Tin & Spit

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Monday, January 22, 2007

Stick Figure Blues


Stick Figure Blues

by Sam Ford



When I was in my mid-20’s my dreams began to overtake me. Usually I’d wake with the sun, the residue of some overwhelming nightmare or fantasy still clinging to my guts and my heart and my head and my sheets. I would ease myself to the edge of the bed, sit there, stare at the wall, try to be as awake as possible. Forget whatever I’d slept. It rarely worked.

I believe this surge of heavy dreaming was due to two things.

1: The only girl I’d ever gotten close to was gone.

She was from Maine. Gentle. Romantic. Strong. We built it down.

She’d said “I love you” more than I had. But there wasn’t any doubt inside a’ me that she was the truest thing I’d ever known. In my bed and beyond.

I was terrified when I was with her. It was real. Her voice and her care and her legs and her tongue and her willingness and her questions and her and her and her. Country songs. Omelets. Loose change. Winter. If only I could’ve accepted myself the way she accepted me.

I was wont to ramble every now and then. A fly I couldn’t swat. And it took me away from her over and over again. And I was wont to take a drink every now and then. And now and then became often and often became always. She’d saddle-up beside me and work the whiskey out a bit, but finally my darkness, true or false, got the best of both of us. I slurred out my affections. She held me in her arms and kept her head turned away. I worked on her. Poured my sloppiest sonnets on her doorstep. Dared her to turn me back. To say “no.” To not say anything. Again and again she gave in. Until she didn’t.

And the streets got slower. And I got sober. And I left town a few times and came back and asked about her and got half-answers. And I missed her friendship. That’s how I knew I coulda’ run with her for that forever kinda’ stretch.

And goddamn, I started to dream it out like a flamethrower.

2: I embarked on a self-prescribed hermitage. Pure, practical isolation. Not alone in the I’m-gonna’-spend-some-time-alone fashion, but the genuine, alone-in-the-valley-living-on-nothing-but-black-tobacco-and-apples kinda’ ride.

I would walk along the river, staring almost desperately at the lights of town till they brightened beyond the buildings and looked like stars beneath the sky.

I would stare at people for hours at a time till I had created an entire relationship with them. Some of them I even took home and preached to, cooked for, fucked.

I would pass by taverns, the drunken barks and bellows echoing from within their doors, grit my teeth and say things like, “in the morning it won’t”, and “it ain’t helpin’ the way it’s hurtin’.”

Every animal I came in contact with – dogs, cats, birds, mice, deer – became my savior. I asked their advice and sometimes they offered it up for free.

I talked to myself in a language I couldn’t understand. Eventually I taught myself how to speak English to myself, and started conversing about things like drug trafficking, baseball, American automobiles from the year 1958, and leather craftsmanship.

Whenever I had to purchase items such as toilet paper or cereal, I would speak to the clerk as though we’d known each other for years and years. My town was too big for this ever to be the case. The clerk would either find humor in my unabashed attempts at camaraderie, or ignore me altogether. Often the latter, and I would walk out of the store saying, “see ya’ later, John”, with a big dumb grin on my face.

I quit smoking and lost weight.

I listened to talk radio and laughed and laughed.

I read as many cheap western novels as I could and often jerked-off to them.

I cracked open maps of nearby towns, shut my bloody browns, and threw a finger down. Wherever it landed I drove. Often times I ended up in places without industry or entertainment. The bars closed at midnight. The women were tired and heavyset and wise. They had given up men and gotten into wine. Or vodka. Their smoker’s coughs were like screams. They offered very little advice and giggled often. The bartenders were waiting to turn a hundred years-old and still be bartending. The men were God’s forgotten Adams. They watched sports without cheering. Almost all of them had some sorta’ facial hair. To say they appeared angry would be inaccurate, as it would seem to imply that something had happened to them.

I missed my girl. Actively. I missed her ‘cause once I could’ve actually called her my girl. I thought of her body, her bumps, her bends. She was, or had been tall – a long torso, grace in her most basic motions. I missed her with a smile on my face. The worst kind of missing.

I dreamt like an ocean.


***

Almost every night as I slept, my hands would start to wander across my body or my face. My fingertips touched my skin as if they belonged to another set of fingers. I would be sound asleep, possibly dreaming, but these movements would come from the outside, as if my unyielding necessity for some kind of physical contact was being drawn up by my own heart and manifesting in these touches and strokes. They were never sexual, not once did I come or even get hard on them. They were replacements for something that was emphatically missing. They were the obscure price I was paying for my seclusion. As comforting as they may have been within the moment, they were ultimately surreal, and eventually disconcerting. I could cook and drive and think for myself. I could build a fire in the woods. I could load and shoot a gun in multiple calibers. I could work or learn just about any job that didn’t require math or chemistry. But the idea of providing some sort of bodily, intimate, feminine comfort for myself struck me as borderline insane. I was holding myself in my own arms. Tracing my cheeks and forehead with my own index and middle fingers. Doing shit that girls had once done better and with a more natural inclination. My hands were callused. My face often jagged with stubble. I wasn’t lonely. I was alone and then alone again.

***

Had me a dream. Took place in a meadow. I was sitting against a tree filling a marble notebook with big nothings and little almosts. Doodling words. Writing pictures. Figuring out the figuring.

Out of nowhere a kid, maybe nine or so, approaches. I look up at him and he spits on my notebook. His saliva runs down the page like a tear, streaking the ink, ruining whatever sad spell I was conjuring. My rage takes over. I can feel my father’s heart beating in my chest.

The kid starts to run away from me. Full speed. The lion’s going after the gazelle and you can almost hear a British voice over the whole thing: “the gentle creature has provoked the melancholy beast with his spittle, and now he must face the chase. Most likely it will end cruelly.”

I’m after him after him. As dreams’ll do ya’, we find ourselves in the hallway of a mental institution. He’s running with a destination in mind. He’s barefoot, I’m in a pair of goddamn Justin’s. The sound of our run is muffled by grey carpeting. There is very little light. Is this a fuckin’ hallway dream, captain? Is that all it is? ‘Cause I’ve had those, y’know?

Eventually he wheels around a corner and makes it to a room. I’m assuming it’s his room. He doesn’t shut the door on me. Instead he takes a seat on his bed. I stop in the doorway, staring him down, smoke coming out of my nostrils. He retrieves a shoebox from underneath the bed-frame. He pulls out its contents. Large pieces of paper are adorned with vivid, bombed-out graffiti pieces done in colored permanent markers. The tag is “Sohn.” He holds one up so I can see it. He isn’t out of breath like I am. He doesn’t say a thing. I examine the design on the paper. The “S” is bold, vast with dimension, filled in with reds and yellows; a flaming letter. The “O” is like a bottomless pit, it’s inner circle pushed in as opposed to popping out. The “H” is similar to the “S”, like a phoenix in color and height. The “N” is classically drawn, an arrow built at the tail end of it pointing to nothing but blank paper.

The kid looks at me, still holding his art up. No pride on his face. Almost concern. I hock a good one and send it flying against the page. An eye for an eye, you little fucker. Somewhere in there I tell myself to dream it with all the vengeance I can muster. I want my loogey to set his drawing ablaze. I want him to scream with fear and sadness. I want him to cry out: “I’ll never get it back.”

Instead he puts the paper down, stands up, walks to me, puts his arms around me. I let my hand fall against the top of his head and stroke his hair.

“What’s your name?” I ask him.

“Jason,” he says.

“That’s where you get ‘Sohn’ from?” I ask.

“You’re a stick figure,” he says.

Of course that’s when I wake up. I’ve got spit on my face. Ink on my hands. Ink on the sheets. I wipe off the spit. Now there’s ink on my face.

It’s noon and I’m pretty sure it’s the weekend. I think about going to a diner and ordering eggs and french toast and potatoes and water. Instead I just lay there listening to the pipes crawl like a creek.

***

My random map-finger took me on a long drive out to western New Jersey, about 35 miles east of Pennsylvania. The town was called Somethingsburg and it had a big supermarket and a set of railroad tracks and a church or two. I got a motel room at an extended-stay trailer court where some paid by the hour, some by the night, some by the week, and some by the life.

The room was made mostly of laminated wood. The carpet was brown-orange with flecks of dirty yellow. The stains were numerous and difficult to name. I started with Shit, Cum, Vomit, Beer, and Giving Up. It was a non-smoking room and it reeked of stale cigarettes. The furniture was falling apart. The bedspread was of a violet and ivory floral pattern, complete with burn-marks and stains of its own. I bypassed naming those and instead, stripped the covering off the bed and threw it in the corner of the room where it remained for the duration of my stay, useless as a politician.

I had a small duffel bag filled with miscellaneous items. I removed a few of them.

For starters, a framed picture of Amelia Earhart sans plane or goggles, simply standing in front of a set of domestic curtains, her right hand placed delicately on an end table near an empty vase. An organic strength in her eyes. Nothing affected. Her face smooth, her hair cropped. An anywoman. I needed her humanity, not her accomplishments.

Next, a generic model M9 Bayonet. I planned on carving my initials and the initials of a fictitious lover into the wall. Perhaps surround them with the outline of a heart.

Two cans of Bumble Bee solid white albacore in water. And a can opener and a plastic fork.

A small cassette player with a Louvin Brothers tape inside, queued to “I Wish It Had Been A Dream”.

The book, Ohio and Its People by George W. Knepper.

A navy blue hooded sweatshirt with a zipper (in case it got cold).

I went over to the bedside table and opened its only drawer. A thin Yellow Pages gazed up at me as though I’d woke it up. I removed it from the drawer and rifled through it. This was routine. I happened on some local businesses:

Captain Hook’s Fishing and Tackle Supplies

Allia’s Beauty Shoppe

The Golden Pig Authentic Bar-B-Que and Grill

Vinny’s Italian American Pizzeria

Wallace Bros. New and Used Guns

O’ Hanlon’s Irish Pub


I laid the book on the bed and let my imagination out of its kennel. A sturdy set of knocks shot the stray dog down.

I got up, heart beating fast, opened the door hoping for her to understand everything and not let me say too much. She turned out to be the manager of the motel who I had rented the room from earlier. He had a shiny comb-over, was dressed in ill-fitting pleated slacks, and smelled like fish sticks. I guessed him to be of middle-eastern descent, but given the times, I dared not attempt to presume what terrorist ridden province.

“Hello, my friend,” he said, a grin stretching across his lips that would’ve made the Cheshire Cat quit.

“Hello, friend,” I said, liking the immediacy of it.

“Is the room to your acceptance?”

“Surely is,” I responded. “Thanks for asking.”

“And will there be company later?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?”

I was smiling and he was smiling. He knew what he was talking about and I tried not to know what he was talking about.

“Will anyone be joining you tonight?” he rephrased. His shoelaces were untied and pieces of his chest hair were grey.

“It’s doubtful,” I said. “I am incredibly shy yet prone to violent fits of social awkwardness.”

“Because if you are interested, there is a phone number I can call and send over a young woman if you are interested.”

“Will she put up with me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he chuckled, “she will do more than that.”

“Are you selling her directly or will she be imported?” I inquired. My hands were dry and cracked. I could feel the rawness without even moving them. I recalled how my once-gal would take some of her good moisturizing lotion, rub it into my paws, kiss me and be with me. Her eyes were the color of northwestern mountains.

“I am not sure I understand the question,” he said, genuine confusion arched across his brow. “But she will be lovely I promise.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said. “Give me a couple more months. I’ll call the front desk if it gets that low down.”

“Well yes let me know. I will be leaving at ten o’clock, but my sister will be at the desk and you can let her know as well.”

“Is there a place to get a glass of whiskey around here?” I asked.

“Yes. There is the sports bar across the highway about half a mile. It is called “Good Times Sports Bar.”

“Have you been there?” I asked.

“Yes sir. Many times.”

“Have you consistently had a good time?”

“Yes. Sometimes I order the buffalo wings.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He waddled off disappointedly, scratching the side of his ass and looking in the windows of the other rooms as he passed them.

***

I had a dream I was inundated with homework. High school homework – trigonometry. ancient Greek literature, algebra, the periodic table, Spanish, fit-in-or-be-fucked, SAT Prep, geometry, what?!-you’re-still-a-virgin?!, and pre-calculus. I couldn’t get it done. I simply didn’t understand a lick of it, and it was all due tomorrow. This was a general nightmare, a dream fraught with mood, built on an impending sense of anxiety rather than a hit-the-couch-with-Sigmund’s-disciple sorta’ dance.

I arrived at my high school with no completed homework. A stranger. All my old teachers had given up and were gone. All my old classmates had gotten old (like me) and were gone. And probably dreaming less than me. Some of them probably made a salary. Some probably even had 401k’s and shit. Maybe a wife or a husband or a ring to pave the way. But that was all inference. And there ain’t no time for inference until you wake.

I walked through the halls. The same metal lockers painted sloppy white. The same marble floors tiled with hexagons, scuffed with Nike’s and Timberland’s. The same old scent of restlessness and deodorant and pressure and extra-curricular sex.

A bell rang and kids came pouring out of classrooms. I tried real hard to know them. Force some sort of familiarity on them. To explain myself, to be one of them. But despite being an alumnus (and one who made quite an impact as an athlete and a drug user in my four years there), I was all but forgotten and barely remembered. My heart wouldn’t give in. It was intentional that I be left out in a place that I lived in so deeply and during such formative years. My isolationism was infecting the freedom of my dreams. No longer could I seek solace in that wide open highway of sleep. I didn’t touch myself that night. When I woke up I couldn’t tell whether the drops on my face were sweat or tears.

***

Good Times Sports Bar was empty except for three men at a table eating cheeseburgers, pulled pork sandwiches, and fried chicken with waffle fries. There was also a man at the hardwood drinking pints of Miller High Life. And there was a woman, 40’s, in the corner smoking a neverending Marlboro Light and drinking whiskey sours. Her curly hair was crunchy with some sorta’ chemical and her sagging breasts hid beneath her tank-top like two frowns.

The bartender was staring out the window. His black rugby had “Good Times Sports Bar” embroidered in neon pink on the chest. Straight light brown hair that was thinning in the front. Hairy arms with a large metal watch strapped across his wrist like a tank in a wheat field. His cellular phone was buckled to his belt, held by one of those plastic holsters. When he moved behind the bar it was like the phone was a six-shooter and he was the sheriff. His hands were always slightly removed from his waist as though he were gonna’ draw down with his Motorola. He seemed to have a bit of a cold as he would let in a thunderous sniff every now and then, sometimes accompanied by a sneeze that could potentially kill a small child if the child wasn’t ready for it.

I ordered a Wild Turkey neat with a Pabst back. They didn’t have PBR. I settled for Budweiser. He cracked the Bud first and put it before me. I thanked him and then realized I should’ve waited till both my libations were in front of me before I did so. He placed the bourbon beside the bottle of beer. I thanked him again. It occurred to me just how displaced I was, thanking a man twice in the span of four seconds for doing his job and hardly giving a shit about it. I put a $10 on the bar. He walked away without picking it up, moved to the end of the bar, pulled his cell-phone from its coffin, flipped it open and muttered “fuckin’ whore”, before easing it back into his belt. He sniffled and yawned. One of the men at the table laughed and I could hear his mouth stuffed with meat as he did so. A hand slapped the table. And more laughter. And the food embedded within it.

I took a glance down at the curly woman. She seemed to be crying but there was a smile plastered on her face. She was talking to herself. Dialoguing. I wondered if I’d found a potential kinsman. Just as I was contemplating saddling on up next to her and trying to put a little conversation to it, she looked me dead in the eye and shook her head. I was taken aback and turned away, only to turn back almost immediately. She was still looking at me, still shaking that head. Her eyelids were blue and purple with make-up, as though someone had kicked the tar out of her while she was sleeping.

“No,” she said from across the bar. “No no no no no. No.”

The men from the table stopped eating. I could hear their chairs scrape across the linoleum as they shifted their positions. The Miller High Life man got up and walked toward the bathroom. The bartender ignored her.

“No,” she continued. “No you can’t. No.”

I wanted to say something in response, but the best I could come up with was something along the line of, “okay” or “I heard you the first time.” My silver tongue had turned tongue colored. Perhaps I needed more liquor to jump into it. It'd always worked in the past. I brought the rocks glass to my lips. I was gonna’ send the brown down like piss through a pipe. Then I’d lumber my ass over to her with my beer bottle and put a pinch to her “no’s.” I’d say something like, “try changin’ them negatives to positives and see where yer evenin’ takes ya’.” She’d probably laugh and tell me I was “cute.” Tell me about her recent split with her boyfriend and how that was connected to her relationship with her father. Not tell me about her kids or her recent tubal ligation. Tell me I’m “easy to talk to.” Lead me out of there. Get to her two bedroom, one story house with the fifteen year-old vinyl siding. Pour two stiff ones from the at-home bottle. Cry a bit. Laugh at the tears. Take me into her room. Tell me she “can teach me a lot (if I wanna’ learn)”. Throw-up. Pass out with her head against the bathtub, all those curls she probably at one time spent months of her life trying to straighten, hanging from her scalp like limp bedsprings.

I put the bourbon on the bar without taking a sip. I wondered if I knew anyone anymore. If I could call some old friends and see how they were without having to explain where I had been or what I was up to. I wondered how or if they’d receive me. If they’d moved on. Not with their lives but with their own sense of being alone. If they didn’t need me. I thought of my old gal again. I put her name in my chest and let my heart beat it out through my brain. I was saying her name over and over again in my mind. I looked around to see if the place had a payphone, knowing that if I were to call her on my cell-phone she wouldn’t answer it. The Miller High Life man emerged from the bathroom with his fly unzipped. He lit a Winston before he sat back down at the bar.

I looked to the bartender. He was reading Soldier Of Fortune magazine as though there were gonna’ be a quiz on it.

“Excuse me,” I said. I had the voice of a seven year-old girl.

The bartender looked up, clearly incensed that I had interrupted his studies. I waited for him to approach, and once it became evident that I was gonna’ do just that, he approached. He was well-muscled but not big. I wondered if he was in the gym four days a week or did it all in his garage with Motley Crue playing in the background.

When he arrived I hoped he’d offer a “whaddaya’ want?” or at least a “yeh?” but he was quiet still. I suddenly wanted to fight him. I wanted to take him outside and let him be what he wanted to be. Everybody should get to be what they wanna’ be. At least for a few hours.

“Do ya’ll have a payphone?” I asked. I had the voice of a fourteen year-old boy.

“In the back,” he said. His lisp overwhelmed me. I looked up at him again for the first time. He winked at me and it all came together. His previous silences had been flirtatious not embittered. I figured him for the gym. He looked down at the untouched beer and the almost flushed bourbon.

“Not thirsty after all?” he asked with an even smile. His teeth were surprisingly white. I found myself embarrassed by them.

I didn’t want to entreat him any further but my misjudgment of him made me upset at myself.

“The wagon won’t leave without me,” I said, wondering if he’d get it, wondering if I got it.

He didn’t get it but he smiled again anyway.

“Is ten enough?” I asked.

He was taken aback briefly, smiled and then leaned in. I gestured toward the money on the bar. He realized something, gathered himself, turned red for a moment, and then nodded. I wanted to ask him how bad his loneliness got. I smiled at him instead.

As I left the Good Times Sports Bar I realized there wasn’t a single TV in the place.

***

It got to the point where I couldn’t tell what I’d dreamt and what I’d lived. There were subtleties and rhythms in the dreams which became doppelgangers in my reality. If I dreamt I’d written a letter to lord knows who, I’d wait by the mailbox for a reply. When it didn’t arrive, I plunged myself further into solitude. If I dreamt a family member or an old friend or a hero died, I spent the next few days in mourning. If I had me a sex-dream, I spent the next few days trying to justify it to myself and figure out how to tell the girl I couldn’t stretch the act out into a promise. My heart was just too Patsy Clined for it.

The dreams of my Maine darlin’ were so visceral I became presumptuous. I would have one, wake up, shake like a kitten in the cold, wait a few hours, and call her, assuming she understood why. Assuming she’d dreamt it too, or some variation of it.

My sleep would take me to the street and there she’d be, her long hair dancing in the wind like a palomino at full stride. I’d chase after her, catch up to her, reach out for her arm. And instead of some kaleidoscopic, fantastical dreamy dream dream moment, she’d simply turn, square off my eyes and say, “it’s over.” Or “I’ve moved on.” Or “I’ve found another.” And then I’d attack the dream till it allowed me to have pecan pie with her, kiss her, or just take a fuckin’ walk with her. Even though her words were carved into my guts like an awl through scrap wood. I dreamt despite them. I wanted to be simple with her. An unabashed dismissal of our reality, and yet a desperate need just to know her again. The morning or the afternoon or whenever I got to waking was the reconciliation of both.

I never spoke to her directly on the phone. I tried to believe the sound of her voice telling me to leave a message was personal, as though she were telling me she’d catch up with me later at one of our old haunts or moments.

I would talk into the air, my words half rehearsed, half impromptu, all hopeful, and all futile. I couldn’t paint the source of my impulse for her. “I had a dream about you” was too highfalutin and finally pathetic. “I miss you” wasn’t the half of it. “Can I see you?” was a question. And “marry me” was an excuse. However it came out, my heart was so honest, the words sounded like a lie. I couldn’t build the bridge in time. It was around this period I realized that telephones were responsible for much of the angst, depression, and misunderstanding in people’s lives. And one should never underestimate an open pair of eyes, focused and listening.

I wondered if reverting back to concentrated, professional drinking would put the dreams to sleep. I decided to test the waters by getting absolutely shit-faced in my dreams. I always woke-up hungover and couldn’t even reflect on some sort of interesting social experience or encounter to justify it. I became a teetotaler even as I slept. I ignored Merle Haggard and gave most of the old Bukowski’s away to younger men I’d pass in the street. They’d look up at me as though I were some sorta’ Jesus-freak trying to spread the word. In a way I was. But I had been baptized, read the Bible cover to cover, been Sunday schooled seven days a week, confessed my sins only to be asked what I was doing later, believed and disbelieved and believed again, and eventually converted to Agnosticism.

My dreamlife was like being in a relationship with a quiet, somewhat disturbed woman. I never knew quite what she was thinking or what she was gonna’ do. But for some reason she always came back and I seemed to learn something new.

***

I left the door to my motel room open. The air was muggy and thick. I could hear a dog barking in the distance and wondered if dogs lost their voices. A single yellow light hung down along the highway, splashing a dark yellow beam against the edge of the parking lot. There was a phonebooth about ten feet from it. Domestic cars whipped by with their dings and rusted panels. Occasionally the low hum of a suped-up stereo would cut through the night and eventually fade away. Was the volume for the driver or the world he drove by?

I was eating tunafish. I considered turning on the TV but that proposition meant I might watch it, and watching it would most likely drive me to do something violent to myself. Television had once been an I.V., borderline necessary. It was a family member who always obliged. Never asked what I was up to or how I was doing. It had cured my chicken pox. Introduced me to a lot of women. But now it was a cruel reminder. A used heroin needle. It was full of bad news. I stared at it for a moment. It was black with soft plastic buttons in the front like horizontal nipples. The screen was dead and grey. One of the buttons was scarlet red and beneath it was the word “power”. No shit, I thought.

I stepped out in front of my room. My neighbor was out there smoking. He had on a big, dirty white t-shirt, shorts and sandals. His wavy brown hair fell atop his shoulders. His face had small cuts or busted zits in various places and he was tall but damn thin. He turned to look at me and his eyes lit up in the darkness.

“Hey man,” he said. He approached with his hand extended. I shook it and could feel the perspiration. It was like pushing my arm into a marsh. “You wanna’ cigarette?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “I quit.”

“You wanna’ drink, man? I got some Jack in the room.” His teeth were worm colored. I was dwarfed by the earnestness in his smile. “My name’s Greg.”

I told Greg my name and watched him walk into his room. His door was open as well. But his TV was on. I could hear David Letterman’s laugh from where I stood. He ducked his head out.

“C’mon in, man. Have a drink with me, man.”

I walked into the room leaving the door open behind me. There were clothes all over the floor. Empty beer bottles. A bag of crystal meth on one of the dressers. An open Domino’s pizza box with a few slices still in it, one of them half-eaten. Greg found his Jack bottle and poured it in two plastic cups. He handed me one and raised his in a toast.

“Fuckin’ A,” he said, and shot his down.

I was caught in a fucked-up state of love-thy-neighbor. I looked at the cup, swirled the booze around in it. There’d been a time when I could’ve put away an entire bottle of the stuff and still recited Shakespeare. But there in Greg’s room with the TV on and the paraphernalia of his pain scattered everywhere, I didn’t feel much like going where even one taste would take me. So I put the cup down and looked at him. He appeared offended.

“You don’t drink, man?”

“I’m good, man,” I said.

“Whatever, man. Sucks to drink alone but…You a faggot or something?” He moved toward me and my fists clinched. He picked up my drink, tilted it back, drank it down. He squeezed the empty cup till it popped and broke. He tossed it away and lit a cigarette.

“Where’re you from?” I asked.

“Indiana,” he said. He sat on his bed and watched TV, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Back in my room I shut and locked the door. I could hear Greg’s TV through the wall. I opened my second can of Bumble Bee and went at it. Amelia stared at me from the nightstand. I set myself up to dream of her that night. I wanted to have a milkshake with her and ask her about Atchison. Whenever I made preparations to dream about something before I was asleep, it rarely worked out. But since these were such deep dreaming days, I figured I’d keep investigating the anatomy until I’d reached some normalcy with the whole thing. The extremity would level off. I’d acclimate. Maybe I’d even start hanging out with people. Spending time. Creating memories that didn’t have to be dreamt.

Midnight turned to early morning. I made up a scene with myself in which I was a meth dealer being interrogated by the Indiana State Highway Patrol.

ME: Who’re your contacts?

ME: Go fuck yerself, statey.

ME: You brewing this shit at home?

ME: I would, but yer wife won’t give me a moment’s peace.

ME: You’re a cocky lil’ bastard, ain’t ya’. Just wait til the FEDS get here, partner. Yer pants’ll need changing real fast.

I read a little bit about Ohio and its people. Ohio. From the Iroquois word meaning, “good river.” Home of Paul Newman, Pete Rose, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Lillian Gish.

I was dead dog lonesome. I could feel a whole world outside my door in which most were just trying to make it and some were already spending it.

Eventually I fell asleep and wrote this.






Brooklyn, NY (1/22/07)