Not even when I’ve been throwing clay pots

I think of myself as the kind of guy who’d get visited by ghosts. What I mean to say is that I don’t disbelieve in their existence, and really, I’m a nice, sensitive young man. I have spiritual beliefs that go beyond the corporeal. I’m easily freaked out by scary movies. I’d visit me if I were a ghost.

But they don’t visit me. Well, I take that back. In high school I consulted a ouija board with a couple of friends, and someone on the other side singled me out to tell me that he visited me and watched me.

“When?” I asked.

“At night”, he said.

Obviously that little statement stuck with me for a long time, throwing a little monkey wrench into my masturbation routine. “Are you watching me now?” I’d whisper. Just kidding. I didn’t say that.

I wish my mom would visit me sometimes. I find myself taking it personally that she doesn’t, like there’s something I’m not doing; something I’m forgetting. Maybe if I built a little shrine with her old photos and her rosary and some candles. Wait, I did that. Maybe if I spent more time with the lights out. Or praying in church. Or sitting by the ocean or something. Maybe she’s safely settled on the other side, eating key lime pie. Maybe it’s an exhausting journey. Maybe she’s dating Karen Silkwood.

Maybe I talk too much.

I Wanna Give You Devotion

Saturday night Bearbait called me to let me know that my long-term barber, Paul, had died suddenly of a heart attack. Paul, I’m guessing, was in his forties.

Five years ago Paul was the first barber to cut my hair after I moved to San Francisco. He worked then out of a barbershop on Castro Street. Louie’s was a relic of the older Castro, a neighborhood slowly displaced, like every other city on this planet, by Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and Pottery Barn. The kind of barbershop that didn’t take appointments; Saturday afternoons were packed; six barbers in six chairs and a row of seats facing opposite, cluttered with auto magazines, newspapers, and Playboys, which never ceased to amuse me, as nobody in the place was straight.

You’d walk in and if you were new like me, you’d simply take your chances with whatever barber opened up first. Looking back, I was very lucky to get Paul. Though he was Russian and sometimes spoke in an indecipherable accent, he was a damn good barber, and he drew a devoted following. He gave me the best haircut I had ever had for $18, and I was hooked.

Because he had a loyal following, and because the shop took no appointments, I’d often have to wait an hour or more for him to open up, while the barbers on either side of him sat in their own chairs, flipping through the newspaper, waiting for clients. Saying I was devoted to him is an understatement. I would structure my days around my haircuts, taking the bus in the middle of a workday when I knew he’d be free.

He cut my hair for five years, and we’d talk about dogs or my mother, who was sick for over two of those years. He had lost his mother when he was my age, and always asked about her. I stuck with him through my break-up and my moving out and my getting sober. When money was tight he’d firmly decline my tips.

Recently we had many conversations about happiness and depression. I could sense in him a familiar pain, and I had my suspicions that some of his unhappiness was due to drugs. His face became more drawn and his moods were often dark. I told him about my experience with anti-depressants, gently suggesting that he might find some relief through them, though he seemed intent on “fixing” it himself.

In January he opened his own shop down the street in a cute little studio with hardwood floors and an abundance of natural light. I followed him there, naturally. I’d sit with my coffee and pet his large fluffy dog while I waited for my much-appreciated appointment.

On Saturday I had wanted to go in, but ended up looking at an apartment for rent instead. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway, because by then he was already dead.

I wonder, of course, if the heart attack was a result of drugs. And it’s a useless torture imagining that I could have somehow saved him from that, that through my experience with speed I could have drawn a door out of nothing through which he could slip and escape the approaching end. It doesn’t work like that. We’re only ready when we’re ready, not when others want to rescue us.

Yeah, but can he type?

Today my (straight female) co-workers referred to me as “eye-candy”.

My work here is done.

Going Back

When I moved home, I got a little studio apartment near her house and never called any of my old friends. I wanted something monastic; I threw the mattress on the floor and hung a string of Christmas lights from the ceiling. A single pot of Cyclamen on the windowsill. In lieu of TV, in lieu of a computer, a CD player sat on the card table in the corner, tuned to NPR. Human voices murmuring under everything; companions for the lonely nights.

I’d drive her across the river twice a week for her volunteer shift. When I dropped her off I’d watch as gradually, over time, her pace to the front door slowed; it became harder to push open the door, to lift her foot for the first step, to lean forward and push her weight against the door, to pull herself around the corner and disappear from view. She went from writing reports, analyzing data, coordinating 5k races for women’s health funds, to folding brochures, to stuffing envelopes, and then even that stopped when her fingers quit working.

From here I still think I can save her from all that; I’ll pick her up in my arms and run from the approaching storm. I see her open that door and before she disappears I’ll go to her and follow her and never let her out of my sight. Fuck you. Pick on somebody else. My vision blurs, anger tilts the world on it side. Don’t you know, it’s stupid to mess with me. You’ll have to kill me, too.

///

I couldn’t breathe. I needed it to breathe.

Each morning I quit. I’d wake early and listen to the murmuring voices as I stretched. I’d pin the housekey inside my shorts and start running at the green light. Two miles, then three, then five. Around the lakes, skirting geese and baby strollers and speed walkers. My legs grew sturdy and I ran like a machine; you could set your watch by my pace.

How did each morning yield such disappointment? My lungs cleared and I was strong. But each day I’d sit at that card table and think about it and not think about it. Four stores within a block. My breath grew shallow and I held on, held it tight till I broke and gave in. I’d pick a store and walk with shame and sick thrill into the fluorescence and buy one bottle, just one. I’ll stop tomorrow. I will.

Sweat

Oh, he just so totally shined me on.
Fickle creature, he’s a gypsy, he’s rhiannon, spinning around the lamp-lit room in a shawl, cruel temptress.

It’s all good, like the kids say. He never came close to my real long distance internet boyfriend. Sure, I’ve never seen a picture of him, either. Sure, jocko doesn’t yet know he’s in love with me. But mark my words, it’s a sure thing. We’ve got that whole midwestern integrity fucked up with art-ness about us. We’ll shop Target together and roam the dizzy-colored aisles as he tries to explain to me why Warhol was so great. I’ll nod and pull box after box of Tide detergent into our flourescent-colored shopping cart, humming Bjork under my breath. Or maybe “Adult Books.” Just you wait.

///

I follow him for a half-block as he emerges from the gym onto Market Street, his sleeveless shirt damp with sweat. He swings a bag over his shoulder and checks his voicemail, and at the light I kick him in the butt and he swings around, bright eyes widening, pale colored over a dark-stubbled face. Shit, motherfucker, I want to say, why do you look so good? He wraps his arms around me for a moment and I lean in to kiss his sweaty neck. Says he feels better already, seeing me. At the intersection I step into the street and for a moment we’re the same height, and when we look at each other I’m reminded of a book I read, many years ago, about a woman having an affair. When she first meets the man she experiences a jolt of sexual recognition; they’re the same height, and when they look at each other it’s the same view as it would be in bed, lying together, looking into each other’s eyes. He scans my face, looks at my eyes and what else? my mouth? What are you looking at, I want to ask. Instead I let him go, I leave, …I walk away like a movie star, who gets burned in a three-way script

Viva La Codepencia

Dogpoet is a grumpy old man, and when he refers to himself in the third person, you know it’s serious. He hasn’t been writing, he hasn’t been sleeping, he hasn’t been having fun. Grrrrrrr.

This translates into free-floating anger, usually targeted at the wrong audience. Well-meaning friends and co-workers, for example. In other words, the very people he needs to get through his Days of Thunder.

I’d love to present you with something a little more creative than this, but fuck it.

It occurred to me (again) last night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, while on the other side of the thin pocket doors my roommate watched TV in the living room and laughed, as every overhead light in the room burned brightly, stealing under and through the cracks between door and floor, that I have a little problem with boundaries. Meaning, I tend to let people walk all over me in their dirty cleats while I burn with self-righteous indignity and curse their names, and expect them to read my mind. This happens at work, too. I have one of those jobs whose description ends with “…and other duties as assigned”, meaning I do a little of everything, usually the stuff no one else wants to do. Like fixing the copier or attending a never-ending succession of weekly “Safety Committee” meetings. Who the hell wants to be on the Safety Committee? Not me, mister. I want to be on the Uncalculated Risk Committee.

Don’t get me wrong, I get plenty of praise. I’m revered as a sort of Administrative Deity, able to produce efficient and superior products in record-breaking time. But praise has its limits. And I can hardly demand that they put their money where their mouth is, working for a non-profit in a struggling economy. And the perks are hard to beat. Louie under my desk, flexible scheduling, Internet access.

In my social life my weak boundaries have been taking their toll, too. Recently my AA sponsor celebrated five years of sobriety, and there were lots of hints from all sorts of people that he wanted a party thrown for him. Since he has four other sponsees and numerous friends, and since I’ve said here before that I’m not particularly gifted in event planning, I figured I’d help out in whatever way I could. Well, the days ticked by and the hints became stronger and stronger and eventually, because no one else was stepping up to the plate, I organized the damn thing. Yeah, it got me out of my head, and yeah, everyone said it was beautiful and moving (even the invites I made were deemed frame-worthy) and yeah, I wouldn’t trade the experience, but I went into it with a pile of resentments and came out barely lighter. Especially when everyone took off and left me with the dishes.

I suppose you could say I’m having a little problem giving to others unconditionally lately. Yeah, I’m a child of an alcoholic. Yeah, caretaking is second nature to me. Yeah, I want to believe that I can lose my worries by helping others. But I need to set up some boundaries, no?

Okay, okay, it was a little spineless to leave a note. But it was simply a response note to my roommate’s note asking if I could please take out the trash tonight. “No problem!” I wrote, and “Would you mind if we limited watching television to no later than ten pm on weeknights? The sound and the lights come right through my door. If you’d like to move the television into your room, that’s fine, too.” Short, sweet, to the point. That it took me over a year to write, well, aren’t you being a little severe?

Can you decide to be happy?

The words won’t come. They won’t arrange themselves in an appealing order. They’re stuck in my swamp. I’m the dark frog hunter, stooped still, pointing a dim light towards the murk, hoping for a sentence that’ll spell it out for you. No good. This swamp swallows all.

That was the last summer of my innocence…

You may wonder how it is that I am engaged to a man I’ve never seen, not even in a photograph. How is it that the chemistry is so…chemical? The attraction magnetic, the appeal overwhelming? Thus is the power of love, haven’t you heard? Someday I hope you may experience the sweetness I feel. Someday I hope you know true love. Until then, how can I put it into words, that which is beyond description? God has blessed me with an angel from above, a gentle soul. Hideously disfigured by irony and bitterness, yes. A gentle soul who calls all hours of the night to leave dirty messages detailing the sick thoughts that keep him up at night, yes. An angel from heaven.