9/10

The stool squeaks like it always does as he pulls it from beneath the bar.  He drops down on it.  Heavy.  Worn.

The bartender wanders over and asks the man if he’ll have the same as always.  “The usual?” He asks.

And the man nods, barely lifting his chin from his sunken chest.  He nods and places his elbows on the bar.  Slouches forward.

The bartender sets the scotch and soda down on a coaster and slides the glass under the man’s nose.  “You need a straw tonight?”

This snaps the man back to present.  This brings his gaze up to see the bartender’s playful smirk.  “No, I do not need a straw,” the man says as he picks the drink up from the bar and delivers a generous gulp to his stomach in defiance.  

But the bartender has already turned when the man clunks his glass back down.  He scans the other patrons’ faces to see if he had an audience, but no one is looking at him.  No one cares.

He resettles his chin on his chest and sighs heavily.  “Suppose there’s not much left to do,” he mutters.  Then takes out an avocado.  And makes some guacamole.

3/8

She lays on an inflatable pool bed, drifting through the canals that cut through the cement of this surreal city.  With her arms and face submerged, she floats, snorkeling.  Searching for deposits or remnants of this or that.  Searching because that's the reason the team sent her out today.  Cull and analyze information.  

So there she floats.  Down one of the intersecting waterways.  And I'm just watching her.  As she slowly pokes around beneath the surface.  As she casually raises her head to drain water that leaked into her mask.  As she lays there so unassumingly.  

Then I'm in the water too.  I'm coasting over to her raft and when I make contact, there's a brief moment of fear that I've disturbed her research.  Compromised her project.  Maybe I shouldn't have intruded.

But she greets me with a smile and a laugh.  Pulls her dirty blonde hair from her face.  Sinks me with those royal blues.

She slides her legs off, providing room for me on the raft, and I grab onto the opposite side.  Our feet drift underneath, coming together in short, almost rhythmic patterns.  Joining, then parting.

I ask how her day is going and she begins to explain the greater aspects of the search, identification and successful gathering of certain organisms or entities, but I must shift my weight at some point because as she's speaking the raft folds in the middle and our heads meet.  A swift bonk.  

I'm embarrassed but she's laughing again, and as I'm trying to asses the damage, apologizing and scanning her forehead for bruising, I realize our lips are closer than they've ever been.  

My body tingles.  Heart races.  Time slows to focus on me.  

And she notices.  She feels the pause as she glances at me.  The split that occurred from the moment we were having to the one I've created with my desire for her.  And though she holds me suspended there for an eternity, poised on my elbows with the grey haze of the day settling down around us, she leans forward to join me.  To lend her lips to me.

And the rush consumes me.  The release of tension and inundation of ecstasy is almost too much.  But I bear it.  I bear it to float with her for a little longer.  

2/28

I’m at a bar with a co-worker.  We decided to meet up for a few beers and plan out the week ahead of us.  Manage the perpetual onslaught of coffee orders coming our way.  But we don’t spend too long discussing vocational duties.  

Once we’re on our second pints we’re speaking more of family relations and odd social interactions.  Of his mother in-law’s manipulative boyfriend.  Or of the guy that I tailed up the highway after he cut me off yesterday morning.  Things like that.

We step outside for a cigarette and I shiver in the night’s brisk air.  Fixate on the clouds of grey seeping out of my face.

Back inside he heads for the restrooms at the back of the restaurant, and I return to the bar.

As I sit, sipping away at my pint, the bartender stands before me rinsing dishes in the sink wells beneath the bar.  With her short brown bob swaying as she bends and rises, eyeing the patrons seated at the hightop tables for empty drinks or needful expressions, I shout her name.

Through the music and cacophony of conversations her gaze settles on mine and she smiles, courteously.  “How are we doing?”

“I’m alright,” I say and raise my beer.  She glances at the glass in my hand, then her eyes are off scanning the room again.  Looking to utilize her services.  But I still want her attention, so I ask, “How are you?  How are your classes?  You said you were taking astronomy courses last time I was here.”

And for a moment, I feel as though I’ve succeeded.  As her arms stop plunging and scrubbing, and her wandering blue eyes come back to me.  Settle once again on mine.  But slowly a certain vitality melts from her face and she lets out such a rattled sigh that I feel a jab in my stomach.  A painful twang through my inebriated carelessness.

Her shoulders slump as she begins to speak.  As she tells me how the value of the credits she’s obtaining aren’t transferring to the university she’s decided to attend.  How it looks as though she’ll have to choose another major, and how the future is revealing itself to be something particularly more cumbersome than planned.  How that’s becoming more of a normalcy lately.

My head is cradled in my arms as I lean over the bar.  As I’m sucked into the disenchantment growing around this lady’s life.  

When I open my mouth to ask about her kids, how they’re doing, what they’re getting into these days, my co-worker appears behind me with a heavy handed slap on the back and the moment passes.  She’s off running someone’s tab and I’m slouched in my seat listening to a story of how some dude is currently vomiting in the men’s bathroom.

  

2/27

The wind is whipping as I walk toward the campus today.  It’s early and the sun is just coming up over the buildings and tree tops.  

The warm glow of oranges and blues is hard to admire with the wind.  My cheek seems to be glued to my shoulder as a shield.  Which also makes crossing University Ave even harder.  As I turn left to peer down the road, the first four lanes are empty.  So I take my time traversing to the median.

Then I see the old man.  He’s dressed in thermal spandex.  Purple.  Or maybe dark blues and blacks.  With black goggles covering his eyes.  A bushy gray beard protruding from his tight hood.  He’s energetically marching along.  Swinging his arms.  Taking small determined steps with his chicken legs.  Into traffic.

I pause at the median and look right.  There are a line of headlights a couple blocks down.  Two in each lane.  Beaming toward us through the early morning light.

And into them he marches.  Right down the middle of the road.

“Excuse me, sir?” I shout.

But he just lifts his knees and swings his arms.

So I walk out into the road with him.  I pace myself beside him.  He’s moving slower than I thought.  “Sir, you’re walking into traffic.”

The wind is still slapping us about.  I wonder if my words are getting lost.

So I shout again, “Sir, do you know where you are?”

He stops then.  A dead halt.  As I do with him.  Then it’s just the wind moving.  Pushing and whizzing and whipping.

He turns to me.  I pull my cheek from my shoulder to give him a good look.  He’s shorter than I thought he was.  “Do you know where you are?”  I shout.

The cars are getting closer now.  A block away.

“Do you?”  He shouts back.

Then he turns and marches on his way.  Just as the light turns green.

2/24

I’m outside the bar with this girl.  The date is coming to an end.  Our first date.  We’d been set up by a mutual friend of ours.  Someone that thought we would jive well together.  I think that’s what she said.  Jive.

But it’s gone well enough.  We met at this hip establishment in Bethesda.  An enormous space with a coffee bar, alcohol bar, and tables placed about to resemble a dining room.  And there’re all these large black and white prints of farming high up on the wall.  Of bare feet in dirt.  Close ups of tomatoes and squash and other hearty vegetables.  There’s one of the girl too.  Apparently she was volunteering when the photographer was on site. We rise from our bar stools to stand under it.  In the photo, she holds a bunch of kale up to her face, blocking out her mouth.  But her eyes are wide and excited.

I say it’s lovely.  Or cute.  Or something.  

Soon we’re back on our stools and finishing our drinks.  Paying the tab.  Layering up.  Then we’re outside.  And it’s cold, but we dawdle in the parking lot by the curb for a while.  Talk about the coming weeks.  Of work and events and spare time.  

At one point, when she’s telling me of her housemate’s late study habits, when her chin is resting on her thick wool scarf, and her head is tipping just slightly to the right, as if she’s trying to slide a memory back into her grasp, I ask if I can kiss her.  I ask as though I’m quizzical of the time, or perhaps in need of a pen.  Something light.  Airy.

Can I kiss you?  I ask.

And her head levels out.  Chin parts from the scarf as her posture straightens.  As her eyes take on the expression in the photo.  Wide and excited. 

Then I kiss her.   

2/23

“You passed it.” I say from the passenger seat, turning my head to stay on the turn we missed.

“Huh?” CJ says.

“You just passed it.  We’ll have to turn around.”  And I’m closing the tattered atlas of the USA.  What has masqueraded as our guide for the past few months.

CJ glances in the rear view mirror, down the forested road we’ve been navigating for the past hour.  “Nonsense,” he says, then slams on the brakes.  

I curse as the atlas catapults from my lap into the dash.  As my hands shoot to the roof and arm bar for support.  “What the hell are you doing?”

And CJ is turned.  Twisted, with an arm behind my chair, peering out the back window as he high tails it in reverse.  “I’m making amends.”  He glances at me from under the corner of his glasses and bounces his eyebrows with a smile. 

“You’re being reckless.”  I’m now fixed on the side mirror, waiting to see the inevitable car come into view.  To ram us from behind.  Put an end to our journey.

But as I’m glued to the reflection, we screech to a halt, turn right and continue forward.

“I’m being efficient.” He says.  And it’s obvious he’s satisfied.  Content in his decisions.  I must’ve missed the cigarette he placed in his mouth, but smoke is filling the car.  

“You’re being an ass.  Open your window.”

He smiles again, which only creates this sensation that all of these displays of happiness are at my expense.  That he is truly taking pleasure in my discomfort.  In my vexation.  But he lowers his window anyway and the smoke dissipates.

“Next you’re gonna tell me to fasten my seatbelt.”  

I’m looking out the window at this point.  My eyes are on the trees and lush greens of the forest.  The density of it all.  The flourishing vegetation producing this mystery and wonder the more I squint into the distance.  But his comment crawls up my spine and clamps right down into all the attention I have.

So I turn my head to him.  His unrelenting smirk.  His smoking cigarette.  His empty buckle.  

“Put your seatbelt on.”

2/22

I’m with the girl, in the hot tub on the back porch of the cabin we all rented for the weekend.  It’s winter and either snow still falls or it ceased just a few moments ago, but the ground is covered in white.  We walked out from the party in our bathing suits, each draped in a towel to assist in the cold journey from the back door to the bubbling bath.  Feet sinking in snow.  

I melt in the water.  The jets and the temperature ease my muscles and bones into a state of complete bliss.  A plane of ecstasy.  The gathering of old friends and alcohol proved more taxing than I’d imagined, but I put my head back and relax.  The cold kisses my nose as I gaze up at the stars through the rising steam.  

And my feet meet the girls’ beneath the surface.  They touch and bump amongst the jets at the base of the tub.  Then I feel a hand on my thigh.  And my stomach.  Then around the back of my neck as her body settles in on my lap.

I break my gaze with the stars to see her.  “I thought we said no more of this.”

She’s smirking.  With that flick in her eye that has always implied she wants something.  “What do you think we’re doing out here?”

And I’m getting aroused the more her hips press into me and the more her lips graze my ear, but I still manage to say, “Sitting in the hot tub.”

“That doesn’t have to be all we’re doing.” And with her slow pulses she’s created this rhythmic wave of the water that hits me in the chin every other moment.

“And at the same time, we don’t need to do anything else.”

Her body goes rigged.  I can feel her thighs stiffen as the motion stops.  The waves do another lap then settle into the mass of chaotic bubbles gathering in the center of the tub.

I open my mouth to say something else, maybe repair the damage, but she’s moving.  Away from me.  Out of the tub.  And into the snow.  

I quickly grab her towel and hold it in an outstretched arm.  “Your towel,” I call.

She pauses, with her back to me.  “I don’t need it,” she says titling her head back for a view of the moon.  “It’s not so cold anymore.”

  

2/21

We sit by the fire I made.  Each on little fold-out stools.  With wine in hand we stare at the flames.  We watch the orange and yellow and blue dance over and on and through the fallen wood of this forest.

And I lean towards her, eyes still on flame, and say, “I believe every man has the ability to convince himself he can conquer the world.”

The fire crackles before she responds, “In what way?”

“In the way that man is all powerful.”

“No,” she says, turning toward me.  “In what way would he conquer the world?  If one comes to understand the world, one has essentially conquered it.  And anyone can do that.”

My brow furrows and the cup rises to my lips.  The tart taste of a cheap red.  “Well, that could be one way.  Maybe, a nihilist way, or something.  But I’m saying, man can convince himself he can do it in anyway.  No matter the obstacles.”

“So, man is crazy.”

I wince, “No.”  There’s a pop from the fire as a log breaks and slants the tent-like structure.  I rise and grab the shovel.  Begin poking and prodding.  Sparks fly up to the darkness.  

The girl tilts her head back and watches them.  Raises a hand and traces their dance with her fingers.  “So you believe man can conquer what he wants as long as he convinces himself he can conquer it.”

I sit back down beside her.  My stool wobbles, which takes me an extra moment to settle.  To straighten my back.  Sip my wine.  “Essentially,” I say, feeling warmer and warmer.  “Even sitting here, in the light and heat of this fire I’ve made, I feel quite powerful.”

And a smile creeps over my face as I embrace this feeling.  As she turns to look at me again, while my eyes are still on flame, I feel powerful.  With my straight back and stoic figure in the shadows of the flickering light.  I have a firm grasp on my existence.  Then an ember from the fire flicks out onto the back of my hand, causing me to shriek in pain, spill my wine, and fall from my stool.

“But he can still burn.”  She says and sips from her cup.   

2/20

I’m to see a movie after work with a friend.  A movie about religion and possession and witches.  

When work ends I stride out to my car, and I recall the dugout I placed in the driver’s side door a few days ago.  As I start the engine I reach down for it, whispering wishes that there is still some weed in the apparatus.  That there is still something in there to make me feel different.  To make consciousness pop.

And there is.  And I rejoice.  Exclaim with relief.  I no longer have to wade through this evening sober.  Hooray.

As I navigate my way to the theater, I casually take hits from the cylindrical pipe, designed to look like a cigarette.  It makes parking slightly more difficult, as I’ve become less concerned with how quickly I turn the wheel or how efficiently I maneuver my car into a space for traffic to continue.  These things are less pressing.

But I still manage to walk in a straight line and enter the lobby in a timely manner.  Even if my thoughts are turning into warm honey.  Even if I’m beginning to fold inward upon myself as I contemplate the finer notions of being a good human.  Of determining right and wrong where there are no structures.  Of feeling some sense of security in my daily life.

My friend rises from the sofa he’s settled on and walks toward me.  We greet each other and I only hold eye contact for a brief moment before looking back to the posters on the wall or the checkered tiling on the floor because I fear that a prolonged stare into another human right now may derail me from any semblance of the stability I’m feigning.

Then I see the girl in glasses with dark hair curling down to her shoulders seated before the dimly lit hallway of double doors.  A silver stud sticks out from her nose, and as I hand my ticket over to her, as our fingers gently graze, our eyes meet.  And I fall in.  I plummet down a well of surging visions and flourishing fantasies.  I see a life.  A whirlwind of events making up a young woman in Baltimore.  The night several years ago on her late uncle’s farm when she decided she wanted to be a city girl.  The tattoos she got when she first arrived and the bike she now rides everywhere.  Then, a sprawling manifestation of a life from here forward.  Together.  With this girl.  Joining hands.  Heading back out of the city.  Opening a bed and breakfast in the country somewhere.  Getting a dog.  Having a kid.  Raising a family.

Then she’s pointing to the door with Theater 1 printed on it.  And my friend is nudging me to move.  

And I do. 

2/18

We’d been hiking for hours when we reached the tunnel.  It was dark when we started, but now the sun seemed to be passing right over head.  Not that it was hot in the mountains.  That wasn’t the worry.  It was my wavering emotional stability.  The unrelenting bombardment of thoughts doing laps around my head.  And I’m not really sure where they came from or why they continued to hound me as we trekked up the endless switchback.  But they were there and they made each step a little more painful.  A little more weighted.

When I caught up to CJ he had that wild smile plastered on his face.  His crooked teeth pointing at me.  “You ready to go in?”

I stood sucking wind.  Trying to straighten up.  Giving in.  Resting on my knees.  “What?” 

“You ready to go in?” He pointed with the hand-held cold steel shovel he’d been fashioning lately.  A Russian throwing weapon, essentially.  “It’s time to find some grizzlies.”

We had heard stories that humans were not the only traffic occupying the passage through Mt Wachaha.  That occasionally one would have to reverse in high speed when growls and grunts started emanating from the other end.   

I straightened up.  Looked at CJ, through his thick brimmed glasses.  Through his bristling anticipation.

Then I nodded.

2/17

There's a man looking at me.  Peering at me from just beyond the glass doors.  The locked glass doors.  He stands with his hand over his brow, pressed against the glass.  To block the reflection, I imagine.  To keep a steady gaze on me.

And it's early.  The sun is just barely making its presence known, and the delivery order of baked goods necessary to open the cafe is right by his feet.  Right by his dirty workman's boots.  Of course.

As I approach, rather slowly, he turns and spits into the bushes, though a considerable amount winds up streaking across the window.  He then drags his forearm over his stubble and resumes his gaze.

I take a moment to fully appreciate how painful the next few moments of my life are going to be, then I open the door.

And he gets right into it.  Rattling off names and missed communications and jobs that aren't done that need doing and locations that need attention that don't have any and, "hey, I was told by Mr So-and-So that you were the guy to let me in, and I just need to get right in here, right past that door there, and I'll be back outta here in no time; now Mr So-and-So said you were the one to talk to, so that's what I'm doing."

I don't realize I've raised my hands above my shoulders in surrender.  That my head is shaking from left to right to left as if broken.  As if in disrepair.  Then, in a panic, I reach for the bag of baked goods.  And we lock eyes for a brief moment, as I get a firm grip, before I turn and sprint down the hall.  Letting the door fall back into frame.

It is fairly embarrassing though, when I have to stand there, within plain view, and wait for the elevator to arrive.  As someone lets the man in, and he passes behind me with a flurry of curses.

Wonderful morning.

1/23

I find myself engaged in conversation with a gentleman I haven't engaged in quite a while.  We speak of the current events in our lives.  Work.  Friday nights.  Future plans.  

And this is all due to the whiskey.  The ration bought for the incoming blizzard.  For a weekend spent wrapped in blankets in front of a book or favorite movie.  Or to simply pass the time.

But we're throwin' back the bottle and rattling off tales of misfortune and tales of great mirth.  Everything just seems to be flowing.  

Then the gentleman suggests a walk in the snow.  A walk to maybe get some food.  Maybe more spirits.  A walk to keep things flowing.  

So, out we go.  And the storm has only just begun.  An inch or two coats the pavement and we kick through it with our boots like children.  We stomp and slide and keep moving forward.  The conversation dwindles as we laugh and play.  

Soon though, I realize I'm gaining distance from the man.  I turn back and he's stumbling into lamp posts and parked cars.  Falling onto the cobblestones of Fells Point, rising, then falling again.

So, I grab his arms and hoist him up.  I wrap one around my back and tell him to grab, place my hand behind his hips and start pushing towards home.  Towards the end of our journey.  Play time is over.

And this works for a few blocks.  Till we get to this stretch by the waterfront when his legs turn to complete jello.  When he just wants to wrestle in the snow.  Like a child.  As we were before.

But I'm growing and sobering fast, and all I can think of is having some warm apple cider when I return to my apartment.  So, I try to grab him again.  Pull upwards.  But he just wants to roll in the snow.  To just spin and turn on the ground.

So I take a stand.  I back a few steps away, shout to him.  "I'm going this way," and point to my apartment.  Then I watch.  Try to see if any of this is registering.  Try to see if there's still a person in there.

After a moment or two there's vertical movement; he begins to rise.  And I feel a rush of hope; time to go home.  But it doesn't take much time, one may even describe it as the blink of an eye, before he stumbles. After his hips are in the air above his legs, when he's pushing his upper body up from the ground, he stumbles.  Crossing one foot over the other over the other.  And I see it so clearly.  If only my muscles would spring into action.  Be more efficient.  But he goes in.  Almost like a child on the first day the pool opens.  In a flash.  He's in.

And I'm on the edge of the stone boardwalk, yelling and screaming like a parent.  Clapping my hands and searching the gentleman's face for recognition.  For an acknowledgement of the situation.  For anything, really.  But there's no one there.  Blank.  Like that of a child.  And I'm cursing.  I'm cursing so much.  As he treads water.  As he treads less and less water.  I curse so much.  Then my boots come off.  Through curses and blasphemies the jacket comes off.  The workman's overalls.  The sweaters.  The gloves.  The socks.

Then I'm in the water.  It's cold.  And dark.  And nothing like a comforter, but I'm swimming better than I ever remembered, and I have an arm around his limp body in an instant.  When we get back to the edge, a newly arrived officer shouts down basic questions and bits of encouragement.  She tells me how great I'm doing.  Help is on the way.  I thank her.

Then there's flashing lights and ladders and ropes tied round rubber hoops and rods equipped with hooks.  And we're getting pulled and tugged and wrapped in blankets and all I'm thinking about is that warm apple cider.

1/17

I wind up on a dance floor again.  With motion and sweat and smiles, I wind up on the dance floor.  And this wasn't my intent.  I came for a beer and some light bar banter.  I came to relax, ease myself into a wooden stool, and think not of my worries.  Nothing too engaging. 

So, it's slightly surprising when my shoulders begin to dip and rise with the beat of the snare on Bowie's Rebel Rebel.  When my feet start to tap out the lead guitar on the hardwood floor.  When my fingers get drumming on the tabletop.

It's not too long before I'm surrounded by bodies.  Bodies bouncing up and bodies bending down, with arms spiraling out in electric fashion and feet that hop and kick and fling about.  It's not too long till the heat is rising and voices are joining in song.  Till everyone has embraced the infectious energy and pure passion that David Bowie left for us.  

And to think, I wanted to be home by nine.