Luster

The fact that one holiday's decorations begin to appear in retail settings before another holiday has even ended has been happening for so long now, it is often regarded in the same way as bad weather, shitty mass media, or even the shape of modern politics; something, which is grumbled about, sometimes to the point of borderline psychotic ranting, but nothing is ever really done. Perhaps there's a feeling of powerlessness there. Maybe it's that some just like to bellyache to hear their head rattle and auditorly masturbate to the sound of their own voice.

Now, when the holiday decorations appear that early on private residences, it just becomes offensive. Almost more so than the decorations that stay up for months after the fact. Or, worse yet, the ones that never, ever, come down, either out of sloth or forgetfulness. I have noticed an increasing amount of this in recent years.

The other mourning, I was walking to the gig in the darkness of the hour before dawn. The route I took was along the western end of Rue Main, just past the cantina. It was one of the newer houses, dysfunctionally kitty-corner to the park, that was strung with lights. Gaudy, multi-colored flashing things, which could have very well been an epileptic's vision of hell. Well, if they didn't just drop into a seizure straight away.

And I growled. The memory of the previous holiday was but a few days old. It was too bloody soon. On the rest of my walk, I saw two other residences with lights. To their credit, they were a little more tastefully done.

I got to thinking about it, because my mind never shuts off. Initially, I figured my vitriol toward the holiday season had to do with my mother, and the fact it was the first one without her, and remembering those last two before. I reasoned it may have had to do with the knowledge that Jibril would've been forty if he'd not died on the last day of winter, three and a half years ago. The fresh wounding of the bruja of my acquaintance dying right before a holiday figured into the equations within the mathematics of my thoughts.

But, I realized, as true as those three factors were, they were not the sole reason. I had to be honest with myself, and even backed up my supposition by checking over previous years' observations; I have been a humbug for a long time. Almost twenty years in fact. The holidays had long since lost their luster, and, if anything, it seems to be getting worse as I get older.

Initially, it was adolescent angst. Spending time with family is all gay and fine, but when at that age of wanting to taste the world, beyond the reach of one's parents, it can border upon torture. Even and especially if one is fighting with one or both parents on a frequent bases.

Of course, there's the theological expectation of some holidays. As I studied other belief systems, and found I was not of the one, which framed some holidays, I didn't have much desire to be involved. Some of that I equate to just being a angsty twenty-something. Spitting poison at a Christian holiday made of the same type of bigoted prick as the doomsday zealots who would condemn my Pagan friends to a Hell they didn't believe in for not believing in the supremacy of the Holy Bible.

The social and commercial expectations observed also added to my growing ire. Even especially around Christmas. Despite all the propaganda about joy and peace and goodwill toward one's fellow biped, I observed some of the most blatant and brutal examples of man's inhumanity to man. Often, over perceived valuable gifts and prices.

For awhile, I really dug on Halloween, but five years of cavorting and monkey watching in the Vampire Caste kind of made that all anticlimactic. The lunar/Asian new year was fun from the standpoint of my fascinations with that, which I find exotic, the lion dances, and firecrackers, but the crowds began to get to me, and, like the Gregorian new year, it was just another day. I've always been a fan of my own birthday, it seems like it's the one time I can get away with getting piss-liquored and not get shot a glance from whomever, but I do not like getting piss-liquored and do not care for the liver sprain of the day after.

Therein lies the rub, I suppose; the holidays, whatever holiday, is just another day when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts. The sun rose and set on such affixed calendar date long before monkeys started putting some other special value to it. It seems as though it's the build-up is far more exciting than the actual day itself. Foreplay leading up to a faked orgasm, as it were. It's all a royal scam. An excuse to spend too much money, eat too much food, and/or drink too much intoxicant of choice.

Since the holidays have long since lost their luster to me, and I've documented it before, it's not as though I'm making any startling revelations. The only variable is I can add the mourning of my mother, Jibril, and the bruja to nearly twenty years of angst-laden emotional baggage. That very statement shows I have my own fetters to these socially constructed days, and, if I was truly above it all, I'd not note it at all. Maybe one day I'll reach that point.

It would be trite to say everyday one draws breath could be seen as a holiday. Cliche to suggest surviving another day is reason enough for celebration. Overdone to point out every single moment fucking magic. And yet, there's truth in those played statements.

I am not without hypocrisy. Fuck, I all but brag about it, because my hypocrisies are a source of great amusement. Well, at least to me.

I am a sucker for those small moments. Those little bits of simple humanity. For all my reptilian detachment when observing the half-bald primates called Man, such things can pull at my heartstrings and get me to smile. Sometimes, just despite myself. For all my angst and hoped for apathy with holidays, I'm sure there will something I see, a moment of some kind, which will hit me between the eyes and reach a soft spot. In that moment, the luster will return and the royal scam will be worth it. But just for that moment.

Organized Anarchy

I was the one who started calling our next door neighbor to the east Mysterio. In a township of two-hundred hominids, which is maybe during high summer and not counting drop-ins and squatters, he is an enigma. He moved into the studio cabin a little over a year ago, and has never been overly social. Upon arriving home, he scuttles inside quickly and draws the blinds. He has two vehicles; one is a pick-up, which is so rusted out and beaten up, it looks as though it should be shot. The other is something sleek and sporty and sorry-about-your-dick.

Our encounters have been less than pleasant. The first time I spoke to him was a few days after seeing a bear nearby. I'd gone along our row of houses, letting everyone know as to watch their trash, dogs, and/or children. He listened dismissively, and I found myself hoping the bear might find itself in the mood for monkey meat and that Mysterio would be the monkey.

My theory is he's actually a monkey hunter; out there murdering hitchhikers, men hu, and nurses, placing their butchered remains in his refrigerator so he might gain their power as he gnaws at their flesh. In the if and when of him eventually being caught for this and the media descending upon our Kashmir like scavengers upon carrion, I wouldn't do the cliche thing of saying Mysterio was the quiet type. Oh no. I figured he was a psychopath and I'm just exceedingly glad he never decided to try hunting me.

Sabina figures he's a dysfunctional wildlife photographer. She bases this on the fact he does not mow his yard, has dug out a sort of pond, and takes great effort to attract the birds. For all either of us know, she might be right. But I like my story better.

It was Sabina who saw the carcass first. We were storing some extra pellets when I heard her making messianic proclamations. When I looked in her direction, I saw her pointing into Mysterio's yard. There, crumbled, as though it had been road kill, was the corpse of a deer, which the ravens were feasting on.

"I sure hope that doesn't attract a mountain lion," I said. Never mind that the cats stay up along the trails for the most part, my utterance was all that needed to be said to feed Sabina's dragons.

She went and spoke with our lord mayor, a warm, friendly, hard-drinking, and slightly lecherous man around my father's age. He is short, maybe coming up to ankles when I'm barefoot. Sabina also spoke to law enforcement and animal control for our Sahel. Fuck, to a degree, I almost got in on it. I was going to phone law enforcement too and make mention of being concerned for my wife and daughter and ask if we were going to be served and protected.

Law enforcement basically stated it was not their nachos with a cheese side of I-don't-give-two-tugs-of-a-dead-dog's-cock. They had bad guys to catch. Let the lord mayor and/or animal control handle it. I like the lord mayor fine. Between him and his wife, I've heard some neat tales of Africa, from when they lived there. But the man is around my father's age and maybe comes up to my ankles when barefoot.

The animal control officer, who lives across the river from us, and dislikes and distrusts Homo sapiens as much, if not more so, then me, said he wasn't going to get involved. It wasn't really his nachos neither, but the Department of Wildlife, and they'd only bother if the corpse began to stink or a mountain lion was sighted. Although, the animal control officer and lord mayor were much more helpful about the situation than law enforcement was.

Our Kashmir is what is called home-rule. We have no standing law enforcement of our own. When Sabina and I first arrived, we were told the open container law was you'd better have one. This was the type of place one could walk down the dirt streets with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other, and no one would even blink. We've done the walking about with a beer or a bottle of wine before. It was fantastic.

Law enforcement can only come within our borders if they are summoned. They cannot just drive through looking for someone walking down the dirt streets with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. We exist in a state of organized anarchy, where we are left to police ourselves.

As someone who has called themselves a moderate anarchist, I can groove with that. I cannot say I've ever been overly trusting those who wear badges and carry firearms in open view, and I try to avoid them. There are too many instances, both apocryphal and observed, of those cats abusing the power their station grants them. There's also the very simple observation an overseer made when I was helping to count monkeys in the name of Empire; those of us come to the mountains, like those who go to any in-between place, do so because we want to be left alone.

All things for a price, that is the nature of the deal. Only that, which is cheap, can be purchased with jingling coins and folding paper. Blood and karma is the true currency.

The price we pay for our organized anarchy is a brusque next door neighbor with a deer corpse we can see from the kitchen window when brewing tea, grinding coffee beans, or making breakfast. Since it is winter here, it's not stinking, but we see more ravens than usual. When the mercury gets just a few degrees above freezing, the dogs become rather interested. I see their noses turn and twitch in the direction of Mysterio's yard.

"Not yet," I tell them. "Let the other scavengers clean it off first. Perhaps closer to spring, one of ya'll can sneak over there and steal me the skull to put up on the barn."

Chevy especially likes himself some carrion. He gives me a look. Perhaps it is to tell me he'll get me the skull. Maybe he's disappointed I won't let him, Whistler, and Milarepa go to get a taste of the strange. It could be I'm just anthropomorphizing.

Whether I get the skull of that deer corpse is kind of irrelevant. Even if I do acquire it and hang it on our barn, what the fuck is Mysterio going to do about it? Both Sabina and I can speak to effectiveness of contacting law enforcement. But, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, we'd not have it any other way.

Mooncrash

My beautiful friend, the bruja, of my acquaintance. It had been a little over two years since she had the dreads, and she had some other aesthetics over the nine and a half years I knew her. Be that as it may, this is what my mind's eye perceives when I think of her...



Back then, when we'd all go dancing, she liked to shake her groove thing to this song. I cannot hear it without visualizing her dancing, and it's been that way for years...

We first met at Netherworld. She was acquainted with a girl Lee was trying very hard to get into bed. On that particular night, I'd run into the fucking psycho x and stupidly helped her back up. I found myself the darkest corner in the gin joint with a tumbler of Irish whiskey and a mocha, in which to monkey watch and chide myself.

Lee apparently told her it was okay to sit with me in the dark corner. I could probably use the company. She knew who my fucking psycho x was too and understood my disdain. The bruja introduced herself, and like the Devil, it was apparent she was known by many names.

"What did your parents name you?" I asked, and she told me. "Reckon I'll be calling you that then."

I can admit that was probably a bit dickish and more than a bit hypocritical, given how I am about names in general. That night I was in a bad mood, and, there was some stranger one of my best friends sent by, trying to talk to me. In inspecting the recollection of our first meeting, I realize I was nothing less than caustic, figuring if she wanted to share my company so bad, she'd have to work for it.

Giddy up, muthafucka...

And she hung out with me the entire night. Talking and, eventually, getting me to speak in something more than short, sharp replies. Years later, in a sickhouse, her mother would say the bruja was one of the strongest women she knew. I would reply I thought of her as obstinate, as in as stubborn as a half-starved ass. Her mother laughed weakly and gave me a hug in those dark moments of the small hours.

Nine and a half years is perhaps nothing on the scale of worlds and the lifespans of stars, and yet it can seem like forever and a day, thus showing how time is an elastic abstract. In that stretch of time, I saw her being one of the Vampire Queens, a mystic, an artist, a hippy, the ultimate event planner, and probably a few other things I'm either still not sure about or somehow got lost in the shuffle of watching her sometimes shed metaphysical skins like a snake.

Sometimes, that bothered me. It was as though she was a changeling. Something with no true form of her own, and not to be trusted. It took me a while to realize why that aspect of her personality got on my nerves, and it was because, in that regard, we were both rather alike.

Both of us could get into something, and I mean really get into something. Head, heart, and gut. It became the paradigm. But then, done and over. Whether it was that the novelty wore off or whatever we wanted to accomplish with such thing was accomplished, and we moved on to the next thing. Of all of my friends, she was the only one who didn't think I'd completely lost my mind when I announced I was done with city living and fucking off for the mountains.

"I've been there," she said. "I know."

Nine and half years can be a small eternity when it comes to all the memories and stories, I find. As I sit back, remembering my beautiful friend, I cannot think of a single tale that encapsulates our friendship; how well we got along, how violently we could disagree, how much we meant to one another. Language begins to become clumsy and useless. I would refer to her as family by neither blood or marriage. That might be the best way to describe it. I loved her to death, even when she was pissing me off.

The last time I saw her, was in the early autumn. The bruja and her husband came up to get a kitten from us. We had dinner together and talked of trivialities. I mentioned how sometime in the near future I wanted to meet her, and perhaps some of our other mutual friends, for tea somewhere in the greater metroplex.

Through correspondence, both her and I were discussing how our views of theology were evolving as we grew older, and by virtue of some of our experiences. In some ways, our beliefs very similar, although she had the Southern Baptist upbringing and Pagan viewpoint, in contrast to my underlying themes of Buddhism and Pathiesm. She would speak of Paradox and I would mention the Tao of Chaos. Along with Jibril, the bruja was someone I loved to discuss theology with. I truly looked forward to the discussions we were going to have.

But it was chaos that took her. Is there any other way to explain it? Chaos is also what makes it difficult to reconcile. I have dealt with death before, but, as much as it devastated me, it was expected. This was out of nowhere and unexpectedly, whilst cooking dinner, that the gypsy phoned. Suddenly everything changed. Wrong place, wrong time, bad things happen to good people, roll the bones.

I am going to miss her. There are very few hominids who understood my misanthropy the way she did. We both did things for one another, which endeared one to the other, and I sometimes think of her acts as bordering upon philanthropic. As far as the females I've been friends with, perhaps Jezebel is the only one I've been closer to.

There is a skull full of memories and stories. Some, which any within the circle of friends can relate, perhaps even adding their own perspective. Others are just me and her. A night at coffee. The time I took her for steak or all the dinners we shared. Our conversations whilst walking, riding the bus, driving somewhere, just sitting somewhere watching the world go by.

Yeh...

Someday, perhaps, I'll get to some of those stories. But I find that day is not this one. On this day, I suddenly find myself out of words.

The Cold

I find myself grateful for my stands at the mill. Well, it's always nice to be able to jack my lumber, but getting paid for it too is wonderful. The small thing of a steady source of income does lend comfort.

The stands have allowed for distraction. Just throw myself into the zen of the gig. Sure, my mind might wander now and again, my mind never shuts off, but I try to keep focused on doing my part on keeping this experimental facility running and producing. That is interesting to me, and not just from the standpoint of income, but in doing a good thing. Dancing with the dead gave me my taste for altruism with the side benefit of getting paper to survive on.

The blizzard that was prophesied for my part of the world never materialized, thus, once more showing prophets don't know everything. It has been cold, though. The wind has been talons and blades, which rip through the warmest of clothing, past flesh, beyond bone, straight to the marrow. It is supposed to warm up. Well, for the pointy lands in this time of year. But I will still want a coat.

Somehow, though, the cold seems to be in context. Twisted, in its symmetry. This is not a time to be warm. Too much has happened.

I find myself so irritable as of late. Me, the one in possession of reptile zen, who it was so hard to anger. I find myself tired, emotional, and all too willing to stab something. It is as if the p'o, the animal soul that embraces instinct over intellect, the demon, is so much closer to the surface these days. The slightest thing gets me to growl. I bite my tongue from snapping. I meditate upon the reptilian, allowing its cold blood to wash over me as I try to reestablish my equilibrium.

One of my newest associates spent a stand talking about everything from religion to politics to space exploration to science to sociology to evolution. It was fantastic. I am a sucker for conversations like that. The cats I refer to as friends, talk like that as a matter of course.

It took me back to the coffeehouses and diners. Discussions over fine meals. Memories of Jibril and the bruja. Those two could give some incredible mind. This cat at the mill was like that.

Something that got me to growl; in remembering the conversation and those lost friends, that cliche about a door closing and window opening...

There it is. Cold air, which burns like kerosene and spun glass when one tries to breathe it. Wind that slices straight to the marrow and beyond. Somehow, though, it fits. Twisted, in its symmetry. I cannot say I enjoy it. Physically, the cold causes aches in my twisted skeleton. Metaphorically, the cold burns and sucks away everything as it freezes.

I accept it because it's here. Simple as that. It cannot be denied. It is going to be.

It will get warmer, because that too is the way of things. Physically, by virtue of the orbit around the sun and the world's tilt on its axis. But in metaphor and metaphysics, that part is a little trickier.

Bon Au Revoir, Mon Ami...

My favorite scene from one of my favorite films. When my mother got sick, this took on a new resonance. When she diagnosed terminal, went into the sickhouse, when the word came down there was no hope, and hour before the call, it was my focus. Then, as with now, the wisdom of this scene helps to keep me from screaming...



Although, I think offering a bag of oranges to the family might get me busted in the mouth, at best, and I would probably deserve it...



I hate this band. I hate this fucking song. This is not about me. This was her favorite band. She was so happy to see them live, in their home town, no less. There were pictures involved.



This has been stuck in my skull since word come down...



Another one that's played within the walls of my skull, along with old, old recollections of Netherworld, back when we first all met. Besides, she always wanted to be a primatologist, and would laugh when I referred to humans as addle-brained half-bald monkeys. I can admit to be savagely jealous of the fact she met the first real girl I ever had a crush on; Jane Goodall.

Perhaps I should do a proper requiem, but perhaps I already have, and it was days earlier, whilst I reconciled the ghost had flown the shell. The shell now grows cold. There will be more words, I'm sure. Maybe a story or two. But, here and now, all I find myself really capable of saying is something another beautiful friend of ours, who has since walked on, would always say to me;

Goodbye, my friend...

Sickhouse Waltz

I started the mourning with some easy listening; the smooth stylings of Ministry, followed by Bad Brains. Sabina gave me a strange look for my description of easy listening, but it's exceedingly easy for me to listen to Ministry followed by Bad Brains. Before we left, there was some old AFI and Bad Religion. On the way to the sickhouse, I played early Rolling Stones, Anthrax, and Stone Temple Pilots. The context of the day spoke of crunchy tunes.

I was not looking forward to what I was about to do. The night before, when the demons came for tea, I was reconciling a friend of mine had died in all the ways that counted the day after my daughter's birthday. All that remained was mangled meat, which stood as fetish effigy to her memory, and that was to be let go as well.

Things had apparently changed in the time from that darkest part of night and the rising of the sun. It had been decided her mental function needed to be more clearly assessed. She was in surgery again, but the paralytic medications were slowly being stopped. In another couple of days an MRI was to be done to see if anything of our beautiful friend was still within a mass of gray sponge.

And we had a reason to feel a little better. At one point, there was a reaction to base stimulus, a lower brain function. There was a small glimmer of hope. Some hopeful notes in an otherwise mournful tune.

It was not so long ago I dealt with those awful last seventeen days that my mother was in the sickhouse. I can still recall vividly the roller coaster of hope and despair. Those moments of light in the metaphoric tunnel that would be winked out by the darkness of another tragedy. Having played this game and danced the dance a little more recently than the others, the feeling we were experiencing was a familiar one to me. Perhaps it's because of that, I found myself being a little cynical.

I find I still think of her as gone. She's been dead two days now, even though her shell is still puppeteered through its basic functions. All of this is formality. Delusion the family plays out so they can feel they did everything. I feel horrifically bastardish for this, but I cannot shake that that's how it is.

However, I have not given up hope. Were that the case, I would've said my goodbyes to the mangled meat and left the sickhouse, telling those who keep me in the know to phone when the biologics cease. As it stands, I'm going down again the next time the sun rises. I listen for any scrap of news.

I have danced the sickhouse waltz before. Once, with my grandmother, almost seven years ago, and again, with my mother, almost a year ago. I have ridden this roller coaster and played this game before.

And yet I want so desperately to be proven wrong. For my friend to make an asshole out of me for figuring she's been gone since the accident. I want to be able to tell her this is the shittiest way in the world to get me to buy her a steak, but being meat-drunk on porterhouse is in her future. It is said no one likes to be told they're wrong, but here and now, I would welcome the opportunity.

The Empty House

She's gone. Well, in all the ways that count. Sure, her body, shattered and ruined by the accident, tied to machines, still functions. But that bit, that thing of which we define, or try to define, as consciousness, that spark, the ghost, the soul, whatever Voodoo mask you want to put on it, is no longer there. As the old cliche goes, the lights are on, but nobody's home.

Fucking perfect...

One of my old dear friends is gone. I realize I use old and dear with just about anyone I call a friend. There's a reason for that; I am a misanthropic bastard, and, just as the sun rises in the east, I do not make friends easily. When I call someone my friend, I've usually known them for some time, and given how hard it is me to consider someone my friend, it follows such a cat would be dear to me.

When the sun rises, my daughter, Sabina, and I will go to say goodbye. Goodbye means done and over. Goodbye means forever and ever amen. Sometime after that, the machines will be shut off and removed. Then, all that will remain is for the meat's biologics to cease.

I have shown solidarity and support as a good friend. La-dee-fucking-da. I still feel utterly useless.

I sip on a glass of red wine and notice, quite to my dismay, it has no taste. Not too long ago, I snarked to the gypsy about having cocktails on what would've been Jibril's birthday, as though the consumption of the drink would bring him back, because sobriety didn't seem to work. But my hypocrisy knows no bounds. I know what will happen will happen and whether I have a glass of wine or water isn't going to change it.

It is not okay. It is not going to be okay. It is just going to be, and what will be is not the outcome any of us hoped for.

I find myself remembering when my mother died, and I arrived at my parents' house. My father and brother got there a half hour before me. As I walked in, my brother offered me cigarettes, beer, and marijuana. I was in such a state of shell shock it all held its appeal and sickened me in the same heartbeat.

"What do you want, son?" My father asked me finally.

"I want my mom back," I said.

And there's the parallel, as I sit here drinking red wine with no taste, waiting for the sun to rise. I think of what I want here and now more than anything; I want my friend back. I want her healthy and vibrant once more. The tragedy, of course, is the reality of how want and get are different things.

Crunch Time

Terms like unremitting horror, chaos, and the lyrical mantra of Roll the Bones strobe through my skull like summer heat lightning. Equations within the mathematics of my thoughts as a mourning infusion of jasmine tea steeps. Once, it was said hot jasmine tea fixes everything, even that, which is not broken. In context, the metaphor seems like bubblegum and bailing wire over an impact crater from an asteroid the size of Pavarotti's ass.

A very dear friend of mine, family by neither blood nor marriage, lies in a sickhouse bed. Crushed and broken. Matted with the stink of blood. The details of how she arrived there are shrouded in a certain kind of mystery, although a tree and the rolling of a vehicle were involved.

I worry for her. For the life she carries in her body. The one she would jokingly call an alien bean and I called a parasite. If it survives, it will be named after a beautiful friend of ours who has since walked on. If she survives, I wonder if she'll want me to get her meat-drunk on porterhouse, like I did the last time she was in the very same sickhouse, although that was for very different reasons, so long ago.

In being encouraging, I want to refer to her with nicknames of champ, tiger, sport, and trooper. I used such monikers with my mother when she was so sick. Given the state of things in context of my mother, I dismiss inflicting those titles upon my friend.

Tired. Sore. Anxious. We sat in the waiting room into the small hours. The biology of habit and obligations to three of the quadrupeds in my household did not allow for many hours of slumber. Concern did not allow for it to be restful. I do not seek martyrdom in these facts, that would be petty, and I know there are those, related by blood and marriage, who have slept far less than me, if at all.

This is the crunch time. The most important of moments. Here and now could show the way to life or death. How scarring the damage inflicted could be.

I am hiding and waiting. I make breakfast more out of habit and the zen calm of cooking than hunger. Perhaps, through the prism of memory, I'll be able to chuckle about parking a space numbered 187, and law enforcement order's code for homicide. I have never been the type to prey, unless in context of the food chain. Here and now, the thought of any anthropomorphic deity of any mythology, invites thoughts of caustic anonymous graffiti scrawled across a bunkhouse wall in Mauthausen concentration camp;

"If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness..."

Yeh, it's like that...

So, I wait. Wait for news. Good or bad is a roll of the bones, and, rationally, I realize that. As a friend, who is family by neither blood or marriage, I wonder and worry. Part of me prepares for the worst I hope does not happen. Another bit wonders if I'll be committing to taking her out for steak at that one dive I took her years ago after another sickhouse stay to get intoxicated upon the cooked flesh of another species. I might not be the preying type, unless in context of the food chain, but a set of words resounds over and over again within the walls of my skull like a mantra;

Hang in there, mon ami, don't you dare fucking quit...

Sweet Sixteen

The true love of my life, my daughter, standing atop Buffalo Mountain, a twelve-thousand foot peak she ascended with my sister, this summer.

Do you remember sixteen? That mystical time spoken of in story and song? The right to operate a motor vehicle, a fetish of ultimate freedom in some parts of the world, comes at sixteen. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bodhisattva, Tara, is depicted as a sixteen year old girl. Sixteen being the perfect time, when one is at the peak or their beauty, ability, and all the other kinds of y that count.

When I was sixteen, I had what might be called my first serious relationship with a girl, although, these days, I'm more inclined to called a comedy of adolescent errors. It was an interesting time, certainly. The Game Boy came out, Hurricane Hugo bitch-slapped the south, and Voyager II reached Neptune. I got braces and my family moved back to Colorado from that three and half year stint in North Carolina. For all it's mysticism, it wasn't a time of unicorns and fairies and rainbows and chocolate and wine and roses that the stories and songs made it out to be. It was an orbit around the sun.

My daughter has turned sixteen, and I am not sure how to approach the subject. I know I am not the first parent to look upon the event with a certain amount of fear and loathing mingled with hopeful anticipation. These days, my daughter is five foot nine, instead of the length of my forearm. She and I can have more adult conversations, which might say something, since some of my friends are convinced she was born an adult, or at the very least, a late teen.

It is said sixteen is magical time. Over the years and lifetimes, I have called my daughter fucking magic more times than I can count without the help of an abacus. Perhaps, for my daughter, this orbit around the sun will be a time of unicorns and fairies and rainbows and chocolate and wine and roses that stories and songs made it out to be. At the very least, I am certain she'll find it to be an interesting time.

Reptile Romance: Part 3 But Despite My Best Efforts...

Just saying, with a healthy punk rock Oi!...

To say that there have been French films and equations of Chinese arithmetic that were less complicated than my break-up with the jewel-eyed girl might just be a little melodramatic. However, it certainly felt like it at the time. Even now, with distance of years and miles, it seems as though there was a lot more brain damage there than there really needed to be.

To be fair, there are things I could have done differently. Ways in which I conducted myself, that could have been better. I can own up to that. The same could be said for her. Some parts of that story border upon a nightmare I am not sure I will ever document, partially out of fear of giving those events more power than they need.

There were other parties who exacerbated and antagonized the situation, because apparently there is just not enough simple scandal and Machiavellian intrigue to go around on the average night of going out and painting the town fuchsia. Part of my reason for just watching, apart from the simple fact I like to watch, and not necessarily getting involved, is to avoid being caught in the fallout shrapnel of one’s personal soap opera. It was frustrating to have repeated attempts to drag me into one because of some splittail I was once involved with, and this kept on for a good six months. I found it to be perdition set to a backbeat of My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.

During this social maelstrom, the gypsy and I made an attempt at something, which, in the end, was a whole lot of was-not-was. Sure, we had our mutual art crush we indulged in, but when it came down to brass tacks and bedposts, there was a matter of timing; the scandalous annoyances I encountered when going out to see my friends and monkey watch amongst the vampires, and the fact Jibril was still around, even if he was sick and dying. I fully believe if he ever once told the gypsy he loved her, she’d have married him on the spot and borne him a litter.

There was also the fact we liked to drink a lot when we got together. Our livers would have only been able to take so much before our skin and eyes took on the color of dirty gold and urine. My father’s father went out that way, and I refuse to share that fate.

Nowadays, the gypsy is with the man she calls her baby daddy. They have a daughter together. The story goes they are retarded for one another. Her and I somewhat antagonize and otherwise fuck with one another in our correspondence. I at least find this amusing.

The gypsy is the only x, if such a term applies, I still talk to. Perhaps the fact we were friends for four years before anything beyond platonic happened between us helped. Generally, I do not speak to x’s. Period. Whatever had attracted us was in the past is just that; past. My x-wife would be the exception, but that’s in the name of seeing my daughter.

It was also back then I was trying to help Sabina with a relationship that was more toxic than the bite of a black mamba. From the time I’d first met her, I could set my watch to the arguments she’d get into with her boyfriend. Nightly viciousness at the juke joint; just add whiskey and soda and martinis in liberal amounts. Perhaps it was because of my own bad luck with relationships I wanted her’s that had already lasted ten years to succeed into that fairy tale of forever.

The boyfriend was the jealous type who was convinced something was going on long before either one of us honestly contemplated anything. I have encountered such creatures before. The jealous type can be both interesting and annoying in the same glance. Their jealousy is spurred by a guilty conscious over where they’ve been spending their nights. I knew for a very long time the musician was less than true to Sabina, but my sources had taken me into confidence because I am more than willing to treat a secret as just that; a secret.

It was only after these same sources told her what I was already privy to that all bets were off with those secrets. She cried upon my shoulder for hours that night, thanking me for being someone who wouldn’t go spreading shit, but cursing me for keeping things from her. The only thing I could do was let her tears soak into my shirt and wish I could banish the violations of trust from her psyche.

Whilst I am not always the best at spotting onto the advances of someone with amorous designs on me, I caught on pretty quickly that Sabina had come to like me, like me. Over the years we had been acquainted, she had become another of my best friends. But, after the abortion that was my relationship with the jewel-eyed girl, and miscarriage that was the was-not-was with the gypsy, the idea of that kind of involvement with a female was seeming less and less appealing. The drunken rush of infatuation hormones be damned. So I started behaving cruelly toward her.

“You’re childfree. You do not have, nor do you like children. I am a parent, and you know how important my daughter is to me.” I’d say.

“She’s not some puking babbling thing. You know we get along really well.” Sabina would respond.

Fuck!

“You’re the Vampire Queen,” I said once. “Party, party, rock and roll. There’s no way I could keep you in the lifestyle you’re accustomed to.”

“That lifestyle was fun for a little while,” she confessed. “But it no longer serves me. I have more fun going to coffee with you or having dinner at your place.”

Fuck!

“If, and that’s a really big if, we were to ever get together, my family, even and especially my mother, would want to know when we’re getting married,” I told her. “You think marriage is for suckers.”

“That way no longer serves me,” she said simply.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

So when the gypsy and I had our curb-kicking moment, I told Sabina she had a shot. Sort of like when I had innocently, wholesomely, told her I’d have stabbed her in the gall bladder were I not secretly in love with her, I half-meant it as a joke. Something of a defensive mechanism on my part; that if my words were not taken seriously, than no harm, no foul. It was never real. It was a joke.

My father’s mother died, and I went to North Carolina. It was when I came back I found I had new companion. Well, I had a pretty good hint the night my father’s mother died, and whilst making dinner for my mother, daughter, and Sabina, I turned to find Sabina in mymuthafuckingkitchen because she refused to be a house guest any longer. She sometimes jokingly calls that when she started to take over my life.

That was so long ago now, it does feel like another life. Our world exists within the narrow rift-like valley and the shadow of the mining days. The city and vampire caste seem more like stories we tell one another for a laugh or as a spook-story in the dark of night.

Every so often, love her as I do, she aggravates me. She can’t help it, what with being a hominid and all. I'm tempted to tell her I was getting on just fine without her. That I would’ve been zen and superfly being solitary when she decided she was going to come into my kitchen and help me start cooking.

I don’t, of course. The intoxication of infatuation hormones may no longer be there, but a different chemical high exists, which I have a hard time describing in the most clinically reptilian terms. Besides, I can see clearly the look she’d give me were I to say such a thing. I know what her retort would be.

“You didn’t kick me out of your kitchen, did you?”

I’d have nothing, and somehow, that doesn't bother me…