Librarians are sexy.

Another bout of insomnia; the flickering blue light of the television, movies I’d already seen. At two a.m. I remember with a jolt to move the car from the museum lot at the end of the street; signs had proclaimed Saturday would be “Bug Day,” whatever that is. I drive down the hill. Below me the city is half-asleep, the lights of the bridge stretching across the bay. Quiet winding streets, an empty parking lot, the bright glow of the Safeway drawing boys and girls stumbling home from closing time like moths. I squint as I step through the door. The hand basket bouncing against my leg as I circle the store, aisles cluttered with boxes and pallets, the late night stock boys stepping politely aside. I wander the same three aisles in confusion, hopeless before the logic of beverage categories; fruit juice here, soda there, water another aisle over. I stop before the Gatorade, yellow sale signs marking decimated shelves. I had passed here three times. Now I stand, dizzy under the florescence, scanning the color-coded flavors, the quarts and the eight-packs, the confusingly clear fluid of the “Ice” series. Pink label equals Watermelon. Later a half gallon of milk, four pale bananas and a bottle of vitamins. The basket hanging heavy from my hand. At the express lane a skewed microcosm of the city’s youth, everyone here this late is under forty. We crowd around two registers, stunned silence under such brightness. A boy steps away from his group of friends and faces me. But he is not you. To look back at him would be unfair, as nobody in this city could be you, nobody could resemble the handsome monkey contained in my swooning, biased heart. I have forgotten, for an hour or two, that this was the day we were to meet. I have attempted, for once, not to dwell on all things absent from my life. I move to the next register and pay for my meager groceries with a crisp twenty.

///

Sunday night I tie my shoes. Everyone else is working in the morning so I take myself to a movie. I drive out to a theater near the ocean; the blinking marquee, two screens, a pimpled usher in wrinkled shirt, steaming popcorn spilling from the spinning silver bowl. Twelve of us sit in the dark theater, nuzzling, whispering couples and other solitary souls.

Afterwards I take the long way home along the wide, empty avenues. The night’s unexpected warmth, a passing dog tethered to a shadowed figure, the darkened spires of St. Ignatius pointing to the starred sky. I roll down the windows and play the song, the one that makes you think of me. I sing along off-key, slowly cruising the dark streets, and I don’t know how I can wait any longer. The pinpricks of lights over the hills, a murmuring in bed. The shower’s spray across your back. My hand on your knee in a dark theater. The white walls of a museum and the view I would show you. But I haven’t found the limits of us, and driving home tonight I feel like I could wait forever.

Sudden derailment, gravel road detour through an unfamiliar town. Or wait, I’ve been here before.

Hello, mister. Welcome back. All your doubts are waiting, just ahead. They’re having a picnic. Spread out on the artificial lawn, a patch of green in red desert. The shimmer of heat over the road, a cold rock sunk in my gut.

I thought I lost you guys. Shit.

Merely a minor vacation, they say, what did you bring, we’re starved.

Just me, I say. I look around at the desolate landscape. You might as well have at it.

They eat me alive. They down shots of whiskey and throw bottles up in the air, howling. The glass shatters and they wrestle over the shards, their blood joining mine. Why the long face? they ask. Then they laugh. As if it was the funniest goddamn thing ever.

I pull myself up. They play along the edges of my vision. They’ve thrown my keys behind a pile of rocks. I stumble over and fish the flash of silver into my palm. They walk behind me, fat and happy. They poke each other.

You’re out of gas, they say.

I slide behind the wheel anyway, focused on the hills unraveling ahead. Bug stains on the windshield. I slip the key into the ignition and turn.

///

Three muscle bears sitting in the open window of the Edge bar as I walk past.

“Woof,”says one.
“Hey, hey! Hey!” says another.
“I am all about THAT!” says the third.

I smile in spite of myself.

///

“I met your friend Ski,” Prometheus says over dinner. I look up at him, chewing.

“Oh yeah?” I say.

“Yeah. He was kind of down. Said he was seeing someone now. That he hadn’t dated anyone in a long time.”

“Thirteen years,” I say.

“Yeah, since, uh…”

“Since his boyfriend died.”

“Said it was bringing up a lot of stuff for him.”

I chew for awhile, then swallow. “Funny. I wanted to rescue him from all that. You know. Be the first one since.” Prometheus nods. He gets it. He always does.

A year ago I shared a little cabin with Ski, up in the woods near Sebastopol. We slept on twin beds a few feet apart. I pretended to be just a friend. Who can predict a year of change? I wouldn’t trade it, but there it is, the ghost of a sting. Ski’s dating again.

///

This letter is to confirm your acceptance into the Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar for Writers to be held June 22 through June 27. Pay up.

///

Running on empty. Night sky, a haze of stars, cold wind whipping through the open window. I’m a fugitive, a loner, a Springsteen lyric. My hand cups the wind. The fluorescent signs rushing past. Motels dying by the side of the road. “Life’s a journey, not a destination” read a poster in my Sunday school classroom, many years ago. I step on the accelerator.

The lessons we’ll never learn.

///

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.

This Sacred Image created by Todd

You’ve become a really great person.
-Oh come on.
-No really
-
-
-Well, thank you.
-You’re welcome. I can say that, we’re friends now, right?
-Right.
-So we can consummate our friendship, right?
-What? What are you talking about, “consummate our friendship”?
-We can do that now, right, I mean we’re over it, we’re past it, right?
-Stop.
-What?
-No.
-It would be fun.
-No. I…. no.
-I’m just kidding you.
-I’m kind of saving myself.
-You’re saving yourself?
-Yeah.
-That’s cool, I respect that.
-Yeah, well.
-I had a dream about you the other night.
-You did?
-Yeah.
-Do I want to know?
-Uh, you were really good, that’s all you need to know.
-
-Your laugher is infectious, I’m on a roll, aren’t I?
-You certainly are.
-No, really, you mean a lot to me, our last conversation helped.
-About?
-Your suggestion of quitting for thirty days, it’s something that I can, uh, get my head around.
-You mean the crystal…stuff.
-The Crystal Light.
-Right.
-Yeah. And when you said that other thing.
-What?
-You said I had burned a hole in your heart.
-
-Didn’t you say that?
-Uh,well….I think I said you’ve earned a place in my heart.
-Oh.
-But that sounds better.
-Yeah, it does, can I use that?
-Yeah.

“The Day Lady Died”

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille Day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesoid, trans. Richard Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Négres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfield Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the FIVE SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

-Frank O’Hara

I swear, if I make it through this, I expect to be made a saint. I want people praying to my image. I don’t care if there’s already a Saint Michael, we’ll figure something out. Saint Dogpoet or something. Something easy to remember. I want my own special day and I want shrines, lots of them. I want my medallion to hang around the necks of cute Catholic boys. Dogpoet, the patron saint of endurance.

My handsome space monkey has been offered a terrific work-type opportunity that will interfere with his visit. Once again we must reschedule. We have met at a time of great transition for both of us, and I suppose it’s a testament to our connection that we keep holding on as these months pass.

I know I have been rather vague about the monkey here; I am continually torn between my desire to shelter this relationship with a little bit of wise privacy, and my need to write about my life, as I have done here since Day One. And the monkey’s slice of my life continues to grow. So I feel like I must acknowledge this, him, if I want to keep writing. My heart hurts, but I am proud of him. We will make this work. Perhaps I will Fed-ex myself to his house.

it gets kinda rough
in the back of our limousine

Poem by Rumi (via a friend)

A baby pigeon stands on the edge of a nest all day.
Then he hears a whistle. Come to me.
How could he not fly toward that?
Wings tear through the body’s robe
when a letter arrives
that says

“You’ve flapped and fluttered against limits
long enough.

You’ve been a bird without wings in a house
without doors or windows.

Compassion builds a door.
Restlessness cuts a key.

Ask. Step off into the air like a baby pigeon.
Strut proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.

Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don’t mind that you’ve been given a dirty cup.”

Considering that two co-workers had come down the stairs from the director’s office in tears, I was a little anxious when the director called and asked if I could come see her. One co-worker had been laid off, another had to take a 20% pay cut AND take on another job. As I walked up the stairs I was actually a little excited. Perhaps, I thought, this is exactly what I need. Please lay me off, I thought as I climbed the stairs.

So it was a disappointment when she told me they were going to cut my job to 32 hours a week. Which means more money cut from my paycheck for health insurance, and no holiday pay. I’ll give you the day to decide if you’ll accept the offer, she told me.

Accept your offer? That’s an offer? Uh, gee, thanks.

Oh, it’s probably all for the best, another day of the week to write and look for a better job. What drives me crazy is the gradual deterioration of the job, as beloved bosses and co-workers drop like flies, as my job absorbs other jobs. I think I’d prefer one solid blow rather than these little irritating scrapes. Yes, I will count my blessings and I will accept the offer. I have HIV, I need the health benefits. I need the paltry paycheck. It’s a big, scary, unemployable world out there right now. One hand on the vine behind, the other stretching out, seeking something to grab.