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Agreed.
The room is moderate in temperature. Climate controlled office. Air Conditioning broke this week, but my feed comes off the warehouse. Nice and cool while the others sweat. Music?
No problem. Must pop out the Billy Bragg and replace with a little Tom. "Heartattack and Vine", one of three I keep at work. The others are "The Black Rider" and "Bone Machine". Okay. In Shades...
Outside the new asphalt melts and runs into the drains. Tar that would burn your hand to the touch lays in small pools where it has surfaced. No traffic. Apache helicopters fly their normal flight path overhead and I can't help but think I'm being trained in the crosshairs of some gun. On the roof things are no different. One story. Pine in one direction, the highway in the other. I-85 heading south. Home. Past my plants and to the horizon. A cloudless sky where the only escape from heat comes with the contrails of planes high in the sub-zero temps up there.
Those contrails take me to another slightly more violent place where planes spin crazily out of control and 10 man crews go down in flaming wrecks, one...by...one. Beyond that, the flight deck of one last remaining B-24. A framed Plexiglas canopy and a few hangers. A wish to share this with someone, but I don't know who.
Knowing work for most. Typing hands. I think of Cullen's hands. Long fingers with tendons and muscles I've never seen in any hand before. The hands of an illustrator, toned to perfection. Perfect fingernails. I know because I bite mine and so I always look to see who is as nervous as me. Hmph. Fiancee will be working a double shift today. Hands turned up, holding hot plates. The same plates I used to set, in the same kitchen I used to work. In a way I guess we touch each other. Later, she'll hold me, but not now. Now she works. Sweats for nickels and dimes in a restaurant that has claimed too much of both our lives. I should thank it for bringing us together I suppose, but now I'm off track. Oops...
One finger wears a diamond that's been in my family for three hundred years. One bracelet. One Hamilton watch on a delicate wrist. No other jewelry. I make up for that. My rings. Four of them. Each with its own special meaning. Special enough to band my fingers, always. A nude woman. A dragon. A dragonfly. A Celtic knot.
I've on my doc martens. I've always got them on. At least for the past five years anyhow. I need new ones, but I can't find Oxblood anymore and they tell me its not made. Web searches turn up nothing in the boot of my choice. Six holes. Padded at the top. I think I remember eating a peanut butter cracker this morning, but before that it was a jerk chicken sandwich last night. That part came to me as I was crossing SAS Campus Drive. I was trying to remember the last lie I told, seeing as how the faces of fellow employees won't mean nearly as much.
The lie. I don't know. I don't lie much. Not to be haughty, but if I'm going to tell you and untruth I'll probably let you know about it at the time. A disclaimer. I think the last lie was last night at the neighborhood bar with Cullen. I was talking about Sin Village (long story) and I mentioned a character, "rat fink" associated with a video game in the basement of said village. I can't honestly remember if it was really there so I made it up. I didn't say, "Hey, I might have seen 'rat fink'." I said, "Hey, there's a 'rat fink' machine down there."
Night before that Cullen and I sang in the parking garage on Tate St. The last words to escape my lips were the lyrics to "Slide", by Luna. I remember one line in particular, "You can never give the finger to the blind..."
I wish a lot. All the time. Last night Cullen and I wished for an audience and debated upon what kind we really wanted. Is one person enough? Two people? The whole world? We wished for answers. On the way home I wished you guys could know him. I wished we were close. I wished against the forces of time and geography. And I wished smoking wouldn't kill me, or hurt me, or make me feel bad about myself, or show my lack of will power, or cause my asthma to act up, or...
Everyday I wish to hear from you. And when I don't I wish I had not logged on. When I do I wish the exchange was longer, spilling over into the tangible...the real...and so right now I find myself wishing something very selfish. That something will arrive in the mail for me besides a bill. Something real. Something amazing. I wish I'd got that pottery from Shy. I wish I understood my recent desire for the tangible, solid aspect tied to you people. But my last real "throw a coin in the fountain wish" was at the Mission in San Fran and there I wished for the same thing I always wish for when wishes present themselves...Beck's happiness.
Be.
Someone's been reading, or is very Edwardian to begin with. Be. Yeah. We be all right. No doubt about that. A collective we is a we torn in all directions by trains, deadlines, busy nights, and hair-tearing frustration. It is a we that suffers from depression, panic, the urge to run, the desire for family, the need to love...and the ability to walk away, but a we that lacks the willpower to walk away long. "We" is beginning to sound a lot like one individual rather than three and somehow that's fitting because at times I feel as far from the parts of me as I do from you.
Oh, and I have dreamed about walking down the street with "we". Single file...no. Arm in arm. A row taking all of the sidewalk. Holding each other up for balance after drinks and pool.
The choice is there you're right. Question is, how far is "we" willing to go.
Could we?
Yes.
Shall we?
I express my part of the power of three. My volition. And I say, I shall indeed.
Who's next?
goodnight 7.2.98
