Your Friends Didn't Seem to Mind

Eventually you didn’t wander the streets at night. You didn’t look like some ghost inhabiting an Edward Hopper painting. You learned to live with not cracking wise to the other barstool holders. You learned again what the sun looks like when it cracks over the tree line on a summer morning.

After some more days passed—A series of them, counted one at a time--- you moved the barometer of a successful day from not drinking to actually getting something done, from feeling good in the morning from the absence of that persistent something, to feeling good at night because of the presence of a new something.

You started to clean up old messes. That bag you carried around, the one with all your fuckups in it, you started leaving it in strange places. There you were running back to whoever, frantically looking around to see if you’d dropped it. Eventually even that stopped, you left it on a train or in your seatback pocket or somewhere. For a couple days, sure, it seemed untoward not to have it, the sudden freedom causing you to bite your nails a bit more. That furrow in your brow was a little more prominent.

So you sat on the stone bench outside the coffee shop, as the sunset took longer and looked better than it ever had. You took that first sip from the mug, the one that shot you full of Everything Gonna Be Alright. Calm and excited at the same time. Real because you got there on your own. You struggled for a moment to remember what that bourbon you love looked like in the bottle, then let it go. It’s not important anymore.

Well, The Drinks Are Free... Kinda.

What Vegas is, is a man stumbling out giggling into unexpected daylight,a man whose face is a little too red to just be that way from his mirth, a man whose boldness and expertise and whose very manhood was challenged over 12 stupid hours of gaming on a Saturday night in which the temperature didn't fall down below 90 until night became that morning.

Vegas is this man now laughing out loud as he passes another man running the large industrial vacuum over the carpets in the casino hallway, the carpets with the red, yellow and brown swirls that are either cheesy or retro, depending how your night is going, the carpet that lives under lights that never dim. Vegas is this man being too punch-drunk giddy to care that he's snorting now as he laughs, because Vegas is also absurd, ostentatious, homicidal, and orgasmic by turns.

Vegas is the man playing all night in casinos built on ground that used to be Old Vegas, and realizing why Old Vegas is gone and not coming back: Because there's more money to be made by pumping Jay Z through bassy house speakers and putting fringe-laden, surgically-enhanced girls on podiums in the middle of the table games section, or on bars out front to bring in the rubes. The man knows he has a daughter, hopes he's done a better job than to think she'd end up in this... Well, hopes she has better sense, anyway.. The man shudders a bit and doubles down on 13. The man plays his hunches. And realizes that as much as it seems so, little has really changed.

Vegas is grinding out a night of black jack and Pai Gow and 2/4 Limit Poker, and having it slap you in the face like the man's first ex-wife. Vegas, tonight, for the man, is needing red and getting black, is needing 10 and getting 8, is watching dullards luck into Fuck You money while good men who plan, scheme and Play Their Systems go bust, with only a rigid self-discipline to keep them from slamming down cards, drinks and invective.

On the other hand, though, Vegas is also this same man, who is most definitely not giggling yet, getting lost on his way back to his hotel, being beguiled again by electronic poker machines, knowing he should be sleeping, but knowing he doesn't have to, wondering what it would be like if you never slept, feeling how that would feel as his extremities probably went numb.

Vegas, though, is also the man on his literal last legs, still pounding vainly away at the video poker machine, somehow hitting an impossible inside draw to a royal flush that just happens to make him exactly enough money to be exactly even for the night, which causes the man to start giggling insanely, and feeling the synapses in his brain tell him in no uncertain terms to cash out, go home, go to sleep, because to play further, after the Impossible Card to complete the Impossible Night, which after all only got him even, would be to anger the Gods of Gambling so much for its impunity that he would be smited should he continue.

And so finally, Vegas is the man giggling, passing the other man with the vacuum, the housecleaning staff just clocking in, the first shift dealers, getting back to his room and counting his money and still cackling to himself. And Vegas is that man, me, finally laying down, wondering if the sun's intensity even allows such a concept as blackout curtains in hotel rooms, and falling asleep in five minutes, and not setting my alarm.

Australian Pursuit

Get into the car
We'll be the passenger
We'll ride through the city tonight
We'll see the city's ripped backsides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky
We'll see the stars that shine so bright
The sky was made for us tonight

(Iggy Pop, "The Passenger")

So you jump up and down on that big hotel mattress you call your life. You leave the blinds open so you can see your reflection, up and down, up and down, the twilight purples and maroons behind the northern California mountains out your window.

It's something you've always done, this jumping. Every hotel room since Painesville at age 8, at the Holiday Inn, on what Dad called a vacation, a weekend trip to a 1/4 mile dirt track 45 minutes away from your house. They had a pool at the hotel, and your brothers and you made a show of folding your arms across your chests and falling backwards into the water. The Saturday night show at the Speedway featured Australian Pursuit: A staggered start, and when a car was passed, it was eliminated. You got to have soda and popcorn.

You didn't jump on the bed to test its sturdiness, but it always ended up being a pretty good indication of the quality of the hotel itself. Extended Stay in Des Moines was like sleeping on the floor of a tent. They gave you some eggshell foam to make it better, and you laughed, remembering the camping trip to Hocking Hills with F., and the eggshell foam, and your silhouettes in furtive movements caught by the firelight, and how you yelped and wilted and giggled uncontrollably when the raccoons showed up unexpectedly. Naked, sweaty in the humid August, rolling in the grass with laughter, her and you. Your last summer hurrah, the marriage was over 7 months after that night-- Lightning and quicksand at the same time. It was nobody's fault. You still laugh every time raccoons are mentioned.

Hyatt had the best beds, and sleeping kits: Earphones, some New Agey music CD, some flameless scented candle. The way to a traveler's heart. You jumped on their beds because you had to, it was a rule by now. The one on Navy Pier in Chicago, the one you stayed at on the first contract job right after you moved away-- not so much away from her, but from your whole life up to that point-- at that one, you had the bellman run to the liquor store and bring you a $30 bottle of Maker's Mark. You drank most of it over the course of the 5 nights, staring out your window at Chicago in December, warm holiday lights and harsh winds off the Lake. You walked Michigan Avenue like it was a white sand beach. You weren't happy, but you weren't despondent either. Back in the room, in front of the window again, you caught your reflection again, cocked your head sideways, thought yourself older, wiser, sipping thoughtfully at the bourbon. Most people didn't understand the little things, why the right amount of ice in straight bourbon mattered, why the right type of glass mattered: Heavy at the bottom. It felt good in your hand. It felt right.

Now you're in San Jose. You leave your 4th floor window cracked, to hear the light rail running all night. Its soft warning bell, the hmm of the tracks, this is what it must have been like to live near train tracks, before all the dissonance, before the psychic noise of the internet and all its nasty little tentacles started gradually warping our attention spans. You find yourself turning off the TV in the hotel more often. It's not denial, you think, it's self preservation. Dad never would have lived this life, couldn't have survived it.

So you force yourself to finally turn off the lights, to lay there and listen. You wonder about her, waiting for you back home, or waiting for... something..? What did she find out about herself, with her therapist? You refused to let the relationship lay in statis anymore during your travel weeks. You still find her eager to change the subject on the phone, when you bring up anything deeper than the weather and How Was Your Day. Her declarative tone grows mousy, distant, the receiver-- like so many things-- held at arm's length.

Lately though, you've started picturing both of you as tender children, and you marvel, thinking back, on how she responded to your openness. Just one day, last Saturday, the day before you left again, when you decided to forget the knee scrapes and ego scrapes the way a child would, and just touch her and love her and say nice things to her because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because it was good for you, above all else. Because Australian Pursuit wasn't as fun as it used to be.

Turns out it does make a difference, just like your shrink said. You always hate when she's right. She has that degree, she's a serious counselor, but she always laughs when you tell her about your internal dialogue during the sessions: "I told myself you were full of shit," you tell her, "but it turns out you were right because..."

In the last session, she asked if you were giving to the relationship expecting to get something back, or because you wanted to. So you test-drove giving just to give. And you kept laying there in the dark, certainty no closer, but not a desperate goal anymore either. For just a minute, you pictured the two of you jumping on the bed together, sometimes both landing at the same time, sometimes in a you-then-me-then-you rhythm. You thought maybe for that Christmas trip-- the vacation one, not a business one for a change-- you could get her to do that with you. Sure, you're just testing the bed. As you drift off, it seems like you've been doing a lot of that kind of thing lately.

Falling When You Jump

So I'm driving today, one of those long aimless spurs through the Columbia Gorge. I'll stop at a coffee shop somewhere, as long as I've never heard of it before, the owner is also the server and she's over 40, and the only music is a jukebox, the kind with vinyl singles. I know, I'm picky. It's one of my things. Shut up.

I think best this way. Today the circles in my head tell me we're starting a new website. It matches you with your future self. Depending on how much insight you can give into the way you are now, you can pick from more versions of that self.

Let's say you've been through some things, and you've taken pains to be aware about it, that helps the site figure out where you're going. You remember, those times where you trusted someone-- over whether they'd bring the car back on time, or do the laundry like they said, or not break your heart like they promised, you know, everyday shit--- And it ate away at you because the sense that you were about to be betrayed was thick in your nose like the smell of burning plastic. Then the Lady of the Lake appeared, deus ex machina, and your faith was rewarded. I know you remember those times, I do. They stand out.

F'rexample, you forgo a Friday night of bourbon and haze to sit in a coffee shop with this dude, he's more casual acquaintance than friend, says he's having some rough patches with that woman. She's that one where you were in the same bar as the both of them that night, the night they remember meeting. So he thinks you two have this connection, you're his Sherpa or his rabbit's foot, he gets those two confused. Then there it is, the two of you Nighthawks sitting there in a window table like you're posing for that Hopper painting.

As an offering to karma, you decide to do it without fidgeting, giving those Gotta-Go signs, or looking at your non-existent watch like you usually do. Then sunuvabitch if just as you're about to go Evil Twin on yourself, he says something that's a little toss-off phrase for him in his thinking-as-he's-talking therapy, but that phrase, it twirls through your head and pops the top off some emotional can of constipation you didn't even know you'd been struggling with.

So Bolt From The Blue you realize that there's this thin electric blue line that connects everyone. Maybe it's the same one the Hippies and the New Agers jump up and down about, maybe not, who gives a crap. It's there like gravity-- You can believe in it or not, you're still falling when you jump.

I'm out to Latourell Falls by now going east, the 2:00 pm sun is already on the fade, it's winter in Oregion. I'm still thinking about this website we're doing. What it is, you get to answer some questions, about yourself, your past, your future. You don't have to post a picture, because you already know what you look like. I'm trying to build it as bullshit-proof, because you know how most people are about surveys: We judge other people on their words, we judge ourselves on our intentions. The algorithm for that one is a bit more complex than I thought. I think I haven't opened my doors of perception quite enough yet.

Eventually you are matched with one of your future selves. Stay with me, this part is still a little inexact. The algorithm, again, has to filter for multiple paths, actually millions of paths, because that self of yours, it's having these millions of daily interactions. The one at the coffee shop, that one really moves things along, you wouldn't believe how many future selves that eliminates (and trust me, the ones that get eliminated, you didn't wanna know from that guy to start with. He smokes generics, a lot of him. Jeeziz).

Hell, even things you don't consider matter in this deal. You keep a stone-face or you smile to that person you pass on the street-- You know, the one who's in that ethnic group or age group or economic group that you get to look down on so you can feel better-- You smile, like a Real honest to shit smile, it works wonders. You do more of that, our computations get easier and easier. All that: You pet the dog instead of kicking it, you give back the extra change they give you by mistake at the Safeway, you create instead of wish, you do instead of watching someone else do.

Now I sound judgmental, though. I mean, it's your future self, do whatever the hell you want with it. I'm just saying, heads or tails on that coin, it all makes a big difference.

I haven't exactly figured out how you get to meet your future self yet. This time travel thing, I know if you watch sci-fi you think it's easy, you get all glowed up and disintegrate into all these sparkly little bozons and leptons and there you are in medieval England or somesuch fairytale. Thing is, there's this physicist Ori from Israel that says you can travel through a time loop that looks like a doughnut-shaped vacuum, and since it's a loop you could go farther and farther back each time. Honestly, most of which doesn't interest me, unless it somehow hinders people from ponying up the $14.95/month for the site subscription. Christ, I'm not working for the Red Cross here.

My team tells me that relationships factor big into the calculations. It's the everyday ones, yeah, but the intimate ones, those are huge because they're catalystic. My teams calls it the Human Acceleration Factor (Don't use that, we've already service-marked it). The stay or go, the commitment to the everyday, the falling when you jump, we're working hard on that. So close to a breakthrough. The rest of it, it's this half-ass formula that any professor who ever consulted on Good Will Hunting would probably step on like a cigarette butt. I can't say exactly, because again, the legalities, but it's half Marianne Williamson, half Nelson Mandela, and half Bertrand Russell. I know, 3 halves, it's a quantum model, it's possible. Don't bother me with details, I'm a big picture guy.

Finally, there's Skamania, and I cruise right on into Stevenson on the Washington side, to Jolinda's for coffee. She sees me come in, knows the contemplative look, knows to bring the Americano tall and strong. We'll talk later. She'll like the website idea.

I slide into the booth across from 65 year old me. He's an unpaid consultant, so far. Very helpful. I stir in a little sugar, we smile the same smile at each other. I don't have to ask him how we found me. He's explained it a bunch of times and I don't understand it, but he says I will in about 10 or 12 years.

There Is Great Discontent, and All Is Right With The World...

“I am a romantic and a raconteur, not a great combination.”

So here we are, on the cusp of the Big Decision. Actually the B.D. has already been made. At least in my mind it has.

We get the keys Friday. To Our House. No longer Hers and Mine, two beds, two sets of keys, two washers and dryers, this was it. IS it. So being that it’s Monday, she’s started telling me about her nervousness, her discomfort. Not so much telling me as showing me, with hair-twisting unease. Funny, when this all went down I thought she was the one with the quite sureness, the smug unknown agenda. She was the Kate Hepburn, me the deliberately unaware Spencer Tracy.

I have found that her anxiety tends to come out in drunkenness. Mine manifests as extreme logic—I will pose to you a series of questions, the answers to which will be weighed, measured, added and subtracted, the cosine extracted, and a product redacted. What you feel, I will think. What you scream, I will Say. I am the diplomat who saws at his scrambled eggs with a butter knife while the Eastern Theater hangs in the balance. I am the measured phrase, the tented fingers, the prescription eyeglasses. You are the wild pronouncement, the unheeded gesticulation, the skirt that flies up in public.

And so we circle the ring, snarling and smiling. She gets me in that choke-hold, tightening, tightening on my neck until I laugh Uncle, to her assertion that she has these foibles that will never change. She allows me a breath, long enough to hear what she wants to hear, that I will pull her along into a new reality, where the monsters under the bed are in someone else's house..

I think we’re going to get along just fine. Just… fine.

It's 1:55 AM

It's so simple to try to tell myself to sleep. But I lay sometimes in the dark room, and an unbidden lyric rolls through my head, and I'm as powerless to stop it as I would be the tide...

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again..

It's from Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," and without the winsome nostalgia you hear in his voice for things which might never happen, the words alone just don't carry the day. I think of the times I tell myself I've been a fool, when I've been incapable or unwilling of treating you-- or myself-- better, and how I'm learning that I never really have known what I don't know. In this dark, with that Irishman who resonates with me as surely as bourbon, it's easy to forget that we've come here, to this point, because of who we are, who we've been.. And he croons slowly like running water, and I find myself wanting to venture into that slipstream, to somehow step into your dreams, not for you to find me, but for me to find you, to keep your sister from drowning, to keep you from being frightened, not like a father but like a lover, like a confidant and a companion...

From the far side of the ocean
If I put the wheels in motion
And I stand with my arms behind me
And I'm pushin on the door
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again

I'm not on the far side of the ocean, but the gulf between us, it seems all at once to be both less and more than it has been in the past. So much less because of our connection, this more solid footing I feel we're on, this base. So much more because the low syrupy flutes and smoky saxophones of this music, it calls me back to you like the hero who awaits his prize at the end of his journey. It makes me want to slay dragons for you... or it makes me want to create a world in which there are no dragons to be slain. I want them to know what we have, I want to live in peace, I want to leave my anger at the side of the road like a snake leaves its skin: Because it's no longer needed. I want to be that in the world. not because we say it, but because the way we Are together propels our attractive energy out into the world. You. Me. Us.

Aint nothing but a stranger in this world
Im nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven

And that's probably true, but I have so much work to do here in the physical plane, so much to accomplish... And I listen to this song, again and again, and I mist up and smile for the love of you, for the power that I've allowed love to give me, and for the person I am becoming with you, for the great work we have ahead of us. I drift off and wonder if I'll realize the moment when we go from this incubation to whatever it is we're birthing. I love you.

There you go, there you go
Standin' in the sun darlin'
With your arms behind you
And your eyes before
There you go
Takin' good care of your boy

Sleep well, my darling. Your man loves you dearly.....

Drops

She is here next to me, laying on her stomach, a sheet pulled up just past her ass. The blanket has long since been kicked to the end of the bed, onto the floor, some nights because of the urgency of our communion, some nights just because we lay there naked, the box fan on the desk moving the cool night air through and between us.

If I am still awake as she sleeps, I smile quietly to myself as she groggily pulls the covers up, pushes them back away again. This action cycles itself about every 15 minutes. I like the feeling of the sheet on me, she says, but not how warm it makes me. Sometimes she lies on her side and I snake myself behind her, water meeting water, her flowing into me into her.

When the sun comes up I leave the blinds closed for a while and try not to wake up too quickly. I squint at her through eyes deliberately kept only half-open and she seems like a gauzy out of focus dream, whose beauty and depth could not possibly be real. She stirs, throws a leg over mine, nuzzles her nose on my neck, purrs. Every time it happens, she is more real, her lines more clearly defined, yet her mystery deeper, wider, an underground stream running cool, clear, unrippled at the surface but sinuous at its depths.

I watch her drift back to sleep again, heedless of the time. She has made me want to learn how to swim, a childhood anomaly borne of an inability to trust myself in water at age 8. I had ceased to think it important, until I moved to the Northwest a year ago. I clearly see the metaphor in this: Water in your dreams is emotion, an old lover always told me. That she could inspire me to immerse myself in it is both lyrical and frightening. I am jumping off the dock anyway. I want to swim, to go the places she goes.

She moves again, still sleeping, but adjusts so her right arm is under her stomach. She always does that.

So yes, I want to swim, but more than that I want to prove--- to her and to me--- that her faith in me is warranted. I want to show us that I and We can become at the same time. Building me is building us.

I revel in the rhythmic rise and fall of her shallow breathing, a cute small snore escaping intermittently, like a child's imitation of the real thing. And I will jump into my water, because it scares me, because I know the reward. For her. For me. For us.