He pulled up against the curb and parked. In his rear view he saw that there was a security guard walking toward his car and then realized that maybe he wasn't supposed to park there. But never mind, he figured. Normally in a situation like this he'd just take the ticket. It involved handing it to his secretary and the matter would be resolved. Ten dollars he would never miss would disappear from one of his accounts and he wouldn't even know when. He paid somebody to know when. Paid them to stress out over it so he didn't have to. And there's a certain beauty to the arrangement whereby someone's family is fed and all this person has to do is chew on the nuts and bolts of boring numbers - numbers in such supply that they had finally just become tedious. Success, was the word for it. But that is not what he was thinking about at the moment. He was thinking that the security guard who was approaching, the security guard who was now tapping on his driver's side window, was familiar. He knew him, but he never knew him to be so goddamn pushy. To have the balls to tap in his (MY) fucking window. “Sir you will have to move your car.” “I'll only be ten minutes.” “And that will be just long enough for us to tow the vehicle. And I'd be happy to give you the phone number to where we'll take it if it pleases you to not move your car......Sir.” “Who the fuck are...............” he was about to ask when there was a tap on the passenger side window. The situation had taken a different shape. It had been lifted out of the security guard's hands. And the guard was glad about it. It was fun and all to push and pull a little, but not his job. Someone else would be explaining how profoundly things had changed in the gentleman's absence. Sir.

stir-fried frog legs. three things.

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas is written in the second person. People will tell you (second person) that sometimes when they read a book, it's like the author is describing their own lives. Not what happens, but how the main character perceives and reacts to the things that are happening. Exact situations are unimportant compared to interpretation and sensation. Neither interpretation nor sensation are subject to what country you live in or what's your financial status. “It's like, I watched this move, and like, everything that was happening was just like what's going on in my life. And I told that to whatsername, and she was like, 'me too.'” I don't buy this on the grounds that I know there weren't trapeze monkeys and Parisian urchins lining the walls of your work place every evening, but sure, you probably wanted to say 'fuck it all' (even the good stuff) more than you wanted people to know. Books and movies don't speak to me like that anymore. But in my book, I'd be the third person. And I'd be hobbling around on a fucking peg with a headful of rum. I'd be nailing a gold doubloon and striking a bargain with my crew. Instead, I'm bitching about rent.

Henry is seventy-six years old and has led what he calls a beautiful life. He has a wife and a couple kids who have over the years given him a grippe of grandkids to whom he (apparently) runs home to every night when he leaves the bar. He was in the national guard as a young man and everything in his life ties back to those days of driving tanks or trucks or keeping a straight face in front of a screaming sergeant. After two beers (PBR's, on which he doesn't tip even the fifty cents change off two dollars) he'll go on about how as an old man your body doesn't work and how all your quiet time is taken up in revelry. “All these memories,” he says, and he squints real hard at me like he's sharpening up the point with his eyes, trying to penetrate my young, thick skull. “All these memories, and it's been a beautiful life! Make no mistake............I was a handsome man, good hair, always small, but................” Sometimes I wonder if he knows he's hanging out in St. Louis' only non-gay gay-bar. I wonder if his family chuckles and wonders the same thing as they pick him up nightly 'round nine.

It's only after you've given up on a certain amount of your piddly ambitions (what lots of people call 'dreams') that security becomes important. These days, what I think about when I hear a line in a song (written, by the way, by a 19 year old) “what you reap is what you sow,” it occurs to me that I may have been forgetting this whole time to sow anything. Except for marginal effort sunk into a job that requires constant attention I'd rather not pay. Reap and sow on a weekly basis. Sow at five, reap ten hours later. It's not entirely my fault. And I'm not entirely alone. “Sow to reap” is a concept that might be kind of dated. Even farmers probably don't throw those words around anymore. And they might douse the 1 to 1, sow to reap theory with a cold bucket of logic if questioned. All it takes is an early freeze or swarms of monarch butterflies to prematurely reap what you've sown, and to leave you with the mess to clean up.

a trail of bubbles bleeding. three things.

There were maybe five doctors/med students poking me with what I imagined to be sticks. They're smiling, oddly, like they're laughing at me. Laughing like, “You would not believe what we just did to you.” I bet it had something to do with my throat, tho. And probably the side of my head. “Why's my throat hurt?” This is curious. I figured the side of my head would hurt, 'cuz of all the knives, and cutting, and pulling, and stitching. But why my throat? “We had a tube down there,” they tell me. They cover their mouths and chuckle. Hee-hee. That's great guys. Really great. You got me with that one. “What room am I in?” “Recovery.” It's just like I imagined. It's a happy place full of drugs and white coats. The thing that it's most full of, and the thing that makes it the happiest place on earth, is being done with surgery. It's totally full of beingdonewithsurgery. Brimming with it. “You want a couple Vicodin?” “Yes.” “You wanna lay down for about an hour?” “It's like you've known me my whole life, nurse.”

Before I moved into this apartment I had a recurring fantasy. It would involve a right-hand turn onto Westminster In my green Honda. My wheels would strain slightly and slide over dirty and rain slicked pavement. Onto a drab street whose old trees line either side. Their leaves would be bright orange and red, but muted by the gray clouds above them. Wet brick and wet cars. Tail-lights and brake-lights shining in the evening overcast. And these are the Sesame Street days before I had cares. Or before cares had begun embedding themselves up there in the form of memories. One month I've lived here and it seems to have been a problem of music that keeps muddying up that moment I've looked forward to for an entire summer. And today it finally hits. I splash through a shallow puddle whose falling drops sync up with arpeggiating notes. I don't need it every day. Just once in every while.

I woke up one eye at a time. It's a trick I learned from an older guy in college. Sometimes when you go to bed, you do so in such a manner (physically) that there's no telling when you might wake up, and no telling what kind of heinous things may have happened while you slept. It was a nice dream from which I woke, which made the “being pulled out of my own skin” sensation of coming to even less pleasant. Something about a guy named Stacie building a house of cards on a granite bar-top. Waking up is one of the few (if not the one and only) instances when “sudden” or “wrenching” become the same thing is “gradual.” And it was this kind of transition with which I made the trade from a dark bar with points of obnoxious light to the morning-glow flood that fills my bedroom every day. And where is that music coming from? So creepy. So out of place. And so beautiful. I fumble in my covers and find the tiny source that's been working away so diligently for so many hours. I turn it off. If every day started with a specter (the kind you only see in the gray that buffers the night from the day) I'd have a lot more to talk about, but a lot fewer people who would listen.

top, theme, base. three things.

I don't know how long that mosquito was attached to my right finger before I noticed it was there, but it was long enough that when I waved it away, its stinger got stuck and for a moment it was convinced that it had sucked on the last hand of its short life. There it is swinging from side to side from its one tool for gathering sustenance, like it's tied by a tether. Minutes later a white welt starts to itch, and I wonder if it's the result of the sting (a slender shaft for collecting small amounts of blood we'll never miss) or from all the dirt and germs you can't believe a mosquito can fit on its little probe. And I wonder if when AIDS patients get stung by an insect, does the same welt appear?

It's sunny and 75F., and I can't stop grinding my teeth. I keep asking myself, “How ya doin'?” and answering, “I've been better.” “Yeah.” It starts in the morning or whenever I wake up, coming up from the nice and cozy waters of sleep feels like being pulled out of my skin. Start with the skull and get a real good grip. After that it's just a matter of pulling and pulling until all that's left is a soppy pile of skin and hair, and dangling above (suspended by the skull with a powerful vice) is a twitching and squirming (and fully, fully awake) me. It's not pain, so that's a plus. Not pain, but all the discomfort you might expect if you were to be thusly separated. And that's how the day begins. Completely different bedroom. Exactly the same fears and uncertainties, mingled with some new ones. The only way to shake off the beast who has decided while you slept that he'd take it upon himself to hump you all day long, is to pull the chord and start the engine. Try to distribute some of the blood that's settled in pools overnight in all the wrong places.

If the next phase of human evolution is toward the floral (olfactory brilliance and beauty and none of that crying over nonsense) then I wasn't necessarily crazy to have obsessed over the resemblance between winter trees and blood vessels. You start at the base of the skull and there's a little nub of brain we could never do without. It's what makes us fight death, but at the same time invite it ('cuz we like our cigarettes and our booze and our sex with strangers). It's reptilian and we inherit it from our fish ancestors. Above that nub, both figuratively and literally, is our mammalian brain. Mammal brain loves warmth, both literally and figuratively. Loves family and safety and preservation of those things. Loves sex with one person. Mammal brain would have nowhere to stand, tho, if not for reptile brain which still makes us warm and loving mammals fly into rages from time to time. Atop and afront mammal brain (literally and figuratively) is flower brain whose resources are vast and unexplored. Flower brain sucks nourishment from the sun and mourns that its present host spends so much time indoors. Flower brain spreads out like a leaf and is concerned with the olfactory. Flower brain secretly laughs every time we marvel at the time-machine nature of the scent of our old high-school or ex-girlfriends. Flower brain germinates through spores and without discrimination. Flower brain is a whore by our standards. One whose nobility is eternal. As will be evident long after we're dead.

welcome any change. three things.

That cloud looks like an upside-down cone over south-city. At its edges are sheets of rain that say that while it's not raining here, it's raining like a waterfall just over there. And we're in for it. This one looks like a global warming kind of storm the likes of which we have only recently become familiar with. This is a storm I'm going to have to beat home so as to not get into a car accident amidst thousands of motorists who all have on their mind that this might be Armageddon and it's all our fault. If I can just make it home this last time, I swear I'll never drive my car again. And the urgency makes it seem unbelievable that we can ever walk around as if the world weren't coming to an immediate end. That's God in the clouds, and he's hanging out with the Devil. They worked together before and have been planning a one-day reunion for the rapture. On this day they're doing the same job. One wears a steadfast and righteously dutiful expression on his face. The other's expression's the same, 'cept he's kinda showing off. Fifteen minutes later I'm home and the local weatherman's graphic shows a shining sun behind a few small clouds and droplets of lingering rain. Underneath the fear of total apocalypse is a hope that something is going to change without our having to make it happen. Humanity makes a collective wish for all that revelation stuff to finally happen.

I'm weaving through potholes and we're discussing the effects of living in a world full of stupid people who like stupid things. If you don't believe this is how it is, you've never seen a show called The Real World. On this show are some people who live in a house. There's a room in this house marked only with the word “Invite.” This room is reserved for whoever has gotten lucky on any given night. To be fair, these people are chosen to be on this show because they are stupid, and therefore do not represent an accurate sample of our population. But then, the show has been on and been popular for how many years? If life imitates art (and here art means any fucking show on Mtv) then there are millions of people out there who think it's okay to say things like “Don't take it personal,” and to address strangers as “Sexy ass girl!” The effect that this has on me is of no concern to anyone. To say how this makes me feel would be self-indulgent. Nothing is more important to people than to say how they feel – even when no one cares and no one is listening. Caring and listening are not required of an audience for a personal rant. I'm weaving through potholes and saying that it makes me sad and angry. And god help me if I have to live like this for the rest of my life. It's a bad dream. I'll wake up and Fergie won't have set the bar for emotional depth. But then maybe it's all real and the last place of refuge will be in one or two circles scattered around the planet where people still think Jack Kerouac was kind of full of shit. Maybe it's a matter of getting used to it all. And maybe I'll designate one room in my new apartment as the “Invite” room.

It was on this word-processor that I wrote five five-paragraph essays the summer before my Junior year of high school for the upcoming fall-term's geology class. There are snapshots from that time and they all smell like this room with red carpet and like the keys whose clicking has probably gotten louder in the eleven years that have passed since I stapled those twenty-five sheets together: Cutting grass in long-sleeves, retreating to the dark and cold basement and dying with a can of Pepsi on the fold out sofa. Sitting in class admiring my new Doc Martens with one foot propped on my knee and feeling like this was the most freedom I'd ever been allowed in school or in any setting up 'til this point. Waking up at two in the afternoon, horrified that the leaves on the ground seemed to match the life-cycle of this Saturday and of my shortening time. Smelling those books in the library and sensing their heft. Wishing I had gotten an earlier start. Snapshots are nuisances and they are a curse. I've gotten better at not remembering those things. Those words that people say when they think it won't matter have much better places to hang out than in my brain.

eighteen minutes and counting. three things.

“In the box that you're sitting on top of are all of my belts from martial arts. That's why I was just standing there letting him yell at me. I wish he would take a swing.” This is two hours and several drinks after all hell breaks loose outside as I'm flipping stools. When you kick the drunks out, they just take all their newly unleashed stupidity along with them. Watching them go at it through the floor-to-ceiling windows is like seeing some awful episode of cops on a big-screen. There's the belief that people have regarding fights that the more people there are standing around to stop it, the more likely it is to stop before anyone gets hurt. There is also a belief that the person “holding back” one of the two fighting parties is actually holding back one of the two fighting parties. The words, “let me attem” or “ooh, I'm' so mad” always occur to me. The reality is that the more people involved in the whole scuffle actually count simply as more people standing in a circle just outside of harm's way and trying to shape their faces into an expression of concern and of being prepared at any time to intervene, but only if necessary. It's sad in theory that this kind of shit-flinging is happening between two adults, 27 and 29 years old. Only in theory, tho. I'm flipping all the stools upward for the night. I'm wondering if I can pour out the last of these drinks. I'm thinking this cooler is leaking and should probably be checked out. And that this is not my bar.

Sitting on a stool (so as to be higher than everyone else) is a tubby “chef.” Around him sit a circle of people whom he fears secretly, but who (as part of their jobs) suck his member and do so with varying degrees of fervor and success. They're talking about wine, a few of them, as everyone tastes a new Red. “Erin came up with a good word to describe this,” says our sommelier. “Yeah, I think this one tastes leathery.” “Ooh, that's good,” says her co-worker and boyfriend. There's no way of knowing how far you can roll your eyes back into your skull (and make sure no one sees it) until you're confronted with someone who says this wine tastes leathery, or that this wine has a real “bass note,” or until you hear someone who claims to have ever drank the stuff describe Moscatto as being “like Peach Schnapps, but not.” I want to be there on the last day of sommelier training when they tell you that the big secret you'll take with you and will enable you to blow countless plumes of smoky bullshit up countless restaurant owners' sphincters is that it's all a word game, and the drippier and more abstract the better. If ever I assemble a list of wines, it will be progressive with respect to alcoholic content, rounding out with my highly recommended “Fortified” assortment.

Field Blank

caramel apples. felonies. three things.

I wish it could always be late in April. It is today and it's cold outside and we're waiting in a huge line of skinny hippies before the Blue Note opens its doors. This venue sucks. Its walls are falling apart in a way that points out that decay is sometimes charming, and that this is not one of those times. It's a cheap drink ticket for frat-boys and their female counterparts, which brings all the douchery you'd expect from a spirited game of “pitchers” to whatever show you've payed $12 to see. It's fine if it's Nashville Pussy, but it's not always Nashville pussy. I'm bored so I'm smoking a cigarette while trying to convince myself that all I have in common with these hippies is that I bought this album, and that I kind of like it. And then what looks to be a group of super-hippies swaggers by with way more confidence than should be granted to anyone in this crowd. He's in the front and wearing his beard like a shield. He's scared but still carrying himself like a giraffe. Lumbering and slow. What gives him away is his trying to fit in with a crowd of people all trying to stand out. He's like a quiet (and very polite) bull-dozer. Nobody recognizes him, or nobody has the hippie guts to point out to him who he is, and how much they love him for it. He goes through the front door and takes, I imagine, a deep breath of relief. I imagine, also, that he said something smart about being able to make your own music, but unable to choose your fans.

She must be ninety by now. She's come down with all the things old people come down with and goes to the hospital like most people go to the grocery store. But nothing has killed her, and maybe it won't. Her sister was a nun and used to visit me in my dreams. And this is something that doesn't seem fair. Once she's done with her body, it's no big deal to hunt somebody down in the city, in their sleep, and after she's dead. No problem. What is a problem, tho, is recognizing me as her grand nephew (who's been around 25 years or so) as she walks into my parents' kitchen where I'm stealing a match and thinking now's as good a time as any to step outside. “And who are you,” asks this insanely educated nun, who years ago gave up god-fearing and has since grown to consider herself an equal. Thing is, if you're really talkin' to god, like on the phone and stuff, who cares who believes you? And who cares if you can't remember everyone around you? Even if they've been around for the most recent quarter of your long (long) life. Sister Baptista went out with a bang, and left behind her (literal) sister. She must be ninety. It's her turn now, and you can see her settling into the role nicely. She's not about to ask me who I am, but she'll stare at me for five seconds (again, as she's walking into the kitchen on mother's day) following my face like a slot machine, till all the tumblers look the same. So much energy to put into every face you come across. As if there's not enough for an old lady to do.

There will probably be a time when I hate this song. And it won't be because the song is no good, but because it was all I could listen to for awhile, and in that while all sort of beautiful things were going on around me. Or I perceived my world to be full of beautiful things revolving around me, like I was something special. Like I had stumbled upon something better than what I deserve. A real analysis might reveal that I'm surrounded by coke-heads and people who have chosen a life that society has deemed irreproachable because inexplicable, when the real case is that it's just easier to get attention by doing this thing rather than that thing. Here's where it comes in handy to tell the truth slant, and to put oneself in a swoon, and use that swoon as a cloud upon which one can cross the abyss, whose bottom is covered with all those sharp and foul things we've let fall down its edge rather than really banish. Like they say, shit adds up at the bottom. And there it is. It hasn't gone anywhere. I'll hate this song when a month or a year I go back to listen to it and it doesn't do for me then what it does for me today. In the same way that a song only provides temporary and illusory (albeit useful) rest from our sometimes unsavory lives, the very nature of the rest it provides is fraught with all those things you've talked yourself into forgetting. You'll find them one by one, like little razor blades pushed into an apple.