benefit of screening out the pretentious and annoyingly New York scenester thing that is happening all around us when all I wanted was a drink and the opportunity to use self-depreciating humor to make Claire laugh, which I believed might get her in bed later. +Most likely this plan would fail. Most likely there was already some beefcake amazonian waiting for her to get through with this sympathy gig, scratching his chin and trying to form a thought, but not being capable of such higher mammalian functioning. (It is precisely this kind of thinking that we use alcohol to avoid, but which ultimately leads to the above mentioned acts of less than sane behavior. Ya right and youÕre telling me youÕve never sat smoking cigarettes on the tortured steps of a building you donÕt live in waiting for someone that would probably prefer not to see you sitting, smoking tortured cigarettes on the steps of a building you donÕt even live in? what did you do smoke pot all your life?) +Claire gets special treatment here at kkkkjlk. She came here one night when the first opened (probably with the aforementioned beefcake amazonian) and sat upstairs drinking vodka and whiskey, and at some point she and the aforementioned beefcake decided to steal a stuffed chicken. The chicken turned out to be some sort of priceless heirloom or symbol of something to the pretentious and quasi-mysterious owners of this joint. After they apprehended Claire and her accomplice, they received a lecture on the notorious significance of the chicken which was so inane that we will spare you it here, but the next day they (the pretentious and quasi-mysterious owners) sent a note the saying they thought the whole thing funny and that Claire was always welcome and the drinks were on the house. She is a kind of celebrity here. But in our snide opinion, the way Tattoo was a celebrity. Painful. Embarrassing. +ŃWe should not have come here tonight. Or any other night for that matter. We should go out and get laid. We should be out in Brooklyn picking up the rich girls that slum down at kkfjlaj and trying to forget about Claire. But we are gluttons for punishment, we love the pain. And we naively believe that Claire still loves us. We are grasping at straws. +Clarie is sucking on a straw, sucking up the last little bit of vodka. ItÕs one of those tiny little black straws that come with Vodka on the rocks, the kind of straws that only come with vodka on the rocks if youÕre a girl because men do not use tiny little black straws to drink vodka with. +ŅSo Claire,Ó we try to sound as casual as possible and even while trying to sound causal we realize there is no masking the desperation in our voice, Ņyou want to get out of here?Ó +ŅWhy? Are you not having fun?Ó +Danger! Danger! +ŃThis is where truth is the wrong angle to play. ItÕs true. But we are only not having fun because there are other things weÕd like to be doing. There is not way to properly articulate this without a) seeming like a depressed shithead, b) sounding like desperate moron, or c) reminding Claire of why we broke up in the first place. +ŃWait a minute now, why did we break up in the first place? Well we decided that we didnÕt want to live in New York anymore and so we moved back to Athens, GA where we had been living prior to New York. We were unaware that doing so would mean that we were breaking up with Claire. Actually we had never for one nanosecond ever stopped to consider what life would be like without Claire. As a matter of fact we still havenÕt. We live on the banks of denial. I spent a lot of my time thinking about what ClaireÕs life would be like without us, which is shear conjecture on our part and always subject to self-abusive whims involving beefcake men, which it should be obvious by now, we are not. Beefcake that is. But we can form thoughts. And articulate them in complete sentences. Subordinate clauses and semicolons. Colons even. Good lord you should see me with a colon. ŅI love that, when you purse your lips, and your brows furrow up all sexy like,Ó Claire said once when I was in the middle of colon sized pause. +ŅNo, IÕm having a great time, I just thought maybe we could go somewhere,Ó big tempting smile here, Ņand maybe,Ó trailing off into mumbles here, but from the look on her face the implication has been implied. +ŅYou want me?Ó Mischievous smile. +Jesus Christ. IsnÕt that obvious? +ŅWhy donÕt we do it right here?Ó +She slides around the booth until her mouth is breathing in our ear. We are unsure how to respond to this; is it a trick? Are we just too paranoid to have a good time? We cautiously slide a hand between her legs and glance at the curtain, which is open just a couple of inches. She responds to the hand, responds rather well actually, climbing astride us and kissing us full on the mouth. A hot smoky tongue darts between our lips. + ŃBut here is where everything starts to fall apart. For one thing she is wearing black leather pants which add immense complications to things and at the same time, we do not want to be the cheap sex in the bar and suffer the ignominy of going home alone. We want to possess body and soul, and we have no patience. None. At all. + Claire pulls back and the curtains part to reveal a blushing waitress. + ŅOh sorry, um, can I get you anything else to drink?Ó + Claire orders more vodka, we order more Wild Turkey and then change our mindŃsoda waterŃwe must keep our wits about us. + The kissing continues. Blood begins to rush just south of our belt buckle. The waitress returns with the drinksŃstill blushing. After she departs, Claire lets her hair down and uses her hair clip to hold the curtains together. The kisses become more heated, frantic, our hands stray up shirts down pants. But we feel cheap and used and unsure why. + +Tomorrow is the desert. Tomorrow is a million things. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but today we are eating pancakes in an old diner downtown los angeles. The toast is fried in oil and the eggs are running and we are going to have heart attacks if we eat anymore. The windows are smeared with childrenÕs hand prints, little grubby hands clawing at the outside world. Corrie and I slept maybe tw hours and now its time to drive. Bill and some emaciated thing whose name I have already forgotten are slouched against the window. Ned and Gorgina are on their way to mexico to fuck and get great tans and sip fruity drinks by the pool or on the beach or from the tops of high mountains and no one will bother them there. Andrea and John are on there way to meet us at NedÕs house. The sky is hazy overcast gray, the coastal fog is stretching all the way in to downtown everything is mucky like the childrens handprints. Rob and Erin are driving seperately. The plan is to go a day early and camp it out at some sort of motor lodge and head to the concert around noon tomorrow. I want to stay at something called the blah blah blah oasis motor court or the palm motor court or some sort of motor court. The kind of place that raked in the cash before the motel 6Õs and howard Johnsons came along and homogenized the american motel scene. I want to stay somewhere that humbert and lolita would have stayed in their cross country journey. I dated lolita for a while. Was going to make her my wife, but she said she had to go. She daid not to contact her anymore. She was over eighteen though so it was legal, but she was a nyphet alright. Oh yes she was one of those. + Satchel is not coming to desert. It is too hot and we donÕt think they will allow cats at the concert. NO CATS ALLOWED. He has too much fur anyway, fur and sun do not mix well together. This fog means it will be hot out there in coachella valley. The fog is drawn in by the desert heat, it creates a kind og vacumm that frags it off the ocean and over the city. It makes me want to be in hawaii where the humidty is genuine and the clouds only hang on the rainforests that creat them. Of perhaps in mexico with Ned. Watching them make sweet love while I smoke bitter cigarettes. Except that I quit smoking damn it. I hate not smoking. ItÕs forcing me to find more things to keep me occupied. I can no longer sit here at breakfast lingering over food scraps ashing in pools of syrup and feeling perfectly content to do nothing. This is very likely a good thing that I can no longer find contentment in nothing, but at the same time what else is there? Is something happening? Is their a great big party to which we are all invited? There is? Oh yes the concert, but itÕs a concert not a rave and all the magic has been drained out, the sponge squeezed dry, raves are done, techno is over this is only a last gasp, an attempt by Perry Ferrel to pay rent on his house in Venice. We used to go to parties there, dance parties that he through to help raise the money to pay rent. He had DJÕs and our friends hung their art on the wall and Perry paid rent. At least thatÕs what I was told. I donÕt really know IÕve never spoken to him. He has nice teeth. + This is los Angeles and everytime I tell any on IÕm from here the first question I get asked is: do you know any celebrities. I used to say no, but people seemed disapointed by this and I hate to burst peopleÕs illusion that somewhere ther is place where they too can party with rock stars. Nowadays I give out two phone numbers, brad pitt for the ladies and julia roberts for the guys. Both numerbs I give out are my own cell phone. No one has called yet. I have winona riders phone number. I met her along time ago at a PosieÕs concert. I was young. IÕve never dialed it. She probably moved. Once upon a time in my youth I hung out with movie stars every night. They bothered me. I felt uncomfortable around them. They were always sitting in the corner. ThatÕs my spot. The corner. Like the one IÕm in right now. This is where I sit. The corner. + Nothing but normal pedestrians in here. No movie stars. No rock stars. No porn stars. Well actually porn stars you never know. Porn stars are every where. I figure the amount of porn on the internet, at least five or ten percent of population is now undercover porn stars. They are all just doing it to put them through las school. Or to put there kids in a nice private school. They donÕt mind it. it helped them get over some of their hangups. They are not addicted to crack. They like sex. They are healthy. They are not being forced into it by pimps in cheap leather and fake gold. They have chosen this life. They suck dick like the pros. They are the pros. They are on the screen, in the telephone wires, on the cable television shows. They are in rock videos and work part time as a teller at the local branch of a national bank. They will not run for office. + Corrie is petting the cat. Bill is petting the emaciated thing. I am pushing toast around in a sea of ketchup with a three pronged fork. A three pronged fork is an awfully classy thing for a diner. Usually three prongs forks are the result of designer silverware and hide in swanky joints across town. In brentwood at cafˇ Luna or the like. Designer silverware makes the food taste better at cafˇ luna, it make the girl you are with imperceptibly more desirable, it complements the white linen tablecloth and sparkles in the halogen lights that very fashionably dangle from the ceiling on long thin wires. This is just a diner. They do not need designer silverware here. Corriw slides a knife, a fork and a spoon in her purse. The cat give her a questioning look. She take it out and puts it back on the table. We all laugh. This is monstrously funny. Even the emaciated little thing has to sit up and laugh. The cat turns its head and appears absorbed in sparrow flitting on the side walk. Corrie very discreetly slides the designer silverware back in her purse. We all smile at each other. WE are in on something together. We are pulling a fast one on the cat. We have bonded at the expense of cat. He just watches the sparrow and looks for all the world like he has forgotten that we exist. + +Later in the car: we drive out the ten freeway. Or rather bill drives and the rest of us ride. We have borrowed a minvan to hold all of us. There is bill and the emaciated waif in the front, then corrie and I and then billÕs sister shirley who doesnÕt like it when I write about her and chris in the back. Andrea and john are driving seperately. Rob and Erin ride with them. That is a couples car. This is a swinging singles car. Except for bill and waif. After breakfast he and I were standing out in front of the diner waiting for the ladies to finish up in the restroom and he asked me: + Hey man + Ya? + If I was to get married again would you make the trip out for my wedding? + No + Why not? + Because youÕre not getting married again. + I dunno man this girl is really somethingÉ + They all are arenÕt they? + This is different. + Uh huh. + The conversation more or less ended here, but the gist I took away from it was that Bill thinks heÕs getting married again. He is mistaken. Again. Bill was married once and engaged three times since then. IÕm holding my breath. She holds his hand while he drives. Corrie and I talk loudly about being single and loving it. We turn around frequently and sneer at the couple car. Fools. Except maybe for rob and Erin because there swingers and fuck different people all the time, but really thatÕs even worse we decide. + + + I subleased a place right off the 405, a venado, one exit past sunset. I had a splendid view of the new getty museam or at least what my neighbor told me was the new Getty museum. ItÕs a very white building on a very green hillside. The apartment is fully unfurnished and rather drab on the whole, but strangely it has hard would floors, which you rearely find in LA. They ran out of wood around here very early on. My neighbor is Hope, a gorgeous actor-waitress with stars in her eyes (you were expecting something else? Perhaps an orthodotist? Sorry, no). Already I have an enormous crush on her and all she said was youÕre new here? My name is hope. Nice to meet you. Great view of the Getty today huh? And she continued up the stairs with her basket of fresh laundry swaying her hip and humming. + |