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david lee wright
Dog Beach Poets
If it's one thing I'm after it's the ambrosia created by her leftovers. If it's another, it's a life not concerned with uncertain moments; what else is new?
So I woke up and she was gone. The letter was of one word, left on the nightstand. The one word was, surprisingly: Gone. No name signed at the bottom of the long, white page. She didn't include the customary smiling face with X's for eyes and mouth like usual. It didn't say 'dear' anywhere but was my name 'john' this morning?
Laying on my back in the middle of the living room I grazed my fingers along the dusty hard wood floor and held the puzzling communiqué between my thumb and pointer finger wondering if more would come to me through its vagueness somehow; where is she gone to, what was her reasoning, was this the end of our affair? I rolled over on my left side and lay my head to the floor, arching my neck like a bent over L, as if all that was left of me was my spine, my neck, my beating, dazed heart; nothing else. I saw her favorite slippers tucked, by her own feet, forcefully underneath the couch chair, her favorite spot. We had lived together for more than three years, usually in good, healthy spirits and seemingly happy with the lives we held. Now, she was just gone?
The first year we were together it was impossible to get us apart. I was raggedy, she was Anne. I had a dope habit, she said she only drank. She would pick out sweaters for me to wear from her X-boyfriends left behind treasure chest, telling me that a dope excuse had to be kept "warm, and loved, and read to…" I would lay in her bed, sober, and listen to her clink her liquor glasses together and shake, shake, shake her martinis, and then hear the sound of crushed ice rattling the metal kitchen sink. "Like any habit, drinking has its sacred ceremonies…" she told me when I asked her why she didn't just keep the Gin in the freezer. I'd roll over and take the book mark from Benvenuto Cellini with a broken leg, unjustly imprisoned, and pretend to read to myself and not want a taste of her drink just to create some sort of buzz.
"Life is so much easier in this day. Now all we have is a society with death repeated over and over on the television and in movies and nobody really knowing its true modus operandi. A complete class of kids afraid of the dark and of Dr. D and breed to fear what is not there: instantaneous apoptosis, which isn't real. Instead it's Mr. Rogers crib death syndrome and a whole army of zombies. Anymore we live longer, we're healthier and we die of less horrible afflictions on average than our ancestors. A new world, wide society of psychotherapists. This is nothing new I understand, in fact, I'm quite tired of said subject and the ad nauseam of the topic among peers. What else do we have to do, though, besides intoxicate ourselves and invent sissy, pop culture problems to conquer?" She always talked as if jello were between her red, red gums: melancholy w/sparkling sheen twinkling in her teeth.
The second year we were together I would lay there and listen, watching her delicate movements and her expressions dilate and contract, flipping a half dollar (Benvenuto) coin between each finger and laying flat on my belly in a thick red Christmas sweater and boxer brief shorts. Rain driblets would smack, trying to collect, on the window behind her head. The rain was just too misty to matter much. If the phone rang at all she would wait for the seventh or eighth ring because, she said,
"…anyone who really knows me knows to wait for me. If they hang up before six I know it's someone 'regular' or 'temporary,' in which case they can go fuck themselves and attend to business in proper, old fashioned timing."
She hated animals too.
"…any, so called, pet can just find someone else to sponge off of. I think if you want to talk about two types of people in the world, mentioning them as separates, of coarse, the non-animal people are closer to existentialism and randomness. Having a dog, or a cat, even a fish, calls for a home and a pile of bills."
I'd nod in vassal agreement and consider my mistreated dog, Lady, growing up on the military base in Albuquerque. My dad and I built a chain link fence for her but for a cocker spaniel she was a high jumper, so we ended up having to chain her inside the fence and after a while I started neglecting her, leaving her out all night, not taking her for walks, feeding her without speaking to her. General dysfunctional ownership.
"…maybe some people need pets to reinforce their conception of reality in this world. Like a pet reminds them that they are not alone when they wake up late in the morning, having dreamt of loss and their incorrigible lives as normal citizens. Then there is always the pet/child angle. Who was it that said 'a nation that mistreats its pets neglects, also, its children.' Or something like that? They were probably right."
She was so full of shit. Well spoken in some circles, still full of dung.
This third year we were together, after she was satisfactorily drunk, she'd lay on top of me and kiss me with her bathtub gin breath and slide her bony fingers under the elastic of my underwear. She has a thing about keeping her bra on these days and I don't complain, it feels good to rub the fabric against my ribs to keep me from melting completely underneath her light weight and delicate body. I used to think of her as so smart, a philosophical angel come to save me from myself. As a rule, she never gave blowjobs.
Standing in the kitchen, I watched for a while how nothing moved but still had its own life. Unlike most mornings, my cock felt more shriveled than existent. The coffee maker gave off heat and the pot was full. The dishes from last night were placed categorically in the drain rack and silent. Her coffee cup was on the counter missing its usual lipstick smudge. The fridge kicked on and purred its mechanical song. On the table was my mail. Not much really, notices enclosed and more credit card offers, the occasional library newsletter was not there; I thought about Thrasher. I could stare like this until I burned holes in the countertop cabinets with my super human laser eye death rays, alas, this isn't a comic book, just a short story. Like so many stories I've read, filling up the moments that make up a life, this was one of those times to forget you're alive but somehow remember to breathe too. Living in the imagination is like falling, beauty and glory surround every single tableau and always with the happy 'say cheese' scenes captured in one takes, good or bad. Alphabetical freezer. A brain engulfed in its own belief. Dream systems become like another heart beating above the eyebrows: if one were to die, as in real life, so would the other half, except that it would only kill the picturesque perfection of the moment. To carry on all the time as if the imagination were law is like a free, slow, motion, falling until you hit ground, but you never knew when, or rather, you never wanted to know and, oh, nyeah, reality and the Truth Brigade show up, ready and packed for the next jump, whether you like it or not. Stephen knocked on the door and I thought it was the coffee pot talking.
"What's the deal, she leave for good?" he smirked pouring his cup, using her clean one, not noticing me much. His back was to me and he was fumbling with something in his brand new bag. I knew what he was doing without having to think of it. Some things are just such the common practice.
"It says 'gone' on the note. Nothing but 'Gone,' and not even her named signed."
"Where is it? Let me see that shit." Stew said. I pointed to the table in the living room and he retrieved it turning it over and instantly dropping it again, face down. Outside the light was so morning that the shadows from the trees were cold, grumpy and waiting for the sun to feed them their stead. I stared out through the kitchen, through the window past the living room and briefly joined the wet bushes with their waking up ritual. "Yeah, so?" he said, sitting down, blowing smoke in my face and handing me the joint. I took it between my lips like any old cigarette and went for my own cup of coffee. I realized I had been standing in the same spot as when he had entered. Weed would speed things up a little, maybe.
"Yeah, so I guess she left. Why? I don't know. Maybe she went for milk and honey for her tea. Maybe that was the final straw, me forgetting the groceries."
"Yeah, whatever you say. You make too many lists in way of excuse. Hey, we should go down to the beach, I heard Victor was back with a new coffee stand and some young girl he mail ordered as a bride from the Soviet Union. Apparently she presses espresso with an iron fist like the Berlin Wall were still up and her family's freedom depended on her expertise in arms with the furor." Stephen gave a Nazi salute with clenched fist and laughed his arf arf laugh like some sort of socialist seal barking for approval, and coffee. I wondered but didn't ask.
"Let's go to the beach then, who cares?" He said.
Melding, melding, melding. Waves, waves, waves. Some things in life are so simple and straight to the point. Like socks. Socks and want of sex. Maybe marijuana and coffee with cream, no sugar. Leave it to sugar to mess everything up. O.K. then, today out on our walk down to Dog Beach, I'll just have to stop by Will's corner store and pick up:
Cream
1 bag- Dope
1 box- Condoms
1 body- Women, Will's wife if she'll have me!
Socks- 12 pair (blue stripe, tube)
I always have coffee for us at the house as Victor gives it out to us seeing we've been coming to his coffee stand for so long now. Can't forget:
1 bag- Ice &
2 box- Soy Milk (for bam bams) +
Butter
Victor's your run of the mill, hidden stress, American. He says that he was born in New York City under old 42nd street to a family of gypsies who, apparently, had some sort of running Hatfield and McCoy type feud with a bunch of homeless Irish Catholic Mafioso types, whatever that means. Homeless and Mafioso is the old days but everyone has to feed their children and, of coarse, make up stories as they go along, too. As a young boy he found "Johns" for his sisters and ran numbers for the bookies saving every penny until the age of fourteen, at which time a distant cousin sent him a postcard of the serene Pacific with a topless pair of tits as setting suns and so he spent the next two years working double time, getting his siblings laid and keeping the ocean saved in his breast vest pocket, saving every half penny until he could take leave. He came to Ocean Beach in the winter of 1974 with one old cardboard suitcase and his "American Dream" fully notched towards success. After a time, he says, he worked long enough as a life guard (which is hard to believe, unless he really let himself go. He now looks like a skinny Andre the Giant with a club foot) to be able to buy his first coffee stand and dole out the crappy caffeine to the surfers and beach goers. Tourists too sometimes, he had a funny evil eye for most of them though. One didn't surf too much at Dog Beach but when the waves were bad down at Bird Shit, or wherever, he would always get a good crowd looking to chill with burnt coffee and sea time sounds. Twenty years later, minus the limp of the club foot, wearing corrective shoes and with two coffee stands, one at the mouth of the pier, another at the end for the fishermen, Victor was doing all right. Coffee was a dream come true business, for him. How all very movie script convenient, what more does a humble person need besides the beach, anyway? He saw us coming, me still in my bathrobe, and poured.
"My friend, you look like a housewife. Why so glamorous today?" he said, showing his yellow teeth and ready for a response to laugh at.
"My girlfriend left me." I smirked. "Plus, it's windy out today, Vic. Every beach needs a freak and I thought I'd fill in for the junkies today." Victor belched then snickered concealing his normally grand laugh. He looked down at his beans and his dirty espresso rags and averted his eyes from us. Stephen lit another joint and passed it to Victor, who always smoked with us, and said,
"Hey, what's all this trash, Vic? The man has had an overly dramatic morning. They only come along every so often, what's with you?"
"My dear friends, I too have been left and like lollipops popping you expose all my fears and all at once." He gave a "HA" out briskly. "My new pet bride has fled with her first weeks allowance we agreed to. I don't know what to do. Where could she be, where could she be? Probably dead. Probably with another man, yes," He looked up at us suddenly with a pointed joint finger and took a quick, fake, too ecstatic to inhale, hit. We jolted and moved back a little. He had murder in his eyes this morning (albeit, only for this scene). "A filching son of a bitch must have been waiting in the shadows to take my one true love, to infect her with his gut belly version of this America, damn it, to teach her how to use the buses and revel in the evils he and his Uncle Sam have to offer."
Stew said, "Speed freaks get her, Vic?"
"You, you. It must be you, you no good student." He pointed again, I reached for the weed. "Why are you not in class?" He said to Stephen.
"It's Tuesday, Vic. My Lit professor insists on segregating the class due to his vicarious fantasies. Tuesday is girls day smoking in the boys room. He's probably reading to them some downtrodden Russian shit thinking that it makes them all wet. He's a sick man."
"What's with you and the triple CP today?" I said. He gave me the finger and shot his glance to Victor, letting out a grievous sigh and smiling.
"Then I'm sure it's him who has taken my bride. Learned Americans, so full of themselves, hmmph. What animals we all are, anymore!"
I shrugged and added more half & half to my coffee. What was I doing here, I thought? So choosy with our moments we can be. As if something else could possibly be better and we wouldn't be questioning our decisions as soon as we got to where we're going. I took a hit. I heard the beach suddenly become clearer. Stephen noticed too and moaned "uh, huh!" under his breath. The waves were always so near. Sometimes you can forget how close they really are if you don't listen.
"So, how long has she been gone, Vic?" Stew said, adjusting his black safety glasses and squeaking his true grit coffee across his teeth.
"Since about an hour ago. Gone, gone, fled like dust in my hands."
I looked at Stephen. He looked at me. I blinked. He sniffed. Although it had nothing to do with the predicament we had found our friend in I knew now why he brought me here this morning. Love is so impossible and ridiculous at times. Stephen lucked out that he had something not of his own doing to base his forcast on; his closed mouth advice worked its surfer magic, as always. I nodded for the pier at him. We started walking, leaving Victor to his latest bereavement without saying anything. Stephen had a thing about spoken goodbyes and how unnecessary they were. I was stoned, I didn't care.
"That crazy, dream come true, bitch." I said shuffling along, with my best friend in tow, code name: Mike Goodman. Fifty feet above the waves walking were we, crashing loud pacific valediction of a moment ~Aloha~ below us.
Victor yelled to us from afar, "You lousy student, you forgot to pay." Stew said, "It's Tuesday," softly, not turning around.
"She's probably gonna come back!" I shook my head and sipped, looking Up and walking with my coffee. "It's beautiful here." I said.
Stephen didn't reply.
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