Two Thoughts For Taylor Marie

It's unequivocal.  It's a soft, green-eyed prettiness that's veiled about her elegant stature.  It hangs over her fair-skinned freckles and flutters in the wind with her auburn hair.  It ties the tongue and stutters the thought if you're caught unaware.  Blindsided.  Perhaps at the turn of a corner so the heart skips lightly on a spring that's caught in the throat before it leaps right out.

It's a curious beauty she possesses.  A timid princess beauty.  A silly sultry beauty that harbors a confidence in her convictions. And to think she once told me she'd fallen for me. If had been a strange time for me though, and to be honest, timing was never really our thing.  Fuckin' aye, if I could, I'd do it right over and quite different, and there's precious few things I say that for.  See, I'm hardly ever one for regret, but this Taylor Marie, she's just prettier than everything.  In part, because it's the kind of pretty that digs in roots and grows on you, and it's been growing on me for some time now.

That being said, there's something destructive in the way she thinks.  It comes from that crazy that's in us all, and maybe that's why I'm crazy about her.  We've all got it.  And if you think for a second that you don't, well then you simply haven't looked deep enough.  It's in everyone, and it shows itself in different particulars.  In the particular case of Taylor, it's not something extravagant.  No, it's quality is innocent and pure with the most romantically hopeful outlook.  The only problem with it really is that life in reality isn't so storybook serene or as easily decipherable as she may believe.  It's not plastered across the universe in such rigid archetypes. 

She's a relationship girl.  That's what she tells me.  "I only have sex with my boyfriend," she says.  Okay, that makes sense.  I guess.  When she has a boyfriend anyways.  But what happens when she's single again because the last one ended badly like they always do for some reason?

"Have you slept with anyone else yet?" I'd ask.

She'd look at me hard, maybe judging. "I told you, I'll only have sex with my boyfriend. That's just who I am."

"Which boyfriends?"

"Ew, no. Not ex-boyfriends."

"But you're single."

"I know.  I hate it."

"Well, hell.  Date me then," I'd say smiling.  "What's the worst that could happen?"


"Oh, stop it," she'd say with a roll of the eyes or a shifty sideways glance. "Please, you're like my best friend."

"Yeah, but I'm also a boy. And I already love you, so it's like a win-win."

"Maybe. But I don't want to ruin what we have right now."

I never understood that.  I guess it's because all her intimate relationships end in disaster and heartbreak.  I feel sorry for her, sure, but only to a certain extent.

[revisited 4/30/13]

It's a year later now just about.  Fuck time's flying way too fast.  I wish I could say I understand her more now than I did then, but if I did, I'd be lying to myself.  But that's what writing's for right?  To bring about some semblance of understanding, some coherent self-satisfying dialogue.  Or is it a monologue?  I don't know.

What I do know is that somewhere in this between she became a woman to me, and when I look in the mirror now, it's not a wide-eyed boy I see staring back anymore, but a reluctant man of beleaguered stoicism pulled like see-through curtains over tired pupils.  So we've both grown I guess. She's single now.  Adult single with a single studio place to herself and a healthy taste for liquor and aesthetic sex with no strings attached.  Which means no me.  And somehow, after all this time and pessimism, I still have the capacity to get completely wrapped up in her.

Fall Paris: Lili

This is Paris.  It's a feeling of vague familiarity, but to be true, it's entirely foreign.  I didn't remember Paris like this, and it had just been a few months over a year since Max, Mike, Grant, and I had bid "Au 'voir" to Marie on a mid-summer morning and snuck away on the metro to Gare du Nord.  It feels like the same city - the symmetry, the architecture, the language - but this is different.  It's not a holiday.  It's not a free-form wild romp like before, no great adventure.

No, this is just living.  An attempt to focus.  To put pencil to paper and slave away at a keyboard.  I came here to write.  LA's too wrought with diversions.  Too many things to do, too many people to see.  Too many girls.  It's only Fall, but it already feels like it'll soon be too cold to get into anything real mischievous.  Plus, I don't know anyone out here - save for Marie.  And of course, Lili.

"Oh, hey there," I hear over the vague undertone of French flying around the steps of the Opera.  I pull the camera from my eye and my eye from the skyline to the sidewalk below, and there she is on a silly bicycle all covered in taupe plastic.  I hear the color's very soothing.  It's Lili.

"Oh, hey yourself," I say looking serious, and I try not to smile.  She's just how I remembered her, sassy and shoulder-groovin' and animated behind a pair of Raybans, and for a second the city turns to LA and I never really left.  But I think that's just the jet-lag.  My heavy eyes blink, and when they open again, I'm in gay ole' Paris.

Lili's looking at me hard.  "I can't believe you're actually here."

"Yeah.  I don't think I believe I'm here either," I say.  "Not yet, anyways."

She laughs, "Yeah?  Rough flight?  You look like hell."

"Gee, thanks."  My skin's sticky from the processed airplane-air, and all my joints hurt, and I feel high off delirium.  "What time is it by the way?" I ask.

Lili flicks her wrist and consults a classy little timepiece on a worn leather band.  "It's just past nine."

"Good Lord!  I'm about to pass out.  How far's your place?"

[stop]

"It's a quick ride on the Velib," she says looking down at the bike between legs.  It's a wonderful city service, the Velib.  There's tens of cheap taupe bikes locked up at tiny stations every other block or so, and they're available with the simple swipe of a Velib card.  But each card can only take one bike every thirty minutes.  It's like a metro pass without being able to cheat your friends through too.

"But I don't have a Velib," I say frowning.

She looks at me sourly.  "I know.  You suck."  Lili's always been a little tart, ever since high school.  Pretty and secretive and sarcastically tart.  That's Lili.  She's a wild one.  She's charmingly seductive.  I might have loved her once.  Maybe, but if I did, if that's even what it was, it was a long time ago.  Before college.  We're nothing but old friends now.  She's always intrigued me though, and for that I've since learned to be wary.  I saw beauty in her the way one sees it in a pack of wild mustangs running at a cliff's edge.  It's not something you want to find yourself in the midst of.  But from afar, it's a rare and beautiful thing to witness.  She's untamed and together and always flirting with a dangerous unknown it seems.  "It's not that far," she says.  "We can walk."

It's pretty fucking far actually.  Especially with fifty pounds of backpack and luggage digging into my shoulders.  We head southwest through the city for a spell and turn left on Avenue de Marigny.  A solid walk.  It takes us twenty minutes to get to the Seine, and as we cross at Pont Alexandre III, Napoleon's tomb in the distance, a young scruffy Parisian walking the other way picks a ring up off the ground and holds it up to me saying something in French.  

"He's trying to hustle you, ignore him," Lili says to me.  Then she turns to him with a wave of her hand and sneers, "Non, merci."  And we keep walking.

"What was that about?" 

"He was gonna try to get you to give him ten dollars for that shitty ring.  He dropped it there earlier.  It's a thing they do."

"Who do?"

"The gypsies.  Then they'll try to rob you.  Look out for them."

So I look out for them.  "Are we there yet?"

"Almost.  Kinda.  It's through this park and just past Invalides," she says, and does a double-take.  "You wanna take a break?"

I let a deep sigh out, "That would be awesome."  And we sit on a green wood bench lined up even with a row a trimmed trees.  

Lili crosses her legs, pulls a pouch of Lucky Strike tobacco from her shoulder bag and opens it.  There's a single rolled cigarette inside.  She didn't really smoke at all in the States, and she looks me sharp in the eyes, "Don't judge me."

"I won't if you roll me one," I snap back.

[stop]

"Fine," she sighs.  And she tosses me the one she'd been fiddling with in her fingers.  Then she rolls another and we smoke.  The ground's covered with leaves, brown-orange and trampled, but the trees still have some life in them, in the greens speckled yellow.

I catch my breath with a puff of tobacco smoke.  It's crisp and sends my skin into bumps.  Lili sees a close leaf falling and looks at me.  "You picked a good time to come," she says.  "It's not usually as nice as it is this time in November."

I blow a puff out.  "How nice is it usually?"

"It should be colder, but it isn't."

"Lucky me."  There's no emphasis in it.  I have none to spare.  Paris is bustling by through morning rush hour, and the clocks in my head don't think that sounds right and they're whining up a fuss.  It's a little past midnight back in LA.  What the hell am I doing here.  Each blink comes with a throb and a shake and I feel my eyes sink into my skull now as my cigarette burns low.

"C'mon," says Lili picking up one of my bags.  "It's just around the corner.  I've got another class to go to so you can take a nap up there or whatever when I'm gone."  

"Oh-kay," I say.  And I pick up the other bag.

Before we trek off again, she takes one last mean drag from her cigarette and flicks it at me with a smile.  "I can't believe you're actually here."

[stop]

Lili lives in a little servants' quarters room just below the roof of a lavish Parisian apartment block in the 7th Arrondissement.  There's no elevator and she takes me through to the back where there's a servants' staircase that spirals up six flights to the top.  The steps are steep and always twisting up.  They never straighten out, and a tiny landing and a servants' door marks each floor until there's no more steps and we're walking down a tall skinny hallway with doors on either side and battered floorboards.  They look recently stripped, but Lili says they've been like that since she moved in a year ago.  She's panting when she says it, and I'm panting while I listen because fucking hell, those stairs were no joke.

When Lili opens the door, we both drop the bags not so softly on the hardwood floors, and I grab my knees taking in deep breaths.  "Wow.  Really Lil? That was fucking miserable," I say.  "I didn't think I was in this bad of shape."

"Yeah, dude.  Tell me about it.  I do that at least twice a day."  She pours two glasses of water, and hands me one, and we sit a her table.  It's a tiny thing against the wall opposite the door, barely big enough for two people to eat comfortably.  The place is a box, and a closet juts out to the middle from the door wall and opens both ways.  Her bed hugs one wall, and the bathroom and kitchen hug the other.  "You must be starving," she says.  She breaks a baguette in half and digs through the mini fridge under the kitchen counter.  "You have to try this butter I have...  It's to die for, muahaha!"

"Is it now." I spread some on some bread and take a bite.  Then another.  And another and another until it's gone, and I finally begin to catch my breath.  It's damned good butter if I do say so myself.  "What is that?" I ask still licking my pallet.   

"That's butter, man.  Real butter," she says.  "French butter."

I take the bar of it in my hand and inspect it.  "Is that salt?"

"Yup.  Crystal-y sea salt.  It's so good."  Then she reaches into the fridge again and pulls out another bar, or more a sliced rock of butter.  "Here, try this one."

"What's this one?"

"Ouzo," she says.  It's altogether different, in flavor and sweetness and saltiness, and it's equally amazing.  I never pegged Lili for a fine butter connoisseur, but it doesn't surprise me.  She's accustomed to fine tastes.  After all, her parents are both Italian so her's was a savory household back in LA.  Or at least it was whenever I came over for dinner.  She's lived up a hill and just a few blocks west of me.

"Your butters are divine," I tell her.

"Why, thank you," she says with a curtsy.  "Oh!  I gotta go to class right now, and you look like you need some shut-eye, so I guess you can sleep in my bed for now."  She takes a step towards me and leans in and sniffs.  "Yeah, that's fine.  I'll be back in three hours or so."

"Haha, spanks.  I don't smell that bad."

"Sure you don't, hehe.  Smell ya later."  She's a mischievous giggler as she leaves, and she cuts a slim fit figure in the doorway.  It's got to be the stairs.  Six flights twice or thrice a day will give anyone body karate.

The blood's still pumping from those damned stairs and tired as I am, my sunken eyes don't feel like closing yet so I write.  In a mixed-up open-eyed unconscious daydream delirium I write.  Sitting on the single loveseat below the tiny servant's quarters window.

[stop]

For dinner we go out.  The night's sweater cold and cozy in this green knitted thing I picked up in LA just before leaving.  It's got little leather elbow pads, and it zips down the middle, and it's a little heavy for autumn in LA, but in Paris it's just right.  We walk arm in arm, Lili and I, chatting fast with jibs back and forth like little kids playing tag, and and she drags from a cigarette in her right hand, and I drag from one in my left.  And when the sidewalk thins, we split seamlessly and walk single-file.  She's a quick walker, Lili, and I keep pace.  "What do you want?" she asks.

"I want to eat something French," I say with a wave of the Lucky Strike she rolled me.

"Hmm... French you say? I know just the place."  She steers us to a corner restaurant nearby.   Café Constant.  The place isn't open for dinner yet, but there's already a line waiting.  It's mostly an older crowd, and to my surprise there's a lot of English being thrown around.  Lili tells me the 7th is the arrondissement that most Americans move to when they move to Paris.  "This place is an American favorite,"  she says.  "Last time the 'rents came out we ate here."

Lovely.  We'll fit right in.  And when they finally open the doors and let us sit, we do.  We slide right in at a table by the door.  It's not a big place on the ground floor.  There's a line of tables pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows, facing the bar, with just enough space for servers to rush by in between the two.  I take the seat up against the window because I get to look at bar and all the bottles behind it, and I like that.  Almost as much as Lili likes sitting in the aisle.  She's quite adamant about it really, and I don't mind the close quarters so it all works out.  Our server's sharp and gives us the English menus, and I sigh easy relief.  "Merci," I say.  "Merci beaucoup."

Lili gets the roasted chicken plate, and I get a hearty steak and potatoes.  She orders a glass of white French wine, and I ask her to order me a decent red because as I look at the list I realize that all the wines are different out here, and I don't know which to choose.  I'm starving, and it's been forever since I've had a proper steak dinner.  I want to do it right.  Luckily, Lili likes her wine, and she picks an ace.

The dinner's everything I wanted.  The steak's savory in a sauce with a sharp bite, and the chef hit the medium-well nail on the head.  To know me is to know I love steak.  Fucking love it.  And the taters weren't bad either.  Especially mixed about in the steak juice.

[stop]

We take the meal at a slow trot, with my trot being just a bit slower.  To hold onto the taste for as long as I can, and to make sure, as always, that there's a little bit of wine still left to wash it all down with after.  Lili watches me after she's done and tuts and laughs and talks of all the sneaky things she's been up to in Paris, and I listen.  "And don't you tell anyone," she says.

"Me?" says I with my mouth half full.  "I would never.  Who would I tell?"

She eyes me with suspicion for the vaguest second, then dismisses it.  "So two months, huh? What are you going to do here for two months?"


"Write, I guess." And I gulp it down.

"That's it?"

"That's the idea."

"Well... You can't crash at my place for two months.  I won't allow it."

"Oh, of course not," I say flatteringly.  "I've got some other friends I can stay with.  And I might go down to Barcelona too."

"Really? Cool. A week here and a week there's fine then.  That I don't mind at all," she says finishing her wine.  "And oh! So my Romanian wants to take me to the countryside this weekend for his friend's birthday party. Should I go with him?"

"To where?"

"To this little village towards the coast."

I nod with an impressed face.  "Sounds intriguing," I say. "And exciting.  This guy's your boyfriend?"

"He's a boy," she says matter-of-factly. "He's fun."

"Well then, I say do it. Why not?  When's the next time you think someone's going to take you to Deauville or wherever the hell this place is.  I would definitely go if I were you."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Do it."

She's excited and bubbly when we leave Cafe Constant, and she says she'll see if I can come too, which I'm all for.  I really want to see something over here.  Something grand and inspiring.  Some adventure.  Some something special that I hadn't seen before.  A countryside birthday bash sounds like just the ticket, and sure enough, the polite Romanian - an ambassador's son - invites me as well when he meets us that night in the grass on the Champs de Mars.

Lili and I had picked up a bottle of wine after dinner, and sat to the side so that the Tour looked down on us over the trees.  In the level grass that's not that dry.  It's not quite wet either though.  It's moist.  So that when I lean back on my hands the feel of the soft dampness leans back, and it reminds me of a towel that's been left out to dry but hasn't quite finished yet.  The guy's a gentleman though, so I wipe my hands quick with one swipe on my pants as I stand to greet him, "Bonjour."

"Bonjour, it's nice to meet you," he says holding out his hand.  His English is spot on.  He looks the way clean-cut native Parisians look with a sharp haircut and long-sleeved stripes and a scarf, but his accent isn't French. It's something more easterly.  "I'm Andrei, and this is Boris."

"Hello," says Boris.  The accent throws me.  I can't quite place it, and it's definitely not French.  But it's not exactly the same as Andre's either.

"It's a pleasure," I say, and I shake both their hands.  We drink the wine casually as Andrei tells us about his friend's house in the Normandy near Deauville.  It's in a small farming village about three hours out of Paris.  With a small stone church and a cemetery, and green autumn fields and old bombs from the War in the ancient backyard barn.

They're leaving tonight they tell us, and we'll be going with another friend tomorrow afternoon.  That sounds just swell to me, and it's exciting to think that my first weekend in France is going to be spend in the country. The next day we wake late and the morning turns to afternoon in a flash of scrambled eggs and french bread with salted butter.  I pry about grad school and Lili gives and talks papers and Parisian friends until it's time to meet Andre's friend Mircea.  We take the metro and rendezvous with Mircea above ground at the Montparnasse station.  He picks us up in his BMW chain-smoking Marlboro Reds, and tells us there's going to be one more passenger.

Fall Paris: Olivia

Lili's mad at me.  Why?  Well, because she was at school all day, so I'd taken her keys.  Why?  So I could go to the market.  I would run down the six flights of stairs and let her in when she'd return in the late afternoon.  The only problem with the plan was that I wasn't home when she came back.  I was out of place, off gallivanting with sweet-pretty cool-quirky Rachel.

We meet, Rachel and I, on Rue Clare, which is clogged with people and tents and antiques for the vintage market this weekend.  There's everything there that one could ever imagine to be at a Parisian vintage market.  And then some, and it's all super old.  Old carries a different weight over here in France.  Some of  this stuff predates my own young country.

She sees me before I see her so when I turn and find her eyes, they're right there looking back at me.  She throws silly awkward surprise on her face with raised eyebrows and wizard's air and I can't hold back the smile of warmth that she brings me.  "Oh, hey there," I say.

"Why, hello," says she.  Her disposition's sultry.  She says it low and with pouted lips after.  But there's a giggle in her eyes, and her long hair's down half covering her face, half flowing over her bright red wool coat. Whenever I see red wool I will always think of Rachel.

"You finish that paper finally?"  I ask her.

"Ugh, finally.  It's good to be done.  And what did you do today, sir?"

"Me?  Well, I just romped around and rambled into this awesome antiques fair.  It's pretty sick actually.  There's some old-ass stuff here."

"Yeah," she says with a lean-back, taking in the setting.  "Super old.  I love it."

"Ah, moi aussi."  I always put on a deep gentlemen's tone with my French accent.  I don't know why.  And it's not even always really.  Just with the people I know because it's sarcastic.  Clearly.  And the French are smart, see.  And I'm afraid they'd pick up on it like that, and what's more, I don't think they'd take too kindly to it.  Especially not from the likes of me.  But enough of that.  "So," I say.  "Spliff time?"

Her eyes widen with a flare for a second, "Mmm.  Most definitely."  We head off towards chez Rachel between the tented rows of old antiquities.  Through the everything old.  Old clothes, old shoes.  Old guns, old mirrors.  Old china and glassware.  Old postcards, old paintings.  Old cupboard knobs, old jewelry.  Old everything.

We finger through the postcards for a spell, all yellow and faded as they are.  Black and whites, mostly from the 1800s.  They're only one or two euro each, and I think about buying one for Lili, but I can't find one at L'Opera.  There's hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they're only sort of sorted.  No dice.

We pass a tent selling solely old bottle openers.  Some of them are displayed in glass-topped cases.  "Ooo, how much?" I say in Borat English.  The tent's patron doesn't even acknowledge me.  The openers are intriguing, so we stop to peruse, picking up old corkscrews of all shapes and sizes.

"Say what," says Rachel holding up a metal, screwed contraption supposedly designed to open wine bottles way back when.  I can't imagine how though, no matter which way we turn it.  "This one's forty euros."

"That's redunkulous."

"Ha, speaking of redunkulous, how was the jazz bar last night, hmm?"  She asks with a nudge of the shoulder.  "Real jazzy, was it?"

"Argh!  I wish I knew!  Didn't end up going actually."  Olivia never rang.  Must've been a long night of paper-writing I assume.  "Just stayed home and watched a movie with Lili," I say.

"Aww, how adorable.  That's exactly what I did, except not with Lili.  Obviously.  What movie was it?"

"Oh, just a little diddy called Melancholia."

"Huh.  Sounds cheeky and fun, haha!  How was it?"  She asks it airily with space between her words to breath.

"Well, it was beautiful," I say.  "It just so happened to be about the end of the world, that's all."

"Nice!"

"Right?" I lay on the exaggeration.  "What'd you watch smarty-pants?"

"Oh, this small whatever film, Winter Passing."

"Nice!  How was it?!"

"Shut-up.  It was all right.  Decent.  One of those slow, sad melodramas of life and love," she says, smiling at her own hypocrisy.  "And stop smiling!"

"Sorry, no smiling," I smile, and then I put on a stiff lip and a tight jaw.  And inside I just keep falling.

"I like those kind of movies," she continues.  "I kind of got a soft spot for them.  Like those Eternal Sunshine-y ones."

"You ever see Synecoche, NY?  That's a damned sad one for sure," I say.

"Are you kidding?  I love that one.  It's Phillip Seymour Hoffman isn't it?"

"The Hoff!  Yup."  And I laugh at the recall.  "That song from it was just playing on the ole' iPod before you got here."

"Oh!  'I'm just a little person...'" she softly sings it, eyes closed, in perfect tune before she forgets the lyrics and hums the slow melody.  "dum dum dum dum duh-dum... That one?"

"That's the one," I say.  We've left the corkscrews behind, and we're walking down St. Germaine now.  To Rachel's place.  She tells me about the paper she wrote and the trials of her day, and I listen thoughtfully because why wouldn't I?  And I tell her of all the nothings I've been up to (well, maybe not all of them), and all the while that sweet-voiced song from the movie sings along in my head for only me to hear:

I know you
You're the one
I've waited for.

Let's have some fun.

[stop]

"I think I'll just do this," I tell her from the bed.

She's up to pour more 2,00 euro wine into her coffee mug, but she looks up at me when I say it.  "What's that?"

"This.  Picking up and going.  Traveling when I can and fuck all the rest.  I don't need it."  Or maybe it's just that I don't have it yet.  And in my lacking I have this freedom.  Not grandiose, romantic freedom, like some great bald eagle flying off with it's olive branch and arrows.  Just a bitter, holistic one that pushes one to wander because there's no one and nothing pulling me back.  No other half to account for.  No one to lay my stresses on, so they pile up inside.  And no job, no career, nothing that requires commitment anyways.  No one telling me what to do except the old patriarch at home.  He just wants the best, I guess.  He wants to see success in his treelings.  A success like his.

There's more successes out there than I think he realizes or maybe cares for I think.  And our lives are not the same.  I'm at the point in the road where I fork off, heeding Frost's words and taking that road less traveled.  The unpaved one.  He raised us well though, my sister and I.  We're quick minded.  We're calculating.  We're independent, a bit more than he wished for perhaps.  That's what you get though when you raise kids tough, and when when I look back I'm glad of it.  And I think now he knows we came out all right, with humble heads on our shoulders.  A couple of self-thinkers off in worldly locales that his own eyes haven't ever had the pleasure to take in personally.  A home body, he was.  He never flew to Paris on a whim.  He never found himself in a tiny servants' quarters flat off Rue de l'Universite with a beautifully cool breeze of a girl, high, and falling in love.  And he never will, so I don't think he'll ever understand.  Not fully, and maybe not at all.  But it's okay because I love him.  Dearly so, so I smile.

She looks at me funny and smiles too.  "Mmm, that sounds nice," she says.

"You sound nice."  We're so high.

[stop]

"I'll be there," I'd said.

"Okay."

It's cold outside, not by Paris standards mind you, but brisk.  And hardly in the habit of waiting outside.  I'd left her there.  Not on purpose really.  I mean I'm spliff high, alone with the prettiest, most beautiful excuse for a soul-mate I can think of.  In her tiny servants' quarters flat in the 7th, not more than three blocks from Lili's.  Oh, her tiny servants' quarters bed and sink and stove-top; all in one room.  Inside her life, and that young adolescent in me thinks I can stay here forever because, why, wouldn't that be so perfect and heavenly?  But that's always how it is when reality strikes, and I'm up and away, and I don't even kiss her, except on both cheeks when I say good-bye because that's all I have time for before I'm off down the stairs.

So I'm late, and Lili's left waiting at her door until I come panting up.  Apologetic as possible, tail between legs.  High tail.  There's a deep grief building up as well, because something said in me that that'd be the last time I'd see her, ever.  And it was.

Lili's mad at me.  "Give me the keys," she says stone-faced and I give them to her.  "I'm going to need some time alone," she says, and she says nothing else.

"Okay," I say.  "Let me just get my baguette and my journal."  Whatever.  She's pissed, and I'm kicked out, on the streets with half a baguette and a black, leather-bound notebook with black elastic to strap it shut.  Oh, and a pencil, duh.

[stop]

Olivia.  I call her on my trusty pay-as-you-go phone, and she picks up after a pair of rings and answers in a light angel voice.  In American English with a French demure.  "Hello," she says.

"Hi!  How are you?"

"Just fabulous.  And you?"

"Samesies.  So... Shall we dinner tonight?"

"Oh!  Yes, let's.  That sounds perfect," she says, and there's a hint of excitement floating wispy through the phone on her words.  "Where are you?"

"In the seventh," I say.

"Oh, no!  I just left the seventh!  I'm on the metro heading home."

"Well, let's just eat by you then."

"Really?"

"Yes, of course.  Where is it that you live?" I inquire.

"In the Marais.  Do you know where that is?  It isn't close really."

"Ha! I was just there yesterday in fact," I say because I was.  Skipping between this art gallery and that with dear sweet Rachel.  Dammit! I'm never going to see her again.

"You weren't."

"I was indeed.  Checkin' out some galleries."

"Oh, no!"

"I know!" I say sounding like a giddy high school girl.  What a perfect pair we are, never in the same place at the same time.  "Don't worry though, it's a straight shot on the 6 isn't it?"

"Yes!  The exit's Filles de Cavalrie.  I'll text you directions from there.  I live super close."

"Lovely."

"Or just call me when you get there.  Let's say around... 10:30?  I still need to take a shower and freshen up."

"10:30 it is," I say.  "I'll see you then."

"A bientot!"

"A bientot!"  Click.  I hate talking on the phone.

Fuck, it's only 9:00.  So I stroll on down to the Chinois place just past Cafe Constant.  "Pour cinq euros," I say pointing to the fried rice and the chicken kebobs.

The squinty middle-aged man behind the counter looks at me queerly.  "Cinq euros?" he asks, confirming.

"Oui, cinq euros pour le rice et le... um, ca!" I say pointing again.  "Le poulet."

The man's wife is in the corner folding napkins and shoots me a look of what I really hope isn't disdain, but if sure as hell looks like it.  Then she shoots one at her husband as well.  Whatever.  I'm the only one in the joint.  "Et d'eau, s'il vous plait."

After microwaving everything (because that's how the Chinois rolls in the Paris), he brings the food out to me on cheap china with a pitcher of water.  "Merci beaucoup," I say, and when the husband and wife start yelling at each other in Mandarin, I just put my headphones in and The Keys Noir croon me through my meal.  Five euros doesn't buy much in Paris, even at a Chinois, so when I'm finished, why, I just open my trusty leather-bound and word-vom onto paper in pencil until 10:00, then I high-tail it out of there to the metro stop at Tour Mahbourg.  It's a twenty-five minute ride to Filles de Cavalrie.  A nothing ride lost to my thoughts.

[stop]

Just a young California man waiting for a girl on a late-night Parisian street corner.  In the Marais.  I shuffle back and forth, pacing because it's so cold in early December.  My cheap aviator jacket only keeps me so warm (I wish the fur on the collar was real), and my scarf's a joke novelty thing from the surf shop back home.  No one wears scarves in LA, no guys anyways.  Mainly because one never needs to, and if I don't need to, well, why would I?  They tickle my neck, and they're a bother, and I don't know, it's just hard to be serious in LA with a scarf on.  It's like wearing a fedora, only not so much so.

Not here in Paris though.  Scarves are dead serious here, and with good reason.  As I'm set pacing, I dip my shivering chin low into the all-too-thin folds of such a sorry excuse, and I try not to gawk at the big, bundley woven ones and cashmere ones that come walking by.  It's fucking freezing out here.  Thank god I put my long undies on today.

She catches me first.  I know it because as I turn yet again to pace in the other direction, my eyes come up and there's sleek boots and long, elegant fur (the real kind), plush lips, and beautiful brown doe eyes looking me straight, coming at me with a garish walk  of determined sophistication and she smiles.  I always remember the smiles.  Hell, what's better to remember?  It's a smile a intrigue and devilish charm that pulls to one side, and I might as well be hers.  "Hello," she says.

"Hi!"  And I have to smile back because I just can't help it.  "How are you?" I ask dumbly.

"Oh, just fine."  She carries herself like a French woman, quite upright and interesting, and she speaks like one too.  But her English is accented American from her years of living in the States, in Florida and the Valley just north of LA.  "And I'm sorry, I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."

The polite concern melts me.  If only my feet felt so warm.  I wish I had wool socks and not these thin stupid gold-toes.  "Psh, never," I say.  "I actually got lost a little anyways (I hadn't), so I just got here.  To this corner, that is."  Stop being a timid little bitch, Brian.  You don't really care remember?  That's right.  I don't.  After all, it's too cold to care, and there's much too much lonesome dreary world out there to get caught up in it all.

"Ha!  Well, that's um... good, I guess.  Right?  It is a bit chilly out tonight." And she pulls her fur close.

Meanwhile, I'm just trying not to shake visibly from the shivers.  "It is," I say, and we start walking.  A brisk walk, but not too fast for talking.

"Oh, but this is nothing, trust me," she says seriously.  "It's usually much colder this time of year."

"Hmm, yes.  I keep hearing that.  Guess I kind of lucked out then, didn't I."  It sounds silly to say as my sides  hold tense, trying not to quiver too much.  But I can't imagine the state I'd be in if it were much colder now, so for that I'm thankful.  as we small chat and half-laugh our way right into a corner cafe.  The place is packed though, standing room only inside.

"This place is really good.  I come here all the time," she tells me, craning her neck to look around.  "So what do you think?  Should we sit outside?  I see a table out there by the window."

"Sure.  Why not?"  Idiot.  "There's a heat lamp out there, yeah?"

"Uhm... yes!  I see one!"  And I follow her back out.  Turns out the table's not all that close to the heat lamp after all, but that soon slips from thought.  A part of me's still blinkingly surprised at the fair creature I'm sharing supper with.  In childish intrigue, I am.  In reserved awe as we tell each other our life's stories, just the best ones.  The charming ones and the flattering ones.  And the coincidental ones, like the one we're living through right now.  Her parents are both French, and she was raised all over the place and still somehow we know more than a few of the same faces.  It's a wonderfully strange feeling, coincidence, and I catch her just once staring at me in rapturous disbelief as I'm rambling on to the city wind in the street, they way you do when you're sharing a small round table, sitting next to each other and both facing the sidewalk. It's endearing to say the least, and she darts her eyes and laughs to herself when I look over.

"So..." she says.

"So," says I.  "What's good here?"

"Oh!  Everything.  It's all delicious."

"Lovely."  So I peruse the menu, la carte all in French, and choose the cheapest thing they've got that sounds like steak.  "Le steak hache, s'il vous plait," I say when the server takes our order.  It's all I know how to say really.  Lucky for me, Olivia's French flows just as freely as her English, and all the more erudite-sounding because hey, it's French, and that shit sounds beautiful and sophisticated at the same time, especially when you don't understand it.

"Did you want anything to drink?" she asks.

"Ah!  Hmm, yes."  I'm not quite sure, because I can't think of any drink that'll make me feel less freezing.  "Well, what are you drinking?"

"Uhm... I don't know actually.  Something with vodka..."

"Screwdriver," I suggest.

"Ha!  I was leaning more towards a cosmo."

"Well, naturally."

"Maybe a couple of them actually.  David Lynch just opened some super exclusive club in Paris and my friend's dragging me to it.  I'm just so tired though."  Her brows tilt with restrained anxiety, the slightest glint, but it's a feeling that sounds familiar to me.

"Aww, poor baby," I say with a smile, and then a glance at the waiting server, "I'll just have a beer."  And she tell him.  En Francais, saying something to slake his waning patience so that they share a laugh before he takes leave.

"David Lynch, huh?  Is he the guy that did Fight Club?"

"Mulholland Drive," she corrects me.  "Fight Club was David Fincher."

"Fincher.  That's right.  Fuckin' ay, there's too many Davids in directing."  Well, maybe not.  Who cares.  Maybe there's not enough Davids.  Or maybe I'm just not as erudite as I thought.  None of it matter though when the food comes because it's been about an hour now since I'd left the Chinois, and my stomach's once again grumbling.  The beer's fine enough, but apparently ten-euro steak hache equals a cooked hamburger patty by itself on a plate.  Sans bun.  And fries in a cup without ketchup.

Olivia can't help but revel in my polite disappointment.  She'd ordered a salad, a big bountiful French one with seared tuna on top and, presentation-wise, in striking contrast to my lonely steak hache patty.  "Mmm,"she breathes it in, relishing her first bite, overtly so.

"Yeah, yeah."

She giggles, "Not quite what you were expecting?

"Well... no, not really."  I'd rolled the dive and come up short, and not for the first time (don't order duck confit if you want something warm and savory and satisfying because it's not).  I'm beginning to think these French dice are loaded and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.  "I was kind of hoping it'd be more steaky," I say with a frowning face.  "Oh, well."  And I dig in.

She laughs and I grin through the chewing.  We talk about written things, things she'd written, things I'd written.  What we wrote and how we wrote it.  For her, it's all the dark brooding male figures, usually a little older.  For me, it's all the... I don't know, tales of adventure?  The curious question "why?" floats by in my mind.  Why all these older brooding gentlemen? ("In every single story she'd read, arghh!" Lindsay'd said," and it's so good!") Am I so brooding and gentle in her eyes?  Eh, maybe.  But certainly not older.  Or at least I don't think I am.  I wonder what she's thinking... I hope it's pleasant.

She tells me it's difficult to pursue two passions, and after we finish our last drinks inside, toasty at the bar, she asks me to walk her back to her place.  But of course.  Her flat is a couple blocks down.  Two kisses on the cheek, a fond farewell drawn out, and she's gone.  Off to prepare for her night of casual exclusivity and dancing into the early morning.  I set my steps back to Filles de Cavalrie.

Ah!  That why!  Why did I not ask to come up?  "I'm meeting a friend in an hour or so," she'd said.

"Do you want to show me your place and have a cup of tea maybe," I'd say.

"Why, yes.  I'd like that."

I wish.

[stop]

It's in a daze of missed beauty that I walk back to Filles des Cavalrie.  And Lili's still mad at me.  I call her coming up the stairs at La Tour-Maubourg, and she's not home.  "I'm out to dinner with Linds and the mama," she tells me.

"How lovely.  In the seventh?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, ou est vous little lady?"

"Uhm... I forget what it's called.  We're at some restaurant near Notre Dame."

"Ooo la laa.  Sounds fun.  Should I come out there?"

"No."  She sounds short.  "I think we're leaving soon anyways."

"Okay.  I'll just hang around here then, I guess."

"Yeah, I'll call you when I'm back."  Click.

And like that, I'm out on my own again.  Alone again in the seventh on a cold autumn night.  It's December, but the real winter weather hasn't quite hit yet.  Or at least that's what everyone keeps telling me.  The winter's coming late this year, I suppose.  And the fall's hanging on.  It's still cold though.  Fucking frigid actually.  So I bum a cigarette off a guy passing by and shuffle off to Collin's Pub in no hurry at all, one hand shoved deep in my jacket's pocket.  FC Barcelona's playing tonight and the place is packed, making it only too easy to swipe one half-a-beer abandoned at the bar.  I manage to slide into a seat in the back by the dartboard, and when I do, it strikes me as surprising that I still feel a little high from the spliff with Rachel way back when, when nobody was mad at me yet.

I'm not high, I just feel it a little still.  And there's simply too many half-beers abandoned in the joint for it to be a bad time, my time as a wallflower flowering on the back-bar bench at an Irish pub in Paris.  The crowd sways and roars with the game, like some interpretive theater art piece hinged solely on goal-scoring and missed opportunities.  It's a romping good French time.  I'm just too tired to do anything but sit here and watch.  Silent and no one sees me.  I don't know anyone here anyways, and it's packed and that's always the best time to wallflower.  It can be surprisingly restive, and I wonder why I don't do it more often.  I need to be alone more maybe.

[stop]

Barcelona takes the game, no surprise there.  Within twenty minutes the place is sufficiently emptied, with none but a few lonely stragglers sipping their drinks slowly at the bar, and I suddenly feel much more noticeable and noticeably without beverage.  So it's with a heavy sigh that I pick myself up and stroll out.  Still no word from Lili.

Fuck.  I'll let her alone though.  No, fuck that.  It's freezing out here.  And everywhere's closed and it's late and it's fucking freezing.  Not literally, of course.  Just in that cold, late night lonesome kind of way.  I lock all that away though as the phone rings, and I try to stay chipper when she picks up.  "What's up, girl?  Where you at?"

"We're still by Notre Dame.  We watched the Barcelona game, but we're leaving soon."

There's a thick lump of disparity rising in my throat, but I swallow it down.  "Oh, reary."

"Yes, reary.  I'll call you when I'm off the metro."

"Okay-"

Click.

All righty then.  There's nothing else to do now.  Nothing else except to walk so I walk.  I shuffle north.  Not on the main rues, but the narrower ones.  The one-ways.  To some raspy gritty lost-soul Brian Jonestown Massacre.  Past Rachel's, past AUP, straight to the Seine.  My feet are tired, and my legs are tired too and stiff.  There's a bench at the corner off St. Germaine, and I sit facing the old river so the cold night's breeze is to my back, and the Tour Eiffel's long gone dark behind me to my left some ways.  No more sparkling lights and orange glow, just dark empty iron.  Not a soul's on the streets now, it's too late and too cold.  Bringing my jacket's collar up and fluffing the thin scarf around my neck only does so much, and so much isn't quite enough I don't think.  Each breath I take puts a shiver and a seize through my chest so I breath deeper and quicker to the fast tune of the music.  At least I've got my journal.  Something to lose myself in, to take my mind away from its present senses.  From the biting cold and the lost puppy dog soul of it all stripped bare.

At least I'm leaving tomorrow.

We're Your Friends Tonight: Third Night

DAY 3

I woke up alone.  Spread-eagle in the back of the Explorer.  The side-vanes were cracked and the trunk window popped like every other night, but today no one was beside me.  My first deep breath tasted sweet to the lungs and the night before seemed like some fantasy hallucination because my head didn't hurt, not in the slightest.  There was no hangover feeling, no grogginess, nothing.  Just a strange empty sense, but in that grand, aloof, adventurous way that didn't feel sad.  It was curious.  And curiously I opened the trunk to find Monster sleeping little spoon to Max's big spoon in the shade on the dry grass by the car, and I smiled.  Silly kids.  BB and Grant were asleep in similar fashion, but not for long.  For soon enough, the sun had crept up high in the sky and the shade was no more and we all rambled about for muffins and Gatorade and sliced bread and peanut butter to put in our bellies for breakfast.  Rambling because it's the only way to pass through life really.  The only fulfilling one for me anyways.  And we were dipping into Abby's spliff stash too, which made rambling a must.  Rambling with squirt guns and sunglasses and shirts off in the desert sun.  Rambling to what end?  Who knows.  It was fun though, and it felt good to fill the mind with everything in the moment like you do when you ramble.

But that trip was a rollercoaster, like every trip is.  And every rollercoaster has that shitty turn or the bump in the rail that throws your back for a spin.  For us, it came in the form of two fat fucks rolling through the campground in one of those golf-cart-sized little John Deere's that polo fields use for maintenance work.  Did I mention they were fat?  Because they were.  Bouncer fat.  Fat assholes with an ugly way of looking at things.  And they took our day and shit on it kind of.  I mean, they definitely made an effort to.  I didn't even notice them 'til they'd stopped and one had penguin-marched in between the cars to the clearing where we were all lounging.  BB was rolling a blunt.

"Hey, what is that."  His chin jiggled when he said it and for a split second after like bad dubbing in an old karate movie.

"Huh?"  BB stopped, and we all turned eyes to greet our new guest.  He had on a black windbreaker (you know, because it was so cold and windy that day) and a yellow shirt and a black hat on that said Golden Voice on it.  He also had a little paper badge pinned to his jiggly man-boob with a number on it.  He walked up to her and picked my trusty lunch box right up off her lap.

"I'm gonna have to confiscate this," he said.  I'm pretty sure he couldn't spell confiscate, but still, things got remarkably sober-ish real quick.

"Whoa there, partner. One, that's my favorite lunchbox you got there.  And two... who exactly are you?" I tried to act calm and intelligent, and not pissed off and high like I was.

He pointed to his badge and sort of puffed his chest out, if you can call it that.  It just inflated like a balloon a little, and he somehow got bigger and douchier.  "I'm with Golden Voice.  We own the property you're on right now, and it looks here like you lot are in possession of illegal narcotics on the premises," he said fingering the bag of weed in my box before taking it out and putting it in his pocket.

"I don't get it.  Are you guys security guards or something?"

"I represent Golden Voice."

[stop]

"I don't know what that means," I said.  "Are you cops?"

"Do you want me to call them?  Because I can."

Fuck people who answer questions with questions, especially when they're confiscating my weed.  "No, that's not necessary," I said with a sigh.  "Can at least have my lunch box back?"

"Nope, I'm confiscating that too."

"Uh... what?  Why?"

"There's marijuana in it still," he said in that security guard voice that always strikes a nerve because it's so dickish.

"Well, then just pour it out.  I promise we won't go scrounging in the dirt for it."

"Nope."  That son-of-a-bitch.  Callan tried talking to him pretty in her netted white sundress and flower halo, but that's didn't work either.  He'd taken my lunchbox and my weed and he started to walk back to the grass lane where his fat accomplice sat waiting in their maintenance kart.

I didn't know what else to say, so I smiled sarcastically.  "All right.  Well hey, thanks asshole."

He stopped and turned and waddle-walked back to where I was standing, right in front of me, not two feet away, and at the feet, which is much farther than the belly in this case.  "What was that?"

"Oh, nothing," I said biting my lip, trying not to laugh.

But he was mean-mugging me, and squinting to look hard.  "You just call me an asshole?"

I panicked and looked at him matter-of-factly, but all that came out was, "You're honestly trying to tell me you're not being an asshole right now?"

He just stared at me for a second, and turned around and got in the kart.  "All right, see ya assholes!"  said I politely, and they drove off.  Well, that sucked.

"At least we did all the molly and acid already," Callan shrugged, smiling at me.  "And we still have the brownies."

"And I still have my spliffs," said Abby.

Then BB chimed in, "Oh! I almost forgot!"  And from her shorts' pockets she procured the blunt she'd been rolling.  "I guessed I'd better hold onto this when he snatched up the lunchbox," she said.  "But, ohh... that lunchbox."

She was smiling through a frown, and I was too.  It was hard to be mad in such a happy place as this really.  So we all had a little farewell brown-high in memory of the box.  "Aww. Bye, lunchbox."  And we 'cheers'ed canned beers.  Warm Keystone Lights, lovingly like Keith Stone.  Then we frolicked with some Santa Cruz friends at another camp site, with more squirt-gun fights until 2:00 when the bands starting playing.  On the way to the main gate we stumbled on some mushrooms, and sold them to a man for fifteen dollars.  And in line, we helped a bunch of rookie teens polish off an eighteen-pack of Tecate they foolishly thought they'd be able to bring in.  In the words of Boom, "fucking idiots."  How silly and convenient.  We chugged the beers in a circle.  Chugging, then passing.  Chugging, then passing.  Never stopping, in a random sort of dream-catcher pattern.  Or something like that.  I was getting wasted, and the brownies hadn't even kicked in yet.  They did so at Julian Casablancas.

[stop]

Like a mother-fucker they kicked in, and like always my safety-goggles were on, making the tented stage darker unless my chin slid up.  The fade would get lighter then, but goddamn, I was high. Too high to talk, but hell, who needs to.  And thank you for that.  Loud music.

Julian was a droner and every once in a while a shouter, always soothing though.  Standing up, sitting Indian style in the grass, or leaning back on my hands and stretching my legs out.  There were no words, just emotions.  I greeted friends with waves and smiles, and an open-mouthed aloofness that I hoped sufficed.  It was that fading feeling, that drooly-loose feeling when my knees swung and my hips swayed, slowly ever shifting weight from side to side off the two-step because my body didn't really know how to do anything else at that point.  I was a closed loop.  Stuck in the clouds of the Mojave Tent.  And this beauty of a blond girl kept staring back over her shoulder, standing right in front of me.  And she'd smile.  The way that made me look over both shoulders and back again, still unsure if it was I that held her interest.  I was pretty sure, but also way too high to do anything more than dance in one place.  And my breath wouldn't stop catching short.  But she danced ever closer, slowly stepping back as the set carried on, and when a guy came up to talk to her and try to dance, she looked over his shoulder at me.  I was smiling like an idiot, and she was too.  She told the guy she was from Sweden.  Stupid pot brownies!  But hey, what're you gonna do.  Laugh it off, cowboy.

We came for the Julian, but didn't stay for the Snow.  Miike Snow.  After all, Mike wasn't even there, and it didn't feel right.  And I was ready for some real open air.  None of that tent nonsense.  At least for a little while.  We could come back, but I wanted to see Spoon at the Main Stage first, where there wasn't any tent and the fresh breeze would try to play with my hair but not be strong enough.  So we all went and danced and sprawled in the grass in the back, past the sound stage.  And we headed back only after the last song and caught the last song of Miike Snow.  It was something about animals, and it was wild to dance to.  Then we didn't know what to do so we rambled over to Phoenix at the Outdoor Stage.  It had been three days now, and everything almost seemed normal.  Things looked familiar as we passed, and we took another shower at the Do Lab.  With everyone, because some had split off earlier.  But we were all together there, dancing ourselves clean under the misty spray coming from the stage.  Dancing in the mud and drying in the open grass as the sun hit horizon and turned the sky all pink and orange and beautiful, and the dancers of the Do Lab spun, hanging from the canopy in the sky like spinning chandeliers that moved and twisted in the changing twilight.  We saw everyone, every friend that went strolling by would come and dance a jig and a jive with us with our sunglasses on.  Someone plopped a homemade Deadmau5 helmet on Monster's head too.  And as the sky cooled we filed in line and pranced and gazelle-leaped to the front at the Outdoor Stage to see Thom York perform with Flea.  We were semi-close.  So close so that when we huddled, standing, a heat rose up, and when I'd sit down it was like that hot, glow-stick and body forest once again.  Like it had been before.  But the place was still magical, and my head opened-up like a trap door and floated away as Thom looped his voice on two mikes and blew minds and rocked to a contorting melody while Flea war-horsed away on the bass.  Then they played Everything In It's Right Place, and it was everything.  It was powerful and memorable. It was skin-tingling and breath-snatching.  And it was all together so pleasing in the red and cool-blue stage light.

Gorillaz played next, the closing act at the Main Stage, and it was eh.  It was the people, not the cartoons. Not holographic, the way I, in my highness, had expected and anticipated.  They were just musicians on a stage then.  And yeah, the songs were good, but I think the bass was soft and lacking, and not so bumpy to dance to.  Or maybe it was I that was soft.  My ears from all the three long days had been pummeled.  Maybe.  Sure, why not.  But I left with a quiet, half-hearted appreciation that night.  Not with jaw-dropping awe, and drunk on molly like the night before.  I was tired.  And I yawned on the walk back.  It was a day of spliffs and pot brownies after all, so I wasn't too surprised.

Taylor was driving home early the next morning with girlfriend Sasha, and I had class that day so I gave my keys to Grant and hopped in the car with Tay and Sash.  And Sasha's friend whose folks had a place nearby, and the four of us all squeezed onto a king-sized bed.  In the morning I woke up on the edge, facing the  nightstand with her arm around me, and it was so adorable.  When I gave a drowsy moan and mini stretch, she woke and realized her hand with a start and lifted it back lightly.  I smiled and pretended to sleep until Taylor tapped me to go.  What a fucking weekend.  And I had class in the afternoon.

Mushrooms

It was late springtime in Santa Cruz, and Max was excited.  "Ok, guys.  I know it's your first time and all, so are you sure you want the whole eighth?"

"I think there's something, after all this time, that you've failed to realize about me, Max.  I ain't no bitch," said Mike.

And I interjected, "Yeah!  And I didn't ride my bike all the way over here to pussy-foot around and half-ass this mushroom gravy-train."

"What?  You ride your bike over here every day pretty much.  And it's fucking perfect outside." said Max.

"Exactly.  Shut up.  Just be a good sherpa."  And with that, I emptied my plastic bag into my mouth, caps and stems and all, and Mike and Max did the same.  When I chomped down, it tasted like dried dirt and old cardboard.  Yum.  We all washed it down with old Miller High Life.  "Ok, now what?"

"Well, I figured we go up through Pogonip and romp around, and if anything gets too gnarly just uh, you know, tug on my sleeve or something."  Pogonip is a plot of nature up on the hill, adjacent to the university campus, and apparently it's a mystical forest wonderland.  "BB said she'd drop us off at the bottom.  Where is she?"

"Probably humping Grant," said Mike turning around the corner to yell up the stairs.  "BB!"

We all yelled.  "BB!"

"Mom!  We wanna go now!"

She came down flustered and sarcastically annoyed.  "Goddammit okay, I'm here," she said prancing down the stairs.  "Where am I taking you silly idiots?"  Then eyeing the empty bags, "Did you eat them already?"

"Duh."

"Take us to Pogonip!"

"Can you drop us off at the bottom by Costco?" asked Max, batting his eyes and handing her his car-keys.  "Pretty please?  It's their first time."

"First time!? Oh, boy."

"Yup.  We're virgins," I said. "Hehe."

"Well, you two are in for a treat.  Give me the damned keys."

"Yay!"  So BB drove us up to where the edge of town pushed up against the wilderness around the back and at the base of the hill.  By the Costco and the Little League field, between the forks of Highway 1 and Highway 9.  I still didn't feel anything when we got there.  "Dude, I don't think it's working."

"Ha.  Give it a little more time," said Max.

"Yeah, just you wait," BB said as we got out.  "Have fun!"

"Thanks mom!"  She drove off and we began our trek up the hill towards Pogonip.  The first part was a little steep, but the woods by the trail weren't too thick and here and there they would open out onto a quiet green meadow with the grass around waist high.  Halfway up, as we strolled by one of the meadows, they hit, and I stopped in my tracks.  "Whoa, guys."

"What's up?"  asked Max.  They both both turned to look at me.  "Haha!  Are you feeling it?"

"I... think... so..."  It was a question, and there was the strangest feeling of vertigo that came rushing with the first few steps forward, and my heart, it raced.  "It didn't hit you guys yet?"

"Psh, no," said Mike.  "But hell! I'm excited now!  You look like your trippin' balls a little bit!"

"That's because I am a little bit!"  And we continued on, me tip-toeing because it awesomely felt like the best way to tackle it.  And I chuckled to myself because everything was slowly becoming more beautiful, and it wasn't just the white-framed, fading, blue-lensed sunnies I had on.  A switch had flipped.

[stop]

It was another world.  I had never been to Pogonip, through it's meadows between the tree lines.  And so that place was made special in my mind the way places do when the first time is so significant.  So significant it was to learn how to grab the reins.  To realize the mind's eye, and the view from another's.  And dialogue with yourself like no one hears, because no one's listening to me talk in my head.  It was a narrative, just me and me, and what looked like a wild fucking ride we'd already been strapped in for.  The stagecoach was already way out of town, and the horses were beginning to get wily.  So what then?  I guess just grab those reins tight and pull 'em tighter.  And set 'em straight for god's sake.  And holler and "Ha!" and giddy-up.  It was an easy fight to hold onto waking consciousness, but a fight nonetheless, and sometimes it slipped.  "Just keep marching," I'd whisper in my ear.  "Stay aware.  It's so much better."

We finally hit the road on campus that swings out and around the back to Merrill and Stevenson.  A thin layer of sweat filmed my skin.  There was a bench on the trail, a little off the road, right before the soft edge where the hill began to slope down and towards town.  It was one of those crystal clear days with clouds, when one could see Monterey easily across the bay, and the smoke stacks at Moss Landing were crisp.  Clouds loomed over the mountains to the north, rolling slowly over and burning off in the hot day, never quite making it to the ocean.  I set myself down and threw my arms over the back of the bench and my head back to breath in as many great gulps as I thought I was warranted.  Slow and deep.  Breathing in until I couldn't, breathing out until I couldn't.  And the muscles relaxed and weren't afraid anymore

"We're close," said Max.  "Just gotta get up into the trees and it's going to be so nice."

"Yeah! Do you guys still not feel it?" I asked.

Mike thought about for a second, and his eyes sparked as if he'd found something.  "Oh...!  I'm starting to, I think!"

"Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!"

"Haha!  AH, you fuckin' guys," said Max.  Then he took a strange step and a tilt, and giggled quickly with a dumb smile before turning up north towards the trees. "This way all! Whoa... Haha!"

We laughed together while we walked, marching into the trees and down a maintenance-road-looking trail of dark dirt and white stone.  Everything was moss soft, and everything changed so beautifully so as the tree canopies danced and splashed golden drops of sun through the forest.  Out in the open and in the shade became two different worlds init of themselves, with different atmospheres and feelings and moods and questions and challenges.  We all quickly found walking sticks; big, tall obnoxious ones.  And then Max took us down to the coy ponds.  They were these shallow, about three feet deep traps of water in between the roots of the forest trees.  Giant redwood roots that hugged and clung to the mountainside.  We walked over them like step stadium benching that's always too high to step down normally.  It was always a little stretch, but it was worth it.  We put our noses right up to the still pond water and watched the fish swim lazily and sometimes dart into a rooted nook of the pond, away from us, the mysterious forest invaders.  All the senses felt a little different and my vision swirled when I wasn't concentrating.  It was other worldly.  Like that moon Endor at times, but without the adorable ewoks.  It still was fantastic though.  And we, the three of us, were all fantastically high.  Balls-to-the-walls high.

Then we jumped back on the trail with our ridiculous walking sticks, and our sandals and boardshorts and hats.  If mushrooms are anything, they're most definitely a rollercoaster, like everything else.  An old wooden rickety one at that.  The trail we were on was not an empty path.  Students jogged on it regularly, and it was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon so there were certainly other patrons we passed on our trek.  They weren't exactly few and far between either, these joggers on their daily lap through the woods on the back of campus.  Hikers too.  You know, the usual mountain trail traffic.  Their faces always contorted when they got close, squished in like cookie dough, or they looked worn out and sweaty.  Then there was us.  The sharp-featured mushroom adventurers, blindly in awe of the mystic, wild elegance that resided everywhere in that place.  With sunglasses and tall twisted walking sticks.  Giddy with bubbling laughter and open-mouthed because my lower jaw seemed to swing loose from the hinges.  We must've looked as silly to them as they did to us, but that's nothing to care too much about.  It didn't stop us from going quiet and rigid when those other patrons passed though, and we'd hold on, but not for too long before we'd burst into laughter again.  Just another drop on the coaster.  "Just remember where I am, and don't get lost." Who was that?  "It's me, silly.  Yourself.  Well, myself, I guess."  Did I say that out loud?  Hmm, I don't know.

Apparently the amount of laughing we were doing was rather strenuous because we found ourselves stopping to rest plenty of times.  Not that I was opposed to it or anything.  In truth, I was probably the most out of shape of the three of us.  We'd stop and Max would go tight-rope across a fallen tree, and Mike would balance smooth stones in a tower, and I would just watch, constantly aware of the reality slipping away.  At the limestone kilns, we all laid down on the roof looking up through the hole in the canopy that the kilns had cut.  The clouds were light and smokey and swirled and meshed and moved in a way that clouds don't know how to move.  It was grainy but wet, that sky.  Still like sand in a bowl of water, always at a slow spin.  And someone put on Cat Power on an iPhone with the speakers on loud and our minds went rambling with the dreary, hollow jazz that soaked quickly into the loud woods around us.  The chirps, the breeze sliding through the trees.  The leaves rustling, the branches squeaking.  The nothing else, the absence of everyday life.  All in time with that smooth-rasped Southern belle and her salty band, never in any rush.  There was no need to rush things.  Mushrooms are an endurance drug.

We took our time through the forest, going everywhere before coming back, and we found ourselves on a trail in a another meadow just past peaking, standing by a curious sounding sign.  I read it aloud, "Danger.  Mountain lion habitat.  Hmm..."

"Say what now?" said Mike.

"I say it's says that this all here's a mountain lion habitat," I said.  "I don't think I can fight a mountain lion right now."

"Woo!  Me neither," said Max, eyeing the tall meadow grass off the trail.  It was golden dry and about head-high, and it swayed slowly before us in the wind.  We all gripped our walking sticks instinctively.

Mike was undaunted though.  "Psh, whatever.  I'd beat the shit out of a mountain lion right now," he said swinging his stick like a bat.  "What do you think'd be better?  A swing or a stab?"

"Probably a jabbing stab," said Max thoughtfully.  "If you miss with the swing you're fucked."

Mike stopped swinging.  "Good point."  And he started jabbing at the high grass with the sharp top of his walking stick.  Then there was a branch crack out in the meadow and Mike stopped again and we all held our breath.

Then Max yelled out, "Not into the high grass!" and got up from the Indian pretzel he was in and started jogging back towards the road and I bolted up too, and Mike and I hurried to catch up, and we crossed to the other side of the road.  The campus side.  We hiked up between the road and the fenced-in cow pastures, past the East Field, to the bottom of Stevenson.

"Fuck, there's a lot of people at the field right now," said Mike from the cover of an alcove of ferns.  "And everywhere really."  There were.  I felt like old, rich white folks on an African safari, and I'd forgot until then that we were on a college campus.  It was positively bustling on that warm spring afternoon.

"Maybe we just post up here for a little while," I suggested.  We laid down in the grass by the path, against the slope and under the ferns, and relaxed and laughed fiendishly for hours, even more so when the occasional sweaty jogger panted by.  We rattled off lines from random movies at each other with dramatic style and gasping breaths.  We were an outdoor nuthouse.  Max's Jurassic Park impressions were fantastic.  He kept a serious face just long enough to get through them.  "They're attacking the fences systematically looking for weakness...  They remember."

"Not into the high grass!" we'd yell in high-pitched voices as the joggers passed.  They would start for a second before continuing on.  They all looked downtrodden in varying degrees.  Glaze-minded, waiting for things to be better.  Looking far off to the future.  To things past college.  To some distant achievement to come.  Barely noticing anything, and it was sad to me.  And at the same time, so hilarious.  When was the last time they realized how pretty the clouds were on a given day?  Because today they were miraculous.  And after all, they're always different.  But that's never really a high priority for some, even if it is so simple.  And the thing they miss is that it can make all the difference in the world to notice the pretty cloud days and be grateful.  Eh, maybe it was a mushroom thing.

But anyways, the sun set soon enough, and we crossed the field as the sky darkened.  The hours had passed like weeks in my mind, and we were all sort of delirious.  Max called BB, and she said she'd pick us up from the bus-stop by the East Field lot so that's where we waited.  Still chronically smiling.  Still with our sunglasses on.  Some girl I'd met at a bar off my growl and paw-claw maneuver was waiting for a bus across the street She saw me and shot me a quirky look, then crossed over to greet us.  She lived in the Village, and I'd dined her a few times.  "Hi!" she said.

"Yes we are."

"What's that?"

"We all ate a bunch of mushrooms a while back," I smiled, leaning back into the wooden bench.

"Oh, really," she said smiling back.  "Let me see your eyes."

So I stood up and took off my sunglasses and stared her hard with rapt focus.  Trying to look serious, but failing miserably.  My eyes darted when hers did, and she laughed a little.  "You're ridiculous."

"I know," I said.  Just then BB and Monster came roaring up the hill in Max's old Mercedes and it screeched to a stop in the road next to us.  I jumped back and stood there surprise-faced.  "Well, I this is our ride.  I'll call you later though, yeah?  Saki bombs at I Love?"

"Do it."  The way she smiled dimpled her rosy cheeks, and there was a fired torched in her green eyes.

I winked at her before jumping in the back of the sedan with Mike and Max, but I'd put my sunnies back on so I don't think she noticed.

BB pushed the pedal down and we vroomed off.  Monster, in shotgun, turned excitedly and asked, "Was that the Village?"

"Ha! Maybe."

"You guys are ridiculous," she said and she squeezed Max's knee.

"Yeah, tell me about it," I said.

A Little Place on Western

It was to be my second and last year at UC Santa Cruz.  Since our university was on the quarter schedule, classes didn't start until late in September.  As far as housing was concerned, Mike got in on a house on King Street with Max and Grant and some buddies, and he found me a room at his summer neighbor's house on Western Drive.  A few of his summer roommates were moving into the house as well.  The residence at 440 Western was an absolute beat-up, old jalopy of a house.  The property owner was this middle-aged hippy that invested a majority of his monthly take from rent on riding the somewhat dull-drum rollercoaster of medium- to low-risk stocks and equity groups.  It wouldn't be over-presumptuous in the slightest to think that he gave little more than a damn about that place, or it's general up-keep.  As I was moving my bed into my tiny, den-sized room under the staircase, an immediate awe of my new home soaked over me.  Not at all like the old home, and not likely to ever resemble any house I would inhabit ever again.  A pinnacle.  Even from the street, the place looked more like a used-up and worn-out crack house than a center for adolescent education.  The gutters over the two-door garage were full of old, moldy leaves and rotting through in some places.  The paint was chipped, and the wood siding was warped and moldy here and there and over there and around that corner and everywhere.  Everything you could see from the street, the house, the driveway, the concrete, that miserable bush, the muddy pathetic patch of grass with cars parked on it, everything seemed to be covered with a perpetual grime that soaked deep into the property's pores and refused to be scrubbed out.  The inside was much of the same in that sense.  You'd be hard pressed to find a corner in that house that wasn't housing cob-webs, a light sprinkle of mold, and a few long-legged spiders.  The entire place was carpeted, save for the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the front door's landing, all of which donned dirty, gritty, sticky linoleum.  My room was maybe six feet by ten feet on a good day, with a short deep cupboard for a closet.  A decent sized window looked out onto an eight foot high weathered-looking wood fence four feet away and the shrubby, dirt side-yard in between.  Beautiful.  The window's sill and shutters were covered in a thick layer of damp dust.  Since the stairs were directly above, a part of the already small ceiling came down to meet the wall at an acute angle, and when I first stepped through the door-frame the smallest finger of sickly claustrophobia tickled my soul.  I closed my eyes and breathed it in.  But not too deep, mind you, because of all the mold and that strange smell.  I barely knew any of these people.

In the fall, in all, there were eight of us.  I think.  There were those of us that actually lived there; Dylan, Conor, Matt, Kameron, Dillion, Alex, BB, and me; but the ranks of boy-souled, eager-eyed 20-something-year-olds that came, and stayed, and passed through those hallowed halls week to week, passed out on those two stadium-seat situated couches in the living room (the back couch was set atop an old bed frame, and when you sat in it you sank and it gobbled you up like a cushion-y, pillowed Jabba the Hutt), taking showers in those rotten, cesspool bathrooms; there were almost too many to count.  It was like some hippy hostel up the 1 just before San Fran.  Old friends of anyone in the house made it a habitual rest stop.  Dylan, Kam, Conor, and Matt were the patriarchs; the oldest, the knowing, weathered willow trees, and I got to know their vagabonding friends quite dearly.  Dylan and Kam had graduated two years prior with degrees in molecular biology and computer programming, respectively; the same freshman class as Conor and Matt, but the latter two had taken their time with it.  They were both still students, but not for much longer.  Conor was to graduate after fall quarter with a degree in literature, and Matt after winter with some science degree, who knows.  They'd all lived at 440 the year before.  And the year before that.  And the year before that too, I think.

Then there was BB, Boom, and another Dillon; Mike's old roommates from his summer living at 426 Western.  They were all a year older than I and finishing up their last year as well.  All smart cookies.  And then there was me and the dog Lizzie, and we all called home that excuse of a two-story, two bedroom, two bath, two-car garage family house up on the hill at the northern edge of the suburban westside of Santa Cruz. It'd been ages since it had housed any actual family though. Since those wonder years, the two-car garage had been converted into a two bedroom commune suite inhabited by Dylan O'Carroll aka D-Buns and Kameron Niksefat aka Nikse.  Attic storage-space upstairs had been converted into rafter-exposed closets, and traditional closets had been converted into more bedrooms.  The master bedroom was a triple, with Matt sleeping in the closet, which was just big enough to hold a twin-sized mattress.  Conor slept above BB, literally, on a huge home-made loft bunk that turned BB's bed into a cave of sorts.  Still, it was a cozy room with old, gritty carpet, a high, sloping ceiling, a tiny balcony, and a record player sitting on top of two big ole' 80's wood speakers that were super bass-y and stood up to my waist.

The balcony looked out over the overgrown lawn, a lush jungle of knee-high grass that Lizzie loved to romp  and systematically poop through in a grid pattern.  Lizzie was a golden retriever with a long, flowing golden locks, and when the fall was still ripe and the sun kept our cushy little coastal town in the high 60's and low 70's, why we all got drunk in the afternoon and shaved her hair into that of a lion's, leaving it long around her face and shoulders and with a little puff at the end of her tail so she looked like Aslan.  BB even teased her mane to give it more volume.  Lizzie looked incredible, and oh, so pretty.  Whorishly pretty and slender from always having someone to play with, and always running away, and running her face off whenever we took her up the 1 to go surfing.

We all surfed in that house, except Alex Boom, who played lacrosse and grew up in Cleveland where they didn't have beaches.  And BB, who was a girl.  The surf in Santa Cruz is some of the best and funnest on the west coast, especially if you don't mind wearing booties and 4/3's all year, or dealing with crazy, methed-out locals that surf way better than you.  Part of the appeal of surfing up the coast a little bit instead of in town was the comparative lack of said meth-heads.  Fuck meth-heads.  They're usually assholes.  They could turn a beautiful day out at Steamer's Lane into an hour-long, tweak-twitching diatribe about how they're going to punch everyone in the face, especially if you look at them, or even look at their wave.  Or if you're at the peak and they don't know you, or for any other number of reasons that would make a small-town tweak surfer tick.  And so we'd always stray north, away from the crowds and into the wilderness of empty beaches and lazy point-breaks.  Peaks that generally broke to the right, but every here and there a left would be hiding and if it was peeling at the perfect stride like it sometimes did, it would give a young goofy-footer like me the ride of his life.  Something to pump down the line on before stretching into long turns.  And it was always good and usually held up in big swells, nothing like the quick, dumpy horseshit I grew up on in LA.  It was immaculate, and if a session carried on past sunset, so be it because the waves don't turn off when it's dark, they just get sharkier.  The water would turn pitch black and sparkle under the still bright sky of twilight, and every kelp-head and playful baby seal seemed ominous.

Mike and Matty loved afternoon seshies though, so it happened a lot.  Not Matt from my house mind you, but Matty from the house on King Street who lived with Mike and those other rapscallion bastards; Grant and Max, and Minh and Chloe.  Minh and Mike were my age, the babies of the house.  Everyone else was a year older, except Chloe who was two.  Their house wasn't unlike mine really.  It was still gritty and grungy, just less so.  Maybe because they had hardwood instead of carpet, or because they had an old kitty named Cricket instead of a dog, or maybe they were cleaner, or maybe they cared more.  Regardless, we were all the best of friends, both houses.  It's just that their's was the clean house so that's the one we always raged at.

What's Left In My Right Mind

These are the only days I have, so I think I'll take them for all they've got.  More surfing, more carving, more spliffing, more writing.  It's the few and far between days, the empty canvas days.  The clouds come in while I'm sitting stoned at the end of the pier in Venice at the end of Washington.  I don't mind though, or I should say I don't notice because when I look up from the pencil and paper things are suddenly different.  The sun's gone and that nothing wind of before is now pushing onshore.  And when Mike calls, the waves aren't what they'd been when I'd told him to come surf.  But he's still frothing for some water time, so I Round 2 with him at the Breakwater where the tide's high and the peaks are shifty, but whatever, it's fun.  Not bad, but definitely not good.  Regardless, it leaves me starving, so we buy a 20-case of bottled Coors Banquet beer, and we grill up some Polish dogs at chez Mike.

[time for sleep]

I love the days I'm not working.  Days like today when they never seem to end and just stretch on forever.  That morning surf seems now so distant.  Eric's just got off from work and he comes straight over, still in business attire, for some beer, and some dogs and some Laker's basketball in HD.  "You guys feel like going out?" he asks.

"Eh, maybe."

"I don't know mang. I'm pretty beat. And broke."

"Hot tub?"

"Spliff?"

"Both?"

"Ha! Sounds good to me," I say.  "I need a shower anyways, I'm all salty and gross."  So we polish off one last round of beers and roll a spliff in Eric's car and smoke it on the way down to the Marina.  To the Ritz Carlton on Via Marina, but we park a block away by the firehouse and sneak in between the tennis courts by the docks.  Thoroughly stoned.

[time for work]

"Well, this brings me back," I say as we slink into the jacuzzi.

"Right?" Mike turns on the jets before jumping in.  "We used to come here in high school all the time," he tells Eric.  "Man, that was five years ago."

"Damn. Sick, dude. This is a pretty nice little spot."  The jacuzzi itself is bigger than most, probably twice the size of our standard round hot tub back at Pacific Shores Apartments in Santa Cruz, but then again it's the Ritz so it's not so out of place.  Just equally extravagant.  Almost expected.  And the pool... Well, the pool's just amazing.

"How's the pool?" asks Eric.

"Uh, perfect," says Mike and Eric scoffs.

"Seriously though," I say and I hop out and over, down some steps, and to the sprawling T-shaped main pool.  There's steam rising off the surface, and it's just so inviting that I dive in swimmer's style like those days way back when on the high school team.  Fuck, it's been a long time.  A fucking long time indeed.  Forever-feeling in the moment.  And as I rise steady to the surface with a spin so that I'm floating on my back, it's funny to me to think that Mike and I have been sneaking into the Ritz all this time.  It's been so long, and so much has changed, but not this.  Not this leisure escape nestled in the middle of the Marina.  I laugh, looking up, and the tip-tops of the palm trees laugh back from my perif.