People being people

              It’s Poppa’s fault.             He insisted we have Danny when I didn’t want him.             Three kids is enough, I said, not counting the two miscarriages and that ugly thing I had when I was young and don’t want to talk about.             Three kids and they’re all growing up to be spoiled brats.             Maybe I should have told him no.             All his drinking couldn’t have helped – though to this day he says booze don’t make kids turn out that way.             Like any of us really know.             But I went and did it a...

              I’m okay now.             But you don’t get over seeing a thin like that. Especially when it happens a lot.             I’m not saying I hated all of Momma’s friends. Some of them reminded me of Poppa in some ways. Some of them even treated me like a son. But all of them had one thing in common: they beat Momma.             I didn’t always see it all.             Sometimes all I saw were the bruises and black eyes.             Most people didn’t even see that much. Momma always covered them with long sleeves or stayed out of work until the most obvious hurts went away.             Yet never...

  The great lakes don’t seem so great when seen from where I stand, a small beach a sign has marked off as “private.” I keep thinking about that silly Broadway song Hank always sings, and wonder what the fuss is about. This can’t be the same place. Louise, with teeth chattering, is so hard to hear there over the howl of wind, I don’t know she is demanding I get back into the car. We’re heading east from Portland to New York, and I’ve spent so many hours coupled up in a car I’m grateful for the change. Even if my bones ach from the cold. Bobby, our driver, for that last 1,000 miles sucks on a joint so small I smell singed hair from his moustache rather than pot. He’s so stoned he doesn’t feel the cold, doesn’t know what season this is, what day of the week or even if this is night or day. He is in no hurry to come or go, swaying in the breeze like a reed. Louise is anxious to get to New York to start our new life, just as she was anxious to get to Portland before that and San Franci...

  My name is Nicky and I live in a world of cork. No, I don’t mean Ireland, and I don’t live inside a bottle like a Aladdin’s genie. I offer no wishes to anyone except those people buy, a joint or a bag full at a time. This is 1970, man. I love the fact that I’m hip enough to know I should live on the Lower East Side of New York City, and that I am the magic man to nearly everybody I know, supplying them with their needs and fantasies. Sure, the straights think I’m the scum of the earth, an evil wraith preying on innocent children, mounting monkeys on people’s backs so I can get rich. I see myself a healer, helping to cure the afflictions society causes, a shaman with magical properties. I make a bad boss more tolerate, a nagging wife less shrill, a lonely life less lonely. Sure, it’s all really smoke and mirrors, a Wizard of Oz trip I pull on people, each chemical something out of a bag of tricks that doesn’t really change anything, and certainly isn’t real. But who is to say what...

  I’m like a mad man, haunting her every step through this damned camp site. The old tiger gnaws at my stomach like hunger no food can cure. The moment I saw her coming out of the road side tavern, the moment I saw her kiss that other man, I knew I was in trouble. Like all those other times when one thing leads to another and leaves me empty and aching except for the fury. This is supposed to be our get together get away; a time away from civilization to see if we still have what we used to have, and now – this. My heavy feet crush dead leaves as I stalk her through the woods, just as my feet once stirred up broken glass along the streets of Hollywood years ago. I an insane with the throb in my head, blood roaring up into my ears like a tsunami. Why is she doing this to me? Why am I letting this happen? I see the sliver outline of my car at our camp site and know logically I should go to it and drive away, out of the woods, out of the state, out of her life. I can trust myself to t...

  My chauffeur thinks I’m crazy when I tell him to leave. A man like  me has no business being in a place like this It is raining and gray, and I’m standing at the heart of the least developed section of Newark, and he thinks I’m trying to kill myself by coming here. Even he won’t get out of the limbo, except to let me in or out, and he’s a black man. When I insist, he pleads with me to get back in the car, and when I won’t and tell him to leave, he takes off so fast I know he’s going off to find the police or perhaps my mother to come save me. I watch the car fade into the mists as if into a dream, and then I seek the protection of the bus shelter, the rattle of empty bottles alerting me to the pools of vomit I find within. The stench of urine stops me at the edge where the leaking roof drips down into my neck and blouse. Outside, I see the rubble of broken buildings, part of a shattered neighborhood, with the only sign of life a half block away where broken people gather und...

  It ain’t that funny. So stop with the hyena act. Can I help it I got active hormones? I just got to get a different woman every night, other wise I get bored Just give me a drink and stop laughing. Bartenders ain’t supposed to be wise asses. Okay, so I admit the blonde turned my lights on the moment she walked through the door. How the hell am I to know that she’s Mary’s sister? Yeah, that Mary – sweet Mary who gives me what I need when nobody else is around to get it. Mary, whose talk of love does about as much for my sex drive as a bucket of ice. And yes, the same Mary who finally told me to get lost, or drop dead or both. Mary didn’t come in with the blonde so I just strutted over to see if I could help the little lady in any way. Yes, yes, I did my star trip. Will you please hold it down? People are looking this way and if they see you laughing they might start laughing, too, and I might have to find another bar to play in. I hate people laughing at me. Anyway, this blonde do...

  We’re desperate LA dumped us on the street like two sacks of trash. So we’ve come to Phoenix to find Gil only to find this old man living here instead. Gil’s don’t live here no more, the old man tells us as we stand on his stoop looking a lot like hoboes. Behind the man we see a workshop where a crash pad had been, full of sawdust and tools. The scent of sweat and saw cuts oozes off the man as if he has bathed in both. Our dog, Midnight, growls at him, its dark eyes thick with suspicions: the dog is as ragged as we are, thick fur still clinging to bits of the desert we have just come through. When the man reached out to scratch Midnight’s head, the dog proves cowardly and darts through the man’s legs, caught a moment later by the man’s large hand – nails blackened from those missed hammer blows, bleeding from the flood of splinters sawed wood brings. He invites us in out of the sun and as we step across the threshold we last crossed six months ago, we enter a whole new strange wo...