Clocks In A Casino

I went to the fights Friday night. It was held inside a casino. The ceiling was made up to look like a starry night sky, presumably to balance off the feeling of being in a gutter looking up at it. Walking through all the tables and rows of slot machines felt like walking through a garden of weeds. For some reason it made me think about the irony of Nick Drake overdosing on anti-depressants. I don't know why. Pretty much the only thing worse than Las Vegas is places aspiring to be Las Vegas; places heavily populated by stereotypes and aspiring-stereotypes. Here's your paint-by-numbers scene: Security guards, roulette wheels spinning, dealers shuffling, slot arms jerking, cocktail waitress heels poking carpet, private poker rooms, 24 hour VIP parking, high roller tables, women dressed up, stacked chips, trays, Wayne Newton signed poster on the wall, fake tits brushing up against elbows connected to a bet doubling-down. I can't handle bets---I like dares.

A boxing student I teach bought me a ticket as a present. His dad was a family doctor who got in trouble a long time ago over some off-label stuff he was giving his patients and the medical board held a hearing about it that ruined his reputation even though he was completely exonerated. First he jumped off the side of a mountain but screwed up and didn't die but shattered his leg and permanently had a limp and a cane as a souvenir. A little while later he took some pills to commit suicide and succeeded when my boxing student was 29, the age I am now.

We watched eight fights in a row after the two national anthems were savagely gang-raped by some 3rd Rate Tone Deaf Scarlett Johansson Wanna-Be Popular Country Star's crumpled notes and sawed off-key embrace.

It was lousy boxing and I felt a little mopey and blue taking it in, but it was still kinda beautiful watching for the reason boxing always is: fighters are always far more afraid of being embarrassed than they are of being hurt. That always gets to me. And that other catch to the whole thing that the cowards and the heros both feel the same and it's just what they do that makes them different. That one does a number on me too. It's good to be a sucker sometimes, if you can afford to.

It made me miss my little gym in old Havana that's reduced to a little postage stamp to this letter.

Zapruder Film

"I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired - my God, so tired - of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath."

JD Salinger, 1943

I come back to that doozy all the time. I have a taste for stuff laid out all pure and complicated. Salinger has a way of way of molesting you with his wisdom and making everybody else's grope feel a little too vanilla for a while. I'm still trying to figure out where you leave them or where they leave you when you're broken and it's *not* on the page. Which makes sense. I've missed a million connecting flights since pretty early I found out fiction has to make sense where life doesn't. That's why on most levels I can tell my nephew Mathew that I'm five years old too and he has to think for a second, with an impressive little scowl, before he tells me I'm lying. I tell him to ask his dad and, sure enough, my story is backed up and poor Mathew is left scratching his blond little head. I'm waiting until he understands I'm not conning him to see what he makes of it.

My best friend got engaged the other day. I'd written a story about him a while back that I hadn't got around to finishing and sorta left it like a kite rattling around in a windstorm. Most of my kid stories feel like that---except usually some girl has a cozy grip on my string along with a pair of gleaming scissors in her other hand. This story does too, but not for my friend. Dan never missed any of his connecting flights I don't think. But a girl in this story did her best to try...

DH Lawrence was bonkers over the idea of love being a stench rotting in people's noses. A stench. Basically whether or not you mind kissing her armpit on a first-date (I wear "Secret" deodorant just in case).

There are plenty of old Hungarian folk songs my mother used to hum around the kitchen whose lyrics she left out because they all described love as a curse. Figures. If you asked for a jacket for Christmas from your Hungarian sweetheart they'd give you a vest and cut off your arms, "Dare's jee-or jaggat, Bweeny." So what is the stench? The back of everybody's baseball card? All the headlines and fine print wafting off somebody.

Which is to say, courtesy of one long-ass, belabored stutter, that's how this story happened on a few different levels. So as an engagement present I figured I'd dust this fucker off and give Dan its kite-string and a pair of scissors seeing that his lady swiped my soul-mate so that he could moonlight as a husband.

Zapruder Film


Before ninth grade math's first buzzer, the mute, top-of-the-class, allergic-to-eye-contact foreign exchange student handed me Steph's note without even slowing down her pencil. The note read: WHOS GONNA BE THE FIRST TO GET LAID IN OUR GRADE???

Of our two week note passing spree this was by *far* the grandest question posed. I glanced over with approval but Steph just stared straight ahead, chewed her gum (Carefree), blew a massive bubble toward the empty teacher's desk until it popped and splattered over her lips and one cheek. I was obsessed with her mouth. The kid in the desk in front of her looked back and she winked at them as her tongue went after the gum stuck to her cheek.

I tapped the exchange student's shoulder, leaned over her desk and flashed some dimple placing the note over her notebook's opened page. She pretended not to appreciate it. I waited until I saw her eyes move over the note. She read it twice and shook her head the second time.

Ok. So who's your horse? I asked.
Shhhh.
Class hasn't even started yet!
Shhhh!
Nobody shushes me the way you do.

Steph threw an eraser at me. Don't be mean to her, she mouthed.

Buzzer rang. Last few kids trickled in. Two girls who shared the same name crammed and grinded against each other through the door. One formerly chubby now conspicuously anorexic in baggy clothes that had once been a couple sizes too-tight. The other with a hearing-aid after a fight with a brain-tumor a few years before. Death was circling and was gonna take her a couple years later. She'd get a plaque next to a planted tree. They slid into their chairs and opened their books as a few kids around class silently observed and considered them for a second. I noticed a few doing it. They noticed me noticing. Steph threw a crumpled piece of paper that whacked me in the temple and I tried to get back on task trying to answer her question. I felt a little woozy. You had to keep your head down, there was a lot of crossfire around here.

We're secondary characters in a lot of people's lives. The brushstroke that sums us up usually isn't all that pretty. Cheap, tabloid headlines mostly. Cancer and anorexia were pretty heady words lit up on a kid's marquee, especially when things are so fucked up they can't hide it but still try to. It leaves an impression. People tended to resent stains at my school. Invisible janitors cleaned up all our shit and graffiti and vandalism.

Teacher charged into class wearing gym strip. This was not unusual. Nut-hugging shorts the most famous article of the ensemble. Always a little puzzling whether the result was a desired effect or just a generational thing. He pulled down a chalkboard, turned and faced it displaying a considerable wedgie to us, started writing instructions. There were still wild, unrestrained sounds in class. After a second he crushed the chalk against the board and paused, slowly looked over his shoulder, stared at the backs of a huddled group of girls giggling and moaning encircling the desk of a pony-tailed, lisp-ridden brunette smiling closed-lipped at the back of class. They were all smiling back there with whatever news was going around but the lispy-brunette was the only one with enough composure to have her mouth closed. Which meant, as far as I could tell, she was the one dishing.

Math teacher squared his shoulders to them, clasped both sides of his waist just over the elastic band of his nut-hugger trunks, cocked his eye brows as the big lead-up to his trademark...

A kid jumped in for the alley-oop, fully loaded with spot-on mannerisms and delivery: Uhhhh, ladies? UHHHH... shut-up. Yeah, shut-up.

Teacher glanced over at the kid. Not bad, he said.
Don't mention it.
Timing, tone, cadence, tempo. Nicely done.
You're a pillar in the math and physical education departments, sir.
I appreciate that. Girls, really. Girls. GIRLS. What the hell are we doing back there? You're a little young for a sewing circle aren't you?

They dispersed and went back to their seats but still had their attention glued to whatever they were talking about. Something had blown their circuits. Their aerials all seemed a little bent.

I only have you folks for an hour. TRY, at least PRETENDING, to pay attention. Sewing circle bullshit later.

We loved that he swore. It reminded us that the nut-huggers weren't a style so much as a shot across the bow.

After the teacher finished writing up our assignments and went back to his desk, Steph crushed and snapped off the tip of her pencil against her notebook. This was a tactic she employed only in extreme emergencies. The teacher heard it and looked over. I did too. Steph shrugged and went to the back of class where another girl went into her bag and dug around for a replacement.

A minute later a Laker's "Show Time"-era no-look pass with a note: LAST NOTE VOID. GUESS WHICH GIRL.

I looked over and Steph nodded gravely until we both smiled.

Other guys looked at her mouth when she smiled sometimes. Puberty was like getting cable and I was stuck on community television. I'd had a few dreams about kissing that mouth of hers and spent a lot of time wondering if it would feel the same if I ever had the chance in real life. I knew the other guys looked at her mouth and saw getting blown. I tried to see getting blown but it never worked. I had enough trouble seeing kissing her.

You're in love with me, Steph taunted.
Huh?
Why are you staring?
I dunno.
You're in love with me.
What makes you so sure?
You can't stop thinking about me.
Oh yeah?
Every girl you'll ever go with you'll compare to me.
You sure?
You're so in love with me.

The last time she said it was strange, like somebody had stepped on the peddles of a piano to draw out vibration. The eye contact had made the real communication something like this:

You're so in love with me.
Yeah, Steph. I'm afraid so.
You're in love with me?
I'm sorry.
You're in love with me.
What choice did I have?

It was the last time she'd ever joke about it. I'd become the punch-line and it didn't go over.

I wrote the name down. Nudged our reluctant messenger and placed the note on her desk and saw her pass it across the aisle. Watched Steph's grin as she read it. After a little while she shot me a look with her chlorinated swimming pool-blue eyes.

Our teacher got called on the PA to go the office. He said Fuck under his breath and several of us beamed with pride. Our champion. When he was two steps out the door Steph and I jumped up simultaneously and sprinted back to ground zero.

The lisping brunette already had on her headphones. She took out one of the buds on Steph's side. She had the hiccups (symptom of sex???).

Is it weely such a big deal? See-wee-ussly. It coulda happened, like, at the beginning of school. Weely.

Steph acknowledged this much was true. Turning it over, I did too. The girl in question arguably had the best ass in high school. This fact was lost on nobody. Her least of all. There was a certain prudence in her fucking at 14.

Was it good? I asked.
She didn't bother to remove the bud.

Steph was smiling and shaking her head.
Listen Steph, getting laid totally isn't a big deal at all.

That's when an amazing thing happened. Dan, who was seated in front of the lisping-brunette, turned around in his seat and leaned in. He had an easy look on his face, down-playing the obvious explosiveness of the subject matter.

Steph, it totally isn't. I mean, take Dan. He's a good looking, weely smart, like, super nice guy.
Totally. He has a nice ass, too.
I slapped the desk. He DOES?
Dan smirked at me.
Weely Dan, I'd totally have sex with you. I'm see-wee-us.

Only last week Dan had worn a pair of glasses that we all discovered weren't even prescription glasses. Why had he done this? he was asked repeatedly. Because I like wearing glasses, he answered.

Weely. See-wee-usly, Dan. Any time you want.

Steph and I exchanged glances at this offer. The entire classes' attention fell towards that table like dominoes. "Indecent Proposal" was out in theaters that year but it had nothing on this offer. Dan's virginity on an indecent proposal? Way bigger deal than a million bucks to bang Redford.

Any time you want to, Dan. Okay? You lemme know.
Dan couldn't make eye contact with her. He tried. No dice. He looked at me and Steph though.
Steph smiled and I was glued to her lips.

Teacher came back into the room:

Uhhhh, you guys back there? Uhhhh, what the hell are we doing? Can you get back to your desks so we can all pretend there's some remotely useful point to any of us sharing the same room here?

At recess, after the indecent proposal, Dan had an interesting question. He took his time finishing his President's Choice soda and half his ham sandwich with the crust pre-removed before he was ready to ask it.

You ever wonder if you're a bigger person for staying with one girl or you think going for as many as you can possibly get is bigger?
Depends.

I said this because my brother always answered big questions with "depends" and I was trying to try it on. Several girls at school had seen my brother---who was actually my *half*-brother---and me at a movie one weekend and the following Monday bitterly attacked me for not being as handsome as him as if I'd done it on purpose. What happened to *you*?

Depends?
Yeah, it depends.

By Dan's troubled expression I seemed to pull it off okay. But then I wasn't sure.

But it doesn't depend for everybody.
No, I guess it doesn't. Shit.
What?
I thought maybe it did.
That's what scares me about what she offered me. I know I have to, you know, really like, RESOLVE this thing inside me before I go through with it. IF I go through with it. It's really bugging me.
A lot of people in here, when they break out into real life, are gonna get revenge. If they can't get laid to save their lives, I mean.
I know.
You just had a girl put it on the table and you didn't do shit. But maybe you did.
How?
You're not desperate. You aren't pretending to be somebody you're not. Maybe she realizes that.
I doubt it, Dan said.
Me too. But, my point is, if you go for one person your whole life and you do it because you're afraid about trying out sex or whatever with a LOT of people, you're still a fucking chicken. The same way as if you fuck a million girls because you're afraid of one girl breaking your heart.
I think I might like her. I mean like, I might wanna her to be my girlfriend.
WHAT?
I have a crush on her.
But are you gonna do it first? I asked him. You gonna sleep with her?
I dunno, Dan said. What kinda girl, like, publicly says she'll sleep with you? Especially right after she lost her virginity. What kinda girl is that?
One who's gonna shit out a LOT of kids very very very soon.
Who'd she sleep with anyway?
That kid who skipped a grade who always wears a hat.
Hmmm.
Can kids go bald at 14? Maybe he's trying to, like, hide it.
I dunno. Maybe.
She fucked a balding 14 year old?

We chewed our sandwiches solemnly and Dan broke out some Spitz sunflower seeds and handed me a handful that we cracked open for a while.

I don't even know her. How could she say something to me like that?
Guys would KILL to be in your shoes! I said. KILL.
But I've barely even said five words to her.
You can lose your virginity at 14, man. It doesn't even have to be with your girlfriend! In a way, you're doing your girlfriend a big favor.
How's that?
If you end up with a virgin you're going in all experienced and shit.
That's a good thing?
Girls dig that shit.
They do?
It's what Norman says. Make her first time special, man. What if you marry her? Everything might be hinging on the first time! You owe it to her.
Wait a minute, Dan said. He dated her before.
Who?
Norman.
I know. Last year.
Yeah.
He didn't sleep with her or anything.
I know. But still.
He won't give you shit about it.
No, he wouldn't do that.
You're right, you'll never hear the end of it.
Great.
You gotta do it for every guy who ever dreamed of getting an offer like yours.
I dunno.
You really are a tin man sometimes.
I really wish you wouldn't call me that anymore. I gotta go.

The buzzer rang outside the room, echoed down the hall. Mrs. S. left her desk and closed the door to the classroom, muzzling the effects of the buzzer. She turned back, rested a hand against the pencil sharpener, and slowly looked us over. We gathered an announcement was going to be made but Norman and I got up anyway and picked up our packs ready to go just to bug her. She pointed us back down to our chairs and we profusely thanked her for clarity on the issue until she denounced the, Effusive excessiveness of your use of superlatives in thanking me. Both of us assured her a more clean, declarative sentence couldn't be devised to address our egregious folly.

In her kicked field mousy-way, she glared at us with suspicion.

She knew every ten dollar word in the world and Norman had discovered why: she didn't have anything to say. Norman could sniff-out anybody's scam. He was that guy in everybody's nightmare who knows the score way before they do.

She took small slipper steps to the center of class and clasped her hands. Her Indian dress and scarf were matching pumpkin orange. The thick lensed glasses on her face hung from a golden chain wrapped around her soft, slightly melted candle-looking neck. The garishly bejeweled fingers and wrists sparkled under the fluorescent light.

I leaned over to Norman, Do you think she polishes them?
Are you a fucking retard? Of course she does. Nightly, man.
She has more gold than your Filipino barber.
She has more gold than all three guys who work at that barber shop combined and those fuckers have more gold than Fort Knox.

This was an exaggeration. But Carlito alone walked around with fifteen grand worth of bling on his person at ALL times. Amado and Perfecto (respectfully) were steadily gaining on him.

Mrs. S. hands broke away from their prayer-like gesture and she held one stateswoman-ly palm before us for a few moments before she spoke. Norman and I avoided eye contact while she did this. Everybody in the class leaned in because it was never easy following Mr. S. even if she had no accent. The verbiage was always a vicious curve ball, but her accent hit your mind's windshield like a monsoon so you just tried to stay with the yellow line and do the best you could.

Boys and girls, before you leave I have something I'd like to bring to your attention. One of our students is departing for a special program at a different school. It's a very special endeavor. The main reason that compels me to mention this, however, is how much---and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say this---we're all going to miss Natalie.

Time seemed to stop for a moment. The class focus zeroed in on Natalie. She put her head down and blushed. I watched her eyes scanning, a torn off power wire writhing in her brain. You could tell she was touched by Mrs. S.'s gesture slightly more than she was embarrassed by the attention of us. I'd never seen Natalie have a spotlight placed on her before. I never thought about her besides when she happened to be in front of me, but I always thought she was pretty in a blan-way, like the kind of flowers that need a flowerbed of like-flowers to please you. Her prettiness had no sauce. No real flavor. In a year and a half I didn't know what her voice sounded like since she used it so sparingly. But there was something darker, too. It caught my attention less then than it did later on. Somewhere in whatever was troubling her, I think I had an inkling that despite being really smart and having this rich, complex internal life, behind everything was a very straight-forward desire to be completely objectified. Not really to be a bimbo or a whore, just to have the instant, arresting response that beauty gets. And deserves. Real beauty is an obscenity. It was something she would never have. It gave her the effect of an out of season Christmas tree left up in every room she entered. Her face was soft, usually fixed in expressionlessness, but you knew bitterness was going to take a chisel to it. Maybe a jackhammer.

Norman nudged me. Get a load of this, man.
What? I asked him.
He turned to the class:

*I* know why we'll all miss Natalie, Mrs. S.

You do? she replied.

Natalie tensed up as if she was facing a firing squad.

Sure I do. Because she's SOOOOOOO beautiful.

Instantly all of us in that room suddenly bystanders to the execution and participants in it too. But none of us had blanks as we stared at the carnage of Natalie's face. And Norman trained his large, famously heavy eye-lashed eyes directly on her too. His face had more in common with a sawed off shotgun that second than it did with the guy I knew from ten seconds earlier. What was the most chilling was just how deliberate his expression was, just the same as his voice in how he'd said it. You had to go a really long way into understanding a victim, having something delicate and innocent warped inside you, to find that button to push on another person. And he'd unleashed it like it was nothing---he tossed it into all our mouths like a Flintstone chewable vitamin.

Ms. S. broke the silence. She *is* beautiful, Norman.
Norman smiled. He enjoyed this topic of discussion.
Man, I said to him, you're gonna have worse karma than fucking Yoko Ono if you keep this up.
I'm just getting started... I think you *are* beautiful, Natalie. I don't know why everyone here doesn't belieeeeeve me. Do you?

Lunch hour was almost over. She was in the hallway just outside class leaning against her locker. I was sorta sad she'd never be able to joke about me being in love with her anymore. I laid off and just looked at her for a second.

Some girls just have a holiday in their eyes. At least, that's the best I can come up with to explain the nagging quality Steph had that a lot of people got hung up on. Because there wasn't anything particularly special in the color, they had the same light blue as Connecticut Avenue on a Monopoly board. Other girls had Boardwalk or Park Place-blue, but pretty soon people started passing them over for cheaper real estate. You wouldn't have to take your shoes off if you stepped into her front door. The furniture in the living room wouldn't be about impressing you so much as making you comfortable. The other prettier girls hearts might've felt like casinos or pawnshops---Steph's was a petting-zoo.

What kind of impression did she make entering a room? Not much. No entry-wound. Garden variety entrance. She never seemed interested in being the center of attention. She preferred being a member of the audience in welcoming somebody. From that setting she was a little more handy at distinguishing herself. She was sneaky about it. She perfected the art of sucker-punch compliments. And it went a long way. You'd bump into her being in a lousy mood and she'd lick her suction cup dart compliment and fire it at you and it could stick for the whole week. She had some kind of directory on where we lived emotionally and she let us know it with compliments. Everywhere else she was low-key.

But she exited a room differently than other girls and it stayed with you more and longer than even the really expensive ones. It felt like she disappeared every time. Nobody else could do that. She's the only girl I ever saw leaving a room who didn't have some kind of bumpersticker on her fender about what it meant.

Then she saw me. Then she remembered what I was worried about her remembering. She took a second before she said anything. She smiled and came over.

Do you want to give me a call tonight to talk about Dan's situation?
I don't have your number.
I'll give it to you. Lemme write it on your hand.

That night Dan slept over at my mother's house. We were in my room with a bunch of Dan's paintings on the walls. A portrait of my mother hanging over his head while he stared at the rug with the discouraged look he always made when he had to make a decision someone had put him up to.

I'll make you a deal, he said.
YOU'RE GONNA FUCK HER??? I can't believe you're gonna fuck her!
No. But if you agree to never call me Tin Man ever again I'm going to ask her to be my girlfriend.

And that's what he proceeded to do.

I picked up the phone after Dan fell asleep.

Is Steph there please?
Do you know what time it is?
It's an emergency. Some Danish woman is waving a butcher knife outside my house screaming Soren! Soren! Soren!
I heard a hand go over the phone and a muffled, Mom, just let me get it! behind it.
Hello?
He asked her out.
Asked her out?
Yeah.
WHY?
He had a crush on her.
Then why didn't he fuck her?
I guess because he wanted her to be his girlfriend.
Guys fuck their girlfriends, Brin.
Thanks for the heads up.
They do.
I know.
He should fuck her and *then* ask her out.
Steph, you're a sick maniac. What kind of---
What did she say?
She said she wasn't looking for a boyfriend. She just wanted something a little more *casual* right now.
That's what she said?
Yeah.
She'd fuck him but not be his girlfriend?
Yeah.
See-wee-us-ly?
Weely and twooly.
How'd Dan take it?
I dunno. But we recorded it on my mother's answering machine.
WHAT?
We recorded it. I wanted to hear it and he was too shy to talk with her on the phone with me in the room so he agreed.
Okay, fucking J. Edgar Hoover.
Hey, I wanted to hear it go down!
You've preserved that shit, right? That's like the Zapruder film, Brin. Dan turned down losing his vee so that he could be with her as a boyfriend! That's the most romantic thing I ever heard.
I know.
I wanna hear it. Can I come over tomorrow to listen to the tape?

Intermission. The rest of my life went forward...

If you want to.
Of course I want to.

Intermission.

Okay.
Is your hot brother gonna be there?
Jesus fuck. I can't help I don't anything like him, okay? We have different dads. I think he---
I'm just bugging you. I think you're cuter...

Intermission.

Why did she say no?
What did Dan say after she said no?
You'll have to come over to find out.
You're in---
No I'm not.
Yeah you are.

Of course I was.

Steph did come over the next day and listen to the tape. And then we listened to it again from the beginning with Dan's trembling voice making small talk before arriving at the business and the conversation going down like an animal in quicksand.

After that day we talked every night on the phone for a couple months. Mostly we talked from Norman's basement which was where I slept over most nights. Then I'd talk with Norman about strategy and tactics to get Steph. I'd done such a good job selling Norman on the idea that Steph was the most amazing girl in school that he started calling her too. And he was a lot better at than me. Then she ended up being his first girlfriend by mid-ninth grade. Then he bragged to me she'd blown him during the commercial break of 90210. Then she'd dumped him. Five years later, out of the blue, I bumped into her one afternoon a few weeks shy of my 19th birthday and she invited me to see her new apartment and a week later I did finally get around to kissing her.

Gnossienne

I was working in a little run-down bookstore one night when this brunette I didn't know walked in and up to the cash register and asked how old I was and what time I got off. I told her twenty to the first question and that it depended on why she was asking for the second. She invited me to a movie. She hadn't even said which. I liked that. When it became clear she wasn't going to, I threw out the only customer in the store and closed down the bookstore by way of accepting the invitation.

While I was pulling down the iron curtain over the entrance, she told me she had to swing by her apartment next door to get her purse. She asked if I wanted to see her apartment. I followed her inside, up the stairs, through a hallway, past her door. Her smell kept playing bumper cars with the smell of the lobby, the rug in the hallway, her kitchen. I stopped at the fridge and she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

There were photos of a boy stuck by magnets to the fridge. He had a lazy eye and in most of the photographs he was holding a cat. In two he was holding the cat in the living room of the apartment I was in. I like cats. I like other men who like cats. I like girls who masquerade as girls because secretly or not-so secretly they *are* cats. I had a sinking feeling looking over these intimate pictures of the boy with his cat. My cat was living with a girl who'd left me and kept the cat. Tiamoo had declined my tentative separation agreement with the girl of dividing him up between us, with her keeping the asshole and me the remainder. That wasn't funny Brin. Tiamoo seemed to think so.

The brunette came out of the bedroom and approached me in front of the fridge. I didn't look at her.

"He's just gonna be a sec."
"Who?"
"Him." She pointed at the boy with the cat. "I woke him up."
"Your roomate?"
"My boyfriend."
"You said we were coming up here to get your purse."
"I know."
"Where's the cat?"
"Died."
"How's the boyfriend getting over it?"
"Working a lot."
"What kinda work?"
"DJ-ing. Too much E though. He's impotent."
"Say what?"

Boyfriend exits the room.

"Hi there," he says.
"Hi."
She smiles.
"You work at the bookstore next door, right?"
"Kinda."
"I've seen you in there."
"Once a week. There's a poetry reading night thing I help out with for the owner."
"How's that?"
"Catastrophic mostly."
She continues smiling. He notices her smiling and turns back to me, extending his hand.
"It's nice to meet you. What's your name?"
I reach for his hand and shake it and look over at the girl watching me.
"You have small hands."
Very observant. And you're impotent, DJ limp-dick. And anytime now can someone tell me what the baker's fuck is going on with you and your girlfriend, man?
"Does he have small hands, John?"
"Yeah. Look at them." He grabs my hand and displays it to his girlfriend. "What, are you Hungarian or something?"
"How's that?"
"It's a trait. I'm Hungarian too. Look at my hands."
So I do for a second, not entirely sure why.
"John, we have to hurry to catch the movie."
"Yeah. Let's go."

They walk ahead of me up the street. He has his arm over her shoulder and she pries it off and as compensation agrees to hold his hand. He lets go of her hand to light a cigarette and offers me one. After I tell him I don't smoke he lights his and puts his arm over her shoulder. She takes the cigarette from his lips, flicks it into the street and removes his arm while I watch the cigarette hit the side of a car zooming by and toss up sparks like a miniature roman-candle that another car plows into. She takes his hand and he releases in order to go for another cigarette.

I look up at the power wires and telephone poles rolling under the sky like sheet music. Look down cozy side streets with the trees lining the street and in the moonlight pick out the ones that have bird nests in them. At a crosswalk a Cadillac Escalade waits for us to cross. I can't see into the tinted window to make out the driver's seat so I glare at the license plate to see if it's my ex. I don't remember her license plate number. I try and remember. I realize if it *is* her she must feel sorry for me trying to read her license plate. My ego can handle being pitied, however, her feeling sorry for me significantly reduces my chances of a possible revenge fuck and as we've been the one-night-stand-revenge-fuck that lasted four years any chance of resuscitating us is going down the drain. What a doozy that reality is. Shucks.

We walk for a few more blocks toward the Hollywood Theater. They carry on their private conversation a few paces in front of me while I shove my hands into my pockets and investigate why exactly I've been invited to share this evening with an unknown couple.

We arrive late and I follow them up the stairs to the darkness of the balcony where we sit in the front row with her between us. He holds her hand and she removes some wine gums from her purse. She unwraps them, takes out a handful, holds them up and inspects the colors against the glare of the opening screen credits, selects her favorites and offers the rejected articles first to her boyfriend, and, finally, all the blacks to me. When I decline she gives them to me anyway.

I have no memory what that film was. When I wasn't obsessing over the couple I was with I leaned over the railing and looked at all the other couples there that night. First-time couples and regular couples and lesbian couples and falling apart couples and aging couples straining to hear anything and fat couples with greasy butterfingers eating each other's popcorn and interracial couples and maybe Suzy with some old dirty Greek looking fucker in the 4th row whose probably fucked her in front of Tiamoo on the couch for all I know...

The next thing I remember was her boyfriend leaning over and whispering something in the brunette's ear. She nodded as he gathered his coat and turned for the aisle and headed up the stairs for the exit. Some light splashed into the theater and got swallowed up as the door closed.

I leaned over to the brunette and whispered, "Did he, ummm, *leave*?"
"Yup."

I awaited her clarification on this seemingly important point. When it became clear I wasn't going to get any I nudged her arm.

"Why did he leave?"

"I dunno." She tossed another wine gum in her mouth and sucked on it for a few seconds before tucking it in against her cheek. "He wasn't feeling well."
"You're not going to go with him?"
"The movie's not over."
This was unquestionably true. "Yeah, but are you sure he's okay?"
"He's just not feeling well. It's fine. He just went home."

That was all she said for the last half of the movie. When it was over she put on her coat and weaved through the crowd to get outside the theater. She moved so fast I'd figured she'd taken off to get back home to her boyfriend. But she was standing outside waiting for me.

"I'd like to have a drink. There's a bar on the corner."
"What about your boyfriend?" WHAT ABOUT DJ LIMP-DICK!
"He'll be fine. I need a drink."

She knew the bartender when she got inside the place. He started the drink before she'd sat down in the corner. I sat across from her and looked at the menu when she reached for it and slowly palmed it to the table. I tried to keep a straight face while she glared at me.

"How old are *you*?" I asked her.
"I want to ask you question."
"Okay."
"What do you want out this?"
I gave that one a second because I was pretty sure even the bartender had heard her pose the question. He'd stopped poring something.
"You know what I want. I wanna get you out of your relationship."
She smiled. 

"I'm thirty, Brin."

Girl Peeled Off A Cigar Box

I was waiting in an empty bar to meet a Cuban for the first time over here yesterday. There might be two in the whole city. I had to meet one. I figured he'd be easy enough to spot: fourteen layers of clothing and shivering in pretty mild weather.

Some sunlight splashed through the windows into the bar, hanging in the air like suspended lemon-aid. The waitress kept calling me "sugar" out of spite because I'd ordered a bottle of wine and been drinking it out of the bottle like a schmuck. When I'm meeting someone for the first time---and it doesn't matter who it is---I get nervous and have to improvise with something goofy. Snatch a wheel chair at the arrivals section of the airport or steal the girls driver's license and keep it in my pocket over the course of dinner and slip it back into her bag before the night's over. You don't even have to tell her. Maybe it goes well and from whatever she's told you about herself somehow you know a little less. To get even you ask to read her palm as an excuse to touch her hand and tell her something's been missing and she plays along and asks what and you cough over the plastic to see how she responds.

For a long time I'd had some plans to meet a different Cuban over here, the one who really did look like a girl peeled off a cigar box. She was just my exact, perfect type: WAY out of my league.

For someone whose gone back and forth to Cuba for the last 10 years, I've only kissed one girl from there and it wasn't even on her home soil. Any filthy tourist will tell you, it's not shooting fish in a barrel over there, it's LOOKING at fish in a barrel. Which is not to say it's ALL economics either. Girls over there aren't doing their best emotional interpretation of a casino over there the way they do over here. They're deviously innocent in the same way all the best, most liked kids books by kids are the same ones most banned by adults and teachers. It never happened for me. I didn't have the guts to accept an offer without anything being said.

I was trying to come up with a way to account for this. Not for myself. I like the idea of being a few cards short of a full deck whenever I feel like playing solitaire. I wanted to have some explanation for the guy meeting me in that bar. Most Cuban men would fuck a lamppost. It's about the only thing in existence they're not philosophical about.

So what the hell are you gonna say then?

You could try something a little clumsy like: Reality is for people who can't handle their dreams and dreams are for people who can't handle reality.

Yeah, but chances are he's sat through about forty-thousand hours of Castro speeches over the course of his childhood and not all that interested in yours.

You could tell him about that first day you had in Havana stumbling onto a fruit stand on Calle Neptuno surrounded by pretty girls and getting this strange craving for papaya and asking if they had any and all eyes at once burning you to a crisp since "papaya" in Cuban is slang for pussy. And the fruit stand guy laughing his ass off because he was the only one who knew you didn't know.

Nah. He's going to want to know about that other girl you met over there. The one who lives in Playa in Havana. The one he probably fucked and just for amusement wants to see if you did too. If you talk about her you're going to have to explain about the other one peeled off the cigar box. This isn't someone to discuss her with. Because all he's going to do is tell you how many men she's slept with just to make all her men jealous since this is the Cubana's unofficial national sport and, what's worse, you're knowledge of her is going to confirm the stereotype. And be honest, partly that sorta stuff made you fall for her---they only keep a secret if everyone already knows.

So distract him.

Get him talking about the city. Boxing or baseball. Tony Montana. Or those chilling pet cemetery animals wandering down the alleys and scavenging for left-overs at restaurants. Get him talking about the tourist blonds famous for being warm at night and amnesiacs in the daylight. Get him going about the pickpockets. All those crews of Artful Dodgers working on the street with others up on the rooftops following the action next to all those wonky TV antennas piled on there like prehistoric discarded toothpicks. Or his family. The generational stuff. Something cute like the Guarapo stands all over the place with the stout women who grab a stock of sugar cane and take a run at lancing it into the cogs of a giant clunky machine that resembles the inside of a clock and produces this juice that the slaves used to drink and that everybody, of all ages, no matter who the surrounding company, sweetly encourages *you* to drink should you ever find yourself climbing over a girl.

That girl peeled off a cigar box is visiting a dad she didn't know she had, and the rest of his family too. And for a month you talked to her on the phone every night and the subject to be avoided was her more and more likely pregnancy back in that hotel room. After she (and her mother, for that matter) didn't believe that you went a couple months waiting for her in Havana and she never showed up so you flew back to see her and piled the sheets from the bed in the corner so the Russian maid could collect them because you were pretty sure she hadn't waited for you and it only took another four or five months to have her confirm it even though she lied through her teeth denying it in that hotel room. But somehow it didn't make a difference either way and you didn't even bother to pretend that it did. She was pregnant for real soon enough and not by you. But you got to have the four-hour post abortion phone call until you got her smiling again enough to sing something the way she used to. Some old song she used to listen to a million times on a record player when she was a kid. And even though it'd been hanging there for the whole conversation she asked anyway, "Are joo really in loov weeth la Nuevo York Chinita? Weeth a Chai-neez woo-mahn?"

He knocked on the window in fourteen layers of clothing and shades slapping the glass at me, "OYE! Brinicio, here we go... "

Valentine

She bought a one-way plane ticket over here around midnight. She bought it on the same week, same day, same *hour* that a couple, same age as us---who it turns out might've got engaged the same day--- got smoked by an SUV that blew through a crosswalk.

The 18 year old drunken kid behind the wheel had stolen the SUV and brought along two younger girls in the back seat. Maybe he was trying to impress them by driving fast. I dunno. I do know that after killing that couple, he ran off and tried to swim across the icy-cold inlet to the opposite shore but a police dog nabbed him before he could get away.

Yesterday I went over to where that couple died. There was a little shrine against one side of a tunnel underneath a bridge.

There were some people milling around trying to find the spot because the story had been front page in the newspapers. They were giddy and confused but also ready to be upset. There are a few crosswalks to choose from pretty close by. The actual location is a bit tucked away. I was alone for a minute and lit up a cigarette after I found a poem by Rilke taped onto the wall of the tunnel and in no time a throng of other tourists piled in.

On Hearing of A Death

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

Other people poking around to find the spot saw us and came over. It was them looking for it with a combination of disorientation and slight panic that reminded me of something I've never written about or really talked about either. I mean, what that crosswalk and my girlfriend's one-way plane ticket have in common I'm not too sure. A lot of it is a big emphasis on a *beginning*, a start, a first page, first sight, taking a chance.

Five years ago I took a girl to Madrid and we arrived the day after the bombing of the Atocha train station. It's not Grand Central or Penn Station, but it's an awfully nice place to see and has its own charm. I had a reservation for us at a little pension about 4 blocks from the blast. I'd picked that pension because it was sandwiched between the train station and the Prado. I boxed in Madrid daily and had to pass through Atocha every day to get there and on the way back I'd meet up with Jackie and we'd see El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Salvador Dalí at the Prado or the Reina Sofia where little boys and girls demonstrate some of the differences between boys and girls with their approach to dealing with pigeons (girls nice, boys evil).

After the horror of the explosion, one of the most bizarre, disturbing things before the ambulances got there was the lack of silence. Hundreds of dinky melodies rang out and clashed for hours that everyone was afraid to deal with. Imagine a decked out Christmas tree except that every ornament is a cellphone: that's how Atocha chimed from all corners as families desperately tried to see if their loved ones were unlucky.

I get spooked when somebody dies meaninglessly. I guess that's why I was a little comforted when more and more details came out about that pair who died at the crosswalk. They felt like supposition to sell papers but still, it was obscenely difficult not to wonder:

She'd found out about the ring but kept it from him to not spoil the surprise. Did he pop the question at dinner that night? Her friends said she'd been looking through bridal magazines. What'd they talk about at dinner? Did they ever talk about how they'd want to die? Did he not leave a very good tip and she suddenly took in, FUCK, I'M GONNA MARRY A CHEAPSKATE! Maybe she even told him as a joke. Did they ever wonder about the possibility of dying at the same time at a happy moment in their lives and sorta hanging up their lives for everyone they cared about on the peg of never spending another moment apart. How violently beautiful is that? Boy, hit-and-run---who'd see that one coming? Probably nobody who knew them. Maybe those two little girls in the back seat for about a split second.

I was so happy when my girl bought a ticket over here to start a life with me I just stared at the confirmation for 20 minutes without it really sinking in. I never said so, but I felt like we had some stacked odds working against us. This long distance thing for the last year is rotten stuff. Penpals with the odd bi-monthly conjugal visit isn't much of a dream situation. And it's clumsy to admit I wouldn't have remembered the day she bought that ticket without what happened to this couple who never get any tomorrows together in the way I hopefully will. Maybe one day some little brat will ask me about when mommy first came over here and even though I'll lie through my teeth and talk about my seven failed Russian mail-order bride-marriages before I'm slapped by anyone within earshot (and they'll hit hard); it was February 10th, on a *choose*day, we both slipped on some kind of banana peel taking a crack on something and I wouldn't have known or especially cared if it weren't for some piece of shit kid who plowed into them. Not fate, just someone who'll have to do or accomplish god knows what to have anything other than this senseless act define him for the rest of his life. Some punk with a chip on his shoulder trades it in for a fucking millstone.

See why I sent this to you and not her?

Straight, No Chaser

Double-whammy, the curse of bumping into Swimming Pool Girl again and an hour later sailing over the handlebars of my bike like a fucking human crossbow onto a busy street landing on my thumb. Permanently eliminating my prospects for a southpaw career in hitchhiking...

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her antique bike leaning against a parking meter. I'd never seen that bike before but I knew it was hers. The shark infested turquoise color of her bike matched the color of her eyes. I looked inside the window of the cafe:

She was darting around the joint like a video game fairy delivering little 10am potions to cure hangovers. Swimming Pool Girl always reminds me I need to write a story about a cat-burglar who tries to rob someone and ends up falling in love with who lives there. Swimming Pool Girl is a 110-pound feminine powder keg for writer's block. Ten seconds inside the door---five years since I last saw her---she mentions she's been constipated for the last five days. Nearly reason enough, she says, to take back up smoking.

I don't do well recovering from this information.

Swimming Pool Girl introduced me to Edith Piaf. Just as she's putting on the record, still wearing little gloves inexplicably: "You'll like her Brinny; she fell hard for a boxer."

She's very sneaky. Whatever you tell her about yourself she eats with the dirty utensils of her soul and it contaminates you. You start noticing stuff you don't want to notice. Rooms are a little hotter around her. Food tastes better. How can it be justified to spend a couple hours with a strange new girl inspecting and judging the merits of every set of revolving doors you can find downtown? But you do. And besides banging complete strangers and recounting it for your prurient obsessed pleasure, she's amassed an intimidating reading list. Oh yeah, and she can guess yours. And Brando sticking that wad of gum under the railing just before he died in Last Tango In Paris was her favorite thing she's ever seen too. Then she'll quote it:

"Torture the children until they tell their first lie."

Everyone who stares at her qualifies as prey. Her eyes always need more names on their mailing list for postcards. From a distance it looks like a holiday destination but when you get up close, all she is is a poisonous oasis. She has something I can't put my finger on, it's more greasy than slippery, but the closest I can get is that comparing her to other girls you've instantly wanted to fuck but knew you'd have to swallow a drugstore if you did---she's an antique where all the others felt like junk. Her slutty high-beam glares and the licked-damp shape of her mouth while she's glaring at you are run-down-porn-theater- cheap and yet if went for it they'd end up being VERY expensive.

If you're like me and you go for girls with penthouse balconies, she shows you what your missing not going for girls with portable dungeons.

Somehow she makes it enticing after the introductory too-close hug and her Venus Fly Trap kiss on the cheek.

I heard Swimming Pool Girl's been dating a guy she calls Dent Head. I ask her if they're still together.

"No, but we're going on a trip. What are you listening to while you write? I'll put it on the speakers."

"No."

She takes my ipod, the one I'll be fiddling with when I go over the handle bars in a couple hours from now trying to numb my commute.

I ask if I can put up a boxing poster in her cafe window and there's more of a pendulum -effect in her ass as she walks over to the cash register.

I met Swimming Pool Girl the day after the worst time I ever showed up late in my life. Just read an extra chapter in my book and that did the trick. Dusted my relationship of 4.5 years for keeps. Poof.

Twenty minutes late and a girlfriend of 4 years came home and found a letter on my computer screen sent from a Puerto Rican pen-pal girl I'd never even met. Small potatoes. Cause there were about 200 more sent over the course of 5 years. So she read all those too. She opened pictures of the Puerto Rican girl. Nothing vulgar. No nudity. But the poses were poses I'd clearly asked for. Requested. And they'd been delivered with precision and pleasure.

How do you compete with a fantasy?

Why bother.

"I don't love you anymore."

This for a girl with profoundly embedded abandonment issues.

No denial-ability available. She knows the score in its entirety. See clearly, be seen clearly. There's your measure. Every word of a relationship conducted entirely on the page. The whole progression of a fantasy that takes over and dominates the alleys of your mind laid bare. She'd cheated on me fucking a stranger once before. "Now I know I *really* love you." Well, shucks. So on the scales of justice, that asshole's dick cheese in her mouth or my saying in a letter to this Puerto Rican: "I probably thought about you 1000 times today"---which is worse?

I was paying it some thought when her jury tendered its verdict:
"Fuck you, Brin! Yours is *far* worse! You cared about her!"
"You fucked a random! You were gonna throw away our relationship on a random! THAT'S WORSE!" And like a stinking fucking Hungarian I'm grinning.
"It's not funny."

Swimming Pool Girl heard all about it when I saw her at the pool and went over to talk to her. And I just treated the whole problem the way I drank the first time I touched alcohol at 16, swallow as much you can and chase it with something else. Magic how the one cancels out the other. Magic. Pretty soon they both spoil the other and you can't go near either. I haven't touched Coke or Tequila since... or that ex-girlfriend.

Polite Bondage

It was nice out---nearly ice cream truck weather---and I finally got around to doing something I'd been putting off for a while. I went over to his house to pick up my bike in the middle of the afternoon. I walked across town to get there, down different streets, some alleys, through a couple of parks. I walked by the church where I had my first kiss and past where I'd walked that girl home after. A new family came out her old front door. I'd only ever gone inside twice. Once because I was badgered into meeting her psychotic, phone-sex-voiced Belgian mother in order that I receive a preemptive lecture on the parameters of dating her daughter and the second time, far more frightening, at the request of the daughter with her mother away, ordering more than requesting: "I want you to come over right now and fuck me on my mother's bed." "Actually, I'm not too crazy about this one, Suzy." "Just get over here." "This one reallllllly doesn't appeal to me." "Get over here. I left the door open." "Suzy..." Click.

I kept going along the sidewalks that girl used to take to meet me halfway, or at least until our specks could be identified. I remember how her walk would change a little after she saw me and that was always my cue to know the little speck was her. Mine must've changed too, I couldn't wait to set a collision course.

It only lasted a Spring on that street because she got a car. But we had cherry blossoms lining both sides of the street, first above our heads, then paving the sidewalk and streets like cherry frosting.



I kept going till I was past all that. Climbed a hill until I could see his place next to the hospital. Stopped a couple times to meet some neighborhood cats and tried to convince myself I was taking my time but I knew I wasn't. Found a curb and read a few pages of Mr. Richard Yates. Saw a sexy girl who looked a bit like Penelope Cruz smoking and I bummed a cigarette off her. She lit my cigarette while I tried to make her smile talking Spanish and struck out. "Unlucky" was teetering on the brink of "bad luck".

And then when I saw him I didn't have luck, of any variety, anymore.

"People who count on luck don't last long in the business of defusing bombs and disarming land mines, and that is what my business seems to be. It helps to know these things. Muhammad Ali was not lucky. He was fast, very fast."---Hunter S. Thompson

What's the smallest group of people you need to have it statistically probable that two people share the same birthday?

How many people would you need in there to make it feel spooky if you found out you blew out your birthday candles on the same day?

The answer's 23. 51% chance somebody there has dibs on your birthday.

Here's another one that I was considering standing there in his foyer:

"What's a safest hour to drop in on somebody who you haven't seen in a helluva long time without them being on their way to a drink, coming back from a drink, recovering from a drink, or in the act of drinking?

Answer: 2pm seemed a safe bet at the time.

Question: Are we taking bets?

Answer: On what?

Question: You know what.

Answer: That?

Question: Uh huh.

Answer: Whether he'll die before he gets around to doing anything about this?

Question: That's your crossword puzzle. But what I'm a little curious about here, with your brow like a broken windshield and all, is whether you're deepdown chalking this up to bad luck, or coincidence, or just an ugly set of stacked odds against you?

Answer: Or whether I'm getting off on it as material.

Question: I take that angle for granted, fucko.

Answer: Listen, if you've got all the answers why is he pretending *not* to be drunk?

Question: To fuck with you. Why are you pretending to humor him about it?

Answer: I don't know what else to do. This is Mexican TV movie material.

Question: You could be honest with him. You could leave.

Answer: That would hurt his feelings.

Question: Well then, Mr. Considerate Chickenshit 2004-2009, best of luck when he interrogates you about the book in your back pocket? You're well aware of the warm friendly tradition of happy hour literary discussions. He'll ask you if it's true Revolutionary Road is really Gatsby for the 50's.

Answer: Do you think he remembers when he told me about Gatsby for the first time?

Question: Now or in general?

Answer: I'm the one expected to keep a straight face here. Confronted with this Nixon-like egregious evasion of the demonstratively obvious subject matter only to point 10,000 fingers at the truth.

Question: Wasn't Yates going on about something along those lines in the book?

Answer: Yeah, but I can't remember the exact quote.

Question: Try remembering it from the movie.

Dad: Are you liking what's his name, you know, Reactionary Road? That guy. My writer friend Michael Leone's guy. Norman Bates. Richard Bates. Bill Gates. What's his name?

Brin: Richard Yates.

Sara: Leave. You don't need to see this. And you're gonna be bummed out for a week over this.

Question & Answer: She's right.

Dad: You were saying it, what's it called again, Reprobate Road, is a bit like Gatsby. High praise. Is it?

Sara: Take your bike and go.

Question & Answer: Enlighten him on the similarities. Go on. Enlighten *us*. Make us your groupies. We long for that throbbing thrust of the noble autodidact's uncontaminated insights into things. So pure...

Dad: "Oh yes---before I forget---and what's this your mother tells me about your harsh judgments concerning my alcoholism?"

Sara: 32 DD

Brin: ?

Sara: I'm trying to distract you.

Question & Answer: We'll try and help her too. We were wondering what it meant about you and her when she told you she wouldn't like to play on a cheap piano and you admitted to us, in strict confidence of course, that you wouldn't like to play on an expensive one.

Sara: Is that true?

Brin: Uhhh...

Dad: "Strong judgment, your mother said. Stronnnng judgement."

Question & Answer: He's in a playful mood.

Brin: ...

Question & Answer: Just wanted to posit that we're amused you've 3rd personed yourself. Taking this shit on first person getting a little much, is it?



Sara: Here's something for you to think about instead. It's my pie chart for moving there.



(Continued) Sara: 80% of it love. Only a sliver for Alanis Morsette, cute Olympic stuffed animal mascotts, wine at the Sylvia with you...

Question & Answer: Alanis?

Brin: I know.

Dad: Come to the living room and we can chat.

Brin: I'm gonna go. I just came to get my bike.

Dad: I knew there had to be another reason besides a visit. My ulterior motive driven son.

Sara: 32 DD. You weren't a breast guy before me.

Question & Answer: This is crass manipulation of a girl you're in love with.

Sara: And you love it, baby.

Dad: Come on, let's go to the living and sit for a moment than you flee.

Dan Starling: Don't worry, all my paintings are in that living room we'll have him out numbered.

Sara: When I move there can we find some way to have Dan Starling live next door to us?

Brin: Okay, just for a minute.

Now what was that quote. Fuck. Fuck. I can't remember. Something like, "That's the great thing about the truth, you always know what it is. No matter how long you've been without it. You never forget. You just get better at lying."

Or something close to that.

I think...

Hawaii Interstate Highway (redux)

"I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure." ---Marquis de Sade

Stop shaking your head. Gimme a chance to explain...

Long distance relationships open like pop-up books. Her pop-up book is in Manhattan.

I like stealing stuff---if I like you. I case every woman who catches my eye trying to see what they're hiding. You can't give your phone number without giving something of yourself. Every little hair on a woman, even the peach fuzz, is a fuse.

I watch some guys staring at their girls like kids staring at a candy store window. Which gets me wondering, along with the girl in most cases, is he making that sweet expression at *her* or to himself in the reflection? So the girl looks over at me and sees the crowbar in my eyes. I can't hide it. Fortunately it's not WHAT you do but WHO you do it with. I find my markets.

But every time it feels the same when it clicks with somebody. I pick the lock and break into their life and instead of trying to steal everything, I end up wanting to move in.

I'm in full-on burglary-mode when all of a sudden I find myself liking the way you crookedly hang that painting, the way your bookshelves lean, where you dogeared pages or underlined stuff, your pajamas, that you're a pack-rat for every letter an ex sent you and you're amused I burned everything I had with my first kiss, your sticker books and photo albums, that you kept a lock of your hair from when you were six and now your hair's a different color, how you had a street portrait artist embellish your likeness when you were going through an ugly phase and everybody pretended you were that pretty, you were entirely frigid with one boy and put out on the first date with another and you don't know why the difference, that I thought my first girl was the one until we popped each others cherry and I knew she wasn't, that you want a dad and your cute little boy at the same time out of a husband---oh yeah---AND the guy you'd risk all that for to cheat with, you want to have your blueprints for the rest of your life approved of, you want your history to be a rumor that YOU spread, you want me to cast my net at you swinging over and over and never get more than half your butterflies, you want to be my private petting zoo, you want me to pry you down from your ivory tower over the intercom, I want a muse who fucks like a whore, you want to be able to hurt me and build me up, you want me to trudge through your sewers and step out onto your penthouse balconies, you want to take your top down in conversation and have my breeze run through your hair, I want you to kiss the stretch marks and cellulite on my brain, you want me to contemplate every guy who ever wanted to get into your pants, you want jealousy, you want me to be loyal but only because you're amused that I'm a born serial-cheater, you want the church of your heart to have the choir on fire and neither of us willing to piss on them cause our sex life is a cookie jar, you want to get our plans on wheels, you want somebody with no plans, you want Monopoly on weeknights and Risk on weekends, you want somebody who can fight but also listen, a caveman with a daunting reading list, you want every smart person you know to feel castrated next to goofy imaginative things we've come up with, you want Dan Starling as our neighbor, you want me to be fucked-up but lucid, you want our kid as the final jury on us, you want relativity here and there but stuff that comparison can't touch other places, you want love letters and suicide notes and me to pretend with a straight face like I know what the fucking difference is most of the time, you want your melody to feel like a symphony, I want my note to feel like a melody cause we're both wondering how many inches it takes to reach your heart, I want crop circles waking up next to you, your revolving door eyes that never get any my toothpaste back in the tube, you want to be my God and have me as your bible, I want you with telescopes and microscopes and a club and a cave and no viable heat source but me, you want me to accept that you have an abiding, unadulterated crush on Adrian Brody despite the fact that both our mothers are Hungarian, you want to be an Asian girlfriend for a guy whose never had an Asian girl look at him twice, you want to be my fire escape---more architecture than utility---my heart as your personal scrapbook, and Brinny you can still fall in love 10,000 times but it doesn't have to be with 10,000 different girls it can be with me, over and over, like some karma on spin cycle and no tag-backs, and we can be off-key, dirty utensil conversation trying to get at each other, and every soliloquy can be one long stutter, you want nobody keeping score and I want EVERYTHING TO COUNT and why the hell am I inventorying all this shit, oh yeah it's Thanksgiving and that's your dad across the room and is it supposed to be lost on me that he's sorta shy and bold in a fairly demonstratively obvious ode to picking me as your fella and if I get your headlines you can use my fine print as toilet paper cause since I was 19 I could swing a rejection letter with both hands behind my back which I don't mind so much when I'm holding your hand because being with you, long distance or coital, reminds me riding a bike with no hands, excited and cozy, and this whole fucking thing and all those other people stinking in our nostrils don't have to matter so much, nor my book of wet matches, I don't feel like such a pinned insect anymore, my garbage and maladjusted apparatus wasn't flammable until I met you, be my pyromaniac and I'll be your kleptomaniac, we'll get the hang of it, this is a piece of chipped paint off my Davega Bicycle, we can be cigarette butt train wrecks in each others ashtray, you can sign letters in lowercase so I'll imagine you on your knees and try to map out more ways to sweep you off your feet, now you're making me a little nervous for not having wiped this thing's nose, I only told you I could read palms as an excuse to hold your hand, everything else was drinking through a fucking bent straw as soon as I saw you... so do we have a deal?

Eat Him By His Own Light

Some material you come at a little stuffy, so I'll apologize in advance for the seductive baritone and clumsy pauses to wipe my runny nose...

This foamy fog that won't lift, day after day, turns the whole town into a soggy bowl of cereal. At night it turns streetlights into penny flavored snow cones. Turns everybody halfway down the street into a ghost from some Gogol Russian night in Saint Petersburg. I like it at night. Have Chopin in your ears humming homesick about Poland into shivering cold while he's lost or abandoned on some ferry waiting for home to find him. Makes it easy to think about people who play the same notes on your own life. Pretty soon you're walking somewhere else with different versions of yourself and different versions of the people you knew. Maybe back when you fit as friends, even though now you can see and feel the places where you wouldn't fit not too far off, even if it took you a little longer to accept it at the time.

I was thinking about this kid the other day while I was walking alone by the beach late at night. He was someone I used to miss being apart from but don't now. The catch is, when I fall asleep he keeps showing up in my dreams as that version of himself I used to miss. He reminds me how to miss him. Which adds its own brand of fog to my situation. Or maybe he's the same and I'm a different version. He never used to show up in dreams while we were friends.

He's always sad when I see him. Dreams are funny because everybody and everything in them gets exactly what its about except you. By the time it makes sense you wake up.

By the beach I was thinking about when he had a cast over his shattered hand that nobody bothered to sign. I turn back a few pages in his story to where he shattered his hand. I never saw it happen, but I'd heard it. Lots of us did. A whole gym full of people.

He'd had the last shot in a basketball game when he was maybe 14. His father was in the stands watching with a clipboard keeping track of statistics because his son was small and bigger kids played more than him even though he probably had more skill. His father kept track of numbers in order to provide seething evidence of injustice in his boy not playing.

That night his boy was given the last shot with a couple seconds on the clock. I was only a few feet away from the team huddle where the decision was arrived at. I wasn't even good enough to ride the bench. I hadn't made the team at all that year (or any other). Probably not even close. But I saw a couple kids in the huddle protest who ended up gaining the final shot. Down by two points, they needed a three. He was the best pure shooter on the team. I watched his face after the coach told everybody who was getting the ball. I could feel it was one of those moments in his life that might change everything. I remember wondering deep down which one he was more drawn to. Could he *deal* with being a winner. That whole angle on his life. I wasn't sure.

They went into their formations on the court and I saw the ball passed to him. Everything slowed down. The crowd hushed. The guy defending him could feel who the ball was going to. But before he caught it he looked up at the hoop and mishandled receiving the ball. There was still time to get the shot off. In a panic he reached down for it but fumbled it again and the defender grabbed for it and they both fell over. Buzzer rang. Big moan from the crowd. Coach threw up his hands. Game over.

I remember him looking over up into the stands just as I did and seeing the frustration on his father's livid face.

I looked back at the kid, the trauma on his face. For some kind of hideously misplaced refuge, he grabbed his ankle, clutched it in agony just as another boy who had desperately wanted the final shot strutted by smirking, "Broke your ankle, huh?" This particular kid never saw a guy on the ground he didn't want to kick.

Then I think he was crying holding his ankle. Everyone left him alone and headed back to the locker room. The stands emptied. As he got to his feet he tested out the ankle and grimaced. The harder he tried not to cry the worse it got. I watched him limp over to the locker room and not two seconds after he was in there a metallic thud rang out. He'd punched the locker so hard he shattered his hand. Now he'd have a momento over his arm commemorating this awful day. Everybody could ask, "How'd you get *that*?"

I think that's when I started talking to him in the hopes of becoming his friend.

I wasn't a loser's advocate or anything; back then you were an underdog or a whore in my emotional scorecard. Lots of the people who don't become artists by profession do way better jobs of it with their own life. They can't help it. You *have* to be an artist to fuck things up colorfully. *Primary* colorfully. I knew an artist when I saw one. Now nobody could ever look at his life without this Mona Lisa-moment hanging on some wall of his eyes.

Damaged Goods

"So do you love her?"

What throws me is how some of them smile as they frisk you with the question. Maybe because naive people like to pretend they're cynical a lot of the time. That they can peg pretty much every human being as either an underdog or a whore, as if those were the only categories anybody can fall into.

After I put my head down and tongue the inside of my cheek what I'm really doing is trying to work out if damaged-goods-hearts maybe have that same magic vending machine candy has. Candy tastes better when it falls. More flavor. Achieving maximum flavor potential; ask anybody whose tried it.

Thing is, if you fall for somebody sometimes the effect it produces actually deactivates everything the person you fell for feels for you. No tag-backs. Maybe the most rotten bit of luck out there is when the ugliest thing about you is what you look like loving somebody. Other times, it's best thing you got going on. Maybe she's the best thing people like about you.

"What the fuck, Brin? You have to think about it?"

I close my eyes and Union Square pops up on split-screen. I'm fishing out my own "linger yet a while, thou art so fair"-moment with her. Reinfecting myself with the same dread I had fumbling and scrambling around for a ticket I couldn't locate just to get on the subway. She's staring at me through the gate; she's on the other side waiting for me. She walks over to the fence and rattles the bars at me while I go through all my pockets again but I can't find the fucking ticket. She's late for work on Madison Avenue and I'm late for my first day on the job in Brooklyn. It's a mosh pit of morning commute cluster fuck. Please God, give me my fucking ticket. Why have you forsaken me with no damned change in my pocket. Don't you know the kind of fuse this girl has?

"C'mon!" She says. "I can't be late again."

I know that but some asshole bumps into me and nearly knocks me over and when I stand up straight everything slows down and I stop looking for my ticket and stare at her. She's dressed up to work in an office just below Central Park while I'm dressed up to smash reinforced concrete.

This voice, the one Steinbeck I think called the "low voice" starts talking in my head and it's the only thing I can hear:

"Sara, if you leave. If you leave me here---like *this*---this vulnerable, make sure you know we'll never see each other again."

Then I said to her, "Just go. I'll find it. I know you gotta go."

But that "low voice" confiscated Yankee Stadium's PA system and said,

"Look at my face right now, because if you *don't* go and you stay and you help me out of this right now, then I'm with you. And you could be gang raped by the Detroit Pistons in a hot air balloon over the Tour de France and it won't define you and I'll still be with you. Nothing bad you could ever do or anything bad that could befall you (even that colorful previous example I cited) will ever define you after THIS act of kindness right now. It might seem a trivial context or an insignificant gesture---it's not. This is a supreme kindness."

She didn't say or do anything for a few seconds.

Then she came around the gate and helped me find the ticket and then find the train and then kissed me before I headed down the stairs. I turned around and caught her turning around and ever since I've been a human-bullseye for this girl.

* * *

"Are you *in* love with her?"

So I smile and shrug like I always do.

Taxidermy Redeemable Coupons

Lately, for the last few months at least, ten seconds after they---friends, family, strangers, ex's---ask me about her, they ask me the same question: "you in love with her?"

And every time they ask I clam up and put my face down. Even if I'm on the phone with that Cuban girl who had my number in a wrenching way (nasty grip) and she can't see me:

"Brinicio, you don't think I can hear you blush over the phone?"

Harpooned from across the continent.

Sometimes I'd give anything to be misunderstood. I could never understand the people who complain about being misunderstood. What's so bad about it? There've been times I woulda killed someone to have a few misunderstood get-out-of-jail-free cards. Standing on some street corner somewhere with broken glass in all my pockets and staring at a girl. You feel like your punctured little soul has a cast on it that nobody will even bother to vandalize let alone sign.

Any asshole gets me, understands me, knows the score. They always have. They always will. Nobodies ever asked me, "What are you thinking?" They don't have to.

But I'm not used to this role. One reason I liked getting girls to cheat with me was for the satisfaction of turning their partner into my number one, crackerjack publicity firm. Hurt people like to hurt people. Pretty basic concept. Especially when, aside from all the acting out insecure bullshit, there are so many girls out there who make it so tempting.

What are the things you're *not* supposed to do? One of the first is: You shouldn't talk about your ex's. Terrible idea. This is basic common sense. Accepted wisdom. Fairly intuitive to anyone.

Depends.

This is certainly true if your ex-stories are dull, or cliche, or a low-rent invitation for somebody to join a lousy, heartbreakingly predictable narrative. Most people don't appreciate trophy cases or the practice of taxidermy in general.

I went to this career thing the other day (after I dropped out of my own school of thought and decided, aw well, fuck it) and one of the questions they asked our huge group was, with a poster on the wall proclaiming, YOU'RE OFF DRUGS AND SOBER AND WANT TO ENTER THE JOB FORCE, "What is 'time' to you?" Even before the pause was impregnated a guy who put up his hand, he had that bloated, career-polygamist look about him, and he said, "Time is what everybody loses over and over for their entire lives."

Solemn nods of furtive appreciation and agreement.

I'm sure his future 19 wives could appreciate the logic of where he was coming from. Seemed mostly true to me, but not for EVERYBODY.

Artists don't lose time. The good ones get to redeem their garbage like coupons. That's why artists are so annoying.

That might be why I go after women using my ex's as my main weapon and douse it with the gasoline of their history.

When I was five and saw all the kids in kindergarten on the first day I sized everybody up the best I could about who was most powerful. Naturally my eyes gravitated to Amber Murphy, Prettiest Girl (not just in the classroom; in the WORLD). Winnie Cooper for every guy before we knew Winnie Cooper. Next. The biggest, strongest kid. The meanest kid. The funniest kid. The cutest, most charming kid. The future street kid with junk halo glare in his eyes. The sweetest girl. The best guy with put-downs. The richest kid. The smartest (this is a weird category because most really smart people secretly feel the dumbest, which means they're actually the easiest to manipulate emotionally and thus are fairly weak in the power ranking pecking order). The fastest running kid. The puzzling future lesbian girls. The sphinx-like queer boys already getting along with girls from the get-go. The most satisfying victim. The cheerer-ons. The joiners. The loners. The people stuck in roles they don't want to play.

After a week I had everybody lined up. But I'd missed one of them. A glaring omission.

He was a quiet kid, good looking, minded his own business---then it was paint class one day. And at the end of class the entire school STOPPED after he handed in his project. Everybody paid attention. That painting was commended by our principal and used to represent the school hallways along with the 7th grader artists' work, even though Dan Starling was five years old.

Somehow a pulled-out-of-his-ass portrait of an elephant had everybody eating out of the palm of his hands. And by the time it was taken down he didn't even want it. So it was auctioned off and fell into my greedy little hands and I gave it to my mom and she was ASTOUNDED by my artistic achievement and I never ever ever ever told her (there's a fair chance she still has it 24 years later).

* * *

"Do you love her?"

I used to go out of my way to sell this stuff. Because forgers understand authenticity a lot better than authenticity usually does. It's their job to. An honest guy doesn't have much need for understanding a dishonest guy. He can just hire one. Like casinos do hiring reformed crooks to catch active ones. Or banks hiring ex-bank robbers to catch new ones.

"Do you love her?"

Why do we pretend if I said yes or no or maybe you'd understand what I mean?

Or do you already know and asking me and my putting my head down bashfully is really the answer you were looking for the whole time?

"So do you, Brin?"

Out-Of-Tune Madrid Ragtime

I haven't been home for the holidays in a while. Since about 18 I've gone out of my way to duck them as much as possible. Mainly to duck my family. If there aren't any jokes because the truth is always the best joke: I can't really handle the misguided expectation of warmth and it's more awkward than any motivation a white guy finds while he's on a dance floor trying to impress a black girl. Yeah, so borrow, max a credit card, wash and rinse some dinky-ass script in LA for a guy more interested in getting into your pants than making a movie, get on a vineyard for a few months---do whatever---and make enough dough to fuck off where nobody knows you... where after fifty tries they still can't pronounce your name right and wonder why you're so happy about it.

Don't tell anybody and get over to Madrid and stay out all night Christmas Eve until that strange hour when the Chinese step out into the copper street light haze and huddle on hundreds of street corners across town clutching dozens of shopping bags full of to-go food for cheap. Chance being stuck over a toilet for 10 hours and go sight-seeing through the nighttime streets that get started around 3am and the Romanian prostitutes lining the outside fence at the big parks with ponds you can take a girl to and rent a row-boat with. Walk until the Chinese have abandoned the street corners and get off the Gran Via and head down to Puerta del Sol along a path where all the North Africans are waiting for you peddling movies and music and scarves and sunglasses on blankets that if a whistle echoes down a corridor that Policia are approaching are packed up by the hundreds, swept up as quick as dominoes tip over, and two seconds later a thriving black market economy is a ghost echo of footsteps haunting 80 different directions weaved into all the other squeaky Windex scrubbed reflections on storefront windows of urgent men casting hectic glances at their fake designer watches.

Stick with that until a handful of kids break dancing in a troupe grabs your attention doing Michael back when Mike was single-handedly sinking the war on drugs with a moonwalk.

Nurse your hangover or buy something else and get down near that statue of a bear reaching up into the tree who looks just like you going for a first kiss, just as shy and deliberate and off-key pilfering some girl's museum gift shop while she's a little amused that you offered to read her palm because obviously you can't read palms and just wanted an excuse to touch her and give her the cracked-windshield-Brando-brow-action that only worked because its failure was kinda sweet. Spend Christmas morning on bench with a coffee and paper bagged cheap cognac and a few of those faintly sweet tasting Fortuna cigarettes and give Don Quixote another half-assed try in Spanish until a tourist bus rolls in and the Gypsies move in like a kicked over ant nest and set up their coordinated strikes. Discern which nationality and why affords the most pleasure in being robbed?

Continue this practice after having been rolled your first week over there by a smooth Arab pair. You shoulda seen the girl with him. I couldn't take my eyes off her while he's going on about my jeans. "Where in the fuck do you FIND a pair of jeans like that, man? You're Italian?" I just kept nodding to his girlfriend while the guy reached over and admired my belt, followed by my pockets. Was this how all Arabs demonstrated their admiration for the craftsmanship of Italian tailored jeans?

Possibly.

So you head over to the little casinos surrounded by the upper crust Romanian prostitutes, not so done-up but noticeably more blond because a lot of the older Middle Eastern businessmen like them that way. You've figured out a trick at the casinos with this standard machine they offer---a frightening one when you apply it's message to anybody who emotionally fits the bill---where a rake is pushing coins off a cliff and you have to throw in more coins hoping it knocks some off. That brings in about 20-25 Euros first thing in the morning since drunks don't play attention to odds at night and they don't recalibrate the machines.

And then Christmas night or New Years get back to Sol, ground zero of the city, and watch the drunken maniacs try to climb up onto Alphonso and grab the king's huge shnoz while everybody cheers.

I guess the main trouble with being at home around Christmas is that one of the saddest Christmas stories I know is about a couple little kids living in the projects in a thimble-sized apartment with their on-welfare-single-mom, who woke up Christmas morning only to find their apartment had been burglarized and all the presents under the tree stolen and their mom had to account for it. These little kids were my big brothers before I was born, before my dad met my mom and her kids and stepped in.

So whatever grievances one might have directed toward *this* particular holiday go well beyond small potatoes given the participants involved.

This was the first Christmas I didn't have that nagging itch to take off. Somebody swiped it from me and I'm inclined to believe the culprit left on a plane for Manhattan but is rumored to be returning in the near future. But even with the snow around, it wasn't a good idea to bring it up and engage in some sorta pissing contest with that Norman Rockwell from Hell scene.