Hookers and Blow

I have no idea where to go now. I readjust my duffel bag tight under my right arm and take a long look up at L Street. I look up and down wondering what bar is closest to the Greyhound station in Sacramento. And I start to think, the Capitol Garage is only a few blocks from here, maybe they'll have music later.

As I pass the sterile-white, palatial hotels along 'L' heading towards the Capitol Building I push my neck far back on my shoulders and exaggerate my posture. Affecting a stoic pose as if supposing there are people of class looking down on me a hundred feet from high inside one of the hotels, I imagine out-of-towners finding it impossible to find their hotel building among all of the others. Each one of them was enormous and white; with a sky blue pool lit up in the front and a hundred windows. The Capitol Building is as scary as a church and several times more imposing.

About half a block from the Garage I hear, "Leo, Hey. Yo. LEO!" I turn around and see my old friend Buddy Truman sitting down in the fenced-off smoking area and waving his beer at me. I walk over and give him five and a fistpound. Buddy is a lush. I met him at the junior college. Buddy always had some weed in his pocket and was always looking for somebody to smoke with, so we would hang out all the time. Half the time I would run into him he'd be like a half pint deep in Wild Turkey, and he would be discretely pointing at a paper bag softly mumbling, "You want some Turkey?" or "C'mon, hit that shit. You don't want me taking that whole pint to the face."

Buddy looks pretty drunk for the early afternoon. He is wearing the same type of eccentric clothing I always have seen him in. He's got black boots, pegged in khakis and a red shirt with pearl snaps half unbuttoned and with big roses printed on it. His black belt has a large buckle with a gold hammer and sickle on it. His hair was longer than ever and made him seem really enormous for such a waif. I tell him hold on while I go inside to get a beer.

I dropped my duffel-bag under the table as I sat down and took a long drink from my beer. "So whats new man?" I ask mechanically.

"Well, did you hear about Bobby and KC?" Buddy asks with unmasked enthusiasm in his voice.

"How would I have?" I answered, half-trying to sound interested at all, "I've been mostly down in the desert for the last year."

Buddy only registers that I, in fact, have not heard the news. It is only 5pm but he is already so drunk he is rocking slowly from side to side. A bartender ignites the pylon-shaped propane heater behind me. I light a cigarette as he begins to expound on the highly personal details of a relationship between two people I can't care less about.

"So you know Bobby and KC have been together since highschool. Right? And they been together longer than most married couples. And you've seen KC. She's, like, insanely smokin' hot. Well, being 23 or 24 and still younger than Bobby, but well, she got the slightest little belly above her couchie. A FUPA if you will. And Bobby, he gets more insecure than her about it. So we never let him hear the end of it. Right? And the whole time he's all like, 'Fuck you guys. Whatever. Fuck you!'

"So he goes to KC all like, 'Damn girl, you got a little pooch. You should do some fuckin' sit-ups or push-ups, something.'

"She gets so worried he's gonna dump her that she starts working out at the Sierra College weight room. I mean obsessively. And over a few months she got this really manly build. She got these big shoulders and shit. And Bobby can't take it anymore and he dumps her. Right? But he can't think of any good excuse to dump her, and she's asking him all these questions until he's so overwhelmed he tells her exactly why he's no longer attracted to her. And she fuckin' loses it. She's like blaming him, right, but he gets confused and says, 'Naw but that won't bring back your pretty little shoulders.'

"KC goes fucking crazy. She just starts beating the shit out of him. Kicking him and shit with her stilettos. He's still in the ICU. They took the tube out of his throat but the doctor say he won't ever be able to see out of his right eye ever again."

I am laughing uncontrollably at this point. Bobby is notorious for being a dick and the fact that he's very athletic makes it even funnier that his ex-girlfriend beat him so bad.

I get some fresh beers and come back outside still laughing. Buddy says in that one-of-a-kind dopey tone of his, "So where have you been man? I havn't seen you in days. You just fell off."

"I told you," and I repeat again, "I spent most of the last year in Arizona."

"No way." Buddy says with a profound sense of wonder. He meditates a moment and thoughtfully asks, "So how are the bitches down there?"

"Crazy!" I answer without a thought. My mind is overflowing with things I want to relate all at once. "Check this out. So I was in Reno and I met this dude who is running around with a ton of coke." Buddy's eye's light up at the word. "I asked this dude in the bar if he wants to smoke out and next thing I know I'm eyeballs deep in the biggest pile I've ever seen. He was kinda shady about it the whole time I was running around with him. Always saying shit like, 'Don't worry where it came from,' and 'Don't worry how much I have.' He was a crazy mack though. You should've seen this motherfucker run game. I became like his wingman, we cruised all the way past Vegas before we went our ways. He swore to me, 'Bitches love whitepowder drugs.' I wasn't so sure that was true but there was no arguing the point with him. He'd be all like, 'No, I'll show you.' But like, it seemed like only a certain type of chick was into that shit, I dunno."

Buddy blinks his glassy eyes twice and says, "Naw man, bitches love bleezo."

"You shoulda seen him negotiate with these hookers. He gets to selling them blow and he books them for the whole night. But by the end of the night these stupid bitches packed their faces so full of yo, they owed him a couple bucks when they settled up."

As Buddy struggles to stop laughing he keeps muttering melodicly to himself, "Hookers and Blow. Hookers and Blow." He uses the sole of his shoe to put out his cigarette and says, "Hey man...wanna go down to The Shady Lady and try and find some breezies?"
"I don't know man, I been thinking about Crystal a lot on my way back up here. You know, I like miss her and whatever. She's so decent. Honestly I don't even remember why I dumped her."
Buddy sits across from me staring blankly out of his bright red eyes. So I continue, nervously accelerating my speech with each word, "You know if she is at the same place? She changed her number, do you have her new one?"
Several moments passed tensely as I waited for Buddy to answer. I knew I wasn't going to like whatever he had to say. Eventually he managed to softly mumble, "Naw man. I mean, I think she might still be staying at the West House in Placer County."
I picture Crystal at the West House as I lean back and light a fresh cigarette. The bars in that part of Roseville where notorious dive bars, full of tweakers and dirty thirties. The West House was the very worst. It is the kind of place a hobo goes after an unexpected windfall to spend a week smoking crack in the hundred dollar a week hotel rooms above the barroom. I quickly drain my beer.
"Look man," I say, "I'm gonna get outta here, get my shit together. I'll see you around though Buddy."
............................................

After three hours and three buses into Placer County my head is a mess of tangled nerves. Why the West House? Will someone be there with her? Has she started drinking heavily? I shake my head as I swing the door open. A surge of anxiety rises in my guts. She's here I think to myself, or maybe she's not. I order a beer to calm my nerves. The bartender is a haggard woman who is probably ten years younger than the roadmap of wrinkles and purple veins on her face make her look.
"Whats-a-matter cutie? Trouble with your girlfriend?" She giggles showing lipstick smeared on her grey front teeth.
I smile wide back at her and say "No ma'am, I'm just tired. Say I have a friend who was staying here. Do you know if Crystal Prigg is still here?"
The bartender's eyebrows droop into a frown and immediately drops her cordial inflection, "Yeah she's up in room 4 right now I think." She turns and walks to the other side of the bar without saying another word. I drain my beer quickly and head for the stairs.
I stand in front of the room 4 door for several minutes trying to sort through all the things I have been planning to say when I finally get here, I can't settle on any. I decide to wing it and knock at the door. It opens slowly and Crystal stands in the doorway wearing a spaghetti strap shirt and thong underwear. Her face looks dirty and her cheeks are sunken in. Her hair stands six inches high in greasy, nappy clumps and one of them looks burned to a frizzy stump. She has a lighter and a light bulb with a black splotch in her left hand. Something inside the room reeks of burning plastic. "Oh Leo," she screams.
I take a step backward in horror. I look at her panties thinking of the frumpy, baggy clothes she used to wear when we dated. Feeling dizzy I can't bring myself to look directly into her wild, meth-addled eyes. I ran. My legs feel like they where made of butter and I almost fall as I sprint down the stairs. I can hear her calling after me but can't make out the words. I don't stop running until I'm on the other side of the railroad tracks. Starting toward the next bar, I mutter with my head bent to the cement, "My fault. All my fault."

Object of Desire

I noticed her because her feet never touched the floor.

Airs of a pose in motion.

Yellow flames engulf her face.

Eyes caress me with the soft blueness of knife-steel.

I grab her in my arms, as the winners greedy fingers snatch dollars up from the pooltable.

She is mine now.

Is she worth keeping?

The Wayfarer and a Woman in the Way

I was on my way, perfectly alone; avoiding the shade because the wind was starting to turn. I listened to the song made by the gentle percussion of the leaves flapping and clapping. As I cleared the nearest hill, where the way veers west, a cry pierced this fluttering song.

A woman lay in the way mournfully wailing. So I went sailing to the spot almost falling down the slope to the violently moaning woman. I stood frozen in horror for moments. She was holding tight her chest; on the left side and right below her shoulder. “Who did this to you? Who could have left you this way?”

It occurred to me that she was extraordinarily beautiful. Even as she wretched her face was docile and her wild glaring eyes widely implied a most unsaintly martyrdom. Offering her some of my water-flask I ask, “What happened to you?”

She winces and weakly squeals. “A wild animal came out from the woods and tore a piece out of me.” She lifted her hand and indeed, there was a part missing from her torso. I used my own shirt to dress the wound and gave her my jacket to wear.

“Come with me, I’ll take you on my back. You need help. You look like you’ve been here a week, dying slowly. I can take you out of these woods alive.”

She told me she was beyond saving.
She would for nothing survive.
She would for nothing, ever get up again.
She had conceded.

I left everything I had there with her. I left grudgingly, helplessly resenting the whole sentiment. Total disillusionment.

The Wayfarer Awakens

I awoke by the way, down in the high grass that covers this stripe of Earth. But everything seems wrong. The sun is surprisingly low in the west. My head pounds with dull waves of blunt pain. I have the hazy, partial recollection of a tumultuous last night. I walk to the way and sit on a fallen tree. I see on the tops of my hands, scabs and dried blood. There are purple bruises on my elbows. I am horrified.

I look back down the way, to the city, where I had been last night. The city is miles away now. I could not remember how I’ve gotten here but just grateful to be out of that wolves den. The people in the city had been starving for so long they would tear eachother apart in the streets. At this distance the governor’s tower compound stood the only visible part of the city against sprawling chaos.

When I went to dress and found my clothes spattered with blood, pity for the man whose blood it was overwhelms me. I can almost remember the narrow glare as the slits of his eyes stared at me. I can remember his face. I can remember drinking in the biggest bar I’ve seen; thinking I might have to murder this man without blinking. I remember hating him.

I went to my canteen to get some water and found I’d filled it with wine. The noxious tonic nauseated me, but it was all I had. I sat on my grey logbench drinking wine and eating bread and cheese and I nearly fell off when a tall, slender woman native to the province rose and stood in the tall grass exactly where I had. “Would you like some water?”

My head clears. I look up to the sun setting on the confused city. “No, but I still have some wine. Would you like some?”

The Wayfarer and the Lady in the Glade

“O, to be on my way again,” I cried with such exuberance that I couldn’t hide if I’d of tried. Mollifying a mind weary from the city’s blaring terrible noise.

From men in vicious packs.
From women in cheap hats and whores in burlap sacks.
From the shade that begs for a nickels worth of acknowledgment.
And from the delighted moans of the decadent.
And from the tax man spouting alms for the king.

In the long view I could only distinguish the largest tower in the city. Athwart that, there was only a faint, alabaster haze. I let my gaze wander and there in the glade before me, a dervish whirling, there she was. Arms spread and flailing, she went sailing upon the wind. Like a cinder, only slowly. And wailing, she did croon the tune by which she was moved. And she, so immersed in the hard, ardent, green garden, she never stopped. Never dropped this silly game that she played; alone. I stayed on the far side of the glade, but still walking.

Stepping to the rhythm of her song, I could not stop edging forward, like I was being pulled a rope knotted around my gyrating hips. I called to her, now closer. I tried to tell her the importance of what she did. And what she did to me. But as soon as my words had passed I grasped her horror completely. To be found in such a state.

She gasped and ran.

I called, “Stay, stay, there is something great here that you have made. We could spend eternity dancing here in the suns rays. Will you stay with me here in your own glade? Or ponder with me that dusty way?” But by then she was gone from sight.

The Wayfarer in the Town

I had been on my way nigh on three weeks when I arrived at a loud little town. The buildings all tall, with pointed ceilings and the ways all wide and clear. The men must have all been off at work because only women peopled the streets. As I gawked I was shocked to notice that all the women who passed seemed to be identical people, ad nauseum. Each face was painted to feign sameness with the rest. Each women’s hair all tied and died alike and it was really very boring there. I was all set to leave with out even getting supplies or even a shower. I felt deceived; this hamlet was to be my momentary reprieve from hermitage.

Just before I left the gates to the long way, I saw a woman whose face shone among all the others. With a kind of natural, revolutionary beauty that was entirely unembellished. Her frailty was severe to the point of vanity. She was clearly the model by which the other women had mutilated their faces and bodies to emulate. She created by merely existing: beauty’s own pretense.

I tried to tell her why she was different, what that meant, “Heaven-sent to show such heights exist.” But she seemed perplexed and eventually vexed, as I spoke faster to coax some understanding. She finally broke my flow saying,

“Why the hell are you so damn dirty?”

The Wayfarer Waits

I saw her in the exceptional stillness of a vagabond. By her severely immodest beauty I was frozen in wonder.
I blinked and she was gone.
So I waited in the knoll by the way, where I prayed she would return again.

Once I had awoken twisting in the winter, sure that I had heard a figment of her song on the wind. I screamed to a pale silhouette that did not turn. So I went back to my camp and packed full my pipe again. And drank sleepily. And I waited.

Spring turned with the dolence of winter.
With no more hope I shruged to the next town and left the meadow with a pile of stems athwart wilted, brown pedals. And hers was among the very first faces I saw entering town.
I cried to her, voice boyishly cracking, “How long have you been here? I saw you on the way, and called to you. I stopped my journey for a season waiting for you to pass again.”

“I know,” she said, “I’ve often seen you, sleeping through the morning.”

Babes in the Woods

He strides in airs of vague defiance.
She looks on in complete silence.
The lovers travel far
with dreams of walking among the giants.

They're in the wood, between the ways,
where shadows lie broken by sunrays
and the breeze wispers of the decadence
of fire-light nights and sleepy days.

They walk as if they dwarf the trees
and the sun shines jealously on the spot.
For they seem to him a brighter hot
even still the night may freeze.

She shivers in the darkening cold
and, stealing a bit of warmth, takes hold
of his arm
until she is wholly consoled.

The night gets darker and the way, stranger.
Still on their path they firmly stay.
They did not know the well worn way
may lead them headlong into danger.

But that they feared more than all other
things that cut and those that smother.
That they feared worse in the wild wood:
none's more than their fear of one another.

Bad

When I was younger I was myown beloved.
But I was bad to myself.

So I loved my friends and I loved their friends
but I was bad to them.

So I went to live in hermitage
but everything I didn't kill went
away.

And there was nothing.
It was good.

Second Person

The priestess kissed you for your christening.
Risen out of sin, you tremble as she removes
her facade. Revealed macabre. Accosted at
random and lost ten days in the malaise of futility.
Crescendo-ed to the gates of fated faces.

Lo,
you where found. Dirty and hurtin'. Behind curtains,
pulled tight like the drum. And some Tuesday blight
was always peeking inside. To no shame that resided
there, those outside still hide from desire, nature, and
twilight.

You know midnight, alright. Its the only thing you'll
stand tight for, in righteous fire. The moon is a tab
of extacy. The air is a cool, lucid liquor. Misunderstood
at nigh. And providing silent hindsight.

Vacant Lady

"What's wrong, the throngs of songbirds
-in your voice- are silenced by complaisance.
Forgotten

"What of your choice to rejoice in the noise of
yourself?
You're rotten.

"Your lips that were perpetually whet with
kisses
lie dried on your face.
Yet, you deny your thirst.

"Your hips that where the tempo to every dance
are as still as your vacant eyes - entranced.
Void of romance.

"The yearning that once burned bright
right out your eyes has dimed
to a cinder.

"This sordid winter has turned you
frigid.
Did you even notice?
Your every passion hangs placidly flaccid.

"I am impatient. And your penchant for lament
has sent me away."

Kindling

I suck spit,
Eat shit,
Bite thighs,
Get lost in eyes
Of the deserts' green turquoise; she drives the boys mad.

She loves bad,
Fucks good,
Screams mad,
We really could
Let the secret take its nature in our forgetting.

She says she supposes
Her fire is dwindling,
So I cut her lovely roses
Into bits of kindling.

Was it the Lover or the Beloved...

Was it the lover or the beloved,
who was pimped by
the simple logic of his hand up the lady puppets skirt.
As his fingers parted her lips she spoke:

"The heat passing these moments
burns and turns the furnace
where passion was fashioned,
in steam, by the friction between
two afflicted souls"

With that he took his hand from her skirt and ran it the length of her legs.
"I'ld like to stoke that factory fire with dynamite kegs."

She pretended this offends her,
so he might've lent her
moments romantic leisure.
These he couldn't render.
So her Tuesdays love letter
was marked return to sender.

Girlies

She's batting her eyes,
To my surprise,
And as I feel the tension rise
I surmise:
The gamble is worth the prize.

I didn't plan this tonight.
I might,
Because I know how to do it right.
And those thighs,
The gamble is worth my pride.

Do I have something to feign
For this game?
Though my tongue is feeling lame,
The same,
The gamble is worth my pain.

With her glare still fixed on me
Anxiously
Like I was the object of myown jealousy.
So weep,
The gamble is my disease.