A plane flies over at 30,000 feet. Not the first time. We’ve seen it all before. Some of us first hand— and to one passenger in first class sipping his bottomless Mimosa, having another, reclining at a Virgin Airlines exclusive forty-five degree angle, staring with bull eyes through cotton windows as those precious stock symbols of his tick by, watching someone else’s dollar fly into a hungry engine wing as if being shredded, as if being pureed solely for his amusement, juiced, from cash to kale, taking it in with but a grin, and from where he’s sittin’ it looks, well, from there it probably doesn’t look like much down here at all. Or does it, Captain? Au mais contraire, from here, ground zero, my hammock clinging with dear life to the limb of a ripe banana tree, every fruit whispering pick me, pick me, all eyes peeled on the infinite ripples forming over a Pacific-fed, saltwater stream who’s current stimulation is supplied thoughtlessly by the trope of water nymphs hanging out on lily pads a gently blowing— yes, from here, from where I’m laying it all looks pretty good indeed—looks to me like all I could ever want or need. Sure is peaceful, I think, but it’s peace having taken the most provocative of form I’ve ever seen. No love lost here—

And so paradise was founded by a group of individuals who cast themselves out a society intent on doing everything in its power to wring, like dirty dish towels, the creative juices from its plump, oily participants, their faceless master, unbeknownst to them, determined to harvest them of soul, suck them dry of tears, kill joy, roll them flat, cut them into matching squares, bake them hard as rocks, watching them grow old and wrinkle like dehydrated raisins in the sun— So what becomes these people of the prune?

To escape this fate us lucky few fled like rebels on broomsticks and laid stake to a small hunk of unprotected Californian land. It was close enough to see the screen of smog backlit in Hollywood spotlights but far enough yet to spy the stars. ‘Hi Tom, are you really out there?’ Here we set out to find another way to be, or not to be any way at all, or to be but what ourselves.

For me it was easy. I had only a few requirements. All I ever wanted to do was spend my precious time Reading and Writing and Watching movies that inspired inspiring visions I could call my own… in a land where sugar plums grow on fairy trees and the elderly walk with candy canes, there is a quiet man, but there would be no elder folk if he could have has way, we’d all die young or not at all, grow up without falling to pieces, the fountain of youth runs red awash thy neighbor’s borrowed blood, knock-knock, another cup of raw sugar please, and the sun offers their only hint of passing time— Wouldn’t be long before we lost track the seconds, said good-bah to sheep, closed our eyes on their white-washed world views and let fresh a coat of darkness that would rinse clean the boundless canvas of a whole body painted black. Here, we have all the Space we’ll ever need.

Here, we have everything we’ll ever need— to bathe in the salty pool that collects an ocean’s waves; that is if I am to bathe at all; to rub dirt in my open wounds, the same dirt where carrots are tended to and gummed by toothless whittle wabbits, where tomatoes are groped first by only virgin hands, all our limbs pure anyway when rooting around the rich, dark, chocolate soil that lies beneath our former’s cracked, clay and barren lands; toenails of all the boys and girls stained purple from stomping homegrown grapes into healing wine; heels black as ash for we have walked the searing coals; palms cupped together holding dearly to each drop of passive rain; clothes reduced to little more than tattered rags, relics of a vintage cult to which we all belonged, one led by Euro-fashion queens and suicide kings, these rustic robes tied together in some cases by patches of groomless hair; body odors more like musk than melon; urine running clear like molten ice; and for us men, our semen sweet and soothing from the mug like fresh whacked, warm milk of coconut. Drink up, baby dove.

It was inevitable—if for no reason other than their possessing Viking hearts—that our sons and daughters would grow up one day and ask to leave the magical fortress we’d created here, for ourselves at first but later adding them, so they could explore the nightmarish plain we left behind, decades ago, the one that presumably still surrounds our invisible, un-moated walls. And what choice did we have but to let them go, not warning them, merely wishing them well, sending them on their merry way, hoping in vain that things had not gotten too much worse in a power driven, pac-man-eat-pac-man, fruitless world. ‘Good luck,’ we sang, ‘be safe,’ we mused, as we watched our offspring made weak by birth in captivity go one-by-one, or skipping in uneven groups of two-by-three, shaven lambs catapulting themselves headlong into a slaughtered, roasted, boastful belly overstuffed with pig ears and bacon bits. Go ahead, gorge yourselves if that’s what you really think you want, you need. But what if they never come back? Will we then have made the greatest mistake of all by sheltering them so long from the domineering, hellish world, filling their minds with nonsensical ideals the likes of whimsy, us knowing all along that one day when tested these morals imposed upon would hold up like Willows against the outside world’s hurricane force winds? Perhaps we should have asked these questions sooner; perhaps we were shortsighted in our vision; perhaps we had deluded ourselves into believing our actions might somehow resonate in the atomic bomb sheltered, lead-lined, bubbled lives these people on the outside led; oh how we would affect change! But we didn’t. No we did not at all. It is crystal clear now that this has been, at best, an experiment entered into by a group of reckless radicals, of freedom fighters from the fringe, of Alien hippies engaged in matrimony by the rings of Saturn, of ones personally meant for this life but, and this cannot be stressed enough, grossly unprepared to make that decision on behalf another, to play god on behalf their unborn child. Yes, what a foolhardy, beastly idea it was for us to choose to mate in here. So best of luck my dear, be you damned to here or there, I hope with all my life you find the courage to smother their flames of hate or flee before they char and pick clean your last piece of infant flesh, sucking warm marrow from your bones while flossing gaps between their yellow teeth with your stretched tendonness. Très bon their appetit.

I guess it was always of greater concern that they would one day infringe upon our savory land and burn our people like unreformed witches from Denmark for living a sense they could not or would not ever bother to understand. How simply they refused to fathom the phantoms that foretold their own demise was always beyond me. Ghosts of their bloody past should have haunted their tireless existences with their dying, looping breath but somehow delusions of greener grandeur seemed to quell the petty cries echoing from their dead ancestor’s shallow, unmarked graves. This must be why I’ve slept under flame retarded sheets for all these years. For long as I remember, I’ve lied beneath blankets singed and holy so I would not forget the inferno that drove me here to my quiet, final, resting place. Sure it’s cold sometimes, there’s a draft more often than not, but I’d rather be cold and winded than cozy and cocooned, rather my warm corpse not be wrapped in dead duck down—thread count be damned—rather my icy soul near death than live like one of those flannel-fed, material beings who belong. But to be burned at the stake, I’d rather not— glad to have escaped the fate of those lesser known witches from Denmark, and I suppose for doing me that one decency the people of my time do deserve the smallest token of my gratitude. Well thanks I guess for that.

Maybe this flimsy hold on humanity was why in the early days I still slunk back, head held in fellatio between my legs, to their broken world. Less and less, but still, before that last invisible thread of connective tissue was permanently loped—of course it would be the burying of my mom, not long after my father’s faulty heart gave way, that would cut my cord for good—but before that there was always a string to draw me back— felt like a fishing line hooked through my belly button every time I got reeled over to their side through a revolving door called ‘pop-culture.’ It almost tickled. See, I’ve always had this morbid fascination towards, and this unfounded fear that I must stay in touch with the so-called pulse of their society, the whiny musings of my lost generation, and even as I grew to despise their place at large, I found myself nevertheless instilled with the bloodthirstiness of a middle school biologist cutting into his first fetal pig, and when it came to understanding the inner workings of my fellow man, getting down to what made them tick, squeezing their beating hearts to make the blood pump faster yet, or more specifically, understanding what kept them entertained, to this end I would slide their tiny organs under my microscope minutiae and slice them open with my most precise of instruments, my ejectable scalpel of the corneal kind. It was their guts I longed to see, but never found.

I still have these splintered memories, shards wedged for good, or for worse, healed under the wrinkles of what was my young adult mind of the book I was reading back then while I walked the jagged, picket-fenced in line between their world and what would become of mine. Smuggled guiltily between Nabakov’s Lolita and Kesey’s Cuckoo Nest, I had procured a digital copy, so best to peek at in the privacy of my own phone, of the masses most beloved book from that place in time. It was called ‘The Hunger Games’— wouldn’t be satisfied to say it was the hollow, earth-rattling mediocrity, a sound best left for easily distracted, volcano babies, or the utter laziness, my shoulders fatigued to this day from all their shruggings, of this work, and of its rabid fans, that gave me the final nudge over the edge and into my rightful, infinite abyss in wait— wouldn’t be fair at all because there were a whole litany of other factors that must have played a part—the part of Noah’s Arc, the part of the Serpent, and the part of an ever-shifting Eden were among the roles I cast. So let me set the scene:

I had just moved into a van and left for a cross-country trip to span Los Angeles and Austin, but would shortly thereafter find my stay extended to Brooklyn, while all along the way I was dropping breadcrumbs, spilling whiskey, planting apple seeds in the backyard where my parents watched me fall from an acorn tree, many years ago, snapping my fragile arm on impact; riding these magic bean stalks populated by my predecessors gave me a greater understanding of my place, or may have made me see where I didn’t fit; shared a brief but lofty love affair—and an adopted, expecting cat—with my musician, siren friend, whom I both admired and was utterly entranced by for the trip; lived a month in the Big City where I narrowly avoided digesting more forbidden fruit than one could expel; how rotten; this and more before returning back to the land of retreaded, stomped-out dreams with a litter of nervous kittens riding shotgun, scratching my back even when it didn’t itch, them anxious as I for a place to make our home—

So that is, and always will be, my biggest vice—the unshakable desire to please. To this this day my only regret remains, the one which will at this point undoubtably accompany me to the urn—burned past death by choice, rather than lit in vain like those exclaimed witches from Denmark—is the personally held fact that everything I have ever done is laced with my silent squeals for their approval. ‘Pick me, pick me!’ the piggish pages read. Somehow, my entire life was spent in turn rebelling from and crying out for their prized acceptance. Will the knowing nod of a fellow’s chin be waiting for me in the life that follows?—neatly bow tied and locked, Jack’s lower jaw aching to be sprung from within its wooden box, trembling in anticipation, a million little caskets all beholden with their dying words, ‘was you all along we sought,’ as they pop in perfect uni-song. Perhaps in death I can for once be free. And with that I welcome you to join.

Was a scared, stubborn baby, was a boy— stayed in Womb nine months and twenty seven years. Nine pounds going on one fifty! This womb of mine was a dark cave that rendered me senseless, but hey, ‘least it was warm— was food in tube. And it was safe— knew I would always be safe so long as I was tucked in there. I had my activities. One of my favorite things to do was pull my knees to my chest, tuck my head, and for no reason past reflex, close my eyes. Yep, that was how I slept, in a ball—could sleep that way for days, could sleep that way all winter, could sleep that way for good and I wouldn’t miss a thing. Although occasionally, I’d hear noises, would feel vibrations, some good & sweet— called those lickings cause they smoothed, like wet whispers or wind-stung chimes they were the humming of birds and the buzzing of bees, and they soothed, while the others, the loud & sudden ones, oh god, they were called thuddings because they made the tummy rock, they made the stomach fluids swell, carrying my breadbasket deeper into the ocean’s oven— took hand-clapped thunder to rock my cradle. When I couldn’t take all the so-called ‘stimulation,’ I would thrust my legs and jab never-cut nails into those padded walls of hers—take flesh of my flesh, a bone to pick unformed. ‘Let me out!’ I would scream; ‘no, no, no—not yet,’ I would moan, premature in my ways. Then I would curl up, rocking to and fro like a dead horse shoed to bowed ski boards and beat. We did the downhill rock. The ‘fetal position,’ I found out later it was called, also helped with the nightmares—

Never been in a sensory deprivation chamber before, but I get the appeal. As an over-baked loaf of being, bred with love but locked in vitro, nobody bothering to monitor the glass oven where my insides petrify like wood, then put on low till my guts return to a sticky goo, I have to be careful about who and what I surround myself with. I’m done, but yet unformed. If they get even millimeters under my skin, are able to root around my rotten core, they won’t be unable to resist playing in the mess of blood and clay I call my grounds. If they aren’t careful, and if I’m not careful as well, they will find their sticky fingers instinctively reshaping my clay organs, my soft as putty heart, in their own image—it’s what these messiah people do— and they shall use their muddy palms to seal the smooth creation in it’s former owner’s blood. I’m resilient, I truly am, but there’s only so much I can do when I keep letting them inside. Every time I convince myself I’m letting the right one in, yet somehow I always end up with these god-fearing vampires running rampant on my sacred grounds, my temple, my body, my mind, my soul, till all I have left is gone. So that would be the appeal of the sensory deprivation chamber. To have a coffin all my own. Nail me shut, drop me in the ground, cover me in earth and let me be free.

The nightmares— more and more often I was having these flashes of ‘Light World’— would come in rapid bursts, vision montages at first— had no clue what I was seeing then, but now, I can proudly describe those sights in terms you will understand. Put simply, I saw:

lions ripping hooded shoppers limb from sweatered limb at the Gap; an exposed breast, extremely close, inflating and going flat under a dictator’s cold, purple lips; swarms of black birds, crows, dive-bombing the volcano before erupting bald as eagles; a man with his big belly jiggling, mowing a lawn of carrot-orange, surly pubic hair, laughing his ass off literally, he had no butt; pig-nosed pedestrians going down on each other in the mud, queefing bubbles and snorting keys and keys and keys of blow from their golden trough; deserted banquet halls serving rotten flesh to flys; and so on runs the sacrilegious bull—

Then later, the visions presenting themselves as prolonged episodes with no clear end in sight, dancing figure eights, no arc, no story, only a middle connecting two fruitless loops. These ongoing shows were boring like unedited footage from ‘The Real World’ must be. They depicted people with blurry faces going places and doing things—some buildings were made of solid glass and displayed only their reflections, blown up larger than life, while others were graffitied in so many words and symbols that all I could make out were white-washed rainbows and billowing Golden Arches.

I called this place ‘Light World’ because even though there was an ample amount of both light and dark, the people there were obviously more interested in light, or ‘Day,’ as they said. They would say things like, ‘while it’s still light out,’ and ‘before it gets too dark’—’too dark,’ huh, is there even such a thing? Their lives seemed to revolve around this artificial notion of Day, and of Time, and around other ridiculous things like Work—which was merely an excuse, and a means, for them to partake in Play, an escapist tactic not unlike my fetal that often involved the imbibing of bitters, the choking of tabs, the setting of tiny plants on fire to inhale the fumes, and sex. And if I was going to be stuck here, as it seemed I were, then what choice did I have but to go along, to conform— I should get a job, schedule my meals not around hunger but routine, salivating like one of those Pavlov dogs when the clock struck noon, pick bits of speech off their crude tongues and spit them back out, and, if there ever came a time where I just couldn’t take it anymore, when I’d had enough, would I revolt? Would I rise up and fight? No. That was not their way. I would watch TV, or get drunk, or masturbate, or I’d do all three— ‘What the hell,’ they also liked to say.

And now that I’ve set fire to the quiet comforts of my deprived cave, will not burn to death in an apartment with non-moving walls—to emerge in New York City of all places—I find myself slapping down your outstretched demon grabs at every busy turn. How does anyone get anywhere with these five finger-lickin’ tentacles, accompanied by visible lines of hot air, steaming, wafting from the sewers to slither up the leg of your pants looking for the nearest point of entry—better watch your backside—wrapping their warm arms around your waist until you lose all feeling down below, inching their way to your neck, lacing your throat with potion from their sucking cups till you lose all desire to think for yourself, leaving your mouth ajar for easy access, ready to infringe, do bidding for you— stay back, you beast— I spend my days filtering your advances—wink once for ‘yes,’ eyed closed for ‘no’—deciding at a moment’s notice what to let in and who to keep out. The safe play is to oppose every inquisition unconsidered, but even if I had the inclination for such close-mindedness it would be impossible in a place like this with so many happenings and going-ons. Some of your harbingers will find a way, be me willing or caught unguarded, with my pants ankled, intoxicated likely, on the temptation to indulge every passing fancy— will have to spend my days looking for and slipping in and out of urban caves long enough to collect my thoughts and gather a semblance of self if ever there is to be.

After a solo, untragic four hour maiden sail south the moonlit one-o-one, I arrived in a city where my virgin ears, no less than one full moon turned, had been exposed for the first time to the siren’s tantalizing tentacles of serpent song, as if eight separate, teasing tongues whipped and lashed my inner ear, stung my lobes to upset the wax, a voice tickling with its melodic feathers at the most base nerves my brain’s formidable stem, and splitting, at last, by the end like strands of ove’grown hair, the siren’s serpent song, where soon thereafter, loosely threaded moments yanked against better judgement into spans of lifetime, I would experience the paralyzing weight of that sinking lead silence of hers, of theirs, of the all too few serpent sirens at once not belonging here and in harmony dragging me home, along with anyone else in their path, to their other world beyond, a world so deep under the sea it turned back to space. I was hooked…

And so naturally my first order of business as Captain Vanagon was to dock in Los Angeles and retrieve one shapeshifter-eyed split-tongued songstress on her way to Austin, traveled by way of Brooklyn, and from east the Baltic, and from deep the scorched juniper fields of unrecorded Mars, and from one of a former pluto’s self-defeating folds, and more likely still, immaculately conceived, gestated and manifested warm from deep my Id with love, bathed in golden Ego showers, and brought to term with hyperbolic life when driven by my Super-egomaniacal, diabolic mind.

Once I had her locked away, safely stowed, chained to the passenger’s hull by invisible shackles of her own devising, we drifted on, waving gently with pride like regals through what I imagined an octagonal oceanic stained glass windshield lit dill in greenish-pearlful sun (the only detail needing embellishment had me chopping and reassembling a four-sided, rectangle porthole to make my eight-side, bug-eye periscope). Was here I made a point to bend—would bend like limber, would sing like wind—as to her every whim.

The siren and I made it only so far as Venice that first night, as she had but one apparent weakness, one not unlike my own— would be the wickedly charming sounds unwound a bar performer’s fluted, fluttered song to leave her dancing, leave her reeling, leave her sopping every drop of spirits till one by one their starry-eyed advances brought her oh so briefly to a maiden’s stranger arms, and later then, a driver’s foreign hand, before I took her willing, and positioned her mostly lifeless form, contorted, on a parked backseat bench. Upright and tilted, sea sick or drunk, we gave our best attempt at sleep.

What I hadn’t noticed, and wouldn’t notice for some time, was that a transition was taking place in her. Overnight we had parked not right—no, not right at all—but inclined near forty-five degrees, thus depriving ourselves of sleep. The angle would have us relentlessly shuffling through positions that would never interlock like glitched Tetris blocks, the lack of rest would damn us to future delirium. All night our heads spun recklessly like globes in hands of a geographically-delinquent child, till the bright, warm blind seeped upon our wayward cabin and ripped thin sheets of sleep off bloodshot, twitching eyes—

Drank black coffee; squinted through a sobering morning sun; went south and east to get South by West; sat ‘longside a radiant creature who batted cobalt eyes, and thought, there’s no reason for her to be restrained—let me set free the girl, I thought; but unleash the beast, I did instead; let loose a fox of Were, I would later find, with van parked on a donut dirt bike track the Werefox hypnotized me into believing that we made love, that we fell this time in numerous positions locked in one, that the whole time we had been working our jigsaw bodies border first and now the final, phallic piece was ready to be slid effortlessly into place, that we had been reshaped, us two, beneath an oozing blood orange moon, a humongous, bittersweet but juicy fruit, where I was brought to bed, picked and robbed my self, by the harvest moon and its furry naked friend. I was spellbound.

MORRO BAY, CALIFORNIA

The zombies, they’re on tv, the zombies, they’re in my head, the zombies, they’re Walking Dead, the zombies, they’re in my bed— can’t sleep— tossing, and turning, brain intact, and active, waking dead— the hamsters, they turn the wheels in my head, run their claws ‘long my cortex, they shred, I mean rip, the remaining tissue keeping thoughts from leaking outtamymind and dripping outtamyeyes. I cry. My future reflection lies in a puddle of tears. My future dips when I blow, ripples when I poke and flees when I stomp. Can’t sleep—anxious, pouty—so I browse Craigslist for buses near Morro Bay…

The first one I find is zero point three miles away— point blank— brown like a bag lunch. Last time I had one of those, bag lunches that is, my mother sandwiched dozens of pepperonis between super-enriched white bread with zebra cake for dessert. If you peel the zebra’s sweet skin back and expose its spongy innards, you can eat them inside out. I put my pop tarts through the same torment but in the morning it always feels more humane—

This particular ’85 Volkswagen Vanagon—codenamed ‘Westfalia’—comes complete with aftermarket tile floor, pop-tent roof doubling as the master bedroom, backseat transformer to guest bed, closet with shelves, table or desk / coffee or tea, happens to be an automatic, all the better for me. Appears mechanically sound, I suppose, but I don’t speak car. Don’t speak German either. Don’t like cars much—like my bike because I make it run, I have the power, whereas the car runs me, that is, if it so chooses. But, and this is an important distinction, I do like shelter. I fucking love forts. When I was younger, back in those bag lunch days, I would build a new fort everyday. I built forts in trees, transplanted fresh moss to carpet my makeshift rooms, three-by-three inch strips of airy green painstakingly peeled, holding on for dear life with a thousand microscopic hands, rooted, clinched in earth, eventually giving up, but not without a fight, eventually, they let go. Dug holes five feet deep—deep enough—and sat underground till my skin crawled with ticklish millipede hooves and spindly spider wands and twisted worm snakes— were it not for a wormhole in the wood board serving as my lid, I may have been forever lost in dark; although, the dime sized beam burning my thigh seemed almost light too much.

My moveable dream fortress can be had for eight thousand five hundred dollars— too much— ’okay, six,’ says Cordell, proud papa of a baby twins, desperate for diaper money. By nightfall, my beautiful brown oasis is parked firm in a friend’s driveway where we smoke blunts locked inside, safe, listening to Gianna tell stories of a mustached lesbian she knew in middle school— can’t follow all the details of her story but ‘G’s effortlessness in spinning them, smooth like a silk worm, is blanketing. Never have I heard her, and rare have I heard anyone, speak with such crystalline precision—as diamonds are cut from coal, alchemists turn milk to gold—with regard to decade old memories. She is there. Trey and I are here. We’re all laughing, liking, laying back in a hazy Vanagon that’ll be there when the sun rises, when the fog lifts and when last lazy rooster lets fall his head. Adios idility.

as for tomorrow, it is back to LA.

Santa Cruz, California

Gutted, Volkswagon bus outside a breakfast diner in Santa Cruz— sure, her cool blue body, her chipped pale face, her bashful doe eyes, those mirrored metal lips, that shiny rump, they look original, inviting, she is, but it’s her inside, it’s her belly that’s been scooped, licked clean and reskinned a festive picnic chic—

Sunday’s finest meets Yellowstone, red-white checkered cloth, folding wooden chairs, fresh cut daisies and linen dressed silvers float alongside sailboat salts and pirate pepper shackers. Overflow seating available. The restaurant proper is less charming and the woman at the counter, the owner, takes great pride in telling me they only prepare Hollandaise sauce on holidays or weekends when I order the Eggs Benedict on a non-specific Thursday in late February. ‘That’s fine,’ I say, deaming rubber cheddar an acceptable substitute for the creamy, buttery, spiced, richness that, in a good Hollandaise, coats egg dishes double in yolky folds a la fresh paint upspooled from a novice brush. The eggs, they come brown and flaky, dry, with a jug of room temperature milk, ham steak and potato cubes; the entire plate coming sealed tight under a blanket of burnt orange that when punctured, releases invisible squigglys of hot air but little of what I would call ‘savory aromas.’ The only prevailing smell being that of dish soap. ‘But how does it taste?’ you ask. Well, it doesn’t really. It tastes dense. Tastes like mass. Filler. Chews like pizza box. ‘Let’s eat outside,’ I say, already tucking my chair, arm-in-arm with milk, skipping lou to the hollowed bus grounded outside. The food is better here. Much better. There’s breeze, hot sauce and birds singing love songs to the ocean’s beat. After I eat, I write, ‘feel more at home here—’ on a receipt and the following thought process ensues: no longer have an apartment in Los Angeles— planning to be in Austin, Texas, for the next month— don’t have a place there either— don’t have a place anywhere really— there’s a girl who would ride with me from LA— not ready to settle in one place— here’s an idea: I’ll live on a bus. Where can I get one?

10/20/11 — a thursday,

“one please—san francisco—one way—thank you.” i have four hours to slay so i walk down the street to sally loo’s coffee shop in san luis obispo, or “slo” as the locals call it, where i too adopt the phonetic pronunciation, “slow” because i have a pension for juxtaposing the b and the p in opisbo. fcuk…

sally loo’s appears a popular study spot for college coeds with their cast-iron fireplace lit orange and the smell of pumpkin spice circulating the air. a guest book hangs mid-air under steel wires and one entry reads, “The blueberries in my scone were warm and gooey. Mmmmmm ~leslie.” who needs yelp. i don’t write anything; can’t work under pressure.

once matt leaves me alone, i’m free to watch openly as caffeinated patrons mill about. the girl with hair like hay but curly elicits smiles from a baby by making funny faces—she does silly with her tongue, crazy with her eyes and dumb with her ears—and in my opinion, she’s way cuter than the baby; the man wearing neck wool blows steam back into a tiny espresso; the cashier in an apron greets everyone by name—well, everyone except me. he greets me with, “hi, what can i get you?” to which i say, “iced chai, that’s it.”

since ice often melts, a puddle of condensation floods towards my computer. i barricade myself behind dam of napkin and shift my pinky on the keyboard. capital I. then with the other pinky, i press: delete, delete, delete. i save twenty words on my metamorphosis into candy corn before actor colin farrell strolls in. he’s with some punk chick flipping out hell-fire red hair. nice tail. colin’s wearing a fedora but it doesn’t disguise the irish accent in his cheeky “coffee en cream” order. “yeh, two.” he agrees to one picture with a muslim woman because they both wear covers over their heads. nobody else moves until after he exits and for the next few minutes, all the birdies are a twitter over their apparent eagle sighting. me too, but you would never know it. i play it so freaking cool.

and back to business. i watch stocks tick by in one browser window and revise what little text i have left in the other. “It’s not the candy’s shape that strikes me as authentic, it’s the segmentation. Base, heart and head, it’s all on display there.”

a nursing student’s pc battery dies so we swap seats. “sure, take it.” what do i care? her old seat, my new one, is in direct sun. i’m burning up and the view from here offers nothing but a glaring coat of dust on my monitor. i up and leave. on the way out, i say my one revoir to a petite girl doing algebra on her TI-83 calculator. “i thought you were holding a really big cell phone,” i kid. her legs are so short they don’t reach the floor. but on the way to the bus stop i realize i will never see her, or any of these people, ever again. well, maybe colin…

[more Running Away]

10/17/11 — a monday,

morro bay floats on a cloud of fog and atop black hill i see rolling green rock in one direction and melancholy waves rocking blue in the other. they both cap white when washed and the difference between sand and dirt remains to be seen, but of course, once i climb down around the ocean and remove my shoes, bare feet make these two worlds all the different. my toes are swallowed alive in cool sand and picked clean by dying waves. in and out we go. my little piggies collect debris all the way back to someone or another’s home…

deep breaths. salty air. wipe feet clean on matt’s doormat and take a beer from the fridge. relax. it’s cooler than an ocean’s breeze in here and the taste of salt lingers on my tongue. there’s a party tonight so i say, “happy birthday trey” and offer him drinks upon arrival. i’m glad he accepts because this means i can help myself—can’t help myself, “and another?” we take our seats on the couch and wait for his friends, my fellow strangers, to arrive.

a surfer dude enters, a platinum blonde chick follows, then neighbor girl, along with a collection of other characters set to play a supporting role in my life, at least for tonight—which is all you ever know for sure anyway. i play beer pong one-on-one with matt in the dark and after we crank up the fog machine, we’re all one in the same—wandering souls lost in a sea of cloudy spirits.

the smoke clears and surfer dude asks me to join his team. right on. we’re competent enough to win at least a case worth of games before he leaves for more beer, or a blunt, and i replace him with the blonde chick. she’s my first choice in partner despite watching her miss every cup so far. it’s just a game. but since we’re winning, our displays of team spirit include the high five, the back pat&rub and after a particularly spectacular shot, the friendly butt squeeze. i wouldn’t dare say who squeezes but…aye.

everyone loses to someone and i’m recast from beer pong player to casual party goer. as i wander about, no longer sure of my motivation, fresh bodies displace air pacific to this coast. i suppose as casual party goer, it’s my place to take shots with the birthday boy, pass this joint and tell people who i just met a little bit about myself. “about me?” what do i know?

well lemme see, “i’m a confused little boy running from home, not that i have a home per say, but more like the concept of home—don’t want one right now, don’t want anyone really.” to which they say, “uh, well—” and run away. godspeed and bless you.

desperate to escape, i video chat with a friend from austin on the front porch. i introduce her to people on the way out—end scene—and promise to visit austin. i mean it; i’m also drunk.

back inside, people shotgun themselves in the face with beer, crash into hookahs and make out in the corner, including blonde girl. i eat once-fresh guacamole on taco chips and chew around candle stubs on chocolate ninja cake—wash it all down with beer and hash and just one more slice. happy birthday to me; turn over the same old leaf.

neighbor girl sits alone on the floor; i sit down beside and we browse netflix. tis’ the season for witches so i play the craft and we peek out from under the covers—not that this movie is scary, but the act of seeking is. thus i hide.

[more Running Away]

10/16/11 — a sunday,

overnight, a curtain rod falls in a crowded los angeles apartment and nobody hears. whether or not it makes a sound is irrelevant because even if you slit the throats of every cock, the sun still rises. as do i…

i get up when black turns to light and the lids on my eyes flip back. trying to follow these little ocular gymnists throws off my balance and feels less like admiring the controlled maneuvers of trained athletes and more like dancing along to the haphazard motions of flag-twirling children run a muck on a cruise ship. if my head houses this vessel’s deck then my gut holds poseidon’s sea. and he’s angry this morning. i drop anchor on hard wood floor and step over human wreckage all the way to the toilet.

here, i spring a leak, wash my mouth out with fresh water and pocket a toothbrush. as far as luggage goes, i take one change of clothes on my back and two more in my knapsack. past that, there’s a computer, a book by kurt vonnegut and one near full composition notepad. ’til the end we go. i don’t need socks where i’m going but i take one pair just in case.

the last two nights are mirror images of one another and they don’t like what they see. they reflect upon two empty handles of jager, two unfamiliar house parties washed out by pills and weed, two long walks home alone and far too many blank stares spent waiting for someone’s mouth to blink—sometimes, i won’t talk to strangers but they don’t take kindly to silence so they turn up their music and i tune it all out. if i look back on the last two nights, the thing missing is me. but if i’m a ghost, why do i reflect, and if i don’t see the one i want, why not change?

i guess that’s why i’m in the passenger seat of a two-man jeep and the sight of LA grows smaller in the southbound mirror. we ride 101 north along the coast and no matter how fast we drive, waves still crash at our side all the way back to someone or another’s home…

[there are no pictures from this night]

[more Running Away]

i call godaddy customer support from the laundromat. they answer all my questions in a professional tone while i fold clothes. the detergent left powder on the seat of my pants, but it’s okay, i’m not wearing them to warpaint anyway…

we bike down sunset to hollywood and down hollywood to franklin and down franklin i almost get hit by a car. i guess it’s my fault for doing doughnuts in a busy intersection. the hill’s too steep for one fixed gear and the hollywood bowl’s carved out of mountain. in order of appearance the marqee reads:

TV ON THE RAIDO | ARCTIC MONKEYS | PANDA BEAR | WARPAINT | SMITH WESTERNS

i care about at least two of the bands; i buy a warpaint shirt and put it away for later. a series of hillside escalators take me to the top of the mountain where i drink wine, eat bugles, and take my seat—about eye level with the hollywood sign which is on a mountain not far behind the stage.

the smith westerns sound like water and warpaint sounds like sex. before panda bear goes on, we move down to some else’s seats. they’re not here, what do they care. panda plays songs from tomboy and before. they all sound familiar but i don’t know their names; they sound like dreams i might have tomorrow.

it’s dark and cold by the time arctic monkeys go on so i drink malibu to stay warm and get away to a tropical beach. there’s some british band playing at the tiki bar and they’re alright. i’m drunk. we leave during tv on the radio but take a detour by the stage. security is lax.

chance wants to meet panda bear so we wait at the artist’s exit. some friends of his come out be he never does. oh well. we take a picture with all the chicks from warpaint who look pretty sexy in the dark. we bike the the fuck out of there and get more booze from a gas station in hollywood.

we sit by a tree under our sleeping friend’s apartment window, drink beer, and talk about what the fuck we’re doing with our lives. we’re doing this, which is pretty cool, for one.

have a chat with bud cort—harold from harold and maude—between leg press sets at the gym (he’s between bike sets and the set of some show on adult swim). to say he’s not aged very well would be fair; physically he’s wilting, but mentally, conversationally, he’s sharp, vulgar and still blooming. to think, he’s finally reached the appropriate age for his maude—too bad she’s dead and gone twice over. goodbye my love…

next door, they’re selling gay porn on VHS for under a dollar—about one cent under. they also carry a limited selection of von trier, bertolucci and vin diesel films. empty handed, unaffected and hungry, i go for dinner. one by one, i order a margarita, three micheladas and dos shots de tequila (or more than six limes of substance, in total). we walk to los globos for musical performances by glass candy and the chromatics. here, they will play songs i haven’t heard but hope to enjoy; i hope to enjoy every new experience here, even though i won’t—can’t—not all of them; it just ain’t possible.

upstairs at globos, silverlake’s mexican dance club, there’s a small stage backed by ceiling-to-floor mirrors overlooking b&w checkerboard flooring. who doesn’t love dancing in the kitchen? the lead singer of the chromatics has dirty blond hair, muddy vocals and filthy blue eyes. what a waste since she never looks anyone in the face. if she were to, they might see her turn to stone. but like perseus onto medusa, i watch only her reflection in the mirror, sparing her this fate. soon anyway, she’s gone.

i mix the vodka we brought in for free with the sprite we bought here for $3: a relative bargain. across the bar, i recognize some girl from a coffee shop and the mere idea of recognizing anyone, them away from their natural setting, me away all previous settings, cast in a wide new city, greatly excites me. i can’t wait to get close enough to ask if she works at downbeat cafe, fully aware of the answer but so desperate to gauge the response—and her response to me; how might she respond, to me? glass candy goes on and my eyes wander the room for a tall blond with full curls reeking of coffee grounds—should be easy to find but i don’t. can’t find her anywhere—not even in the mirror. what good are you mirror, when you refuse to show me what i want to see?

while glass candy is more up tempo and the lead singer is certainly more engaged, i’d still rather be engaged by the tall blond ghost or the dirty blond siren. worse yet, i’m soon engaged by a full-figured redhead that reminds me of kathy griffin with large breasts. “you’re cute,” she says and quickly revises it to, “you’re handsome,” afraid, i assume, that her compliment may be taken as emasculating. thanks, i’ll take either-or, or both, but preferably from a girl more my size. her proportionally large butt keeps rubbing against my zipper but i could garner equal pleasure by grinding a tightly stuffed pillow in jean case (not that tightly stuffed pillows are incapable of bringing one nearer to climax). thankfully, the show ends long before any cushions need be soiled.

they all scurry away, leaving me with one familiar face in the mirror—my own. seen enough, i turn my back on me so i can slip downstairs where there’s always one more drink—one more chance. but by last call, i’m content alone and intoxicated enough to wander home by moonlight. for tonight, there’s no reason to fear the dark, the emptiness; no reason for me to cower over steps on stomped ground. instead, i howl, let loose the new pioneer’s spirit on formerly charted lands. my turn…