August

[written last month. i wanted it to keep going because i liked it (so far) and i told myself to finish it but what with the break up and the new job and all, i don't *feel* like it anymore. but still, there a loads of good bits in it, if i do say so myself.]


Soon as I walk in, I have to duck because here come NEW AVENGERS VOLUME 7 flying at me.

She says, "Sorry, but the fucking Avengers is getting terrible!"

I say, as I pick up the book from the porch, "Is that all you've been doing all day, reading comics?"

"Yup. Jealous?"

I am and say so.

"You're home early. What, you got fired too?" she says because she's been out of work for six months and has stopped looking for a new job since the unemployment started rolling in. "Come on, change. We're going out."

"I just got home."

"Change. I'm going to change my underwear."

In my room I peel off my not a uniform/dress code slacks and polo and take off my shoes and socks. I look at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my closet door. I need a tan. Maybe a wax. I take off my underpants. Or a serious trim? Those tattoos I got years ago, yes, they're expnading in very unflattering ways as my mid-section does. Am I loosing my hair? I must be the palest Hispanic person ever. When I suck in my gut, you can still see the lovehandles. On the floor next to my closet door is a p-air of boxers I know aren't mine. I haven't moved them since he threw them there a couple days ago. I pick them up and hold them to my face and inhale and they still smell like him. I put them on.

Later, at the bar we seem to end up when we're bored, she's on her phone talking to her boyfriend. He's some sort of musician and is on tour somewhere in the south. I wonder if the south is still The South? What kind of gigs do rappers line up in Scumbucket, Mississippi? For Tuesday afternoon there's a quite a bit of people here. It's not really a bar. More like a converted shack with a cooler of beer, a jukebox full of 1990's music, and too many stools. The city university is on spring break and these must be the kids who have nowhere else to be. You know, like home or a vacation or life. She's finally of her phone.

"I'm pretty sure he was getting a blow job while we were on the phone," she says.

I ask, "How can you tell?"

"You've seen enough porn to know what getting a blow job sounds like," she says but not at all angry nor surprised nor hurt. "He's out on tour, having a grand old time, meeting new folk and I'm stuck at home doing nothing (no offense). I'm going to get him to get a blood test done when he gets back. I don't need to get the clap from hist our groupies."

"That's just nasty. Getting a third hand venereal disease."

"Oh, as opposed to getting it first hand?" she says and we laugh. She finishes her beer and I finish mine and she goes to get us more.

I don't normally wear boxers. I wear briefs. Plain black or white briefs. He wears boxers. I'm not sure what it is when he takes off his pants, it's not like I have a weird underwear fetish, but when I see his boxers every time, it sort of melts me. Right now, however, I really wish I wasn't wearing them: I feel like my dick and balls are all over the place. I feel like I'm wearing a diaper underneath my jeans. Is this what women feel like when they're on their period and wear maxi pads? I keep wriggling and pawing at myself, I must look like I'm some sort of pervert out in public to get my jollies. How is it that these boxers can wedge themselves so far up my leg and ass that it feels like it could be a bad thong I'm wearing?

I look over at the bar and see some young black guy with long thin dreadlocks and terrible Buddy Holly-wannabe glasses and a black tee-shirt with the word OTIS on the front smile and trying to talk to her. She smiles back but doesn't seem to be saying anything. A beer in each hand, she turns to walk back to our table and the guy, get taps her on the shoulder and says something in her ear and still smiling turns to the guy and tell him to leave her the fuck alone. She sits across from me and hands me a bottle and says, "I think we're the two oldest people here." She looks around as if she thinks she can will everyone here away.

Later that night, I'm laying on top of my covers, naked, masturbating with my eyes closed and his boxers on my face and I'm inhaling as deeply as possible, thinking about the last time he was here. He's a little taller than me, and a little bit tougher looking than most guys I've ever been with. He was laying next to me here, just talking, laying on his stomach and I had my hand on his back, at the curve just above his ass, just feeling the finer hairs on my fingertips. I don't remember what I was saying but he was listening and asking questions, and with my hand working my dick furiously, it's not him naked or the sex we'd had that I'm thinking of, just him listening. Even when I jerk off, I jerk off in words.

In the morning I pick up the Avengers book and sit on the floor with my back to the couch and I start reading it. I'm sure I've read it before: months back they decided to reveal that for decades a bunch of superheroes were aliens in disguise, and they worked it out that they could bring tons of dead superheroes back because, well, they weren't themselves when they died, they were aliens. It's pure crap. Superheroes should stay dead when they die. I mean, what's the point of having tons of tension for months and huge hoopla around so and so dying if all comic book writers seem to be coming up with are stories to negate all the other ones? Continuity would be nice. She's right, Avengers suck.

First time I met her she's crying in her car in the parking lot of where I work, which is at an electronics store that's about to go under. On my lunch break, walking back to work from the sandwich shop at the other end of the lot, smoking a cigarette, and there's a black 2003 Civic with its hood a little crumpled and a primered quarter panel, there is a girl behind the wheel and she's crying. Oh, I do think that it's a little weird seeing someone crying in public without seeing a reason for it. But I often wonder whether or not these people, this girl, if they just got off a phone call that clearly went bad real quick. Did she just find out her husband was cheating on her with her sister? Did she just find out she's deathly ill? Did someone die and only now did she just find out? Did she fail all her classes? She lost her job, her kids? We all do such a great job out in the world, being little citizens who're mostly polite to each other, and mostly sane, and we go on thinking everyone else is as pleasant and happy as us. All it takes is a few tears to bring it all apart and start seeing each other as people.

I almost walk by and never again think about the girl crying in her car. But I hear music coming through the car's closed windows and she doesn't see me because she has her forehead on the wheel, sobbing away, I can see her shoulders shudder. I almost walk by but stop and knock on her window and she startles up and sees me and smiles and I smile and it's like her tears are gone.

Years later, it's morning and I've just now finishes re-reading the book she threw at the door and a couple more in the series (you know, to make sure it sucked all the way), and she sees me sitting there, nearly naked if not for his boxers. She comes out of her room, her afro all over on one side and her eyes are still a little puffy and she has her empty coffee mug in hand. She's wearing an old enormous tee-shirt that goes down mid thighs she cut up and now has no sleeves and a neckline that goes down to her stomach and her tits are half-exposed. She smiles and says, "Good morning," and goes to the kitchen and sets the coffee maker on.

Before, she lowers her window and asks me if she can help me with anything as she wipes away at her face.

"Are you okay?"

She says, "I'm fine. Sorry. Yeah, I was just sitting here..."

"Oh, I know. I'm sorry I shouldn't have bothered you, you know."

"No, it's okay. I must look like such a mess, huh? Crazy girl, crying in her car and you see me and probably think it's some terrible tragedy seeing a woman out in public like this."

I can't help it and say, "Well, pretty much, yeah."

"I'm fine. Thanks."

"Um...why are you crying?"

"It's so stupid."

"Tell me?"

"I was just driving over here to get some blank CDs and a new jump drive and this song comes on and I just couldn't help it."

"You're crying because a song came on your stereo."

"That's about it."

"A song."

"God, what a fucking spaz am I, right?"

"Which song?" I ask and her smile widens and hits play on her CD player and we listen to it in the parking lot of where I work.

She comes from the kitchen with fresh coffee for us both and sits on the couch next to me on the floor and asks me what I thought about the comics and we talk about that for a while. She thinks Luke Cage is being underused and now that he has a kid they're turning him into a cliche. I say what a cop out it is to reveal that there've been aliens in the Marvel Universe and that's the reason why so many things happened. We talk about the fucking Avengers for hours.

That first day, well, that night, she meets me outside when I get off work and asks me if I want to go to a house party somewhere in Inglewood. I say sure because why not and I get in her car and we're there in half an hour and we talk the whole way about the song and the album that made her cry earlier, and we talk about comic books, and she tells me about her boyfriend, and she asks me if I have one, and I tell her about working where I do, and she says she's been working at the same boutique since high school, and I ask about why her car looks the way it does, and she asks me how old I am, and I offer her a cigarette, and she says she doesn't know whose house we're going to, and I ask what her favorite movie is, and she asks me what I read besides comics, and we talk about what living in Lynwood (her) and living in Bellflower (me) is like, and we each say how much we'd much rather live somewhere that isn't Los Angeles, and she says she was just in Seattle for a on-tour visit to his boy friend, and I say I've not been out of town in years, and once we're off the freeway and up Hawthorne Boulevard and just off Washington Street, there's the house we're going to spend the night in, and there's people all over and they all look very sketchy in a high maintenance sort of way, and a group of girls watch as we park, all of them blonde and all of them appear to be suffering from a bad case of I'm-a-horrible-person-itis, and I say so, and she laughs, and I laugh, and she says, "Let's get the fuck out of here," and we do, and we end up talking all night in some Denny's in Culver City, and then, she drives me back just in time for my ten in the morning shift.

She's in the shower and I'm finally pulling on some jeans and a tee-shirt and we're going to the mall and try to see if we can re-live a moment of youth while exchanging those blouses she'd bought for her job even though her receipts are lost and she's worn two of them. She'll yell at the girl behind the counter, I know, until she gets her way, and when she does, we'll stop on the way home for some ice cream and probably go to the record store to look at all the music we want but can't afford, and she'll ask me what my favorite movie is.

I didn't say he should but after we had sex he saw my briefs on the floor and he put them on. He asked me whether they looked good on him and I think I sort of smiled and he didn't say anything but said he was going to wear them home.

Earlier, we were just walking through downtown Fullerton, peering into the closed shops and in the open tattoo parlors and in the overly-dramatic restaurants. Just a walk through a neighborhood neither one of us knew. Lots of college kids and Laz commented on this fact. Tough-looking Hispanic boys walking around in wife beaters holding hands with girls with way too much make up on; preppy south Orange County blond kids, looking more out of place than I think they think; no older folk, as if this town wasn't made for them. Laz says it's because of the university nearby, I say it's because this town is a hole. He laughs and his hand grazes mine and we cross the street when he sees a Batman symbol on a window and we must investigate.

A little later, we're sitting in traffic trying to get back to Bellflower. The radio is playing something I don't know and he's driving. I ask him what the music is and Laz says it's blah-blah-blah and he must see I've no idea what he's talking about and then he says if ever saw that generic comedy last summer that was number one for like month according to ticket sales, and I say I didn't. He looks at me like he's trying to figure out whether I'm making it up or not. I'm not, but that sort of stops that conversation. It takes us a half hour to move three miles. He's a frustrated, but when I told him just to take La Palma of Orangethorpe Avenue all the way down he said he'd rather do the freeway and here we are, again. He's gripping the steering wheel pretty hard.

Before Fullerton, he shows up right after I get out of the shower and I've a towel wrapped around me. At my door, he cocks his head to the right when he sees me and smiles and says hello and he's a little too adorable for his own good. He's wearing black jeans and a plaid short sleeve and a pair of sneakers that look as if they were dug out of the trash. Maybe his jeans are a little too tight for him but look at those shoulders and that chest. I mean, really, who can say not to that? He comes in and hugs me and kisses me and follows me to my room as I change. While in the bathroom shaving, I catch his reflection in the mirror as he sits on my bed and he's looking at my ass. He sees me looking at him and says how nice I look nearly-naked.

After the freeway, we're sitting at a terrible chain diner that isn't as nice as Denny's and we're having coffee and pancakes as the sun begins to set somewhere. The old lady who's our waitress keeps coming back every five minutes to check on us and always smiles and there's no one else here. Laz says there's this thing coming up at the Hollywood Bowl, something about a cast performance of some movie musical, do I want to go? I say sure and we're both being ridiculous programming our cell phones with the information. Under the table, he's tall enough that his knees are touching mine. He doesn't spoon sugar in his coffee but adds milk. He says next time he'll listen to me about driving back from Orange County; it took us three hours to get back even though it's normally a fifteen minute jaunt. He says he feels pretty gross and can he take a shower at my house and of course I say sure.

Later, after his shower, we have sex. We fuck. Something. I'm seriously wondering whether or not I should tell you the details. I mean, who doesn't love the sex details, right? Especially when the sex is good (because it was). But maybe I've already said too much already and I'm not even certain I like you yet. I'm pretty certain you don't know whether or not you even want to keep reading to find out whether or not you like me. I'm thinking if I tell you too much about Laz and I being naked together that's crossing a weird line. Like talking to your mom about something and the conversation turns into her telling you about when she was younger and was hopped up on something and having a threesome with your dad and her sister. You know, awkward. But then, I really want to tell you how Laz makes me feel and what I like about him being naked under me. I want to tell you all the noises he makes when I do this and this and this to him. I really want to tell you about the orgasms. And I really want to tell you how much I enjoy feeling him hard and wet and rigid through his clothes. But you'll see me differently. I mean, we don't know each other that well to start, but maybe I've decided you haven't earned me telling you that bit. And me telling you that I don't think you don't get to hear about it makes me think you think I'm a jackass. Such a odd dilemma between strangers. I'll say this: we have sex, we fuck. Something.

Now, he's in my underwear, looking at himself on my bathroom mirror, trying to catch how his ass looks in them, what his crotch looks like (he adjusts several times). He says it feels as if someone has his hands on his ass, holding it. He looks at me as he finally pulls on his jeans (they are, indeed, a little tight for him) and asks me what we're doing this weekend and I remind him I have to work and he says if he can come Saturday once I'm off and maybe we can watch a movie or something. Honest, I'm not sure if I even want to but I tell him, sure, why not, it'll be fun. He buttons his shirt and ties his shoelaces and I ask him why he doesn't spend the night and he says he has work in the morning and it's a long-ass drive from here back down to Venice and I say, oh, okay, and he leans over me and kisses me on the forehead and he leaves me there, naked on my bed and his boxers on my floor.

Much later, we're at the mall having ice cream and she says, "So he leaves wearing your panties?"

We're walking along somewhere in Lakewood. She wants to go to a comics shop near the college and because I've nothing better to do, I come along. The shops along the street are filled with college-age kids. Everywhere, kids. But they're not and I'm thinking about that time in the bar and I'm feeling us being the oldest people here. But they're not kids, these are adults, and suddenly my cardigan and plaid shirt make me feel like a tourist. Or a guy in his thirties trying to look like a guy in his twenties.

Another time, about a year ago, not long after I first me Laz, he has to ask me about my name. He says it's so strange that someone my age is named Horatio.

I say, "Supposedly, my mom was against it. She wanted to name after my dad's dad. Jesus-something or other. But because my dad is my dad and got his way, and because strangely enough way back when he was in college, he read Hamlet and decided his first boy would be named Horatio."

He says, "that's so ridiculous!" He laughs a little because it is pretty absurd. "But not as ridiculous as how I got my name."

I ask him and he tells me he was named after a comic book character from the early 1990's.

On the street, we stop by some Thai place and she says, "Notice there are tons more Thai restaurants everywhere now? Before it was like a treat, you know. Something you couldn't have every day. Now, you'd think Thai food was like McDonald's."

She's not wrong but what I don't point out is that she's reading the menu looking for her saitan with peanut sauce and pad thai to take home for dinner the same way folk always know they're going to get a big mac every time they're in a McDonald's.

Then, Laz says, "So, my mom was big into comic books and she saw this book at some second hand book store, a softcover collection of old British comics from Blast Magazine. She sees it and reads it at the book store - she says she couldn't afford it then. She reads it and say's it wasn't that good, that the art was pretty amateurish but the story was better than she thought it would be. But really, she liked the guy's name in it, the main character, and she said she decided when she was pregnant she would name a boy after the guy in the story. This guy, he's immortal, right? and the one thing he wants to do is die but he can't. The way my mother says it it's kind of romantic in a way, this guy, everyone and everything he's known keep dying while he keeps on living, so what's the point, you know? To me it just kind of sounds fucked up. And she likes the name so when I was born - she didn't have the problem of a husband - so she names me Laz. In the comic book, the guy's name is Lazarus Churchyard but his friends call him Laz, and she likes that better than Lazarus, you know, and so there you are: my name, Laz Churchyard Dominguez."

Of course, when he finishes his story, I laugh and he kisses me while calling me a horrible man.

There's no longer a comic book store where she thought there was one. It's a juice bar, filled with people (it's just after one in the afternoon) and I'm a little disappointed too. At the mall earlier, after our ice cream, I wondered after she mentioned the shop, if I could find a copy of that thirty-year old comic. Can I order it? But now, no, I can't find it here.

She says, "Well, we walked all this way, want a smoothie?"

Before the name conversation, months, I see Laz in Westwood, coming out of a movie theater as my sister and I are walking back to her car from dinner. I don't immediately think he's the most adorable thing on the planet the way I would in the future, but I hear his name from a girl whose arms are around his waist and she's smiling and he's smiling and this girl, she says, "Stop it, Laz!" and I knew then it was what I would name my kid if I ever had one. I didn't see him again for almost a year.

We sit after we get our smoothies. They're good. And neither one of us is saying anything, just enjoying the air conditioned air after the walk and the man who was standing behind us at the counter is getting loud enough that we can hear what he's saying to the very pretty brown girl behind the counter.

The girl behind the counter says, “But we don't sell those here, that's why.”

The customer says, “I just don't see why you can't just put this iced coffee in that blender behind you and turn it on for a few seconds?” He's holding a large clear plastic up from some generic coffee shop. Of course we're listening in.

“Uh, because we're not allowed to put milk in the blender is why.”

“God, just fucking do it. It's not like it's a big deal.”

“If it's isn't such a big deal why are you making a big deal about me not blending your milky coffee in our blender? There's a Starbucks two blocks up, go there.”

Ah, but if his glare could dismantle this little girl. He says, “Let me talk to the owner.”

“She's not here,” she says noticing the five-deep line this little asshole's helped create. “Now, I'm done talking to you and I'm going to help the young man behind you.”

He looks and five people behind him, none of them are on his side. He looks at the girl behind the counter of the juice bar and maybe he's about to curse at her but he doesn't and stomps out.

She sighs. The next customer, a pretty teenage-looking boy smiles at her. “What can I do for you?” He has beautiful fake green eyes.

Years ago, he invited me to his apartment for a beer. This is after we spent some time talking about the ridiculousness of the comics I was reading outside of a Starbucks after class. So long ago and still it's as if it's happening right now. Everything seems to always be happening at the same time in my head. Everything. Then. Now. Now, in his apartment that he shares with three other guys (only two bedrooms, one of them sleeps on the couch) and I look around and there's a futon in the main room facing a huge television set with all of the video game systems hooked up to it but no cable box. Shelves everywhere with records – vinyl – and CD's and DVD's and comic books seem to cover every available wall space. He sees me looking around and says none of it is his. Like he's embarrassed. Why did I come here?

We go to Target, after the mall, because we need some things for the house. The closest store is also a half block away from where I work and it's Thursday and I need to pick up my paycheck. We walk in and she grabs a shopping cart the size of my first car.

"Do we really need that?" I say.

"Maybe," she says, "let's see if we can fill it up."

We walk down the main aisle toward where the clothing departments are. There's a rack that looks like a broken and hobbled old skeleton with colorful swim suits and bikinis hanging off it. She stops and picks out a one-piece and holds it against me. She looks at me as if she's seriously considering getting me this and that I would seriously consider it wearing it at some point.

She says, "I like this color on you." She's serious. She drops it in our cart and we move on to where the lingerie is and she says, "I need a new bra."

We're both naked, our clothes lying on the floor, he's on top of me on the futon. He smiles down at me and his brown brown eyes don't say much other than he's about to fuck me. And I know this and I'm a little scared. But my excitement more than makes up for it. He's maybe five, eight years older than I am and I don't even know why I care about that right now, and he shifts his weight and I can feel his erect penis next to mine, wet and hot and I can maybe feel my heartbeat in it. It's all I can do to not come. He kisses me the way a car crash happens: perfunctory metal on metal scraping. There's more lust than anything else and I nearly laugh, his tongue in my mouth, when I remember my mother's sister saying I was cute now that I lost the last of the baby fat over the summer. He pulls my hair and my head tilts back and he nibbles on my neck.

In the lingerie department, she puts on bras over her shirt and whenever she does that I'm reminded she has big boobs. I always forget. None of the bras fit and all I'm thinking of is how if she wasn't here, I'd look like a perverted old man, holding these bras, lost, where I don't belong.

Afterward, in the futon, he gets up and walks to his kitchen and comes back with a glass of water for me and he asks me if I'm okay. I'm sweating and sore and exhilarated and he sits next to me and I make the mistake of asking him when I can come over again. Of course he laughs. He digs in his pants and brings out a pack of cigarettes and lights one and asks me if I want another and I'm more confused than anything else, suddenly. He's quiet for a long time and I watch him smoke, the sinew of his muscles on his skinny back look like snakes slithering underneath velvet. He gets up and pulls on his briefs, purple, maybe lavender, and not expensive and says I should get on home.

We're in the haircare aisle, and she's looking for another couple of hair picks and I'm looking for nothing. While she looks, I look over her shoulder. I see a lavender-handled hairbrush. It's pretty big and it's not the size of it that makes me reach out and grab it off the rack (there are several just like it behind it), but the color. It's unmistakable. Color memory, is that a thing that exists the way odor memory exists, transporting you to very specific time and place at the same time? I remember the very first time I saw this color. Every time I see it, I'm reminded.

Long after I walk and take bus home, after I shower and maybe there's some residual pain, I'm laying on my bed, under the covers thinking about him, whatever his name was or is, wherever he is now. Then, I'm thinking I will run into him next time and I'll want him to take me home again because I think I like him. What I know now that I didn't know then, of course. But in my bed and I'm sixteen, I touch my body everywhere he touched it, I'm trying to imagine what his touch would be feel the second time around.

We fill the cart with everything from towels to movies to baby clothes as we walk through the store. Everything is a story, a what if or a wouldn't it be nice. And it's fun making up the stories as we go because, well, why wouldn't we, right? So we leave the full cart somewhere near the greeting cards and she takes what she needs and I take what I need from it and go through the checkstand and she pays for everything and as the young girl running the register rings up the hairbrush she says to me if I forgot I shave my head and the cashier, she smiles, and I let's get out of here. And in the parking lot she asks me more about the stupid hairbrush neither of us will use and I tell my best friend a story I've not hold her before.

The walk takes only a few minutes. We drop off our bags at the car and walk to where I work so I can pick up my paycheck. It's still early afternoon and the sun is fresh and clean and there's a breeze. Maybe we're only a little quiet because stories, you know.

Where I work is a chain electronics store. Company's in it's final legs, everywhere you read in the financial pages, it says how much the economy is STILL in the shitter, almost always, you'll read something about the company I work for. It's projected it'll close by the end of next quarter.

She says as she lights a smoke, “I'll wait for you out here?”

I go inside.

After that first night out, I didn't see her until a week later. Across town, where I used to live, is where I normally get my comic books and that day, a week later, I walk in and, you know, browse. I sit in the corner, a stack from my pull box next to me, the girl at the register, I don't know her, but she was friendly enough. They keep firing everyone here and getting someone knew every few weeks. I'm flipping through the new Tara McPherson art book when she walks in. I see her but she doesn't see me just yet: Bree.

At the customer returns counter, I'm behind the counter, reading through a copy of the following week's schedule, just to make sure I'm off Sunday and I am. In the back office, as I'm waiting for my manager to give me my paycheck, one of my co-workers, Mike, he walks up and says something to me about the girl he saw me walking here with when he was outside smoking. He asks me who she is and what her deal is. I tell him to leave me alone. He laugh, calls me a fag, and says he'll see me later. My manager appears with my paycheck and he asks me who IS my friend smoking outside.

Bree sees me after I hear her ask whether or not they have the new Darth Vader one-shot.

“Hey!”

I say hello back and she sits next to me and starts flipping through the books next me.

“You know what I never liked about this new take on the Justice League?” she says, “it's how they tried for nearly a year to have the team without Batman.”

“Batman.”

“Yeah. I mean, come on, you can't have the JLA without him. It always turns out that they need him because someone comes along they supposedly can't beat, and who's the one who winds up making up the strategy for it? Batman.”

“I remember for that whole first year it was them versus really retarded supervillans like Mirror Master and – who was that guy? fucking Glorious Godfrey?”

“I know!”

“Well, when did they bring him back, like, number 14?”

“Man,” she says, “I though you knew what you were talking about! It was number 17. Remember? It was when the Joker returns.” She smiles. We become friends.

Walk back and she's sitting on the curb, typing with both hands into her phone, laughing about something she's writing. I sit next to her. I ask her for a smoke and she hands me her purse with one hand while the other keeps typing away. I get a smoke and she closes her phone and she says, “You wanna go get a beer?”

“How about some food?”

“Yeah, that too?”

“Let's go,” I say and we walk to the car.


Near Seal Beach, we're in a surf taco shack off Pacific Coast Highway, having bad American burritos and lemonade. She's typing into her open cell phone and I am reading through Facebook on mine. One of the great errors we made that is now regular behavior is sitting across from someone at a table, elbows on either side of our plates, not talking, not looking at each other, not doing much of anything in the prescense of another person, but we'd much rather look into LCD screens and see what other people, most we don't even know, are doing.

She says, “You know, it's so dumb how we're more worried – no, not worried, but, I don't know, interested in what other people do than what we're doing right now.”

“I was just thinking that.”

“Weird. How did that happen, I wonder?”

“I think it's always happened. I mean, it's probably why when you see a couple at a restaurant and they're not talking, that was their version of what we're doing now.”

Bree says, “Just imagine until it gets even more so. Man, what're we going to be doing, having lunch at a restaurant by ourselves and instead of a, say, napkin dispenser, there's going to be a computer at every table.”

“Like an office?”

“Like an office.”

“Notice neither one of us has put our phones down?” I say. And we both laugh and the waiter guy with a bad attitude shows up, asking us if we want anything else. Not need but want.


I met her current boyfriend a few times. I never really got a good sense of who he is but he's an okay guy. I mean, he's polite, kind of short, a bit attractive, and his music, if I was to guess from the few tracks I have listened to, is pretty bland. Weeks before the current tour, we're somewhere near the LACMA, off Beverly, a twenty-four hour hispter dinner joint. He's here, sitting next to Bree, I'm here, Laz on his way. The other three places are occupied by his friends, Evan, Marcus, and Melissa. I'm going to describe them:

Bree's boyfriend: aside from what I already said, he looks like a compressed version of Denzel Washington in the matter of looks: the potential of a handsome man. He's dressed in terrible loose-fitting jeans and a black tee-shirt with a blue and white skull logo on it. He doesn't have dreadlocks but a ratty mess that claim to have been dreadlocks at one point, now it looks like a demolished bird's nest. His white and blue sneakers are impeccable.

Evan is the most good looking of everyone here and incredibly nice. He's biracial, you can tell, and his hair is cropped very thinly, and is in a black polo and regular fitting jeans and black sneakers. He smiles and it reminds me of Blair Underwood when more people than just me knew who he was. He's incredibly polite and know what he's talking about. Very confident. Something clicks in my head when he and I are talking about the ridiculous proliferation of free online-only record releases. The bad thing about him is his shirt's collar is turned up. On purpose.

Marcus and Melissa are together. They're married. He's been living in California since he was thirteen but still has the trace of an English accent and has the whitest skin I've ever seen. So perfect too. He's white and has freckles and green eyes but brown hair. He's cute in an Eric Stolz kind of way, crossed with Julienne Moore. He meets us after he's done with work over at the Flynt Publications building and I fight my urge to ask him if he works on Hustler. Melissa is Evan's sister and very pretty. She doesn't wear a wedding band and has a short afro and is very curvy. Very sexy. She too meets us after her job at a law office in West Hollywood.

I tend to describe people by my ideas of what movie stars look like.

Near Seal Beach, the waiter leaves after we ask for more lemonade and the check. After he huffs and rolls his eyes as he walks away.

I say, “Did you see that asshole?”

“Who cares? Dude's just a dick.”

“I'm a dick too, but not at work.”

“Oh, I think you probably are. Dealing with jerks like us, asking for more service from the waiter.”

“Probably, you're right.”

“I don't really want to go home. It's so nice out. Do you have plans?”

I don't.

She says, “Want to go to Hollywood?”

“Sure. What's out there?”

“It's not here.”

Before, after the dinner, Laz walks me to my car and says how Bree's friends are pretty nice cool people and I say so too. We make vague plans to come back here some other time. He asks me if I want to meet him at his house and I say sure, he smiles. I ask him what he thought of Bree's boyfriend and he smiles and maybe is thinking whether or not he should tell me what he really thinks or a polite non-committal answer. I tell him to be honest.

Laz says, “I don't get why your girl is seeing that guy. He's not at all attractive, his music is terrible (yes, I had to listen to it before coming here, that's why I was late), and what's with his hair? She's much to pretty and nice for that guy.”

I point out both of them didn't talk much.

“I didn't want to talk to him. There's something off about that guy. Watch, you'll see I'm right.”

Bree and I get up to go and I pay the check with exact change. The waiter is walking in our direction, giving us a perfunctory smile and an emotionless thank you. I don't say anything to him, and we walk out, but I look back to see him pick up the money and check just to see his face get even more dour.


We're crossing Sunset when a gray SUV runs a red light and slams into a white Mercedez. All metal and rubber and scares the shit out of us.

Another time, before, but I can't remember when, Laz and I are walking down Fairfax after parking and it's the middle of the night and we're maybe hungry and whether he is or I am, Canter's is the only place that's open. No traffic. Very little. People just lingering about ever couple of blocks or so. In the distance I can hear a siren and I think it's a firetruck. We get to the diner and get seated and the waiter is a middle-aged Hispanic guy with a thick accent and we each order coffee. He's so sleepy.

On Sunset, the accident isn't as bad as it sounded. No one is hurt but the Mercedez seems like is irreplaceable. The driver is a young woman, pretty, maybe on her way to a reception because her dress is too dressy and she's completely calm. The woman driving the SUV looks like what you think a woman driving a SUV looks like: frumpy but trying to look like she's maybe fifteen, twenty years younger. She's hysterical and is sitting on the curb in front of the Pink Dot. We stand and watch, there are other people, some taking pictures with their phones and Bree says how great it is no one is hurt. There's already the honking from the intersection. I hear the siren of a police car coming.

We eat mostly in silence. A spattering of conversation about the movie and it's maybe three in the morning but I can't see the clock on the wall from where we're sitting. Long drive home. It will be the longest drive home in history, I think.

Once police and paramedics arrive we keep walking toward the old Tower Records used to be. That's the direction we're heading because I don't know why. We stop by Book Soup and keep on walking. There was a signing announcement at the front of the store. Some pornstar was going to be there to read from her autobiography at seven. Neither one of us bought anything. We're just filling time, so we walk. Bree says they reopened the old record store but it's some new company and wants to check it out. She says she read it was more like the old Virgin stores.

Afterward, we walk back the five blocks to his car. He lights up a cigarette, probably so he won't have to talk to me. And I try to hold his and when he takes mine in his, I might as well be gripping wet noodles. A homeless woman looks at us and says nothing. He smokes and I breathe I breathe it in as we walk. He sighs a lot.

There's no longer an old Tower Records building. There is a hole in the ground and two big heavy yellow metal machines on huge wheels and lots of rent-a-fence. I ask Bree what's supposed to be here but she doesn't know. She's not disappointed, and neither am I. Traffic slows more and more as the queue at the accident grows longer and longer.

He opens my door and closes it when I'm in and he flicks his cigarette away, exhaling very loudly, and when he sits behind the wheel, it's as if a cloud of cigarette smoke fills the car. He revs up and takes off and goes two blocks before he notices he forgot to switch on the headlights. He turns on his stereo and some DJ comes on talking about “obvious jazz influences” and “arrythmic time signatures” and “influenced by Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy, and more recent artists like !!! and – believe it or not – Vampire Weekend”. He doesn't change the station but raises the volume. All the way up Melrose to the 101, all I hear is the radio and his breathing. He looks so sleepy but it's not just fatigue. He's angry. He runs the last red light before the on-ramp, and it feels like car's about go airborne.

We don't walk back the way we came but walk down San Vicente to Santa Monica and there, a group of protestors are chanting something and are carrying signs I don't bother to read. A throng of people, all wearing the same white and blue tee-shirt with a cross on the back, all of them probably gay, blocking the sidewalk. There are no police and I don't really want to know what's happened that brought them out here: reactionary protest. Bree says we should maybe head back. And we do.

Up the 91, nearly home, he reaches over to hold my hand. We don't say anything until this moment when he says he's sorry about the jewelry store earlier. I say it's okay and he says it isn't. I say we can talk about it tomorrow, we both just need to get home. He says fine, and I lean over to kiss him on the cheek as he pulls onto the off-ramp, and he turns his head a little. He doesn't even slow at the yield sign and a car sideswipes us onto the sidewalk. I scream. He says, “Motherfucker!” and the car comes to a stop just seconds later, and I see the car that hit us driving off into the distance. Laz turns to me and asks me if I'm okay, am I hurt, am I okay. And I say I am and I undo my seatbelt and I look at his face and there're tears in his eyes. He's breathing very heavily. I tell him I'm okay.

We walk back and there is no longer and accident scene. As if it had never happened.

Bree says, “Wow, it's like they even swept up the broken glass and everything.”

“How do they do that that fast?”

“I don't know,” she says.

“So weird how minutes ago there was chaos and smoke and now there is nothing. No one driving through the intersection has an idea what happened.”

“Here to go."

We break up, my ex and I, and I'm visiting my older brother and his family in Seattle. Years ago, we're sitting outside his house, drinking beers, looking out into the neighborhood and looks like any other neighborhood anywhere else, and it's only a little boring. My older brother's been married for years and his wife is currently pregnant with their third child. He and I are drinking beers and talking about our father, where he is and how he's doing, and that's he's coming back into the country next summer. I ask my brother whether our dad asked about me and he says he didn't. Not as if I was expecting anything else, really.

I got into Seattle very last minute because I just didn't want to be home, obviously. There wasn't anything there for me after my ex say's he's moving in with some man he met somewhere in Long Beach whom he loves. He said he was sorry and he didn't mean for anything to happen where he'd hurt me and he didn't want me to hate him but it was a done deal and he was sorry. I listened, of course I did. I didn't say much when he was done. He stood there, at his door, he didn't even let me in. He was wearing the shorts I'd bought him the month before. Yes, I listened. And then I punched him in the face and took off the ring he'd given men not long after we started dating and throw it at his crumpled, crying, stupid face, and left. I haven't seen him since but that was only two weeks before arriving at Sea-Tac.

My older brother says, “Has he tried calling you? I mean have you talked to him?”

“He's tried, you know, but I've not answered and I don't really wanna talk to him.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Nah. He's a fucking liar, and he hurt me.”

“That's pretty petty.”

“Oh, I know,” I say. “I'm okay with that.” I laugh. “I'm having that sort of moment when I'm okay being a bad person.”

“You're too damn stubborn for your own good, you know that?”

“Am I? Probably.”

“This passive-aggressive bullshit of yours, I don't know how you do it, man. You're kind of smart and when your feelings are hurt you turn into this metal robot.”

“As opposed to a wooden robot?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.”

His cell phone rings and he talks to his wife for a few minutes. On the table before us, his pack of smokes and I take one and take a good long drag and I hate I'm thinking about how wonderful he was to me when he was there, present and fully, even when he'd be off at work and I was off at work and he'd send me inappropriate texts while he was in a meeting. He clicks off his phone.

He says, “So, I have a question.”

“Okay.”

“Don't get all offended and try to punch me in the face, okay (I mean, you know I'll kick your ass, right?)?”

I laugh, “What?”

“Okay: so who fucked who when you were together?”

“Are you really asking me this?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I'm just curious.”

“Why?”

“Why're you avoiding the question?”

“This is so idiotic.”

“Well...?”

Now, on the drive back from Hollywood, my older brother texts me he and his family will be in town, somewhere in Orange County so they'll be able to take the kids to Disneyland. Can we get together, dinner, maybe. He and his wife want to me Bree and Laz. I text him back sure, yes.

I say, “He's the bottom most of the time, if that's what you mean.”

“So he fucks you too?”

“Yes, but not often.”

“You like it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, with girls, you know they like it.”

“Oh? How do you know?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He rolls over and it's morning, and I'm facing his back now, the sun coming in from his windows. Not another ex, not really, but we were sleeping together. We slept together. Whatever. He rolls over, his back to me, he has an intricately ridiculous tattoo covering his back, and when I first asked him about it, he sort of smiled and said it was one of the few things he regretted in life, getting this enormous tattoo that he's had unfinished for years. By the time I met him, he said when we first began speaking to each other, he was adamant about finishing it, but by the time I slept with with him last, two years later, he never mentioned it again.

We're still on the road, Bree at the wheel, punching things into her phone while she keeps an occasional eye on the road. It's getting to be later than we thought and the idea of driving to and back from Hollywood was probably the wrong one. Her ipod is playing on random through her car's speakers and there's that Catpower song I love and maybe it's not so random because the song before was Ryan Adams's cover of Wonderwall and I want to ask her if this is a playlist. She keeps typing into her phone, traffic or no.

He rolls over, it's morning. Over his shoulder, the sunlight refracts and I've various rays of color hitting me in the face, not unpleasantly, and I hear his breathing. I feel him move slightly, myoclonic twitches from whatever he's dreaming, and this isn't the last time we sleep together but after my break up nearly a year before, it feels as if whenever I sleep with someone it will be the last time I'll sleep with that person. He isn't like that and I don't know why for month's I will sleep with him. He will kiss me in a mechanical pornographic movie sort of way – a precursor to him letting me be fucked. When he said he didn't want anything serious but fucking, I jumped at the chance because fucking is better than still pining over someone who still emails you or calls you once a week. He hurt me and now I'm hurting him and I think about last year when my older brother called me petty out on his porch.

Bree says there's a party somewhere in South Gate, do we want to go. And because I don't know why I say, yes, we do want to be there.

I turn onto my back and hear him sleep. The sun doesn't move. At that point maybe I'm thinking that I don't really dislike him, not really. I definitely don't like him. Whether he's the good thing about a bad situation, I can't say. He's sleeping while I've been awake the entire night since he pulled off the final condom and said he needed to take a shit and did and came into bed reeking of come and amyl nitrate and sweat. My sweat. And I listen to him fall asleep and I'm thinking how much I want to return all of these phone calls and emails and it hurts so much to think that I won't do it because it would mean defeat and, naturally, I think this is the most childish thing about me and I'll probably be this way for the rest of my life. I'm twenty-three, sleeping next to him, the sun in my face.

We're the first ones to show up to the house in South Gate. This is how bored we are. We arrive and open beers and there's us two and Brittany, girl whose house we're in. Even her boyrfriend isn't here. She's playing something over the stereo that reminds me of old goth music from junior high school and I ask Brittany where she went to school after high school. Brittany isn't a friend the way that Bree is my friend. She's someone we know the way you get to know the girl behind the counter at the coffee shop: routine. She and Bree worked together for about a second in a second-hand store when we were in college and Bree says she just never deleted Brittany's number from her cell phone's memory. That's how I know her. At a party off campus, then, I'm told Brittany and I made out. I don't remember that. Brittany tried to hold my hand once at a hip-hop show a year after that. This music is terrible.

Naked, I get up and sit on the toilet, waiting for something to happen. I don't close the door. Through the hallway connecting the living room and the bedrooms (his apartment is huge and has three of them), I hear noise, rustling. He's getting up.

Brittany sees me eyeing her book shelves and says most of the comics are her boyfriend's, whatever this one's name is. She has had a lot of them in the time I've known she exists. It's what I hear. Gossip. If that's the case, I say, than your boyfriend has impeccable taste. I say this because he has an original printing of Box Office Poison and Blankets. She says she doesn't read them. She doesn't get them. Brittany, she says she used to read X-Men when she was a kid and there was an X-Men cartoon show. Bree on the brown leather couch, her legs underneath her, is talking to someone on the phone, and Brittany's stereo changes from terrible music to Chuck Ragan's first record.

After a shower, finally he emerges from his bathroom, and I'm putting my clothes back on. He says he wants to go out for breakfast and do I want to come and I say thanks, but no, I ought to get home. He stands in his bathroom doorway, naked but for the towel wrapped around his waist, steam pouring from behind him. He's muscular in the same what linebackers are muscular which is tangentially. I love his chest. He crosses his very impressive arms across the aforementioned equally impressive chest and looks at me and smirks. I look at him and I think I try to smile. It's not the last time he and I will sleep together, I know this now, I didn't then, and now, here, thinking about it, it should have been, not because he was a bad person, but I was running away and I think, even then, that was what would help me more than anything else, running away into brutally meaningless fucking (not sex), instead of answering something as small and wonderful as an email that asked how I was doing and said that I was missed and that I should call him back. I didn't. I never returned any of those calls or emails.

Brittany's party, two whole hours after Bree and I arrived, is actually entertaining and fun and I'm dancing with a girl with blonde dreadlocks who said she wanted to make out with me but settled for a dance.

In my car, after I leave his apartment, I turn up the music as loud as I can stand it and peel out and never take my foot off the accelerator once I'm on the freeway. It won't be the last time he and I will sleep together, I know this now, but I didn't then, and I'm thinking about what the sunlight looked like coming through his window, over his shoulder, and how inert it made me feel. Running away.

At the party, I see him. The man with the tattooed back, whose bed I was in for a long time. He sees me. We're both older but he sees me and smiles. I smile back. It isn't shock but what a tiny universe we live in. He comes in alone and I'm still dancing with the dreadlocked girl and he sees me and recognition: years have passed since last I saw him and I see nothing of me then when he appears. I don't feel the me from before now, here, dancing, a bit sweaty. He smiles at me and I wonder why I ever though he was a good escape. One of those things to regret for the rest of my life. I dance and dance and dance and dance.

Years ago, he invited me to his apartment for a beer. This is after we spent some time talking about the ridiculousness of the comics I was reading outside of a Starbucks after class. So long ago and still it's as if it's happening right now. Everything seems to always be happening at the same time in my head. Everything. Then. Now. Now, in his apartment that he shares with three other guys (only two bedrooms, one of them sleeps on the couch) and I look around and there's a futon in the main room facing a huge television set with all of the video game systems hooked up to it but no cable box. Shelves everywhere with records – vinyl – and CD's and DVD's and comic books seem to cover every available wall space. He sees me looking around and says none of it is his. Like he's embarrassed. Why did I come here?

We go to Target, after the mall, because we need some things for the house. The closest store is also a half block away from where I work and it's Thursday and I need to pick up my paycheck. We walk in and she grabs a shopping cart the size of my first car.

"Do we really need that?" I say.

"Maybe," she says, "let's see if we can fill it up."

We walk down the main aisle toward where the clothing departments are. There's a rack that looks like a broken and hobbled old skeleton with colorful swim suits and bikinis hanging off it. She stops and picks out a one-piece and holds it against me. She looks at me as if she's seriously considering getting me this and that I would seriously consider it wearing it at some point.

She says, "I like this color on you." She's serious. She drops it in our cart and we move on to where the lingerie is and she says, "I need a new bra."

We're both naked, our clothes lying on the floor, he's on top of me on the futon. He smiles down at me and his brown brown eyes don't say much other than he's about to fuck me. And I know this and I'm a little scared. But my excitement more than makes up for it. He's maybe five, eight years older than I am and I don't even know why I care about that right now, and he shifts his weight and I can feel his erect penis next to mine, wet and hot and I can maybe feel my heartbeat in it. It's all I can do to not come. He kisses me the way a car crash happens: perfunctory metal on metal scraping. There's more lust than anything else and I nearly laugh, his tongue in my mouth, when I remember my mother's sister saying I was cute now that I lost the last of the baby fat over the summer. He pulls my hair and my head tilts back and he nibbles on my neck.

In the lingerie department, she puts on bras over her shirt and whenever she does that I'm reminded she has big boobs. I always forget. None of the bras fit and all I'm thinking of is how if she wasn't here, I'd look like a perverted old man, holding these bras, lost, where I don't belong.

Afterward, in the futon, he gets up and walks to his kitchen and comes back with a glass of water for me and he asks me if I'm okay. I'm sweating and sore and exhilarated and he sits next to me and I make the mistake of asking him when I can come over again. Of course he laughs. He digs in his pants and brings out a pack of cigarettes and lights one and asks me if I want another and I'm more confused than anything else, suddenly. He's quiet for a long time and I watch him smoke, the sinew of his muscles on his skinny back look like snakes slithering underneath velvet. He gets up and pulls on his briefs, purple, maybe lavender, and not expensive and says I should get on home.

We're in the haircare aisle, and she's looking for another couple of hair picks and I'm looking for nothing. While she looks, I look over her shoulder. I see a lavender-handled hairbrush. It's pretty big and it's not the size of it that makes me reach out and grab it off the rack (there are several just like it behind it), but the color. It's unmistakable. Color memory, is that a thing that exists the way odor memory exists, transporting you to very specific time and place at the same time? I remember the very first time I saw this color. Every time I see it, I'm reminded.

Long after I walk and take bus home, after I shower and maybe there's some residual pain, I'm laying on my bed, under the covers thinking about him, whatever his name was or is, wherever he is now. Then, I'm thinking I will run into him next time and I'll want him to take me home again because I think I like him. What I know now that I didn't know then, of course. But in my bed and I'm sixteen, I touch my body everywhere he touched it, I'm trying to imagine what his touch would be feel the second time around.

We fill the cart with everything from towels to movies to baby clothes as we walk through the store. Everything is a story, a what if or a wouldn't it be nice. And it's fun making up the stories as we go because, well, why wouldn't we, right? So we leave the full cart somewhere near the greeting cards and she takes what she needs and I take what I need from it and go through the checkstand and she pays for everything and as the young girl running the register rings up the hairbrush she says to me if I forgot I shave my head and the cashier, she smiles, and I let's get out of here. And in the parking lot she asks me more about the stupid hairbrush neither of us will use and I tell my best friend a story I've not hold her before.

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/softskinsells/blog#ixzz0zFTQ21TQ

Years ago, he invited me to his apartment for a beer. This is after we spent some time talking about the ridiculousness of the comics I was reading outside of a Starbucks after class. So long ago and still it's as if it's happening right now. Everything seems to always be happening at the same time in my head. Everything. Then. Now. Now, in his apartment that he shares with three other guys (only two bedrooms, one of them sleeps on the couch) and I look around and there's a futon in the main room facing a huge television set with all of the video game systems hooked up to it but no cable box. Shelves everywhere with records – vinyl – and CD's and DVD's and comic books seem to cover every available wall space. He sees me looking around and says none of it is his. Like he's embarrassed. Why did I come here?

We go to Target, after the mall, because we need some things for the house. The closest store is also a half block away from where I work and it's Thursday and I need to pick up my paycheck. We walk in and she grabs a shopping cart the size of my first car.

"Do we really need that?" I say.

"Maybe," she says, "let's see if we can fill it up."

We walk down the main aisle toward where the clothing departments are. There's a rack that looks like a broken and hobbled old skeleton with colorful swim suits and bikinis hanging off it. She stops and picks out a one-piece and holds it against me. She looks at me as if she's seriously considering getting me this and that I would seriously consider it wearing it at some point.

She says, "I like this color on you." She's serious. She drops it in our cart and we move on to where the lingerie is and she says, "I need a new bra."

We're both naked, our clothes lying on the floor, he's on top of me on the futon. He smiles down at me and his brown brown eyes don't say much other than he's about to fuck me. And I know this and I'm a little scared. But my excitement more than makes up for it. He's maybe five, eight years older than I am and I don't even know why I care about that right now, and he shifts his weight and I can feel his erect penis next to mine, wet and hot and I can maybe feel my heartbeat in it. It's all I can do to not come. He kisses me the way a car crash happens: perfunctory metal on metal scraping. There's more lust than anything else and I nearly laugh, his tongue in my mouth, when I remember my mother's sister saying I was cute now that I lost the last of the baby fat over the summer. He pulls my hair and my head tilts back and he nibbles on my neck.

In the lingerie department, she puts on bras over her shirt and whenever she does that I'm reminded she has big boobs. I always forget. None of the bras fit and all I'm thinking of is how if she wasn't here, I'd look like a perverted old man, holding these bras, lost, where I don't belong.

Afterward, in the futon, he gets up and walks to his kitchen and comes back with a glass of water for me and he asks me if I'm okay. I'm sweating and sore and exhilarated and he sits next to me and I make the mistake of asking him when I can come over again. Of course he laughs. He digs in his pants and brings out a pack of cigarettes and lights one and asks me if I want another and I'm more confused than anything else, suddenly. He's quiet for a long time and I watch him smoke, the sinew of his muscles on his skinny back look like snakes slithering underneath velvet. He gets up and pulls on his briefs, purple, maybe lavender, and not expensive and says I should get on home.

We're in the haircare aisle, and she's looking for another couple of hair picks and I'm looking for nothing. While she looks, I look over her shoulder. I see a lavender-handled hairbrush. It's pretty big and it's not the size of it that makes me reach out and grab it off the rack (there are several just like it behind it), but the color. It's unmistakable. Color memory, is that a thing that exists the way odor memory exists, transporting you to very specific time and place at the same time? I remember the very first time I saw this color. Every time I see it, I'm reminded.

Long after I walk and take bus home, after I shower and maybe there's some residual pain, I'm laying on my bed, under the covers thinking about him, whatever his name was or is, wherever he is now. Then, I'm thinking I will run into him next time and I'll want him to take me home again because I think I like him. What I know now that I didn't know then, of course. But in my bed and I'm sixteen, I touch my body everywhere he touched it, I'm trying to imagine what his touch would be feel the second time around.

We fill the cart with everything from towels to movies to baby clothes as we walk through the store. Everything is a story, a what if or a wouldn't it be nice. And it's fun making up the stories as we go because, well, why wouldn't we, right? So we leave the full cart somewhere near the greeting cards and she takes what she needs and I take what I need from it and go through the checkstand and she pays for everything and as the young girl running the register rings up the hairbrush she says to me if I forgot I shave my head and the cashier, she smiles, and I let's get out of here. And in the parking lot she asks me more about the stupid hairbrush neither of us will use and I tell my best friend a story I've not hold her before.

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/softskinsells/blog#ixzz0zFTQ21TQ

Dig

i wish i didn't know it could exists. that it could happen. and every time i see you i know what's behind your eyes, i can feel it. i know it's there and i know you love me. of that there is no doubt. but what's missing is its sheen. because there are no more compromises to make, and none i'm willing to make and all we have is...just love. a love that's done. i don't question your feelings nor mine. our love has just run its course. our love has used up all its magic, and i wish i didn't know there was such a thing.


(c)2008

August

i left him sleeping because it was time to go to work. he didn't seem to have a care at all, but he's asleep and who of us look like anything when we're sleeping? thing is, he should be worried, he shouldn't be resting. he should be wondering what's goin g to happen tomorrow. but he isn't. not even midnight and he's in that deep sleep he falls into where my shaking him is the only way to get him to rouse. i lace up my boots, grab my jacket on the way out.

no buses run at this hour but it's only four miles away. it's done wonders for my health, this walking to work. been doing it for nearly a year now and my legs have gotten firmer and i've lost some weight. it's not like for real exercise. i don't think any grown man wants to get up every night before midnight and walk four miles to work the graveyard shift at a warehouse. proletariat exercise?

after the first few hours, when we're outside having a smoke during the meal break, a bunch of sit on the loading dock, our legs hanging off the metal lip, and we just talk pure nonsense. i'm not sure why this is what we do, but it's entertaining and sometimes we get to hear one of the younger guys' stories about their weekend trip out of town, and laugh when they laughs because they're looking for some sort of validation. most of us are probably ten years or more older than they are, but we were them back when. no real education and no real skill other than upperbody strength and ability to stay out of serious trouble.

when we get off work, luis and i go to the diner off c avenue and have some bad food for breakfast. he tells me about his daughter getting accustomed to her braces and i tell him my brother-in-law is coming out next week. he says how much he wished he could get a few day shifts next month so he can watch his kids. when the second cups of coffee come, that's when he tells me he thinks he and his wife might lose their house. he says he's behind a few payments and just can't seem to catch up. it's apropos of nothing, and maybe i think he's about to cry and i offer to pay for our bill and he says nothing else about it.

what do you say to a person when he's so despaired? what can you say when you're own situation is as precarious and you really don't care very much about anything else.

i finally get home after a long night and long morning. the apartment is empty and there's fresh coffee brewing and maybe i don't feel like a shower. pour myself some coffee and turn on the morning local news. of course, he's gone. that morning class he has, that's today and the day after tomorrow. honestly, i'm always glad to have the place to myself most of the time. does that make me a bad person? no, it doesn't. i don't think anyone ever imagined themselves being glad they're alone in their house. i think most people like to be home, just relaxing, like i am, in front of the television, with some fresh coffee, with the one they love.

when i take off my shirt, i feel like i'm covered in a film of sweat and dust. whenever i move my arms, it's as if when i was a kid and used to peel dried glue off my hands. i take off my shoes and my socks butnot my jeans. in the bedroom, the bed, unmade, seems like a grand idea. i wish i wanted to see him more. but as the weeks go by, i don't. i listen to the youngsters at work, and i don't want their life, maybe just that little bit of fire they seem to have. i'm sure at one point i did. only, then, when we're in the middle of it. i listen to luis after work and his complaints are the same complaints of someone's father who can't make things work out anymore, and i wonder if that's really where i'm heading. no one ever tells you that when you're young, any of it. is there such a thing as pre-midlife crisis crisis? could be the lack of sleep.

i lay down and the sheets smell like they need changing but i don't want to. it's just warm enough that i don't need any covers. maybe i'm just having a little bit of lack of faith simply because i always thought by the time i reached this point, this wouldn't be it: glad that after work i can come home and sleep on an unmade bed alone. when i'll wake up, maybe i walk to the bar around the corner and have a drink and i'll talk to the waitress who's always flirting with me even after i told her i'm not available (that's what i said; i didn't say i was living with someone), she's around my age and makes me laugh. maybe i'll just stay home and wash clothes and clean. something easy and domestic. or maybe i'll just lay here until i can't anymore. or until he gets home and is wired on whatever topic they discussed in that acting class he goes to. try sleeping through that.

i make it seem like every day is the most terrible day in the universe. it's not. i'm glad i have what i have. everything. but i need more than all this. i'm not satisfied. are you? does that make me greedy? i have what i want, but not what i need. there's a difference. i don't even know what i need.

i hope when he walks in here he thinks, i don't want to wake him, but i know he'll wake me up anyway.

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i've not depth. that's what she said. i'm shallow. like a posed pretentious over-saturated, over-exposed, over-planed, high-contrast photograph. she said people can look at me and what they see really is what they'll get. sometimes you can judge a book by its cover, she said. there's nothing to me than my face and my lips. she said she couldn't handle it anymore: cute was good for a couple of months but she wanted more. she didn't say if there was something else, and all i could imagine is one of those greasy-haired, way too skinny mexican boys across the hallway. she didn't really let me answer back. she came and said what she wanted to say, and left. she wasn't agitated and didn't appear to be angry. she was definitely passionate. she said she couldn't do it anymore, and i'm thinking what were we doing that was so bad, actually. i thought we enjoyed each other and we made each other laugh. that's my problem: girls are always telling me a variation of the same story. what they never say is what it is that theyre missing. why is that? is it that they're too concerned that it is they who'll sound selfish and shallow? it's not about giving or taking. but i wish at least one of them would give me something to work with. i have a crappy job that pays me just enough; i buy them books i know they'll like; we go places we both want to go to; we rent only the movies they like; we go visit the same restaurants we've liked from the beginning. is that it? there's no surprises left? after a few weeks or months, i couldn't imagine you can build tomorrow much less a future. after a while of these sort of melodramatic but not really exits tend to lose their impact and i know longer linger on them too much. the sting wears off and what am i left with but single sunday afternoons and single friday mornings (maybe i should say these are my favorite times. is that it?). i hate that by this point it doesn't mean as much as i'd like to think it does. it's not that i'm completely heartless and made out of metal, i know it's not. but i do imagine that there isn't anything that's so complicated that can't be, maybe not solved, but at least talked about and maybe, eventually, dealt with. or am i just so stupid that i can't see that there really isn't very much to me? i suppose it's possible because i'm used to me being me (whatever the hell that means) and expecting everyone else to get me, isn't that very self-centered arrogant thing? but i think i'm a reasonable enough person. i don't think i'm a bad guy, but i can't be so dense as to not see that, yes, they're variations of the same story, obviously that means something. i mean, so many people can't be wrong. i can see why rob fleming wanted to revisit his exes. no depth. that's me. strange that a person can be summed up that way, huh? so if that's what i'm perceived as, maybe that's what i should be like. live down to other people's expectations. then everything's equal. but that'd be a lie. i wonder, if you give people what they want all the time, will they be satisfied? even if it's something that's manufactured and not at all genuine, i mean, how would they know you're only pleasing them for the sake that i don't want to go out to the art theater on sunday afternoons by myself? isn't that what a parasite is? would people rather have more symbiosis that codependency predicated by a lie?

i'm not sure what snaps me out of my funk, but there she is, still sitting on the toilet while i'm naked in the bathtub, soap everywhere. she's looking at me like i just went on and on for five minutes without any clear point. irrational musings that i said out loud because i thought she left.

she says, what the fuck is wrong with you?

i think her face is flushed with anger and she get's up to leave and as she stomps her way out of my house, i maybe feel a little self-conscious.

i really should quit drinking.

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he finished talking and sat there listening to the rest of the table and he made a noise the same way a baby makes noises when it wants to talk but can't. no one else heard him and i looked over and he had this weird look on his face: he wasn't listening anymore and felt as if he was looking through us. then i saw the firs bubbles of spit form between his lips. i couldn't look away. i thought he was going to say something. everyone else kept on talking. he wasn't looking at me at all. his eyes were so wide and dark like shark eyes.

someone said something about what we're doing in class next week. the types of monologues this particular teaches likes, when i saw it begin to dribble from his mouth. it wasn't spit. well, not only spit, but blood, too. no one saw as this was happening and i couldn't move. i couldn't just stop looking at his mouth and the blood and spit slid down his chin until it dripped before him on the tabletop. he wasn't wincing in pain, and he didn't say anything. i wanted to say something before anyone else noticed. a thing string of spit and blood was on its way to meet the table when, without any indication, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he fell forward, hitting the table with his face before collapsing to the floor.

the force of his head hitting the table made all the plates and glasses and silverware rattle. everyone was startled but me. i saw it happen as if it were slow motion. now, i think i should've been able to stop it from happening, but i know there wasn't anything that i could do to make my brain move my body. i was in shock. but i didn't even know what was happening. on the spot where his face hit the table was a broken, bloody tooth.

a couple of the girls screamed, and the black girl's boyfriend - jeremy-something - cursed loudly. everyone sprang to their feet. a couple of waiters were running in our direction. the other diners, the ones near out table, all looked over and didn't know what was happening. hell, we didn't know. i didn't know. some women oh-my-goded from the other end of the restaurant. a couple of men who were wearing suits and were sitting at the bar, rushed over with glasses of water. all this comotion, all of this action. so much kinesis at every level. already i could see people with their cellphones to their ears, calling for help. there was a kid nearby using a cellphone to take pictures. another (the first's twin) was taking video from his own phone. i sat there.

everyone was pushing the chairs away from where he fell. everyone was reaching for clean napkins, dipping them in water, and wiping the blood from his mouth. you could see where his nise snaped when his face his the table; it was growing darker and darker. you could see the gap in his formerly perfect row of upper teeth. blood kept dribbling out of his mouth. but it wasn't red-red, claret-red, blood-red. it looked so fake: orange and too oxigenated. his eyes were open but nothing but white showed through. a blood vessel in his left eye had burst near his nose.

i sat there watching this and no one paid me any attention. everyone was too busy trying to help, trying to call for emergency services, wiping away at the now torrent of orange-blood-red blood that was coming from his mouth. waiters were trying to keep people away. the girls who'd been with us that night were crying, holding their hands near their mouths. all the guys from our table were trying to wake him up the way you think a parent tries to wake up a child to go to church. one of the men in suits was calling him champ and sport, talking to him as if he was trying to convince him not to die.

i knew that's what was happening. he was dying. even if you've never seen a dead body, there's just something about a way a person looks when they're done.

even know, after everything, no one ever says anything to me as to why i didn't move an inch to do anything. what could i say? i was in shock sure, but not for the reason people say i was in shock. i was so surprised to the point of inaction.

the paramedics arrived and they couldn't make him breathe. they asked if anyone moved him. who saw what happened. everyone at our table but me said the same thing: we were all in the middle of conversation and he just fell over. i didn't say anything, and amongst the chaos that was unravelling, i got away with staying silent. they strapped him on a gurney: pointless. the had one of those mask-hand pump things on his face to help him breathe. as soon as the paramedic put the mask on him, it began filling with blood. dark red blood. he said, oh shit, and removed the mask and blood poured out of his nose and mouth and ears and eyes. it covered his face and looked like off shore oil spills look on the nightly news. they wheeled him out. people were freaking out. we all left and got into the cars we came in and followed the ambulance. one of the girls grabbed the broken tooth on the way out.

i knew he was dead because i wished him to die. i wasn't in shock from what i saw. i was in shock because what i did worked. i'm not sure exactly what i said in my head. i just know i didn't want him to make it out of the restaurant breathing.

you know when you're driving along and someone cuts you off, and you get ultimately pissed-off to the point of a few moments of utter hate? maybe you curse at the other driver, or maybe you even say something like, you dumb motherfucking asshole, i hope you die, but you don't really mean it. you're just angry in a little burst. but you say something terrible to yourself, maybe you think it.

i didn't mean for him to die. but i did want him dead.

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when i get home, i strip down to my boxers. sloughing off my clothes, i walk into the kitchen and grab a bottle of juice from the fridge and sit at my desk and read through several emails. it's hot out tonight, a little humid. but i don't really mind. it's almost three in the morning and i feel so wired. the idea of going to bed and trying to sleep is pointless right about now. i delete almost every single email without even reading them.

what happened is she said to meet her after she got off work. that's all it took.

i wondered around town, driving around, killing time and i asked her what she was doing after she got off work and she said nothing and i said would you like to hang out (i can't even believe i said that) and she said yes. she didn't pause to even think about it. she said yes and smiled at me and told me to meet her out front at eight. that meant two hours. i couldn't go home i was so excited.

we drove up to century city and wondered around the westfield mall on santa monica for a few hours. we talked about how she's trying to save up enough money to go back to school. how she didn't really want to keep working at the comic book shop in her thirties. she said she also waitressed on the weekends in venice. i should come by one of these days soon, she said. she told me about her dad raised her and her brother when her mother died when she was five. her older brother lives in phoenix now, with his girlfriend of seven years and their twin daughters. she says how much she loves it here in california but she can't afford it as the years go on. she grew up in las vegas, but being near the ocean is much better than cheap living. she tried acting for a while when she was a teenager and only got one callback for a crest commercial and still didn't get it. yeah, she said, the director tried his game on her and it was a little cute but more creepy than anything else. imagine, she said, giving up your pussy for a one line bit part in a toothpaste commercial. she told me she regrets the one tattoo she got when she was fifteen. she said she was at the same show in long beach i was at last christmas. she said she doesn't really like hip hop but the guy she was seeing at the time had an extra ticket for one of his buddies who bailed and took her instead. she said her then-boyfriend got so high he wound up sleeping it off in the car and she was at the show himself. she said the tour dj from the show asked for her number. she said she's been single since. she asked me if i thought she was talking too much. she does that.

we walk until the mall closes and there are no more people anywhere. all the shops are dark.

she laughed so loud when i nearly tripped over a crack on the floor and she said she's sorry about that. she saw i was a little embarrassed but laughing too and ran over to me and hugged me and kissed me.

almost as if it was still happening right now.

she kisses me and looks into my eyes and says she'd been waiting for me to say something to her so we could see each other outside of the shop. she says she's come so close to asking me out but just couldn't do it. she's not shy but for some reason, asking guys out is different for girls. we run when we see the night security guard before he sees us. we make the right turn at the hugo boss store and tells me how way back when, the company that is now hugo boss got money from making nazi ss uniforms. she's full of tons of useless information. she holds my hand for the rest of the night. i ask her if she wants to go somewhere and make last call. she says sure and we walk to the car. i open her door and she says most guys don't do that anymore. i'm about to make some oblique reference to chasin amy but she says she'll reach across and unlock my door every time from now on. she smiles and i kiss her. we drive to up santa monica and she holds my hand the entire way. we don't say much and she turns up the music when she hears nick cave come on the stereo. she doesn't sing but she mouths the words and i look at her lips moving. she looks out the window, the beverly hills night rushes past us.

i drive her home and she tells me she's not going to invite me in. she says she likes me. tonight, she likes me. let's see how it goes from here. she gets out of the car and says i don't have to open her car door all the time, she was just kidding. she likes me, she says again. the car door closed and i wait for her to go inside her building until i drive off.

let's see what happens she said but i can't sleep. i can't. because i just can't help myself. i wonder if she'll call me tomorrow. i feel like a kid in junior high school being so excited over the prospects of another person coming into my life...

...it's nearly five when she gets home from the airport. she says her sister just now dropped her off. she asks me why i'm still up and i tell her i was waiting for her. i was just too excited to sleep. she undresses and we have sex and i fall asleep with her arm around me.

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after class and coffee with a couple of the girls, i'm in my care, ready to set off for home when my phone chirps with a text message. when my phone says someone's trying to reach me, i know exactly who it is: a bad idea. but it's been a few days since i returned a call and i text back, making sure it's the same place as before and when i get confirmation of it, i do0nt go straight home.

home. it's not like anyone's going to miss me for a few hours. i do like having most of the day to myself, most days. he did say he'd pay for me to finish this stupid course. if i really wanted to. i told him, yes, of course. i mean, money's a little tight ever since i quit my job a few months back, and he had to give up his car, but i think we're getting along fine. not great, just fine.

on the freeway toward san pedro, you can feel the ocean breeze as soon as you hit gaffey street. all the hills and turns and cliffs make it for a nice drive on any day. i wished we lived out here instead. winding my way through portugese bend, everywhere are bicycle riders in their ridiculous bike-riding outfits made of spandex and lycra. you see people walking their dogs along the side of the road. off to the left are pretty steep cliffs and the ocean. on clear days like today you can see catalina, so far but not really.

when i park my car, i always check to see if his car is here. i hate waiting. but i don't know why i still do this becaue he's always here before i am. in just a black tee and jeans, i still look at my reflection in the rearview. i wonder how it is that i find myself in these situations. i know the how, but why is it that this seems like a good reason. why is it that even when you know you're about to repeat a mistake, sometimes you just can't help yourself? of course, i'm projecting. i always ask myself the same questions because i know what i'm about to do is not the right thing. i get out of my car walk into the hotel room anyway.

afterward, what i'm thinking is how ridiculous an image a grown man with his pants around his ankles is. i mean, it's not, but it is. it's a little sad in these situations. he's in the shower and i'm laying on the bed, naked, absentmindedly flipping through the chanels on the absolutely ancient color television. i took off my shirt earlier and sat on the bed and he had his pants and boxers around his ankles, his hard and dripping dick aimed at me. at that moment, it's not like it's one of the things i'm thinking about, the ridiculous image. i wouldn't be a guy if that were it.

i can hear him singing in the shower. that little extra pep afterwards. older guys, it's been my experience, usually seem a little bit more energetic afterward. me, i'm lounging around, feeling pretty pleased with myself in everyway. must admit, when you know you can influence people to do what you want them to do with a quick smile and a short bit of conversation, it's a great ego boost. he walks out of the shower wearing his underwear and socks and smiles at me. i make the effort to return it. wonder what his life is like. he dresses and talks to me about something he's doing for his job, something to do with going to arizona and if i can get away for a couple of days, he'd like to take me with him. i say no and thank you and i just can't get away. i can tell he was really expecting me to say yes and recoils a bit when i say no. he says i can stay but he has to go, i say okay, and he kisses me on the cheek and leaves. i get dressed and wait for him to drive off and i get back to my car.

the drive home seems a little off putting. of course i always feel guilty. it's not fair and it just isn't right. but i make that choice every time. no one's forcing me to do something i don't want. and that's just the problem. i want to damn much. i know i do. i want more of everything. it's like greed, only a little diffrerent. want want want. i'll tell you this, you can't settle for less.

i get home and i turn on the television but mute it. something terrible's on vh1 and i make myself a sandwich. i smell like what i've been doing. after i eat while watching the silent program, i shower and clean out the coffee maker and empty the old coffee and brew some more. it's not even two in the afternoon. i've a towel wrapped around my waist and go to the bedroom for a fresh pair of jeans.

i open the door quietly and i hear him before i see him. he's sleeping. he managed to fall asleep while still wearing his pants and nothing else. i look at him and lean over and kiss him on the forehead. he's incredible but i wish i didn't want more. i don't want to wake him, so i leave and sit out in the living room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes until i fall asleep.

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i look at him sometimes and i don't think i trust him, not fully. what does that mean, when you have wavering faith in a person? I don't know, i look at him and i can't tell what's going on behind his brown-brown eyes. it's not that i want to know every single thought he's having right this second. but the feeling comes over me that says he's not someone to invest in one hundred percent, and certainly not right now.

what's a little curious about us simply walking the aisles at the supermarket is he talks to me and asks me questions and there isn't a thing we miss about each other during these moments. but i can never feel at ease. i wouldn't admit this to him, even if he asked, but i can never feel comfortable around him. he makes me feel his brain's constantly working. scheming. isn't that terrible, thinking the person walking next to you is always planning something...underhanded? has he given me reason to believe this is the sort of person he is? truthfully, not that i can recall. i'm not sure why i'm so uneasy around him.

afterward, back home, he realizes he left his wallet on the checkstand. i saw him set it next to the atm pin pad but i can't recall if he put it away before we walked out. a quick call to the market and someone did turn it in at lost and found. he says he'll be right back. right.

last night, my sister dropped me home from the airport and it was so late (or early, depending how you look at it) and we still had sex and he falls asleep. i look at him sleep and i can't get the feeling of distrust to go away. it wasn't the first time i've had to go out of town and i know it's not going to be the last (he and a couple of his friends to go to las vegas pretty regularly), and every time i just can't stop thinking this way. i didn't sleep at all and when he woke up around ten, i made it seem as if i'd only been up for an hour or so and made him breakfast.

after we get everything ready for tomorrow's drive, he asks me if i want to go out somewhere. he doesn't feel like staying in. neither do i so we get in the car and we drive up pch until we hit huntington beach. up mainstreet used to be a pretty decent mexican place that's now been replaced with a surf shop. go across the street to the other restaurants that've always been here and each place is crowded already: friday night. every place seems to be full of younger people with too much time and money on their hands. we talk about the route for the drive to san diego tomorrow and that's just depressing for some reason. i ask him when he goes back to work the week after next, if he's looking forward to it. conversation moves along like a timid kitten.

finally, after we manage to get a table in aloud bar/grill and eat a pretty predictable dinner, he says maybe we should get back and avoid even more people being out here.i drive us back home and he settles on the couch with that book he's been reading for a couple of days and i watch some television. i sit next to him and rest my head on his lap and the puts an arm on my hip and it feels safe here, right now. why can't everything always feel safe? why am i constantly thinking everything over and over? when it comes to him, i just can't figure him out, even after so many months.

of course i'm insecure. thing is, i've never had that feeling before. i've dated more successful and attractive and funny and interesting and smarter men than him. and each time, whatever turnout in the end, it was never an issue. why now? he's great: smart and great looking and affectionate and plain nice. my sister says it's intuition. i'm intuiting something that i can't see. i tell her each time i think all that is b.s. and she laughs at me and asks me, frankly, if don't have any female intuition at all.

we leave early in the morning to san diego. it's his father's birthday and they're having a sort of mini-family reunion for the weekend. he says he can't wait for meet his entire family. i just wonder if any of them will like me.

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after we went out that one time, i didn't see him again for weeks. of course i knew he was living with someone! jarvis told me. i'd be lying if that wasn't one of the reasons why i agreed to go out with him. nothing serious: all we did was run around an empty mall for a while and kissed a couple of times. i liked him from when he started coming into the shop. he's good looking in the way you think clive owen is good looking. meaning, rugged and weathered a bit, and still sexy as hell. and, gotta tell you, a good looking guy who likes comics, seems to be such my thing, you know. anyway, he'd come in and always just buy one book and it wasn't ever a single issue. it was either a trade or graphic novel, and it wasn't ever of a continuing series. yes, it made me curious, his comics buying habits.

the shop's owner - that'd be jarvis - told me he'd come in a few times with his girl and they were pretty lovy-dovy and a little spark died inside. but, fuck it.

i wasn't gonna go to be bed with him, but i was curious to see what sort of guy he was. to his benefit, he didn't try to take me home (i wonder what would've happened if he did). he was nice and asked me loads of questions. he wanted to get to know me and all. turns out, when i was still seeing that asshole jason, he was at the same show in long beach i was at. small world and all that. he's a little bit more interesting that i thought. of course, he was out with some other girl while his girl was back home, probably wondering where he was. if she only knew.

before you hate me, it was completely innocent. i'm not going to try and take this girl's guy. just wanted the company, and never ever underestimate the power of a good make out session!

for a few weeks, he stopped coming into the shop. i noticed. but that's how things go, i suppose. probably, he felt guilty. in a way, it's disappointing because...because i think he'd make a decent friend. a terrible boyfriend, but a good friend. i'm a pretty good judge of character. always have been. irony? you be the judge. i mean, you're already judging me, so...

at home, if you can call it that, my three roommates are having a party and i just want to sleep. this is what my room looks like:

wall one is covered in music posters and flyers and photos with bands i've met. wall two is plastered with movie posters, none of which are like 'real' movie posters. just reprints. my favorite one is for that movie they made a few years back, ms. wyoming, but mostly because i think i've a lesbian crush on shannyn sossamon. wall three is lined with bookshelves i've bought at terrible suburban stores. they have zero personality. bookshelves as high school yearbook pictures? anyway, i've dozens and dozens of comics and trades and graphic novels (yes, there is a difference between the three types, dammit!). also dozens and dozens of novels i've read at least four times. i've been a nerd for longer than i knew. there is no wall four, just my tiny closet. which is just as well because all i seem to own are black tee-shirts and jeans, and one immortal pair of sneakers.

i lay down and wonder what mike is doing. haven't talked to him in a while and he was pretty cool. if you met him you'd think he was some sort of spaz, but once i got to know him, he became spectacularly cool. he'd write his little two act plays and put them on at the university theater and were actually pretty good. mostly it was about guys and girls meeting or breaking up. a weirder younger amalgam of kevin smith and john hughes. his hair used to always fall across his face when he was writing (he only wrote longhand!). he didn't wear glasses or carry around a square shoulder bag. he had red and black dreads and always wore some japanese biker boots i'de never seen anywhere. he didn't wear skinny jeans and did not match his shirts to his socks. i'm thinking about mike because he is creative.

i think about julian because he was so damn cool. only gay guy i know who'd jump into the mosh pit with me! looking at him, you'd think he was one of those hip-hop b-boys but he wasn't. he was fucking with those people because he could. he'd rock a 1970's punk rock outfit when we'd go to the mall. but when it was just him and me, yoga pants and an old bruce lee tee while we watched seinfeld on dvd over and over again. i'm thinking about him because he's long gone, and at a time, before i knew he was gay, i think i fell in love with him.

i think about jason because he was the last guy i went out with. i have to tell you, jason was probably the best looking guy i've ever gone out with in my adult life. he's tall and has a dark complexion and a killer smile and and dreads that hang to his waist and the cutest chubby cheeks! one of his eye has a tinge of green around a deep brown iris. he dj's. he can sing too but is self-conscious about it. too bad he likes getting high as much as people like to have three meals a day. after that show last christmas and he couldn't make it out of the car, i'd had enough. count me lucky for a few months, walking down the street while holding his hand, and seeing all the girls look at him and then look at me, or having dudes look at me and then him, that's always priceless, even as memories. i'm thinking about jason because i'm lonely.

i am. i get a chance too meet all these wonderful men but they're not for me. i'm not sure how this works and i'd like to think i've something to offer. but they're all gone, doing whatever it is they're doing. while i work two jobs and try to save some money. i wonder about them and the rest from time to time. this fucking city wasn't made to make friends. or maybe it's just me.

i want tacos.

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when i get home, my wife has a great spead at the table. we are expecting company and she' knows how to put on a great show. she's proud of her work. and she should be. whenever anyone's due to come over, she doesn't let a single thing fall to chance. a bit controlling, i know. cleaning the house, making the food, washing everything. even when i've begun helping at time, even if it was just washing dishes, she tells me to stop what i'm doing and leave it for her. i continue, and she'll stand next to me and start doing the work and takes over, nearly pushing me away. i didn't know she was like this until she moved in with me all those years ago. i appreciate it. i really do. i'm sure she doesn't like to do any of it, but revels in that impression people have of her home.

who's coming over are some of her college friends and their husbands and wives. just a light lunch party. how it will turn out, who knows. after so long, i mean, you can't really know everything about old friends after a few years apart. this twenty-first century, with the internet and all, you keep connected via emails and electrons and i would've never imagine this is what would become of personal interaction. when i was a kid, all i wanted was robots and a jetsons video phone.

she's finishing up the table settings and watch her do her thing. she sees me and smiles and asks me if everything went well in the meeting and i tell her everything went fine. panic over nothing. i tell her i thought it was gonna be longer, but i'm glad it wasn't. she says she's glad too because otherwise she'd have to kill me if i missed meeting her friends. i tell her i love her and that i'm gonna shower and change.

in the bathroom, after a shower that was probably a little too long, i'm shaving through the fogged mirror. i've always used those cheap disposable razors you buy in packs of a dozen. there's lots more gray in my beard than ever. there's less hair growing up on top of my head. i don't know why this bothers me. not a lot, but just enough. my chest is pale and i remember when it looked as if it was carved out of stone. all those years ago. wistful thoughts.

in the garage, i put clothes in the to do basket. weird that these clothes need washing now that i've worn them all of four hours or so. when i was a kid, i'd go weeks in the same pair of jeans. stupid boy that i was. people notice. i know i do, now.

once everyone's left, my wife's in the bath, feeling triumphant i think. she should. she's one of a kind. she reminds me a bit of julia louis dreyfus in the later years: beautiful, black curly hair, smarter than me, and knows damn near everything about me, it wouldn't surprise me if she ever had to be the one to remind me of my own birthday one of these days. i'm pretty damn lucky. i remember years and years back, my mother, she would tell me what type of woman she wanted for me and what type of man she wanted for my sister. of course, i didn't really pay it any serious attention back then; i was a kid, what did i care about when i got married. truthfully, not that we've known each other for nearly twenty years, my wife and i, i think mom would be proud.

i call through the bathroom door that i'm going to walk to the corner gas station for a pack of smokes and she says okay, and that i should pick her up a can of beer: she's earned it. i tell her i'll be right back.

on the walk over, just a couple of blocks, i like our neighborhood. it's nice but it's not suburban nice; i like that it has personality. it's the type of nighborhood that doesn't have housing associations and where all the houses all look the same. one of the houses a couple houses away is painted pink! it's a little surprising but it turns out this lesbian couple that lives there decided on pink when the adoption for their daughter happened. i remember seeing them drive up with tons of balloons and little caravan of family and friends. they invited the entire block and we celebrated!

on the other side of our house, behind it, that house has been unfortunately handed from one terrible family to the next. we know this because of the ever-present for rent signage on the lawn. we've joked about how it's the house that isn't right for families. my wife is convinced if a decent single person were to rent it, everything would be a-ok. i just once someone to regularly prune that damn ficus tree that over hangs into our back yard.

a can of beer and a pack of smokes on the counter and i don't have my fucking wallet!

i know precisely where it is and i'm kicking myself for the careless idiot i am. i don't care about the money and credit cards and all that: nowadays, all that stuff is pretty much theft proof as long as you have your affairs in order and my wife and i do. but i'm still embarrassed at the gas station and i'm walking back home, hoping to get cash from my drawer next to the bed and return to the shop and then back home. serves me right.

where my wallet is, if he didn't take it, on the floor next to the shower of the hotel room from earlier. i remember i took my clothes in with me for a shower and it fell out of the back pocket and i saw it fall and i thought to myself i'd pick it up afterward. but i was in the shower right after fucking that boy. i was fucking singing in the shower, feeling pretty pleased with myself, and i completely forgot. of course when i get home i text and call him when i can and he doesn't answer my calls and he doesn't respond to my messages...

...until midnight, when my cell rings and i've been asleep for a couple hours. when i answer it's not his voice i hear, the voice i expect. i whisper into my phone a groggy hey baby and the man on the other end of the line says who the fuck am i.

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i’m not sure what i was expecting this morning.

i roll over and nearly fall of stella’s couch. i couldn’t go home last night. i know she’s gone to work already because her keys are gone. the sun is coming through her wide fron windows but it’s still a bit cold. i throw the blanket off me and it falls to the floor. i slept in my clothes and socks and i feel gross. i feel grease and defeated. what a terrible night.i didn’t dream about anything. i think i lost consciousness as opposed to sleep.

after a shower, i dress in my wrinkled clothes, and i walk home.

i never really thought i could change him, you know. i mean, i knew what i was getting into when i decided he was funny, and smart, and beautiful, and clever, and unlike anyone else i’d met recently. because he was all of these things. when he began the conversation, that first one that now seems forever ago even though it wasn’t, i was hesitant. all he asked was something about the book i was holding at the store and who knew from something so easy and benign, all of this would come?

i remember seeing his bookshelves for the first time and it made me believe him. isn’t that terrible, judging based solely on what a person has on their bookshelves? but everything he said back when was true. it wasn’t even on the third date that i went up to his place. but i remember thinking after that first conversation that there would be, in fact, a third date. how presumtuous of me, i suppose. but when you get that inkling, aren’t you usually right? i wonder if when some people meet each other for the first time, if they know they’ll wind up together forever? so much future.

at the corner is a breakfast place, and in its patio are tables full of people, laughing and talking and eating. sunday mornings are the best. breakfast is my favorite thing to do in the world with other people. today isn’t the case and that makes sad.

i knew he drank a lot. all the money he spent, all the times he’d call in the middle of the night and he couldn’t even talk straight. the terrible nights when i didn’t even know if he made it home okay. i’m still not sure if he’s an alcoholic; he was able to keep a decent job and function normally. he wouldn’t drink every day but when he did, it was a little scary. of course, i pushed all that aside because he was never beligerent or violent or mean to me. he still took the time out, even when he was at his worst to watch out for me. i remember this time, we’re leaving that bar off venice, and i’d called for a cab. we’re standing there, in the middle of the night, the bar closing down for night, people everywhere, and i’m a little embarrassed and a little scared, and he’s standing next to me, swaying like a shoot of wheat against the wind. the cab pulls up and i move to open the door so he can get in and instead, he opens and holds the door for me.

i go into the liquor store a few blocks away from my house and i buy a pack of cigarettes. i haven’t smoked in months and i know i shouldn’t start up again, but i feel an itch i can’t scratch. i stopped smoking because i knew it bothered him. this isn’t irony, it’s something else. the girl behind the counter looks at me, my hair pulled back into a ragged pony tail, my wrinkled slept-in clothes and i think she feels me. she asks me for my id and after she takes my money, she says thanks and wishes me a good day. she smiles at me and it breaks my heart a little.

when i finally decided there wasn’t going to be anymore of us was when i felt him becoming something different. he didn’t change his routines. but whenever i’d look into his eyes, i wouldn’t see the same man looking back at me. what i silly thing to admit: i felt him changing. i didn’t go to his place to break it off with him, not at first. he was drunk and in the tub, bottles of beer along the edge of it, and i became angry and told him something about how if anyone saw him, all they’d see is this drunk cliche. i yelled at him, i think. i told him i couldn’t see him this same way again and again. and i walked out. or was about to when hearing him say something made me go back. i thought he said something to me, but he was talking to himself. every word he was probably thinking was coming out his mouth. i put the lid down and sat on the toilet and just listened.

when i get home i shower again and brush my teeth and wrap myself in my robe. i pour myself some juice and turn on some sunday morning politics television program but i don’t really care. i miss him. he’s destroying himself. i don’t want to have to save him from himself just so that i can have someone to have breakfast on sunday mornings. that is not my job. i love him. i wish i could just remove the one thing that seems to be his own impediment. i want to help him. i want him to help himself. but this isn’t my job. it’s not up to me to fix him. maybe he will, or not. i will care either way it turns out for him. i wish he was here with me now, telling me everything i want to hear, holding my hand. but i know exactly where he is, and there’s no room for me there.

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it's not true at all about having your life flash before your eyes when you die. i don't know where that came from. i wonder if it's just an expression people use. like when they say 'bless you' when you sneeze. you know, politeness. what i do know is none of that happened to me, the life and the flashing and all that bullshit. which is fine because, honestly, would you want to repeat your life, even just in flashes, all over again as you're about to pass on? i doubt very much anyone would. it would be like watching a football game and you already know the final score. what would the point be in that? honestly, although a little miffed about that, i'm glad whatever happens next will completely different from everything i've known. i mean, it has to be, doesn't it? i remember one thing, the night i died, it felt as if i got an intense headache, but only for about a second. you know, the head-throbbing type of headache that does ache but is more annoying than anything else? it felt like that. a wave of pain and annoyance. and that was it. we'd been at this restaurant, a bunch of my friends and i, and all we're doing is talking and drinking and eating one moment, and the next, i'm looking at matt, and the next i'm dead. of course i know i'm dead. i don't feel much of anything. i feel comfortable and surrounded by light. imagine being lit by a million million strobe lights, making everything white and warm, so much light everywhere you could hold your hand before you and you couldn't see it. the very opposite of a blackout. whiteout? maybe i don't have a body anymore. i mean, i can feel gravity and the weight of my arms, but i can't feel my fingers and toes. isn't that weird? you'd think there was some sort of great revelation once you're dead. like all those stories about the pearly gates and being asked questions by st. peter. at least, really, i was hoping that someone would've met me just to say, hey, we took your body and now you're nothing but soul. that would've been cool. on the other hand, there is nothing but there is comfortable contentment. i don't feel like i want or need anything. i'm not thirsty and i think i can talk to you for as long as you want. i mean, i know you'll go to bed soon, having had a great day with your family and your friends, doing whatever it is you do in your life, and it's time to relax a little and reflect a bit on the day, but sleep will win. and once you are asleep and nestled in and warm, ready for a dream or a thousand, i will still be here, telling you stories, because that's what i think i'm supposed to do. yeah, i do feel a little like i'm at a new school on my very first day: i know what i'm supposed to do even though where i am isn't familiar. i'm sorry, i can't help myself moving from one thing to the next. i don't even know why i said 'sorry' for anyway, it's not like you're going to go anywhere without me being there. but, man, didn't that sound terribly stalker-like? anyway, no, i'm not sorry either. i mean, i wonder if that's part of what life's about: you spend most of your life apologizing for things you didn't mean to do but you did them anyway. i do know i've no reason to be sorry for anything here...wherever here is. everything winds up having a purpose. as it is. the real kicker of everything is i know you can't hear me. i mean, all these things i'm saying, they're being said by a voice and they're being said in a language you understand, but you're not hearing them. you'd think that would make me stop, i'm sure, but that impetus goes away: i'm eternally patient and forthcoming. i wonder if i've become your conscience. that's the only thing that would explain it. man, if that's true than you and i both have been gypped. here, i was really, really, really hoping i was becoming a ghost or something ethereal like that; you were probably hoping you'd never hear from me ever again, and now i think we're saddled with each other. now wouldn't that be a nasty trick for you, if god really meant for this to happen? i've never been one of those people who're all 'everything happens for a reason,' but this reeks of scheming. there has to be a reason for it. i wish i could ask you some questions. like your name and what you look like and where you are. but just like you can't hear me, i don't know anything about you. talk about impartiality, huh? i guess when you're deciding about doing something sketchy, or guilt, or something like that, from the two of us, i'd have to be the rational voice: you have a lot more to lose than i do when making choices. god knows i made loads of terrible ones when i was alive. i mean, i know we all make bad decisions, but when they're our own, they carry more weight because of feelings and emotions and responsibilities. i wonder what i'm going to say to you for all this time you have left being alive. i mean, you're just getting born and here i am already talking lots of nonsense to you, all of which you have no possible way to understand even if you could hear me. and even as you get older, like i mentioned, it's not like eventually you'll develop an ear for me and finally hear my words. you'll have a scratchy sort of feeling when something lays before you and you must decide what to do or not. that's gonna be me. talking still, guiding you through what you're about to do. what sucks for you, whatever impartiality i have, whatever decision you make, it'll be yours and not mine. i'm not going to help you choose either way. i think, mostly, i'm here to remind you afterwards by making you feel good or bad depending on your choices. does god recycle us to be someone else's voice of reason?

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my roommate hates it when i smoke in the house. i'm late with my share of the rent, so i figure i shouldn't make him more upset and i have my last smoke of the day outside.

at the end of the day, all i want to do is just lay on my bed and sleep until two days from now. double shift at work for the last three days and i'm exhausted. don't get me wrong, i'm glad for the steady paycheck, but i wonder if there's more to it that just working and hoping for a good night's rest at the end of the day. more to life, i mean. even now, not even in my thirties, i feel as if i'd been at this forever. i'm sure my dad would just laugh if i admitted this to him.

after i flick my cigarette into the street, i strip and shower and put on some boxers and tee-shirt and make myself a sandwich. i sit out in the living room and hit play on the dvd player and chasing amy comes on. movie's nearly over; someone was watching it earlier. i'm not really paying much attention to it. i'm still in shock i think.

i've never seen a dead body, nevermind someone dying right before me. i can't get the image of him dying right in front of us out of my head. all work has been recently is a distraction. but every time i get a few moments to myself, all that blood and chaos and death just creep in from around the edges of my brain.

was he in pain? his eyes where open, but i wonder if he could hear anything. did he know there were friends and strangers trying to help him? was he aware of everything going on until the last minute? i wonder what he felt like. i wonder what it feels like to die. it's such a morbid thought, isn't it? i hope it didn't hurt. but in my mind, when there's so much blood, it can't no hurt.

i fall asleep on the couch and wake up a few hours later, the television still on. i go out to the front steps and have another cigarette. it's nice out tonight and a little cloudy and crisp. the moon isn't anywhere in the sky, and you can see a jet flying so high you can't hear it and only see its blinking red light.

i've never told anyone this but i wondered, after he died, if any of us would be next. i'm not sure why. we were all so close, what if he was infected with something. honest to god, i was thinking that at the funeral. i caught a glance of each one of us and wondered if any of us caught something. stupid, huh? i also wonder if he was doing drugs. i don't know about these things. but, is that a possible reason? people don't hemorrage for no reason.

my god, had you only seen: he was a fountain of blood.

i smoke outside until i see the first bits of sun coming. my day off today and when i walk inside, my roommate's girlfriend, stella, is in the kitchen, making coffee and cracking open some eggs for his breakfast. she see's me and says hi. i say hi back. she asks me if i'm okay, and i tell her i am. she looks at me like she doesn't believe me. she says she doesn't believe me and i deflect that by asking her how it's going. she says she had a friend crash at her place last night. i nod like i know what she's talking about. all i'm thinking, seeing her standing in my kitchen, wrapped in my roommate's robe, is whether or not it'll hurt when i die.

i say i'm going to bed and she says good night and gets back to what she's doing.

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i saw her house keys on the kitchen counter. when i didn't see her car in the parking lot, i knew what happened. i always know with her. it's not that i like to know what she's going to do, but if i were a betting man...

i go into the bedroom and the bed is made, if you can believe that. in the closet hang my clothes. and only my clothes. her half is empty. the dresser drawers are open and empty, hers. there's gaps here and there all over the bookshelves and the cd racks. the bathroom is the same; she left her toothbrush on the sink, toothpaste still on it. as if she was about to brush her teeth, looked up into the mirror and said, fuck it, and she got her things and left.

i knew she would. sooner or later they all do.

finally, i take off my jacket and sit on a barstool at the kitchen counter and look at her keys. beneath them is an envelope and i think of her flair for the dramatic.

part of it says:

i just wish i could fucking depend on you. but i can't. every time i need you, you recoil and go off into you little world where nothing is allowed except you, you, you. i can't compete with that, can i? because you're the most important person in your life. yeah, i get that. how many fucking times did you tell me that, i lost count. maybe i was hoping that at some point, even if it was for a little bit, you wouldn't be so selfish and let me be the most important person in your life. because, it's going to sound so fucking dumb, you were mine. i can't believe i just told you that. sometimes i don't think you care i care. i don't think you care about what anyone else thinks but you. and that seems sad and pathetic and lonely and it fucking suits you. and even this letter your reading, even i know this is such a punk ass thing to do. because i know i can't tell you to your face what i really want. there's always something you say or do that makes me clam up. but i just can't do this anymore. am i afraid of you? not in the way you think. but yes. this is already to damn long. i hope you're happy now that i'm gone. because i could never imagine being able to make you happy.

i grab my jacket and head out.

you know, it wasn't supposed to be like this. not with her. i don't know what made me think so, but after just a few weeks, i thought she'd be the one who stayed with me. given my history, i really shouldn't think so. most people who spend enough time around me tend to find me unpleasant to be around. probably because i tend to be pretty unpleasant.

such the cliche, drinking in a bar in the middle of the day. the jukebox, someone set it to play nothing but hendrix. bartender is this girl who looks about twelve years old, all tits and no ass. she's on her phone, texting away and it seems as if she's being rude. she's not: i'm the only person in here besides her. if i talk to her and tell her everything, i know this bartender girl will tell me i'm wrong. maybe she'll take pity on me and tell me i can't blame the ex for leaving. i mean, just going from the story i tell her, she'll say i had it coming. that, if not worse. she'll say i sound kind of like an asshole even though she's never met me until right now. that's right, she'll say, she's judging me based solely on a single story. i'll smile and laugh that little condescending laugh of mine i use to show disdain and indifference. but then, the bartender will smile, and call be baby or sugar or darling, and she'll buy me a drink. she'll feel a little bad. and i'll try to take her home and she'll get back to her phone and flurry of text messages.

when i get home and can barely stand for all the drinking, i walk into the bedroom and see it for what it is, an empty room. no one's going to be sleeping in here tonight. maybe i feel sad but i don't think i am. maybe tomorrow. but above the bed she left that framed poster i gave her at the four month mark. i knew she liked it and she said she loved it.

truth is i've always been the one who's left, who's broken up with. as i say, if so many different people believe something to be true, there must be some validity to it, right? kind of like believing in god. or that i'm a selfish prick. don't let me try and convince you otherside: it's all true. and yeah, how i was imagining that conversation with the bartender earlier, there's no way that would happen. no, she would think i was charming and a little hurt and a bit too sober to be dangerous. and i wouldn't have told her the same story you sort of have an idea about. and i wouldn't linger too much on it because a good way to talk to a much younger girl is ask her questions about herself and she'll immediatelly think she's the center of your world. it's true. even if all you want is waste some sweaty hours. ask her things. and tell her you like her eyes, it's a tired line but always seems to work. eventually, after you give her just the right amount of attention and you maybe make her laugh a few times and you break her defenses, she'll give you her number without asking and she'll tell you she gets off work at four.

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she says, tell me. so i tell her:

i’d lay next to him and just want to look into his eyes, you know. i just wanted to look at him and admire just how handsome he is. he’d see me looking at him and he asked me, what? and i’d smile and then have to say, nothing. i'd get a little self-conscious that he caught me looking so often because, well, imagine you always caught him looking at you? anyway. he’s just so physically beautiful. i know you know; you’ve seen him. his eyes are so wide and green. that rugged and very manly nose. oh my god: his mouth! those lips! those few gray hairs on his beard are insanely sexy and i don’t know why. there's the sinews of his neck and shoulders that makes me just get a little weak in the knees. regardless of anything, i always liked laying my head on his chest, hearing his heart and breathing, and feel comforted. the little bit of belly poking over his boxers, the hair from his legs to his navel. when he lay on his stomach and i'm on top of him, feel his warm ass on my crotch and the muscles of his lower bac move beneath his skin. that huge tattoo. he's the kind of guy you see walking the opposite way you are, you spot him from blocks away it feels like. and he's getting closer to you, the ubiquitous white earbuds in his ears, he doesn't notice you but you clearly notice him and you think to yourself, high five to jesus: keep making 'em like that! and you think that when you see him out in the street and he's not naked; he's wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, a backpack hanging off his shoulders. his clothes hang on him the way it should on mannequins in a fancy store front. you don't know if he takes care of himself, if he has some sort of grooming routine, but as soon as he walks past you, you want to see him again.

she says, yes you do. he's incredible. perfect even.

i say, i don’t know about perfect but that’s one attractive man; who wouldn’t want to just look at him?

she says, so what happened? why would you leave a man like that?

i say, he's incredibly good looking, but sometimes i think that's all he has going for him. i need more.

she says, you need your head examined more like.

i say, you really think so?

she says, i wouldn't leave him. so why did you?

i say, you really want to know?

she says, yeah, i do. so i tell her.

you know he's really really nice to me. to everyone. he's polite to a fucking fault. and that's another thing that makes him so much more sexy to me. he likes the right sort of movies and books and records. we can talk forever about lots of things, you know, and it never feels like a chore. never many arguments that got so heated they escalated into fights. he let's me pay for things without even being asked, and he let's me drive sometimes whenever we go anywhere. i think he gets that i'm a pretty independent person, you know. and you gotta admire that nowadays. he doesn't give me shit about hanging out with my friends, but is willing to cancel his plans to come see me. i don't know, everything seems, not perfect - i wouldn't even know what that would look and feel like, and i don't think anyone ever anywhere would - but so comfortable and complementary, it's really hard to say a thing about him and us, you know. but the thing is, he sleeps with guys. i mean, he's slept with guys before.

she says, what the fuck?

i say, i know.

she says, since you guys were going out?

i say, no, he says before.

she says, so he's gay?

i say, he says he's bi.

she says, what to you say? you believe him.

i say, yeah, i do.

she says, how'd you find out? so i tell her:

not too long ago we were talking and he made a joke about how when my girl from las vegas was in town and the group was getting drunk, one of his old buddies - that guy that's always getting shitfaced - he dares me and my girl to make out, and we're just that drunk that we do it at the table. everyone's clapping and hollering and laughing. we make out for a quick minute and that friend of his isn't even paying attention. no big thing, right. i don't get that about guys, by the way. anyway, afterward, we're still a little tipsy, we're laying in bed, there won't be any sex, so we're talking, and i ask him how come guys think two girls kissing is hot, and he laughs and he says how he just can't explain it, seeing two attractive women kiss is just a turn on. i tell him i don't get it. i tell him my girlfriends and i don't find two guys making out hot at all. it's just two guys kissing, i tell him. and he doesn't say anything. most guys i know wouldn't not say anything, you know. so i ask him if he's ever made out with another guy. he doesn't even think about it and tells me he has.

she says, no fucking way.

i say, right?

she says, but that's it?

i say, no there's a lot more. caught me by surprise, you know.

she says, no shit, huh?

i say, i couldn't believe it. i felt like he said he'd cheated on me.

she says, but he hasn't slept with some guy since you two...

i say, no.

she says,...but just before?

i say, yeah, a few times.

she says, so what did he say exactly?

i say, there's no details or anything, he just told me a couple stories.

she says, tell me. so i tell her:

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every time i get a new black tee-shirt, it becomes my favorite, and i really wish he'd shut up. he hasn't said a word and i already know what he's going to say. it's the same song with him. pop radio has nothing on this guy.

he calls me up to meet him and going outside means getting dressed and so, on with the shirt. when he calls, i can tell he's probably already half-drunk. he's always half-drunk, that way whenever whoever he's meeting, they're a little disarmed and little sympathetic. pathetic more like. him, i mean. i hear his drowned voice and he says i need to come out and meet him and i tell him i don't feel like it, not really. he says he needs to talk to someone and i'm the closest thing to a friend he has here and i feel a little guilty. my new black tee-shirt has more depth than a drunk person.

i'm the guy who wears black on the hottest day of the year, just because. if ever there was something i could change about me is that, actually. but for some reason, everything else seems ostentatious. and i'm too pretentious for all that, so...

i walk the five blocks and there's no one in the place. it's the sort of bar where, aside from the the neon behind the bar and the mirror hanging below it, there is not light at all. maybe the flash from the briefly-opened bathroom (unisex) door. it's suburbia meets hipster chic. i wouldn't normally be here, and when i see him off at the end of the bar, near the taps, taking one for the team is a little better of an argument.

but i know what he's going to say before i even sit down. before he slurs his first word, i already want him to shut up. because he'll say the same thing he's told me dozens of times over the last few week. nothing new. nothing old. stuck in this rut. his rut.

he talks and talks, barely pausing for my uh-huhs and my um-hms. i listen as best as i can, sipping from the same glass of beer for a few hours, watching him get further and further into a big mess. this is what's going to happen – i can tell you because he's still reviewing everything he's done wrong recently: he's going to be so blitzed i'm going to have to walk him to his house three blocks away after we get kicked out, and make sure he's at least lying on the floor on his side. i'll leave him there, and he'll still mumble to himself after i've closed the door and made it back to my house. he's worse than a violent drunk: he's a sad drunk. i mean, he's sad to be around, but you know when his inhibition's down, everything just comes pouring out him. if only he were like that sober instead of some fucking rock.

the bartender has huge tits but no ass. she's pretty in the same way a nice clear day is; you appreciate it but after five seconds, you forget all about it and destroy yourself a little. she comes over and keeps refilling his drinks and takes no money. she has his credit card. she looks at me and shrugs her shoulders and motions to him with her eyes. i shake my head a little as he's mid-sentence and smile at her. she brings us to glasses of water and he pushes his away, as if it's toxic. she takes out her cell phone and starts typing something.

a few weeks ago, at the record store, i get a call and it's him and he's not drunk but his voice is hoarse and i wonder what stupid thing he's going on about. i'm too busy to listen to him because i just found what i was looking for and i'm examining the cd's surfaces. he talks and talks as i check out and i don't even tell him to hold on, but i tell the girl at the till sorry because i'm being a douchebag. she says it's okay, and her words drip with the word asshole. i finally ask him if he wants some company and he says he doesn't and i say i have to go and i hang up without saying talk to you later or anything.

before today, i don't think i've seen him for a couple of weeks. he sends me retarded text messages when he's drunk, thinking he's so deep or funny or just plain sad. and he is all of these things, just in different quantities.

i'm not entirely sure what happened but we started going to the same bars and we'd run into each other at the same comic book store. just started talking about shit people talk about in these places and we began hanging out. he'd call me when there was a band we both liked in town, or to see a movie. he's an alright guy but for some reason i wasn't expecting him to turn out like what he is: the sort of guy who's be tanked in the middle of the day.

i suppose we're friends. i think we are. i wonder what he thinks.

the bartender looks up from her cell phone, catches my eye, and closes out his tab. he's slurring more words and i catch something that sounds like, i told her, whatever that means. this hit me: i don't really know anything about this guy i get together sometimes to drink with and listen to. he doesn't know much about me. this guy, i don't know. the girl brings him his check and he scrawls some numbers for the tip and signs his name.

i make sure he's home and set him on his bed. he's snoring by the time i look through his wallet and take his cash.

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we're getting ready to head out. only, it's more like: he's ready, and has been for some time; i'm still working on it. getting ready, ready for whatever it is you're about to do, is a process. and you have to be careful, take your time, get everything just right. not perfect, because no one really knows what perfect is. but as close to that as you can. you have to astonish and wow. not the people who you're about to chare some space with, no. you have to wow your man.

he's in the living room with a news channel on television, cold beer getting warmer in his hand, and his face is nothing but frustration. we're going to be late. he hates being late. he hates anyone being late for anything. work, dates, appointments, even bills. there is no such thing as a grace period. if you say eight o'clock, that's what it means and if you're later than that, even by a few minutes, you're a liar. he's maybe a little crazy about that. once, i took fifteen minutes past the time he said he wanted to leave, i come out of the bathroom, and the asshole left without me! regardless, it's the only weird thing he has, which, considering what's out there guy-wise, i came out with one of the better ones. he's my guy.

applying make up isn't up on top of my list of things i like to do, but when you do it, you gotta do it right. take the time. symmetry and getting [prettier] needs patience. girl at the make up counter at the store, the one with all the rad tattoos and afro, i wish i could do at home what she does for me at her job. but it's something you pick up as you go along. it's the girl equivalent of guys learning how to play ball out in the courts: something you do and learn from others as you grow up.

once everything is in place and it's time to leave, he's fuming! i can see it in his eyes and the way he's sitting. but he'll wait for me. after that other time and a stupid fight over it, we talked about it and turns out we decided i'm the exception to his rule, so he needs to relax. of course, he relaxes after we're already late. in the meanwhile, however, there he is, probably on the same beer bottle from a couple hours back. he's probably curing me so loudly in his mind. but i come out and sit next to him and wrap my arms around me, and maybe my skirt pulls up on my thigh just enough that his hand touches my leg and:

electricity.

in the car, he lets me change the playlist if i let him smoke. fair trade off. i click through his ipod and find the playlist he made me and he lights up a cigarette and rolls his window down and i hit play because i hate it when people hit random on a playlist clearly intended to be listened to in this order. placebo comes on and he blows out smoke. his left arm dangles over the opened window and he's steering with his right and i lean over and rest my head on his shoulder and put my hand on his stomach and start singing a little and the city lights going by outside, they look especially pretty tonight. street lights and neon signs and lit up billboards, they always make the city prettier when you have somewhere to go in this town. he flicks his cigarette out the window and the song changes to suede and he rolls his window closed and he drives with his left hand and takes mine from his stomach with his right and we interlace our fingers and he leans over and kisses me.

restaurant is so crowded, but everyone's having such a good time! i know i am. i know he is too; i love it when he talks with my friends about whatever it is they're talking about. they're so unlike him in so many ways, but look at them: as if they were old friends already!lots of food and lots of drinks and maybe one too many old stories. same stories we tell each other about when from before and who and all of it. why do we tell the same stories, even the embarrassing ones? i mean, we all know them by now. sure, we know them, but after a while they slip away from us and we don't ever think about them until nights like this, when we all get together and share them again until they're forgotten. something i never understood. but how these people make laugh and enjoy myself!

after we leave the hospital and get home, he asks me if i want some whisky and i say yes. he says i look so pale. i'm afraid. i'm frightened. what we just saw, what just happened. less than twelve hours ago, everything was sane. now? he hands me my drink and we both sit on the couch. it's nearly afternoon and my feet hurt from my shoes and my face feels like it could peel off like a mask. he puts hi arm around me and we sip our drinks, the only sound is our breathing and the clinks of ice in our glasses. i melt in his arms and i shudder at the image that i won't get rid of for a very long time. i look up at him and he looks at me, eye contact, and he tries to smile but he can't. i feel my eyes water and he sees it and he pulls me closer and sets his drink down and wraps both arms around me. he won't let me go and i don't want him to. i'm still cold.

i can't believe he's dead. all that blood coming out of his mouth.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------i'll tell you, i was a little nervous. i mean, maybe more than a little. it's so strange, after all these years, to feel like you're back in school, in a way.

in college she used to straighten her hair and had badly done red streaks in it. i didn't know they were bad at the time, but it certainly made her stand out: mousy, nerdy girls do not have streaks in their hair. i'd see her around campus and i immediately noticed there was something about her i really liked. i was never the type of guy to ask a girl her name right off the bat. i'm a bit more awkward than i'd like to admit. so, there she goes, all those years ago, walking by in a hurry through the library lobby. what i see is a flash of red and black hair and i look up and a huge backpack and books clutched to her chest.

i'm not sure what it is in our brains that set us off about a woman. what is it about a particular person that makes you say, this is the type of person that i want to get to know better? sure, attraction is the obvious answer. but at the same time, what i wonder is how our brains seems to be so hardwired to like a certain type of person. she was it. is it.

i'd see her about campus, always trying to get somewhere. it was a few semesters later that we wound up in class and we started talking. i don't take too much stock in serendipity, that's just lazy. she sat next to me that first day and said hi and i said hi and that was that. problem back then was i'd been seeing someone for years whom i loved. i did. still do, in fact. so, us finally meeting and becoming friends was both, great and bad. worst thing that happened from that was i made a kick ass friend. even now, saying 'kick ass' takes me back then.

i couldn't help developing feelings for her. it's just how it happens to everyone at some point in their lives, i think. loving someone who can't love you back. when you're in the middle of it, it's one of the worse possible feelings. and no matter what anyone else says to you about how it's going to pass, or how it's really not as difficult as you feel it is, you and your little misery grow older.

funny thing is it does pass and then you sort of kick yourself because in the midst of it all, you can't imagine ever reaching this point. how i remember her back then was her hair and her brown eyes and that smile and her dark mocha skin and the way she laughs and the how she walks and those jeans.

now, i'm nervous because we're in her house, in her back yard. how much time we've spent apart only to find ourselves back somewhere so familiar and yet not. a mere chance click on a computer at work and the twenty-first century's lead us back to this. i'm married now and so is she. so is everyone here. we're a little more wrinkled, bigger bellies, better clothes. better lives?

a group of us who knew us all from back then, here again, together, hoping to make something new into something old? does that say anything about us?

she runs around with that same step i remember from years ago. there are no more red streaks in her hair (she finally got rid of them near the end of junior year), and it's wavy instead of straight. it suits her better. does it sound bad if i suggest that getting older's defnitely agreed with her? what is it about us that despite all the time and the distance, some people always draw us in? why is it that you can't stop thinking in what ifs and could have beens and should have beens.

trouble is, i like her husband and i love my wife.

now that we're older, of course i wonder what would happen now if i tell her everything i never had the courage to so many years ago. it wouldn't just be me putting myself through turmoil, it would be three other people. what do i expect, her to tell me that she's waited all this time for me to finally tell her how i feel? why am i a grown man acting and feeling like a teenager over a woman?

everyone's laughing and sharing stories and talking about jobs and children and even the first grandkid in the group. the sun is out and there's a breeze and great food.

she finally sits for a moment. she's across from me, wearing a green blouse and jeans that seem to hug her hips. her hair is held in place by a headband. she has silver bracelets on, and her wedding ring. her nails aren't painted and she smiles and laughs the same way i remember. across from me, her husband sees me looking at his wife and all he does is smile and a sudden rush of embarrassment. he doesn't say anything to me, but he whispers something to her. she looks at me and i can't help but smile at her.

someone asks me something about what i would do i were teaching his kid in my class, and i manage my way through an acceptable answer. and when i'm done, what i do is get myself a drink and she comes up to me and asks me whether or not i'm enjoying myself and i say yes and she touches my arm and says i should call her tomorrow after eleven. if i'm free. her hand lingers a bit too much on my arm, but it still isn't enough.

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his drunk friend leaves with him. on his check, the drunk guy, he scrawled all over the signature line, but somehow managed to write in a thirty dollar tip. what's a girl to do?

middle of the day middle of the week, i should just plain be glad i'm working but there's hardly any people that come in here. before those two guys showed up, nothing for a couple of hours. you can only make sure every cooler is full, you know. every now and then a teenager and his friends (nearly always guys) will come in and try to use their fake id's. wasn't so long when even i thought that was the height of cool. anyway, work is boring when there's no people in here.

my phone keeps beeping with text messages i'm trying hard to ignore. i deleted a few without even reading them, but they keep coming. he doesn't know how to handle it and keeps sending me variations of the same thing: he misses me and he wants me back. i nearly text him back a few times. sometimes, because of frustration and i want him to just stop. others, because maybe i want to see him again. thing is, i do miss him. i do want to see him. but if i feed into his bullshit some more, i know exactly where i'll end up again. i'm trying very hard to keep my distance because i know what will happen if i don't. he's a decent guy, but i just can't go through all that again.

a guy in a bad suit (i mean, it must be bad if i can tell how badly it's hanging off him) comes in with his cell phone to his ear. he's agitated and a little sweaty. my phone beeps but i ignore it. grab a cocktail napkin and place it in front of this guy when he sits. he looks up at me and kind of smiles, as if to ackowledge his douchebaggery right now. he's older, maybe middle-aged. not bald but his hair's thinning in that sad horseshoe pattern guys get. he looks at me and catch him looking at my tits. guys are really all the same. my phone beeps again. i go back to wiping the bottles clean with a towel. really, they can't get any cleaner.

whoever this guy's talking to on the phone, they must be pissed. he's answering with a lot of yes, sirs and lots of uh-huhing. if i switch the juke back on, maybe he'll leave. i don't know, he looks like he might be a talker when he gets off the phone. you know, one of those guys who really believe that bartenders of any sort want to hear them spout on about their bad day at the office. why hasn't that cliche died off yet? i just know he'll get off the phone and he'll wait for me to say, rough day? and we'll go from there.

my phone beeps three times and i finally flip it open to all the new texts. there's something sad about a guy who's this way. he's the one who wanted to see someone else. shouldn't our roles be reversed? as i said, i do want to see him again and probably lay naked next him again. but this is what he wanted. now that whatever thing he thought he wanted to do didn't work out, i should be ready to jump back into being with him again? asshole.

guy finally clicks his phone off and puts it in his jacket pocket and lets out a deep sigh. i walk over and ask him what he'd like and all he asks for is a glass of water, no ice. i bring it and ask him if he wants something else, something stronger. he says not right now, he's waiting on someone. from his inside jacket pocket he brings out his wallet and gives me his credit card to open a tab. he asks me if we have a cab company's phone number and i bring him a card for one, and he pockets it. my phone beeps and i read this one.

i'm not sure how it was that from one moment to the next, he felt he wanted to see someone else. it's so true what they say in movies: whenever anyone says this to you it means they've already been fucking someone else. what makes them finally tell you is they were probably given an ultimatum by the person they'd rather sleep with than you. gotta tell you, that kid of hurts. one week, everything's going fine and we're even talking about getting a place together, the next, he's beginning the conversation with a we need to talk.

a woman comes in and she's beautiful. she reminds me of that girl in the seinfeld show. she's that pretty. all long wavy black hair and such a pretty smile. probably this guy's wife. when he sees her, his face changes completely and he smiles and he stands and kisses her on the lips and hugs her and you can tell she's reciprocating. i walk over and she smiles and asks me how i'm doing and i tell her i'm okay and i ask her what she'd like and she asks for two regular domestic beers and i bring them and she takes them (she says thanks) and they both go and sit in the boot near the back. i look at them talk for a while and wonder why they're in here. i mean, this place isn't that divey but they look like suburbanites and this isn't that kind of place. they'd fit in perfectly at t.g.i. friday's.

what's strange is for the last two days, all he does is send me text messages and not a single call. why that is is because you can't hang up on a text message. you can't really yell through one either.

the couple in the booth. maybe i should go and ask them advice. what's their secret, you know.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

after the shower, he comes out of the bathroom in just his underpants. i'm laying naked on his bed. we're talking about what time we're supposed to get to my father's house tomorrow. a lot of the extended family is getting together, sort of a family reunion in san diego, and this will be the first time my family will get to meet him. he's so excited. he's asked me all day long how do i think it'll go, and do i feel okay about it, and what should he wear. it's been a fun day, i gotta say.

in the morning we go to this place in venice for breakfast. kind of a drive just for what can only be a comical version of huevos rancheros, but he likes it, and we make the drive from long beach through the morning rush hour, bloc party playing in the car, and he's dancing in his seat the entire way. adorable, right? at the restaurant, the conversation never stops. which is something that amazes me about him: there's never a moment of forced or uncomfortable silence. he says incredibly bright things, and he always has. he's remarkably smart. he asks me about the drive tomorrow and says he'll pay the tolls along the way.

later, we're in hollywood and browsing through the racks at amoeba. this one is for me. there's something about a record store. and in this record store, i spend hours just browsing, not even with the intent to buy, but every once in while, i find something i think i want or have been missing. we walk into the store and we split up: he goes upstairs to where all the dvd's are, i make my way to the electronic music section. after an hour or so, he finds me with a little handbasket nearly full and asks me whether or not i'm really going to buy these, and i say i am, and he smiles and cocks his eyebrow that way, you know, and he takes my free hand in his and he says maybe we should get out of here. he kisses me on my neck and i say sure and we leave.

on melrose, we're sitting in the patio of one of the terrible restaurants along the street. he's having something for lunch and i'm just having coffee. he tells me how his mother is doing. since i've known him, she hasn't been well. early onset of alzheimer's. it's been rough on him and his family, he says. she forgets more and more every time he sees her. he says he's afraid one of these days he'll come see her and she'll smile at him but will have no memory of who her son is. he says that's what scares him the most. he says he doesn't know what he'll do then. he's anticipating the worse before it gets here. she still talks to him about his dad, who's been dead for ten years now, it makes him cry as he tells me the story. we leave for his house. he's tired he says.

he starts snoring really and i turn on his television and watch some cartoon network as he sleeps. how will tomorrow go? i'd be lying if i wasn't anxious about it. it's been a long time since i've brought anyone home to meet my family. he's smart, and fun, and incredibly handsome, and nearly perfect. i think my mom will adore him. i've no reason to believe so, my mother being such an old school catholic lady. but i have this weird feeling that she will. i have this idea they'll talk and share weirdly embarrassing anecdotes about me. maybe they won't become fast friends, but i imagine them sitting together tomorrow, having a beer, and a laugh. he turns over and is facing me and he reaches out and puts his arm across my chest.

after his shower, he jumps on the bed and he lays his head on my bare stomach and i look down at him. he's smiling and i ask him what and he says nothing. this is what days off are for.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

i drive up and he's sitting on the curb at the corner of seventh and hope and i can't help but smile a bit at the very idea. it's dark out but for the lights of the skyscrapers of downtown. it's nearly two in the morning. at the corner just across from where he is, there's a security rent-a-cop having a shoving match with a homeless person. i pull up and he bounds into the passenger seat. the drive back to his house is going to take a while. i don't know why i keep doing this.

i say, i don't know why i keep doing this with you, you know.

he says, what do you mean? i'm glad you came and i really appreciate it.

yeah, yeah.

i do. you don't believe me?

you know, i don't think i do.

you want me to get out of the car?

don't be stupid; we're about to get on the freeway.

you didn't have to come get me, you know. i could've waited for the bus.

no you wouldn't have. if you were going to do that, you wouldn't have called me. and if i wanted you to do that, i wouldn't have come.

then what's your problem?

my problem? it's you.

what're you talking about?

remember way back when, when you and used to sort of go out?

yeah.

and remember when i basically had to break it off with you because you were too gutless to tell me you weren't into me?

i wouldn't say that, but yeah.

i knew then i should've stopped talking to you.

why?

i always assumed stella told you. she can never keep her mouth shut.

tell me what?

i should've stopped talking to you then because i knew - i fucking knew what was going to happen.

and what's that?

we'd stop being friends.

what the f--

it's true. here i am in the middle of the night, driving all the way out to downtown to come get you because i'm a sucker when it comes to you.

what's that supposed to mean? you could've said no. jesus.

no, i couldn't have. because i can't say no to you without you turning it into a thing.

a thing?

every time i say no to you, it's like it's an affront or insult. so i don't do it. i'm telling you, when it comes to you, me? i'm a sucker.

a sucker?

yeah. you might not like it but i think i'm a better friend to you than you are to me.

what?

yeah. what we have is a one-sided friendship. hell, i wouldn't even call it that.

that's fucked up.

whatever. that's what it is. and i knew back then if i didn't stop talking to you, this would happen. and here we are on the 110 on the way home.

now you're gonna tell me this is all my fault? i missed the last train because i'm a bad friend?

you don't get it. it's nothing to do with you. i know me and this is what happens when i'm these situations. i knew it would happen with you because it happens to me nearly every time. i'm a sucker because whenever you call me - that is, when you do call me - i jump at the chance to see you, to talk to you because...i'm not sure why. it's not like i'd wanna date you again, you know. that time has passed. but for some damn reason, when you call me, i make myself available.

that's not true--

isn't it? when was the last time you called me before tonight? and not for some bullshit like this, but to see me and want to hang out with me?

that's bull--

i'm telling you, i'm not saying it's your fault. this is the person i am. like just because we were close for a few weeks, for some reason, you still have some sway over me. i'm not saying you exploit it because i don't even think you're aware of it. i hope you're not because that would make you one gigantic asshole.

why are you telling me all this shit now? we've known each other for a few years now, and now you're coming at me like this? that's not cool at all.

no, you're right, it's not. and i am sorry for that. but i'm driving up to downtown to come get you in the middle of the night and i have some time to think, you know.

so what're you telling me here?

i'm not sure, to be honest. i just think we need to realize that, yeah, we know each other, and maybe we like each other enough we can spend time together every once in while, but having a few records in common isn't enough to build a relationship on.

relationship?

don't get all flustered. i mean, between us, this friendship as you call it.

as i call it? what the hell are you saying?

come on, are we really friends? really? think about it.

aren't we? don't we go out and do stuff and talk and--

do we really? every time we get together it's all about you. it's totally one-sided. even when you've actually came out to see me when i called yoy because i wanted someone to talk to, seems to turn into a therapy session for you. conversations always come back to you. haven't you noticed?

that's not true.

isn't it? maybe i'm being unfair, foisting all of this on you. you're right. i'm sorry about that. but after tonight, it's probably best if we just stop this. don't get me wrong, if you need me, i'll always be there for you, you know. i think i've made it pretty clear that i will.

yeah, you have. it feels like you're breaking up with me. don't you know i care about you? i mean, you're one of the good guys, you know. i mean, you're one of the few people i know i can count on you. even some of the people i've known for years, they're not like you.

oh, i know. and i don't mean that as smugly as it sounds. but i know. when you're down, it's been more or less because of those around you, these people you've had in your life way longer than me. i know because when we talk, that's what we talk about.

so, now what? what does all this mean?

look, i'm sorry to give you all this shit right now. i really am. but i know me. and if i don't do this now, for as long as we know each other, i'm going to feel bad i care more about you as a person than you do about me. maybe i'm being unfair, as i said, but it's how i feel.

the rest of the drive was in silence. i pulled up to his house and he says he'd really like to talk to me some more about this and i say i am not up for it. it's late and i have work in the morning. he says he'll call me tomorrow, if that's okay with me. i say it's fine and he gets out of the car. i drive off to my house and already i know he's not going to call. he's going to feel bad and awkward around me for a while. and i'm not going to call him. call it selfish. this is about me, not him, and definitely not us.

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through the nearly closed bathroom door i can still hear, both, the music, and the porn. naked and just out of a quick shower, i'm standing in front of the mirror in the hotel room bathroom. i look at myself and ask myself how i got to this point. steam's rising from my skin; the air conditioning in the room is a bit too strong. in the mirror, my eyes are so wide. if i didn't know any better i'd say i was in some sort of mild shock, but i'm not. i think i'm more disappointed in myself than anything. right now, all i want to do is get dressed and get out.

earlier: the message said it was a sex party. and i was feeling a little down and when the idea for something stupid burrows into my brain, it's very difficult for me to let it go. so i texted him back and he sent me the information, address and details. he asked me if i could pick him up and we could go together but i didn't answer back. married guys tend to be as bad as twenty-somethings.

his legs apart and his bent over the side of the bed as i'm fucking him. he's moaning the way he's supposed to and i'm not really into it. my head's elsewhere. but you can't just stop in the middle of a hotel room orgy. so i keep thrusting but i think it's evident i'm just going through the motions. so to speak. someone's hand reaches around me, feeling my stomach and down to my hard dick sliding in and out of this guys ass. someone's hooked up a laptop to play porn on the big screen in the room; two white biker-looking guys sucking each other off in the screen, all muscles and facial hair and veiny dicks and bad tattoos. this isn't the case around me.

on the other side of the bed is large black guy who seems to be more balls than penis is eating out a kid who's laying on his back, legs up in the air, ass exposed. off near the couch on the other side of the room are three seemingly hispanic older guys taking turns fucking a superthin asian guy. there's some guys still dressed but jerking off standing by the door. you can hear some slapping coming from the bathroom. i look down and see the hand on my dick and i feel his tongue on my ass. as i said, when the idea for something bad hits, it's hard to shake.

later, i'm laying on the bed as if just resting, and the porn on the screen's changed to some gangbang video i have at home and i've two of the hispanic guys going down on me and of course i'm feeling better about making a bad decision. when she dropped me home last night (hell, just a few hours ago), maybe it was the booze i was coming off of, but i didn't really need to hear that one of your better friends just decided to stop being your...you anything. the black guy with huge nuts starts licking my nipples and i'm trying figure a bit about my life right now.

sex is sex is sex. it means as much as the used up twink sleeping off the high he was on on the floor. and i'm such a fucking old story. this is what happens when i don't want to feel much of anything else. when i feel bad about any one thing, it's so true: nihilistic tendencies seem to be the easiest routes to just not feeling anything genuine.

i'm on my knees, ass up in the air, getting fucked by...someone. next to me is one of the hispanic guys in the same position, grunting like he's moving a large piece of furniture, you just know he practices his sex noises. i feel hands on my hips. resting on my elbows and i can't help but smell come and sweat everywhere. the smell of scented and probably flavored lube. the music playing somewhere is someone's phone, the same song over and over again. lots of calls. guy pushes me on my side and raises my left leg onto his shoulder and he hits the right spot and i can't help myself: i'm enjoying myself. he comes loudly and says he wants me to fuck him and i let him lay on the same sweaty spot i was just on. he's on his stomach and i don't even hesitate and i start pounding him and he wriggles a little away and sort of maybe screams and i spit on my dick and keep at it without losing a beat.

when you're in the middle of impossible shit, why's it that making it more difficult instead of better for yourself is the answer?

after everyone's come at least once, twice, maybe, dude who's hotel room this is says there's beer in the fridge and all of a sudden the place is full of sweaty guys with loose assholes and wet mouths and limp cocks and we're having a beer and talking about where's the next party at, has anyone heard of anything coming up, and weren't you at what's his name's house the other night, and what's your name. this is indeed my life.

in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, hearing what i'm hearing coming through the door and i wonder why the hell this is the place i chose for myself tonight. sun's probably out already and instead of sleep this is what i'm doing with myself. there's definitely something wrong here. two guys come in the bathroom and are laughing at something. they jump in the shower and pull the curtain closed but i can hear them fucking and i go out into the room and get my clothes and walk out of the room with my clothes in one hand and my shoes in the other, getting dressed in the hallway and i'm not really sure what i'm going to do next. but my phone beeps with a text message and it's him, saying he's on his way here and asking if i'm still here and to wait for him so i can fuck him while he sucks on some guys dick at the same time. i don't answer. i leave the hotel.

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of course i didn't sleep that night. i'm not entirely sure if she did. when you see someone die right before you, there's only so much you can't think about when all you want to do is sleep. sometime around sunrise, i got dressed and walked out into the street. the neighborhood so quiet and calm. maybe some birds singing, the odd car here and there. no people out yet, it's that early, but you can see where the black night sky is giving way to blue.

i walk around the block and maybe i want to go back inside and slip into bed for a while longer, maybe let whatever fatigue i'm feeling kick in and eventually i'll drift off. i'm definitely not going to work. i don't think i could.

i didn't know him very well. he's a friend of a friend of hers. i keep playing in my head, everything that happened and what i won't ever be able to get out of my brain is the sound the table made when he hit it head first: over the din of the room and the noise we were making.

no, i don't go back to our house. i think i need something. not sure what, just something. i wonder if this what shock is. there's the church a few blocks away and i wonder if going there and asking questions to the different saints' statues there will help. i always hear people say prayer helps overcome. i've never really prayed before and i wouldn't even know where to begin. i mean, when i was a kid, i was taught to pray. decades later, i'm not even sure if me going there is...right.

maybe i'll go the high school uptown. walk around the race track for a while. the idea of some monotony seems a little comforting and safe. there is no way to walk around a race track.

i really ought to go home. i should make sure she's okay. after we had a couple of drinks to settle our nerves, she didn't say a thing and just went to bed. if this is how i feel, imagine her. she knew him somewhat. i can only imagine what the ppor guy's family is going through. no, i can't imagine it. i've never known a person who's died my entire adult life. every one of my family members are still around, i've not had any friends have major accidents or anything like that. this is completely alien to me and i don't think i can take it.

somehow, just walking, i'm down town and the sun is finally out. people in cars going in every possible direction. people are out now, going to wherever it they need to go. the road of the train going up and down long beach boulevard. my clothes feel a little too tight and i just know my eyes are nothing but red coals. at fourth street, the cafe is open and there is a waiter setting up for the morning breakfast crowd. it's the middle of the week and all i can think of right now is who on earth could have breakfast right now. maybe i should call home, let her know where i am put i didn't bring it. no keys and no wallet either.

walking up broadway and where it becomes a one-way street. there are people crowding the bus stop benches.

arachnid reaction. that's what all of this is. my brain can't work though all of this.

a person i don't know dies and i can't process the world.

maybe i should go to that church a couple miles back. ask the preacher (or is it priest? what the fuck's the difference, really?) what i should make of what happened last night. how does this happen so seemingly at random? am i having a lapse of faith in myself?

somewhere near redondo, where the old houses are everywhere, and the neighborhood is the sort where you see couples in their running outfits, jogging while pushing prams with their kids riding along, obvlivious to everything. there's a coffee shop at the corner and i can't go in because i don't have any money. there are old men sitting outside chain smoking and reading newspapers. i'm maybe six miles away from home.

when she wakes up, will she freak because i'm not there? i wonder what she'll think? maybe she's even out, taking a long walk herlsef. maybe she's having the same crisis we're all having, all of us who were there last night. such an inescapable feeling. i should go back. i shouldn't leave her by herself. i need her and she probably needs me right now. i know i should go back, but i can't. not yet. i have that feeling i need to do something first.

it's somewhere along ocean street that i finally stop. i'm sweaty and gritty, but i've made it to the beach. the water looks brown and when you can see the oil tankers anchored a couple miles offshore, it seems as if the world never notices when someone passes. everything keeps its routine, not thinking twice about stopping to acknowledge someone's death. why does it feel as if everything should just top right now? everything should stop, even hesitate for a moment. give a damn, i want to say. he died last night, right in front of us. the police asked us all loads of questions one at a time. all i said was, i thought he fainted when i hear the sound his face made when it hit the table before he fell to the floor. the police detective, in his bad suit and holstered gun, didn't say anything. he kept asking questions without looking at me and writing what i said.

i walk close to the water line, sand getting into my shoes and i sit on the sand looking toward the city. there's that ocean breeze and the air smells like an industrial park.

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i didn't even see the truck coming. of course i didn't. if i had, what would i've done? i think i might've tried to back up because there certainly wasn't any room to pull forward. when they tell you not to block the intersection, do not block the intersection. i suppose you could say i had it coming. but i didn't imagine what happened when i thought i could make the yellow light at the intersection and then traffic stopped, my car two thirds blocking the way when the raised ford ran through at full speed and smashed right into the passenger side of my car.

it never really sounds the way it does in movies, have you ever noticed? car accidents, i mean. in television and movies, a car crash nearly sounds melodic. a very well-produced and designed sound effect. in real life, a car crash sounds like what it is: about four tons of metal and plastic and glass and skin smashing into each other, making hollow imploding noises. the fiberglass crunches from the force and turns into splinters. metal tears like an autumn leaf. safety glass webs with thousands of cracks; regular glass shatters. moving parts lock into place as they're molded into configurations they weren't mean to by the impact. palstic and metal tanks of fluids and oils burst like bladders. there is always smoke after. immediately after, and dust.

i'm not sure what the person driving the truck was thinking. i mean, you can't miss any car when it's in the intersection. did he want to be first to get to the other side of the street? did he just miscalculate getting around my car? was he just plain psychotic and figured he'd plow through anyway? i'm always curious. it's very possible he didn't even notice my car. i suppose, it's possible. unlikely, but possible.

i'm not certain if the car became airborne, but i certainly have the memory it did. it couldn't have. i'd remember gravity pulling me in every direction.

when i finally managed to crawl out of the car, people were running my way, ready to offer help. others were on their phone, calling for help. everything smelled like burning rubber. i was aware of the irony. something was burning in the wreck. but i was calm. at first, i was really calm. my brain was working extra fast and the adrenaline kept me from probably collapsing on the asphalt. the truck had its front comepletely smashed. but my car looked like it had been picked up by a pair of massive hands and twisted into a bow tie and dropped on the street. the driver of the truck was slumped over on the wheel and i could see blood in his blond hair from where i was standing. a trickle of red transmission fluid was inching toward me. people were asking me if i was okay, did i need to call someone, that they saw the truck make no move to avoid hitting me. people were at the driver side door of the truck, arguing about whether or not to move the driver from his seat. someone says something about him not wearing his seatbelt. a woman comes from behind me and takes my arm and says i need to get out of the sun, maybe sit at the curb.

later, at the hospital, after the police report and lots of calls to let my folks know what happened that made me miss the party for now and assuring them i'm fine, i'm waiting for my cab. this is all my father needed on his birthday. something always seems to happen at times like this. i'm not a fatalistic person, but whenever something important is planned, i get into a car wreck, wake up in jail, are hundreds of dollars overdrawn, get dumped. something, you know. isn't it that something? no lie, stuff like this always happens. wrong place and wrong time? i'm not sure about that, but after all these years, i got used to it. not that i'm expecting the worse every time, nothing like that at all. but when something does happen, after the initial shock, it's like whenever you you realize, well, it's morning again.

after the party, i'm sleeping on my parents' couch. everyone's been long gone and i can't sleep. my brother offered to rent a room for me at the hotel where he and his boyfriend are staying. so strange, even with family, how when one person knows i'm broke, everyone knows. my aunt who i haven't seen in two years knew. she asked if i had found a job yet. yeah, she knew that too. house smells like there were just over two dozen people sitting on this couch, in this room, exhaling and coughing. way the weekend is turning out, i might wake up with some sort of illness.

but why do these things happen? i always ask myself that. never really giving it more than a passing thought. after thrity years of it, now, i'm thinking i'm like a lightning rod for micro-disasters. i mean, how come these situations always find me? why me? not in a woe-is-me kind of way, i'm just really curious. i wonder how it was decided this is what needs to happen. because, well, why?

the drive back to los angeles two days later is uneventul. my brother asleep in the front passenger seat, his boyfriend sleeping in the back, i'm driving. roll the window down so i can smoke and the pacific ocean actually looks blue and the breeze coming off it is making another sunny day near-perfect. that is, until the earthquake happens. it's a big one and the five is going to split all over the place and lots of cars and people are going to be lost up and down the road. we'll be one of them. of course.

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you know, sitting at the train station, there's a delay somewhere along the rail. the screens above are flashing a warning and there've been announcements. not a lot of people waiting, it's a little late, i suppose. i always imagine the idea of meeting someone while at the train station, or at the bus stop. you know that story, i'd be waiting for the ride and they'd be waiting for the ride and we'd start some conversation. probably some b.s. about the schedules never being right, or the weather, even something about our zodiac signs. you know, something really cheezy. but as we waited and waited, we'd discover we liked talking to each other, we'd both laugh at the right parts and we'd ask questions when it was necessary. we'd say things that interested the other enough to ask more and more. of course, we'd discover we have loads in common. we'd get to talking about all that pop culture nonsense we are all unable to escape. but when the bus comes, or whatever, through some jostling with the other people who're waiting, we'd get separated. you know, like a bad gag in a bad movie where one person from the pair gets on the bus and the other doesn't, and it pulls away, leaving both with a huge what if because they didn't even get each other's name. and one waves from inside the bus and the other from outside, and it pulls away and they never meet again.

how's that for stupid?

when the train finally arrives, of course none of that happens. no one else gets on and no one gets off. i ride for thirty minutes to my stop in the train all by myself. at every stop, no one gets on, and that's a little eerie. as if the entire city's on lockdown. at my stop, with all the lights, maybe there's a movie shooting. no people though. stop by the 24-hour 7-11 across the street for a coke and a pack of smokes. the woman behind the counter says something about my jacket, and then something about smoking, and she smiles at me, and i wonder whether or not there's someone home sleeping while she works the graveyard shift a convenience store. maybe she has a kid or two who have to stay with her sister because she doesn't. maybe she's working her way through school and this is the only job that lets her do that so she doesn't have to go to community college at all and still finish in four years. i wonder what goes on in her head when random people like me walk in here at all hours. is she disappointed with how she spends her nights, how her life's lead her to this point right now, commenting on my jacket and smokes?

i live four blocks away and there's no traffic. the streetlights make the asphalt look dry and cracked, like a saltine. there are no lights on in any of the buildings along the road except for the hospital. no sound, only silence. it's humid and no moon out. when i cross the last intersection before my house, a cab slows to a stop near me and the driver asks me directions to pine avenue. at least i think that's where he wanted to go, he has a thick east european accent. i try to direct him but he doesn't understand what i'm saying. he digs from his glove box a pad of paper and pen and motions me to write or draw what i'm saying, and i do. i wonder if he's going to pick someone up who's too drunk to drive. maybe someone needs to get to the airport. did someone have a fight and is leaving for good, this time? what's this man's story? i give him the pad back and he looks at it and he turns it. i drew a little map from where we are to pine, wrote the street names and everything, but i see him examining it like i just gave him a chemistry test to answer. he says a handful of thank yous and drives off.

when i finally get home and i lock the door behind me, i don't turn out the light. where i live isn't very remarkable: a typical nineteen-seventies building, just like they are everywhere in town, and very uninteresting studio on the second floor. i set my backpack and jacket on the floor next to my bed and i walk in the bathroom and flick the light on and wash my face. i get undressed and lay down without getting under the covers. you ask me, getting home and all you do is lay down after a horrible work day, and terrible date, i think that's a win. getting some sleep after today wouldn't be such a bad thing. maybe tomorrow i'll go out somewhere. living in a new city every couple of years, not really making and lasting friends, that gets a little lonely, but you learn real fast that what you're missing isn't what you need. and that's okay. finding people to like isn't difficult. finding people who you like and can stand to be around, that seems to be a real chore. and that's why i always think about people i come across daily, what gets them by, you know. and i don't want to get by.

in the morning and after a shower and walking to the train station, everything's back. the city's come back to life. such a different scene than from at pre-dawn. suddenly, i wish i was back in bed, sleeping for days. how does that happen? aching for life and activity, and now that it's everywhere, i don't want it.

walking to work and maybe i'm annoyed. then a truck runs through the intersection and plows right into a car blocking traffic.

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probably, it's something else. i've fallen in love five times. i'm certain of it. i've thought about it a lot, i suppose. i'm not really sure why i think so much about it. probably because it hasn't worked thus far. i sound like those old women who buy romance novels and sigh at the covers. but think about it i do. there's patches of time when i think about each one of them and i wonder what they're doing now. if we met for coffee, what would we talk about? i wonder what they would think of me, and what i would think of them. how much have we changed?

she used to draw. i hope she still does because she was damn good at it. like wendi pini, only a bit more modern. was the first girl i ever fell in love with. i'm sure of it. only i was too stupid to know so at the time. i remember when we'd talk comic books during the lunch period. this is what we'd do, talk comics and writing stories and books. we were nerds together. and, even to this day, whenever i meet anyone new and i can have these conversations, nearly immediately, i know i'll like them. and i liked her. she was so smart and pretty and nerdy and liked great things and we could talk for hours without losing interest. problem was my girlfriend of two years. when you're a kid all of this seems so catastrophic and tragic and unattainable. but little by little i fell in love with the girl but was attached to the wrong one. but what i think i'll always remember is the way she'd hold her graphite stick as she drew. and that smile. killer smile.

it was through my then best friend that i met him. he was so...i'm not sure. so reserved and seemingly conservative. very suburban. but he was always really nice and courteous and that always counts for something. i remember spending so much time with him on the phone while i was in school. remember the time before cell phones became so prevalent? i do because i'd call him from payphones whenever i got the chance. and we'd watch movies at his house while his parents were away and he'd make me something to eat every time and he'd always make sure i was so comfortable. he was the first boy i ever thought was beautiful. he was. i will always remember the drive to his house. when in college, i missed so many classes just because of him and failing physics 102 was okay with me. he told me he loved me afterwards. but when he met someone new, someone older and more fashionable and with a better job, just like that, he was gone and i cried.

years later, as i grew into a passable proper grown-up, she walked into the coffee shop i was running at the time. half-broke and with terrible roommates, i loved going to work because she would come in daily and she would always strike up an interesting conversation about anything. and as it turned out anything always seemed to be so damn interesting. so i asked her out for a drink after a few weeks and she said yes. and in one night, i discovered so much about myself through our conversation. i remember it all but i'm not going to tell you details because it would cheapen it. but when i walked into that dank bar (which i still love) and saw her sitting there, a cold beer in front of her and a cigarette in the ashtray, and she turned and saw me and smiled and said hi and hugged me without getting off her stool, that's one of my fondest memories. and also that night she told me she'd been seeing this guy recently. something like a boyfriend. sort of. maybe. yes. so we decided to become friends instead. of course, it didn't stay that way. because we did become friends but i couldn't help myself. as you get to know a person, it's difficult to stop these things. and with her, i couldn't. i just couldn't. she got married to that guy, and i watched as it happened.

he'd hold my hand whenever we drive anywhere and i felt as if i didn't appreciate it enough then. because it seems as i get older, it's the little things that matter the most, trick is to notice them. once we drove up to a movie theater and watched the entire thing while holding hands in the dark, in the middle of a crowded theater. he'd kiss me on the cheek and he'd rest his head on my shoulder. we didn't have to say a word and it was bliss. it was. because when i realized i was in love with him, everything got its volume turned to eleven. everything was brighter. everything was a much better sunrise. cliche but true, isn't it? we left the movie theater and were walking back to his car, still holding hands. the looks we'd get from people! you'd think it wasn't the twenty-first century but the 1960's. but he was like that. and i don't think i appreciated it then. loast time i saw him i didn't know it would be the last time. how these things work out. but that's one of the things i'll always remember about him.

i think i'm still in love with those four.

anyway, it's time to start getting ready for the drive. we're off to his parents' in san diego. maybe i should be more anxious about that than staying up all night and figuring out whether or not this naked man in my bed, how it will be that he leaves me.

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my best friend emails me her ex's newest ep. she says to listen to it and then call her back to talk about it. i ask her what does she think about it and she says she wants to hear my honest opinion so she's not going to say anything. she says to just listen a couple of times and call her back, so i do.

i've always liked her ex's music. it has always been so underrated in the scene. i mean, i don't get a lot of modern instrumental music (the whole idm bullshit is comepletely useless to me, as is most instrumental hip hop), but his stuff i like. it has always bordered primal sounds, and rough textures. i remember telling him once i likened his stuff to less pilished and more precise stravinsky. he smiled and when he began talking about that record, he said it sounded like i 'got it'. but really, despite him being my best friend's fiancee at the time, his work was really, really good.

but this seven track ep? it sounds so self-indulgent and totally mainstream. it sounds like car commercial jingles (they are still called jingles, right?): all flashy, and predictable, and dance club. he's gone in a completely different direction, and not in a good way. the same way dj shadow went hyphy a few years ago and failed (as a fan, i feel it's my right to say so; it's not like i wanted him to put out endtroducing... part two or a second private press, but shadow's the outsider was completely disappointing for all the right reasons). i am wholly disappointed. i don't listen to it more than once. it's enough.

i put on my headset and dial and when she gets on the line i tell her she owes me for making me listen to that pile of gross. she laughs.

the next day, we meet for lunch somewhere in venice. after a few more laughs about the previous night's bad music i ask him how his ex is. she laughs a bit. she tells me he's doing okay but that he just broke up with his girlfriend. i ask her if that's why his newest music is so terrible and we both laugh. she says she doesn't know, but does say she's glad he's hurting. apparently, his girlfriend broke up with him. she was a few years younger and when he asked her to move in, she left him. that's what's making my friend a little giddy. she asks me if i remember how crushed she was when he called the engagement quits and i tell her i do. she says she hasn't ever been able to stand it that after their break up, her ex went on about his life as if nothing had happened. found a new girlfriend within weeks and was out in town, playing shows, with his new girl watching from backstage, probably in the same spot my friend would've been standing on. she says she's happy he's unhappy because, plain and simple, it's sweet revenge.

later we're at amoeba records on sunset. we're digging through the used rock section, trying to find a cat power cover of otis redding. we don't find it so we split up somewhere in the vinyl section: she stays there and i go up to browse the movies upstairs.

looking through the documentaries, some guy bumps into me, i drop the bbc boxed set i'm holding, and he says, sorry. i look and she this beautiful tall brown man, smiling at me, saying sorry for bumping into me. i'm a little lost but manage a don't worry about it. he bends down to pick up the dvds and so do i and we both reach at the same time and his hand touches mine. neither one of us recoils. we right ourselves and he's smiling. he says this boxed set is pretty good, he has it at home. i tell him i've been meaning to watch it for years. he says i have good taste if i'm about to get this; he points to the reduced price tag. i tell him of course i'm getting it because, of course i have to tell him we already have this in common, us, two strangers at the record store. i managle my words but ask him if he ever wants to watch it again but his laugh stops me cold and i'm embarrassed by my clumsy pick up line and i think he is too. he says it's nothing personal but his boyfriend is downstairs. i feel my face get really hot. he says it's been nice talking to me and he goes downstairs. i put the boxed set back in its place.

my best friend and i meet in the a's section and she telling me about this boy over in the electronica section. he's so cute she says. she says he's a bit tall and has a little belly and has tattoos and a nearly shaved head: that's her thing when it comes to boys. i tell her about the guy upstairs and ask her if she didn't see him come down. she says no. she drags me over to the electronica section and we spot her man. she and i have never ever had the same taste in guys. it's the one thing i don't think we get about each other. everything else is fine, but for this one thing. her boy has a handbasket full of cds and is looking through the rack in front of him as if he's going to find some lost treasure. she and i get that feeling. she says he's so adorable but i just shrug. out of nowhere appears the tall beautiful brown guy from upstairs and comes up behind the guy we've been pseudo-stalking and takes his free hand in his. we both say, what the fuck?! the couple are just far enough away that we can't hear what they're saying to each other. the tall guy kisses the other guy on the neck. he sets the handbasket down and they leave the store. my best friend, god love her, says, you know they're going home to fuck.

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it's always hard for me to talk to you, so i hope you don't think this the cowardliest thing i've ever done. i'm sorry, i just don't know what else to do. they keep saying how you're probably going to die soon. it might be better is you die, condition you're in and all. your mom cries everyday. i think you already know that. that poor woman, your mother. i haven't seen your dad much over the last few weeks. i never thought he liked me very much from the first time i met him. i really just though you were right at first, that he didn't like the tattoos and the way i dress and that was that. but now, he gives me these looks that i swear to fucking god, i can feel. there's a force about you father, and i only just noticed it since you wound up here.

my mother says i need to stop coming to see you. she says, you being here, in this hospital, just laying there, with machines and tubes everywhere, my mother, she says, there's such a good chance you're never going to wake up. she agrees with your doctor: you might be better off if you die; you wouldn't want to live like this. my mother says me coming here and seeing you like this can't possibly be doing me any good either. she says who i see when i see you isn't the same person who would talk to me on the phone for hours. she says you've been long gone.

honestly, i don't know why i do keep coming here. i could tell you it's because i love you, and that is true, but that's not the entire truth. i don't know what me seeing you like this is getting me. but what i feel better seeing you, even like this, because it makes me see and believe that you're still here. that there's still a chance you could wake up. i know there is. everyone's talking about how unlikely that is but i so want you to wake up. i need you to wake up.

i can't fucking believe you crashed your truck and ruined everything.

okay: why i need you to wake up is i'm pregnant. you know how much we've been trying and how frustrating it's been that it just hasn't happened. it's so typical, things haven't ever been easy for us. i know we're hoping before you head back out on another tour of duty. so was i. i'm glad we didn't tell anyone what we're trying to do because right now, it would just kill everyone. it's killing me. i can't believe you might not get to wake up. but if you do you'll be a father. so, please wake up. i know this isn't ideal, but i just have to tell you. in a way, i'm glad you're still here, alive, breathing, because for some reason it doesn't feel like anything i tell you won't count.

i'm sorry.

baby, you'd be so excited. our baby's going to be blond and have blue eyes, just like you. i really hope it's a boy. if it is, no matter what happens to you, i'm going to name him after you. that was always my plan and i was hoping you'd be all excited and maybe change your mind about naming any kid we have after our parents. i didn't know what else to do. you have to understand. you were about to leave again and i didn't know what else to do. i wanted you to be out there and have a reason to come back to me. a real reason.

i hate all of this. and i'm sorry about this, all of this shit. what you're going through and what i'm dropping on you when you can't say anything about any of this. you have to wake up. you just have to. son't listen anything any of these people are saying around you. i'm not sure if you can hear any of them, or me, but don't listen to any of us. we're gonna have a baby. i need you to wake up. please.

okay, i need to tell you what i came here to tell you. visiting hours are almost over and if i don't do it now, i never will and you deserve to know. i hated it so much we just couldn't get preganant and i hated it so much you might think it's me, or worse, you. i had to do something, baby. and now we're going to have a baby and you're not around for me to tell you. you know, as soon as you got to my house that day, the day of that fucking crash, i was going to tell you everything, about the pregnancy? i was so scared. but you had to know. i was going to tell you we finally got preganant. i know you would've been so happy. so happy. and when you collapsed at you brother's house after the crash and haven't woken up, i've just been so scared. and now here we are. everything gone to shit. everything. everything we planned and everything we wanted, all gone, just because of a fucking traffic accident. you have to understand. i had to give you what you wanted, what we wanted. i did it all for us. you were going to go overseas and come back to your perfect family and everything would be okay. finally.

it's not your baby.

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two days ago, at the meeting i flew in for, the producers and director went on and on about why they want this semi-famous character actor as the lead. i was jotting down the reason why they wanted her for this particular role and it was strange that i agreed with everything they said. no deal was made but i think they’re going to get their way. the studio people just want to be able to say they’ve put out a new film by this hotshot european director who’d probably going to be the new danny boyle. in this business, starting out, you have the be a new somebody instead a new nobody.

a day ago, everything went so smoothly that we ended the day aroun noon. the rest of the day, in my rental car, i drove all over los angeles. i went to the santa monica promenade and that was a little disappointing: people who live here crowding a two block section of the city. and at the pier it was more of the same. the beach was crawling with families, none of which seemed to include anything less than three kids. the water looked so grey/brown, i can’t believe these people want to wade in it and swim and surf and everything. the beaches back in miami are not pristine, but they’re perfect in comparison to this.

i wanted to go to venice, not the beach but the city. but when i was driving aorund looking for a parking space, everything looked so disjointed. places that were always here, giving the town some characted were now surrounded by terrible franchise restaurants making everything look tacky as opposed to interesting. when i found a spot and was getting ready to get out of my car, a couple walked by. he was black and tall and skinny and wore those stupid glasses with the black frames and had dreadlocks and seemed to walk like a flamboyant gay boy; she was probably some sort of hispanic and short and a little thick, but in an attractive way, had huge tits and bad tattoos. they were holding hands. their clothes looked like they pruposefully dressed badly just so they could still feel apart from the rest of these people who really all looked the same. i didn’t get out of my car and i drove off.

i went up to silverlake, and everything was just like at venice.

i didn’t want to be in hollywood nor the valley. i made my way back down south along the 110 and wound up somewhere where all the signs on store fronts were in english and spanish. it wasn’t what i think a barrio is or anything like that, movies ruined my imagination. i parked across a high school and grabbed my camera and began walking. everything was so quiet with is being in the middle of the day. one of my hobbies is taking pictures. i’m not very good at it but i think it’s fun. i’m not an artist. i’m more of a glorified accountant, really. walking through this neighbohood i must look so out of place in my slacks and shoes and shirt and tie. i take a picture of a couple of asian girls in all black, with black make up around their eyes. if they see me they don’t make it known. i take a picture of a butcher’s shop sign that has a cleverly painted deer on it. a few blocks away is a refinery of all things and i manage to take a few pictures of the all the buildings and smokestacks and scafolding and tanks. trucks going in and out and all these guys driving them, they must see me and wonder what a prick like me is doing here, taking pictures of nothing.

walk back and check the time. i drive off, back to my hotel.

i love this city but i’m always glad when i get to leave. as much fun as it can be, there’s something about the people here. they seem so happy living here, i think, and probably have no idea why. i suppose it goes the same for nearly everyone everywhere. i wonder how many people, if give the opportunity, would leave. where would they go that’s better than home?

the valley is scorching hot. i stop at the liquor store a few blocks away from the hotel, get some beers. a little group of black kids is hanging out just outside and when they see me going in one of them comes up to me, no more than sixteen, and says if i’ll buy them something to drink. alcohol, you know. he gives me a twenty and i ask him what they want and they all get this smile across their faces. and when i come out and give them the paper sack with their booze, i give the kid his twenty back and tell them to be safe.

i’m not sure why i decided to stay here but once in the air-controlled room, i fire up my computer and and television. take a shower and start getting ready. weird, getting ready. i drink a beer and smoke a cigarette (even if it’s a non-smoking room) and my phone beginngs ringing, my computer keeps flashing with new emails. all these guys asking for directions, making sure of the time. no one wants to get lost and be late to an orgy.

after all those guys leave my room, i take a long shower to wash off all the sweat and spit and come and lube off. i feel like i’m covered in a film of dirt. the warm water flows over me and i feel like i could sleep for a million years. i’m so tired.

i love this city.

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during the middle of the party, everyone's at different levels of getting drunk and it seems as if everyone's having a good time. really, it certainly feels like it. everyone was waiting to see what happened earlier with our younger brother and that car accident he was in hours ago. and as soon as our older brother arrived with his new boyfriend and was introduced to us all, there was some tension. not too much, you know, but you can definitely still feel it hanging over the entire house. but what was a bit ago, now that the sun's down and people are drinking and dancing, nothing but a celebration.

all of my aunts ask me when i'm going to find a nce girl and settle down, get married, have a kid or three. no one seems to buy it when i say i don't really want to get married nor have kids. used to be, whenever i said this to anyone, everyone would say back to me, oh, you're saying this now, but you're just young. ten years and still going, here i am telling them the exact same thing. i have cousins who come up to me and introduce me to their friends they brought. of course, my cousins and their friends, they're jailbait. problem, if i can even call it that, is my brothers and i, we're all tall and dark complexions. somewhere back when our family tree was a sapling, our genepool created us. isn't that something: good looks as a burden?

my cousin carla gives me a beer and asks me why i'm standing all the way over here when i should be enjoying the party. i say i'm okay. i wasn't ever a very social person. plus, most of my extended family, they're kind of assholes. i mean, they're not bad people or anything, but i definitely wouldn't invite any of them over for a drink on a friday afternoon. sometimes i can't believe we're related. carla, she's talking to me about another of her friends who's on her way here because she told her i'd be here and that i would really like her.

why is it when you reach a certain age that every female in your family thinks what you're missing in life is a woman and kids to make you happy? they can't conceive that either one or both are completely the opposite.

a little later, once people begin to leave in little groups, finally, i find my dad sitting alone along the side of the house, smoking a cigarette. he's drunk and seems strangely serious. he's sitting on one of mom's garden benches and i sit next to him. i ask him how he's doing, how he's feeling. he says he's fine, just a little drunk. i say how it's not everyday he turns sixty-seven. he sort of laughs. he says he can't believe he made it this far. he says he probably should've died a long time ago. he says all the things he's done in his life, maybe this is plain luck that he made it this far. i ask him if he's okay. he says he's fine, just thinking out loud. he says he'd really like to be alone. i leave him after giving him a hug.

a bunch of the girls that came along are still meandering. some of my male cousins are all over them. everyone is just drunk enough to the point that anyone seems like a good idea. my brothers are talking over something. my mother is nowhere to be found. at the end of these things, everyone's having their own little crises. i sit in a plastic lawn chair near the kitchen door. my older brother's boyfriend comes and sits next to me. he says how much he enjoyed being here. i tell him it was a pretty good time. he says he thought it was going to be a bit more disastrous for him and my brother and he laughs a little nervous laugh. i tell him i could have been, but it's been years since my brother being gay's been an issue. i say, back at the beginning, every time it came up in conversation, yeah, it was a neutron bomb. he says my brother's told him everything. i tell him he seems as happy as i've ever seen him. i tell him how it's probably my brother finding him that's ginally made him less sour. he says thanks, leans over and kisses me on the cheek and gives me a hug, and i think he's about to cry. he walks over to where my brothers are talking.

once everyone's gone to bed, i'm still sitting outside in the back yard. my cousins who're left started a fire in the clay stove my dad built years ago. we're all sitting around it. some of their friends are there too and they're talking about whatever it is kids in their early twenties talk about. i'm just there for show. one of my counsins' friends talks to me about what it's like to go to san diego state. how much she likes it, mostly. how she's already failed a class, like it's a point of pride. she says the party she went to last week, a girl wound up getting alcohol poisoning. she asks me where i went to school and how old am i and do i have a girlfriend and what do i like to do and where do i live and do i have my own car and could we hang out sometime. maybe if i were a few years younger this might seem like something worth wasting a few hours. i tell her to please just leave me alone. she asks me if i'm a fag like my brother.

the next day, everyone's gone. i live on laurel, just behind the casbah, so i walk home. it's a few downhill blocks and the san diego late morning is always beautiful.

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my best friend is nervous. he thinks no one notices but he always chews on his fingernails whever something's occupying his mind. we left the record store and we're on our way down to melrose, just to waste a few hours. thing is, he knows his ex is out there right now. he knows because they still talk. they're trying the whole being friends thing. thing is, she's already seeing someone else. i shouldn't say it like that because it has been a month since they stopped going out. he's still in love with her but he won't ever admit that. i've asked him and what he says is he doesn't think so. doesn't think so. i told him we didn't have to go down there but i really wanna hit up golden apple for that 100 bullets one shot that just came out. he said it was okay, we could go, so he flipped the ignition and off we go. at every stop light, his mouth gets to work on his thumbs.

it's not that i didn't like his ex when they were going out, but i know he could do so much better. she is an adorable little mexican thing, but he's way too smart for her, way too mature. i think he'd rather put up with all that foolishness just because she's pretty. of course i've never told him so: he'd kill me. and it's not like she's all that bad. when i first met her, she was this shy little girl who barely spoke three words to me. but as she came more and more around, i guess i got to like her a little bit. thing is, she has no real identity. i suppose it's because she's younger than we are, but, i mean, just because we get these replacement at the drive-in records a few months back, suddenly she's their biggest fan. i could obliterate her with a few well timed and pointed questions. i wonder what that says about her and about me.

he parks across the street from fat beatz and clumsily puts change in the meter. i ask him again if he's sure he wants to be here and he says he's fine. i just know this is going to be a disaster.

after the comic book store, we're getting something to eat at this new cafe just across the way from mao's that's supposed to be veg friendly but i've yet to see anything that backs up this claim. a couple hours later and we haven't run into his ex and her new man, and for this i'm thankful. and not. i am curious to see what type of guy she'd go out with now that she's copied everything about us. that sounds catty doesn't it? it does, because it is. strange how after one of your friends' boy/girlfriends break up with them, how fast you can hate them. it's the fucking truth.

...alright: truth, right?

yes, even after all these years, i've always hoped he wanted to go out with me. yes. even now. isn't that a terrible thing to admit? when we'd first met, it was like that, he asked me out for a movie and i went because he seemed incredibly cool and cute and everything. but i knew then we were going to be friends. actually, he told me: he was seeing a boy at the time. so we've had that conversation. he had to have it with me because when i made a move the second time we hung out, he told me. so that was that. but even after all these years and all the people we've seen, there is a bit of me that wonders, you know. is that wrong? does that make me a bad friend? it's not like i've just been hanging out with him just biding my time so i can make my move. it's that cliche of a story: i wouldn't ever want to ruin the relationship we have. maybe i just need to grow a pair of balls.

after the food, we're waiting on the bill, having some terribly strong coffee, and he's relaxed and unassuming when his ex and her new boy walk in. i see them first because i'm facing the entrance. i can't help myself and i tell him she's here. he gets so agitated. she sees me and waves. i wave back and put on my best fake smile. bitch. he turns as if he really wants to see who it is i'm waving to. she walks over and he stands and they hug and she introduces all to her boy. stella wasn't ever that subtle: she tells her boyfriend she and my best friend used to go out. it sets the awkward meter to about a million.

when we get back to the car, i ask him if he wants me to drive. he's still so out of it. i want to tell him just to stop what he's thinking and what he's feeling, but telling someone that isn't helpful at all. i think he might even be this close to crying. he says he'll drive us home. i wonder what makes us so fractured at times like this. i mean, as you get older, you know all of this is transitory, everything has its time and it'll pass. all of it. so how come when we're in the middle of it, it's nothing but an atom bomb?

at my house, he says how come he can't stop thinking about her? why does he still love her? she's terrible to and for him, so why can't he stop? i tell him it'll be alright, it will pass. you know, but what i really wanna say i never will. because seeing him ache this way, it makes me think if he and i somehow came to be and it didn't work, imagine me, then. and him. we count on each other when times are rough, what if we were the reason why the other is sad? but i just know i'd be so much better for him than anyone else. then, as if he heard me, he starts crying.

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he's sleeping on the couch and from the smell of it, he's been smoking in here again even though he knows i hate it. it's nearly six in the afternoon. turn on the afternoon local news but mute it and wash the dirty dishes in the sink, maybe straighten up a little in the kitchen. should i make him something to eat? he doesn't snore, god bless him, but when i look over at him, his legs move like a puppy's when he's dreaming. time for a shower.

afterward, i put on the same pair of pants i was wearing and when i come out of the bathroom, he has some pasta on the stove and a sauce pan of alfredo sauce. i walk over and give him a hug from behind and kiss his neck. he asks me how my day was and i tell him and he listens. he always listens to me and i wonder how uninteresting my day (or night, i guess) working at the warehouse must be to hear. he asks me about luis and i tell him. i think he's the only one of my co-workers he likes. he says maybe he really ought to get a job. he says it's not fair to me. of course, i tell him, no, he has to focus on his classes. he turns and kisses me.

we eat at the couch, watching some old seinfeld reruns. it's probably the only television show i like and can still watch every episode all the way through, even after all these years. he gets up and gets me a beer and asks if i want some more. i say he just needs to come back and sit next to me, i'll clean up later. he does. he asks me if i want to go to san diego my next weekend off. it's time for street scene and he really wants to go. i could do without all of that, the crowds and the sun and the terrible music and the bad art and even worse commercialism. he knows all of this, but he asks anyway and of course i say yes. his face lights up the way that makes me think he's just the most adorable man on earth. we have sex on the couch.

i get a phone call and my entire shift's been cut for today and the day after next. i ask my foreman if there's no way that i can make up the days and he says there isn't. i really can't afford to miss any days. but here i am, my night off and he's out with his friends. no car, no extra cash. i walk to the bar at the corner.

she says she's still having problems with her ex. i've met him and he's not that bad a guy, but i suppose when you're younger things taste different. over in the corner an older couple have set up camp, and from the looks of it they've been here for quite sometime: both look like they're not really paying attention to what the other is saying. she tells me she thinks they're married but not to each other, each keep getting calls on their cell phones but neither are answering. we look for a while but they're certainly carrying on like teenagers. i drink my first three beers within the hour. by the time the fifth comes, i know it's time to get home. she says i should come back later, hang out. i'm just drunk enough that i make sure to ask, just hang out or more than hang out. she smiles. i tell her we've had the conversation before, and it comes out a little more forceful than i mean, but she says, yeah, that's fine. tell her i'll see her later.

at home, he's back and he's tearing through the bedroom. i ask him what's going on and he says he can't find his phone. he's sure he left it here. i give him mine to call it but there's no ring anywhere in here. i'm a little hazy and i say maybe he left it somewhere else. he seems really worried and i tell him my shift got cut. he doesn't say anything about that or about me being half-drunk. he curses a lot but i can't be bothered right now. he says he's gotta go pick up his friends back at the bar they're at. i ask him who he's out with and he says some of the girls from class. i plop on the bed and fall asleep.

it's barely around midnight and he's still not home. i don't still feel drunk but do feel like my head's going to explode. definitely, i'm not a young guy anymore. i strip to my boxers and make myself some coffee. wonder what's going on at work. it's been so long when my boss hasn't needed me. i hope nothing more serious is happening. i hate this is the type of thing i have to think about. i should've finished those tech classes i was taking way back when. i should've gone to work with my cousins downtown when they offered. i need something more steady, more certain. i can't go on living paycheck to paycheck. i have someone else counting on me. that was the deal. sometimes i think i got all of this figured out and something like this happens. isn't that always the case?

at least he'll be home soon. he never stays out too late. and when he comes, and we go to bed, i'll get to wake up next to him and that hasn't happened in a long while. i like waking up next to him. if i told him he's probably think i was a little too cheezy. but that's okay isn't it, whenever you have someone next to you? all the work traumas and all the other minutia of your daily life, all of it goes away when you can say good morning to someone like him.

i pour myself another cup and that's when i see it, just above the stove, his cell phone. he must've been using it when he was making dinner, set it down and completely forgot all about it. maybe i shouldn't but i check his calls and his texts. because...i don't know why.

oh. and that's when everything ends...


[see also august in pictures. (c) 2009]