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“Adventures with the Road Runner”

The thing that surprised me most about moving back home was the overwhelming gush of esteem and compassion I encountered from the people here. Still, kitchen work was my line, and it made you thirsty. My late-night bar game usually consisted of the sports bar and then this little dive in the downtown of the next town over, for a live cover band.

The little dive was the kind of place that didn’t have any craft beer on tap and sometimes was the home to great acts of violence. Just a couple of months ago, actually, someone was stabbed in there, late at night on a Friday night — no fatalities occurred, but, somewhat troublingly, there was also no news story about the event available anywhere, online. Life was starting to seem like a crazy video game of constant deadly threats and a finite amount of “lives.”

Mandy was one of the bartenders there. She was pretty in a magazine cover sort of way, and maybe even in a porn star sort of way, with a very sexy body. Out of all of them, she had a beauty that most intimidated me, like getting served a really expensive plate of food that was still too hot to eat.

Eventually, though, much of the outside fanfare dissipated, and Mandy and I ended up forming a casual but pleasant friendship. She had this puzzling way of seeming kind of promiscuous and edgy, but also sort of nerdy. She’d show up to bartend in a shirt that said “Hogwarts,” for instance, and I had to confess to having no idea of what that was, she then filling me in on its connection to the Harry Potter series.

At some point, word got to me that she had three kids, so I sort of tacitly, with myself, made a pact to never date her. It ended up kind of being moot, anyway, since around this time, my personal free time became just annihilated by writing projects, from fiction, to a non-fiction book about music I was working on, to my everyday blogging practices, which involved listening to an unwieldy amount of music every week, both good and bad.

All the while, though, Mandy steadily kept bartending there, exuding an alluring dynamic of personae, in the meantime, and even being miraculously nice and smiling to the customers, like this one jacka** who’d lost his debit card and kept trying to yell at her about it. One of the cooks who worked late nights there, a pretty overweight dude with a scruffy beard, would talk to her in a pretty much incessant stream, or so it seemed, if he didn’t have a food order to make. She seemed to possess this limitless amount of patience, through this, standing there smiling and nodding, and issuing nothing but the most benevolent disposition, through all his chatter. And, of course, there were scarier characters than him to deal with in there, pretty much all the time.

The beat seemed to go on, anyway. One thing was for sure: Mandy had the prettiest laugh. And she’d laugh often, and smile often, perhaps stoned, but all the while manifesting this sort of little-girl identity that made you want to bear-hug her, and safeguard her against all the evil things in this world.

One of the last few times I had her as a bartender, she was wearing yoga pants, which seemed pretty out-of-character, for her. Her default was way more tomboyish, it seemed, like loose jeans, or whatever. These pants, anyway, were hunter-green, and showed off a posterior that would definitely get any guy staring. None of us really batted an eyelash. Yoga pants were pretty much the default around Michiana. Actually, I was surprised to see that female Notre Dame students even more them to class. They really didn’t ban those on campus for non-working-out activities?

Anyway, it was another night of Mandy and I hitting on each other, having a great time, me making her laugh at a very pleasing rate, and that cook dude even interrupting us pretty frequently, to seek attention. As always, Mandy was impeccably congenial and cheerful, even through the mediocre behavior of scary men around her. And with me, she wasn’t really my woman, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I was lucky to be a man and be alive and get good cheer and attention from this gorgeous girl, who might have been at this time about 36 (I was 41). It was just marvelous.

At one point, that night, Mandy came back from a smoke break. And I swear to God her butt looked skinnier. I probably seem like the biggest pervert on the planet, don’t I? But then, they invite us to look at it. That’s how I thought of the situation.

The very last time I had Mandy as a bartender, I was very surprised to see her not return my “Hey,” after I’d sat down — she made eye contact with me, but didn’t smile or say anything, just tending to somebody else’s drink and walking away, before finally coming back to me, with what seemed like a mocking look in her eyes. She was rail-skinny, visibly about 20 pounds lighter than she’d been three weeks before, the last time I’d seen her. When I saw her expressions, then, I couldn’t even believe my eyes. Her smile had been completely truncated, replaced with this strange, old-lady kind of scowl, which seemed like the ephemeral groundwork of frustration which then, itself, couldn’t even really come to fruition within the miasmic madness of her present mind state. Almost immediately, I made the conclusion that she’d been doing drugs, and something hard. I hoped she hadn’t actually been shooting heroin into her veins, but with the amount of weight she’d lost, and her eerie inability to smile and make any expressive face, I wasn’t ruling it out.

I walked out later that night and felt like Mandy was pretty much a stranger to me. It was a cold, desolate, ominous feeling, but at the same time, the kind of reality that life seems to provide in pretty full plenty, on this planet. It was the same, in a sense, as dealing with any person who really isn’t friendly, any person who’s been driven to an uncomfortable place by this life such that disallows for any mirth on their part, any ability of theirs to make friends with you, or even put themselves in your predicament whatsoever. It was the same as all the people you meet on the streets, in stores, in restaurants, who are just strangers by trade, and who will always remain strangers, to you, and to everyone, no matter what you might try to do to prevent it.

Mandy was just one bartender. Still, I felt the weight of her predicament on me, and it seemed so sad. She’d had this sweetest way of laughing when I said something, like a mouse squeaking, but in a good, almost sexy way, a really feminine way. My mind raced for some sort of solution — rehab, counseling, methadone clinics, anything to get Mandy back, clean, and relating in such a kind way to the public, as she had been doing.

And then it hit me. That’s what she was doing and it wasn’t working for her. What we’re trying to call the solution, the return to her status quo, bartending in that downtown hole, getting scowled at, seeing other girls in yoga pants, getting interrupted by fat cooks in Colts t-shirts, hearing cover bands belt out “Get Lucky” — it just wasn’t good for her. Her bar would get crowded, shoulder-to-shoulder. She’d be right in the center of it, money raining down on her. But she was still unhappy and I wondered if some of it might have been my fault. Truth be told, I had this pretty-much senile habit of hanging out in bars all the time, getting conversation from beautiful girls and then never attempting to get involved with them, or even get their numbers, or anything. She’d been driven to hard drugs by ostensible success, in life, which of course was probably even more heartbreaking than someone stooping to that level on account of poverty and destitution.

I mean, I didn’t know what it was like being a girl. And I didn’t know why Mandy was so nice to that bastard who kept yelling at her when he’d lost his debit card and to that fat cook who interrupted her.

And I didn’t know why we had to live this life amidst so many boarded-up buildings, so many beloved, local restaurants that failed, so many atrocities nationwide, worldwide, so much killing, dying and loss. Our loss of Mandy, finally, just felt like one more natural occurrence in the world — like an 11-year-old girl wearing yoga pants at a high school basketball game, like another school closing, like another four-degree, icy, slippery winter day, on which we were required to still go through all our motions as if everything were fine. The world spat fire and the world spat dust and we took and made the best of it, each of us, probably, in our private mental nooks, living a litany of lies, akin to stepping stones we used to circumvent reality, to usher in a song to support our morale, though not a communal gesture, and hence the less for devolved, coon-show solidarity.

“Your Private Life is Public Now”

Like men on a chess board,

Your skin and hair form a nationalistic demarcation,

Light,

Dark,

With your glazed-over mind,

Discontented and inattentive,

Feuding with the next moment in

Deferent disbelief.

.

You have shrouded yourself in chemicals,

20 pounds skinnier,

Conferring

Again and again

With that moment when you lost all hope

In a maze of knife-wielding knights and rooks.

“I’m Strangely Not a Recovering Addict”

On this sunny day,

Per your summoning,

All of the cats in the world

Are piled in Pinhook Park

In one giant mountain of

Fur, claws, paws and

Eyes full of bewonderment

At their own

Furry little predicaments.

.

This is the end of the world and

I’m watching it with resignation,

Hoping that for you

It contains some truth

To set you floating into the night

And away from the price tag Christmas

That galloped like a gazelle,

Backwards down the empty calendar.

“The Weather Report Comes”

The buildings are large,

Apparently meeting code inspection,

100 miles west

From where we sit in northern Indiana.

.

Here,

Drab greys

Inform the day

Amidst boarded-up,

Dusty buildings and

Stomping, armed madmen,

.

We acknowledge the giant city

Sitting Southwest of Lake Michigan,

We read restaurant menus,

We shower,

Get dressed,

Put on necklaces,

Cuss at vehicles and

Rant endlessly about dialysis,

.

Then

Encountering the

Sponsored message from the big city:

“Monday will be sunny with a high of 32.”

.

The day

Had a number, too,

But that doesn’t really matter.

“Waiting for the DJ”

In the bar

I’m working

And people kind of just glide in

Like drops of water falling.

.

All of a sudden

There’s a black dude drinking IPA and

Looking really occupied

Tending to some technological gadget.

.

Then,

Out of nowhere,

The music comes,

The cutting edge in hip-hop,

Soul,

.

Stuff in general that

A black dude drinking craft beer

On a bar in a Sunday would be putting on.

.

I start to think,

.

Maybe this guy’s a genius,

.

But then I notice that he’s got a laptop with which he’s using a mouse.

.

My sexy bartender’s boyfriend,

Who’s half-black, gets him talking and

He talks a healthy, robust stream for an hour straight,

Acting, somewhat, as if C-SPAN is there or if

He has the potential to initiate a significant change in society

By blabbering in The View on a Sunday.

.

Well, he brought the noise,

It was a time for noise,

And a lot of LSD intake,

A lot of incoherent mental meandering and

A lot of technological gadgets

Must go into

Being the DJ

In The View

On a Sunday.

“For Eyes Locked in a Stable”

You are threatened

By the ingenuous, big picture itself,

A predicament so asinine in your

Compulsive combat of my simple,

Innocuous statement,

A diseased condition

Which has you defending the world’s

Monochromatic functioning

As if it were a closed circuit of robotic reactions,

As if the universe were some sterile terrarium

Created by Turner/Time Warner and

Rendered for the purpose of you

Therein

Receiving finite, mundane messages to

Assimilate you to your comrades and

Set you fitfully crying to

The next new day.

“Adjudication, Pt. II”

I am watching

Like a practical joke

The humanity of Logansport, Indiana

Restart the wheels and

Reenter the functionality of society

On January 2,

Juxtaposed with the lake

Proviso of any number of mishaps,

So why should it be surprising

When they wield homicidal dispositions

Toward me, when they

Endorse a president

Who devalues human rights

And health care?

.

We aim low

And our prizes are low

And your prize

Is the discontinuation of me

As the weather laughs and fluctuates

Akimbo into the abyss.

“Paying for Black Tea in Blood Milliliters”

It was always a melee

Of female beauty

Working in Indianapolis and Carmel,

Going in at 5 a.m.,

Vomiting into the trash can and

Seeing the day

Shoot by like chrome airplanes

Which were like splinters into the eyes of

People on health sheets and so

I see the gamut of humanity as I

Didn’t need anything

But incurred teeth to my neck

Of those who did

And

If I ever get any power

I’m going to give these people something

But I don’t know what,

As I sidestep the incisors and

Point a proud eye

At our paradoxical species.

“Shredded Sanctum”

In one more vista of yoga pants,

In one more shadow

Of a frantic Black Friday shopper,

In one more traffic jam,

D’Angelo Russell decides he wants to join

The Lithuanian national team.

.

His rejection is met

In the world at large,

Under honking horns,

Amidst shrieking babies,

On the jet stream of

Ravenous capitalistic fury

.

As the nation

Braces for a “silent night”

And shuts its blinds and curtains

With alacrity,

Like a mouse hurrying for the end.

 

“A Gilded Venture toward Eternal Austerity”

I hated the buzzing, electrical lights in the room and I hated the heat emanating from the vents, providing us with gratuitous, grotesque comfort. I wanted pain. I wanted to see the end of the road. At this point, I couldn’t envision it, so I just sat in the room, miserable, waiting for everything to burning down, waiting for the bottom to be the top and the top to be the bottom, again.

The rash of human malevolence had hit me. For this reason, I felt like nothing was working.

My grandmother sat with a vacant, half-obliging expression of disdain, watching the TV. We’d all eaten. There was nothing left to do but engorge ourselves with entertainment, indulge in the shortcomings of the lesser beings on the TV, whether or not they’d initially been conceived as that.

I knew girls didn’t have any hidden answer to everything. They grasping at straws just like us, patiently, vacantly awaiting the next ephemeral, slipshod conclusion, or nugget of entertainment, to worship temporarily.

Outside, the snow stagnated in cold, relentless frigidity. Most of it had turned to ice, making the roadways a foreboding expedition.

My grandmother lived next to a bridge that went over a set of train tracks. The tracks were home to the Am-Trak train, which ran from Chicago to Detroit, and everywhere in between, including her quaint Michigan town. On this particular night, the trains even seemed to be crying, from the dormancy of humanity, from the ready-made sterility of our everyday lives, which come prepackaged to us for our mindless consumption. Well, Christianity would teach us that we’ve lived an eternity of sin, already. At this point, it was about a 50/50 as to whether our grandmother would successfully drag us to church, the next morning. All of the masses seemed the same. A ritual was something repeated, to ensure a result, hence suggesting that said result had been, in some right, successfully achieved, as a reaction. Perhaps, though, some rituals were just a sublimation of the self, just an antidote, like a blank canvas onto which the individual can paint any paradigm, or any shifting conception of him or herself, for that matter.

In time came bloodshed. It tasted metallic, it tasted clear, we ate it with our morning breakfast and coffee, we breakdanced to it, we wore it like a parka which kept us warm on nights of numbered days on the calendar.

I grew up with a cat. It was a complete hellion when we first got it. My mom almost gave it back.

Cats are real funny — like ha-ha-funny and also strange-funny. One time I saw it looking at a blank wall, glancing back and forth, along the wall, in a potent state of zeal and suspense, as if a bunch of other stuff were occurring, on the wall. Another time, out in Colorado, I found myself lounging next to it, after a work day. It just lay their still, and even silent, not purring very loudly, almost like a slug would. I sank into the moment. There was nothing going on on the wall. Blood had been shed. Bodies lined the death camps and floorboards. We were all hurling toward death, in a miasma of finite colors and shapes, little whips, cracking, telling us who we are, sounding their vituperative song into the night, to die, and to be laughed at in another form, eventually, by a blind, inadvertent cat, seeking the mountains.