P A R A G R A P H S

sunday 7/1/07
love is just emotion on the make
legs overboard on my roof talking to you on yours, canyon between too far to jump. wouldn't anyway. rubber tar surface heel depressed oozes back like a giant snail. when you smile i can't see it in the bloodshot night even with a fat yellow moon. gesturing nicotine fingers (orange tip circles a bette davis drag), watery emotional voices sloppy with booze makes me wonder about everything. nearly next to you - but better not. not tonight. as if shouting across a line of sheeted laundry - we're safe this way. black pant legs damp sneakers off the end of a rooftop dock-o'-the-bay. clinking ice worth the whole damn night.

monday 7/9/07
the 'regular'
read in BUTT (as in GAYbutt) that year-of-magical-drinking Kiki (of Kiki n Herb) decides that not drinking one day a week is good for the kidneys and liver. i take her advice - though my room mate tells me i don't drink enough for any of this to matter. so what? give it a shot. take sunday off the bud lites and spend it with a book, knees under, pumpkin lampshade overhead feeling 'clean' because 4 buds at the behan, midnight to 1, takes it's toll and lo n behold - the day after is one crystal sky. what i do miss by not going to my regular chair are the big arms of friends, how they look up when another bangs in the door. the laughs the red sox analysis the latest gossip the nod into the night from the unknown bum who's not afraid to talk, who wants to tell his life to a stranger. the cute one at the end of the bar who has me thinking about him when he's not around who was so much fun to spar with the night before even as he avoids me next time 'round when i look to see if there's that spark in his eye when he sees me laughing like an idiot over nothing funny.

sunday 7/14
fantasy nails
a few birthdays back i decide to creep up on fantasy nails on centre st (didn't want t be caught with feet in swirl bucket by unsuspecting friends) to get a pedicure from the vietnamese lady - a ferocious one who pulls one foot out of the swirl bucket and goes at my toenails with a pair of cutter teeth that look like the choppers on a stainless steel psycho beaver. i stare at japanese rock videos on a silent screen. my feet shrivel in the swirl. to be honest, i'm glad to get the lady; the guy's too delicate (a subtle application of eye liner). i want tough love from the bitch on my gnarled, dog-hard toes, warped into gruesome ugliness when, as a killer nun in neverland, i leaped from the stage, landed on a electric cable and broke a foot. you don't get a cast for this kind of injury. you hobble and wait and in the end your foot is a disaster. that photo of Baryshnikov's feet? decades of crushed 'on point'? like that. my big right toe is twisted and bent, my toenails look like fungus muffins. which is why i treat myself to fantasy nails in the first place: the makeover. lifting one heel out of water, dragon lady swipes a cheese slicer across the bottom of my foot and scrapes centuries of yellow callous into the bubbly in larded lumps. the bottoms of my feet are now soft as a puppy's belly. but i'm worried. i remember of polanski's 'repulsion'. catherine deneuve as a manicurist snips a vein paring the cuticles of an elderly man. black blood squirts over white linen, soundless screams ricochet off the walls. (my fantasy at fantasy nails becomes a nightmare.) an arsonist torched the place last year and now fantasy nails is kaput. i try alternatives. none make the grade. who's gonna make my feet once-a-year new now? moi. privatization. when my room mates are outa the apartment i fill a spaghetti pot with water, soak, and chop my screwed up nails, one foot hiked on the tub, ass on toilet, cat meowing outside the door. see, with the soak pot replacing the hi-end swirl im still able to snip my softened nails and nibble off the wierd, stonehenge shapes with impunity. i feel naughty and in-a-hurry fearful of the unexpected room mate catching me in the act, like mom coming in a teenage bedroom at 'the wrong time'.

thursday 7/26
jimmy doody
i was born in sioux city. my sister janie in tuscon. lisa in san francisco. dad made a lotta moves. we didn't actually live in san francisco, but across the bay in oakland. when i tell someone about my past however, i always say san francisco cuz it seems, i dunno, cooler, even thought it isn't. i sort of remember how it was, even though i was only 5. three story walkup. narrow stairs. dark interior. i went to a school where you're supposed to learn immersion french. the teacher, when i arrived my first day, was cleaning piano keys with a cloth. one note at a time. boong...boong......BOONG. never looked up. scared me, but i sweated it out i guess. walked home with a classmate and we'd throw rocks through the windows of an abandoned house, set back from the road, wild lawn, broken gate, discarded biked - a nightmare landscape. rock would shatter glass, hit something weirdly soft and a howl curled up out of the dark recess, freaking the shit out of of us. we'd run away shrieking and laughing, high as kites. i made my first best friends out there. jimmy and judy. 'jimmy doody'. they didn't go to my school but we met up in the afternoon and invented stuff to do. one day we pulled turds out of the toilet, wrapped them in christmas paper and tried selling them door to door. our thinking: there was So Much of it maybe a fortune could be made. needless to say... my dad had a pale green desoto with heavy steel doors that made a sure sound when you shoved them shut. smelled new inside, like leather and gasoline. we took her for a spin across the oakland bridge, one of those with a road surface made of metal gauze. you could see the bay rippling underneath. janie sat shotgun, i was in the middle. her door swung open. her hand on the latch, half her body stretched away from the seat, one foot swinging like a doll's. i could see the blink blinking of the bridge girders flickering underneath. i grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her in. dad was yelling. as i picture it, as it tell it, i saved her life, but i probably made the whole thing up. a month later i swallowed a peach pit. couldn't 'go' for days. they took me to the emergency room. the doctor snapped on a rubber glove, smeared it with goo and pulled the doody out of my ass. jimmy doody. i trace a lot of who i am back to that moment.

thursday 8/25
unicorn horn
as a kid, an 11 year old boy, i found in the woods near our big white house in Connecticut, an antler, or horn. it was nearly three feet long, smooth ivory, a twisted yellowing tusk. i knew it belonged to a Unicorn. it had to. there was no other explanation. i buried it under wet leaves + put a boy's spell on it for safe keeping. i told people about it but never showed it to anyone. finally, it was lost, or decayed into the ground or ether. magic for sure. i still remember it like a favorite character in a book that stayed with me, or a lover from a dream too real for reality.

saturday 9/1
reflections in golden eyes (put another way: porn saves the sexless night)
this is not a lament. it really isn't. it's just that after a certain point, a certain age, we succumb to gravity. we have no choice. all the jogging and lifting and diets in the world lose the battle. evaporating gradually (as if we ever had it) is the commodity of the smooth handsome face, tight under chin, lean upper arms, hammock-less under-eyes, fabulous hair. we cut loose the possibility of Something Ever Happening With A Future (ie 'a relationship'). our surface Self, the one we mock with false modesty, loses it's persuasive lure. we let it go. we have to. instead we employ the brutal truth, honesty as a con, our 'charming' seduction repertoire transmogrified into the quiet qualities of The Listener. youth - the only 'true aphrodisiac' (Rene Ricard) - stops checking us out and looks to others. I remember my Mom, Jane Kinscherf, trying on wigs to hide the hair that had fallen out after weeks of chemotherapy: 'God, I look so old!' her vanity loosely intact but shrugged off in the end with a laugh. it's more weird than sad - the old face refusing to recognize itself, hallucinating a younger version through through the impressionistic blur of squinted eyes. inevitably, deep down, we're pretty sure that we remain that same compelling, fascinating, oddball soul we've always been. that we still have much to ask, to give, to love, to be funny about. but today, at the onset of our greeting card 'sunset years' we reinvent the way we love. it is no longer about the chase, about roping someone in, or having them 'see' us. it's about seeing them in a way that serves their needs and not our own centrifugal neuroses. there's no preparing for this. no text to teach or thumb through - Romance for Old Dummies. late love has it's own slow momentum and moral impetus. the beautiful, unreachable, untouchable boy loves us when he feels like it, not as any falsely flattering sexual fantasy, but because he senses safe houses in our hooded eyes: 'this one has traveled the long love road'. Uncle Awareness is The Man (our new vanity). the beloved and the ancient sleep side-by-side, goat beside shepherd boy undisturbed on some bright Mediterranean island where beings merge without ownership or showboat passion.

monday 9/17
miss zablocki's tits
my 3rd grade teacher, miss zablocki, would stand behind you and gently lower her tits onto your shoulders, placing them there it seemed, warm sleepy kittens against neck, to encourage wonder and confusion. would tit A slide down your chest like dough? would tit B shift and locate an bra-less nipple against nervous skin? would they smell funny, like sour milk? when would they lift off gradually or with a snap? did every kid in class, boy or girl, get the same pair of presents? we never got anwers. we never talked about it. we held her in awe and mild fear. an angry miss zablocki would swat her hand on your desk so hard you jumped. if it hurt her too much she'd use your hand and smack it on the desk instead. whatever you'd done to piss her off you never did again. sometimes, to get your attention, she'd force the entire class to stare at the black board where she'd draw a giant chalk circle that zeroed in (a concentric spiral) like an old fashioned hollywood special effect implying 'crazy'. you'd become discombobulated, nauseous, woozy. in better spirits she'd tell us about her travels abroad. (i think she went alone). floating like balsa wood in the dead sea or playing canasta on a card table in the great salt lake. she maintained a seated position because the salt was buoyant. (this was hard to picture.) she had dark cherry lip-sticked lips, bottom lip larger than upper, with a clown-like exaggeration effective as either smile or frown. when she snapped her fingers the flesh under her arm jiggled like jello. (you weren't supposed to notice.) she was the 1st exotic character i knew - wild flame-dyed hair, trumpeting alto, east european exaggerated hand gestures. she walked to school on cold days, wearing a loose, partially buttoned, billowing blouse, spain red hair writhing like medusa snakes. her long legged high heeled tick tock steps echoing on the pavement. ever since big loud women scare the shit out of me. 3rd grade changes you forever.

monday 10/8
riggy
i spent the spring and summer of 1971 on martha's vineyard, about a year before band after band took over my life. 1971 was the tail end of the summers of love all of which i'd believed in like a hippie evangelical. a lot of acid consumed. in fact on my first landing 'on island' i was ripped. hitched down route 3 with pat irwin (who describes the vineyard as a 'rich people's park'). we'd got our last ride from a 16 wheeler, country and western music splitting our heads open in slack jawed hallucination. a short run up to oak bluffs put us in hobbit town: the gingerbread armful of tiny houses that looked more imagined than real. we met up with toby (a friend from cambridge). he'd had a motorcycle accident and wound up in the hospital in a room next to a lesbian pilot from an all-lesbian pilot cove (no kidding - they flew over the island in v-formation). she offered him a house on a hill in menemsha. the roof needed shingling and he could live there until the job was done. in less than a week five of us moved in. brought a100 lb bag of brown rice, kerosene lamps, sleeping bags and an upright piano that we got for free from a church. we set it up in the kitchen, banging away as michelle cooked us vegetarian dinners by lamp light. vegetables, nudity, pot, booze and lsd ran the show. this was to be our fucking summer of love, brakes off. i got a job as a painter for a portuguese employer who mocked our flimsy beards ('why cultivate on your chin what grows wild around your asshole?') but who went easy on us with our faux on-the-bus lifestyle. we painted big clapboard houses, high on ladders and drugs and listened to joni on a boom box until dusk. there was a kid who pumped gas in town who reminded me of a wyeth painting, the boy with that huge listening ear, a farm boy with corn blond hair and overalls. he came out to our 'farm' for one of our continual day/night parties, arriving on a vespa. he vomited in the front seat of a truck when i went down on him and fled. i never went back for gas. never saw him again. we swam in a fresh water pond, walked a sandy path from there to the ocean, swam in sea where the pebbles, shells and rocks looked like jewels, walked back, rinsed off in the fresh water, drove home, ate drank and started the cycle all over again. unstoppable. on one clear as a bell afternoon i dropped a tab, slipped into the dark pond in flippers, and pumped the circumference at what felt like 90 mph. round and round and round on my back, the sky convex above me in fish eye distortion. back to the beach i heard my dad ( how the fuck did he get here? how did he find me?)'riggy! riggy!' he yelled, with my sister's high school friend priscilla beside him. he toted a styrofoam carry all crammed with ice, cups, vodka and tonic which he dipped into as he hitched and drank his way around the island. and lo and behold here he was, SURPISE! with priscilla, plunging naked down the sandy slope into the water where my skinny dipping friends treaded water, smiling stoned captain beefheart 'can't go back to my frown land' ear-t-ear grins. he appeared overly real under my lsd lens. he stayed a few nights with us, charming my hippie room mates and leering at the girls. he walked in on me going at it with some rock kid, upstairs in my bedroom, flailing about in kerosene light. ducked out the door without a word. i blinked and resumed. at dawn he was spotted hugging his knees on a rock in the field cooing 'wiporwil...wiporwil' as if the bird might land on his shoulder. my dad. honing in on my hippie summer camp.

thursday, oct 18th
obsession is a player
i am lost in the face body mind of a person. i'll call him A. wake up to thoughts of him. go to sleep the same way. don't spend a lot of time together, but when we do there is a lock on the chord between us that no noise, conversation or view can interrupt. this is of course nothing new in my life. or his. but when the magnifying glass positions itself above the heart and soul of the beloved, all else recedes. obsession is a focus as scary as the face on a 9th inning closer. predictably enough, after months of A, B, takes his place. it isn't a rapid transition, or fickle, but the more time i spend with B, the more i lose track of A. divergent lives, divergent worlds, the revolving romantic door. soon B supersedes A in all areas. i don't see A at all until one night he unexpectedly appears backstage. i don't recognize him. i can't for the life of me remember his name. i am shocked. not even his name! who is this? i wonder. who the fuck is this guy who seems to know me so well? the pattern a cyclical cynical one: A overtaken by B who, not soon after though i can't remember when, is replaced by C. a love whore is what i am.

tuesday 10/23
spit shine
my approach to cleaning has never been thorough. ask charlie isenberg. 'you never really wash the dishes.' he would say, pointing out spots on the glasses, a stray string of pasta under a plate and then rewash with nose in air. at the same time i have a snobs abhorrence for slobs - appearance ahead of truth (at least have your fucking house LOOK clean). for me it was always about aesthetics. i like the look of a clean, apparently orderly apartment. it pleases me, like table lamps, coloring rooms with gentle, fantasy-world ambience. very blanche dubois i suppose. as for the dishes, i burn them clean, a lazy, green-less sterilization process that leaves the tap on it's hottest dial, steam blurring the window above the sink, until cooked. my oddest idiosyncrasy: the spit shot. i lob a gob onto an annoying smudge on the kitchen linoleum and rub the it away with heel of foot-in-sock. while i'm on the phone, multitasking with a vengence.

friday 11/2
return to sender
it seems, much as we fight it, on many levels we become our parents. especially as we get older. body and personality. i see my mom's AND my dad's (dick and jane) legs when i throw mine up and over in the 'plow' (yoga) every morning. there they are, white as a flounder's belly, bowling pin calves, brown spots from the sun recognizable as not mine, theirs. the under chin, what's left of it, sagged in a straight line from jaw to throat. just like jane's. the heavily lidded eyes, chestnut brown, squinting, like the old man's. toenails warped and twisted like mum's. (she retained enough vanity to paint them, crushed and distorted as they were, vampire red.) back of hands, thick veined, raw, spotted and crepe papered. belly: distended and sucked in on the rare occasions when i think it would make a difference; before i think, fuck it, who gives a shit, it lolls back out like a poorly curled bowling ball. like jane, i keep things neat and throw away anything i'm sick of. like dick i chase the young. like him i like bars and dark adventure. like her i'm frugal and generous at once. like him i never hide from a good fart. like both of them i love to laugh. of course in other ways i presume differences, but im closer to the tree than i'd imagined. in my sidewalk self i think im young, smooth-faced and fabulously interesting. not.

monday 11/12
wearing the habit
i repeat myself. over and over and over again. i pretend that i don't. that i am a creative person 24/7. i try to break habits, to prove that i reinvent everything all the time, but the truth is i can't help it. try as i might to change this, i get bent out of shape in a hurry and revert to repetition over and over again. this is most apparent in the shower: 1) turn on spigot, wait for heat to rise, piss in the tub while standing outside. 2) reach and blend cold with hot to scalding - the burn-yourself-clean technique. 3) left foot then right steps in, face to hard rain, squeezing eyes against water as it hits hair line, cupped hands in front of face to repel niagara in pantheistic prayer - hair in face shoved up and back, a quick flip landing collected water in the tub behind me like a bitch slap. 4) shampoo. 5) soap face, squint and burn cheeks for soft shave. 6) neck, upper shoulder, pits, arms, tits, nipples, legs, balls, cock, under ass, ass crack, asshole with back facing nozzle. 7) scrape off, bend over, pull cheeks, douche asshole, check for shit specks in teeth of bath mat, tweeze out and nudge down the reluctant drain. 8) squeeze hair. 9) lazy susan turn in the steam, admiring impressionistic bathroom wall art. 10) twist knobs hard shut, drag shower curtain to right and towel off in predictable fashion - face, hair, pulled ears, head and neck, pits, upper arms, torso, back, ass, legs n feet. i try reversing procedure: feet, legs, asshole, ass, arms, etc - but it was too weird. i'm trapped in a cage i built myself. i wonder what other parts of my life assembly line repetition owns. i wonder if any live-in relationship, or LTR, could survive these set-in-my-ways parameters. it's way too late. i fancy myself an improviser and i am a latin teacher: 'repetitio est mater studiorum' (repetition is the mother of students).

sunday 11/25
the real thing
we had a silver blue weimeraner named boo (after boo radley). he had yellow eyes + a sweet disposition that was unusual for his breed. most of the ones i'd met were high strung bugged-eyed + scrawny. boo was a shade on the mournful side. maybe because we had his balls cut off. what was left was an embarrassing walnut that everyone could see under his clipped tail. he hated being observed doing his business. he'd crane his neck around in squat position to see if we were looking. we'd turn away behind invisible fluttering fans like geishas. he also had a serious fart problem. when one would hiss out of his ass like a steam iron, he'd look more world weary than ever, stare at his behind with an 'oh God what WAS that?!...' expression, rise + move to a distant room, hating his own stench. as a kid i remember him issuing forth while granny was playing bridge with her friends. tap tap tap she'd drum her forefinger waiting to play her hand. boo would erupt, stand + leave, the odor so overwhelming it seemed to 'appear' under the table, wafting into the nostrils of granny + co. she was stalwart, her reaction a raised eyebrow. boo's best friend in the world was a neighborhood dachshund named mopsy, as diminutive + ladylike as boo was substantial. copper brown with perfect sharp teeth + toe nails. she lived down the hill, across a skirt of lawn, over a stream + up a slope in a big brand new millionaire's yellow stucco mansion. every now + then she'd wander out onto our field, a nearly invisible spot against the grass. one afternoon, when my dad + his pals were driving golf balls from an imaginary 'tee' near our house, one of the balls hit mopsy in the ribs. she blew up like a balloon. she had a habit of getting in the way. i was painting a 4x8 foot faux picasso for an art show at school. it had to be laid on the floor for me to work on it. mopsy clicked her sharp black nails across the painting in an effort to satisfy her curiosity about the paints i was using. they were made from egg whites. (i fancied myself a fresco artist who's materials were manufactured from powder + egg). i picked her up by the skin on her back + threw her across the room + out the door. i didn't feel good about it, but mopsy didn't need human love. she had boo who visited her every day. he had befriended charlie the milkman, who tossed boo a milk bone, let him hop into the truck + drove him down to mopsy's mansion. there they'd hang out, go on a garbage hunt, get their fill + then walk up the slope to our house. there they'd sit , side-by-side, just off the flagstone porch + stare down the hill like a couple of old ladies in rockers, except to us they were more like lovers. when it was time for mopsy to go home, boo'd walk her the whole way + come back, a bit lonely we thought. after mopsy left this world (at 17) boo was never the same. he left himself not long after.

monday 12/10
strike out
my mom was in a recuperation house after having part of her lung cut out. t.b. i was about 11 or 12. because she was away, they thought it'd be smart to send me off to camp. camp viking. on the cape. big trips in big sail boats. big everything. i made a model of a schooner. sleek black hull. it actually sailed. that was nice. but i was sick most of the summer. spent it in sick bay. there was a knot hole poked out that looked in on the nurse's station. me + the other kid laid up in there would peek in and watch her undress. never saw much beyond bra + panties. i wasn't sure about myself in the naked girl turn-on department, but i do remember liking the shoulder of the other kid against mine as we watched with naughty excitement. not that we ever did anything, him + i, although one night he decided i needed a 'sex lesson'. he made me take off my pajamas. with a pencil + paper he drew a cock + balls + showed me how 'the white stuff' came up out of the balls + boner. he also showed me on me with the eraser end of the pencil. i don't think i got hard or anything, but i never forgot it. but none of this was as critical or as shameful as the baseball incident. i didn't know i was a fairy back then. i did know that i was a shitty athlete, even before viking + there i was on the field during batting practice one hot afternoon before i hit sick bay for good. i stood at the plate, legs apart, bat cocked like a noodle + couldn't hit the ball. not once. swing, miss. swing, miss. over + over + over again. the coach pitched meatballs + still i couldn't hit. 'you're gonna stand there, kinscherf, in the batter's box + you're not getting out of here until you hit the god damned baseball!' he warned, level-eyed - a real man. i stood there shaking + crying + swinging + missing + swinging + missing. it was a horror show. the other kids stood around watching, scuffing their cleats. he didn't let them make jokes, but i could hear what they were thinking: 'faggot'.

monday 12/24
dancing with cuba
im a busy guy. i like t think so. if im hurtling through the day, the last thing i need is some unexpected distraction or person obliterating my bullet head get-out-of-my-way schedule. i slither out of most of 'em - the big laugh, the joke at my expense. but sometimes i can't get away with it. the onslaught is too persistent, or too cute to say no. it's a good thing too, because those are the times i can actually fend off the ticker tape, the static in my head + enter The Zone, unannounced + nearly free. about a week ago i dropped down to la casa del lagados where my landlady, the irrepresable aida lopez holds court + keeps my mail for me. (i lost the key to our mailbox a few months back. down a rabbit hole at the foot of the stairs). so aida retrieves it from the mailman, straps on a rubber band to hold what is mostly crap in place + points it out to me with her big cuban smile, hands held together in front of her waist. last week she had her blaster playing some serious cha cha music. she twirled up at me, grabbed my wrists + made me dance with her. laughing it up - her high soprano, musical laugh. dip, spin, twirl, laugh, cha cha cha. it was crazy. i was completely caught up in it + i hate to dance. i'm the sour pus at the wedding when all the drunks are up on the floor shimmying + grinding + laughing + me feeling like a total boob, checking my watch like the elder bush debating clinton. i can't wait t get outa there. last time i actually got off dancing was on a hit of ecstacy at a gay bar with a Very Cute 'Straight' kid. we were not appreciated. too many big gestures that didn't go with the territory. it took a pill to get me out of myself enough to not think about every little dumb move i was making + that was one rare night. dancing with aida was another. i think the two events are at least 15 years apart, but maybe, had i lived in cuba...

saturday 1/5
stand by us
stevie macintyre lived in a one story shack, damp + mildewed, grey rotting shingles + an absentee mom n dad. or maybe i just never saw them. he had boxes + boxes of comic books that we'd pull out from under his bed + leaf through, lying side-by-side on the floor, up on elbows like praying mantises. stevie was poor, at least compared to us kinscherfs. we lived in a big white three-story house with lots of land, a horse barn (without horses), a swimming pool, a vegetable garden + help - 2 tons of it as my dad used to say. 2 fat women + a rail thin old man. so what. stevie was my best friend + only later did i notice the differences in our houses or in the incomes of our dads. every afternoon after school, i'd walk over to his house though a path in the woods that stood between our properties. we'd hang out, run around the fields, show each other our 'things' under the umbrella branches of a weeping willow, throw rocks at trains. i don't think we talked much, but we were inseparable. stevie had mouse soft hair, cut close with an upturn at his widow's peak. he wore second hand clothes + his fingernails were dirty but there was nothing insecure or apologetic about him. i think the favorite thing we did was pluck over ripe tomatos off the stems in our garden (which eventually died a death of neglect), lick the skin, salt 'em down, bite into them, juice + seeds squirting our faces + smile that big smile of knowing that we both felt the same joy at the same time. it stayed like that, stevie + i until richard tebay moved into town. the new kid. spry, handsome + soon to replace stevie as the person i wanted most to be with - maybe my earliest glimpse of homo, though i wouldn't have called it that. my grandmother caught us pulling each other's pants off on my bed one afternoon. he left in disgrace i think, though after we moved to philly, we wrote letters, quasi love letters to each other. to tell the truth, stevie + i were, in a true way, easier friends. we didn't share or require the love assault on our emotions. i'm not sure if he was hurt being upstaged by richard + if he was i did nothing to quiet him or to repair our friendship. regardless, both boys played a part in my early life. stevie by being the kid who, from the 'other side of the tracks' didn't have a phony bone in his body + richard by being the accepting object of my affection. they continue to live in my heart to this day. don't they all.

friday 2/1
nostril yoga
when i catch cold + sometimes when i don't, i have a serious which-nostril-to-breathe-out-of freak out. one works, the other doesn't. the working one clogs, the other's clear. a needle thin stream of air bites the roof of my mouth. i try everything: lie on side, one sheet fold covering open nostril; lie on back, head under covers (cat the fuck out of the way); press clear nostril into pillow at just the right angle; twist a wad of tissue into a cork to plug/adjust aperture; open mouth like grandpa, make lungs happy, get cotton mouth. if all else fails: sit up + read until exhausted enough to not give a shit about what a disaster the whole thing has become. if i were a shaman or a guru or a disciple i'd know for sure that this was an opportunity to practice yoga breath, elevate my consciousness, arrive. don't breathe, be happy.

valentine's day 2/14
hot springs
1968. i'm eligible for a draft deferment if i teach shcool or join the peace corps. terrified of viet nam, of killing or being killed or of being a shitty teacher, i opt for the peace corps (korea) but get the boot half way through training. the shrink diagnoses me a confrontational personality in a non-confrontational society. the classic ugly american. next stop: the teaching deferment. through yale i land a job as a special class/art teacher in a one-street town. moosup, connecticut. i last 8 months. i fall in love with one of my students, E. he lives across the street from my boarding house in a listing, two story shack with his mom, her boyfriend(s) + 6 brothers + sisters. by winter, i stay in his bed every single night. no one minds. we are tentative physically. i get no sleep + tip toe out in the morning, shoes dangling from two fingers, rush across main street, dress for school + get picked up by the football coach, heart in vertigo. moosup jr high is not eton or exeter (where i imagine boys slept with boys +/or teachers for centuries. a right of passage + part of the curriculum). of course this is bullshit. im working a public school in a tiny town with tiny minds. E will be found out, shamed or worse. god knows what will happen to me. i decide the best thing for everyone is for me to leave town. i ride to philly on my kawasaki 650, depressed + weakly suicidal. when i call E up, twenty years later, his son answers: 'dad's out,' he says. i tell him who i am, how i knew his dad + before i can finish explaining the kid shouts: 'rick!? from moosup?!' like i'm some long lost hero, back from traversing the globe, the person his father told him about. when E takes the phone, he tells me that i wouldn't like him now. he has a pot belly + isn't 'that way' anymore. he says we'd been good with each other then + are still so today. maybe we'll get a beer if he comes up north. but this conversation occurs long after i try, only one year after moosup, to take a second crack at teaching. this time in a co-ed boarding school in steamboat springs, colorado. what was i thinking? sure enough, three months down the road i have 'those feelings' again. this time for K, my english student. we spend hours together. get messed up on robitussin, weed. take long walks in the snow, the electricity of high emotion + laughter bounces off the hills. sometimes i lie in his lower bunk, he in the upper we hold hands top to bottom. not saying a word. smiling. we drive to the top of a hill, take off our clothes + slip into the hot springs - floating there, at peace + forgetting school, job, drama, age difference (i am 21, he's 16) + thrive in the moment of our friendship, close, a bit in love. it is a rare, psychedelic oasis on top of a colorado peak + though we never 'do anything', i'm 'caught', accused of sleeping with boys AND girls + fired. they shunt me off to a motel where i drop acid + wait 'til one of my teacher friends sneaks K down to see me one last time. we hold each other, cry some + then, next day, K goes back to school + i take the bus to denver for my draft physical, high as a kite + scared to death. i flunk. i have letters from two shrinks that are conclusive: i am both 'suicidal AND homicidal' - 4F. the ignominious end to both my last stand as a teacher + dodging bullets in nam. i write K long letters about everything. missing him. i guess they were love letters. the headmaster reads them aloud to the student body at lunch in the cafeteria terrifying my friend + dooming our relationship. i try to repair us by driving to santa barbara + waiting for him. he'll fly home christmas. but when he arrives he doesn't want to see me. it had been too much to bear. the public humiliation. love drifts + evaporates in a cloud over the pacific. it is a long, amphetamine drive home. i suppose, even as i was terrified + partly ashamed of everything that went down, it was time to take seriously the idea that i might become that most pretentious identity: artist/musician/homo.

monday 2/18
mouse twitching
my cat, sofi wan kenobi (or sofia di putzi, or sofi anon depending on my mood) is a runt. tiny head. tiny body. funny off kilter walk. lopsided, skittering run. in fact she gallops (i hear there's a german word for this) up + down the hall of our apartment. thundering hoofs. i chase her in my socks, trying to imitate her, to make her run faster. she loves this. sofi's noir, w/ yellow/green eyes + a few straggly white hairs on her chest. she distrusts everybody. she hid behind a couch for 2 weeks when i got her, second hand, from a girl moving to the west coast. the girl called her zoey, which was cool, but i had to name her for myself. if i was gonna feed her + solicit her affection, then i should call her what the fuck i wanted to. strangely she's a one man cat + i'm her man. he who feeds her... of course there's more to it than that. i think she got kicked around in her old neighborhood, like nixon. + it's still with her. the paranoia. she's also sweet. when she watches tv in my lap, her purr is so loud you can hear it in the next room. she licks my hands. she's a pro at seductive 'i love you' eyes. last summer i had to extract some of her teeth. they were rotten at the root. it cost a small fortune. she survived the surgery, but had to be fed mushed up tuna + water for weeks, hating the dry pellets when forced to go back. a funny result: her tongue gets caught in her missing tooth gums during a licking session. it gags her little throat. she reels it back in, like a birthday curly horn contracting into place, but it makes her look pathetic. i refuse to let her get fat. i'm obsessive about it. too much to ask of a dime-sized heart, i rant. i feed her parsimonious portions 4 times a day which means she wakes me up at 6:30 in the morning staring at me. 'NO,' i say. 'NO, SOFI!' but she's right. she's always right about feeding time. i lumber out of bed, feet like ski boots + clink her pellets into the bowl. afterwards i can't sleep. i read. noir fiction while my noir cat glares, nose-to-nose, hoping for a post breakfast scratch. i give in. pat, purr, scratch, lean, purr, read. big news - she's a super hunter. handling the mice problem is a total sport. i can tell she's caught one when i hear her leap up + through the secret door in my closet making muffled meow sounds, mouse in mouth. she lets it go. chases it to pieces. i find the poor creature in the morning, tweeze it's tail w/ a square of toilet paper + dump it in the garbage. when she doesn't kill it dead it's not alive enough to interest her. there it is on the floor, upright, tiny feet just so. i touch the tail + one little matchstick leg shivers. i jump. i'm horrified. i can't put it in the garbage until i'm sure it's totally gone. i won't let it suffocate in the stench. but it hurts - this mother nature struggle. which sofi always always wins. i'm proud of her, but i feel badly for da poor widdle mouse.

friday 2/22
collision doll
at 14 we thought it would be cool if we could get cars to crash. at night. on a dark stretch of road near our house in wayne, pa. there were nine of us. henry pemberton, four voorhees (harlow, john, teddy + lilian), keith manley + three kinscherfs. we made a life-sized doll out of clothes and stuffing. strung a clothesline across the street near a bend in the road that was surrounded by trees. we dropped it there, lax, with the doll, looking like a ten year old child, attached, but at rest. we practiced. we would abruptly tighten the clothesline + the fake kid would snap to startled attention. it performed like an early cgi. we waited in the dark, having sneaked out of our houses after we were sure our parents were asleep. it was late. past midnight. in june i think, but i'm not certain. it was cool out, not cold. no shivering. we waited in the bushes on either side of the road. we wanted two cars. one from one end of the street, one from the other. we heard them coming. we could see the lights. we knew what to do. we knew how to escape. we knew the woods, the crazy property. as they neared, 200 yards between them, we snapped the rope. the little fake boy popped up like a startled deer. both cars slammed on the brakes. tires burned + screeched to a slow motion halt, but not quickly enough to avoid cracking into each other. we heard the smack, glass shattering, one headlight out, cursing from both drivers, doors opening. we crept backwards into the black woods + made our escape, hearts pounding, sweaty, unable or even afraid to speak. we were pretty sure no one was hurt, but that they might have been was a chastening thought. we stopped doing stuff like that afterwards. we never read about the accident or heard anything, but we knew. each of us. it was an unspoken secret. we lived, if for a few frightening minutes, on the island of the 'lord of the flies'.

thursday 2/28
the love lottery
don't get me wrong. i like sorella's. something about it. not quite a diner. hardly an uppity cafe. the food can be awful. in june a kid was found puking his omlette into the gutter. you have to be smart about what you order. eggs over easy, luke warm home fries, dark toast with bacon usually cuts it. the coffee is hardcore. a surefire diuretic. tippy-toe walk to the toilet. my favorite thing is to go there alone, on a sunday, eat something safe, read + inventory the beautiful boys. last week, they sat me upstairs. i prefer the original room with the ugly greek art + omlette posters, but i don't really care. the fat guy who waits, thighs churning against thighs, is a scenic view in + of himself. strangely, there is not One Single Handsome Person in sight. fine. easier to concentrate on my book. i live dangerously + order a vegetable crepe with a side of braised tempeh. it arrives tepid, flat + the crepe the fat guy smacks down is spilling over with fruit. i didn't order fruit, but i refuse to make a scene. we waiters never want to make a fuss or embarrass a comrade. soon, however, the big man returns with the veg version - raw onion, raw sprouts, damaged spinach, cold crepe. fine. I wolf it down, i'm in a good mood. my noir novel (the dead yard - mckinty) is clickity-clacking down the track. i get lost in it + in the dead yard on my plate, until, simultaneously, two couples are seated on either side of my table. the girls as striking, as the boys. my eyes lift from the page. the kid facing me on my left has black briary brezhnev eyebrows, corn blue eyes + full lips, nearly lipstick engorged. he + his girl spend hours lost in each other's eyes. the open windows. not for show. he smiles as i lurch up from the table to leave, a salad of singles next to my coffee. i ask, nervously, if he's seen rushmore. he has. you look like that kid, i say, big smile. no kidding? it's safe to connect on a silly pretense. but it is the boy to my right that takes my breath away. i stare over my glasses at his legs, beardsley profile, wild art school hair, big boots. i must look like a sex starved librarian. i picture him in boxer shorts, boner poking a tent. a cliche porn fantasy, but what's really captivating is what he + his girlfriend are doing. taking turns drawing on a single napkin. that's right. drawing. with a blunt golf score pencil. she is engrossed as he looks on. as if she traces a line on his naked back, in the sun, on the beach. she pushes the paper over. his turn. i try to see what the images are. hieroglyphs of a personal, in-joke nature. i can't tell. it doesn't matter. it is this thing between them. this happy, sandbox way of liking each other that is beautiful. i love them for it. is she french? she has that paris girl band of outsiders thing. no makeup, pouty lips, disheveled hair. who cares clothes. they are lost in the game. they have won the love lottery.

friday 3/7
in the weeds
i first get high in college. senior year. 'when does it begin?' i wonder. 'i don't notice anything...'. i lie back on a filthy dormitory persian rug, close my eyes + trip into cartoon land. daffy duck cavorting in a field of sunflowers, leaping, laughing - animation by van gogh via disney. a week later i am listening to horowitz perform chopin's funeral march. my mother appears in a pale blue greek robe crossing a cracked dali desert. her head falls back, freighted with sadness, exaggerated picasso profile, slow motion silver tears. she carries my father in her arms, like a baby, tiny limbs crooked + blackened like the burnt ends of match sticks. she traverses the landscape in deliberate martha graham strides. her movement echoes the dark, lo-end piano chords. i am shattered by the visceral visual hallucination created by smoking this tiny, dried up plant. it is 1967. i am ready to jump on the flower power bandwagon. ready, set, groovy. but years later i get paranoid every time i smoke. i talk too much, laugh too loudly, stare too aggressively, worry my tits off. pot stops being fun. some wise man on a street corner explains: this happens to some of us. it's physiological. your body reaches a tipping point. bad outweighs good. mary jane scowls. she no longer smiles. she's over you. she's moved on. after many more tests to prove him wrong, i give up. i stop. no more ganja. no more paranoid nightmares. not for me. in the late 90's a friend comes to town. we go to his brother's apartment. the pipe is passed. maybe this time. maybe my body's cured of its aversion. 2 puffs later i'm in orbit. i can't shut up. i can't uncross my legs. i'm frozen, babbling + jumping out of my skin. my friend turns to me + says, deadpan: 'you know, rick. no one is listening to you'. it takes every ounce of energy to stand up, find a dark empty room, lie down + wait for it to go away. clearly my body rejects the high. 2008. on occasion, with rarely more than one other person, i can handle a feeble hit + be ok. it's fun again. pissing takes a century + every conversational nuance is brilliant; insight around every corner. i get lost in the face of the beautiful. wow, man, your teeth, your crooked yellow teeth are fuckin beautiful. the place where your neck disappears into your shirt...

wednesday 3/19
first fight
weatogue, connecticut. 1955. our house is a big-box, 3-story, white clapboard, wrap around porch, acres of lawn, copper beach trees, massive untended vegetable garden. it is idyllic, the least disturbing, miraculous part of my childhood, until one night, late, after bedtime, when i get up to pee. flannel pajamas, no hair down there, watch the stream, shake off when i hear something. an argument in the kitchen. the voices thundering up the backstairs. i hear mom, furious. tears folded like egg whites into the yelling. i hear dad, screaming back at her. a glass shattering. i tip-toe to the top of the stairs where the shouting gets louder, but the words are either indistinct or i don't let myself understand them. i hadn't a clue my parents weren't ok with each other. just that afternoon i helped dad paint new yorker cartoons on a bathroom wall (a rare collaboration). last night i watched mom get ready for a cocktail party in her incredible gold dress. you look like a movie star, like tallulah bankhead, i brag. (tallulah's voice has captivated my prepubescent imagination. deep, low, ironic. replacing the lone ranger in my pantheon of luminaries.) but that was hours ago. this fight hits me like a rock in the head. I cover my ears + retreat onto the back porch - a screened-in, second story 'day room'. there the sound is muffled. i am 'intrigued + repulsed at the same time' as my friend jane said once about a strap-on. it's like discovering santa claus is a lie. i take mom's side in my little head. she's hurt. i should defend her. but is it fair? i hate hating my dad. sure enough, a month later, things get worse. when he takes me on a ski trip, i rat him out. he's plastered. there are women on couches in our bedroom laughing. one, two? college girls? i'm not sure. this is new. they're 'guests' i suppose. but they also seem to 'be with' him in some way i can't comprehend. while i'm on the phone checking in i tell mom about it. the drinking, the girls. right in front of him, close enough to hit. he goes berserk. he'll never trust me again - his fairy-assed son. the little boy he calls the prince as in 'you pay more attention to the prince than you do your own husband'. this after she refuses to call in sick for him at the bank. 'you're hung over, you're not sick. go to work'. i think she's right, but i'm never sure. i'm proud of how crazy he is. how easily he can make her laugh. how he likes to fart in the elevator + blame it on a stranger. but remembering that first fight i want to protect her from being hurt again. so i rat him out. 100%. i shame him in front of his college girls + in front of me, his son. i threaten his manhood. two years later on a train from philly to montreal for yet another ski thing we kids are about to conk out in bunk beds, clickity clack train wheels soothing us down, when dad stumbles in, shattered. mom reaches back + clocks him, a sucker punch to the jaw + he goes down. it's gotta be tough for a guy to be punched out by his wife in front of his kids. i realize, deep down, that we love them equally. it is more painful to take sides than not, even as we did, jumping from one ship to the other in hopes of some miraculous balance. we are never certain where love lies. we wonder if our subsequent luck or ill fortune in the relationship game grew from that tight, unyielding yankee tempest.

wednesday 4/2
vacancy
watching last weekend's winter soldier II i was struck by how distant i am from knowing, in any profound or visceral way, what it is that a soldier, any soldier, suffers. i've not been there as my comrade is shot to death or has his arm blown off. i've not been there when the machine gun in my hand severs the head of my 'enemy' while his son looks on. i've not been there arriving home, stepping off a bus, looking into the eyes of family, friends, loved ones + feeling that they can never comprehend where i have been, what i have seen or what i have done. i've not had my humanity trained out of me, dehumanizing, demonizing 'the other'. i've never know the screaming pain of having my leg exploded by a roadside bomb, half my face acned with shrapnel or my mind lost in the paranoid nightmare of ptsd. i never will unless jamaica plain is invaded + i take up a butter knife to defend my old lady's railroad apartment. i sit stunned in front of the computer screen as i listen the story of the father who takes his 22 year old son's body into his arms + lifts him up out of the garden hose noose he had used to hang himself. i drive to the rainy anti-war vigil by the monument. we are few. cars honk by in the drizzle. our quiet assemblage not noticed by anyone who has the power stop this war. my out of iraq now sign blurring in the wet assuages no one hurt or destroyed in battle. i fear this unknowing although i am grateful to have never known the hot hell of war. i ache for those who cry out, but my pain is nothing compared to theirs. i 'think' - god bless you, but i don't know who or what god is.

monday 4/14
cute
‘cute’ applies in a weird way to my mom, even as she's fighting lung cancer with chemotherapy treatments in portland. and this the day before her 77th. she tugs at the edge of her wig. the tendrils of what’s left of her hair peek out. i snip some off. we laugh, but i notice that fear shades her eyes from time to time, or a far away, inward look as she drifts off from our conversation. her trembling hands look up a number in the yellow pages. her green-rimmed eyeglasses tuck under the wig like a pencil stuck into a rubber bathing cap. her empty cornfield eyebrows (one bent + lonely stalk here, another there) are more sparse than ever. she walks steadfastly away from the waitingroom in her regulation robin’s egg blue hospital robe for an x-ray. she does not look back. her wig is on right, but to her it feels as if it bubbles up on top of her head, leaving an itchy cavity of space between her balding skull + the nap of the wig. she applies herself to this assault of lethal chemicals with what-else-am-I-going-to-do-about-it-I-hope-this-works-matter-of-fact yankee courage, dread, hope + helplessness. all this is transparent in her wrinkled face, the face which she finds ‘so old’ when she looks in the mirror. tonight I catch a glimpse of her in her underpants + sunset boulevard turban. she says goodnight all over again as she sees me seeing her, but she does not start. she is not ashamed of her body, of her mottled skin - the testament to her ongoing battle with pre-melanoma. she is girlish undressing for bed, caught like a snapshot in the soft light.

tuesday 5/13
rage dichotomy
when i was a teenager one of the seniors in my high school, a kid named castigliano, punched me in the face, twice, + shoved me into a swimming pool for 'foul-mouthing his girl' (why do we never forget these things?). i had no idea what he was talking about. i'd had maybe 5 beers + was just standing there, at the edge of the oval pool, zit-faced, nonplussed, oblivious. that's when castigliano clocked me. springing into action, before the 2nd hit, i clenched my fist. i was gonna give him the goods for real, but i...ah...didn't have the balls. my arm froze. ok, he was bigger, stronger + nastier than me, but the picture in my head - my fist to his pretty jaw - disarmed me. i couldn't hurt him, or was afraid to, or so i told myself, or, or, or. my friends yanked me out of the chlorine, dabbed at the cut on my face + consoled me, but i never got over it. i whimped out - a total fag. this confuses me today because i'm such a sicko badass steroidal motherfucker on the turnpike. any asshole hugging the bumper of my old lady's grand am + i hang in there like a mule, 20 mph over the limit, a wall of traffic in the right lane, a stream of cars in mine + this bastard can go fuck himself. i revel in the phantom violence. i will not give one inch from my little safe house motor vehicle. when at long last there's an opening on the right for me to scoot into + let him pass, i ignore it. i even slow down a bit just to piss him off, hit the gas, +, lurching ahead, smiling my most vindictive smile. this fucking cunt will not pass my big fucking gay-assed red car, period! i play chicken with 16-wheelers, six pack pick-up trucks, mercedes elitists - a silly, lethal contest of wills that i choose to play, cool in my cocoon, tense hands on the wheel, on fire with clenched-jawed glee. i am the total opposite of the girly boy at the pool who was too chickenshit to fight back.

saturday 5/31
fish nets
you make a snap decision + it turns out a total fiasco. this time it was fish nets. lime green, sparkly fish nets. at a college, a fucking college. short shorts, a see-thru skimpy 'blouse', gold reflective converse all stars + fucking lime green fish nets. if this was a nod to glam, to bowie, to some consistent 'look' maybe it could have cut it. but no. this was a fluke. it came outa left field. right up there with the gold lame pajamas i wore for an orchestra luna show at the orpheum. the band didn't get written up, but the pajamas did. 'jumping around the stage like a hot potato in tin foil'. good going, berlin. + The Hair. forty colors over 12 months, but nothing consistent. nothing that held. just a weak water color smear. one hair job - swimming pool blue. i'd hoped for superman blue. the chick who did it fucked up. i washed it out + colored it over to some weak pinkish result. laughing stock pink i think it was. ah, image. how you failed me. on the top of the mountain: the lime green fish nets with leg hair squirting out between threads.

sunday 6/22
bad burgers
in the dentist chair for a new crown to replace one 30 years dull w/ decay. doc says i have 'long roots' which is why i need not one but three hits of Novocain or else i flop around in the chair like a trout. the temporary insert is plastic. 'chew on one side til you get the new one' he advises. home later, the drug worn off, my jaw throbs w/ the abuse suffered. the left side of my mouth can't smile. drool drools out. it hurts to open up. eat something, you'll feel better i tell myself like a jewish mother. i check the food wall menu to find something tofu soft + then rethink. there's leftovers in the fridge from the barbecue last sunday. toss out the chicken (it smells like fart). accept the frozen tomatoes, weak lettuce + two ok burger patties. tweeze out the crusty bottom-of-foot yellow bun. plop the patties into a the Teflon skillet i bought my room mate travis months ago, replacing his old one - the surface so scarred it took very un-Teflon, violent scrapings to scour. i tap on garlic powder, pepper + cover the pan with a glass top. seems as if it's gonna take awhile to get done so i drift back to the piano to practice. losing track until i smell something foul. the burgers! fuck! at first i hope (finger to chin): hmm..., they must be ready. wonderful. but the kitchen's a disaster, the pan in flames, smoke like a dust storm + the burgers transmogrified into rock hard charcoal briquettes. i click off the burner + yank the pan clear just as the smoke alarm screams - a robotic female voice: 'fire! fire!'. smoke obscures kitchen + hallway. i flip on the day porch fan + grab another from downstairs to suck out the smoke. it crashes to the floor. my cat skitters down the hall, rear legs like dragon fly wings. i re-set the fan, the smoke dissipates, the alarm gives up + i construct a sorry assemblage of bun, 'blackened' burger, sliver of nasty cheese, 2 tomatoes, slab of lettuce + a squish of ketchup. i had to chisel the burgers off the pan. a hammer would have helped. i eat the bed i make. i eat the embedded teflon too. i shuffle down the hall + fire up the latest episode of the wire. i inhale my pathetic dinner, careful to keep everything to one judicious side. later, washing up, i realize i'd destroyed the new Teflon + will have to buy another. hey, not all faggots can cook.