Rise

If anybody has reason to yell, it’s her, and she’s screaming into the receiver.
I hold it away from my ear.
It’s 8:30 on a Saturday night and I’m walking down cross streets and alleys, dodging traffic, and it’s cold, the wind whipping down the avenues of block buildings, the chill shaking my veins.
“What do we do?” She asks.
I’m mumbling.
Downtown New York is peaceful at night. People are everywhere, all scurrying by, giving the solemn streets of Wall St. life, passing by the churches that line Broadway, everyone’s head bowed to the cold wind as if solemnly, disappearing down the holes that lead to the subways.
I’m standing in front of Trinity Church. Orange lights glaze the dark brown façade. The steeple rises high.
“You need to calm down,” I’m yelling. “It does nobody good to panic in this situation. And you’re panicking.”
I pause for effect.
“We know how this will end. We know what will happen to him. This isn’t an unfinished story. And you don’t need to be afraid of it.”
She’s crying.
“Can you imagine his life?” She says. “Sitting in that facility, in those padded rooms. He was never crazy. He was never like them, inside that psychiatric ward.”
“But he’s in there now.”
“I don’t even know him anymore. This isn't him. I just wish, wish it would all be the same again. I wish we could start again. This is not how it should end.”
I’ve made my way towards World Trade.
Ground Zero is fenced off and harsh fluorescent construction lights flood the landscape. The sound of heavy machinery echoes through the hollowed out shell of what once used to be the Twin Towers.
And some fifty stories up, a welder works on beams for the new World Trade, the half-finished skeleton of the reborn skyscraper glowing with soft orange lights from within, the strung-up construction lights of workers on the floors inside, building up.
This is where souls must sleep at, and where lives are being reclaimed at.
“Calm down. And understand it will all be better soon. This isn’t the end. This was never supposed to be how it ends.”

Nine Ten

New York, New York, New York.
Boom, Boom, Bam.
Sirens.
She's smiling at me with her eyes and I have vertigo because of it.
It's getting dark outside and it's warm inside, with her. And I’m sweating now.
Maybe sweating it all out.
Sitting, rain like shards of glass slashing against the window, and she asks me if I want a drink, smiling.
Boom, Boom, and suddenly I’ve had another and my phone is ringing. The doctor is on the other end.
I miss the call, deliberately.
And I missed the next call, deliberately.
I don't care. I don't want to pick it up. And she is rubbing the back of her hand on my shoulder. My phone was miles away in interest. But then again she is also miles away from my interest.
I’m trying to articulate that opinion to her, the break-up as it were, as the phone rings again after some time and it rings and rings and I finally look and it's not the doctor, but him, and I don't mind talking to him.
“I need to take this call,” I say, pretending it’s important, walking out of the room.
He slurs as he talks.
He's been drinking again and it's only 4 in the afternoon.
Then again, I’m no saint.
"5 o'clock somewhere," he says, more or less the signature slogan of a career alcoholic. "Join for a round. Or five. Tomorrow won't be that great a day, anyways. We can afford a hangover."
His voice is raspy. But his invitation is wrapped in sinister appeal. And five rounds seem perfect.
Besides, I don’t think I’ll be staying around her anymore.
I walk outside and it feels like the death of the universe just happened. The sky is dark, ugly and smeared on the horizon, the air chokes me, the smells sour in the mega city. There is no breeze, no wind in the trees, there are no sounds, just dampness from the just-happened shower. A car coughs by, spiting exhaust, and I cough.
She starts calling me as soon as I leave, craving for me to come back.
“I thought you wanted to talk about us."
“Whatever,” I mumble.
In the bar he and I drink and meet a banker and he is drunk and keeps handing me business cards. He says he's getting out of business soon. He asks if I want his business. He laughs. He thinks it’s funny. And then he looks at his watch and notices it's ten past 9, and he's already late. The babysitter can’t stay past 9:30.
I wave goodbye.
To my left, at a bar stool that is a little shorter than mine, my friend raises his glass and toasts, "to the economy," and we both gulp. His next toast is to our hangovers.

The doctor calls again around 9 a.m. when I'm slightly hung-over and working it off.
I've come to suspect early calls as harbingers of terrible news, and I hate when I'm right. She says that she had already tried calling yesterday. She tells me that my father is ill. She sounds somber. I hate when doctors sound somber, uncaring.
Medicine isn’t bureaucracy.
It makes her sound so lifeless, so cold, so devoid of anything.
I make a joke but it doesn't feel like a joke. It feels like I just said something wrong, or that I've just done something I should be ashamed of. It was really a bad joke, too, I think.
She doesn’t laugh. I'm talking to a zombie. Why would it be a laughing matter, anyways? Even across the distance, connected only by wires and radio signals, I can tell she doesn't even smile at me, or the joke, and I think that this really all is a joke, the whole damn situation.
"When can you visit him?" Her question is sharp.
I sigh loudly and it crackles over the speaker.
Maybe the sun is suddenly cloaked by streaking clouds and everything is grey. There is something inherently wrong, something rotten to the core with the environment all around me, and I'm not at ease. It's too early to not be at ease.
My head is throbbing and I'm fumbling with an aspirin bottle, the child-proof top anyways.
I ask what is wrong. The diagnosis is the same as it has been for years: he’s suffered another mental lapse, a relapse, and has been admitted into what boils down to an asylum and that I should be advised that he can’t stay there long because she knows he is medically able to quit being mental and as such the hospital cannot treat him. Drugs don’t help. And maybe she doesn’t want to help.
I laugh it all off, and it's a nervous laugh, and tell her I’ll be there as soon as possible, and she hangs up on me.
The cap pops off but the pills don't really give any relief.

The next day I'm thinking about calling the whole thing off, the whole grand affair I’m having with the girl, and I'm laying it out to him, the whole sad strategy to do so, and he's selflessly, longingly trying to reconcile the relationship because, as he puts it, "he hates to see a girl as pretty as a painting cry."
"It's not like she's holding a torch guiding us to freedom in this crisis," I say.
"She doesn't need to. You should hold your own torch."
"I passed that torch a long time ago, right after I used it to burn bridges."
I'm drinking a bourbon coke and the ice has melted but beads of cold perspiration still gather and drip from the glass and I put the glass to my forehead to cool my burning mind and I feel as a bead tickles and glides down my face, catching on my eyelash and the rim of my eye, then runs down my cheek as I blink it away.
"Weren't there good times?"
"Of course there were good times."
"Don't forget."
"I won't forget."
"Never forget."
"I won't forget."
"Don't forget."
There are sirens outside, rushing past.
I go to her apartment.
She asks if I want to come in.
I don't want to go, but it's getting dark outside and it's warm inside.
"I don't care where we do it.”
I guess things fall apart so quickly. I don't think she registers the end as I explain it to her. Maybe she's surprised. I half expect her to say, "Well this is out of the blue," because it is, on my end, because I didn't even see it coming until it was too late. Now it's kind of too late, and it's getting late, and I tell her it's getting late and I mutter my statement, my parting words, and tell her I really need to go. And I stand there, for a second, as it all crumbles.
She doesn't cry.
Of course I don't cry.
The TV is on behind her and the main character is in Miami and the character puts on sunglasses in one scene because it's sunny out and there is a pristine pale-turquoise sky, to use Crayola box terminology.
I think that tomorrow the weather man says it will rain. I grin at the irony. What is it that the Roman mantra says, "Great rains most typically occur after great battles."
This conversation is a battle, I think as she stares at me coldly.
The clouds are there. It was glittering sun today, like the sun on TV reflecting off the buildings and concrete. The main character adjusts her sun glasses.
Above a plane roars by. We hear it even inside.
Her phone rings. She doesn't answer. The TV cuts to a commercial.
Somewhere in the middle of it all we are a charred relationship, the two of us.
“Besides, I need to go to the hospital.”
I don’t go to the hospital that day, though.
I wake up early the next morning.
Cold sweat, nightmares, tossing and shaking through my sleep.
When bad dreams are on your mind, something is generally imminent.
The dream stays with me through the morning.
In the dream I'm somewhere, in some city, filled with lights and music. And the sky is falling, shards of glass-like rain slashing and splintering on the concert. Then there are the screams. The music turns into the distant sound of bagpipes. When did the Scottish get blended into the trip to the afterlife?
My throat tickles and I think I'm getting sick and I go get salt water to gargle. It's ten minutes after 9 in the morning and I won't be making work any time soon so I call in sick.
I need to go to the doctor.

High lights

There's something about the Kentucky air.
It's sweet as I step off the plane, and suddenly I'm back home.
That's how it ends.
The 8 p.m. from LaGuardia, flight 3033, U.S. Airways, is 10 minutes late -- 30 minutes early by LaGuardia standards -- the stewardess happy to be back. She's from Louisville because she pronounces "LOOVUL" properly on the intercom.
I wait to check my voice mails. It's nothing pressing I need to do, not at this time at least.
As I gather my luggage a group of girls make a rush to get out first, from the back, and they look impossibly tan, and one has sunglasses on, in the night, and I reach into my pocket for my phone then, because I'm pushed farther down the queue, and fumbling to listen to my voicemail I'm surprised to hear it's Ray and she's back from Europe as of yesterday, and she says she knows I'm probably tired, and fed up with nightlife after New Yorl, and probably broke, but it was a ridiculous trip in Europe -- one she needed a few drinks after -- and we could review it all later, but I should come out tonight, again, because she was with friends and all of my friends wanted me out.
My mouth is parched and suddenly I want water.
The kids look too impossibly tan, they really do, racing out as the stewardess opens the air lock. Nobody cares about skin cancer any more.
We walk down the tunnel and into the terminal and I always have that feeling that I forgot something, left something back there.
Outside the stars shimmer, and it's surprising because I'm used to the light pollution of the mega-city.
It's not raining, but in central Ohio, before our descent, I looked out the window and saw thunder clouds built like cities flashing lightening and spewing rain down on the ground below, cars like ants in perfect little lines making their way through the storm with their headlights like little eyes.
I'm not worried about the weather. It's too damn humid and showers would be savior to my sweaty brow.
In LaGuardia things moved fast for the first time I had been through there. That hustle makes for a sweaty plane ride.
In the early night we took off from New York, and I think it was a little more humid there,actually.
The plane lifted, the wings catching a current, rising in the evening sky. Sunset was on the right side, the window opposite of me alight in an orange glow.
Lifting past Manhattan, the high lights of the city, I saw her apartment, or maybe the building next to it, or the general cluster of buildings in that area in which she lived. Then again I forgot what the facade of her building looked like and I didn't really know what I was looking for and I didn't really know if I would find hers specifically, and I guess it wasn't important because I thought of her none-the-less. I missed her right there, feeling like my life was a little more vacant as we flew over and away, higher and faster, and faster and higher into the clouds until her building was gone. The high lights faded.
I laid back and my wondering wandered and I thought that everything in the past seems to move faster and faster until you forget, and then it's gone. My memories are clouded. So I thought about her a little harder.
Manhattan is nice at night and it was a mooney night that night in the high lights when we first met, her and I. That's what I remember without even trying.
And if memory serves me well, she complained that she couldn't get a tan that summer because of the constant rain.
That's how it started.
There was just something in the air.
I think I smiled then like I smiled en-route to Louisville, Kentucky, the 3033, 8 p.m., out of New York.
In my car I switch the ignition, speed away from the parking structure. Alone on the highway, eyes adjust to lower lights of smaller civilization.

Text

She texts me if I ran shirtless, I said, "Sure," just to get things a little hot.
No less than 45 seconds later I text back if she's shirtless, to keep the heat on, but she writes, "no," and that she's on the train, and she says, "But I am panty-less," followed by, "Seriously, I didn't pack them."
She claims she forgot.
I text, "hmmm," And don't know what to say, and refrain, or choke, or cough, or grin, or panic, or tense up. But she doesn't know.
"I don't mind." I say it without thinking. It comes out wrong, but seems true enough.
I don't get an instant reply so I throw my phone down, mutter, "tough," maybe said the wrong stuff.
She writes, "ha."
Simple, too simple, really, but a reply non-the-less.
I forget what I reply next, still it's nothing about sex.
Then the breakthrough: "I really like you."
I fumble the answer, draft a text, then erase, than do the same three more times. Normally I'm more tightly laced, I think.
I tell her I agree, simply.
"The train is moving too slow," she says, the conversation suddenly shifting.
I say: "Let's talk more about the things you didn't pack."
There is no response
Pick-up lines are a talent in which I lack.

Broken TV

Broken everything.
It's 85 degrees outside and the AC won't kick on.
My computer blew two days ago.
The signal fades on my phone.
My tooth brush is old.
My contact prescription is wrong.
I see blurry everything, struggle to adjust my vision.
The office never sent my check from last week.
Ants invade my bathroom.
The milk was expired.
My car is almost out of gas.
Gas is too expensive anyways.
I'm driving to the airport.
To pick you up.
The sunset looks beautiful.
The car windows are down.
My hair is a mess.
I'm smiling.
I look in the rear view mirror and realize I'm smiling.
For no reason.
I had no idea I was smiling.
Or because I'm driving to the airport to pick you up and, suddenly, everything in my life seems so perfect, and there's nothing to worry about, and it all seems so put together.
I can't stop smiling.

Stupid thoughts

Driving through the forest and there is snow on the ground, powdering everything.
I'm listening to the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" and I think that it's a summer song and it's weird to have a summer song playing with snow on the ground.
I'm heading towards work and it's early and the sun is already above the white hills and the light glistens on every snow-covered tree.
The landscape looks good dressed in white.
I have the heat blowing on my hands to get them warm.
I'm thinking about drinking.
I'm in Germany on one of the most amazing adventures of my life and I'm thinking about drinking.
I shake my head, swallow a sour taste from my mouth.
"I'm such an idiot," I say to nobody in the empty car.
The snow looks beautiful in the alien landscape, and it's terrible I want to be somewhere else.

Science Hill

My phone rings and I ignore it.
It's the first thunder storm of the season, and I feel like I'm watching rain for the very first time, captivated.
There is one big, fat cloud -- a purple, blue and scarlet blob -- applying darkness to the world, drifting slowly and cloaking the sun. I watch it from a hill miles from its epicenter, a hill still soaked in sunlight.
Science Hill isn't being rained on.
I stare at the opposite scene with mortal amusement, and she walks up and says it's beautiful.
"Isn't it?"
I don't take my eyes away, annoyed that she's suddenly broken my solitude.
"Cold air pushing warm currents, all invisible," she says. "Oxygen and hydrogen mixing a trillion times over, forming tiny drops. And that can sometimes lead to a flood. So much of such tiny things."
"Unbelievable."
We're quiet, staring, like in a museum at a portrait, the smudges of clouds the colors, the downpour the brush strokes.
It's Science Hill's Science Day, and there are a lot of people with an understanding of things beyond my understanding, talking about things beyond me.
They serve champagne and I tell her that I like the champagne.
I'm dressed as the best I think I am, blue suit, Hilfiger, darker blue tie, DKNY, brown shoes, shined, and she just grins at me with a smile that could easily beat all of it, handing me a drink from a shimmering silver tray beside us.
"Have some more."
There is electricity in the dank air.
Maybe protons and neutrons collide between us, but I don't feel them, lost in my own clouded thoughts.
We are talking about nothing suddenly, her and I, and I can't focus, focusing only on a text I got earlier with three simple, stupid words: "It's not good."
And I don't feel good, spiritually. Science Day on Science Hill may as well be a washout, for me. I'm done with today.
We talk more about nothing: informalities that are so much formalities that they are insignificant.
I stare at the rain and think that I wish it would just pour on me, drown me, wash me away, flood my mind and submerge everything in my mind.
She mentions that she's still paying for her PhD, and that the recession isn't helping, adding something or another about a student loan bill that just passed the Senate.
"I don't trust Senators," she explains.
"Can't trust everyone," I add with cynical emphasis
My phone rings and I ignore it, and she realizes that I'm ignoring her and she walks away after quick informal goodbyes.
I'm alone in a crowd of scientists, but it doesn't last long.
He begins talking to me, suddenly, about his work, how he's been recognized for his work, and how his work is changing.
He's the chairman of the science board.
"Politics, though, isn't my strong point," he says.
I mention that humans are naturally disposed to politics.
He explains that ideas are so hard to sell, for people to grasp.
"I have something new," he says, his grey eyes wild with a deep excitement. "Something extraordinary."
"When will you unveil it? Today?"
"Later," he says. "Always later."
At Science Hill the next big thing is always tomorrow, he says, and I'm thinking about tomorrow, not today, a wasted day.
I have eight missed calls, and I sigh, ignoring the voice mails.
I wonder if the scientists ever wonder about the human side of things. It's not always abstract. Today I screwed up and paid a consequence as a result and today I feel the storm building up and can only imagine how it will end. I'm surrounded by smart people, a lot of people. I want one of them to explain to me what to do.
Somebody gives them bad news, too.
At Science Day they announce that funding for Science Hill has been cut and, suddenly, it's raining on everybody.
I smile, actually, as misery suddenly has company, and, finally, I've found it at this party.
"That's what this Great Recession has done for us," one person states.
Then it turns into academic analysis, as it always does here.
"Economics is cyclical," he explains. "We'll get through it."
And he's standing next to me telling me the greatness of economics as a natural science, a cyclical science, something that has ebb and flow, or is seasonal, like a bountiful summer to cold winter. He smiles as he talks, his grey eyes and hair shimmer with the analysis. Maybe I forget, for a second, about the emotional weight of the natural process economics has on life, and look at it from an abstract way.
"Phoenix rises and falls, then again," he concludes.
His words ring in my ear, and I've finally unsorted the knotted rope of my problems.
Then there is another ringing.
Wires spark and satellites send an array of radio signals through the nothingness that is the atmosphere and a transmitter tower collects them and distributes them and the device in my pocket accepts them and my phone erupts, all in a split second.
The phone whines and vibrates, and I ignore it.
"Won't you get it?" He asks.
"It's just the same person who has been trying to get a hold of me all day," I say. "And I've had a bad day."
"Call them tomorrow," he says. "It's a new day."
Then he walks away.

Sedentary Traveler

"Whale hunting, sometimes," He says. "And I've made an igloo. There are no nights in summer, no days in winter. All-night parties in the snow. The girls sometimes where bikini tops."
"Lush life."
"Lifeless, lushless," he sighs, drinks.
I tell him he's the first Eskimo I've met, that you never really think you'll meet an Eskimo, that I totally pictured Eskimos different,, and I'm in the middle of a mojito saying a variety of other politically incorrect things when she comes out of nowhere, yelling, smiling, saying we haven't seen each other in months.
More like years, I correct.
She's beaming with fake interest in me, all parts of her, and we proceed through classic "I missed you" formalities and she finishes by saying that she's just come back from London.
"Our little project has really taken off like a bottle rocket," she says describing a non-governmental organization she helped build there. "We're helping funnel food, radios, and diapers to Haiti now."
"That's amazing," I say. "Why diapers?"
"They're a mother's best friend."
"You wouldn't know."
"Men don't know."
I want to tell her something along the lines of "duh" and be really harsh about it when he adds, "I've never thought of that, either."
He's gazing at all the parts of her that are beaming, longingly. She seems annoyed by it, glances with ice cold eyes, and excuses herself, to make a phone call, "to London."
She says it with an air of superiority, and I'm flustered for a second, then tell myself I haven't done anything for Haiti lately.
Whatever.
Our waitress -- brown eyes shimmering, grinning at me with a certain lust behind her features -- asks if we need anything else, then lays down the check.
Maybe she's just doing it for a tip, I think.
And besides, I'm not interested. I'm talking to an Eskimo who says he'd love to go to Budapest, and nothing could be more interesting as he sketches on a napkin, pushing a boat out into the sea with a felt-tip pen the waiter gave him to sign the bill.
"There's nothing up there, for you to see," he says, meaning Alaska. "Budapest -- If I had wind pushing me, I would go to Budapest."
I'm entertained by the sudden culture quirk in his vocabulary.
"What does it look like?" Alaska I mean.
"Flat. No depth."
"I hear Budapest has nice architecture."
And he tells me something about its Western and Eastern European roots, and Turkish influence, or something he may have seen on the Discovery Channel, and I'm not really listening as the gorgeous waitress with brown eyes drops a pen and picks it up again.
It's only a momentary lapse.
As he draws I notice that it's a sail boat, not a canoe, or something native to his Eskimo tradition. I want to ask why a sailboat, and not a canoe, than think about political correctness and how I should be cognizant of such. It's so hard to be correct today.
"Where is it sailing to," I ask.
"Nowhere," he laughs, showing off bad teeth. "There's no wind!"
I'd been sitting at the bar with him for a few hours and the music that's playing has no rhythm and we were full on food so the beers didn't get us as buzzed as we'd like, so we leave.
Putting on my jacket I tell him how I just got a postcard from my brother, written from Paris, with love. It outlined how much he hated Paris. It was so superficial, he said. There was no depth, it was like so many other cities.
"Tourist pit," he said.
No layers to discover.
"I saw something on Paris on TV," he says.
Outside there is no wind. I can't immediately hail a cab.
"I think we may be going nowhere, fast, for a while," I say.
"Typical," he adds. "You can't really get away from it, I suppose."
His face twists with the irony, almost.
I laugh at the popcorn-opera reading of it all, the sedintary bore of it all.

Falling

In the shadown of oblivion I'm walking, past Ground Zero, the epicenter of modern history, my coat over my shoulder, my tie flapping in the southside sea breeze, my sun glasses tucked in my breast pocket, smiling.
If the soundtrack of my life were playing at this very moment, the bass would be mosterious, shaking and large, a soft drumline adding balance, auto rock.
Ba Ba Ba Ba BaBABABA BA Ba Ba Ba Ba BaBABABA BA.
It would be powerful.
Because, walking two blocks away from Wall St. I feel powerful, confident.
Around the corner the door man greets me.
I walk in, 12 up, out the elevator, in the hallway and on to door No. B.
Shoebox-size, the apartment feels warm.
She's smiling, warm.
We're standing in the shadows, her and I.
How did all this start?
Where did it all begin?
She comes close.
And I feel confident.
In the present I feel steady.
In the past, I was more shaky.
What was it she said?
"What do you have, a girlfriend? Boyfriend? What's your story?"
"I, uh, wow, you seem to ask a lot of questions, like a journalist, are you a journlist?"
"Just interested. And interested in knowing what I'm getting myself into."
It was something to that effect.
Then after a few hours of talking: "Listen to what I say, because it's really complicated..." and I tell her how much I like her, want her. Something to that effect.
Actually I mumble something, make it more complicated than it is, really.
We're together, then, right now. Close, running our finger across each other's clothes.
The material is soft, my hand slight.
She's close.
Then hot.
Then her eyes are bright. Tractor beams on my own.
My fingers tingle.
Hers wrap around my waist.
She smirks, laughs.
I smile.
I can't stop smiling.
Smiling. And falling.
Falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
And I'm sitting straight up in the bed, my shirt off, the AC blasting cold on my skin, my hair a mess, my eyes dialated with some strange emotion, my jaw dropped and just laughing.
It's 7 a.m. and I'm laughing hysterically.
In the shadow of oblivion I'm laughing hysterically.
I fall back and my back falls on the mattress.
I tell her I can't stop laughing. It's not even funny anymore.
I don't even know where I am, when I am, the past and present can't sort themselves out. My mind is eliptical. This feels eternal.
And she smiles.

Parallel Lines

Two-way highway ahead and I'm going 79 on a stretch of 65, clearly not thinking.
About driving, anyways.
The four lanes blend to two, and I get in the fast lane, thinking of you.
Black hair.
Brown eyes.
Eyes that smile.
A car pulls up next to me, also speeding, aligned with me, and neither of us pull away from the other, staying parallel for a stretch.
It's funny how much you and I are the same.
Two parrallel lines.
Two copies. Perfect copies.
Key and a lock.
If I say the lines, will you say them with me, I wonder?
I slow down, focus more on driving.
When I stop, there is a man playing a yukalaylee on a porch, smiling, squinting with the sun in his face. My music plays loud and streams into my car through of my open windows, and my stereo is going, but the beat of my stereo seems to blend with the strings of his song. I wave and he nods.
I smile as I think how much we blend perfectly together.

Dressed

"I'm so tired playing," she sings. "Playing with this bow and arrow," the stereo belts. "Gonna give my heart away."
I brush my teeth, and rinse for a fresh feeling. I take off my glasses, set them aside.
With my contacts in I shave, then run my fingers along the smooth lines of my face.
Can't be a hot mess.
I exhale, wrestle with creased pants.
I adjust my tie, pulling and pushing it stout around my neck.
The fishbowl bathroom bulbs burn bright and I stare at my features in the mirror.
My left shoulder tingles, twitches, from a workout last night, and I rub it, then put the sport jacket on, button the first, but not the second.
Confidence swells.
This new frame of mine is just fine.
"..." The stereo belts.
I take a look outside, glancing for weather patterns and making my own novice forecast.
No umbrella.
"From this time, unchained, we're all looking at a different picture through this new frame of mineeee," she sings, bass heavy.
For a minute I sway with the music.
I tie my shoes, rub them, brush off a smudge for a cleaner, clearer shine.
In the morning I don't think about all the mess, the dirtiness, the faults, the failures, the causes or the actions, the decisions and the complexities. I inhale, I exhale. And pick up my keys, wallet, phone. And fix my hair one last time.
It's all perfect.
To think that thought seems disgusting. To say that thought out loud sounds even more vial. Nobody likes optimism, especially in the morning. But it's a thought I can't get out of my mind. My heart burns with the thought. My soul flourishes. I grin, or smile, or chuckle, or smirk, or am content with a twitch of my lips, or whatever the method of acknowledging one's contentedness is. And I adjust the cuffs of my sleeves, leaving them a half an inch from my coat, perfect, as I open the door.
"..., ...., ..." The guitar rifts. "This is the beginning of forever and ever."

Bra

It's humid.
Some time around midnight the AC kicks on, or rather, is kicked on.
Everything else is kicked off.
As dark as it is, it doesn't feel that way; the computer screen blazing bright, the electricity of it all, the room translucent, latent, lucid. Mixed and changing.
Circuits meld, blend, neurons process, gather, hard drives cultivate, save, lights flash, drives start, little speakers swell, tracks change, signal is found, then lost, fans cool, buzz, text and window fades.
Screen saver.
After everything is silent the AC is the only sound. It breaths polar into the room. It seems like the hot and cold should cause a mist, spiraling and snaking around skin.
In the catacomb of catacombs on the island, she remarks that, if it'll take this long, she'll take it off herself.
Then laughs.
You think of all the places in the world: Cancun, Clearwater, Munich, Montreal, San Francisco, Singapore, and a thousand other places -- and you really don't want to be anywhere else but here, now.
Sometime past midnight it all fades to dream.
Then the alarm is screaming, yelling, and eyes are ripped open.
You can't see the sun rising from the window, deep inside the catacomb apartment.
Outside the air smells different, fresh for the first time, a sea breeze.
Past Ground Zero and on Wall Street, the businessmen look like ghosts at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Which is ironic. For all the right reasons.
She walks and her heels smack the pavement past Trinity Church, heading to the Green 4/5/6. And she smiles.
And lips lock.

Hot Minute

iPhone says the weather will be stormy, he announces.
But she's not paying attention.
He slides the phone in his pocket.
I make decisions, decide to purchase. They beat me to checkout.
The iPhone rings.
Late night, the store is closing and the ring echoes.
Over the counter, I'm asked about paper or plastic. It's philosophical, really.
"Neither." I'll hold it.
I walk fast out the door.
I'm late.
We meet on the corner of an avenue and street, her and I. I'm semi-lost. She asks why I didn't get a bag. The moon dips behind a curtain of clouds. A car honks,a generator hisses, a man raises a cup half-full with change at passers-by. It's that normal soundtrack of the City. I say I'm so tired of honking cars. She says we need to make it 30 blocks in 30 minutes. I whistle as we walk.
She smiles.
Down the stairs, we head to the catacombs.
Red or blue line, 1/2/3, A/C/E, X/Y/Z? The train is late. I make a crude comment about the F train, making further crude comments comparing it with the local and express. She laughs.
Take the subway then, only halfway, and take a taxi across the island, east to west, where the trains can't run. Next to me, she's singing the song on the radio. We pull up, we pull over.
Stop.
Debit or Credit? Cash. Cash back, too. And a receipt. So I remember. It can't be another New York morning, staring into an empty wallet bewildered.
Riverside. Up a street, down a street, over a block. She's wearing high heels and they click on the pavement.
Stop at the corner. Cars shoot by. Everyone in a rush. A woman strolls up, walking a dog. She's in no rush. I look at my reflection in the mirror while she fixes her hair. The breeze blows. The doorman nods, salutes with his hat. I realize we're river-side. The air is better here.
Open door, close door. Up 30 stories to his place. More mirrors in the elevator. I fix my hair. She stares. I consider kissing her deep and long, and she stares at me with absolute passion filled in her eyes. The mirrors make it all seem multiplied. Open door, close door, open door, he's there. We're the only one's there, in the hallway, and he tells us to take our shoes off before we step on the carpet. He smiles as he greets us. I shake his hand, unknowing what to do as his girlfriend comes in for a hug. I smile. She smiles. We smile.
The apartment is cavernous for a New York apartment, and I sit on a couch a explain, "This is true living, especially on this island."
He pours a drink. Another for me, and one for them. They drink, I sip. He asks if I want vodka, rum, whiskey, bourbon, beer. "No, water is fine." It was a long weekend, I explain. He claims there is no water. "But there is wine." My decision turns from water to wine. "Never stand empty-handed." I smile. She smiles back. The two of them, him and her, smile at both of us. This is how porn movies start. And horror movies. I tell them that. "It's funny how the two seem related," I say. Everyone laughs. I'm the center of attention. In New York it's a magnificent feeling.
I turn to her and she's still staring, eyes deep in mine. It's a heavy smile, mine. She grins. It's a sharp grin.
Other's enter. Door opens, closes, opens, closes, opens, closes. Shoes are scattered across the hallway. Seven people have iPhones. Four say it will rain within ten minutes. One of them is juggling their phone with a glass of wine, careful not to spill it on the carpet.
The carpet is a gorgeous ivory.
More wine. More wine bottles. We uncork two within a minute, pouring.
Pretty soon we're all drunk and it's raining outside. Pouring.
"I want to give my soul what it needs. Tell me this is more than booze, sex and weed," he says. He's pouring, his soul, his drink.
I say I like a painting on his wall. He says he doesn't know the painter or era. I ask if he bought it at Wal-Mart. He stares at me with a blank expression.
"Ikea."
Whatever, and then there is a clap of thunder, and the thunder in the City sounds so foreign, so weird, echoing off the multitude of concrete and glass walls, rattling down the avenues.
"Come smoke with me," he says.
"Why?" But I walk out the door anyways.
He hands me a cigar and it feels so masculine, outside, in the rain, smoking cigars. I attempt to blow smoke rings and cough.
"I don't smoke."
He smiles.
We stand under a canvass overhang, the doorman behind the glass doors.
The rain is coming down and there is lightening and another clap of thunder and she walks out and he stares at me, then her, then us, then smiles, then walks back in.
I exhale, smoke escaping my lips.
She smiles.
For one hot minute we stand there.
It's raining and we step closer then, to avoid the water pouring off the canvass.

Spectacles

Jason sits next to me in the cab, complaining that he hasn’t had a drink in four days.
We’re driving en route to a night on the town and he’s as impatient as ever to get things going. Personally, I’m enjoying the evening ride, watching the world blur by.
The midnight sky is dark and there is an electric blue moon arching high, reflecting off the flowing river next to us. It makes for a spectacular effect, glittering like champagne, lovely under the neon light.
We drive with the windows down and the breeze blowing through the car.
“This wind messes up my hair,” Jason complains to no one, then repeats to the taxi driver. The windows now closed, he slides his fingers through his gelled hair, realigning strands.
“How does it look?”
I fix my glasses.
“Fantastic. You’re a lady killer.”
He’s wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans, at least I think they’re jeans, and I have to adjust my glasses in the glare of the moon to see them clearly.
I hate wearing glasses. The bridge keeps slipping from my nose. The arms chafe my ears. Normally it’s contacts I wear, but I ran out yesterday.
“Where are you from?” Jason asks the driver.
“Senegal.”
“How’s the winter there?”
“What?”
“Where is that? Is it warm?”
Jason makes you feel like you’re a good person, a better person, someone who gets the world. And that’s a reassuring thought. Not to say Jason is a bad person. He’s a bit crazy, lives too hard, and only tolerable in small doses. But his conversation is good and his philosophies make sense and, with certain friends, that's really all you can ask for.
The cab races down the road with an urgency to get this fare over with and move on. As we pull into the city the electric blue of the moon is replaced by the sickly electric orange cones of street lights. Jason mumbles that he’ll have a something and coke.
We stop at a bar called the Desert, or Dessert, I don't get a good look at the name, but it makes me remember a place I went to called The Oasis. The Oasis was in the middle of a forest in Germany, and you went there to get drunk. I stopped by a few times while on assignment covering the military in the area. It was nothing more than a watering hole for soldiers on R&R, back from down-range, who hadn't drank for some time. Typically things got out of hand. I remember that, when I left the Oasis, someone was on the verge of beating another's head in with a bar stool.
The Desert isn't that kind of place.
There's a pool table in the middle and a blonde and a brunette playing when we walk in.
They stare at us like vampires.
Jason is already at the bar and he walks back with two drinks.
“This is for you,” and he toasts. “To America.”
I lift my glass.
“I think Marie is here,” I say, unsure if he hears me.
Jason drinks hard, stares at the vampires, and they stare back.
I stare, too. Behind my lenses my eyes scan their curves like a Terminator. The blonde whispers in the other's ear, their chests rubbing close together, the brunette with a shirt too small for her upper body that's more angled than the corners of the billiard table, the blonde with eyes that make you wonder if you're already under the influence as she looks away and leans over to expose her already exposed back in her tank top, a strap sagging as she aims, positioning to get a stripe in the center pocket, arching for the perfect balance to avoid a scratch.
The Desert is a bad place to be when you're thirsty. And I sip.
Purple cigarette smoke spirals from an ash tray beside me, and Jason asks if I want one.
“I don't think I'll go to church tomorrow,” he says with a smile.
We meet Edison a little later. Edison is back from Iraq, on R&R from the Army’s 101st Airborne, and toasting to the occasion. Therefore Jason is toasting to the occasion.
“To America,” We all say.
Edison is built like he should belong in the ranks of an ancient army, the kind that would just bash the enemy’s head in. Still, he smiles constantly. He is friendly and begins talking about his time as a linebacker for a college team out west. He had so many tackles in so many seasons, and normally the numbers would make sense, but I’m not really focused as I study the pool game in front of us, and the players.
Edison says he considered the NFL.
“Country first,” he adds, and I don’t think he’s boasting; only stating facts.
“Where’s a journalist when you need one?” Jason says, looking at me with a wide smile. “What a fantastic story.”
“Are you a journalist?” Edison asks.
I nod and he proceeds to explain why he hates the mass media, citing that some newspaper somewhere at someone point attempted to libel his father. I quickly change the course of the conversation, intimidated. I’m hesitant to ask Edison about the military, though he touches on good stories, including his participating in the sacking of one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces. I’m afraid if I push too hard the wrong stories would come out. Probably dark stories. Not stories for tonight.
Jason has gone to get drinks and is now talking with a man at the bar that looks Middle Eastern, dressed in a Western suit. The man is smiling and nodding and I can tell, even from afar, that Jason is talking about nothing in particular, probably himself. I wonder if Americans realize they’re the center of the world, the center of the universe for that matter, and that attention isn’t hard to come by.
I fix my glasses.
The two walk back to our table and the man says he is from Dubai, here on business. He comments that he enjoys this country and is happy his own country can help continue supplying our energy needs. I consider the comment odd, as Jason laughs and gulps hard.
Edison stares at the man, a certain fire in his eyes. I’m unsure if the man sees it and keeps laughing with Jason. They talk, then, about oil, as Jason is a businessman with an eye on investments. Oil, he says is what this country needs to continue functioning: “Cheap and easy, what the nation is built on,” he says. “Besides, alternatives are nothing more than pipe dreams.”
The man from Dubai commends Jason on his astute observations and reinforces his views, adding that it would cost billions to switch from the “Oil Age” to the “Tree Age.”
Still, you can’t help but wonder when the Oil Age will end, I say.
“There is enough for another 100 years,” the man from Dubai says. “We just need to make sure it’s in the right hands. Maybe 200 years. As long as more men lay down their lives to make oil a possibility.”
It seems like the man from Dubai was attempting to make a joke, but nobody laughed.
“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” Edison says.
I stare, and Jason stares, and the man stares, and Edison stares back.
The man from Dubai leaves. It seems like his exit is overdue.
“That was kind of unnecessary, don’t you think?” Jason asks.
“What do you expect, we’re children of 9/11,” Edison says. “And they’re the enemy.”
I laugh a laugh you laugh when you’re not sure what else to do. But it all makes sense. Sons of 9/11 in the Oil Age have a natural, ideological enemy in the Arabs. Or is it vice versa? The name too, works well, has a certain ring, and I wonder what history will write about the sons of 9/11, and of the Oil Age, and if it’ll be a good enough story kids will want to read about.
I adjust my glasses.
“Is Marie here?” Jason says.
“Who’s Marie?” Edison says.
“They were together,” Jason points to me. “And he’s still in love.”
“Let’s get a drink,” I say.
Cassidy is a vampire. She tells us her name perched atop the bar, swaying her hips to the music, dancing somehow gracefully in high heels.
Jason asks if he can buy her a drink.
“Absolutely.” And he helps her down.
As we wait, we talk, and talking to Cassidy I find out she’s 20 and she snuck into the Dessert with a friend. She’s wearing a low-cut shirt and she doesn’t look 20. The combination probably worked in her favor. She tells me not to tell anyone, and I promise not to. She slides the blonde hair from her eyes and tells me I’m cute. I don’t say another word to her. She turns her attention to Jason, who is interested in what she has to say in so much as a means-to-an-end objective can be. Cassidy is still swaying, her smooth skin and bracelets shimmering in the light. She seems unnaturally down to Earth in the bar, no excitement, like she’s done this a thousand times and isn’t impressed. It looks like the only pulse she has is with her rhythm. She allows only short smirks as Jason talks about himself. Her eyes constantly stay on his, though she seems weary. She herself doesn’t say much, and when she does her small talk is like chloroform.
The other vampire, the brunette, is bent over with the cue stick. Her earrings sparkle in the pale light, a tag the reads “Victoria’s Secret” clearly visible through her shirt. My glasses fog up in the humid Desert and I order a glass of ice water to come to my senses.
Jason, Cassidy and Edison head outside, to the patio. It’s gotten later and the night above has grown out of control. Staring up, my eyes adjust and focus. The moon is almost full – empty at the top and the sides – and has taken a bright, pale blue hue, the craters like pock marks on its face. The stars gleam like milky white pimples soaking through a black blanket; the smaller, more distant pin pricks barely visible, drowned out in the growing portrait. They are the most distant of distances, light years away, where time is tomorrow, or yesterday, or another matter entirely. The world comes into perspective as galaxies fill my view, tentacles swaying, swinging, grabbing, wine-red and deep blue, vibrant yokes, turning like cogs in the machine of the evening; the arms reaching out to grab me, pull my gaze, twist and turn my vision. I become lost in the evening’s vortex, like sweet Charybdis.
I fix my glasses.
Torches are set up around the patio, the metal kind which look like a mix between umbrellas and a car muffler.
We sit. Cassidy has her upper body sprawled across her arms which are crossed along her chest. A shoulder strap sags and she readjusts it. Her legs are crossed and her foot is bobbing as she smiles slightly. We make eye contact, but it seems frosty. She points over my shoulder and says, “Look at this guy.”
I turn around, and recognize the man. Lane Tammer is at the far end of the patio bar making a fool of himself. He’s speaking to the man from Dubai, raising his arms and half jumping to grab onto a beam that is exposed a foot above. Lane will periodically do five or so pull-ups on the beam. Women stroll over to watch. The man from Dubai is smiling, enjoying the attention his new friend generates. Cassidy is up from her seat now and walking over to be part of the flock. Jason doesn’t seem to mind, but his eyes follow every step she takes. In the dim light, with the people all around, Lane looks like a carnival attraction, like the body builder with a mustache who holds a woman up in his palm. Then again he always has been nothing more than an unfamiliar attraction, fleeting as the glamour slowly wares off. I turn around.
After some time Lane sees me, breaks off his antics and strolls to the table.
“You never call anymore,” he says with a slap on the shoulder.
“I don’t really bother.”
“Met someone over there,” he points to the man from Dubai. “He doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Marie is here.”
She walks by just as he says it and I look the other way, trying to draw as little attention as possible. I glance back as she passes. Marie is wearing a white blouse, crisp, and white skirt that lands right above her knees, flowing, and wears her long dark hair across her shoulders. Lane grins as he sees her, and then turns his grin to me.
“What is she Spanish or French, or something foreign, right?” Lane asks.
I don’t answer, consumed in watching her.
She meets someone, her boy friend, and he walks over and leans in for a kiss. I tighten. It’s sweet, it really is, but I don’t have the stomach to look and instead look away. Suddenly he’s gone and she’s searching the bar for a friendly face. Our eyes lock.
She sits in the chair vacated by the vampire, and smiles.
“I didn’t recognize you in glasses.”
“Normally it’s contacts I wear. But I ran out yesterday.”
“They make you look like Clark Kent.” She says, her Portuguese accent faint.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Not tonight.”
“Everyone else is,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to be the only one out.”
“Get me water.”
I come back with two waters. We talk and she smiles at me, twisting the straw of her drink between her fingers, brown eyes focused and bright. I realize that I’m tangled in them, her eyes, lost, my mind drifting in the night above. We talk about a thousand things seemingly forever.
Her boyfriend returns, talking loudly, drunkenly, running his hand up her thigh, cutting me out of the picture. Suddenly they’re kissing wildly. I feel like I shouldn’t be here, like I’m on the outside looking in.
I adjust my glasses.
They stand up. The wind blows and the breeze runs through my fingers, sliding through them, empty.
“We need to be going,” Marie says. I nod. Maybe I smile. Maybe she sees I don’t. Maybe it’s obvious. I wish it were more obvious.
I watch her walk away, disappearing in the smog of cigarette smoke, the flood of people. Lane walks back with the man from Dubai.
“She looks good.”
“Yeah.” I say.
“Always had.”
“What do you want?”
He takes a swig. “I bet I could have had a shot with her.”
I hesitate. “You’re confident.” A pause, then, “Really, you do know you’re talking to the wrong person about this. I mean, I’m still in love with her.” The last part comes out almost as a gasp, and to no one in particular.
“I’m not sure she ever loved you.”
I don’t hesitate. At that point I'd had enough and I let loose, let fly, fists pounding, knocking him to the ground. Someone pulls me away. I readjust my shirt and glasses and he gets up, sniffs, blood running down his lip, stares at me, reels back and then it's my turn to go down.
My glasses are broken. The bartender is dragging me out and I land on the curb, get up, readjust my shirt and collar.
“The police will be here in a minute,” he says.
“That's fine,” I dust off my pants. “I'm satisfied.”
And I walk away.
Maybe that's the way it should happen. Maybe I win. Maybe I lose. Maybe Edison helps out. He’d ask what we we’re fighting for. I’d say a girl. It wouldn’t sound as stupid as it does. Edison seems like he’d enjoy fighting the battle of Troy. But Lane isn’t on the ground, only in front of me staring, grinning something ridiculous. And I can only drink.
I realize I’m drinking memories, one’s I’d just vomited up, and I’m disgusted with it.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah, she never really loved me,” I say. “Why don’t you go somewhere else. I’m done talking.”
I stare and Lane stares back. Then he excuses himself.
A band starts to play. I pick up my blues drink and swallow hard, then lay it back on its soggy napkin. The music, the bass is loud in the room, people scurrying all around. The vampires dance. Slowly. Intoxicating. I wonder what it would be like if they bit my neck.
“Do you think I'm getting too old?” Jason says lighting up again, suddenly next to me. The flare of the match flashes along the features of his face. He takes a drag, smiles a smoke-ringed smile.
I see he's buzzed. “No. There's still some kid in you.”
“You know how old that one is?” He points to Cassidy.
“No,” I say.
“I don’t think I want to know.” He takes a drag. “Shame. She’s the only girl here that’s into me.”
Jason smashes the cigarette into an ash tray where he’s already crumbled one before, ash and debris exploding on his fingers, the remains of the two sticks leaning jagged in the plate.
“I’m done,” he says with melancholy.
“What about Cassidy?”
“Never mind her.”
It’s like we’re playing poker and he’s just won, and I’ve won before him, and somebody’s won before that, but the winning chips are too hot and nobody wants them.
The other vampire is another story. She comes close to me after the band is done playing and tells me her name, but I forget it immediately, under the suddenly thick blanket of the alcohol.
“What happened to that foreign girl?” She says, brushing her hair out of her brown eyes.
“She abandoned me.”
Tragic as it all is, it’s not hard to find someone sweet in the Dessert. Soon she’s whispering in my ear, rubbing her hand on mine, kissing my neck, and I laugh at the irony of the moment. She thinks I’m smiling at her, and smiles back. For whatever reason, we begin an in-depth conversation on art. Impressionist paintings were really good, I say. They made you think what you wanted to think, feel what you wanted to feel, see what you wanted to see. Art is her aphrodisiac. She asks to take me back.
I’m in her car, then. Rock and roll plays loud and her windows are down to de-fog the windshield. Streetlights are flashing green, orange and red and I can't hear what she said, what she's saying – not over the music. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My glasses, the lenses, shimmer in the street light and I can't see my eyes. I wonder if they’re even there. I think about Marie. I look at the girl next to me. She’s sweet, she has to be, but I still can’t get the thought of her as a monster out of my mind.
I check my phone to see if anyone has called. Then I realize I don't have signal. I'd been having a lot of service problems with my phone, people would cut in or out, calls wouldn't go through, signal would fade.
I feel like I’m fading, too, as she rips open the door of her apartment, and I collapse on a couch. My head is spinning. I lean back, get a grip, and stare at the girl as she makes her way through the room. Undressing, she asks if I want anything to drink. I say no.
She takes it off: the Tiffany’s, the Victoria’s Secret, the shimmer and shine, throws the Coach bag to the floor and stands bare in the shadows.
Without all the flash she looks different, less filled out, more empty.
I’m suddenly less attracted to her.
I take off my clothes and wonder if Americans realize they play Halloween for most of the day, until they undress. I wonder if it qualifies them as the loneliest people in the universe.
I stand, then fall back onto the couch and close my eyes in an attempt to make the world stop spinning. It seems such a hard thing to do, cosmically speaking.
She stands over me, her body half covered by shadows. Taking off my glasses, she tosses them to the far side of the couch. I’m blind as she leans in and kisses me deep. I think I kiss back.
“Wait right here,” and she smiles and I smile and she walks into the next room.
I close my eyes and start to fall asleep.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text message and when I open it, I see its contents are empty. I write back to the sender to say I didn't get a message and couldn't read the text, and then realize that there is no message. The emptiness was all there was.

Composure

Tetris blocks.
And I'm sliding through their creases as they come together.
I can't remember a time I've been more greasy, and I'm happy for all the times that have led up to this that have greased me up.
Those spring days, too.
Over the hill, down the street and through the path by the blooming oaks there is a stream. There is always a strong rush of water and it spirals wildly near a bottleneck at a bend. We would spend hours -- him and I -- throwing ripped up grass blades into the vortex, watching them submerge and reemerge on the other end of the suction. There is a beginning and an end to the water. Smoothly philisophical. The simplest metaphor. After you're sucked down, you'll pop back up. So the current flows.
Tetris blocks, those are a bit more difficult to navigate, though.
Requires a certain composure.

Botony

It smells like spring outside, that fresh plant smell you seem to forget during winter. Tonight it smells of flowers opening up and the lushness returning to the world.
Inside the Orchard Bar and Lounge the crowd is loud. It's dim and I order a glass of beer, wait for the foam to ebb.
She's telling me why she hates journalists, and why not: apparently one of them "libeled" her father.
I'm surprised she uses "libel" in the right context. Most people would classify printed falsities as "slanders." She bumps up a point on my scale of attractiveness, her perceived intelligence pushing her past my general threshold.
I watch as she tugs at the waist of her pants as she talks, pulling down, exposing more of her naked hips. I scan the length of her. She has a small tattoo of a lilly on her ankle.
She seems interested in me, and that's interesting.
Or rather, the alcohol is making her seem interested in me, and, under the influence, I find that attractive.
I told her I was a journalist, and she started talking. Opened up.
I wonder if that works for all women.
I explain to her that the industry is falling apart, being mulched right before my eyes. The chaotic explanation I give seems to turn her on as she leans close. Anarchy is her aphrodisiac.
"You know what the worst part about it is?" I say, drawing from the depths of me. "I'm good at it."
"Is it the only thing you're good at?" She grins, staring me straight in the eye.
She smells like the jungle, or what I'd think the jungle would smell like were I there, my idealized version anyways, my Amazon interpretation, fresh and exciting and seductive.
"Yes. Journalism is the only thing."
"Rubbish."
"Rubbish?"
"There has to be something else."
"Who says rubbish?"
"What else do you do in your life?"
I drink.
The beer tastes tasteless and that's when you know you should cut yourself off.
"I was in Mexico once," I say. "I sang a song. In a bar. My friend played guitar. Everyone clapped at the end and the bartender said I should stay at his bar and sing more songs, that he'd pay me. We'd be a team. I should have stayed in Mexico. There would be more money in Mexico. And fame."
"And swine flu," She drinks hard.
"It's H1N1 influenza now."
"Whatever."
"Mexico could have used my charm," I say, spinning my glass and watching the contents form a vortex. Then I drink, consumed by the sweet Charybdis.
"Then you wouldn't be here." And she smiles, her eyes sparkling, or, rather, the alcohol making them glitter.
Outside it begins to storm. The people on the patio all scurry inside, some drenched and laughing. The sudden downpour intensifies.
"Mexico is a place to forget and be forgotten," I say. I had heard the quote somewhere before today, and right now was the most opportune time to use it.
I relish the timing and smile.
She asks me not to talk, going as far as putting her index finger on my lips. I stare at her.
She tells me I make her feel sexy. And I laugh.
And she's offended, or, rather, the alcohol is offended.
She says that she'd love to talk to me more, but has to go, and asks if she could give me her number. I oblige.
She writes her number down on my hand with a pen.
"I won't call," I say.
"Yes you will," she smiles.
"You wish."
And she walks away. I follow her as she leaves, scanning the length of her.
I know I should feel better about getting numbers, but I don't. I feel numb. Or, rather, the alcohol makes me feel numb. Or my life.
I'm numb on life, I think. Would that make me drunk on it, too?
I dismiss the thought. It's stupid. Just like all my other philosophies.
I check my phone to see if anyone has called. Then I realize I don't have signal.
I'd been having a lot of service problems with my phone, people would cut in or out, calls wouldn't go through, signal would fade.
And as I drank it seemed my life was reflective of the signal.
I'm a dinosaur, I think. More mellow-dramaticism, unnecessary. Still, entertaining. I consider stopping my alcohol input before it makes me depressed.
But, then again, you need to have a catharsis sometimes.
I think about journalism and everything I've given the industry to progress my career. If living is about giving and getting -- giving to get -- than giving and not getting to where you want to be of course makes you wonder, "is this it?"
That's where I am.
Later that night, leaving the bar, my phone buzzes with an incoming text message and when I open it, I see its contents are empty. I write back to the sender to say I didn't get a message and couldn't read the text, then realize that there is no message. The emptiness was all there was.

Lucky Boxers

Need some encouragement.
At night, after a shower, I reach in my drawer and put on my lucky boxers.
Talisman, they are.
It's the trinkets in life that can give living the most meaning and I feel like there is a good day ahead as I pour a glass of chocolate milk. A fly bites my arm and I scratch and ponder.
Earlier in the shower it all came pouring out.
Lost in a sea of Lemony Snickets, unfortunate events, I wondered how the true melancholies dealt with prolonged downers in life. I guess Poe drank himself to death.
"Not a bad idea," I say out loud with the water streaming down me.
But then again the hangover would be terrible.
As the steam dissipates, my melancholy drys up.
Drying off, I think I'm happy to be sober, as I think clearer sober.
Around midnight I begin to write. I've written a lot in the last few weeks. Stories. Papers. But it feels good to finally get my thoughts down.
To think about all those things you feel.
Maybe this is catharsis. Or just words.
The feeling is fine no matter what.
By the end of it my lucky boxers are kicking in, and I'm feeling fine.

Fling With Calamity

Calamity ended on Thursday, but began again on Tuesday.
I had a good weekend in between.
Sunday put it in perspective.
I went to church, and walking in I knelt, because that may be what you're supposed to do in churches, crossed my heart and hoped not to die, and sat in a pew. I hadn't been to church in a while. It was a nice church. Catholic -- the Catholics build the nicest churches -- and quiet. I sat, silent, and stared at the domed ceiling and buttresses. And stared at the golden crosses and stain-glass windows. And listened to the quiet, then prayed.
I couldn't think of anything to start the prayer off with, so I thanked God for soccer, and another Bayern Munich win, and the warmer weather, the bus not being late today, corrective lenses, my shoes which I just cleaned, and my new shirt which I felt I looked particularly good in.
Then I thought about laundry and asked God to remind me to do my laundry, hopefully in the morning, when was best for me. Then there was my laundry list, a list that was a jumble of to-do's that I couldn't do myself. And I hated to think that I was incapable of doing things, so I thought about it, but didn't pray it, feeling inferior, and skirted the issue.
Then I thought about the list. About budgets, aighlments, conditions, predictions, doctor's opinions, horror stories, fears, uneasy feeling, tense moments, akward silences, unreturned phone calls, unbalanced checkbooks, empty bank acocunts, scratched CDs, and, of course, the end.
And the flood gates opened. And I prayed that they'd close again.
And added that God help my mother, brother, father and Oma. And my health. And girlfriend, past and present. My roommate, past and present. Their fathers and mothers and brothers. And I prayed that my cell phone finally get a signal in the living room of my apartment. And that I wouldn't have insomnia again tonight, that I find some meaning when I'm thinking about what meaning my life has tonight.
And I prayed that wars end, but decided that was too vast to pray about. So I asked God to consider making the World Cup an event that happens every two years instead of four, for prosperity's sake, but then remembered that there's also the European Cup to pass the time. And basketball. And proper football. And internet radio. And Netflix. And cable. And cheese cake. And text messaging. And beer. And I thanked God for all of these things, decided that my prayer wasn't narrow enough, recinded my last comment of thanks and just grouped everything into one big category of things to be thankful for, a category opposite the category of things not to be thankful for. Those were things that really made me feel bad.
Then I wondered if there really was a God. Why would God want me to feel bad?
I dismissed the notion. There's not enough time in the day for God not to exisit. Only a higher power could coordinate such rediculous deadlines, and rediculous impulses in my brain.
I asked God to pull me from the edge.
I was flirting with calamity, and I don't mean a stripper who may be named such.
Maybe he heard me.
When I left the church the sun had set and the wind was picking up and my knee was chaffed from kneeling. I'm not used to kneeling.

Spectacles

I fix my glasses.
Normally I wear contacts, but during the long nights glasses can be better.
I hate wearing them. The bridge pinches my nose, the arms chafe my ears.
But they do give me a Clark Kent look, and women like a guy who looks smart.
He's driving, yearning for a drink. "Haven't had one since Monday," he says, nothing more than a career alcoholic. He makes you realize your morals haven't slipped that much. A bit crazy. Lives too hard. And only tolerable in small doses. But his conversation is good and his philosophies make sense and, in this town, that's really all you can ask for.
We stop at a bar called the Desert, or Dessert, I don't get a good look at the name, but it makes me remember of a place I went to called the Oasis.
The Oasis was in the middle of a forest in Germany, and you went there to get drunk. Really drunk. An American military bar, for soldiers back from down range on R&R, drunks who hadn't drank for some time, so typically things got out of hand quickly. When I left the Oasis someone was on the verge of beating another's head in with a bar stool.
The Desert isn't that kind of place.
There's a pool table in the middle and a blonde and a brunette playing when we walk in, each with a beer.
They stare at us like vampires.
Behind my lenses my eyes scan their curves like a Terminator. The brunette whispers in the other's ear, their chests rubbing close together.
I order beer, wait for the foam to ebb and they stare at me, the blonde with a shirt too small for her upper body that's more angled than the corners of the billiard table, the brunette with eyes that make you wonder if you're already drunk as she looks away from me, exposing her already exposed back in her tank top, a strap sagging as she leans over, aiming, positioning to get a stripe in the center pocket, arching for the perfect balance to avoid a scratch.
I think how great it would be to kiss up and down her bare back, the sound of cashing in -- "$", "$", "$", "$" -- ka-chinging with every touch.
The Desert is a bad place to be when you're thirsty. And I sip.
Purple cigarette smoke spirals from an ash tray beside me, and he asks if I want one.
"I don't think I'll go to church tomorrow," he says.
He's just come back from New Orleans and says it's really cleaned up since Katrina took care of it. I wonder if what they say is right, that God really wanted to wash all the city's sin away. I don't say it. It doesn't make sense, but neither did the Great Flood. And all of a sudden I'm flooded with a nervousness in thinking about it because God doesn't like you questioning him.
I wonder why God made me a journalist.
"I'm getting high and going to see my girlfriend," he says. "Get some."
I scratch my neck, a nervous tick, pry my eyes away from the vampires.
"You live a life," I say. "All sex and all weed."
"I don't think it's all about sex and buying weed," he says. "But it feels good. Feels so good."
I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
One of the vampires walks past, the one with the vertigo eyes, and she brushes my arm.
I wish she wouldn't fuck with my feelings. The beer doesn't help calm any part of me down.
I was on Facebook earlier and a girl wrote on my wall describing my life as an alcohol-induced sex rave. I don't understand what that exactly means, but, in contemplating it, I wondered if I was OK with my life being like that. The easy answer was yes. If only what she wrote was true. And I wonder if I give the wrong impression to people.
Impressionist paintings were really good. They made you think what you wanted to think, feel what you wanted to feel, see what you wanted to see. Not like that Baroque garbage.
The other vampire is bent over with the cue stick.
My glasses fog up in the humid Desert and I order a chocolate milk with hopes I'll get a sweetness overload. Like a cold shower.
We sit.
A band starts to play. They play good music. The vampires dance. Slowly. Intoxicating. I wonder what it would be like if they bit my neck.
"I haven't felt as boring as I've felt today," he lights another of his purple cigarettes, not a typical cigarette. "I kind of want to let you know. Do you think I'm getting too old?"
I see he's buzzed. "No. There's still some kid in you."
"I got to go see my girlfriend. She said something about bringing something. Fuck, I keep losing my focus," he takes a drag, exhales, his eyes pounding with the bass, captured by the vampires' gaze. "I need to let you know this is a fantastic guitar rift that they're putting together. Great song. My mind feels like it's in Texas right now, you know? OK, listen. Get these girls over here. But don't let them talk. I don't want to hear another thoughtless bitch talk. I'm reading this book with only one female character. Fantastic. You should read it. I read too much. Does that make me too old?"
"I read too much."
"OK."
"What?"
"Don't let them say thoughtless things?"
"Do you really want me to get those girls over here?"
"No. I'm blunted, but I'm driving anyways."
"What?"
"What were you saying?"
"Got to see your girlfriend?"
"It's our anniversary, so yes."
"What did you get her?"
"Isn't the relationship enough?"
"I guess."
"No. Wrong answer. So I bought her some sun glasses that she's wanted. Hopefully they fit."
I fix my glasses. Without them I'm blind.
I'm thankful for corrective lenses, but they really take the nature out of life.
If God had wanted me to see the fat girl dancing with a bar stool in the corner, right past the vampires, he wouldn't have hindered my visual capabilities.
"You want a ride anywhere?" He asks, standing.
"I'll text my roommate. Thanks."
"The one who beat you up the other day?"
"He had his hand around my neck when he was drunk. He never beat me up."
"Not that you'll say. I want you to know anyways," he puts his hand on my thigh. "That I've all ways thought you were soft."
My roommate picks me up at a quarter past the bus stop, shortly around midnight.
Rock and roll plays loud and his windows are open to de-fog the windows.
Streetlights are flashing green, orange and red and I can't hear what he said, what he's saying -- not over the music. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My glasses, the lenses, shimmer in the street light and I can't see my eyes. It's not so bad that I can't make contact with myself.
Just means I can't see the spectacles.

White Stuff

Hot breathe twirls from his lips into the evening, like spiraling smoke from a cigarette.
He's standing under a street light, waiting, an orange cone surrounding him, snow falling through it, littering the ground.
White stuff everywhere.
The night is quietest when it snows.
I'm flipping the cover of a match book open and closed, flashing the phone number that she wrote on the inside flap. I could use a cigarette right now.
But I don't smoke and the thought of needing a cigarette right now makes me wonder if it's really been that kind of day.
A text message buzzes on my phone in my pocket, the phone beep ripping through the tranquility.
I flip open the phone: "10 min."
Reply: "Cold. Any faster?"
There's waiting. And white stuff falling all around. And after a minute: "No. Sorry."
He waits, the man under the light. And I wait.
I'm not sure he sees me.
And I start typing a message on my phone and start walking, thinking that I don't want to wait in this cold, that the walking might warm up my blood.
It's a soft snow, a powder snow, and the man under the light doesn't hear me coming. He's startled as I walk past. I don't really pay much attention, keep texting.
"Hey, man, have a light?" He calls.
And I throw back the matches I have in my pocket. "You need this number?" He calls back.
And I wave my hand no.
The streets are empty, like the snow is a disease no one wants to touch.
Walking, she calls me.
"I've been up since 5 a.m., honey." She says.
"Was it a good day or bad day?"
"It was a work day."
The moon squints from behind a screen of clouds. For a moment there is blue light, the white stuff shimmering with it. The dark silhouettes of the fingers of trees stand out in the night now, reaching up and clawing, then disappearing as the moon falls back under its blanket, lost.
"Tell me a story."
"What?"
"Tell me a story. Keep me awake."
"Long day?"
"I'm trying to make my way home now, driving. Keep me awake."
A car navigates a road of slush, makes a sloshing sound as it goes on, cones of light beaming from its hood. And I'm alone again, save for the electric wires forming a speaker in my ear.
"I don't know if I have anything."
"Come on." Her voice is fluid, soft, like milk, if a voice could be like milk. Like verbal white stuff: words falling slowly, carelessly, almost meaningless, but beautiful when they land, perfect, her tone pure.
I tread through the snow, ruining the perfect film in my wake.
"Maybe last Friday, that was strange."
"OK."
"I come home from class. Everyone is in their underwear when I walk in. Keep in mind I live with only one person. I have no idea who the others are and ask what the hell is going on. They say they'll be done in a minute. And I left. Went to a bar."
"That's it?"
"I'm not really sure how it ended for them."
"There is no end?"
"Nothing spectacular. I came back and the place was empty."
There's a pause and in the tranquility of the falling snow you could hear the silence. I switch hands to give each equal time in a warm pocket while the other braves the elements.
"I remember that I miss your thoughtless, meaningless stories."
I remember that I miss her.
"What are you doing?" She asks.
"Walking home, in the cold."
"We'll keep each other company, then."
In the distance I hear sirens. But it's only in the distance. I walk on the street, talking on the phone, because no one is on the street. It's 1 a.m. on a snow day. For me, the clocks have stopped. There's only white stuff.