my journals from myspace
here are some of my entries from myspace, i am pulling away because i think it is complete shit.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
if condition persists, consult a medical doctor...
my head really hurts. i wonder sometimes why people around me seem to think that i have the capability to solve all of their problems, and especially why some people seem oblivious to the possibility that i may have something i need to work through on my own, and don't necessarily have time to work through something for them. argh, i really do try to avoid rant sessions, however i am not great at it, especially when my head is left feeling as cloudy as it does now.
so last night i saw this girl kim, who i havent seen in years, and it brought on a wave of youthful nostalgia. it was like she caused a sensation in me that made me wish i was still fourteen (hows that song go? back in the day, when i was young, im not a kid anymore) because things/life/waking up in the morning (or not) were so much simpler and easier to deal with.
okay, there is more to this, but i am simply to exhausted to continue right now...
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
when days were shorter and evenings colder...
so, I have to ask myself exactly why I feel compelled to write on a semi-daily (and sometimes multi-daily) basis in some journal which few read, and which I would almost prefer read by fewer. I do have other (read:better) things to do, and I am fully aware of this fact, and perhaps subconciously deterred from doing these "other" things by a need to simply slow my day down and reflect. I could, for example, research why a certain girl in my life who I was convinced wanted a relationship has now completely vanished off the face of the earth. did I take some action which disrupted her intentions, perhaps unintentionally? maybe she hasn't vanished, and I am simply imagining her absence. it would be easy (probably) to find these things out, call a few mutual friends, ask a few questions, problem solved. yet I am not tempted to take these simple steps because I realize that if I had vanished off the planet in much the manner as she has, I would probably not prefer to be hunted down like prey by some person that I was just beginning to get to know. so there goes that relationship out the window I think, because even though I don't know exactly what her intentions are, I know that in her shoes, I would call a person I was interested in, so perhaps I have outlived my usefulness to her. a couple of good things did come of this truncated affair, for example, I found myself signing up on this service. yes, I realize it is a faux world for keyboard junkies to comingle prior to heading out for a night of partying, so be it, it works for me.
aftermath......
so, vancouver costs money. knew that before, know it even more now. spent over my budget, and that was w/out stopping at the AX on the way out. we did get stopped by canadian customs on our way in, they searched the vehicle for an hour, interrogated us, and accused us of being high and trying to smuggle drugs into the country (which we were and werent, collectively). after getting through this, which was difficult, because any official that says "ay" produces a laugh reflex in my system, we checked into the pinnacle, then hit the town. don't remember much except all the drinks were doubles and pretty soon we were all out of cash and I was bribing the bouncer at a club that was over capacity to let us in with some british pounds. once we got in, we did more doubles, and promptly got kicked out when my buddy cyrus lit a joint in the vip booth we were sitting in. sure, canada is lenient on pot, but you're not allowed to smoke ANYTHING in their nightclubs, unless you're known. rest is very blurry, will do it again.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
vancouver or bust!...
going to vancouver tonight, Im actually pretty excited, since I havent made a canada run in over a year--but used to do it all the time--so its been a long time coming. the only down side is that my friend cyrus, who im going with, is having chick issues, and she doesnt want him to go, because they just broke up and are now considering getting back together. I think they're both stupid, not really, but dumb because their relationship was crap and they both knew it and there is nothing to salvage besides possibly a good friendship. but viva bad mistakes like getting back together with people you know you shouldn't.
anyway, Ill have a good time, and Ill make sure he has a good time, and we wont sleep with any random girls, because I don't want to piss april off if he does, and I think I might have a pretty good thing going here myself.
ps, im not moving to arizona.
Friday, February 27, 2004
frog update...
So, I checked for senor frog today on my way to the gym, and while I did not look particularly hard, or scrutinize any minute green detail on my front lawn, I do believe he survived the advances of Spot, to live out his short life, and warn away any other frogs thinking to adventure into my house. Good luck
11:07 AM - 0 Comment - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
no sleep for the wicked......
okay, so I think everyone can agree that at 4 o'clock in the morning, a person should either be sleeping or partying, right? not tossing and turning in bed with multiples of millions of random thoughts spiraling around, then going downstairs to drink some warm milk (which never works) and find his cat playing around with a frog. a frog, you ask? yes, a little green amphibious creature who belongs in a pond somewhere, certainly not in my kitchen, being batted around by a catnip-addict feline I like to call spot. so I rescue the frog, who has no name, and is now out in my front yard, survival unknown, and tend to warming some milk, which takes approximately one minute forty five seconds, at which point I drink the milk, telling myself it will work, hoping back of the head style that it will at least have a placebo effect. now back upstairs, I continue to toss and turn, but now I have at least two more random thoughts merging onto the freeway of insomnia; what the hell was a frog doing in my kitchen (we do not leave any doors open for any amount of time in the winter, this is not florida my friend), and did this frog survive the playful attacks of spot (who was quite angry with me for transporting the frog to a more amenable habitat, and mewled for about forty five seconds of milk warming time until I fed him some pounce and dunked his chipmunk/squirrel (to me they're interchangeable) in catnip).
the paper was just thrown at my driveway outside, and now I have another cat (flake) making terrible noises in the hallway outside my door. this she is fully capable of doing, coupled with trying to nose my door open for about thirty seconds, and then she usually knocks out for a while, due to the fact that she is twenty in cat years (which makes her what, a thousand in human?).
now it must be time to turn off thoughts and grasp at rem, since I have plans of working out at ten, and will most likely be awoken at 9:30 by april, with whom I have my morning workout plans. then she'll come over, we'll eat something defineable as a light breakfast, and go run in place and lift weights for an hour or so. yes, definitely time to close my eyes and see emptiness, not flashing lights, or the day in rewind, and certainly not a frog.
goodnight/morning whatever, I hope, for good this time
04:07 AM - 0 Comment - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
this should be interesting...
So, weird day/night. Not much to say except that I was very confused about things all day, nothing new lately, and could not get much sleep during the night. I love writing, so I started on a new project, which I feel will probably be a short story, but we'll see. I'm going to post that of it which I have written so far here, and hope it'll fit in it's entirety. Ahead of time, I apologize for the formatting, as pasting from Microsoft Word is not always seamless. Also, just a small comment, in case anybody is curious the characters are not modeled after me or people I know, but more me, people I know and people I don't know sort of smashed together, like different colors of playdough as children, in order to create new complex characters I can meld or modify at my whim. Enjoy!
Ch.1
He awakens to the scent of lust, dark and dormant, all around him, mixed with her. Vanilla flavored dreams he remembers and just as quickly forgets, sees the shape of her next to him, but just the depression, no physical evidence remains on his merlot Ralph Lauren sheets to prove she was there. And other things; vessels emptied in some unlaced lucidity-free zone he and she occupied before now, scattered haphazardly around the room in a way that ironically suggests design, as if some Soho based artisan had flown prelude to the dream for just that effect. The nausea inducing smell of stale tobacco and hash hangs somewhere in the back of his head, suggesting consumption in recent not-quite memory.
Outside tries to break in, as if kept for so long as to become insistent, and he closes the blinds he knows she opened, because they are never open. The window is closed on the 78 degree weather outside, and before he finishes with the blinds, he opens the one window in the room, hoping to disgorge the lingering sensual reminders of something he cannot quite recall.
Next is a journey down the hall from the bedroom, to the kitchen/dining-room/living-room that he wishes were bigger, and maybe not trying to be more things than it could. On the stove are pots from a week ago, and on the counter a half-drunk bottle of Simply Orange from the night before, which is quickly discarded. He cannot stand anything that is not fresh.
Moving from the kitchen to the dining room-or more accurately taking three steps to the left-he removes the Chinese takeout containers from the small black wooden table he purchased from IKEA a month ago. Joining the orange juice in the chrome cylinder which passes for the garbage, the Chinese takeout boxes look extra white, and he recalls their contents vividly. Brown rice, moo shoo pork, family style steamed tofu in oyster sauce, and bok choy, which he’s pretty sure is Chinese broccoli. This is what he always has, and assumes he ordered it for them.
The small square which represents his living room holds no new surprises. His silver 50” Sony Wega flat screen TV is still poised precariously on top of his chrome and black three-tiered entertainment center, purchased along with the table. Above it, on a shelf he’s always assumed to be half the width of the one below sits his matching Sony DVD player with progressive scan, capable of playing MP3’s, or so the salesman told him, and his matching Sony ES 5.1 processor with six-disc CD-changer, also capable of playing MP3’s, a tribute to the age of more is less, where music had regressed from the beautiful recordings he recalled during the infancy of the CD. His silver center channel speaker emblazoned with the Pioneer Elite nameplate sits alone on the top shelf, dwarfed by its larger electronic cousins below.
To either side of the entertainment center rises a left and right speaker to match the center, matching also the rear left and right speaker and subwoofer that are hidden behind his black leather couch, acquired from his mother when she moved and had nowhere else for it, which is behind him.
The couch is his favorite piece of furniture, perhaps because he can remember long nights spent on it, sleeping, in a different apartment, smaller, with no money and no other accoutrements within grasp. Those nights he pretended he was home, had laid down to read a book, and didn’t feel like making the trek to his room for much needed sleep.
Ignoring the pots and pans on his stove, he makes his way back down the hall, this time entering the bathroom. Stripping off the plain black boxers with Polo embroidered on the tag, discarding them on the floor, taking one last look in the mirror at a face that could use a shave and hair that could use a wash/blow-dry/gel. He’s tall, 6’2”, but doesn’t tell people his height, lean but toned, with the exception being the smallest evidence of too much beer showing around his middle. This is made more or less indistinguishable by his weekly trips to the tanning salon, and he believes it is getting smaller and smaller as he trades nightly drunken bouts with daily workouts more and more, although apparently an oversight was made the previous night.
He steps into his shower, which is guarded from the rest of the bathroom by two curtains, one transparent and on the outer ledge, and one opaque for the inside, both purchased from the Bon-Macy’s home store on his card, both inconspicuously sporting Ralph Lauren badges. Here he has the assorted requisites for a man who takes care of himself from a grooming perspective, lately referred to as metrosexual, a term he ignores, and refuses to apply to himself. American Crew shampoo sits next to matching conditioner, which occupies the shelf next to his Nautica body wash, rarely used in favor of a bar of Irish Springs Aloe. For the face he uses Clinique For Men facial scrub, prefers Nivea For Men shave gel, and finishes with a Clinique For Men soap bar.
Shampooed, soaped and shaved he exits the shower, dries with a red towel from the same set as his curtains, and steps back in front of the mirror. He applies gel to his hair from a small bottle of Tigi Control Freak and musses it around in a forward motion, giving it texture in a crooked way, draws his bangs down diagonally across his forehead, applies Hugo cologne and deodorant from one of many brands of scentless spray-ons and sticks occupying his counter. He has yet to decide which he prefers, but today goes with a Right Guard aerosol, which he assumes to be essentially the same as the Shick sitting next to it, but perhaps it protects better, he’s not sure.
Back in the bedroom a form fitting dress shirt from Kenneth Cole is put on over a Hanes Tagless t-shirt, un tucked because it was designed that way, a metallic blue which he thinks he likes but isn’t sure. Next a pair of Diesel boot cut pre-faded blue-jeans, several shades darker than the shirt go on over black boxers, streaked across the lap and leg to suggest wear, even though he’s only worn them twice. He’s not sure when he bought them, but owns numerous pairs in case he goes out to a bar or something, or generally anywhere else where they could get dirty or smoke-saturated. A problem still, since Washington is still dragging heel on passing legislature to ban smoking in bars, pubs, restaurants. No, they don’t allow smoking in public buildings, and he’s still puzzled, along with many of the more austere lawmakers, and the State of California, as to how restaurants, pubs and bars don’t fall under this classification.
On go the brand-less ankle cut dress socks he purchases en-masse at Costco. He hates to wear the same socks too many times in a row, as he finds that thin dress socks develop wear in the toe area quickly, no matter how trimmed the toenail that occupies them.
Back in the kitchen/dining-room/living-room, adjacent the door, slipping into black leather shoes purchased from Aldo, where he vows never to purchase shoes again, but will, because they look/feel/wear so well, except in the heel, which he assumes is due to his habit of dragging said part. And opening his door, which is wooden, and has the classic peephole which obscures anything viewed through it to the point where your date looks like her face has been squeezed into a none too flattering fish bowl prior to her coming over. Once he made mention of this, and has learned since that women do not appreciate being compared to fish, even when done so in a clearly joking manner. For that matter, he has found that the average woman would prefer that all comments related to her appearance contain words such as breathtaking, beautiful, stunning and the like, and not much else, save for the occasional requisite noun and predicate.
Lastly before leaving, grabbing watch, wallet and sunglasses, all Kenneth Cole, from the shelf next to his door, and knowing he is forgetting something, returning to the bedroom for keys, necessary if one should wish to have a productive day of securing home, starting car, unlocking mailbox, and returning home at the end of the day to enter without folly.
Sun, seeking his skin and finding it, all the way to the third button of his shirt, around his low profile sunglasses, up his arm to the point where he has cuffed his sleeve. Drenching, warm and dry, squinting through lenses guaranteed to block harmful UV’s, nourishing where possible. Leaving the Kirkland waterfront, where rich is assumed of residents, and his ultra-expensive condo sits waterside beckoning at those on boats and jet-skis to gawk. He knows he’s on the tour, with his kitchen/living-room/dining-room visible to the tour-boat as it passes, along with those of his neighbors, some of which choose to pull blinds when walking around unclothed, some not.
Now she finds him again, still lost though, her memory. She pulls at him, teases, suggests and plays her brand of game until he pushes her out. Brown, long silky, maybe black hair, he can remember. Skin the color of mocha, but white underneath, all the way to eyes that peer into the back of his skull, or maybe behind him, his head transparent to her, learning his deepest darkest most treasured secrets without words to complicate them. Long legs he remembers, and long arms, tall, not boy tall, girl tall, 5’5” he guesses. A face he doesn’t see hides behind bangs that occupy her head in a sort-of crisscross fashion, teasing with the tainted memory of beauty recognized but not remembered. A sleek glistening body tangles its way around his, finding ways to touch, feel, sense, respond, resonate, that he’s sure he has never known.
Gone. Now he is getting into a car he doesn’t remember approaching, black convertible coupe, he remembers the guy calling it that, bought the ’03 Mercedes-Benz Kompressor off of a Microsoftee who’d obviously hit the big one. Remembers the brand new red Ferrari Modena in the driveway next to it, no plates, top down. Remembers how the Benz was parked six-feet away, almost on the walkway, as if discarded. He bought it for a steal, knew it was because Mr. Microsoft simply did not care about money anymore, watching moving guys carting things out of the two storey Tudor on Lake Washington. Wondered where the wife and kids were, wondered if there was a wife and kids.
On the freeway now, 405 blazing past at 90mph, watching the used gray road pass beneath his car, Escort SR7 hidden away, aware, just in case. From the Eclipse deck with twenty four bits of digital to analog conversion, through the matching amplifiers and all the way to the Focal speakers occupying his doors in six places, complementing the Focal sub subtly filling in from the trunk, Tupac is talking about Brenda now, lamenting her loss, and her child who now has no mother, and he feels bad, but good too, because he knows that the song is about a lot of things, and not meant to inspire sadness, but change. He can change things, he knows, thinks, maybe doesn’t quite know how. He has changed. Knows he’s lucky, volunteers sometimes downtown Seattle at the soup kitchens that various churches have organized, even though religion sort of grates at his skull, coached a 5th grade Boys and Girls Club basketball team a summer ago, still remembers the kids he never sees.
Katie’s house is still where he left it. Totem Lake, off the 116th exit, nestled away among a bunch of other houses built to look the same but different twenty years ago, knows she pays too much for the gated community but doesn’t mind because she can leave her front door unlocked during the day. Brown, two storey, with plants in pots out front lining the walkway up to the concrete steps which lead to the door he helped her buy from Home Depot six months ago because she said she wanted one with a window. A white door with laser engraved glass depicting a dove and some tulips. Nice, but not the one he’d liked, which had started an argument where he was the villain who never listened to her or respected her decisions. They’d bought the door, had it delivered, and then he had hired two guys to install it, because she wasn’t talking to him. It had taken them four days, two to show up, one to put it on, and another day to come back and make it so it’d close again after it had been opened. He’d spent the night outside her house in his car, even though she still wasn’t talking to him, had text’d him in fact, explaining her problem, and then the next morning she came out and told him she loved him and started crying and made him come inside to make love loudly while the two lazy contractors put the door on right and exchanged jokes.
Opening the door, knowing she’s mad at him again, that memory burned into his brain, or his eyes, he isn’t sure. She’s asleep of course, so he has to walk in, scratch Congo the Saint Bernard on his head, wipe slobber off on her white leather couch where the dog sits and slobbers all day anyway but she still complains when he does it, go upstairs and knock. They’ve been dating for two years, he’s seen her naked enough times to draw her body from memory, right down to the birthmark on her inner left thigh, and he still knocks, because she likes to have things her way. Which is why he’s in trouble, not coming over last night when she text’d him to.
Open door, enter, smile and hang head. She’s naked, under covers which always smell of peaches, which he knows she bought from some swanky store in New York that she always tells everybody about which is maybe why he can’t remember the name. Walks over to her and bends down and kisses her mouth which is asking to be kissed, fresh even at this hour of the morning, framed by a face with soft features, pale, surrounded by brown curls streaked with lighter brown cascading down almost to slender shoulders. Past these shoulders he knows, cant see, her breasts rise averagely and pleasantly leading to soft understated hips leading to toned legs not long or short.
Post kiss she is all business, angry in a way which scares him sometimes, controlled, concocted, planned, to make him uncomfortable he’s sure. Disapproval spills out of her lips, which are now angled in a way that certainly doesn’t suggest kissability, and he stands there and agrees in the way he always does, pushing back feeling and aggression, his mom loves her, friends are mutual, don’t screw it up. Dark bad thoughts leak into his perspective from the corners and soon she follows, anti-Katie, sliding her hand down his arm from behind and kissing him behind his ear in a way he loves but never knew he loved so much. Stroking chest with other arm, vanilla combating peach, winning, now he’s facing her, back to him and he’s kissing the nape of neck that defies perfection. Stunned and confused, the present breaks into the past and Katie finishes being mad, he finishes being the punching bag, crawls into bed with her and loses clothes so recently put on.
“What’s wrong, honey?” She asks this from the bathroom, showering with the door open, where he can see soapy limbs and breasts and back turning under water he knows is too hot for him, behind a single filmy curtain made of what, silk? He grunts, noncommittal, moves towards the bathroom from the bed where he’s been prone, not aware of putting off wrong vibes. “No, baby, something’s bothering you, you weren’t yourself” she says, pursuing like she always does, not mad, but letting her voice take on a edgy-sweet tone. He used to crumble under it, but now finds it strangely repelling, and is instantly aware of this change, subtle yet crushing, he forgets the feeling and modifies it somewhere subconsciously like airbrushing a photo, until now he’s crumbling.
“I’m sorry, I got some bad news yesterday, and I’ve been letting it get to me.” He had in fact received news of dubious nature the day before, but it had been in the back of his mind, something about his Comcast stock dropping, money lost, but he’d known it would rebound. Ignorant of stocks, he massages this lie into shape and neatly places it in her head, at which point she becomes less edgy-sweet, finishes doing something indescribable to her hair which leaves it looking as it had before, and makes way back to the bedroom, still naked, in the way that a girl completely comfortable with her body could. He catches himself admiring her in a way that starts at her feet and gradually makes it all the way to her neck, which is obscured by her hair, smelling certainly of lavender shampoos and conditioners. She attracts him still, which he hadn’t been as convinced of during their lovemaking, fumbling confused where once was familiar, now he wishes she hadn’t just showered, as that puts an end in her mind to anymore play.
Katie problem fixed, he leaves by way of his entrance, avoids Congo, in active pursuit of somewhere to deposit more slobber, back in car, top mechanically disappearing into trunk, her off to work in minutes, her car already warming up in the driveway by way of remote start he had bought for her last winter, an invaluable addition to the green Cabrio, since the soft-top let in too much moisture and caused the interior to resemble more the inside of a freezer.
Her garage, her knows, is filled with detritus accumulated through years of pack-rat mentality, old sofa, white still in places, mattress with story telling stains, boxes endlessly stacked of Christmas ornaments-even though she’s Jewish, he always thinks-and childhood knickknacks he assumes to be crushed beyond recognition and mildewed beyond repair, much like the garage he left behind at his mother’s old house in North Bend. Clutter of life buried but not forgotten, like pets lost in early years taking rest under several feet of dirt in hopes of discouraging excavation by owners seeking pleasures of swimming pools and tennis courts.
Freeway again, pointing south towards I-90, which will take him west towards Seattle, away from the east, where memories still linger in haunting clarity, life more normal, possessions less flashy amongst those who possessed much more.
Gone now, these monetary problems, replaced by bank accounts replete with funds and options and bonds and things that were assuredly maturing so they could be plucked away at in golden years and advisors who spent their lives looking at sheets filled with meaningless numbers so you wouldn’t have to. No job to speak of, unless you consider the office he enters, tucked away in a tower on 1st street, with his name on the door, suggesting some profession he holds which is non-existent. Sometimes he takes people into this office and sells them things, interest in one of his ventures, a particularly expensive item he has listed on ebay solely for the purpose of drawing buyers into the matching leather chairs given him as a gift by his father on his 24th birthday to replace the two tattered cloth upholstered chairs bought at Sears. He sits now opposite these chairs, in a matching leather recliner designed to make the user feel as if he is being massaged by beautiful women on a cloud somewhere just outside the office he occupies. He imagines the chairs can’t be this comfortable for those in them, but assumes that if he replaces them with duplicate recliners, he might never get any alone time.
Logging onto his web-site, on his state of the art AMD powered computer with RAM, video memory, power, speed, sleek luxurious 20” flat panel display which doubles as TV, cable modem speed shoots him there as soon as he types the address. Knows that he can sit in the office next to his with his laptop and connect just as quickly using it’s built in WiFi, which allows him wireless connectivity here, home and just about anywhere he can buy a cup of coffee-preferably Starbucks-and which he uses to also extrapolate random bits of code from his desktop to his laptop-which is a Sony Vaio, and fits extremely well and deceptively lightly into his Tumi laptop case, both of which are in his trunk now, which he regrets, but realizes there really isn’t anything to extrapolate today anyhow.
Business now, his web-site allows entry through a back door where he can view a counter without it being visible to site visitors, which he checks. Back out, front page says BUY THIS, BUY THAT, YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT THIS, although much more subtly, and in fact many visit and find they can live without the products he sells. Just as well, he’s able to cover overhead and generate a small profit and with such ridiculous tax laws created by the government in order to keep him seated in front of sheets and forms and things-although his tax attorney is actually the one seated, but fair is fair-he figures money made through investment of his inheritance works well enough.
Now to ebay, where he signs in, checks items he’s selling, his old computer, an HP, bid up to $400, Katie’s lightly used Baby Phat cell phone she just had to have, now up to $130, and a set of Wilson Titlelist golf clubs he bought a year ago, now up to $200, reserve set at $400. When the auctions close, he will gather up the items, package them, call the Federal Express man, and wait for the money to show up on his PayPal debit card, which is in Katie’s possession, and allow her to treat herself to little things now and again, like Coach purses in multiples, which he still cannot convince her to purchase on ebay. And so the cycle discontinues, stopped on her doorstep, but the formula still works for other ebayers, so he figures it’s okay.
Mocha on white again, twisting swirling catching a wandering eye, he feels human contact, electricity in white hot bolts that smolder pleasurably, slippery in his grasp, she twists and turns and concaves into herself and is gone, left staring at his reflection on his desk, chrome and black, shiny, mirror that needs to be cleaned after contact with human hands.
Ringing, not in his ears, in his pocket, the brand new tiny Samsung comes out, announcing itself in every technologically available medium, a foreign number displayed across its color outer screen. The phone is from Europe, and proudly shows pictures of callers who have been stored, and now seems almost disappointed as it flashes the ten digits on its front. Distracted, he flips it open late, catches the words “call ended,” replaced by a beach somewhere that somebody decided would look better on a phone, cycles into missed calls, selects the number and calls back.
Ringing, but this time it is that monotonous ring heard on modern U.S. phone lines so often that when one travels abroad and hears otherwise, it is a shock, ringing, replaced by the sound of voice mail, a woman’s voice, soft, tender, almost incomprehensible what she says. Normal voice mail banter ends, tone, and now its time for talk. A voice trapped somewhere below, fights its way to the surface, leaves a message with name, time, instructions for calling back, and apologies for not immediately recognizing the voice mailee, and perhaps she could call back and educate.
Heather, that’s her name, he knows many Heathers, but this is not one, foreign number, foreign voice, and now he wonders if she left some message on his phone, something to indicate identity. Fumbling now and cursing at the phone that sometimes doesn’t notify of new voice mail right away, as happens often with mobile technology, lost somewhere in-between intangibility and form, encoded and drifting, now holding the button “1” which speed dials his voice mail and is recognized by the carrier so no punching of four digit pins will be required, and a polite female voice informs him that no new messages have been received, but that he does have five saved messages he could listen to if he’d like to.
Closed, and back in pocket, and suddenly out of mind. Exiting his office, letting the door close behind him without removing key to lock it because he has a feeling he’ll be back, and besides, nobody here would find anything of significant value to take from him, save for his replaceable computer, and the leather recliner that he imagines difficult to steal without notice. He would certainly miss it’s comforting massages, but could replace it with a phone call to his father-must find out where it is from-and another call to its distributor. He has thought of this dilemma before, and views it as a slight bump, worth taking the risk so as not to have to fumble for keys yet again today.
---
Ch.2
New day, awake, alive, rinse wash repeat if necessary. He wakes up and shakes head and hands, exits bed, goes through the morning routine before joining the world of the living. Well, not joining perhaps, he thinks, more a guest checking the place out before committing to membership.
Outside today is still warm, still kind of summer in late August, good for Frappachinos, favorite mocha, salvation is just down the street. Black leather invites his posterior into the near fetal position which is driving a sports car, shift knob feels cool to the touch, magnesium alloy, said not to conduct heat, radio off today, listen to top come down.
Past several inferior-though he never tries them-coffee shops along The Strip, sees Starbucks sitting there, beckoning to his corporate loyalty, as if they need his business, value it, while opening stores in France, ready to take on the country arrogant enough to say they invented the café. He reminds himself to buy more stocks in Starbucks, parks, enters, orders, sips. Cool refreshment finds him in the form of caffeine, ice, chocolate and milk, blended by Susy, his barista his cup tells him, with the sticker they were putting on these days.
He knows tomorrow he’ll have a new barista, and knows in fact that he’ll never have a practical need for knowing her name either, but it is nice to know, and they always find familiar things to say to him, to let him know that this is his Starbucks, not just any. “Going to try another peppermint mocha today?” is one phrase stuck in his head from winter, uttered by some gorgeous young girl making college money who has since moved on. This one he had a crush on, and misses, but knows he forms crushes easily, so doesn’t miss to the point of admitting it.
In a wave he’s out, back in the car, applying sunglasses, different today, these D&G, which he didn’t know how to pronounce, whether to say dolce with a hard c or a soft c, so he just referred to them as D&G, sitting off his nose a little, broader than his Kenneth Coles, but promising to block just as many harmful rays of sun. He wonders about the optical health of cavemen, and quickly dismisses the thought to make room for others.
She’s back in his head now, no phone call back to respond to the message left and now he wonders if it weren’t an accidental call. No, now she is back in memory but looks more and more like Katie, which is unlikely because they look nothing alike, but blending, kindof like what his memory does with anything removed for too long. Faces fit familiar molded lines and soon the arms pale and legs shorten imperceptibly, breasts change in shape if not in size and scent is forgotten/replaced with peaches. Katie, who he did not visit this morning, she had an early meeting, now frustrated in that sexual way, not wanting to admit, confused because he wants Katie, but he wants his mystery girl back.
Off for a fix, nothing to do, and too much time to do it in, forget yesterday and tomorrow and live presently. Small house, bad neighborhood, Tacoma, parks next to a ’86 Civic with one donut tire standing out against three discount tires bald to the point of racing slicks. Knows to put up top, sitting there, debating leaving, then its up and he’s out and the car chirps, letting him know it can take care of itself.
Inside, past a screen door with holes in it and a pit-bull nameless to him that doesn’t beg for scratching or seek a haven for slobber, rather sits there, menacing, but emaciated, he thinks. Further in, Bobby knows he’s coming, yells come on back, emerges from a bathroom he’d rather not investigate further with no shirt on and tattoos chasing themselves around his porcelain white skin, colors, vibrant, snakes and knives and words and numbers and characters he takes to be Korean, because Bobby’s girl is Korean, and one naked girl on each arm, one smiling, one crying. This he doesn’t understand, but never asks because Bobby is not the sort of guy you question his motives.
Rolled crisp green thin rectangular swapped for powdered white crystal and accompanying plastic zip bag, small and stamped with little hearts, cute. Knows the contents are anything but cute.
“Gonna stay for a rail?” asks Bobby, who always asks this, and he responds in kind, sits down on the same off-brown seventies-era couch that smells like mildew and something that might be urine, dusts a bit of the bag down on the glass table, clean against the dirty of the place, but always clean, takes a credit card out of his wallet and shapes long thin white lines on the glass. Next extracted is a twenty dollar bill, rolled quickly but carefully, held against nose, and placed at the starting line.
It begins, sudden, white light against his head, light but pulsating, thoughts chase themselves around in intricate patterns and he is not aware of the next five seconds, save for a feeling of wellness, complicated by several subliminal feelings suggesting anything but.
Harsh pain bites at nostrils flared from four lines, four completed races, he thinks to himself and begins to laugh a little, under his breath, pulls head back rests and smells the room, which now does not smell musty, aged, or scented with urine from the couch, but alive and complex, somewhere pizza is still influencing senses sensitive enough, and he hands the rolled up twenty to Bobby, wipes dusty whiteness off of glass with forefinger and gums.
Leaving, he passes the dog, who now seems to view him with disapproval, as if he sees this variety of thing all the time, and he supposes the dog probably does. If it were his dog, he decides, he’d name it Congo. Looks more like a Congo than Katie’s Saint Bernard; giggles accompany this thought, and follow him out to his car, just outside his head, taunting him with happiness that is always slightly out of reach, even with the rails.
Later, after the first run has worn off, he pulls into a Jack in the Box parking lot, not hungry, and dips the edge of the credit card into the little bag with the hearts stamped on it, raises and sniffs, once, twice, he loses track, which is the point, slides the car back in gear, and loses purchase between the concrete and his Pirelli tires on his way out, allowing the car to correct its path, better it that he.
Back in Kirkland, meeting Katie and friends, concentrating on not overfeeding his fix, like not feeding a dog all day, even though it’ll eat if you let it, not allowing his mind to carry on like a wallowing fat lazy dog. Sees Katie, at TGIF, on his way in the door, sitting on the bench to the side, even though he knows they’ll seat her before her party arrives. She knows, just likes to wait, so people know she is in fact waiting for someone, and not here to eat alone, as if anyone ever eats at TGIF alone.
He pushes this thought out of his head, manages a smile out of his bag of facial tricks, and takes her hand, kisses her and she stands to greet him. Now they can sit, so a hostess must be summoned, and one comes, blond and blue eyed decked out in red pinstripes and a ridiculous Cat in the Hat hat that he knows not to be required, odd patches and buttons going up one side of her suspenders and down the other. It makes him think of flair, and Office Space, as it always does, except she is nothing like Jennifer Anniston, he thinks, no, more like Drew Barrymore, who probably could have played the part, but not like Jennifer Anniston.
“Huh?” Broken out of his distracted tangent, now reminded he is in public and has appearances to keep up, “sorry, was thinking about something else.” Asks her to please say again what she just got done saying, and yes he’s listening, and yes it is important to him what she has to say, but darn it, he has to use the bathroom all of a sudden, could she please excuse him.
She pouts at his back as he walks away, around the corner, men’s room, not much privacy but stalls with doors will have to do. Bag out, credit card out, dance repeated, very familiar feeling, and he flushes the toilet to cover the noise. Exiting, checks appearance in mirror and removes small dust of white from under nostril, smiling at a man entering, this man large and sweaty and decidedly not Caucasian, looks like he dressed himself at Mario’s, expensive clothing, straight to the stall, most likely for different reasons.
Back out at the table friends have arrived. Brad and Jenny, or Brock and Jinny, he’s careful not to say either. Nice to see you’s are passed around as always, he inquires about how things are going at work for both of them, Brad-as it turns out-has just gotten a promotion and is ecstatic to share it with someone else, his broad chin jutting out as he pontificates on the importance of hard work and loyalty, where it’ll get you in life. Something related to pencil pushing at a local ad-firm. Jinny-and he reminds himself to practice his mnemonic exercises after this near fatal no sex for a week from Katie cause she’s pissed he can’t remember their friends names miss-reminds him that she has recently left her job because she is pregnant, and he politely inquires as to the wellness of the fetus, is informed that they are already taking some new type of birthing class that has apparently only recently been offered in the U.S. and is prohibitively expensive but that’s okay because Brad is doing so well at work, and they just traded her Audi for a Lincoln Navigator. “Almost lost the Corvette on that one,” Brad says with a mouthful of bread and some sort of blue alcoholic drink poised at his lips. Jinny is forgoing alcohol, they both point out, in that fresh couple way, in order to ensure a healthy baby, and they no longer frequent restaurants that allow smoking in any part of the dining room, since second hand smoke is a risk at all times. This he agrees with them on, doesn’t mention that TGIF’s bar allows smoking and is not twenty feet from their seats, notes it is the only part of the conversation he can really find interesting.
Later, as smoked chicken quesadillas and towering rings of fried breaded onions and sampler platters with three of everything and not enough of anything are brought to the table, he excuses himself again to the bathroom, citing three Mack & Jacks for the interruption in conversation. Back in front of the mirror, a little too sharp this time, things moving a little too fast where thoughts are breaking out in verbose form without any real intention of that happening, and time for something new. Two Valium are produced out of a small mint tin in his left pocket, he swallows and stares, considers that he should have crushed them, or put them under his tongue, or really anything to make the damn things act now. Sweat is on his brow, and he thinks of the fat man in the expensive clothing, and wonders if he’s still in the bathroom, discards the thought as ridiculous, grasps metal faucet handles and turns, cold water rushing out, cupped in hands and distributed in rapid fashion on face. Next a paper towel to mop up water now dripping onto his crème wrinkled linen Ben Sherman shirt, which doesn’t really show, so he’s not concerned. Exits bathroom.
After dinner, or lunch, he’s not sure, but it’s dark now, back at hers drunk and railed and spinning off of anti-anxiety pills, unbuttoning shirt and watching Katie slip out of the summer dress she wore all day because it’s Saturday and she’s allowed to wear casual dresses on Saturday because it’s her day off, and next pulling tight fitting undershirt and boxers off to deposit in a pile on the floor, leaving his socks on because he can’t concentrate anymore. And then she’s beside him, in white innocent underwear, the kind she always wears under those dresses, and he is pulling it off, fumbling at the strap on her bra while she chides him for getting so drunk off of five beers, not knowing, and now its off, and she is naked too, sans socks, and their bodies are fighting for shared space, trying to twist and turn and interlock in places on a queen sized bed just big enough to keep anyone from getting hurt. Strange sex this time, rough, but not too rough, just some biting and her scratching his back while he is working harder and harder at her, and then he’s off her and she’s on her back, and now it’s his turn to scratch, ecstasy sitting just out of reach for him, knowing its passed for her now, and he is angry with himself for being weak, for the drugs, for not being able to finish the job, and now he’s off, laying, panting and sweating, thinking of all the times it was different.
---
Ch. 3
Morning is harsh, not happy to see him, nor he morning, blazing through Katie’s insufficient blinds that he has suggested she replace innumerable times, no success. So now bright light streaks his face, suggesting pallor, he’s sure, so unnatural it seems at this hour, early, and he’s up.
Into her bathroom, where scant supplies of his await, no cornucopia of spray deodorants, one bar of Old Spice, too scented, but still a standby, in the shower, her shampoo, some Australian combo thing she wont use, but keeps, and forgotten was the trip to the salon to pick up more of his, so in it goes, smelling of chemicals designed to give hair body and bounce. Then Dove, which he likes, and knows she also doesn’t use, favoring some Bath and Body Works treasure trove of assorted bubble gel bottles, which all smell like peach, but Dove is not a man’s soap, he knows, only okay occasionally, lest skin become silky under light.
Out and shaking water off before toweling with one of her not for actual use embroidered towels, hair wet and towel refolded to suggest order and disuse, cant stand the smell of her that remains on cotton, too visceral, and too frustrating, given previous hours spent. Head is treated with Tigi once again, but hers, designed to reduce frizz and doesn’t hold well, which won’t do with the top down.
Now dressed, same clothes different day, bending to kiss, and off before she flutters her eyes in that way he knows she does, Congo waiting outside the bedroom door for approval, and pleading eyes searching for evidence of forthcoming pats. This accomplished, Congo is off to others parts of the house, in search no doubt of some pseudo-buried bone or rope or plaything long forgotten for just this type of entertainment value. White leather couch, remember to wipe, don’t want saliva de perro on steering wheels, makes for slippery driving.
In the car, he makes for the freeway, no direction in mind not knowing or caring, maybe Seattle for a boat ride across the Sound, then drive through endless small dilapidated towns long ago promising adolescent almost cities, ignorant tax payers and strip malls squelching dreams of lightly ambitious public officials. Decay of rural America, waiting for his disapproval, and expecting his eye to squint at Motel Sixes guaranteeing HBO, pool and flashing vacancy neon.
Or perhaps the windy roads of North Bend and beyond, telling the same tale, but with more big words and big money and big dreams, achieving success in driving out those seeking haven, preferring flashy cars, houses, coiffed hair and designer clothes. The expansion of the Eastside, until someday it stretches from Issaquah till Ellensburg, rows and rows and cities and cities, with mini cities ten thousand people strong, all commuting thirty forty or an hour somewhere to rot in offices with their neighbors and friends neighbors.
Drifting thoughts follow him back on the freeway, and without thought the clear plastic heart stamped zip bag filled with instant ecstasy/grief, open and spilling contents on to vehicle registration, twenty out and almost rolled, top up so no wind to worry about, and just as quickly the bag and it’s contents find their way out of the black Mercedes-Benz convertible coupe, careening away, dusty white dreams filtering into air, he wonders what happens when the substance enters other cars via interior climate control. Filters, he assumes, will catch most of it.
Close, sweating now, wanting to pull off and scrape whatever contents he might back into bag, lick coca crystals off of dirty weather beaten concrete, bitter taste on tongue and back of throat dripping. Valium is back out now, two yellow pills emblazoned “5” to indicate dosage, knows this will calm nerves somewhat, somehow.
Cold grip of addiction wont release his mind, and it swerves precariously back to Tacoma, fighting the steering wheel, allowing random direction in lieu of regression to that place he always wants to be, but can never return to.
Mocha, she’s back, curvy satisfying satiating saturating cool/warm caress of her arms and hands on his arms and hands, it’s okay she says, you have me. Whispers in his ear, breath he knows tastes like peppermint, little nonsensical things that make more sense now than anything. Lust at first site, he knows, and love and then lovemaking, and soon lying there tangled up in each other, knowing that any emergency will have to wait, his limbs are not at his command, but at hers. Remembering more, hours spent doing her bidding, more important to him than his own deepest desires, and then, relaxing letting go of inhibition as she careens around corner after corner of desire fulfilled at breakneck speed slowly. Arms, legs, eyes relax, she is his savior now, pays him attention, knows no limits and surpasses his imagination, going beyond his wildest efforts and its over, but not over, and now he knows satisfaction, but knows it will haunt him like powders pills and haze, cant be that good twice, impossible. Gone.
And now he’s here, a night/day club in Seattle, close to Pioneer Square, private VIP he’s in and knows that deep in dark corners sit deep dark people, imbibing and ingesting in hunt search mode, similar to predators stalking prey they’ve heard about, seen and eaten, but can’t seem to find now, perhaps extinct, or evolved.
Stomach aching, he relaxes into his booth, alone, soon a vision finds him, modified from original form by countless expenditures and much artistic aesthetic vision she hovers on size 5 shoes that seem to add six inches without taking away leg, follow up to skirt which compliments thighs that must taste like candy kisses, can almost see her panties, wonders what they look like, wonders if he can find out. More tan skin above skirt, revealing abs that are smooth but not too hard, can’t stop following inviting lines up to breasts barely covered by some white piece of lace designed to compliment skirt and platinum hair, which coronas her thin even symmetrical face, no paint save for eyeliner and white lipstick with something shimmery in it.
“White Russian, Bailey’s crème, no ice.” She hasn’t asked, in fact just stands there still, now he’s on display, realizes shirt is open down front to navel and self-consciously adjusts posture to in an effort to minimize long nights spent drinking and drugging.
She says his name and follows it with something incomprehensible, in the manner of one who is not much in tune with their level of self-esteem, head down, eyes now not gazing but darting in geosynchronous patterns somehow fascinating and nauseating simultaneously. Turns, is she blushing-cant tell in this light-walks towards the bar in the darkness of the windowless club, and disappears, leaving wake of confusion.
He knows her now, knows her name age education dreams fears, little sister is in college, Stacy, and mom and dad don’t return her calls. One night, while popping little blue pills with dolphins on them, she opened up her heart to him, and laughed when he asked her home, said where’s home? Never saw her until now, must’ve taken a cab before he woke, and now what? A year has passed, will she pretend it’s okay, should’ve called you bastard, oh that’s where I know you from? He won’t know, because when his white Russian with Bailey’s finds him, she is not in tow, and he can’t make the same connection with the empty eyed skinny girl now waiting him, tired and collapsing in slow motion. He pays the ten, tips another ten, drinks quickly and leaves.
---
Sunday, March 07, 2004
if condition persists, consult a medical doctor...
my head really hurts. i wonder sometimes why people around me seem to think that i have the capability to solve all of their problems, and especially why some people seem oblivious to the possibility that i may have something i need to work through on my own, and don't necessarily have time to work through something for them. argh, i really do try to avoid rant sessions, however i am not great at it, especially when my head is left feeling as cloudy as it does now.
so last night i saw this girl kim, who i havent seen in years, and it brought on a wave of youthful nostalgia. it was like she caused a sensation in me that made me wish i was still fourteen (hows that song go? back in the day, when i was young, im not a kid anymore) because things/life/waking up in the morning (or not) were so much simpler and easier to deal with.
okay, there is more to this, but i am simply to exhausted to continue right now...
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
when days were shorter and evenings colder...
so, I have to ask myself exactly why I feel compelled to write on a semi-daily (and sometimes multi-daily) basis in some journal which few read, and which I would almost prefer read by fewer. I do have other (read:better) things to do, and I am fully aware of this fact, and perhaps subconciously deterred from doing these "other" things by a need to simply slow my day down and reflect. I could, for example, research why a certain girl in my life who I was convinced wanted a relationship has now completely vanished off the face of the earth. did I take some action which disrupted her intentions, perhaps unintentionally? maybe she hasn't vanished, and I am simply imagining her absence. it would be easy (probably) to find these things out, call a few mutual friends, ask a few questions, problem solved. yet I am not tempted to take these simple steps because I realize that if I had vanished off the planet in much the manner as she has, I would probably not prefer to be hunted down like prey by some person that I was just beginning to get to know. so there goes that relationship out the window I think, because even though I don't know exactly what her intentions are, I know that in her shoes, I would call a person I was interested in, so perhaps I have outlived my usefulness to her. a couple of good things did come of this truncated affair, for example, I found myself signing up on this service. yes, I realize it is a faux world for keyboard junkies to comingle prior to heading out for a night of partying, so be it, it works for me.
aftermath......
so, vancouver costs money. knew that before, know it even more now. spent over my budget, and that was w/out stopping at the AX on the way out. we did get stopped by canadian customs on our way in, they searched the vehicle for an hour, interrogated us, and accused us of being high and trying to smuggle drugs into the country (which we were and werent, collectively). after getting through this, which was difficult, because any official that says "ay" produces a laugh reflex in my system, we checked into the pinnacle, then hit the town. don't remember much except all the drinks were doubles and pretty soon we were all out of cash and I was bribing the bouncer at a club that was over capacity to let us in with some british pounds. once we got in, we did more doubles, and promptly got kicked out when my buddy cyrus lit a joint in the vip booth we were sitting in. sure, canada is lenient on pot, but you're not allowed to smoke ANYTHING in their nightclubs, unless you're known. rest is very blurry, will do it again.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
vancouver or bust!...
going to vancouver tonight, Im actually pretty excited, since I havent made a canada run in over a year--but used to do it all the time--so its been a long time coming. the only down side is that my friend cyrus, who im going with, is having chick issues, and she doesnt want him to go, because they just broke up and are now considering getting back together. I think they're both stupid, not really, but dumb because their relationship was crap and they both knew it and there is nothing to salvage besides possibly a good friendship. but viva bad mistakes like getting back together with people you know you shouldn't.
anyway, Ill have a good time, and Ill make sure he has a good time, and we wont sleep with any random girls, because I don't want to piss april off if he does, and I think I might have a pretty good thing going here myself.
ps, im not moving to arizona.
Friday, February 27, 2004
frog update...
So, I checked for senor frog today on my way to the gym, and while I did not look particularly hard, or scrutinize any minute green detail on my front lawn, I do believe he survived the advances of Spot, to live out his short life, and warn away any other frogs thinking to adventure into my house. Good luck
11:07 AM - 0 Comment - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
no sleep for the wicked......
okay, so I think everyone can agree that at 4 o'clock in the morning, a person should either be sleeping or partying, right? not tossing and turning in bed with multiples of millions of random thoughts spiraling around, then going downstairs to drink some warm milk (which never works) and find his cat playing around with a frog. a frog, you ask? yes, a little green amphibious creature who belongs in a pond somewhere, certainly not in my kitchen, being batted around by a catnip-addict feline I like to call spot. so I rescue the frog, who has no name, and is now out in my front yard, survival unknown, and tend to warming some milk, which takes approximately one minute forty five seconds, at which point I drink the milk, telling myself it will work, hoping back of the head style that it will at least have a placebo effect. now back upstairs, I continue to toss and turn, but now I have at least two more random thoughts merging onto the freeway of insomnia; what the hell was a frog doing in my kitchen (we do not leave any doors open for any amount of time in the winter, this is not florida my friend), and did this frog survive the playful attacks of spot (who was quite angry with me for transporting the frog to a more amenable habitat, and mewled for about forty five seconds of milk warming time until I fed him some pounce and dunked his chipmunk/squirrel (to me they're interchangeable) in catnip).
the paper was just thrown at my driveway outside, and now I have another cat (flake) making terrible noises in the hallway outside my door. this she is fully capable of doing, coupled with trying to nose my door open for about thirty seconds, and then she usually knocks out for a while, due to the fact that she is twenty in cat years (which makes her what, a thousand in human?).
now it must be time to turn off thoughts and grasp at rem, since I have plans of working out at ten, and will most likely be awoken at 9:30 by april, with whom I have my morning workout plans. then she'll come over, we'll eat something defineable as a light breakfast, and go run in place and lift weights for an hour or so. yes, definitely time to close my eyes and see emptiness, not flashing lights, or the day in rewind, and certainly not a frog.
goodnight/morning whatever, I hope, for good this time
04:07 AM - 0 Comment - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
this should be interesting...
So, weird day/night. Not much to say except that I was very confused about things all day, nothing new lately, and could not get much sleep during the night. I love writing, so I started on a new project, which I feel will probably be a short story, but we'll see. I'm going to post that of it which I have written so far here, and hope it'll fit in it's entirety. Ahead of time, I apologize for the formatting, as pasting from Microsoft Word is not always seamless. Also, just a small comment, in case anybody is curious the characters are not modeled after me or people I know, but more me, people I know and people I don't know sort of smashed together, like different colors of playdough as children, in order to create new complex characters I can meld or modify at my whim. Enjoy!
Ch.1
He awakens to the scent of lust, dark and dormant, all around him, mixed with her. Vanilla flavored dreams he remembers and just as quickly forgets, sees the shape of her next to him, but just the depression, no physical evidence remains on his merlot Ralph Lauren sheets to prove she was there. And other things; vessels emptied in some unlaced lucidity-free zone he and she occupied before now, scattered haphazardly around the room in a way that ironically suggests design, as if some Soho based artisan had flown prelude to the dream for just that effect. The nausea inducing smell of stale tobacco and hash hangs somewhere in the back of his head, suggesting consumption in recent not-quite memory.
Outside tries to break in, as if kept for so long as to become insistent, and he closes the blinds he knows she opened, because they are never open. The window is closed on the 78 degree weather outside, and before he finishes with the blinds, he opens the one window in the room, hoping to disgorge the lingering sensual reminders of something he cannot quite recall.
Next is a journey down the hall from the bedroom, to the kitchen/dining-room/living-room that he wishes were bigger, and maybe not trying to be more things than it could. On the stove are pots from a week ago, and on the counter a half-drunk bottle of Simply Orange from the night before, which is quickly discarded. He cannot stand anything that is not fresh.
Moving from the kitchen to the dining room-or more accurately taking three steps to the left-he removes the Chinese takeout containers from the small black wooden table he purchased from IKEA a month ago. Joining the orange juice in the chrome cylinder which passes for the garbage, the Chinese takeout boxes look extra white, and he recalls their contents vividly. Brown rice, moo shoo pork, family style steamed tofu in oyster sauce, and bok choy, which he’s pretty sure is Chinese broccoli. This is what he always has, and assumes he ordered it for them.
The small square which represents his living room holds no new surprises. His silver 50” Sony Wega flat screen TV is still poised precariously on top of his chrome and black three-tiered entertainment center, purchased along with the table. Above it, on a shelf he’s always assumed to be half the width of the one below sits his matching Sony DVD player with progressive scan, capable of playing MP3’s, or so the salesman told him, and his matching Sony ES 5.1 processor with six-disc CD-changer, also capable of playing MP3’s, a tribute to the age of more is less, where music had regressed from the beautiful recordings he recalled during the infancy of the CD. His silver center channel speaker emblazoned with the Pioneer Elite nameplate sits alone on the top shelf, dwarfed by its larger electronic cousins below.
To either side of the entertainment center rises a left and right speaker to match the center, matching also the rear left and right speaker and subwoofer that are hidden behind his black leather couch, acquired from his mother when she moved and had nowhere else for it, which is behind him.
The couch is his favorite piece of furniture, perhaps because he can remember long nights spent on it, sleeping, in a different apartment, smaller, with no money and no other accoutrements within grasp. Those nights he pretended he was home, had laid down to read a book, and didn’t feel like making the trek to his room for much needed sleep.
Ignoring the pots and pans on his stove, he makes his way back down the hall, this time entering the bathroom. Stripping off the plain black boxers with Polo embroidered on the tag, discarding them on the floor, taking one last look in the mirror at a face that could use a shave and hair that could use a wash/blow-dry/gel. He’s tall, 6’2”, but doesn’t tell people his height, lean but toned, with the exception being the smallest evidence of too much beer showing around his middle. This is made more or less indistinguishable by his weekly trips to the tanning salon, and he believes it is getting smaller and smaller as he trades nightly drunken bouts with daily workouts more and more, although apparently an oversight was made the previous night.
He steps into his shower, which is guarded from the rest of the bathroom by two curtains, one transparent and on the outer ledge, and one opaque for the inside, both purchased from the Bon-Macy’s home store on his card, both inconspicuously sporting Ralph Lauren badges. Here he has the assorted requisites for a man who takes care of himself from a grooming perspective, lately referred to as metrosexual, a term he ignores, and refuses to apply to himself. American Crew shampoo sits next to matching conditioner, which occupies the shelf next to his Nautica body wash, rarely used in favor of a bar of Irish Springs Aloe. For the face he uses Clinique For Men facial scrub, prefers Nivea For Men shave gel, and finishes with a Clinique For Men soap bar.
Shampooed, soaped and shaved he exits the shower, dries with a red towel from the same set as his curtains, and steps back in front of the mirror. He applies gel to his hair from a small bottle of Tigi Control Freak and musses it around in a forward motion, giving it texture in a crooked way, draws his bangs down diagonally across his forehead, applies Hugo cologne and deodorant from one of many brands of scentless spray-ons and sticks occupying his counter. He has yet to decide which he prefers, but today goes with a Right Guard aerosol, which he assumes to be essentially the same as the Shick sitting next to it, but perhaps it protects better, he’s not sure.
Back in the bedroom a form fitting dress shirt from Kenneth Cole is put on over a Hanes Tagless t-shirt, un tucked because it was designed that way, a metallic blue which he thinks he likes but isn’t sure. Next a pair of Diesel boot cut pre-faded blue-jeans, several shades darker than the shirt go on over black boxers, streaked across the lap and leg to suggest wear, even though he’s only worn them twice. He’s not sure when he bought them, but owns numerous pairs in case he goes out to a bar or something, or generally anywhere else where they could get dirty or smoke-saturated. A problem still, since Washington is still dragging heel on passing legislature to ban smoking in bars, pubs, restaurants. No, they don’t allow smoking in public buildings, and he’s still puzzled, along with many of the more austere lawmakers, and the State of California, as to how restaurants, pubs and bars don’t fall under this classification.
On go the brand-less ankle cut dress socks he purchases en-masse at Costco. He hates to wear the same socks too many times in a row, as he finds that thin dress socks develop wear in the toe area quickly, no matter how trimmed the toenail that occupies them.
Back in the kitchen/dining-room/living-room, adjacent the door, slipping into black leather shoes purchased from Aldo, where he vows never to purchase shoes again, but will, because they look/feel/wear so well, except in the heel, which he assumes is due to his habit of dragging said part. And opening his door, which is wooden, and has the classic peephole which obscures anything viewed through it to the point where your date looks like her face has been squeezed into a none too flattering fish bowl prior to her coming over. Once he made mention of this, and has learned since that women do not appreciate being compared to fish, even when done so in a clearly joking manner. For that matter, he has found that the average woman would prefer that all comments related to her appearance contain words such as breathtaking, beautiful, stunning and the like, and not much else, save for the occasional requisite noun and predicate.
Lastly before leaving, grabbing watch, wallet and sunglasses, all Kenneth Cole, from the shelf next to his door, and knowing he is forgetting something, returning to the bedroom for keys, necessary if one should wish to have a productive day of securing home, starting car, unlocking mailbox, and returning home at the end of the day to enter without folly.
Sun, seeking his skin and finding it, all the way to the third button of his shirt, around his low profile sunglasses, up his arm to the point where he has cuffed his sleeve. Drenching, warm and dry, squinting through lenses guaranteed to block harmful UV’s, nourishing where possible. Leaving the Kirkland waterfront, where rich is assumed of residents, and his ultra-expensive condo sits waterside beckoning at those on boats and jet-skis to gawk. He knows he’s on the tour, with his kitchen/living-room/dining-room visible to the tour-boat as it passes, along with those of his neighbors, some of which choose to pull blinds when walking around unclothed, some not.
Now she finds him again, still lost though, her memory. She pulls at him, teases, suggests and plays her brand of game until he pushes her out. Brown, long silky, maybe black hair, he can remember. Skin the color of mocha, but white underneath, all the way to eyes that peer into the back of his skull, or maybe behind him, his head transparent to her, learning his deepest darkest most treasured secrets without words to complicate them. Long legs he remembers, and long arms, tall, not boy tall, girl tall, 5’5” he guesses. A face he doesn’t see hides behind bangs that occupy her head in a sort-of crisscross fashion, teasing with the tainted memory of beauty recognized but not remembered. A sleek glistening body tangles its way around his, finding ways to touch, feel, sense, respond, resonate, that he’s sure he has never known.
Gone. Now he is getting into a car he doesn’t remember approaching, black convertible coupe, he remembers the guy calling it that, bought the ’03 Mercedes-Benz Kompressor off of a Microsoftee who’d obviously hit the big one. Remembers the brand new red Ferrari Modena in the driveway next to it, no plates, top down. Remembers how the Benz was parked six-feet away, almost on the walkway, as if discarded. He bought it for a steal, knew it was because Mr. Microsoft simply did not care about money anymore, watching moving guys carting things out of the two storey Tudor on Lake Washington. Wondered where the wife and kids were, wondered if there was a wife and kids.
On the freeway now, 405 blazing past at 90mph, watching the used gray road pass beneath his car, Escort SR7 hidden away, aware, just in case. From the Eclipse deck with twenty four bits of digital to analog conversion, through the matching amplifiers and all the way to the Focal speakers occupying his doors in six places, complementing the Focal sub subtly filling in from the trunk, Tupac is talking about Brenda now, lamenting her loss, and her child who now has no mother, and he feels bad, but good too, because he knows that the song is about a lot of things, and not meant to inspire sadness, but change. He can change things, he knows, thinks, maybe doesn’t quite know how. He has changed. Knows he’s lucky, volunteers sometimes downtown Seattle at the soup kitchens that various churches have organized, even though religion sort of grates at his skull, coached a 5th grade Boys and Girls Club basketball team a summer ago, still remembers the kids he never sees.
Katie’s house is still where he left it. Totem Lake, off the 116th exit, nestled away among a bunch of other houses built to look the same but different twenty years ago, knows she pays too much for the gated community but doesn’t mind because she can leave her front door unlocked during the day. Brown, two storey, with plants in pots out front lining the walkway up to the concrete steps which lead to the door he helped her buy from Home Depot six months ago because she said she wanted one with a window. A white door with laser engraved glass depicting a dove and some tulips. Nice, but not the one he’d liked, which had started an argument where he was the villain who never listened to her or respected her decisions. They’d bought the door, had it delivered, and then he had hired two guys to install it, because she wasn’t talking to him. It had taken them four days, two to show up, one to put it on, and another day to come back and make it so it’d close again after it had been opened. He’d spent the night outside her house in his car, even though she still wasn’t talking to him, had text’d him in fact, explaining her problem, and then the next morning she came out and told him she loved him and started crying and made him come inside to make love loudly while the two lazy contractors put the door on right and exchanged jokes.
Opening the door, knowing she’s mad at him again, that memory burned into his brain, or his eyes, he isn’t sure. She’s asleep of course, so he has to walk in, scratch Congo the Saint Bernard on his head, wipe slobber off on her white leather couch where the dog sits and slobbers all day anyway but she still complains when he does it, go upstairs and knock. They’ve been dating for two years, he’s seen her naked enough times to draw her body from memory, right down to the birthmark on her inner left thigh, and he still knocks, because she likes to have things her way. Which is why he’s in trouble, not coming over last night when she text’d him to.
Open door, enter, smile and hang head. She’s naked, under covers which always smell of peaches, which he knows she bought from some swanky store in New York that she always tells everybody about which is maybe why he can’t remember the name. Walks over to her and bends down and kisses her mouth which is asking to be kissed, fresh even at this hour of the morning, framed by a face with soft features, pale, surrounded by brown curls streaked with lighter brown cascading down almost to slender shoulders. Past these shoulders he knows, cant see, her breasts rise averagely and pleasantly leading to soft understated hips leading to toned legs not long or short.
Post kiss she is all business, angry in a way which scares him sometimes, controlled, concocted, planned, to make him uncomfortable he’s sure. Disapproval spills out of her lips, which are now angled in a way that certainly doesn’t suggest kissability, and he stands there and agrees in the way he always does, pushing back feeling and aggression, his mom loves her, friends are mutual, don’t screw it up. Dark bad thoughts leak into his perspective from the corners and soon she follows, anti-Katie, sliding her hand down his arm from behind and kissing him behind his ear in a way he loves but never knew he loved so much. Stroking chest with other arm, vanilla combating peach, winning, now he’s facing her, back to him and he’s kissing the nape of neck that defies perfection. Stunned and confused, the present breaks into the past and Katie finishes being mad, he finishes being the punching bag, crawls into bed with her and loses clothes so recently put on.
“What’s wrong, honey?” She asks this from the bathroom, showering with the door open, where he can see soapy limbs and breasts and back turning under water he knows is too hot for him, behind a single filmy curtain made of what, silk? He grunts, noncommittal, moves towards the bathroom from the bed where he’s been prone, not aware of putting off wrong vibes. “No, baby, something’s bothering you, you weren’t yourself” she says, pursuing like she always does, not mad, but letting her voice take on a edgy-sweet tone. He used to crumble under it, but now finds it strangely repelling, and is instantly aware of this change, subtle yet crushing, he forgets the feeling and modifies it somewhere subconsciously like airbrushing a photo, until now he’s crumbling.
“I’m sorry, I got some bad news yesterday, and I’ve been letting it get to me.” He had in fact received news of dubious nature the day before, but it had been in the back of his mind, something about his Comcast stock dropping, money lost, but he’d known it would rebound. Ignorant of stocks, he massages this lie into shape and neatly places it in her head, at which point she becomes less edgy-sweet, finishes doing something indescribable to her hair which leaves it looking as it had before, and makes way back to the bedroom, still naked, in the way that a girl completely comfortable with her body could. He catches himself admiring her in a way that starts at her feet and gradually makes it all the way to her neck, which is obscured by her hair, smelling certainly of lavender shampoos and conditioners. She attracts him still, which he hadn’t been as convinced of during their lovemaking, fumbling confused where once was familiar, now he wishes she hadn’t just showered, as that puts an end in her mind to anymore play.
Katie problem fixed, he leaves by way of his entrance, avoids Congo, in active pursuit of somewhere to deposit more slobber, back in car, top mechanically disappearing into trunk, her off to work in minutes, her car already warming up in the driveway by way of remote start he had bought for her last winter, an invaluable addition to the green Cabrio, since the soft-top let in too much moisture and caused the interior to resemble more the inside of a freezer.
Her garage, her knows, is filled with detritus accumulated through years of pack-rat mentality, old sofa, white still in places, mattress with story telling stains, boxes endlessly stacked of Christmas ornaments-even though she’s Jewish, he always thinks-and childhood knickknacks he assumes to be crushed beyond recognition and mildewed beyond repair, much like the garage he left behind at his mother’s old house in North Bend. Clutter of life buried but not forgotten, like pets lost in early years taking rest under several feet of dirt in hopes of discouraging excavation by owners seeking pleasures of swimming pools and tennis courts.
Freeway again, pointing south towards I-90, which will take him west towards Seattle, away from the east, where memories still linger in haunting clarity, life more normal, possessions less flashy amongst those who possessed much more.
Gone now, these monetary problems, replaced by bank accounts replete with funds and options and bonds and things that were assuredly maturing so they could be plucked away at in golden years and advisors who spent their lives looking at sheets filled with meaningless numbers so you wouldn’t have to. No job to speak of, unless you consider the office he enters, tucked away in a tower on 1st street, with his name on the door, suggesting some profession he holds which is non-existent. Sometimes he takes people into this office and sells them things, interest in one of his ventures, a particularly expensive item he has listed on ebay solely for the purpose of drawing buyers into the matching leather chairs given him as a gift by his father on his 24th birthday to replace the two tattered cloth upholstered chairs bought at Sears. He sits now opposite these chairs, in a matching leather recliner designed to make the user feel as if he is being massaged by beautiful women on a cloud somewhere just outside the office he occupies. He imagines the chairs can’t be this comfortable for those in them, but assumes that if he replaces them with duplicate recliners, he might never get any alone time.
Logging onto his web-site, on his state of the art AMD powered computer with RAM, video memory, power, speed, sleek luxurious 20” flat panel display which doubles as TV, cable modem speed shoots him there as soon as he types the address. Knows that he can sit in the office next to his with his laptop and connect just as quickly using it’s built in WiFi, which allows him wireless connectivity here, home and just about anywhere he can buy a cup of coffee-preferably Starbucks-and which he uses to also extrapolate random bits of code from his desktop to his laptop-which is a Sony Vaio, and fits extremely well and deceptively lightly into his Tumi laptop case, both of which are in his trunk now, which he regrets, but realizes there really isn’t anything to extrapolate today anyhow.
Business now, his web-site allows entry through a back door where he can view a counter without it being visible to site visitors, which he checks. Back out, front page says BUY THIS, BUY THAT, YOU CANT LIVE WITHOUT THIS, although much more subtly, and in fact many visit and find they can live without the products he sells. Just as well, he’s able to cover overhead and generate a small profit and with such ridiculous tax laws created by the government in order to keep him seated in front of sheets and forms and things-although his tax attorney is actually the one seated, but fair is fair-he figures money made through investment of his inheritance works well enough.
Now to ebay, where he signs in, checks items he’s selling, his old computer, an HP, bid up to $400, Katie’s lightly used Baby Phat cell phone she just had to have, now up to $130, and a set of Wilson Titlelist golf clubs he bought a year ago, now up to $200, reserve set at $400. When the auctions close, he will gather up the items, package them, call the Federal Express man, and wait for the money to show up on his PayPal debit card, which is in Katie’s possession, and allow her to treat herself to little things now and again, like Coach purses in multiples, which he still cannot convince her to purchase on ebay. And so the cycle discontinues, stopped on her doorstep, but the formula still works for other ebayers, so he figures it’s okay.
Mocha on white again, twisting swirling catching a wandering eye, he feels human contact, electricity in white hot bolts that smolder pleasurably, slippery in his grasp, she twists and turns and concaves into herself and is gone, left staring at his reflection on his desk, chrome and black, shiny, mirror that needs to be cleaned after contact with human hands.
Ringing, not in his ears, in his pocket, the brand new tiny Samsung comes out, announcing itself in every technologically available medium, a foreign number displayed across its color outer screen. The phone is from Europe, and proudly shows pictures of callers who have been stored, and now seems almost disappointed as it flashes the ten digits on its front. Distracted, he flips it open late, catches the words “call ended,” replaced by a beach somewhere that somebody decided would look better on a phone, cycles into missed calls, selects the number and calls back.
Ringing, but this time it is that monotonous ring heard on modern U.S. phone lines so often that when one travels abroad and hears otherwise, it is a shock, ringing, replaced by the sound of voice mail, a woman’s voice, soft, tender, almost incomprehensible what she says. Normal voice mail banter ends, tone, and now its time for talk. A voice trapped somewhere below, fights its way to the surface, leaves a message with name, time, instructions for calling back, and apologies for not immediately recognizing the voice mailee, and perhaps she could call back and educate.
Heather, that’s her name, he knows many Heathers, but this is not one, foreign number, foreign voice, and now he wonders if she left some message on his phone, something to indicate identity. Fumbling now and cursing at the phone that sometimes doesn’t notify of new voice mail right away, as happens often with mobile technology, lost somewhere in-between intangibility and form, encoded and drifting, now holding the button “1” which speed dials his voice mail and is recognized by the carrier so no punching of four digit pins will be required, and a polite female voice informs him that no new messages have been received, but that he does have five saved messages he could listen to if he’d like to.
Closed, and back in pocket, and suddenly out of mind. Exiting his office, letting the door close behind him without removing key to lock it because he has a feeling he’ll be back, and besides, nobody here would find anything of significant value to take from him, save for his replaceable computer, and the leather recliner that he imagines difficult to steal without notice. He would certainly miss it’s comforting massages, but could replace it with a phone call to his father-must find out where it is from-and another call to its distributor. He has thought of this dilemma before, and views it as a slight bump, worth taking the risk so as not to have to fumble for keys yet again today.
---
Ch.2
New day, awake, alive, rinse wash repeat if necessary. He wakes up and shakes head and hands, exits bed, goes through the morning routine before joining the world of the living. Well, not joining perhaps, he thinks, more a guest checking the place out before committing to membership.
Outside today is still warm, still kind of summer in late August, good for Frappachinos, favorite mocha, salvation is just down the street. Black leather invites his posterior into the near fetal position which is driving a sports car, shift knob feels cool to the touch, magnesium alloy, said not to conduct heat, radio off today, listen to top come down.
Past several inferior-though he never tries them-coffee shops along The Strip, sees Starbucks sitting there, beckoning to his corporate loyalty, as if they need his business, value it, while opening stores in France, ready to take on the country arrogant enough to say they invented the café. He reminds himself to buy more stocks in Starbucks, parks, enters, orders, sips. Cool refreshment finds him in the form of caffeine, ice, chocolate and milk, blended by Susy, his barista his cup tells him, with the sticker they were putting on these days.
He knows tomorrow he’ll have a new barista, and knows in fact that he’ll never have a practical need for knowing her name either, but it is nice to know, and they always find familiar things to say to him, to let him know that this is his Starbucks, not just any. “Going to try another peppermint mocha today?” is one phrase stuck in his head from winter, uttered by some gorgeous young girl making college money who has since moved on. This one he had a crush on, and misses, but knows he forms crushes easily, so doesn’t miss to the point of admitting it.
In a wave he’s out, back in the car, applying sunglasses, different today, these D&G, which he didn’t know how to pronounce, whether to say dolce with a hard c or a soft c, so he just referred to them as D&G, sitting off his nose a little, broader than his Kenneth Coles, but promising to block just as many harmful rays of sun. He wonders about the optical health of cavemen, and quickly dismisses the thought to make room for others.
She’s back in his head now, no phone call back to respond to the message left and now he wonders if it weren’t an accidental call. No, now she is back in memory but looks more and more like Katie, which is unlikely because they look nothing alike, but blending, kindof like what his memory does with anything removed for too long. Faces fit familiar molded lines and soon the arms pale and legs shorten imperceptibly, breasts change in shape if not in size and scent is forgotten/replaced with peaches. Katie, who he did not visit this morning, she had an early meeting, now frustrated in that sexual way, not wanting to admit, confused because he wants Katie, but he wants his mystery girl back.
Off for a fix, nothing to do, and too much time to do it in, forget yesterday and tomorrow and live presently. Small house, bad neighborhood, Tacoma, parks next to a ’86 Civic with one donut tire standing out against three discount tires bald to the point of racing slicks. Knows to put up top, sitting there, debating leaving, then its up and he’s out and the car chirps, letting him know it can take care of itself.
Inside, past a screen door with holes in it and a pit-bull nameless to him that doesn’t beg for scratching or seek a haven for slobber, rather sits there, menacing, but emaciated, he thinks. Further in, Bobby knows he’s coming, yells come on back, emerges from a bathroom he’d rather not investigate further with no shirt on and tattoos chasing themselves around his porcelain white skin, colors, vibrant, snakes and knives and words and numbers and characters he takes to be Korean, because Bobby’s girl is Korean, and one naked girl on each arm, one smiling, one crying. This he doesn’t understand, but never asks because Bobby is not the sort of guy you question his motives.
Rolled crisp green thin rectangular swapped for powdered white crystal and accompanying plastic zip bag, small and stamped with little hearts, cute. Knows the contents are anything but cute.
“Gonna stay for a rail?” asks Bobby, who always asks this, and he responds in kind, sits down on the same off-brown seventies-era couch that smells like mildew and something that might be urine, dusts a bit of the bag down on the glass table, clean against the dirty of the place, but always clean, takes a credit card out of his wallet and shapes long thin white lines on the glass. Next extracted is a twenty dollar bill, rolled quickly but carefully, held against nose, and placed at the starting line.
It begins, sudden, white light against his head, light but pulsating, thoughts chase themselves around in intricate patterns and he is not aware of the next five seconds, save for a feeling of wellness, complicated by several subliminal feelings suggesting anything but.
Harsh pain bites at nostrils flared from four lines, four completed races, he thinks to himself and begins to laugh a little, under his breath, pulls head back rests and smells the room, which now does not smell musty, aged, or scented with urine from the couch, but alive and complex, somewhere pizza is still influencing senses sensitive enough, and he hands the rolled up twenty to Bobby, wipes dusty whiteness off of glass with forefinger and gums.
Leaving, he passes the dog, who now seems to view him with disapproval, as if he sees this variety of thing all the time, and he supposes the dog probably does. If it were his dog, he decides, he’d name it Congo. Looks more like a Congo than Katie’s Saint Bernard; giggles accompany this thought, and follow him out to his car, just outside his head, taunting him with happiness that is always slightly out of reach, even with the rails.
Later, after the first run has worn off, he pulls into a Jack in the Box parking lot, not hungry, and dips the edge of the credit card into the little bag with the hearts stamped on it, raises and sniffs, once, twice, he loses track, which is the point, slides the car back in gear, and loses purchase between the concrete and his Pirelli tires on his way out, allowing the car to correct its path, better it that he.
Back in Kirkland, meeting Katie and friends, concentrating on not overfeeding his fix, like not feeding a dog all day, even though it’ll eat if you let it, not allowing his mind to carry on like a wallowing fat lazy dog. Sees Katie, at TGIF, on his way in the door, sitting on the bench to the side, even though he knows they’ll seat her before her party arrives. She knows, just likes to wait, so people know she is in fact waiting for someone, and not here to eat alone, as if anyone ever eats at TGIF alone.
He pushes this thought out of his head, manages a smile out of his bag of facial tricks, and takes her hand, kisses her and she stands to greet him. Now they can sit, so a hostess must be summoned, and one comes, blond and blue eyed decked out in red pinstripes and a ridiculous Cat in the Hat hat that he knows not to be required, odd patches and buttons going up one side of her suspenders and down the other. It makes him think of flair, and Office Space, as it always does, except she is nothing like Jennifer Anniston, he thinks, no, more like Drew Barrymore, who probably could have played the part, but not like Jennifer Anniston.
“Huh?” Broken out of his distracted tangent, now reminded he is in public and has appearances to keep up, “sorry, was thinking about something else.” Asks her to please say again what she just got done saying, and yes he’s listening, and yes it is important to him what she has to say, but darn it, he has to use the bathroom all of a sudden, could she please excuse him.
She pouts at his back as he walks away, around the corner, men’s room, not much privacy but stalls with doors will have to do. Bag out, credit card out, dance repeated, very familiar feeling, and he flushes the toilet to cover the noise. Exiting, checks appearance in mirror and removes small dust of white from under nostril, smiling at a man entering, this man large and sweaty and decidedly not Caucasian, looks like he dressed himself at Mario’s, expensive clothing, straight to the stall, most likely for different reasons.
Back out at the table friends have arrived. Brad and Jenny, or Brock and Jinny, he’s careful not to say either. Nice to see you’s are passed around as always, he inquires about how things are going at work for both of them, Brad-as it turns out-has just gotten a promotion and is ecstatic to share it with someone else, his broad chin jutting out as he pontificates on the importance of hard work and loyalty, where it’ll get you in life. Something related to pencil pushing at a local ad-firm. Jinny-and he reminds himself to practice his mnemonic exercises after this near fatal no sex for a week from Katie cause she’s pissed he can’t remember their friends names miss-reminds him that she has recently left her job because she is pregnant, and he politely inquires as to the wellness of the fetus, is informed that they are already taking some new type of birthing class that has apparently only recently been offered in the U.S. and is prohibitively expensive but that’s okay because Brad is doing so well at work, and they just traded her Audi for a Lincoln Navigator. “Almost lost the Corvette on that one,” Brad says with a mouthful of bread and some sort of blue alcoholic drink poised at his lips. Jinny is forgoing alcohol, they both point out, in that fresh couple way, in order to ensure a healthy baby, and they no longer frequent restaurants that allow smoking in any part of the dining room, since second hand smoke is a risk at all times. This he agrees with them on, doesn’t mention that TGIF’s bar allows smoking and is not twenty feet from their seats, notes it is the only part of the conversation he can really find interesting.
Later, as smoked chicken quesadillas and towering rings of fried breaded onions and sampler platters with three of everything and not enough of anything are brought to the table, he excuses himself again to the bathroom, citing three Mack & Jacks for the interruption in conversation. Back in front of the mirror, a little too sharp this time, things moving a little too fast where thoughts are breaking out in verbose form without any real intention of that happening, and time for something new. Two Valium are produced out of a small mint tin in his left pocket, he swallows and stares, considers that he should have crushed them, or put them under his tongue, or really anything to make the damn things act now. Sweat is on his brow, and he thinks of the fat man in the expensive clothing, and wonders if he’s still in the bathroom, discards the thought as ridiculous, grasps metal faucet handles and turns, cold water rushing out, cupped in hands and distributed in rapid fashion on face. Next a paper towel to mop up water now dripping onto his crème wrinkled linen Ben Sherman shirt, which doesn’t really show, so he’s not concerned. Exits bathroom.
After dinner, or lunch, he’s not sure, but it’s dark now, back at hers drunk and railed and spinning off of anti-anxiety pills, unbuttoning shirt and watching Katie slip out of the summer dress she wore all day because it’s Saturday and she’s allowed to wear casual dresses on Saturday because it’s her day off, and next pulling tight fitting undershirt and boxers off to deposit in a pile on the floor, leaving his socks on because he can’t concentrate anymore. And then she’s beside him, in white innocent underwear, the kind she always wears under those dresses, and he is pulling it off, fumbling at the strap on her bra while she chides him for getting so drunk off of five beers, not knowing, and now its off, and she is naked too, sans socks, and their bodies are fighting for shared space, trying to twist and turn and interlock in places on a queen sized bed just big enough to keep anyone from getting hurt. Strange sex this time, rough, but not too rough, just some biting and her scratching his back while he is working harder and harder at her, and then he’s off her and she’s on her back, and now it’s his turn to scratch, ecstasy sitting just out of reach for him, knowing its passed for her now, and he is angry with himself for being weak, for the drugs, for not being able to finish the job, and now he’s off, laying, panting and sweating, thinking of all the times it was different.
---
Ch. 3
Morning is harsh, not happy to see him, nor he morning, blazing through Katie’s insufficient blinds that he has suggested she replace innumerable times, no success. So now bright light streaks his face, suggesting pallor, he’s sure, so unnatural it seems at this hour, early, and he’s up.
Into her bathroom, where scant supplies of his await, no cornucopia of spray deodorants, one bar of Old Spice, too scented, but still a standby, in the shower, her shampoo, some Australian combo thing she wont use, but keeps, and forgotten was the trip to the salon to pick up more of his, so in it goes, smelling of chemicals designed to give hair body and bounce. Then Dove, which he likes, and knows she also doesn’t use, favoring some Bath and Body Works treasure trove of assorted bubble gel bottles, which all smell like peach, but Dove is not a man’s soap, he knows, only okay occasionally, lest skin become silky under light.
Out and shaking water off before toweling with one of her not for actual use embroidered towels, hair wet and towel refolded to suggest order and disuse, cant stand the smell of her that remains on cotton, too visceral, and too frustrating, given previous hours spent. Head is treated with Tigi once again, but hers, designed to reduce frizz and doesn’t hold well, which won’t do with the top down.
Now dressed, same clothes different day, bending to kiss, and off before she flutters her eyes in that way he knows she does, Congo waiting outside the bedroom door for approval, and pleading eyes searching for evidence of forthcoming pats. This accomplished, Congo is off to others parts of the house, in search no doubt of some pseudo-buried bone or rope or plaything long forgotten for just this type of entertainment value. White leather couch, remember to wipe, don’t want saliva de perro on steering wheels, makes for slippery driving.
In the car, he makes for the freeway, no direction in mind not knowing or caring, maybe Seattle for a boat ride across the Sound, then drive through endless small dilapidated towns long ago promising adolescent almost cities, ignorant tax payers and strip malls squelching dreams of lightly ambitious public officials. Decay of rural America, waiting for his disapproval, and expecting his eye to squint at Motel Sixes guaranteeing HBO, pool and flashing vacancy neon.
Or perhaps the windy roads of North Bend and beyond, telling the same tale, but with more big words and big money and big dreams, achieving success in driving out those seeking haven, preferring flashy cars, houses, coiffed hair and designer clothes. The expansion of the Eastside, until someday it stretches from Issaquah till Ellensburg, rows and rows and cities and cities, with mini cities ten thousand people strong, all commuting thirty forty or an hour somewhere to rot in offices with their neighbors and friends neighbors.
Drifting thoughts follow him back on the freeway, and without thought the clear plastic heart stamped zip bag filled with instant ecstasy/grief, open and spilling contents on to vehicle registration, twenty out and almost rolled, top up so no wind to worry about, and just as quickly the bag and it’s contents find their way out of the black Mercedes-Benz convertible coupe, careening away, dusty white dreams filtering into air, he wonders what happens when the substance enters other cars via interior climate control. Filters, he assumes, will catch most of it.
Close, sweating now, wanting to pull off and scrape whatever contents he might back into bag, lick coca crystals off of dirty weather beaten concrete, bitter taste on tongue and back of throat dripping. Valium is back out now, two yellow pills emblazoned “5” to indicate dosage, knows this will calm nerves somewhat, somehow.
Cold grip of addiction wont release his mind, and it swerves precariously back to Tacoma, fighting the steering wheel, allowing random direction in lieu of regression to that place he always wants to be, but can never return to.
Mocha, she’s back, curvy satisfying satiating saturating cool/warm caress of her arms and hands on his arms and hands, it’s okay she says, you have me. Whispers in his ear, breath he knows tastes like peppermint, little nonsensical things that make more sense now than anything. Lust at first site, he knows, and love and then lovemaking, and soon lying there tangled up in each other, knowing that any emergency will have to wait, his limbs are not at his command, but at hers. Remembering more, hours spent doing her bidding, more important to him than his own deepest desires, and then, relaxing letting go of inhibition as she careens around corner after corner of desire fulfilled at breakneck speed slowly. Arms, legs, eyes relax, she is his savior now, pays him attention, knows no limits and surpasses his imagination, going beyond his wildest efforts and its over, but not over, and now he knows satisfaction, but knows it will haunt him like powders pills and haze, cant be that good twice, impossible. Gone.
And now he’s here, a night/day club in Seattle, close to Pioneer Square, private VIP he’s in and knows that deep in dark corners sit deep dark people, imbibing and ingesting in hunt search mode, similar to predators stalking prey they’ve heard about, seen and eaten, but can’t seem to find now, perhaps extinct, or evolved.
Stomach aching, he relaxes into his booth, alone, soon a vision finds him, modified from original form by countless expenditures and much artistic aesthetic vision she hovers on size 5 shoes that seem to add six inches without taking away leg, follow up to skirt which compliments thighs that must taste like candy kisses, can almost see her panties, wonders what they look like, wonders if he can find out. More tan skin above skirt, revealing abs that are smooth but not too hard, can’t stop following inviting lines up to breasts barely covered by some white piece of lace designed to compliment skirt and platinum hair, which coronas her thin even symmetrical face, no paint save for eyeliner and white lipstick with something shimmery in it.
“White Russian, Bailey’s crème, no ice.” She hasn’t asked, in fact just stands there still, now he’s on display, realizes shirt is open down front to navel and self-consciously adjusts posture to in an effort to minimize long nights spent drinking and drugging.
She says his name and follows it with something incomprehensible, in the manner of one who is not much in tune with their level of self-esteem, head down, eyes now not gazing but darting in geosynchronous patterns somehow fascinating and nauseating simultaneously. Turns, is she blushing-cant tell in this light-walks towards the bar in the darkness of the windowless club, and disappears, leaving wake of confusion.
He knows her now, knows her name age education dreams fears, little sister is in college, Stacy, and mom and dad don’t return her calls. One night, while popping little blue pills with dolphins on them, she opened up her heart to him, and laughed when he asked her home, said where’s home? Never saw her until now, must’ve taken a cab before he woke, and now what? A year has passed, will she pretend it’s okay, should’ve called you bastard, oh that’s where I know you from? He won’t know, because when his white Russian with Bailey’s finds him, she is not in tow, and he can’t make the same connection with the empty eyed skinny girl now waiting him, tired and collapsing in slow motion. He pays the ten, tips another ten, drinks quickly and leaves.
---