an idiot and his improper use of the word namaste

We met at a bar called Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge in the uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. it was a glorious shithole. Popular, like all glorious shitholes these days. We like em, glamorize em, ruin em. Why? Cuz anything that smells like rotten beer soaked wood appeals to us over the synthetic cleaner days of our chemical laden youths. Linoleum. Clorox. Granite countertops if we were lucky. If we grew up in dirt, then it's a nice little reminder of it. My favorite little dive bar was the womb.

She said naked people drink free at the bar. She said she and her ex-girlfriend, the burlesque dancer on ice, drank there topless one night. It wasn't my problem. She said she might enjoy drinking a little too much sometimes. It wasn't my problem. She said she met the lonely fifty-year-old man slumped over the bar, she said she met him on New Years Eve and that they spoke for hours that night. She said he told her to be careful when I walked in. He gazed over at us, in love with her, or drunk, same thing maybe.

We touched hands. Hers were warm blooded. I paid for our Miller Lites. Takes a round or two longer to hit that ten dollar minimum when drinks are cheap and the night started hours before elsewhere.

She drove us to her place. I left at four in the morning. She said stay, I said we won't ever sleep. I wanted to stay as long as I could but never return once I left. I had the airport waiting for me in the morning. In the light. We were two candles melted and reformed. The bonds that can be made in a few hours of something like honesty.

The driver was majestic. We were talking about the sunsets in California. He brought em up. Maybe so he could bait me. To tell me about the most beautiful one he'd ever seen. In Iowa. I didn't ask him what he was doing in Iowa. He was eating in between two lakes. Watching the sun disappear below one lake to his west. While the full moon rose over the other lake to his east. He said it was green and purple at first. He pronounced "silhouette" in a magical way. He spoke for ten minutes straight, bragging but also possessed by what he had seen. He had seen a lot but that this was unlike anything else. That as long as his brain works, he will remember it. That a camera couldn't have shot east and west. A camera couldn't tell it like he told it.

None of it was my problem. I walked the Garden District. I saw my awesome friend Morgan earlier. We ate with his girlfriend. They saw me do comedy, it's fun in the south. It's fun everywhere. Then, on a whim, I met her. Met the driver. Slept a couple hours then got on airplanes to Florida in the morning. I was my only problem. The way all my organs hurt except for my heart.

I was with my dad last year. And the year before that. Now he's with me. Now I'm with me. Last night I was with her. It was only one night.