what i wrote when i wrote it

el chubasco

Her parents met on fishing boats. She, the daughter of fisherman, Costa Ricans, Alaskans, Santa Cruzians, Oregonians, and I remembering when how she walked in through that door, a gentle daughter of light. How she said she was gonna go to the Women's March the next day or something. I remember last night and how close we could touch and how long and how deep and how enormous the bridging of our energy. I kissed her face this morning. She reached for me with her arm. The drunks on Sunset cried at each other as we held and melded and I got up and closed the bathroom window and then returned to her, quiet and calm

how he bled black blood out of his nose and we cradled him in our arms like we had been all this time

Travis my boy

yes what is it josh

Travis my boy do you remember when

josh, yes, of course i do. i will never forget it

No but

josh i know what youre gonna say

But Travis that hollowed out haunted stare that i am trying so hard to hide that you are trying so bravely to preserve it is about--

i know what it is about josh

I know but Travis you must understand it's a miracle how you and I can still confide in each other and share space and orbit one another after all we have been thr--

josh i know. i know josh. so well. better than anyone on earth can articulate at times when i try

But Travis

josh

Travis do you remember how

it is  on my mind constantly

How we... do you remember

i remember josh

Do you remember how we watched a man die together

yes josh. he was my best friend. of course i remember

Travis, sometimes I wouldn't believe it was real if it hadn't been the most real thing I have ever had this life to know

i know josh i know

winsome

The wind whipped in through your windows. Your apartment is a nest atop the branches of echo park. Your underwear in my mouth. I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say

she said

she said it would turn her on to get hit by my car

or maybe anyones car

she said there was a name for it. even a movie for it. the wanting to get hit by a car in an erotic fashion

she said when she was a little girl in paris a car hit her. and her asshole father cried and held her on the street and that his emotions were closer to pure than she ever saw

i brought up the dots that connect the two. she probably knew. it's her story to tell. so i won't tell it. she, her brain, will tell it better than mine anyway. what an intelligent brain on the young woman. it wasn't the provocative youth that poured out of her ripe curves it was her provocative brain i objectified in my worst views, and melded into in my bravest, and bumped back and forth with - in my favorite, and then scattered from in a manic dash to find quiet

she said don't romanticize female sadness. but i cut a coconut in my kitchen this morning and gulped the cold gray water inside of it for my hangover. you don't understand how i am the only shape i am because of this female sadness. my outline is traced by it

recently, another woman, said let me inside your apartment just for a little while

recently i saw a picture from last summer of her laying on my bed back when my bed was on the floor

recently, another woman, said let me show you the way the sun sets from my windows

recently, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 105, women said let me fall into your lap.

and so they pour out of the windows and scale the tall buildings, plague the streets and crawl all over me

and i do everything to encourage them

an explosive tree

how even my fingers are tired and you
had oatmeal in your bathtub
birds chattering by your windows above echo park
a breeze pushing in
and the everly brothers singing something about kissing someone or something

when you said what i said
you have this knack for remembering things i said
and they're things i liked once saying
like a pleasurable radio station
you told me a story about your hawaiian cousin leaning out of the minivan window on hollywood blvd asking people on the sidewalks
what that star say?

waking up grateful and surprised

I can't really do anything these days without other people, maybe I never could.

I am 73 years old. I don't know how to make love anymore cuz I am missing the desire to do it

I was walking home from work and bumped into my two friends and they accused me of not being sad anymore and they were right

I made it. I made it older than I thought I would. I am 80 years old. I sit on a bench and I watch the birds float atop the water. I used to do these things as a younger man which is funny

I can run. I can fuck for hours. I can play tennis and I can breathe. My body does everything I ask of it. I am a living miracle

I am 82 years old.  Everything is second by second. My eyes blur the image but my trusty old heart knows the story so well. It beats on a couple more times and then says its quiet goodbye

when an old guy dies

he lived alone. his things were out in the hallway this morning. a tattered bookcase with bad books on it. the kind of bad books you find at the goodwill. there is likely a closed circle of bad books coming and going from the goodwill as the nearly-dead people who own them and buy them for a quarter each die and buy again and again. he likely died. what were they doing. they were renovating the dead mans apartment. it wouldn't be his apartment by the first of the month.

a morbid feeling along the crosswalk that passed upon arrival to the sidewalk

I know these women who try to look like stone. They are going through mud and want to look like stone.

I told this lover, unrelated to the women close to me looking like stone, i told her we know we are going to lose eventually and that's what makes our desire to keep surviving beautiful. That we keep trying even knowing we are going to lose. And i told her this because she has survived so much more than me and here she was a miracle over and over again a miracle

This is the place where women come to drink alone

The incandescent shimmer of muddy clear high end vodka. It doesn't have to be, it can be the cheap shit too.

Don't read the news. Don't read the news.

Women are leading the charge. Women are leading the resistance. Women are being what they wanted her to be and they are being her themselves.

Don't read the news, you came here to be, to be alone.

I look to the one to my right thinking about how martinis make me regretful of the feelings I no longer hold in my hands. I would love to tell you more about these feelings but this story is not about me. So I disappear into the warped reflection of myself in my glass.

This is the place where women come to drink alone.