the hour is getting late
Koala stretched lazily and made himself beautifully into a koala. He reached for Fuck’s pipe, hesitated at the distance, and finally rolled on his side and pawed the pipe into his hand. He was small and slightly fuzzy and charming in a heavily drugged way; a perfect specimen in my eyes.
The last I heard from Icarus was the night he found my love letter from Alice and to Alice.
One letter, one love…we shared a paper and wrote sentence for sentence nonsense love, much like what Icarus wrote that night after the hospital in the shed on his jeans:
Grail love almost within reach. A piece from the heart of anti-America bleeding out running free out into the bright sun Light is shining pretty pretty soon… --
He didn’t know Alice was the sun to my sun in a distant galaxy, he found my letter/his letter and brooded over it quite expressively and impressively, and I was both embarrassed and flattered.
Alice looked like an Aryan Bob Dylan with large eyes. His nose, his facial structure and proportions…
He used to look much more effeminate, back at high school, in an all-boys Catholic prison.
Alice spent five years rotting in Catholic prison in Detroit, drowning out frustration with pot.
When Alice was in high school he was beautiful, and I think that might be the only reason his mother kept him around. While he was in Catholic high school prison he became a tattoo artist for all the other miserable prisoners. He gave himself a couple tattoos as practice. He gave me my first tattoo, a pair of bat wings, small and black, one on each ankle.
Now his whole face looks like a young Bob Dylan, big blue eyes and blond hair aside. Even his hair is wild and unruly and Bob Dylan now. I think that might be the only reason his mother tolerates and supports him at all now.
Alice never told his mother he didn’t need her help anymore because of the thieves. He never told anyone about the thieves because that would be suicidal stupid.
They drove to where Chief and I and everyone else were staying.
I saw Icarus for the first time in over a year.
He had the same lazy eye as me, the right eye that never quite opened. Mine was on the left.
Wheezy was there, along with Jack-Jack.
Jack-Jack was Meow’s dog. Meow was our reluctant mama bird. She was the only person who truly seemed to understand my aversion to having a
bellybutton.
She thinks the reasoning behind it may be that as infants our umbilical cords were torn off rather than falling off after being removed.
Icarus thinks it’s because I’m an alien and not meant to have a bellybutton.
I got out of the car and looked at everyone waiting outside. A black car rolled by as I walked and rolled the window down. The passenger on the left side in the backseat fired a handgun and shot me in the back of the head.
I had never felt so relieved. All the pressure and tension and fever building up constantly scattered on the parking lot pavement.
And when I woke up I felt a reverse vacuum collect all the matter and frustration, sucked it back in and sealed it tightly.
It took less than a second. I was awake.
Alice looked at me concerned and held my hand. I was sitting on a hotel bed. I passed out in the parking lot. They carried me inside.
Jack-Jack was crying. He curled up next to my face and cried quietly. I tried to assure him that I was alright. He was half poodle, half dachshund and blond. I had never met a dog that cared so deeply for people. Jack-Jack was one of my favorite people.
My anemia made me very tired. I tucked my chin up in my knees, head heavy with the weight of living. Everything was dimmer than it should be. The synapses were firing erratically and explosively and slow.
A mushroom cloud rising and billowing out at the top. If the thieves could see the nuclear warfare stirring in my head it would be cinematic.
I wondered what Icarus was doing working at a bakery. It was not where I imagined him to be now. I found out his grandfather owned it and Cydne was working there too. He said they needed to lay low for a while and mesh into society. He went home to go to school for a year and he and Cydne had become good enough friends that they decided they could tolerate working and attending school and living together.
They had been back in the States for a few days staying at the hotel grandfather clock owned, without me ever knowing until now. He named it after the way I described it, A Strange Middle Place. It was built along the coast.
Grandfather clock retired from architecture after the resort was finished and bought a house nearby with his old love Maxwell. After my grandmother died he met Maxwell and finally came out of the closet.
My grandmother was a harsh woman. I don’t remember her too well, so most of what I know about her was told to me by my grandfather. He sometimes would refer to her as a Nazi, with equal parts affection and bitterness. She had my mother put me through prep school, which was strange. I was rather grateful that at least it wasn’t a gender segregated religious prison. I couldn’t imagine what poor Alice did to deserve that, but then I tried to and I imagined quite a lot.
He started being a significant burden on his mother and father after about twelve Earth years. He made hard cider in his bathroom sink and started smoking cigarettes. His family was unhappy. A year later he started smoking pot, and a year later his mother sent him to Catholic high school, all boys, The Prison. He was a closet atheist and unhappy. He polluted the school. Two years later he started growing mushrooms in his basement.
Two years later he graduated and moved north to go to culinary school, and I met him. In the winter, where he spent most of his time in the throes of pot and LSD.
The last I heard from Icarus was the night he found my love letter from Alice and to Alice.
One letter, one love…we shared a paper and wrote sentence for sentence nonsense love, much like what Icarus wrote that night after the hospital in the shed on his jeans:
Grail love almost within reach. A piece from the heart of anti-America bleeding out running free out into the bright sun Light is shining pretty pretty soon… --
He didn’t know Alice was the sun to my sun in a distant galaxy, he found my letter/his letter and brooded over it quite expressively and impressively, and I was both embarrassed and flattered.
Alice looked like an Aryan Bob Dylan with large eyes. His nose, his facial structure and proportions…
He used to look much more effeminate, back at high school, in an all-boys Catholic prison.
Alice spent five years rotting in Catholic prison in Detroit, drowning out frustration with pot.
When Alice was in high school he was beautiful, and I think that might be the only reason his mother kept him around. While he was in Catholic high school prison he became a tattoo artist for all the other miserable prisoners. He gave himself a couple tattoos as practice. He gave me my first tattoo, a pair of bat wings, small and black, one on each ankle.
Now his whole face looks like a young Bob Dylan, big blue eyes and blond hair aside. Even his hair is wild and unruly and Bob Dylan now. I think that might be the only reason his mother tolerates and supports him at all now.
Alice never told his mother he didn’t need her help anymore because of the thieves. He never told anyone about the thieves because that would be suicidal stupid.
They drove to where Chief and I and everyone else were staying.
I saw Icarus for the first time in over a year.
He had the same lazy eye as me, the right eye that never quite opened. Mine was on the left.
Wheezy was there, along with Jack-Jack.
Jack-Jack was Meow’s dog. Meow was our reluctant mama bird. She was the only person who truly seemed to understand my aversion to having a
bellybutton.
She thinks the reasoning behind it may be that as infants our umbilical cords were torn off rather than falling off after being removed.
Icarus thinks it’s because I’m an alien and not meant to have a bellybutton.
I got out of the car and looked at everyone waiting outside. A black car rolled by as I walked and rolled the window down. The passenger on the left side in the backseat fired a handgun and shot me in the back of the head.
I had never felt so relieved. All the pressure and tension and fever building up constantly scattered on the parking lot pavement.
And when I woke up I felt a reverse vacuum collect all the matter and frustration, sucked it back in and sealed it tightly.
It took less than a second. I was awake.
Alice looked at me concerned and held my hand. I was sitting on a hotel bed. I passed out in the parking lot. They carried me inside.
Jack-Jack was crying. He curled up next to my face and cried quietly. I tried to assure him that I was alright. He was half poodle, half dachshund and blond. I had never met a dog that cared so deeply for people. Jack-Jack was one of my favorite people.
My anemia made me very tired. I tucked my chin up in my knees, head heavy with the weight of living. Everything was dimmer than it should be. The synapses were firing erratically and explosively and slow.
A mushroom cloud rising and billowing out at the top. If the thieves could see the nuclear warfare stirring in my head it would be cinematic.
I wondered what Icarus was doing working at a bakery. It was not where I imagined him to be now. I found out his grandfather owned it and Cydne was working there too. He said they needed to lay low for a while and mesh into society. He went home to go to school for a year and he and Cydne had become good enough friends that they decided they could tolerate working and attending school and living together.
They had been back in the States for a few days staying at the hotel grandfather clock owned, without me ever knowing until now. He named it after the way I described it, A Strange Middle Place. It was built along the coast.
Grandfather clock retired from architecture after the resort was finished and bought a house nearby with his old love Maxwell. After my grandmother died he met Maxwell and finally came out of the closet.
My grandmother was a harsh woman. I don’t remember her too well, so most of what I know about her was told to me by my grandfather. He sometimes would refer to her as a Nazi, with equal parts affection and bitterness. She had my mother put me through prep school, which was strange. I was rather grateful that at least it wasn’t a gender segregated religious prison. I couldn’t imagine what poor Alice did to deserve that, but then I tried to and I imagined quite a lot.
He started being a significant burden on his mother and father after about twelve Earth years. He made hard cider in his bathroom sink and started smoking cigarettes. His family was unhappy. A year later he started smoking pot, and a year later his mother sent him to Catholic high school, all boys, The Prison. He was a closet atheist and unhappy. He polluted the school. Two years later he started growing mushrooms in his basement.
Two years later he graduated and moved north to go to culinary school, and I met him. In the winter, where he spent most of his time in the throes of pot and LSD.