Pouring

I'd woken up to the sound of the sea spilling from the sky. Church bells rang out nine times. When it rains the air molecules must vibrate differently because the sound seems fuller, and damp. Outside a fast rushing wind shakes awake sleeping birds hidden in the trees. They puff out their chests and bury their heads deeper into their feathers and let out a nearly soundless sigh. Slowly some switch a sleepy leg and shut both their eyes. The streets below, glistening and dark, are littered with fallen yellow leaves, for winter rains always wash the last of the leaves from the trees. Poor souls who have to venture out into the early Sunday morning wetness can be heard swooshing past in their slippery cars. Rain beats against the windows like crashing waves and the church bell rings once more to mark the half hour. Puddles form in pools on the roof and from its edge little waterfalls pour out gushing into a shared alleyway. Rivers rage along the gutters and get sucked up by thirsty sewers. Rain like that can't last long in San Francisco and soon it softens to a reluctant trickle. Beads of rain fall like sweat from the brows of buildings and tears seem to stream over gray glass windows. Somewhere a cat seeks refuge under a musty old wooden deck, choosing its crouched steps carefully, to avoid the leaks which threaten to touch the tips of the cat's ears, it settles on a safe spot and waits. Lovers pull each other close in their beds and are thankful they have nothing to do and nowhere to be but warm and dry and cozy and contented. Some wake alone with bloodshot eyes, dry mouths and headaches, and whimper softly in gratitude that the day has been given back to them. This is a day to be spent idly. Others mourn the loss of a sunny Sunday and think of all that the day could have been. They regret nature's inconsiderate cruelty and curse the sun for its cowardice. They forget all is not lost, that the sun still shines. It's there, way up above the clouds, contemplating their milky mystery, the way they make the world vanish and then reappear, changed; wetter, darker, lonelier. 

(f)Art

Last night, after some wine, dinner and dessert, a conversation about art bubbled up into the room. One of the guests, a man with a boyish face, a mustache, and slicked-back hair only on the top part of his head, proclaimed that art had nothing to do with objectivity. He argued, I believe, that art is subjective and depends completely on the intent of the author. It is an interesting stance, but one that I did not agree with. Art, when it is good, expresses something objective, subjectively. But to illustrate his point, he made use of a hypothetical scenario in which Bob Dylan stood mindlessly strumming chords during a sound check. Surely, he said, this is not art. But isn't it? Perhaps bad art, but still art. Isn't it at least some reflection of Dylan's artistry given he chose to strum those chords in that way for that duration? Is art what the artist does? What if the artist goes as far saying that what he did is not art? Does that invalidate the work? I'd say no, it doesn't, in the same way that an author might be ashamed of his early works and not consider them canon. This doesn't change the fact that they were still artistic attempts, only the passing of time has made them seem more inconsequential and perhaps lacking in artistic merit.

Let's, for argument's sake, use the definition of art provided by the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the expression or application of human creative skill or imagination that is beautiful or expresses important ideas or feelings. This definition is already problematic because it presupposes beauty and importance. I should pause here and note that there may not be an easy solution to this question. This might serve only as an exploratory exercise.

For now, put aside beauty. We can come back to that. But importance is one that's nearly a given, because, if your art was unimportant to you, why would you do it? I think it's safe to suppose that any thing someone does must pass some litmus test of importance or, given the choice, one would simply do something else. Even if the art was deemed unimportant later on, still, during the moment of its creation, it had sustained importance long enough to arrive at completion. It would be interesting to consider works of art that had been started and never finished due to lost interest. For the purpose of this writing let's stick with completed works, because it's simpler.

If we've defined art as the expression or application of human creative skill or imagination that expresses an important feeling or idea, then I think we have something substantial enough to play with. What is an important feeling or idea? There is a great deal of subjectivity here, but most would say there are some ideas we can agree upon collectively; the preciousness of human life, for instance; the ugliness of war; the value of kindness, empathy, love; how we as a culture treat death. In that last example I overtly appeal to consensus. I think this is an important distinction when ascribing worth or value to a particular idea. Why do we as a people decide certain ideas are more worth defending than others? Perhaps it is because ideas tend to amass power when more people hold them. But what makes an idea provocative or compelling enough to imbed itself into a person's belief structure? We tend to assimilate those ideas into our worldview that most closely convey unassailable truths. When a comedian says something satirical and contentious, we laugh because we see the truth in the idea and may even say something like, "it's so true," or "it's funny because he's right." We like ideas that fit into our existing belief hierarchies, and we resist those that challenge them. Because we've grown up enjoying the benefits of a world that seeks to protect and preserve life - because it allows us to live longer, and often but not always, peacefully - most people believe in the sanctity of human life. Most deeply held ideas follow a similar trajectory. They carry with them an odd kind of utilitarian irresistibility. And though we come to understand them subjectively, the truths that these ideas express have become so ubiquitous that they border on objectivity.

If the above is true, then some ideas seem to become important out of necessity, the proliferation of certain ideas following an almost Darwinian organizing principle. These ideas, the more important ones, move in the direction of objectivity as they ingratiate themselves with more and more people. This is what gives birth to a collective consciousness amongst us, even across different cultures and in different parts of the globe. Using the same sensory apparatuses to make sense of our physical and intellectual worlds, we are able to have a shared experience. Tenets of that experience, things like fear, pain, love, sadness, joy, hunger, suffering, loss and loneliness color the lens through which we view the world. This is what enables us to participate in art. It is experiential. We each bring our unique histories to the table when we experience art and this is what generates the feeling of subjectivity. But if we were to look deeper and really consider what's happening when we experience art, the subjective becomes a bridge toward the objective.

Works of art, like people, symbols, and ideas, do not exist statically. They are dynamic. Consider classic works of literature. They are contextualized by time and place and are then further contextualized in time and place. The world changes around the work and imposes itself upon it as the work imposes itself outward on the world. But the works aren't remembered for what is changeable about them, they are remembered for what is immutable and enduring. Most literary scholars are able to agree upon the artistic merit of a work and comment about themes and style and innovativeness in an objective way; there are things that make Steinbeck Steinbeck and Proust Proust. One can say, objectively, that there are differences in their art, that they explore different ideas and in different ways. But even that is not the point. The interesting thing to try and define is what happens when someone reads Steinbeck or Proust. How do they participate in the world the author conjured? What's the reader's role? Isn't the reader also writer, intuitor, the vehicle through which the author paints his vision? The reason that we as readers feel sadness as we come upon the ending of A Farwell to Arms is because the author is conjuring a very deliberate feeling, particularly of sadness, desolation, limp devastation. We as people have experienced sadness so we are able to relate with the character and feel the feeling the author intended us to feel. If art had nothing to do with objectivity, how would this be possible?

It echoes Plato's allegory of the cave. The artist's idea is the objective form, and our experience of it is the shadow on the cave wall. Our experience will never be the form, because it cannot be - we can only participate in the artist's expression of it - but there must be something objective of which we are to participate in. Otherwise, it would be inexpressible and we would be left to decipher the shadow of a shadow. Now it should also be noted that the artist, too, is grasping at a shadow that is a only a reflection of the truly objective form, but this does not damage the relationship between artist, art, and its apprehension. During the act of creation, the artist reimagines the form and projects a very deliberate, carefully distorted shadow onto the wall. That shadow becomes the ideal representation of that form to that artist. For an analogy, imagine a master shadow-puppeteer with the ability to beguilingly mimic any shape. Because the puppeteer has complete control and discretion of the shape you will apprehend, you are seeing the most finely polished version of the shadow possible. It is the expression of something objective, subjectively.

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
― Ernest Hemingway

A Telegram From the Sickhouse

I've been working from home all week. I work in an open office environment where the slightest hint of a runny nose, the first choked cry of a suppressed cough, or even the menthol scent of a Hall's cough drop will send surrounding colleagues into a fearful frenzy. They'll degrade, guilt, and then shame you into going home. It's an odd, socially enforced sort of quarantine. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well, which is the reason I got sick in the first place. Every motherfucker around me was sniffling and sneezing, hiding in the bathroom and coughing, blowing their noses and hacking green phlegm surreptitiously into the sink. But it doesn't matter, it is Friday. I'll work one more day from my sickhouse, full of crushed tissues and soggy teabags, decapitated Campbell's soup cans and empty bottles of water, where I'll get hopped up on the tussin, anti-inflammatories and expectorants needed to power through the workday.

Earlier in the week I rented a car and booked a cottage up north to travel to with my lady friend. When I realized I was coming down with something, I quickly took matters into my own hands and made sure I got all the rest I needed so that I would be fit to travel with my rainbow-haired maiden. I'd like to avoid infecting her, if possible. I like her.

I've run out of time.

The workday has crept up on me despite a poor night's sleep. I had sleep paralysis, again, for the second time in two weeks, which is unusual for me. Last night's experience was a bit different than normal though, because I'm pretty sure I was asleep when it struck. At the foot of my bed there was the unmistakable shape of a cloaked, slimmly-armed bear. There it stood, faceless and shadowy, paralyzing me with its evil energies. For anyone who hasn't been lucky enough to have the experience, it's as though your soul is growling with all its might at some unseen terror trespassing at the foot of your bed. And the thing, unfazed in the darkness, just stands and stares, taunting, unimpressed by your pathetic threats, like a bear looking down with irritation at a barking Pomeranian. Seething rage bubbled up out of my profoundly helpless state and I felt my vocal chords frothing and straining as my hands turned into fists. I woke up barking an inhuman fuck you as my body - propelled by frustrated hatred - swung forward and up, ready to brawl with my phantom antagonist. But there was nothing there but the memory of a ghostly and imposing visage. Why am I talking like this?

I have to go to work.

Rainy

The sun had come up early. Wet wheels on passing cars said it had rained during the night. Soon the morning's brightness had been replaced with a flat, wintery greyness. A nearby bird sang a mournful song. On days like this it's easy to fall victim to listlessness. Sunday morning rainclouds are rapey. They force rest. They are for lazy rumination, for lying in bed and yawning. People who live in the Pacific Northwest know this. For them it is a way of life. But days like these are best when they are sparse. Too much causes unhappiness, depression, a sense of inescapable gloom. When infrequent, they are restorative and nourishing, especially to the soil. And especially here in California, where the dry ground thirsts for rain. We need it, for the grapes to grow. What better cure for a rainy day than a bottle of wine? Realize that when you are drinking wine, you are drinking the fruits of rain. Know that each chirping cork singing out from a plugged bottle is a rainsong.

It is too early for wine, for now. Maybe later I'll get out of bed, after a few hours of tossing and turning.

Warmth

From the tips of trees the breeze shook free the snow. It fell slowly down, twirling and spreading out in the air. The sun hadn't yet risen, but it would, soon. Distant mountaintops seemed piles of sugar. Cold air rattled loose leaves across a frozen lake. They skittered and blew in spirals until they crashed into a snowy hillside. On the other side of the hill icicles hung like long shark teeth from the mouth of a small cave. In the spotless forest, frosted and pristine, a hungry squirrel rummaged through a campsite garbage can. Nearby, not yet awake, a couple slept inside an orange tent. They'd been in the park for the last two days and had done much hiking. The night before, over a bottle of red wine, they made a fire, roasted marshmallows, and told stories. The stars above twinkled and the sky seemed to pull away from them, making the world swell with mystery. They wore down jackets and scarves, winter hats and waterproof boots. They sat reclined in a chair with a warm blanket draped over them as they spoke. Beside the fire he had her in his arms. She leaned her head back against his chest and smiled. As the wood burned it cracked and popped and the wind kicked off little embers that moved like snow. It was their first camping trip together. Each of them had been to the park independently, and never during winter. The thought hadn't ever crossed their minds. This made them happy, because it meant they were able to share this moment for the first time, together.

The sun began to light up the sky behind the mountains. Slowly the sunlight melted and spilled down in rivers into the valley. When it touched the top of the tent it began to warm. He moved against her in the sleeping bag, shaking off sleep's stiffness as he spoke. Mmmm, she said. They whispered and she kissed his wine stained lips. They felt the cold air against their skin as they poked their heads out from their cocoon. She smiled and said it was too cold to wake up. He said it was too cold to sleep in. They moved and wrestled free of the cold in slow motion. Making love in a tent, inside a sleeping bag, in the dead of winter, carried with it a kind of nordic novelty. When they were done they were warm and happy, hungry. Once the warmth had begun to disappear they quickly dressed and unzipped the tent. It was snowing. Clouds had floated in over the naked forest and flurries of shining snow danced all around them. To the east, over the mountains, the sky was clear and completely blue. Wow, look, she said, pointing, that's beautiful. And it was. A vacillating sky. The morning felt dreamlike and paradoxical, as if it were rooted in two separate realities at the same time.

They each ate a banana while they waited for the water to boil. Hot cocoa, oatmeal with cinnamon and carmelized apples, two bran muffins they'd picked up at a roadside gas station in the middle of nowhere on the drive up. The flurries had stopped and the sky was dusty but bright. Today they would take pictures and play on the lake, probably have an impromptu snowball fight, maybe build a snowman. It seemed like no one else wanted to brave the storm and they had the entire park to themselves. A snow covered Eden. She looked cute, bundled up in her winter clothes, puffs of smoke coming from her mouth as she breathed, her big eyes shiny and wet like melting ice. He wanted to take her back to the tent and pull off all her clothes and climb back into the sleeping bag with her. There was time for that. They should go out, he thought, that's why they were here. No, they were here to be together, to be together here, now. There wasn't anywhere else he wanted to be. It didn't matter what they did, really, because they were here, making a memory. Memories of a split sky, of a morning snowstorm, of marshmallows and wine, of the heat of their bodies, the warmth of her love.

Just then she asked him what he was thinking of.

You, he said, just you.

Mantis

She had an insectoid skull, ant-like, in the shape of an upside down teardrop. She wore her hair up. Her eyes were large and far apart on her face. Taut skin and a high, receding hairline reinforced this aesthetic. In front of a white plate full of bright green salad leaves she sat alone in a booth beneath a lurid white light. The small cafeteria was quiet, and empty. It wasn't quite lunch time yet. Beside her food was a small paperback book wrapped in a dirty, old looking cover. The woman's jaw moved mechanically as she stared off and brought the food to her mouth with a long silver fork. Her hands seemed excessively pale, almost glowing. Her forearms were thin and sharp and, if they had been green, would have looked like the arms of a praying mantis. Occasionally someone would hurriedly walk by, moving between buildings to different floors and offices, trying to finish up any remaining work before lunch time. Everyone that saw her thought she looked rather lonely, sitting there in her prim black dress and shiny black shoes. All around her things started to slowly chatter; the clinking of dishes, the shuffling of feet, the sound of cooks working and moving about the kitchen, the subtle crescendo of conversation.

The building was old but newly renovated. The walls on the fifth floor were paneled with reclaimed driftwood, lending them an elegant, rustic look that was subtle yet showy. Lots of workplaces were doing this now, refinishing and refurnishing, reinvesting, to conjure a sense of wealth and worth. Companies in this part of the country were so prosperous they couldn't spend money fast enough. They threw expensive parties on Friday's, fully catered with beer, liquor and wine. On every floor were makeshift bars stocked with all varieties of top shelf whiskey, bourbon, and gin. Refrigerators bookended each hallway and were stocked with cold craft beer. Lavish spending took place to adorn the common areas with comfy modern couches and plush chairs. Some wondered whether this was a prudent way to invest in the company. "Y'know, you'd think they'd take all that money and use it to increase salaries, to pay better wages, to expand healthcare for menial workers." The common rebuttal was, and always will be, "we're looking into it."

The more knowing among them whispered in back rooms, behind closed doors:

"So much energy is dedicated to keeping up with appearances. People do this. And because companies are made of people, companies do this, too. Instead of sportcars and high fashion, it's risky acquisitions and arrogant product decisions. It's insidious and wasteful and narcissistic."

"Insecurity masquerading as strength."

"Misplaced ambition has a tendency to hijack sensible discretion. It cripples and warps foresight."

Outside the building the company physically alters its environment. It displaces people. The neighborhood slowly gentrifies. Minorities are pushed out. So are the poor. The rich move in. Bars close down, boutiques too. High end cafes and restaurants replace vacant storefronts and housing costs begin to soar. All of this sparks tension in the streets. The city’s poorer inhabitants grow resentful of what the new people represent. Slowly, a war begins.

Hallowent

The weekend was a smash. In every sense of the word. We saw a funky performance by a group of misfits calling themselves The Thrillpeddlars. It was a play in the style of le theater du Grand-Guignol. That's French for "theater of the great puppet," which is a sort of theater specializing in naturalistic horror, blood splatter and gore. The perfect fit for Halloween. As we tried to locate to theater, we walked around in circles in a sketchy part of town populated with homeless encampments and factories. Eventually we found it, and the group of actors prepping for the show outside. When we walked in, just on time, a character I can only describe as "ghost dick" stood holding a clipboard and waiting for us. Wearing only a sheet - with eye holes cut into it - and a long, fleshy dildo protruding from a hole cut in place for his penis, he said our names. I asked him how he knew and he said, "because we've been waiting for you." As he escorted us to our seats I saw that everyone was already there. It was a full house. We were to sit up in our very own private booth, plush and equipped with elaborate ancient artifacts and a silk curtain to be used for privacy. We were a veritable Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, with the best seats in the house. They warned us of impending gunfire and I wondered just how much we looked like Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. The play was great, full of blood, murder and mayhem. The piece seemed to borrow a bit from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Antigone, incorporating incest, murder, a blind prophet, and a good old-fashioned eye-gouging.

We left the theater and continued our tradition of making out in the street, at corners, stop signs, in doorways, under traffic-lights hanging like mistletoe, against parked cars. I flashed my dick and saw it looked formidable and proud. Someone saw me and I said it was a prop, part of my costume. Everyone knows jackrabbits like to fuck, c'mon. We talked about dancing, but worried we'd quickly overheat while wearing our giant animal onesies, so we got into an Uber and headed to a local neighborhood bar. Frozen cocktails were consumed. This produced considerable groping and public displays of affection. We were photographed kissing inside a coffin. The photographer said she would put them up on Instagram. Terrific. Seeing as we were no longer able to control our libidinous desires, I decided we should travel back to my apartment, where it was safe. I nearly got into a fistfight with Chun Li and Guile from Street Fighter after he yelled sonic boom too close to my ear.

We got back home and did the mash. We did the monster mash, twice, with a smoke break and a lavender oil massage in between. What followed was the most awful night's sleep of my life. Terrible heartburn and an intense sensitivity to sound produced a near perfect sleeplessness in me. The whole night I probably only slept for an hour or two. Once the sun rose I gave up all hope and decided to wake sleeping beauty. There's nothing like sweet love in the morning, followed by a shower and lots of food. After wandering around the city in a sleep deprived daze, popping into stores while looking for an easel, we took the long way home and stopped off to drink beers on a patch of sun in the park. Back home we napped like cats.

Later, I stopped off to see T and he cooked a delicious pasta. I met a man named Uncle Mihal. He was an interesting Irishmen, a painter, with many stories to tell. The bottle of wine I brought singed my throat with every sip. It burned so badly I could have sworn my esophagus had melted. We tried in vain to figure out the intricate workings of an old transistor radio on which we would listen to the end of the World Series. We never could get it working though. The rain came and I called a taxi home.

Sleep took me almost instantly.

All Hallows' Eve Eve

Big weekend ahead. Halloween. I can't remember what I did on the day last year. If I cared enough to search back on this blog I might be able to find out. This year there will be a play and dancing, costumes and mayhem. Halloween is a holiday I almost dislike. It's an amateur hour somehow more formidable than even New Year's Eve. But the spirit of it, the scantily clad women and drinking, the supernatural danger, the sheer depravity of it all, make it worthwhile. San Francisco is a city that knows how to dress up, and better than most. Louisiana might have us beat but I've never been there to confirm. All my knowledge is anecdotal, and perhaps exaggerated, based purely on a few photos and the sordid hoodoo history of the bayou. Now I want some ghostly gumbo, some chain-rattling cornbread, a giant bowl of zombie jambalaya. Instead I'll stop off at the local supermarket and get a disgusting bag of candy corn, a party-sized brick of Hershey's chocolate, maybe some bite sized Snickers. Candy corn are awful. They're just high fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring. I think they're made almost entirely out of wax. Madame Tussauds nipples.

Me and my femme fatale are to wear animal onesies. I’ll be a pink bunny and she'll be some sort of cute, Asian inspired animal that doesn't really exist. I hope whoever imagined her costume fit the fictive creature with working reproductive organs, because we're gonna make sweet love like rabbits. No, I think we'll have to shed our new skin and shapeshift back into our human form to perform the deed. I'm waiting on Q to confirm that he's gotten me on the list for tomorrow night's dance party. If he hasn't I'll need to find another party, which would be unfortunate this late in the game. Luckily there will be plenty of parties. All of tomorrow's parties, in fact.

Tonight I'll go out to dinner with a few friends, to a shitty Italian restaurant that hardly qualifies as authentic. I've never been there, but if I've learned one thing while living in San Francisco it's that we don't have good Italian food. I could also just grab a quesadilla and meet them at a bar after they wrap up. Decisions decisions. I woke up very early today, but I need to stay up late. If I don't, I won't sleep in tomorrow morning, and then there's no way I'll survive the night; especially when you consider daylight savings. Who is it saving, exactly?

Well, the outside world is beckoning me. More later.

8% Battery, 92% Piss

I wanted to write tonight but I'm tired and I only have 8% battery. My power cable is too far away for me to get up and get it. I'm writing from my cozy love cushion; my mattress. I would never buy a used mattress...people fuck on them. They are stained with semen, perspiration, and tears. Through our skin, when we sweat, we excrete trace amounts of urine. This is why pillows begin to yellow over time. Who wants to sleep on someone else's old piss? If I had my way, I'd buy a new mattress every time I changed lovers. Things would quickly become prohibitively costly though. Instead I'll continue to suffer the indignity of sleeping on the stained passions of my past. Those little rorschach inkblots of love hidden behind my sheets. 

A new art piece arrived today.  I'll need to decide where on my walls to hang it. Actually, I still need to decide where to hang the one from last week. 

All in due time.

Voice Lessons

Public speaking is a terrible thing for most people, myself included. All the staring eyes, expressive and sharp, become mirrors, doubling and squaring, exponentially increasing all that anxious self awareness inherent in the center of attention. I'd always regarded it as one of the most undesirable parts of being an adult; to openly bear the brunt of other peoples' judgement. That was, until last night.

Last night, I was the lone male in a room full of women, all of them strangers, where I was forced so far out of my comfort zone that I would have welcomed an impromptu, nationally televised speech before Congress instead of my fate. I knew things were getting weird when we were told to mimic animal noises and parrot them back each other. Just for fun, see how silly you sound while trying to imitate the sound of a woman meowing, yelping, cooing or wooing. Multiply that with soul-crushing emasculation and drown it in a sea of wet femininity. Surely things couldn't be worse than this, I thought naively.

Soon we were made to stand in a circle, partnered up, with half of the women facing out and the other half facing in. We were taught to recite a Hindu chant. It was perhaps 30 seconds in length. We were to sing the chant to our partner, while staring straight into their eyes, with a hand held over their heart. Yes, tits were sort of a problem. So I stood there, twitching with discomfort, enduring the longest 30 seconds of my life. Then the circle rotated. I was forced to suffer this fate a dozen times over. I felt like the protagonist of a forgotten Greek myth. There was no end to my torment in sight. Without having ever experienced this phenomenon, it is impossible for you to understand the profound discomfort of it all. First, there is the knotted mess of gender dynamics, burrowing long claws into my back like a deranged koala, whispering warnings and screaming impropriety. Then there was the sheer number of times I had to perform the ritual. The end seemed impossibly far away. There was the feeling of the vibration on each woman's chest as she sang, the extreme awkwardness of being placed in such an intimate setting with a stranger, and the debilitating vulnerability of singing to someone. All of this, though, failed in comparison to the eye contact. My eyes moved like a misbehaved dog's, darting and averting, guilty and downcast, quickly glancing back to see if my master was still watching. I could feel the content of each person's soul. It was to rummage through the junk drawer of another's heart. One woman whispered that she felt bad for me, because I was the only guy there. I felt bad for me, too. The intensity of it all was almost breathtaking and I begged for it to end. Finally, it did.

It couldn't get worse than that, right! Nothing I could think of could be worse than that. It turns out I hadn't yet been divorced of my naiveté. It got worse.

The instructor told us we were each to sing, a cappella, for one minute, while everyone else in the room sat, stared, and "beared witness." Holy shit. Panic whipped through my nerves like static and I felt my heart start to race. I need to run, I thought. Fear filled my sails. Just get up, pick up your hoody, put on your shoes, run down the stairs, grab the door handle, pull it open and don't look back. Those were too many steps. It was that moment where I'd realized the cruel intention behind removing our shoes. I was trapped. Ok, stay clam. When it's your turn, just tell them you aren't comfortable. Perfect.

The first woman volunteers to start. After her minute's up she calls on the blonde beside me. After five seconds of pained silence, anxious breathing and a few umms, she declared she couldn't. Yes! Yess! I fucking rejoiced!! I wasn't the only one. The teacher wouldn't let her off that easy though and told her she'd come back to her at the end. It was over for me, folks. I contemplated faking a stroke, or an asthma attack, even an orgasm to get me out of there. There was no savior in sight. It was hopeless. This was the closest I'd come to a living nightmare. All of my bad shroom trips combined weren't as bad as this. After a torturous ten minutes it was my turn. I eeked out a shitty version of the intro to Take a Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed, forgot the words, and then butchered one of my favorite Iron and Wine songs. After everyone was done we held hands, our heads hung low, heavy with shamed liberation, and sang one last song.

Until next week.

Oops, I Did It Again

Last night I did a thing I'm not proud of. It's something I'd always wondered about but had been too afraid to try. We were drunk and it was late, after midnight. My friend told me he wouldn't do it, that it was disgusting and wrong and shameful. He said if I tried it he would leave. But it had to be done. I wasn't sure he'd cooperate but it was a chance I was willing to take. I reached into my pocket and entered my location. Within minutes the car arrived. We stood in the street, at Fillmore and McAllister, and when the car pulled up he refused to get in. He told me he'd call his own car, that he wanted no part of it, and he stormed off down the block. Alone, I opened the door, hesitating, wondering whether the driver would judge me. "Hello," I said, "don't drive off just yet. I have a question for you and it might seem strange." He looked at me in the rearview mirror awaiting my request; not nodding, not smiling, not blinking not anything. And then I said it.

I need you to take me to the McDonald's drive through. 

He didn't say anything at first. The car was idling in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, if there had been any. Was I too forceful? Had it come across as a demand instead of an earnest plea? Damn it, I'd insulted him, ordered him to take me there like he was my goddamned chauffeur. Wait a minute, he was my chauffeur! What had I felt bashful about? I have needs and desires like any other man. I get hungry! There's nothing wrong with that. But what if he was judging my dietary habits? Did I look fat in this shirt? Technically this was the second time in less than a week that I found myself at this very drive through. And this time I intended to order something much more obscene than before. My standard Big Mac, fries, Oreo McFlurry and apple pie wouldn't be enough tonight. No. Tonight I would order two Big Macs, a large fry, twice as many apple pies and an Oreo McFlurry. Clearly I wasn't fucking around, and if this prick was going to try and tell me he wasn't driving me where I wanted to go, he was gonna have it. In the rearview mirror the shiny resolve in my eyes met his like lasers and I waited for him to try and tell me no. Every inch of my being was insistent, unflappable, ferociously calm and unwavering. I was the golden god of the golden arches.

Something about his mirror was strange. It was too long, and the image was too sharp. It looked like a 4k flat-screen television in Best Buy. How hadn't I noticed this before? I wondered if he was a cop. His clean-cut Asian face stared back at me expressionless. Could I be arrested for this? Could he? Sure it was true that I'd met my daily burger allotment; I'd had three sloppy joes for lunch and a bar burger for dinner. Yes, this was definitely criminal. Fugitive fat cells in my blood breached the blood-brain-barrier and commandeered the ship. There was no other explanation for my actions. I was a victim, at the mercy of an insatiable, cellulite heart. What was I doing here, pudgy faced, sitting in the back seat of a stranger's car, exposing my dark desires to him like a fast food exhibitionist. Oh god, this was awful and awkward and I regretted everything. My friend was right to leave me. Why hadn't I listened to him? Oh god. This was terrible. I was terrible. I'd made him terrible by association, by asking him to do a thing that was terrible. If I could take it all back I would. In an instant!

Suddenly he smiled. "Sure," he said, "you are stoned?"

Yes....yes I am.

I wasn't sure what gave it away but it didn't matter; my dreams were coming true. I was having it my way, and lovin' it. The hot bag in my hands made me warm and fuzzy. Suddenly I loved him. I bought him a sweet tea, because he was sweet to me. But the bag. The hot, sweet smelling bag of taboo indulgence. Its aroma spiraled up into my nose and made my mouth wet. The thought of getting home and devouring its contents made me giddy. Unable to take it anymore, I got out of the car and started running madly to my door. My feet thundered up the stairs and I was panting like a dog. I kicked off my shoes and dove headfirst through my door, splintering it badly. With one hand, in a single, swooping motion, I rolled a joint and smoked it. With the other hand I brought the delicious sesame seed bun to my mouth and opened sesame. A rhapsody of satanic flavor and lecherous texture consumed me. The force of my hedonism catapulted me somewhere depraved and immoral, but the world seemed a better place.

The rest is a blur. I fell asleep in my bed with the lights on, a smear of special sauce on my lips.

Flies

Since yesterday things have been odd. There was the sunset today. The sky looked like someone had thrown a ruffled velvet blanket over it, to soak up sangria the sun spilled. And work was weird. A lot of people weren't there. The food seemed more ambitious, too.

Someone was shot and killed a few blocks away. The buses weren't on time. The day felt alien. Even the sunset, as beautiful and unusual as it was, seemed to happen too early. I hadn't showered. I always shower before work. I could smell the oil in my hair when I took off my hat. The day evaporated before me with the quickness of isopropyl alcohol. Then, just now actually, there was the fruit fly.

I hate fruit flies; loathe them. They are a perfect nuisance. I once unleashed an unintentional genocide on them as I tried to vacuum hundreds out of my living room, back into the great outdoors. What I'd failed to consider, as I sucked them out of the room, was the motor inside the vacuum. When I opened the door to free them I discovered they'd all been instantly torn to pieces. My stomach turned. I realized I'd put them all into a blender; the painful irony being I'd deliberately vacuumed them up to avoid killing them. I felt so terrible I couldn't eat. Since then, I've grown accustomed to openly murdering the little suckers, on account of them being so profoundly annoying; flying into your eyes and mouth, your ears while you're sleeping, open wine glasses, and anywhere else you wouldn't want them.

Tonight though, I stumbled across one that had fallen into my beer. I thought I'd scoop him out with my finger and then quickly and mercifully kill him at the height of his drunkenness. But then I had a sudden change of heart. After all, he was no different than me. From my kitchen I extracted a fork and saved him from the brew. I left him aside to dry and told him everything would be okay, but warned him that should he reenter my beer I would have to take it upon myself to swallow him whole. I have yet to return to the drink to see if he's called my bluff.

I'll update tomorrow.

A Big, Silly Grin

An art exhibit. The sign on the door said - private event. It was incomprehensibly hot inside. I was sweating severely, practically melting, raining saltwater onto the floor. I walked in, turned, and she was there. I touched her and she jumped. I smiled, we kissed. I'm trying to figure out what it says, she said. I was trying, too. We walked around in a square and stared at the art on each of the four walls. Da Vinci believed that visual art was the highest form of art because there's no barrier to entry; assuming, of course, that you aren't blind. Unlike literature, one doesn't need to know how to read, one needs only to see. Seeing is a form of feeling, it's presence unfolding in realtime. It's all in the eyes.

Hers were discerning, mysterious and warm.

We left and walked the street briefly. There was the possibility of graffiti. When she stepped, the metal ball inside the spray-paint can swayed, giving her footfalls a lilting, percussive quality. We waited for our Uber driver, Juan, to arrive. We fell out of step with time and altered reality as we walked toward his car.

A heavy fog, set low in the sky, caught fire from the soon to be setting sun as we passed the Palace of Fine Arts. Juan seemed lost so we told him to let us out. Walking, alone but together, into the mist, we stumbled upon a Lion King boneyard. We glided through the misty whiteness, floating like phantoms, laughing, whispering, brushing against each other's arms. The air was sweating around us, painting the beach in an eerie fog. The sun reflected softly against the water. A dog ran into the waves. Silhouetted children chased after. People beside us laughed. Hungry seagulls pursued the outline of a running woman. Waves crashed slowly against the shore. Distant hills were encased in a ghostly mist which rose up out of the ocean. It steamed up off the water and drifted through tall trees. We talked and laughed. And laughed. And kissed. Sand got into our mouths. It crunched, and we kissed with exfoliated lips.

A persistent wind carried in more fog and the sun became a pale sphere. It looked like a smooth, brightly glowing craterless moon. Was it day or night? Where's the line in the sand? She was intoxicating. I felt stoned. We kissed. I said something and she called me an idiot and I wanted to kiss her again. I smiled. Her eyes were wet with laughter.

We stared at the sky, interpreting rows of raked clouds.

Our hands danced as we lay in the sand. The sun was setting. It was swallowed by a hissing sea, bubbling in the places where the light had touched it. Steam and cotton-colored smoke strangled the blue. I sought her elusive eyes under darkened sunglasses. The temperature dropped. She lost circulation in her arm. We got up and walked and watched the glow of the smoldering horizon. Colorful cotton candy clouds.

A bar. A drink. A kiss. Goodbye.

Walking home, a big, silly grin.

Schrödinger's Sunrise

Waking up early has become one of those odd pleasures. Something about the time seems stolen, ransomed from the dreams of still sleeping people. Sometimes the hour hides in mist and thin fog. Other times it paints the beige building outside my window in a soft orange-pink that's almost salmon. The sunlight glows in the glass windows and reflects back through mine in small square pools. Not a car passes. There isn't any conversation. No trace of another human being's existence. For a moment, the world seems to stand still, caught at a chance moment of meek vulnerability. Then the birds sound out, a car door closes, then starts. Soft-eyed people make their morning pilgrimage toward the smell of roasting coffee. Running water can be heard through the pipes in the walls of my apartment. The birth of the day. Watching it all happen makes it more personal, as though it only happens because I'm looking; Schrödinger's sunrise.

Last night I drank responsibly and put myself to bed at a reasonable hour. I received a few calls from close friends who wanted to talk about their feelings; one from New York and one from Bacchus country. The first friend was drunk on much laughter and self-aggrandized bravado. He esteemed his wit above all else and demanded I remind him of the following things: $7, $9, mauve, taupe. From this, he told me, he would reconstruct verbatim the clever exchange that impressed him so. In the morning he said I would be awed by his unmatched faculty for creative rigor and the tenacity of his memory. This morning however, after having sent him the requested, and much necessary "poetics," those ingredients for his breakfast masterpiece, he replied: what the fuck are you talking about. Clearly he'd forgotten how he told he would "pimp me," how he would "sell my mauve ring out for $7 to the highest bidder." He'd forgotten the line that made him laugh most - you don't even know the difference between mauve and taupe, you're not gay enough. Perhaps after reading this post it will all come back to him. One can hope.

My second friend, calling from New York, by contrast was drunk on self doubt and insecurity. He was wrestling with the threat of love's leaving. There's a girl - there's always a girl [because, after all, nothing occupies a space more completely than the love of a woman] - that he's been courting for just over a month. He was worried she might be wavering, that her affections could be flagging. I recommended he see other girls while chasing her, to distract him, to conceal the strength of his devotion to her; from himself and from her. It is far too easy to scare love away in its infancy. More skittish than squirrels or birds, nascent love needs to be treated with an almost unhealthy sangfroid. Any sudden lurching or telegraphed desperation is almost always ruinous. At the onset, love needs to be tantalized. It needs to be precious and precarious. There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional. Often it is capricious and cruel and given to chase. But always, when it senses the threat of being unrequited, it swells exponentially, obsessively, and becomes a need more insatiable than even the deepest hunger. I told him to listen to Hungry Eyes on repeat every moment that he isn't with her, and when he is.

I need to go shower. I'm going with Coco to Russian River soon and I smell like dirty beer sleep. We'll drive and chat and drink more beer and eat pizza; the finer things. I'll regale her with stories of my exploits since we last met and hope to make a few more while we're there. Last time we went we stumbled upon a very special international tasting, synchronized across the globe so that we were all drinking the same beer at the same time, bridging enormous distances to share the same moment/experience. It was strange and magical. Who knows what adventure awaits us today.

Of Her, Dreaming

We'd become entangled, locked at the lips. Temporarily inseparable.

Green stars spilled over the ceiling and swirled in slow spirals. They look like sperm, she said. They sort of did; galactic and green and swimming. In the dark, on the wooden floor beside us, a burning candle perfumed the room with vetiver, vanilla, and honey. As our skin touched, our bodies shared quiet secrets. They were effortless companions, complicit, sensitive and knowing. The cherrywood speakers hummed and velvet sounds sighed, deepening the air. Heat from my hand ironed smooth the small goosebumps on her arm.

I felt a deep comfort with her there. It was as though I were alone, but not lonely. Words were whispered between us, and tired laughter like twilight birdsongs faded into silence. She smiled, softly, and laughed, and I knew it in her eyes. I knew it in her kiss, and in the softness of her touch. I knew it in her sinking, shallow breath, and the safety of her sleep...in the foolish hopefulness of her perfect dream.

A Celebration of Flames

There's a book, an essay, that's come my way. It was purchased for me so I feel obligated to read it. The translation is terrible, full of spelling errors and typos. Some passages are so poorly translated that they are unreadable. To overcome this I constantly have to reinvent the text as I read it, adding or removing words, trying to imagine what the author meant in his native language without the appropriate historical or cultural contextual clues. It is a challenge. Still, it's an interesting read. Citing the absurdity of life and of living, it tries to interrogate the question of suicide. We all know we are to die, right, a truth as clear as water, so why do we endure the anguish, uncertainty and waiting? Because I'm only at the beginning of the piece I am still unsure whether this is a literal suicide or a philosophical one. All will be revealed I suppose. In the meantime I'll have to endure these dense pages full of sticky sentences and amorphous references.

Tomorrow a friend arrives from Canada. I will need to pick her up at the airport at midnight, after I've turned into a pumpkin. We'll need to run last minute errands on Saturday, get the gang back together and make our way to Black Rock City. It's that time again. Tens of thousands of us will descend upon the desert like swarming scarabs, to debase ourselves for a week. Dancing, drinking, drugging, hugging; searching, finding, losing, loving; burning. The profound symbolism of the flame needn't be remarked upon by me. Everything I could say about the thing has already been said, and by men more learned and more eloquent than I am. It is fun though, to travel to that place and stand at the crossroads between eternity and ephemerality, where the distinction between the sacred and the profane dissolves and we are all absolved by fire. Flames don't discriminate. To fire, everything is fuel just waiting to be burned.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

The sky is grey, full of fast moving clouds. On the ground there are dead leaves. They rustle the air, a skittering static discharge. Pressed against a window is a black cardboard cat, wearing a witch's hat, sat beside a perfect pumpkin. Wrapped around the door a flattened Frankenstein holds a sign that says danger, beware. Telephone lines whip in the wind and it howls as it moves between them. For hours it's looked like rain. The sidewalks are littered with evidence of adolescent mischief; broken eggs, splattered shaving cream, silly string.

Excitement and quick, hurried words. A small thumb gnashes a button. Panting, hushed laughter, exhilaration. The pair thunder down the stairs and race toward tall hedges opposite the house. They duck behind a rusted car and peer out over the bumper.

Across the street a doorknob turns. The door opens. An old, haggard looking man stands in the doorway, staring down at the flaming bag. His eyes dart from the bag to the street and slide from side to side as they scan for whoever is responsible. A disgusted sigh and he disappears inside to find something to put the fire out with. Giddy, the laughing children cackle and hold their hands to their mouths while they watch for the old man's next move. Out of sight, on the roof of the car is a toy spider, inching toward the children every time the wind blows. The man is back with a pot of water which he pours onto the fire. The bag sizzles and stinks as the water hits it, leaving a brown muddy puddle on the man's doorstep. He curses and grumbles, muttering as he looks out into the evening, knowing somewhere they are watching him.

"You think this is funny, don't you," the man asks the wind.

From behind the car they laugh to themselves in disbelief, proud of their havoc. The wind edges the spider closer.

"If I find you rotten kids, I'll kill you, I swear!" He throws the pan against the stairs.

A bus stops at the end of the road and a middle aged woman gets off. She's dressed professionally, in a beige skirt and blazer. She looks tired, like she's put in a full days work. She roots through her pocketbook looking for her cigarettes. The bus takes off down the street. The wind gusts over the roof of the car, sending the toy spider onto the nearest boy's shoulder. He cries out in shock and leaps into the air as he slaps the spider away, onto the other boy. The old man hears the commotion and spots the boys across the street and begins to yell. The abruptness of the first boy's movement, and the sudden sight of the spider send the other boy recoiling from behind the car out into the street, into the bus, under its wheels.

The woman screams. The bus stops. The old man stares.

Newman's O Face

A found an old post that I never published. There are nearly a dozen of them, actually. This one even had a photo already selected, and a title. I remember where I took this photo. It was north of San Francisco, in Sonoma. I was dating an Asian girl then, and we had driven out of the city to get away for the weekend. At a small winery we'd had a tasting. They had a bunch of chickens and a rooster. Or maybe this was taken at the small ranch where we were staying. They also had chickens and a rooster. The post below doesn't seem to be related at all to the weekend where the photo was taken. But, here's the post anyway:

There are a lot of words that mean two things. Take truffles for example. It can mean chocolate or mushrooms. I prefer it when it means both. Bat is another one. It can mean a club-like piece of wood used for hitting, or a winged creature of the night. Don't even get me started on cock. Not only is it a noun but it's also a verb. This kind of double meaning becomes more problematic once we start talking about verbs. Duck and roll. Does that refer to a nice poultry sandwich? It is lunch time.

I started reading Grapes of Wrath; just a few chapters while eating. I never read it in school. It's probably better this way, because I can enjoy the book now. It's unpleasant to read under duress, for a grade. In school what I enjoyed most about assigned reading was the discussion, listening to other people espouse their nonsense opinions in front of a large classroom. I'd love challenging them, gently, to see how firmly they held their beliefs, to see whether they were full of shit or not. I especially enjoyed challenging the teacher, even when I knew I was wrong. Because the teacher had to respond to even the silliest interpretations of a text, I saw it as a type of training in creative expression. A worthless courage and cheap exhilaration would thrill me when taking a stance against the class. I'd hope to slowly convert the room, one by one, to my point of view. In my younger days I was a compelling speaker, convincing, at times charming; a young Charlie Manson. Once I convinced a friend to lick a strange beetle that had crawled out from a fresh pile of shit, another to eat half a dozen moths, someone else to climb out of a sunroof naked, and another to commit grand larceny. Those were the days.

Now I can't even convince myself to write something interesting.

It shouldn’t be hard, writing. All it is is taking the voice in your head, relaying it on paper, and hoping you've communicated some kind of truth. But it is unbelievably hard. When all is said and done, we’re just sacks of meat walking around being slow-cooked by stress and fear, waiting to be eaten up by time. We’re all so easily ruined; a slip in the shower, a fall from a ladder, a blown stop sign, a random act of violence, a sudden stroke, an embolism, an absent-minded anesthesiologist, an allergic reaction, a terrorist attack, a crashed plane, a wild animal, a cat scratch, a change in the weather, a loose rock, uneven footing. Those are just to name a few. Most of us will be spared these, hopefully, but we’ll still suffer all sorts of psychic distress and trauma, accumulating cracks and fissures along the circumference of our fragile psyches. Our minds wind up spoiled long before our bodies do.

Have I ever told you that I find Oreos completely irresistible? I passed by the supermarket on the way home, to pick up some yogurt, and I only narrowly avoided purchasing a package of America's favorite cookies. Instead I bought a pack of Newman’s O’s. The name is misleading - they are cookies, I swear. A healthier alternative to Nabisco’s gloriously chocolatey, classic cream cookies. I’d thought that the bland taste of the Newman O’s would curb my appetite, but I ate an appalling, morally reprehensible number of them. I was like an obese, pudgy faced Cool Hand Luke gluttonously gobbling cookies, glistening in a sweaty sheen of shame and self-indulgence. Shoveling the cookies into my mouth, moaning, showing the whites of my eyes, I lost all control. Desire took me under its arm and ran for the 30 yard line. The only thing that saved me was satisfaction itself: the death of desire. My happiness was short lived, though, and it ended promptly, once I caught a glimpse of my swollen stomach. I'd impregnated myself. I was going to have a little food baby.

Silent as a Stone

I haven't written recently. The fact has been brought to my attention by a small fellowship of dwindling readers. Why don't you write, they ask me. Because I've been too busying wronging. My desire to write is as weak and insubstantial as my molted libido. It lay on the floor beside me, lifeless and inert, gathering dust. I've been reading more lately, perhaps that is why; a collection of stories by Hemingway, a novel by Murakami, useless internet articles, the backs of shampoo bottles, filthy poetry and crude rhymes scrawled on the dirty walls of dive bar bathroom stalls.

Every sign suggests I'm uninspired. There's an unseen silence between the lines. The small space at the start of each sentence is a mendacious misrepresentation of time. Any suggestion of brevity is a bald-faced lie. Stilted stops and awkward starts, and I'm not sure why. Why does this rhyme?

I haven't written because I have nothing to say.

Gas and Indigestion

It wasn't even noon yet but it was already scorching. Everything felt thirsty, especially the car. It needed gas if they were going to make it out of town. Little rippling waves of heat rose up off the pavement and made it look wet and glassy. The city had been mostly cleared out by now. There were no cars and no motorbikes, all the metal police blockades had been removed. Everywhere there were still the evacuation posters and leaflets littering the street like pieces of post apocalyptic confetti. They were colorless and half erased, bleached from years of rain and sun exposure. On the walls of buildings they stuck lifelessly, peeling and thin as cicada shells. Some of the windows were shot out, others were smashed and broken. Looting had cleaned out what was left. The car rolled through the city, panting, looking for a gas station that would surely be out of gas. Gas and groceries were always the first thing to go; food, water, canned goods, gasoline, batteries.

On either side of the street were tall buildings that blocked visibility. They were in a concrete canyon. Only when they approached an intersection were they able to see around corners. Up ahead, about four stoplights away, was a small Shell station. They would have to be in and out. They pass the first light. Then the second. Third. The hood of the car passes out under the fourth light. On the righthand side another car is approaching, about half a mile away.

"We're gonna have to be real expeditious about this, Doc."

"In and out, Bennyboy. Let's go."

The speeding car grows larger as it barrels toward them. Benny leaves the car running and jumps out. He jostles the gas handles and squeezes to see whether or not the nozzles are dry. One handle, then another, and another. It's the same on the other side. It's no good. He can hear the car now. It's close. Benny pushes open the gas attendant's door and looks around the small room. He kicks over a stack of plastic red gas containers and they all scatter but one. Bingo. Benny runs out back toward the car and hops in.

"That's it? That's all they left us? That's a quarter tank at most."

"That's all there was."

Their conversation is halted by the arrival of gunfire. Bullets whizz over the car and crash into metal and brick. Doc hollers at Benny to drive. The car is coming fast and gaining. It's armored and black. The windows are all tinted. A man with black hair, wearing a black bandana and black sunglasses is leaning out the passenger side shooting at them. Their tires squeal as Benny and Doc pull out of the station.

"Of all the gas stations in all the world," Benny says, lighting a cigarette.

A bullet hits the rear window and shatters it. Glass rains down into the backseat and Doc screams in frustration. He picks up the rifle from the floor and takes aim through the blasted out window. He fires off a wild shot that touches nothing but sky as the car hits a sharp corner and turns right down a side street.

"Keep her straight!"

This street isn't as tidy as the other one and Benny swerves to avoid hitting a displaced dumpster. Doc misses another shot.

"God damnit! I said keep her straight!"

Firebreathing

Up early. Can't sleep. Heartburn. Five alarm fire. Ambulances. Firetrucks. Antacids. Too much pizza. Peppers, pepperoni. Alcohol. Idiocy.

Desolation Wilderness

The sun rose and it was hot. The heat in the parking garage was brutal. Doc woke up with his head booming, his lips like snakeskin. He whimpered softly in the backseat. Benny had already been up for some time. He sat with his arm dangling from the window, smoking a hand rolled cigarette. A few beads of sweat gathered on his wide forehead, ran down his temples. He'd known Doc for a long time now, since the bombing. That was three years ago.

"Time," Doc said, breaking the silence, "it's a pretty word if it wasn't so uncaring."

"What are you on about, Doc?"

"It just goes on. Doesn't stop for no one or nobody, not even isself."

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"When I was a boy I never paid it no mind. Now, it's all I think about; how to pass it, how much might be left. It's why I drink, to slow it down; makes it more bearable."

"Time isn't slowing down, just feels like it is."

"No, no it ain't. You're right. But feeling; feeling's everything, ain't it?"

Benny smokes.

The bottle of whiskey squeaks as the cork comes out and Doc takes a big drink.

"You know, I'm glad this one is the kind with the cork. I like the sound of it. I'd hate it if I had'a screw a cap off and on every time I wanted a drink. It's more elegant, dignified. It announces itself like a bird. Chirp. Remember birds, Benny? I haven't seen a bird in years."

"All dead, Doc."

There were no other cars in the garage. It looked like an enormous cement refrigerator. Except the air conditioning was busted, and the lights was off, and there wasn't any food.

"We can't stay here much longer Doc. They'll be coming for us soon. Ostensibly, they already are."

"Ostensibly. Benny, have you been reading that dictionary again? You've picked up quite the vocabulary. You used it incorrectly, though."

"How's that, Doc?"

"Ostensibly means they might be pretending to look for us, as though they were only fooling, trying to make us think we were bein' hunted."

"Maybe," Benny says as he starts the car. In the backseat the doctor takes off his heavy woolen blazer. He'd gotten it before everything was the way it was. It was a gift from his sister, Claire. She'd gotten it for him as an early Christmas present years and years ago, back when he lived in Kansas. The inside pocket was worn and it had a small hole it in. Every time he'd put a pen there it would be gone when he'd need it. The collar was stained and covered with dust, sweat and blood. But what wasn't? Benny turns the wheel and they roll out of the garage onto the desolated street.

"Maybe," Doc says suddenly. "What a word, Bennyboy. Maybe. It's perfect. You said something but said nothing. But even nothing is something. We're doing exactly what he wants us to."

"Not sure I follow. Who's he?"

Doc takes a drink and looks out the window of the car. In the sunlight the city looks emptier. Night has a way of suggesting infinity, of exaggerating the dimensions of real and imagined spaces.

"You ever jus feel like we was two characters in a book?"

"You must'a hit your head pretty hard, Doc."

Doc smiles and plugs up the bottle. He asks Benny to put on some music.

"We'll need to stop for gas before we move on," Benny says in reply. "We're almost out." He pushes a cassette into the dash and they drive.

The Only Friend a Guy Ever Needs

The car rolls through the stop sign and gradually comes to a halt in the middle of an intersection. It didn't have to stop, the town is deserted. It looks like there hasn't been anyone here for years. A pair of broken stoplights sway at the larger intersection up ahead. The engine idles. It is dark. Las Vegas, look at you now; all your blinking lights returned to the sky. There are stars everywhere. Behind an empty casino, the moon, looking like a dead disco ball, begins to rise. The man inside the car lights a cigarette, throws the match out the open window and lets his left arm hang out. Wispy sulphur whispers spread out and soften, quiet. The match head breathes red on the asphalt. The engine groans and the car cuts loose.

It growls as it darts over deserted streets. The emptiness emboldens its sound. It roars. Glass buildings shake as it passes. The air hums. Then there is something else, another sound. It seems to come from everywhere at the same time, and nowhere. It chops at the night, quickly, percussively. It is getting louder, stabbing, stalking the silence, cutting at each second until it seems to float over the car. A spotlight pierces the dark, sweeping it away like a broom. The light scours the streets, makes them pale and harsh. Dust and sand are kicked up by the helicopter's whirring blades. Old newspapers and lose garbage sputter out over the sidewalks. The speeding car turns off its lights and tries carefully to maneuver around the light, to remain hidden in the dark.

It is no good. The light easily find hims. It pursues him as the copter gets closer. Another man, in the backseat, sits up. He's drunk. He hiccups and laughs and he slaps his hand down on the driver's shoulder.

"Where are we now Benny, in Vegas?"

"Yeah," Benny says as he pulls smoke through his cigarette.

"I'll be damned! Can ya believe they found us? After all this way? God damn, you gotta give it to them."

"Yeah," Benny says.

"And just when I'd taken a nice nap. They always get you when you're having yourself a little dream, right Bennyboy?"

"Yeah."

"I was having that same one again, the one I told ya about, you remember?"

Benny doesn't respond.

"Come on, you 'member now dontcha Benny?"

"I'm a little predisposed at the moment, Doc," Benny says, throwing his cigarette out the window.

"You don't say? I see that now. Just lose 'em like you did last time," he says, hiccuping.

"Yeah."

"Where's my whiskey?"

"Now ain't the time, Doc. We're in a precarious position."

"That's a big word, precarious. A fine word. It means, before carious. D'ya know what carious means, Benny?"

"Yeah. Hold on."

Benny cuts the wheel as he yanks the emergency brake. The car spins around sharply and the doctor smashes his head off the door.

"God dammit it Benny! My head, my bleedin' head. Ohh, it's achin'."

"Sorry, Doc."

"I'm glad I wasn't sober for it. Look, there's blood all over the seat now.

"I said sorry, Doc."

"Where's my whissey? Did I ask you that already?"

The searchlight glides past them as Benny ducks the car into an enclosed parking garage. The car crashes through the wooden arm at the entrance booth and he kills the engine.

"Here," Benny says, handing the doctor his bottle.

"Oh, there she is. Reunited and it feels so, so good. She's the only friend a guy ever needs you know. And you too, Bennyboy, you too."

"What was that dream you were talking about, Doc?"

A Lie in Bed

She had soft hair, wavy, two shades of brown. Her cheeks swelled adorably when she smiled. Her eyes were light and big and perfectly polished. When she was happy something in them swam, smooth ripples rushed outward in golden rings. As the night came nearer their color became deeper, more mysterious, and dark.

Sleep enhanced her beauty. In the early morning her skin was somehow clearer, more delicate and white. Sometimes I would wake before her and watch her sleep, the small wrinkles on the edges of her eyes softened by sleep's iron. With her breathy voice, reaching my ears like the first light of day, she'd say, go back to sleep. She'd lay her head against my chest and sweetly sigh and drape her arm over me. I never wanted to get out of bed. I never wanted the day to come any closer. I wanted us to stay suspended in those quiet white sheet moments forever.

Monday would inevitably tear us from our lazy lover's haze. At night, after work, I'd return home and lie in bed. I'd smell her on my pillows and on my sheets. A strand of her hair would find me like a shower drain and rising water thoughts of her would gather at my feet. I'd drown in dreams of her. Many times I'd wake and hear her say, go back to sleep; especially when she wasn't there.

Somehow I knew I wouldn't keep her. She wouldn't be kept. Maybe she would. I lied in bed.

Running Through the Styx With my Hwoes

The weekend is over. It was a whirlwind. A hurricane. A duck-blur. At one point I was so drunk I thought I lost my hat in a pizzeria, or that one of the blood sisters had stolen it. I woke up at 2:00 in the morning with my shirt off, wearing jeans, sweltering. My mouth was burned, probably from the pizza. I walked into the kitchen to taste the water I'd been dreaming of and I found my hat on the stove. That's where I put all of my important possessions; on the stove or in the oven; it's the German in me.

It was nice to see them and we all had a lot of fun. We tried to end the day with chocolate, some award winning, extraordinarily delicious truffles, but we were greeted by a locked door. Drunkenly, and while screaming the word chocolate, I jerked the door with such savage ferocity that I ripped the handle right off. My hwoes acted swiftly and before I knew it we were running through the six into a getaway Uber before the cops came. I told the driver that I needed him to find my hat, at any cost.

I do feel bad though. I got them terribly drunk everyday, stoned, introduced them to each and every local disrepute, and forced them to sleep in squalor on a stolen air mattress. The inevitable outcome of my depraved behavior was the loss of N's passport. We called Uber, Zipcar, restaurants, nearby bodegas, even tore my tiny apartment apart, but it was nowhere to be found. Many calls were made to the TSA and they told her she would be subjected to a lengthy screening process and a possible cavity search to verify her identity. I recommended she take the bowling pin out before she got to the airport. For as long as I've known her she's had an ass like a magician's hat. I kid. About the magician's hat. Everything else is true though. I was sad to see them go. We'd become like three little sisters, a pimp and his hwoes. Who knows when I'll see them again.

In truth I am a little relieved that they're gone. Now I can finally masturbate in peace, without them waking up and asking me what that noise is.

We'll Never Fight Over a Guy, a Wine, or an Oyster

Yesterday, me and my menstruating maidens woke to discover the concert we were to attend had been cancelled. We decided to go to Sonoma anyway, to tour wineries and drive around in the sunshine, to get drunk and be merry. We stopped off for some delicious southern style breakfast and celebrated the sun with the lovely citrus effervescence of three golden mimosas. Then three more. The food was great; biscuits, egg sandwiches, chicken and waffles, brisket. Cake was had, at the end, only because I had synced with their womanly cycles. I found myself with cramps and an insatiable craving for German chocolate cake. I insisted that we eat some. The waitress advised against the apricot pie, insinuating I had already eaten enough. She even mouthed the word tubby when the girls weren't looking. Incensed by her appraisal of my appetite, I ordered an entire apricot pie, and ate it. If I'd known this would later cause me to vomit while waiting in line for the women's bathroom, I would've still eaten the pie, out of spite. She's the one that had to clean it, after all. You might be wondering why I was waiting line for the women's bathroom. I've decided I identify as a female homosexual more than I do a male, so I've reassigned my gender and sworn to wear floral shirts, exclusively.

After breakfast I made the mistake of reaching out to Q, to see if he might want to ride around with us and stain his lips on some fermented grape juice. We picked him up and he poured three liberal gin and tonics; one for himself and one each for the girls. He advised we take them to go - in the day there is only so much time. And so much wine. So we drove to a winery which I described as having a sort of man made lake.

Gundlach Bundschu he'd said.

"No," I told him, "not Gundlach Bunschu. I know that one. The place I'm talking about is different."

Gundlach Bunschu was where our concert would have been. He and I had been there once. We sat on a bench beside a large lake and talked about gravity and time and drank a bottle of Rosé. In truth, I admit I misled him with the term lake. The winery I was thinking of had a pool, a fountain, two small fortified dams guarded by large steel sentries. It looked more like an opulent bunker on top of a velvet, vineyard mountain. I misjudged Q's acuity, his attention to detail, his understanding of the English language and of negations and German names. When I said not Gundlach Bunschu, he understood this to mean Gundlach Bunschu and directed us there anyway, insisting that I was mistaken. It was okay. We drank wine and he frightened two women at an adjacent table as he decried the ugliness of elderly women and their dried out sexuality.

As we were leaving he realized his error, kind of, and said that the winery I was talking about earlier must be Artesa. So we went there. We hung around, drank our complicated wine and then left to eat oysters. We watched him argue with the waiter and make comic demands on the bar and kitchen both. He said he wanted the smallest cheeseburger in Sonoma, that he wanted it cut into four pieces and brought to our table. He said he wanted four french fries, that paying $3 for a standard serving was fucking crazy. He kept asking for more and more horseradish for the oysters, until we had a baseball sized dollop of it in a metal cup in the middle of the table. I think he enjoyed it more than the oysters. Initially he said, "I'm buying," but when the bill came he agreed only to pay only for the oysters.

Outside, after N and D ordered some ice cream, Q begged them for just one taste. At first they refused, but after a while they relented and gave him some. He seemed happy. We dropped him off back at home and we drove south to In-N-Out. We each had a burger. I forgot to warn them about the uselessness of the fries, of how they taste like a mix between soggy potato chips and cardboard. But they enjoyed it overall. It was everything they'd dreamed of.

Then we drove along the sea, beside the Golden Gate Bridge. We watched the sun set between the mountains and into the ocean as we cruised along winding roads toward Pt. Bonita Lighthouse. By the time we'd looped back around and emerged at the bridge the sky had become soft and pink and blushing, with creamy purples and blues as bruised as eyeshadow. We took it in in silence, not wanting to break the sunset's spell. We drove over the bridge to the Palace of Fine Arts and then to Sutro Tower. In the dark we looked out over the top of the city as the cold wind rushed around us. Cigarette smoke. Weed. Photos. Laughter.

We drove home in comfortable silence, exhausted and full. The crescent moon rose up into the sky and like a giant scythe cut down all of our concerns. We slept.

Pill Cosby

Friends in town, girls, two of them, brimming with period power. We went for dinner last night, and then drinks. And then more drinks. Some very lovely sentences were uttered. My favorite, spoken by my friend when confronted with a can of PBR, a shot of whiskey and a pickle back: "oh my god. This makes me sick, the smell. I gotta drink it." The night progressed pretty much in that fashion.

We walked through the windy San Francisco night back to my apartment, armed with two bags of potato chips and ice cream. We got home and I got them stoned before bed. We didn't eat the ice cream or the chips because one of them began laughing hysterically, calling the other one hideous, while the other was caught by a violent fit of coughing. I went to bed in the next room and heard her suppressed coughs through the open doors. I called out and asked whether she was okay, if she needed water. She said no. I brought her water anyway. Soon the coughing started again and I called out once more: do you need more water, or a cough drop maybe?

No, she said.

The coughs kept coming and I felt terrible for getting two innocent women on their periods completely stoned. All they wanted was to have a good time and get a decent night's sleep. My friend kept coughing and asked me if that was normal. Holy fuck, she was high as a damned kite! Have these girls never smoked pot in their lives? What had I done? No, certainly I remembered smoking pot with them ten years ago. Right? Oh my god; how high was I? 

Of course it's normal, I told her. Eat some chips and shut up.

Then I remembered I'd put quaaludes all over the potato chips.

"Actually, don't eat the chips," I said.

"Why," she asked in between coughs.

"You might O.D.," I said.

"On what?"

"Weed."

"But they're just chips."

"They're weed."

"Oh."

Holy shit, she was high. But, could you O.D. on weed? Was that true? Damn, I wasn't sure. I started worrying, imagining myself charged with two counts of manslaughter, jailed, accused of all kinds of indecency. I felt like old Pill Cosby. I prayed to Jesus and asked him to help us. The other one was completely quiet, asleep. To lighten the mood I joked about her being dead. That was my first mistake. Well, no, that was probably not true. I'd made others. The one who was awake, gripped by coughing paranoia, woke sleeping beauty to verify she was still alive. After some laughing I got up to get her a cough drop. I think she fell asleep after that.

Or she died.

I will update soon.

Hallelujah!

Yesterday we spent the day looking through old boxes, excavating the basement, searching for torn seams in dusty air mattresses. My jeans are filthy; my black shirt too. It looks like I stepped on a bloated, vacuum-bag land mine. I can't feel my legs. I can't help thinking there's something symbolic about checking for air leaks; running your fingers over smooth plastic and feeling for punctures, listening for the soft hiss of escaping air as the mattress exhales, taping up the holes, making it stronger. It's what we do to our selves when he have the intention to grow, to learn, to expand. No matter what we do though, no matter how full our hearts or heads become, no matter how many seams we patch up, we can't ever stop the air from seeping out. Even the healthiest, most air-tight air mattress will suffer from deflation over time. This is because gas molecules permeate through most solids. A friend made the analogy of a ball bearing dropped down a two mile stretch of wire mesh. It might take it a while, maybe hours, but eventually that ball bearing will make its way through to the other side. This is symbolic too. We're always losing pieces of ourselves to time; big silver birthday balloons huddled in a corner, dented and caving in, filling up with emptiness. Hanging helplessly from the ceiling, like wounded piñatas we wait for blindfolded time to bash us apart.

When we were done I went home and did some moderate cleaning while I drank a Corona and listened to Etta James, Solomon Burke, and James Carr. I'd never heard Solomon Burke before. He was very good, though I admit there is some novelty to hearing talented soul singers from that era. There's something charming about an expression of pain you haven't yet heard. Over and over I found myself kidnapped by aching melodies, musical ransom notes for lost love. More and more lately I think loneliness is what we are when we are most naked. Take away our money, clothes, possessions and companions and what do we have? Need. To need is to admit incompleteness, unfulfillment, insufficience; a desire for something other. And what is that, if not loneliness?

Oh, I nearly forgot about this morning:

I go to drop off some shirts at the dry cleaner and I walk outside right as the bus comes. Sweet. I board through the backdoor and over my headphones I could swear I hear a girl whisper "I wouldn't get on this bus if I were you." I hear it too late to turn to her to see whether she was talking to me or if I'd misheard her, and then the doors close. I touch my metro card to the reader and head toward the empty seat in the back. Once the bus is in motion I hear impassioned speech coming from the middle of the bus. People look very uncomfortable. I lower the volume on my headphones a bit to hear what's going on. I see a dude, homeless looking, maybe my age, drugged out, crazy, gesticulating with a black water bottle in one hand. His other hand is in the pocket of his hoody. Dude is yelling about Jesus and talking about how he's murdered someone and he's sorry for what he's done, how he's gonna make it right. People look really uncomfortable. He starts talking even louder, about the lord and redemption and salvation and atonement. People are visibly nervous. While this is happening, the bus driver is eyeing him in the rearview. The driver comes over the PA and says Divisadero is the last stop. Everyone looks annoyed, but thankful to be getting off the bus.

At this point we're a few minutes to Divisadero, maybe three stops away, four max. Dude literally begins screaming the word hallelujah at the top of his lungs, over and over and over and reaches into his pocket. I'm thinking, oh fuck, dude's gonna pull out a gun and start shooting up the bus. I'm gonna die here. Like this? C'mon! I almost died on Saturday; not again! Now we're coming up on Divisadero, he still hasn't stopped roaring hallelujah and the bus is like a fucking feedback loop of tension. People start rushing for the door and the guy lunges at some chick but doesn't touch her. Everyone is startled. I look at him as I pass and he starts beseeching people to embrace Jesus. I still don't know what the dude has in his pocket. Everyone gets off the bus and the driver is trying to get him off but he won't get off. Then, the driver gets out of the bus. The dude is in there screaming hallelujah, hallelujah! Hallelujah! You can hear the sirens coming. I just realized this story is anticlimactic. I didn't stick around to see the confrontation between him and the cops because I had to get to work. But if I were him, when they got there I would've definitely told them I was a huge Jeff Buckley fan.

The moral of the story is, if you ever need to stop and completely empty a bus, just keep yelling about Jesus for as long as you can, as loud as you can. Your prayers will be answered.

I Just Don't Want to be Free

Something told me it was over
When I saw you and her talking
Something deep down in my soul said, "Cry girl"
When I saw you and that girl, walking 'round, oooh

I would rather, I would rather go blind boy
Than to see you, walk away from me, child, oh, oooh
So you see I love you so much
That I don't want to watch you leave me baby
Most of all, I just don't, I just don't want to be free, no, oooh oooh

I was just, I was just, I was just sitting here thinking
Of your kisses and your warm embrace, yeah
When the reflection in the glass that I held to my lips, now baby
Revealed the tears that was on my face, yeah, oooh

And baby, baby, I would rather, I would rather be blind boy
Than to see you walk away, see you walk away from me, yeah, oooh
Baby, baby, baby, I'd rather be blind now

The Bigger Man

"They've probably already left us," he says.

"They'll wait," the other one says.

They walk through the snow covered forest, up the hill where tall pines stand covered in cake frosting. They've been walking a long time now. The air is cold and quiet except for the crunching of snow under their feet and the sound of their white breath. The larger one's face is red and numb. Early winter winds in Russia are fierce and full of novocaine.

"We were supposed to be there an hour ago," the smaller one says, "they've probably already gone."

The bigger one says nothing.

All around them are frozen trees and white ice that shimmers in the midday sun. Last night they ate too much, drank too much wine, slept too little and too late. Isn't it always that way?

"My head is killing me. Do you have the water?"

"You have your own."

"I drank it."

"We are almost there. You can have water once we arrive."

"If we are almost there then why does it matter if I wait?"

"Because this water is mine."

The smaller one glares resentfully as they march on. The sky gives little cover from the sun this time of day, and although it is freezing cold, they are frostbitten and sunburned. The snow brightens the light, doubles the dawn. Overhead a wandering waxwing flies like a thrown snowball from tree to tree, sending small explosions of powder as it goes. The bigger one thinks back to the night before, to dinner and the party. He sees her face, her eyes, her smile, the softness of her hair, the cut of her dress.

"Where are you going," she'd asked him when they came in. He'd gotten her to sit with him alone at a table.

"On an expedition," he'd said.

The smaller one was at the bar, already half drunk, talking loudly and laughing with the men there. The larger one could see him turning back over his shoulder to look at him as he talked to the girl.

"Oh," she'd said with interest, "to where?"

"Ah, it's nothing," he said modestly.

"No, I am curious," she said, "please, tell me."

"The Ural mountains."

Again the smaller man turned. He had a curious look in his eye. The larger one watched a wave of crooked courage spread across the little one's lips, creating a flippant, roguish grin.

"The Ural mountains," she said, surprised, "that is very far from here!" As the woman spoke the smaller one was already within earshot, walking stridently toward their table.

"Not far for us," the smaller one said as he sat down, "we've done it before. Twice."

"My, that's something. Just the two of you?"

"No," the smaller one said as the larger one opened his mouth to speak, "we're meeting the rest of the pack tomorrow."

"Pack," she said laughing, "you speak as though you were wolves."

The smaller one howled, showing his drunken, wine stained teeth.

She laughed and was no longer looking at the larger man. She went with the smaller one to the bar for more drinks.

He sat alone and watched them dance and laugh. He knew leaving too quickly would reveal his jealousy and make him look small, so he stayed. When his concern for appearances wore off he'd gone to his room. He'd replaced the wine with brandy and smoked an ashtray full of cigarettes before going to bed.

In the distance, perhaps a kilometer away, a large green building sits on top of a snowy embankment.

"C'mon, we are nearly there, let me have a drink of that water," the smaller one says.

"No."

"C'mon, we are a team, bratán."

"A pack, bratán," he says coldly.

After pausing, the little one asks, "this isn't about last night is it?"

"What about last night."

"The girl. You are upset about the girl."

"No."

"Then what?"

"I am teaching you a lesson about responsibility, self-reliance. I am doing it for you."

"You are teaching me a lesson about your selfishness."

The bigger one says nothing and keeps on walking. He takes out his canteen, takes a big drink, then puts it away.