path: root/tomorrow/ch4/ch4.txt

Vague vulgarities -- nothing so meaningful -- all this around us -- disassociated translucent film from the dentist X -- ray -- orgonomic sunshiny day -- rats creeping across the ceiling in bibelot herds -- rattle of bones -- do -- make -- say -- think -- sweat -- buzzing -- insects -- 

fumbling -- cigarette -- lighter -- flame -- inhale -- exhale.

What is that far off hideousness? That infernal twang drifting out of the otherwise solemn jungle? It's leaking in between the chinks of rotten caulk around the window. Or maybe it has always been in here just waiting for the right moment to switch itself on. All it needed was that last little E that it found this morning under the curious lichen clump that has sprung up around the toilet, one little E and it's on -- one. No I have to get out of bed and find a Z and R neither of which are where I thought I left them, just an empty plastic bottle with a peeling sticker...leve... V is so close to Z but right now I need a Z and V's just won't cut it. Soldier heavily to the fridge. Pour tall glass of water. Consume without breathing. Pant for a moment. Wait, stop. The twang is gone. Must have been a Z or two in that water. I like to think its all H's and O's, but ground water is unpredictable. Liable to be most anything lurking in there and the carbon filter of the Brita is a good defense but some things, like Z's, are damn sneaky. 

Most likely it was Scratch. He is convinced he can play the banjo he got from his mysterious absentee girlfriend, who, from what we gather, is somewhere down there. How far is inconclusive, though Jimmy claims its Costa Rica. But that could just be an assumption he made because with Scratch everything ends up in Costa Rica sooner or later.

Scratch is the poorest millionaire I've ever met. Like most people I met Scratch because of a bad set of directions. This morning Scratch looks part lunatic, part sage. He is sitting in the tire swing in front of his house, a wistful look on his face; he reminds me of a potatohead toy with a pasted on goatee and slightly askew lips, eyes that look out of order, screwed up and glinting earnestly. He's stripped to the waist with his T -- shirt wrapped around his head like a turban. He's hunched over plucking at the banjo looking a touch toward the dwarf end of the spectrum, though he would be some freakish dwarf who tipped back one too many rBGH laden pints  -- He's six feet tall and going bald -- but with his butt hanging down his legs appear foreshortened and silly swinging a couple inches off the ground.

Scratch is a self -- inflicted nickname, but sometimes you have to do that to avoid something much worse coming your way, pre -- emptive strike. Harm reduction the Pentagon calls it. I always figured the name came from the way he itches his head when he's trying to find the words he needs, or the way his hands wipe over his face when he sits back on the couch. It's like he's making sure he still has skin. 

Scratch's house is not technically on the same land as mine, I have to traverse the outer edge of the ridiculously large chunk of land that a poor unsuspecting yuppie thought would be a good investment. Technically, Scratch has told me, the yuppie owns everything within about ten feet of the back of my cottage, but he put his fence in about a hundred yards further back, which means that I can cut around the back of my house, drop down in the gully and follow it for about a half mile and I come to Scratch's doorstep. This is the long way around but it's easier than marching across the yuppie's back lawn, tangling with his dogs and pregnant wife. Scratch and his banjo are high on the yuppie's to do list.

"You're late." He barks when I hear me. 

I sit down on his chopping stump. "Late night."

"Girls?" He sets down the banjo.

"Does Chloe count?"

"Does Chloe count? The gem of Athens? For you no. For me no. For everybody else...." He ducks under the top of the tire and leans back arms extended. He emits a long groan that doesn't quite cover up the crackle of vertebrae.

"The gem of Athens...? Scratch do you have a thing for Chloe?" 

"The appreciation of beauty is my life Sil. Chloe is second only to Leah." He pulls himself back up and ducks under the top of the tire again. He hesitates for minute and then executes a weird, but graceful bodyvault from the tire swing, landing on his left leg, right one hovering just off the ground. He lowers it slowly and smiles at me. "Eh? Pretty good for a guy that fell fourteen thousand feet huh?"

"Graceful as ever." I shiver whenever Scratch mentions the accident.

"Where is our beauteous one this morning?"

"Dunno. You woke me up with the banjo... I didn't go over there. Jimmy did say he had to work today though."

"That's okay you'll do. It's not that hard. Just need someone to hold the bottles."

Jimmy weaseled the spare bottles from Five and Ten. They weren't watching when he installed the air conditioning in the kitchen. They were busy vomiting from the heat of summer afternoons, compounded by ovens, rangetops, a dozen burners, an open grill, a sanitizer, the thermometer below his ladder was spiked at 130º and people were trying to cook. He slipped out with a case of red table wine -- 3.99 a bottle at the store. Perhaps they did see him and just figured drinking them would be punishment enough. 

Scratch has a habit of muttering things under his breath. At first I figured it was just an eccentricity of age and I paid little attention, but I quickly learned that these half -- heard fragments were the real gems. 

"How's that?" I have, after much rehearsing, come up with a series of open -- ended questions for extracting repetitions of his cryptic mumblings. Asking "what" all the time frustrated him and stalled our friendship until Chloe pointed it out to me. She was also the one who informed me that Scratch was fabulously wealthy.

"Oh," He says waving his hand dismissively, "I was just thinking about blind pigs."

"Blind pigs? Is that some southern kink?"

He chokes on barnacles again. "No, actually I don't think it was regional, but maybe. I dunno. Blind Pig was a name... or actually I think it was the password maybe... it was either what you called or what you said to get into a speakeasy during prohibition. I was just thinking perhaps I should institute a password for the game... blind pig came to mind." He claps his hand to his forehead, fingertips on his hairline, and slowly drags them down pulling his jaw and stretching his cheeks until his fingers reach his chin. "Come on I got a new sculpture."

Two things assured our friendship after our first curious meeting in the gully. The first was Ford trucks, specifically 1969 Ford trucks which he owns and I covet, and the second was a penchant for shooting pieces of wood, though, admittedly, Scratch's shooting is far more beautiful than anything Dean and I ever created. At some point in the distant past Scratch embarked on an artistic endeavor he calls Stump -- Shots, which involves him finding fallen trees, chain sawing off the body, leaving the intact stump, and then blasting away at them with a sawed off shotgun full of rock salt. The forest is dotted with these weird pockmarked carvings of his. His newest is a birch stump about two hundred yards past his house. Six months ago, far too early in spring for electrical storms, the tree was nevertheless hit by an errant bolt of lightening, which also fried Scratch's lamps, toaster, iron and chandelier -- the sum total of his electrical devices -- and split the tree neatly in two. This tree however, did not fall down, or rather it did not fall on its x -- axis, it fell straight down into itself. Scratch thinks there was a nail or bolt or some kind metal in it that grounded the lightening about four feet off the ground. Whatever the case, it blew apart a section of the trunk and the rest of the tree fell straight down onto the spiked, fragmented stump and stuck there. Somehow it manages to continue living, and so Scratch has been sculpting the jagged extrusions that spike out from the trunk. Some of them are four feet long and over a foot wide. Today's project is on the mossy north side of the trunk a curving, open -- wound looking protuberance that Scratch takes aim at and blasts away. Scratch and the shooting are also high on the yuppie's to do list.

After the second shot he absently unhinges the gun and studies his work. "Kinda looks like that barrier island area off Belize doesn't it?"

I nod, unwilling to admit I'm not that familiar with the coast of Belize.

"Or a reclining woman. Course that would be a Degas girl..." Chuckling ensues followed by a thoughtful pause while shoving more cartridges in the gun. "Isn't it strange that our ideal of female beauty couldn't get laid to save her life a few hundred years ago...? Kinda makes you wonder about the source of your desires huh?"

"Not really, Scratch." He turns toward me as if I have undercut some profundity he has been waiting all morning to distill. "I mean I know my ideals are cultural hand -- me -- downs... everybody know that, but what does that mean?"

"See all ya'll have all this information and no understand of what it means. Those of us who came to these conclusions for ourselves don't have that problem."

"Okay then old man, what does it mean?"

"Nothing." He raises the gun to his shoulder and laughs pulling the trigger. The salt completely misses the target and scatters through the undergrowth wagging branches and puncturing leaves. Scratch can't stop laughing. He points the gun straight up, pulls the trigger and takes off hobbling back toward the house. There is a split second in which I am profoundly disoriented and then I take off after him.

I pass Scratch about fifty feet from the house and spy Chloe swinging in lazy circles on the tire swing. She looks up, startled by our ruckus approach.

"Are you okay?"

"Huh? Yeah why?" The sad truth is that a two hundred yard run is desperately stretching my physical capabilities. I bend over hands on my knees greedily sucking humid air.

 "Well I heard the gun and then you're running..."

"Oh no. It's cool. Scratch was just overemphasizing a point."

Scratch lopes up laughing and out of breath. "Everything is wonderful Chloe," he manages between pants. He collapses down on the chopping block. Sweat trickles down his face. "I got a letter from Leah yesterday... She said to tell you hello and many thanks."

This is clearly some element of Scratch's life that I am not privy to. I can't stop myself from thinking it's sexual. Some personal confusion between the sexiness of secrets and the sexuality of my friends. I know it's not sexual, but yet it feels sexual -- clandestine, vague, whispered -- everybody is having an orgy but you.

"That's nice of her. Tell her I said it was nothing." Chloe closes the book in her lap and jumps off the tire. "Are we going to do this or what?"

"Yes yes." Scratch lumbers to his feet and limps off toward the door. "Come on you two..." he hollers over his shoulder.

"Have you ever had mead?" Chloe asks as we walk inside.

"No."

She drops her voice to a whisper, "it's very sweet." She sticks out her tongue.

"I can't stand the stuff myself." Scratch grumbles having heard Chloe's whispers.

"Then why did you make it?"

"It's fun." He drags two enormous clear jugs out from the shadowy recesses of his pantry. His house is dark enough that he probably could have left them in the middle of the living room and they would have fermented just as well. The musty linen draperies of the bay window are perpetually drawn shut and what light that does filter through is diffused to the point of seeming confused about its role in the room. It feels extraneous and steps lightly around the upturned walnut stump on whose roots an abstract glass shape is precariously balanced. Delicately now against the cedar walls -- not wood paneling, actual cedar, splinters and all --  slinking along the far wall, edging over the couch, meeting with its cohort that took the other wall and had to navigate a collection of books that shames many Oregon libraries, teetering in decayed peach crates, collapsing against each other until it's hard to tell whether they are holding up the books or the books them. Light sneaking over the cracked spines and curled paperback covers, under the watchful eyes of Alfred Stiglitz and Georgia O'Keefe who've been waiting in the recesses between the crates where the light was not expecting them, where once there were indeed crates in their place but now in lustful ambush Alfred and Georgia groping after the light in ways that make the light uncomfortable and anxious to be off and there it is... its glowing brethren from the other wall...the two sides meet up like Victorian gentlemen, blushing, but tipping their stovepipe hats, as they nearly bump into one another in the brothel hallway, and then it's a hasty retreat to the kitchen window where they slink back out into the afternoon sun. 

Above the couch is a shelf of bric -- a -- brac photos mostly of buildings and a handful of people standing in front of stoves or arms extended holding plates of food. There is a clipping of Scratch dressed sharply in a chef coat and checkered chefware pants smiling on the cover of Food and Wine magazine. Separated by an antique bird cage complete with a stuffed finch Scratch calls Mabel, are another collection of photographs of people standing in front of airplanes, some smiling, some looking a touch nervous. One small picture in a frame whose borders are decorated with notes from the crescendo of the fourth movement of the ninth symphony is a rather terrified looking Debra Winger with her arm bravely wrapped around Scratch's waist. 

Hung prominently above the shelf and never escaping comment by first time visitors is a giant picture of Scratch buck naked save the parachute on his back, plummeting toward the out of focus grey -- brown desert below him.

Chloe is stacking the bottles in rows on the kitchen table. Scratch is attaching what looks like surgical tubing to the rubber stoppers at the mouth of each jug. The mead is a tawny amber that looks archaic against the antiseptic stainless steel table. I lean up against the monstrous stove, complete with rangetop and massive ceiling vent, which Scratch took out of the kitchen of his last restaurant. 

"The secret," Scratch says pinching and squeezing the tubing down in the bottle, "Is to make sure you don't get the bottom inch or so into the bottle."

"Is that the bad part or something?" Chloe sets down the last bottle and sinks into a chair. 

"Well, personally I don't think any of it is that good, but yeah the bottom is what you really don't want." Satisfied with the work he heaves the jug up to the table thumping it down on a six -- inch stack of newspapers. From my vantage point, the far side of the jug reflects a skewed convex headline -- better things are coming.

Scratch commences sucking until the mead is running into the first bottle by means of miraculous suction. Once in Mexico I saw a bus driver use the same method to retrieve gas from a taxi, which came rushing out faster than he had anticipated and exploded out the sides of his swollen cheeks. He had the presence of mind to put the hose into the jug before turning green and commencing the vomit. Scratch just coughs and his eyes puddle up. 

"Whew... Damn." He gasps and spits in the sink. "Still needs a week or two." He cracks the primitive icebox and retrieves a carton of orange juice. "Not that bad though. He drinks straight from the carton and smacks his lips "not bad at all with a chaser."

There comes a far off lowing sound that tickles my leg. "What the hell...?" Scratch sets down the carton, "Is there a cow out there?"

"No. Sorry, that's my phone." I dart out the back door into the caustic white of afternoon. I have to squint and feel slightly dizzy as I answer.

"Sil? It's me." Her voice crackles with digital lust, but all curl and Q's flattened to hiss. The treetops are swinging around me, the bleached dry sand crunching under my disoriented stagger.

"Maya? What are you doing?" 

"Well," she giggles, "I was just calling to tell you that I'm at home and I'm naked and lonely..."

I try to find something to say, but standing in the middle of boring midday sun of Scratch's backyard nothing comes. Somewhere thousands of miles up from here Maya is naked and wanting me. I have an urge to bolt into the woods and not stop running until I get to her or far enough away from her that I'm full circle to her.

"I have my hand on my pubic mound..."

She breaks through my awkward silence. "Ick. Don't say pubic mound." I shake my head as if she can see me.

"Why?"

"I dunno it sounds like something Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders are going to come charging up... bayonets glinting and whatnot..."

"Kinky. I like men on horseback... Can you be my cowboy this afternoon? We haven't done that one yet."

"I can't right now. I'm kinda in the middle of something." 

Her voice thins out, no longer clipped by compressors, simply flat. "That sucks."

"Can I call you later?"

"What if I said I have my hand down inside my panties?"

"I thought you were naked."

"I am. Except for my panties." 

"How many times do we have to..."

"You know you like it when I say panties." There is a pause. "I want you to say it and then I'll let you go."

"Okay. I like it when you say panties."

"That's what I thought." The line goes dead.

I shoot a glance back toward the house, but if they heard my end of the conversation, I'll never know. The door is open but the darkness inside is impenetrable. I don't care anyway. Or I don't want to care. I walk back inside and they are sitting on the couch drinking Pabst. 

"Maya?" Chloe arcs her eyebrows. 

"Yeah"

"Of course it was," Scratch laughs and looks at me with a mischievous green jello glint in his eyes, "who else calls him on that phone?"

"Every now and then my dad calls." This sounds lamer than I intended. They say nothing. "Mead all bottled?" 

"Yup. Be ready in a week or two." Scratch seems over enthusiastic about it as if incredibly relieved to be out of an awkward silence. 

I stare at him willing the awkward silence back. Scratch sits forward on the couch wipes his hands vigorously up and down his face and retrieves a tupperware container from the coffee table. He sits back resting it on the crest of his fat -- skinny -- guy belly. Out of it he produces a bud of marijuana and pair of scissors, which he uses to trim off a few leaves and buds. As he begins to roll a joint, the light in the room seems to perk up. It starts to pool around him, enveloping his body, wrapping it like a mummy. He leans forward again for the remote, and, after a bit squinting and face rubbing, the speakers emit a gentle finger -- plucked guitar sound crawling all the way from Nebraska across the hand woven Mexican rug on the floor. Soft eighth notes tiptoeing through the room, jumping on the table to a scatter of ash and dust and errant leaves of weed, but steadily and with direction and purpose, heading for Scratch. A corporeal mosaic forms around him, sound and light interwoven... and I haven't smelled anything in while... drawing to him, a film running backwards, a battery being charged, the book shelves are leaning in... this is how Stiglitz and O'Keefe were found... the plants bending to the Scratchtropic influence, leaves fanned out in hopes of some future expulsion, some radiation, some giving back, the necessary exhale to this massive huffing and huffing of all available resources, stalk gone turgid bracing for the future force of it... knowing that when he finally lets go, when he talks his voice will be a howling wind peeling off glacial peaks, ducking over the pitiful bottling company and its liquor store displays carving valleys in a single blast the sound following afterward in a wake. Or. Maybe it will leak out slowly, in the way he moves, steady and deliberate, he will mumble or whisper echoing the wind beating the roof, and whole Serengetis of meaning are lost in the silence of his hand. He saves them for later. He eats them when he is alone. His mouth is a microwave. He re -- heats, re -- charges his words under his tongue, little kernels of corn erupting as he chews them around in silence, mashing light and sound, wave and note, oceans and deserts.... He goes to talk to himself and nothing but popcorn spills out.









"Why is it that you don't come visit me?" Late April we're lying in bed, hooked and crooked around the rumpled clothing and sheets which are scrunched down to pillowcase size and bunched between her legs. A leather boot is trying to crawl up my ass, and I head it off by rolling on my side which sends Maya's head up off my chest just as I reach the end of my question. They are shooting a movie on the street downstairs. It's a what's -- his -- name action vehicle. Every so often we here "action" and "cut" over the ambient discord of Sixth Avenue.

"You know my life is here in New York... this is where I need to be right now." She speaks with the conviction of any recent immigrant. She has absorbed the vertical velocity of ninty -- nine story buildings. She wants that cinematic sweep from the Bronx to the Fire Island breakers, sketching indigo and pulsing with the semen of six million teeming... old grade school jokes about the depth of the vagina and length of the penis and the resulting imbalance that yields six hundred feet of virgin pussy just outside the window and everyone, every man woman and struggling model in this city believes it's out there, just waiting for them to push through the Hymen Tunnel and into the unfurrowed promised land. "Anyway, you were the one who said we needed to have our own lives. I thought independence was 'the most important thing' to you. You know you broke my heart when you left LA."

"When I left LA? You're the one who got on an airplane the night after we met."

"For a month Sil. I came back and then you left for god knows how long it's been now... I'm starting to think that I must have some alienation abandonment issue with my father because I sure seem willing to... nevermind what does it matter? All this is past and conjecture and meaninglessness... you're here another forty -- eight hours and this is how were going to spend it?" She sits up on her elbow and looks accusingly through the dissolving plume of cigarette smoke.

"No it's not. I just wanted to know why you never come down to visit me. I'm not asking you to move in with me or to drop your life or anything. I just thought maybe you know... we could spend some time together in my world."

"You act like I'm some kind of high maintenance city girl." She flicks her ash out the open window. "I came down there four months ago Sil. I like your life down there. I had a good time, but right now there are so many things going on it's just crazy... I barely have time to drop everything and spend time with you this week."

Busyness. Flickers and flashes, action and cut. Subways storming the bridges, greedy tendrils, roots clawing up out of the ground. "You act like I'm some kind of backwoods hick. You know I lived in LA for over twenty years... Forget it. I like New York. I like coming to see you here. I like to get away from Athens every now and then. Wait. Did you say you think you have abandonment issues with your father?"

She giggles. "The thought has occurred to me. I mean I live in a city with no shortage of bachelors and I'm with you... I mean I'm in love with you, that's why I'm with you, but I'm just saying if someone else, some outsider were looking at my life what would they think."

"Did your father abandon you?"

"No. But he was out of town a lot."







It's difficult to tell how long we have been this way. For some time I have been able to hear the mead. It's a long low moan, a lovesick bovine moan, some final protest of sugar against the decay into alcoholic oblivion. The jars gently rattling as if patiently rocking a crying child, running fingers through hair It's alright now, it won't be that bad thoughtful but meaningless, perhaps secretly thinking to themselves that they would like to crawl up in a ball and let the springworks go like a Panama City hotel on fire. Through the primordial haze now a light penetrates, the first rays after the nuclear winter of the comets, just three mammals around to witness. And of course a fourth to break the spell with style.

"Godamnit what the hell is going on here?" I can see Jimmy's silhouette in the doorway or at least I am aware that the silhouette in the doorway must be Jimmy, but I can't really see anything, the setting sun is not afraid of Scratch's house at all, it's Roman red pushing through the door in search of Christians for hungry kitties... none in here you sick fucks...

"Sil, there are cowboys on the roof. I cannot work with cowboys on the roof. I can't get the cowboys off the roof." Jimmy again. He is insistent on this communication thing... great gods in heaven he has turned off the music... Jesus what is this noise...its...its...punk rock. Time to give in. Straighten up. Fly right. Bathroom. Close door. Drain. Zip, for the love of god do not forget to zip and even more important -- damnit should have thought of this first -- tuck, but its okay the tucking appears to be ingrained. Ah yes, there it is, water on the face, down the gullet, engage in some Scratch -- esque face wiping. Alright. Now how was that? Why are there cowboys on the roof? Who put cowboys on the roof?

"These mutherfuckers are crazy," Jimmy is pacing, "I can't fucking deal with cowboys on my roof. Stupid fucking south Georgia hicks.... Red. Man I tell you these are some red mutherfuckers." He smiles. "I mean shit it's kinda funny I guess, but damn. I just can't work with them around. And they're wearing cowboy boots... who the fuck," he extends his arms incredulously, "wears cowboy boots on a slick, tar -- papered, forty -- five degree slope?" He gestures toward the tupperware, "Scratch you mind if I roll one?"

"Help yourself. What are you doing to the house with cowboys on the roof?"

"I'm supposed to be putting a porch off the back, they got these steps... it's about six feet off and sloping downhill so I gotta run out some joists from the floor beams...you know through the wall and then built a little screened in deck and ninety degree turning stairs... pretty complicated carpentry you know? I mean not really it's all brute force shit, but I can't fucking work with goddamn south Georgia redneck cowboys clomping back and forth on the roof all day talking about niggers and whores and dripping tar all over my joists -- what is wrong with these people? Have you seen cowboys on roofs before? I have never seen a cowboy on a roof."

"No. Never seen a cowboy on a roof... you're sure they were cowboys?" Scratch hobbles to the icebox and grabs a six -- pack.

"I mean... I guess. They had the boots. They had the hats. The had the twang. They drove Chevy trucks...

"'Nuf said." Scratch smiles at me. "Well smoke that and try not to think about it."

Can you feel the fingers in your hair? Try not to think about it... there is nothing in the closet... do you want me to open it? For the love of god no. Don't open it. I'm not thinking about her. It. I'm not thinking. Heel -- clicking there are no cowboys on the roof... there are no cowboys on the... there are no cowboys at all.

"The mead's all bottled? Yeah? How long?"

"Well normally two weeks in the bottle, but I had to gulp a little getting the siphon working and think a week will do."

"Won't the fermentation create pressure? I mean won't it burst the bottles?"

Jesus. That low moaning again. Maybe it's a groaning, maybe it's not the decay but the pressure...we want out... we never asked to be fermented. The original recipes call for ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus on certain grains. We left that out. Most of us never get over memories salted with distance and snapshots kept in ghosted albums on dusty shelves anyway. Fermentation is the slow breakdown of structure over time. Help! I'm melting! The sugar in honey is slowly changed by the acidity of the citrus. It's like snow melting from and ground up by the heat and decay of last falls leaves. Eventually there would be only a thin shell of snow, were it not for the cataclysm of the sun crashing down on the other side. In the end, sweetness becomes mead. Yellowed photographs crumble. Bedsheets stain and crust. Old Fords too long in the driveway choke and sputter charcoal, engine chaises rust, valve seats loose their youthful bounce... even your bones turn brittle -- unless you fall out of an airplane first.

Chloe slowly sits up and reaches for a beer. "Just take the next couple of days off, wait til the cowboys are gone."

"Oh I took the next two weeks off. I mean no point in putting down a nice deck and then having tar dripped on it." Jimmy lights the joint and exhales slowly. He offers it around but gets no takers. "Solo? Alright. I need it."

The cave -- like silence returns for a minute or two. Jimmy seems to create some sort of energetic opposite to Scratch's vacuum, neutron stars orbiting each other. Jimmy smokes the joint about half way down and then gently taps it out in the ashtray. He smiles for minute and then decides to share. "Okay so this isn't like something I normally do, but it had interesting results so I'm gonna share... After getting hot tar dripped on me for the millionth time I went inside to see if they had some solvent or something right? Well nobody's home. I holler around for a bit and then I think fuck it... forget all about the tar -- which, as it turns out comes off pretty easy with tar -- off -- start snooping around the house. It's one of those old houses off Boulevard, but the couple that owns it are nuevo -- rich... you know Scratch, saucing it up with the Truffle oil like it's ketchup?" Scratch grimaces and nods. "So at first I'm digging through the medicine cabinet for anything interesting, actually I lifted a couple darvocets..." Jimmy giggles.

"Jimmy that's horrible." Chloe with her mock angry voice. "Can I have one?"

"Yeah sure, but wait... It gets much worse." He bends forward laughing and then scratches the back of his head and screws up his face as if building courage for a new level of confession.

"Did you sniff her panties?" Scratch beams like a jewel thief passing on the secrets of the trade. "You sniffed her panties didn't you?" 

Jimmy falls off the edge of the couch laughing. "Yeah. I did."

"Jimmy!" I can't believe..." Chloe grabs a magazine, roles it up and starts swatting him on the head.

"Wait! Hold up ya'll!" He rolls out of Chloe's range. "Damn girl... Look I know it's fucked up..." backward glance at Chloe, some attempt at suppressing laughter. "Damn... But you know, I was standing there in the bathroom when the idea occurred to me and to tell you the truth I started laughing the minute I realized I was gonna do it. It's just one of those things that you never think to do, I mean unless your actually fucked up enough to get off on that sort of shit, but most guys, like myself, A) never have the opportunity to do something like that and B) when they do have the opportunity to do that don't think to do it... cause you know it's not like I wanted to get off on it... I just wanted to know..." 

"James William Miller..."

"Oh come off it Chloe. You're not my mom. You wanted a pill damnit. I stole the pill. I mean suppose the woman was in pain and needed those pills... that's all fine and good, but sniff some panties and you're all pissed? Don't get high and mighty with me. Besides you've sniffed a few jock straps yourself haven't you?"

"Actually no. I haven't." Chloe crosses her legs and glares at him. But then a smile breaks over her face. "But I have stolen underwear from a few guys because I wanted to have a souvenir." 

"See I knew it. But you have totally distracted me from my original point, which was the magazines... No not those magazines, damn ya'll are some repressed mutherfuckers... National Geographic Magazines..." Jimmy inches by Chloe and sits back down in the middle of the couch. "I sat there reading National Geographic for like two hours, well, actually not reading just leafing through looking at the pictures. But after two hours of that I started wondering about everything I know...Do you ever get the feeling that tribal people sitting around swatting flies or sticking sticks in anthills to get grubs...or is that monkeys? I forget, whatever, but do you ever start to suspect that perhaps these people are leading much fuller lives? Look at the eyes of the people in National Geographic sometime and tell me you don't start to wonder if perhaps we have missed the point of life entirely." No one says anything, his voice gets quieter, "and in some weird way I think that's why I had to do it, even though it's a reversal of cause and effect, I had to do it because I need to be that close, not invasive, though we perceive it as such now, but think about it, smell... smell is the original identity, the animal scent, the recognition of one's fellow creatures. I smell you and therefore you are not me and then, I mean goddamn, that's what opens the door to everything."

"You think we'd all be better off sniffing each other?"

"Scratch I'm serious here. I think that the reason we're so distant from each other is that we've walled ourselves up. We got hung up on the threat response -- you are not me and therefore I must guard against you -- rather than the hey how you doing response that I see in other animals. I mean Chloe, Annie sniffs crotches right? It's her way of understanding... of knowing." Scratch hands Jimmy the joint which is once again burning. He takes a long drag and speaks as he exhales, "I'm not saying we should sniff each other's underwear, I'm just saying that's the kind of closeness we're going to need if we're all ever going to get along in this world. Well, that and the collapse of the whole religion and nation -- state concepts, but I think those are inevitable in a world with the kind of closeness that I want."

Scratch takes the joint back from Jimmy and stares intensely at him for awhile taking little hits of smoke into his lungs in quick succession. "When I go Jimmy, I want you to come."







"It's beautiful isn't it Sil?" Maya in her painfully stylish charcoal overcoat, the recent dry chill rustling them, a few falling off here and there. Thanksgiving in Central Park, playing frisbee and watching the cirrus turn pink and lavender and now tightly hugging against the faint but persistent breeze. "But kind of sad too don't you think?" She shivers and pulls tighter. "Did you know leaves aren't their true color until they die? I mean the leaf is green because the tree give it chlorophyll and stuff, but then when the tree stops, then the leaves reveal themselves."

"That's a depressing thought."

"Maybe. But it's beautiful too." She has a wistful look of absolute satisfaction with the world that makes me uncomfortable.

"The leaves are the tree though. The tree is the leaves. They aren't separate from each other. They don't exist in some vacuum. We're the ones who are seeing them as separate."

"Maybe. But if that's my perspective then isn't the oneness just yours?"

"Perhaps." We start to walk back across the fields toward the subway. "But we monkeys seem to be the only ones with this overly acute sense of self. I mean if you set aside the usual way of thinking about it couldn't you say that you and I are in fact one entity?"

She smiles. "That sounds great and all, but we're not. Especially not us. I'm here, you're down there."

"Maybe our loneliness is in failing to see that we aren't apart at all. Maybe loneliness and longing are just the result of some isolation from ourselves. Maybe if we stop breaking things into pieces based solely on our own distortions and isolation, we would see through this parts/whole dilemma... we'd see something interconnected, a kind of ever -- evolving beauty of process -- poetry through motion, through seeing the through."

"But we are separate Sil. It doesn't matter how eloquent you want to get about. The leaves still die every year." 

"How do you know they die? Changing color could be only the beginning for the leaves. The leaves don't die because they're still part of an ongoing process. Thinking of brown leaves as dead is only our misconception of what life is. Or even if they do die, everything that dies comes back. These leaves lying there on the ground, breaking apart into food for the tree, soil nutrients, that sort of stuff... It gives the trees the material to produce new leaves for a new year. Are the new leaves actually new? In a sense, the dead brown leaves are climbing back up the trunk of the tree and emerging out of it green again."

"Maybe. I kind of like that idea. The leaves fall for the tree so it can survive the winter and then help it grow in the spring.... But the tree is still never going to fall for the leaves."