I'll Take You There

I'll take you there.

I'm in the DJ booth in the boom boom boom in the city in the darkness
Without the really good scotch.
But I'm pretty sure he's wearing the same blazer.
We're drinking Tequila
Sans training wheels.

"Do you remember the night we met?" He grins.
I grin back. Then I look out at the dance floor. "Yeah, [insert big mid 90's club in Queens]. I picked you up on a bet."

"A bet?" He's still grinning. "You were there with Tracy."

Yeah. She and I had executed our customary divide and conquer. 13 years ago we could do that. We'd arrive at a club and split up at the door. She'd go in one direction. I'd go in the other. Lap the room. Check everyone out. Check back with each other at the door in an hour. She was a great person to club with, when you wanted to be there alone with someone there alone as well.

He was with friends at the bar. He was gorgeous. He got in my face and said, "Smile!"

When I met Tracy back at the door we exchanged prospects. I said I'm thinking... him. The Smile Guy.

She laughed. And she bet me. She had known him for years. He's hot and playful. But he doesn't fuck. He's the kind that wants a girlfriend.

God how times have changed, we laugh. He'd chew off his paw now to avoid commitment. I'm happily married 10 years. He pours two more tequilas and starts up some Stonebridge.

I had him on the ropes when I asked him to walk me to the car. Just to get my lip gloss.

"That was such a lame line." He grins.

"It worked, didn't it?" I look out at the dance floor, I'll take you there, through the night and the city. The dance floor is huge when you're riding it. It's so much smaller when you're looking down at it from the booth in the darkness in the boom boom boom.

He slides the headphones down to his cheeks. "I remember the garters."

"I remember the music. Killing Joke. Pandemonium" I always remember the music.

"I remember you said you would never marry."He looks down at the racks and the gear, he looks away, and I can see him.

It doesn't need to be said. It is what it is. And I never meant,
and I'm sure he didn't either.

"I'm sorry."

He nods. He nods and then he slides into a mix. He let it be. And it was. I had never apologized before. I hadn't realized until that moment.

He finishes the set up and looks at me when he can. He shrugs and winks. It's OK. It's all OK. Years of friendship aren't taken lightly. He raises his shot glass to me before he downs one more 1921. "To ghosts."

"To ghosts."

I'll take you there. Through the dark and the night and the city.
Through the big and small dance floor.
Through bets and bars and the 1990's.
Through the years and the Pandemonium.
Through the friendships and tequila.
Through the never meant, and the never was.
I'll take you there,
Through the boom boom boom.


"All my life
I've been waiting
For this moment
To come
Taste the salt of my tears
Take the wealth of my years
Singing in the millennium with you."
- Killing Joke

Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie

"It's one thing to fuck with me,
Another thing to fuck with my ex girlfriend who hates me."
- Dexter

Sometimes I have to go too far to get it all out. Sometimes I have to squeeze and ring it, digging backward, and sinking beneath it to get those last drops to expel. Those drops, that are unnecessary in the telling, but oh so necessary in the exorcism.

I didn't mean to cause damage with the excess.

I was just trying to free myself.
I never intended to capture you along the way.

Fore!

LD - How are you doing in Tae Kwon Do?

Me - Doing great, thanks. Kicked so hard the other night my tampon came shooting out of me.

LD - Woe, that's impressive. I mean, if you ever have to kick somebody's ass with your vagina.

Me - (laughs) I've been wondering if this would work it's way onto the blog.

LD - Seriously. And for once I'm not saying anything inane. Wait, what's 'inane' again?

"Faster kill, faster still, pussycat,
Those hyenas are not your friends.
Honey, you know where the world is at.
Come home with me when the party ends.
You turn me on."
- Paul Oakenfold, Faster Kill Pussycat

Indelible

I remember they shook hands.
I remember how impressed I was at that. I remember thinking they were all grown up. I remember being right there, but watching, as if I was on the outside looking in. As if it wasn't even my memory.

I remember learning you better. I remember wanting so much to understand you.
I knew you: I knew what made you sad, and what made you smile.
But I remember trying to learn the bigger picture through the more subtle parts of you:
What made you listen, what made you wince.
What Words need to be whisper.
What you named the spiders that haunt the crawl spaces in the basement of your mind.

I remember when you pulled away.
When you shut down.
When you were gone, like you had never been there at all.

And I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing.
I wondered if you were ever a grown up.
I wondered if I had ever really made you smile. Or knew you. Or anything.

And then I remembered
when you were little.
When you were not all grown up,
shaking hands and crawling in the spaces.

And I realized
what it is that really makes you wince,

and the names of the spiders.
.

Thumbprints

Sometimes you have to accept people with their faults. Sometimes when you fix their faults, you lose them. You change them. And sometimes that's not good. Not for you, and not for them.

Impressions are better than truths. They last longer. They defy time. They aren't anyone else's.

4 Deliveries of Tony

"Had a dream,
It was time
To be taken to the front of the line.
Well that is not a place you wanna be,
Sleeping with the enemy."
- Roger Hodgson

Initially his sister made the rounds with Joe
around a good and bad circle where I ran,
that ran away.
I didn't know him then, but everyone I knew did.
He was beautiful.

There was so much youth and betrayal I can't possibly remember it all.

Ray skipping with the rent money,
While I was sleeping with Ray, after S,
While Tony was sleeping with Patti who had H.
'Pizza Boat. Can I help you?
We gave new meaning to the phrase, "Did you want mushrooms on that?"

"Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me.
The sun in your eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing."
- Alan Parsons Project

When the circle repeated
most of the players had changed
and not for the better.
But there we were. Again. Running them.
He was a roommate repeated.
He still had that floodlight that plugged into the cigarette lighter in the car.
He still had that Mustang.
We fucked on the hood of that convertible in the moonlight,
coupled like animals,
parked on a quiet street in Bakersfield
while strangers watched.
He was mesmerizing.
I don't remember the name of the guy who's heart I broke that night.
And I never did find out what they did with my parent's living room furniture.

"Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?
Don't you hear me calling you."
- Queen

But that day in the Haight...
That was one fine day.
He told me about the things that mattered, like Jenny.
"And when I came out of my cloud of smoke..."
She was gone.
And he was gone.
And there she was.
In the window -
metaphorically and literally.
He stepped up and owned it.
He went after her, and he faced it.
It might surprise him if he knew how often I've gone to
that cafe moment for courage.

His father made these pancake kinda things in Modesto.
God, they were good.
And so was he.

"I'm lookin' at my watch
At all the time that's been stolen."
- Smash Mouth

I can't find him.
21 years is a long time.
I think I may have once found a crime-victim art-photo on what may or may not be his sister's Myspace page, but who knows. And if he changed his name, and who hasn't, there is an impasse. Isn't there. I don't know. Who knows.

All I know is,
everything I didn't know then.


And I wish I hadn't lost you along the way.

.

Just as Hard

He was kind.
He listened.

He was patient and accepting
As I wrote it, as i worked it.
I gave the Words. I made the Words.
And he received them.
He was kind.
He listened.

He listened to the thoughts,
to the making of,
the creation waiting.
He heard the attempts
at the moon
and the failing
and the pause.
He waited.
And listened.
He was quiet and kind.
Then he heard it:
The birth.
The Words were the right ones.
The writing was...
good.

And he closed his eyes.
That's it, he said.
You got it. That's it.
And he was right.
The process isn't witnessed.
Not usually.
Never kindly.
But he was.
Kind and unusual.

And he could listen
as hard as I could write.

Egress

He hands me a small stack of papers clipped together with a pewter Pottery Barn-type binder clip that no one would really use. "These are all the notes I took that need to be included. This speech is possibly the most important of my career."

"Got it." I take the papers.

He smiles with a slightly embarrassed glow, "I didn't copy anything over. These are just all my raw original notes. Some of these have doodles and whatnot in the margins."

"Don't worry, it's fine." I've seen whatnot before. The doodles of a wandering mind. Everyone doodles eyeballs. Women tend to doodle hearts and stars. Men tend to doodle team logos, and boobs.

He puts his sunglasses on and stands. He's a good looking man. He's wearing a big ivory Irish sweater, and jeans. He doesn't look like a finance officer. He doesn't look like he could ever be comfortable chained to a desk in an office like he is. He doesn't look like the kind of guy that uses phrases like, my career.

I glance at the pages. At the doodles. At his mind. "Wow," I whisper, surprised, to no one there.

******

He comes back from the bar and hands me a beer. I'm wearing gorgeous BCBGirls, 4 inch heels. I slide the folder toward him and look around while he settles in and begins to read.

After a few thoughtful minutes, he sips his Sam Adams and says, "Great. Thanks, Veronica. This is what I wanted."

"Well," I hand him one more paper. "It's what you hired me to write, anyway. This is actually what you wanted."

He takes it, curiously.

I sit back and cross my legs. I sip the Corona. And I watch his face. It's an application I downloaded.

"Your doodles are very telling."

I watch as he smooths the application. He drinks his beer. He compliments my gorgeous shoes. He pays me, we finish our drinks and we stand to leave.

He takes the speech tapping it straight in the folder. Then he takes the application and puts it on top.

I keep my fingers crossed that he'll be happy.




"How long have I been sleeping?
How long have I been drifting alone through the night?
How long have I been running for that morning flight,
Through the whispered promises and the changing light,
In the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky."
-Jackson Browne

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