9:09 PM *
I. among them

a rank festival.
back and forth.
bloody snout and neck, both the wolves and their breeders. they lick each other's snouts and necks when they get like this. they smile at each other when this happens.
they're killing normal people.
in city.
the city is old industrial and blown out. there is a sea of parking lots and small brick buildings between deserted warehouses with broken windows.

the coming and going of the breeders happens at dusk and dawn. i can never see them at night, only when it's daybreak, when they are licking, festival over for the night.
the wolves fight with people and kill them. the wolf breeders watch. they might be telling them what to do, silently.
like vampires, this animal class of people are apart from normal society.
like preying rednecks, indirect, in dress, dirty-hairy, stray blood dried on the cheek.

II. staying concealed

eventually, because i cannot watch forever, they discover me.
they notice i am not watching the fighting, but them. i am always noticed watching.
i move quickly. my feet and the air never fail me.
if i keep moving no one can get to me. i am different places.
i fly, jump, and am not bounded by gravity or time or speed.
yet i am afraid. but safe by running.
it's like work for me.

III. taking control

on the outskirts of the city, looking like the outer-outer-outer bronx, or queens, among used car lots, i see my employer's car, a large, blue, the1980 impala station wagon, slightly rusted and dusty, that he's always speeding around in.

put one foot on the hood and bend forward for a look through the windshield. it's my boss, lookng dazed and passed out. he starts to struggle to be awake when i say "oh my god" and i say his name, but he's doped or something. i can see where he's been by looking at him. the wolf trainers are on their way here and he's been kidnaped and drugged and left here for their animals.

suddenly a person is behind me, drawing near.

i skip on the hood and swing around to face her: a woman with short natty hair, in her fifties, with a vacant toothless grin, flannel work coat. she looks like a dog person, and i can tell what she's thinking.

she's thinking that i'm next.

i'm very afraid, and my throat clutches. she's doing that. but then i realize my power.

i can kill her, because i can move faster than her.

i pull out my gun and cock it and point it at her.

"get the fuck away from him or i'll blow you away." as i hold out the gun, i feel as if i've used it thousands of times, in situations not unlike this. i've been trained to. i must have. trained by many similar experiences. knowing what they think, and knowing it's them or me. life is so rarely like that and that makes me afraid too.

but it makes me free as well, something i can't think about while holding the gun, otherwise i'll do something rash. i need all the cunning i can get. i have a license to kill, given by the need to defend myself.

i can see myself getting my boss out of there, turning down the road, cold morning sun on my face, him somehow being towed along. avoiding the wolves and people, but i'm not sure ifi should be returning to someplace after it's over or staying to fight them.

but i'm caught in their world until the alarm rings, and i do return and fight.

and like a minx, i could never be caught by any wolf in close urban quarters, because i can move fast.

10.2.2001

10:14 PM *
"do you want a beer?"

i'm only eighteen. am i allowed to drink beer? a sound comes out. then sure, yeah.

"what kind?"

quick, think of a kind of beer. budweiser? this is saint louis, after all.

"i've got miller and corona"

miller

"you can take off your jacket if you want"

i had tossed down on the sofa's comforting white leatherette still clothed, lightly dripping, so as to convey how cool and at ease i was, not yet knowing that the best way to do this was by making myself comfortable without having to be asked to do so.

nate went into the kitchen, shuffling on whitish linoleum tiles, while i stumbled on the rug on my way to a little hardwood chair behind the sofa. it was the only one in the room. the wet october air seemed to fill this room, as if there were no glass panes in the bay window. i looked out onto the gray forsyth street; my walk here was the first time i'd walked this way. seconds passed slowly, listening to the gray rain, the mumble of the television, the shuffling in the kitchen. his appalacian accent hung in the air, company for me.

i sat down again, on the chair, just as nate brought my beer.

"i was watching the game. who do you think is going to win?"

quick, think of the name of the saint louis football team. shit. i don't know. i don't really follow football. then why are you here? i came to hear him talk, talk about poetry and feeling small even though he injures fellows on the rugby field once a week. why can't you move? drink slower.

he sat down on the sofa, put a leg out over the coffee table. his six-foot-two frame, toughened by years of rugby and women and drink, seemed to become a part of the beat-up furniture when he rested his limbs on their far reaches. it was his domain, and he slowly put each hand, foot, arm, thigh where it belonged. it was a long couch, and the only place i could comfortably sit, without his comfortable embrace, was at the far end; his arm was stretched over the middle.

"oh. we can watch baseball if you want"

i want to see your chest without your shirt. football's okay.

"okay. cool."

i want to marry you.

i sat at the far end of the couch. if i could only move a few inches toward him, if we could only do this differently.

"nate, grab me an mgd, willya?"

"yeah. want a dry shirt?"

"already got it."

6.30.2001

2:13 PM *
i don't know why i make myself write all this down, like i don't have enough shit to do today.

opened my eyes from sleeping this morning, well i thought it was morning, cuz i looked at the clock and it was 12:30 and i said OH SHIT then i thought OH SHIT I FELL ASLEEP!! because i didn't want to wake the kid in my bed up. i was supposed pick up tony at noon and wasn't planning on sleeping with my john but i guess i fell asleep. god, i NEVER fall asleep with them. these kids, i mean i'm a good looking guy, muscular, got a little hair on my chest that shows when i wear the wifebeater, nice dick that shows through my green cargos when i go commando, and i look good for guys looking for italian beefy puerto rican hairy new york yankee fan, but lately have been getting a lot of calls because of the bits of gray in my hair and beard, guys who are 28 and have a shitload of cash and want an older guy. like this one today.

his apartment was on 32nd and eighth, so i was close to mandy's apartment. i ran down eighth. fuck, i thought, if i'm late again, she'll kick my ass and never let me see him again. i'm so tired of that bitch because she yells at him so much about me. i got to 22nd street, hung a left, and buzzed. a few seconds and i hear her yelling something to tony about me and yelling fuck him and all that. banging doors, and he comes down the stairs. he never really looks at me except at my chest, i guess he's shorter but he doesn't look up anyway, and opened the door and said hi dad.

i asked him what he wanted to do and he said he needed to go to cvs for some shit for that bitch his mom (he didnt say it like that, but she is a bitch) and that he had to meet his friends at one. this made me mad as fuck, so i told him "well let's get this over with because i've got a lot of shit to do today too". he was kind of mad at me because i said that and so he didn't say much so i just started walking to cvs up the avenue. if he's going to play games with his dad because he was late, he'll get what he gives. he learns that shit from his mom.

he kind of asked me if i was okay, like he always does when he's sorry about doing shit like that, and he wants to know why i was late. but i wasn't going to tell him that i was late because of a job with some kid twice his age and he'd freak if i told him the guy liked my big dick up his ass and all that, so i didn't say much to that, just let's get this over with because i've got to get going too. i think he knows that i do guys for money, but he never has asked me about it.

we went to cvs and got the shit for his mom. god how could i ever have fucked her? i mean, i guess looks good and everything, but she turned out to be such a pain in the ass. i wouldn't let tony stay with her at all if i didn't have too, and i know if i take him now he'll end up like me. but she won't be hurt at all to see him go, just pissed because she can't be all up in mine if he's not around with her.

i get kind of weird about tony because he's growing up to look like me, because he's a guy, but he looks a lot like his mom. he'll be taller than his old man, he isnt now, and he's a thin gawky kid. he doesn't have chest hair like i did when i was that age, and he's got darker hair and eyes than me. he looks more like a puerto rican kid than i did, my hair being more reddish and my eyes green and light.

i paid for the stuff and told him to carry the bag. he picked it up, and we walked back down eighth. he kind of looked at me in the corner of his eye, and i kind of kept looking back at him, thinking about if he looked more like his mom or he was just a late bloomer, or if he was into women or guys, he never talked about that either. i said goodbye to him at the street, i punched his shoulder a little, he punched mine and left. then i looked at my watch it was 12:48. then i looked around.

5.30.2001

9:14 PM *
drop beat, so much control. it rains so damned much in this town, disco was never an option for us. can you believe we actually got used to hanging out in bars with jukeboxes, complete with damp tank tops and beer bottles at our jeans?

but i learned to speak different languages, and with our trips to europe, all that changed. oh, dance, us. and the time we met our favorite dj...

but the drop beat, leaving things out, saying the opposite of what you mean, that you are cold and steady, meaning precisely that you were in need of a lover and did too much coke, brings me back to those slow rhythms, the ones i know are deeper, the ones we listened to when we came home from josh's place, wet from the rain.

if i said something to you in that language, would you get it? la VIE en rose, la VIE en rose. her voice is so compelling, it captures my heart every time i hear it. someone with that much conviction only has something to share, only wants to persuade it's listener what's behind it. it's an outpouring that causes the same swelling in me. yes, my life too, our lives too! i don't care if it's the magic of recorded performance: i loved you the moment i told you so.

4.24.2001

10:06 PM *
Despite the number of times I've been up this way, I never get tired of cruising along here. Gliding along, I feel like I'm inside one of the countless films depicting it's powerfully winding lane, creating a layered seaside vista with shrubbery of coastal California perfectly welded to the aging asphalt. Or like I'm in one of the advertisements for cars. Cars gliding by like my tongue against the ridges of my upper mouth. Except that I'm actually in this film, this particular version of the pouring sun not recorded until now.

I'd like to think I went from there to here, but I'm just now idling at a stoplight, and I realize that I've seamlessly jumped to a hilly intersection, sitting at a red, in my car, sunroof down olympia, gone from breezy to unbearably stuffy in the sun. The seats are sweating and black. I lazily stroke my tummy with the stick hand. In fact, I feel like I've been doing this for some time, stroking the wet hair in the ridge around my navel, matting it back and forth. I haven't moved my other hand from the wheel. Feet on brake and clutch, hot down there.

A car at my left, I notice, looks a lot like mine. Actually, it is identical to my car, the same scratch on the right door, the same blue paint coming through, sunroof down olympia, shining too, hot too. Inside is someone who knows me. How I know I can't remember, but he is very big, taller than tall me, very muscular, hairy. I can somehow see his chest, even through his shirt is on and covers it all. I can see that it's hairy, brownish/black hair. Odd. I can see his chest, and the rest of his body is familiar to me too, discovered and waiting for more. His gaze is like mine, animal looking and knowing what it sees, except his holds a smile and an invitation, one that can be heard without him speaking. I can't move my mouth, but I can see where his glance falls, up the hill, up to a cabin surrounded by brush, brown/black overhang. His. His and mine, I've been there before. In fact, I'm beginning to think I go there every time I've driven up this road, from there to here, up there.

In bed, my hand is always on his chest, and I ask the question I always ask, me floating beside him in the air, this cloud of a bed, skins hot and cool, hard against him, my hair loose, his hair still black, his buzz cut still divine: "can I have some of the bull now?"

4.14.2001

12:05 PM *
we went to the funeral home yesterday for uncle forrest. aunt edna was there, and i would never had recognized her. she's been suffering from lou gehrig's disease for 12 years. normally people only live a few years with that. forrest wore himself out taking care of her, and finally died of old age.

when i think of forrest and edna, i think of them as an elegant couple. edna was always dressed nicely and her blond hair was always just so. forrest was a dapper dresser and self-assured. she was taller than he, but they carried it off without a care. edna played the organ so beautifully. they should have aged gracefully, not as they did.

we don't know what god has in store for us.

we took the pine tree out of the front yard. it was suddenly gone yesterday when i went home to pick paul up. surprisingly, the yard doesn't look bare, but cleaner, and nicer. that tree was just getting ratty looking. of course we have a large, bare circle of dirt in the front yard, but we'll get that taken care of as soon as they take out the stump, which should be today. they also trimmed the maple trees outside the patio door-they were getting too overgrown and needed to be thinned out.

love you both,
mom

4.8.2001

10:49 AM *
i love it here at the lake. lake erie sure has gotten cleaner over the years, much cleaner than when we used to do this with the grandkids in the summer. oh, those two. they are all grown up now, no time to visit and living so far. i miss them so much; just when you have the time to see them, they don't. especially the one in new york.

why doesn't he write more often? i know he is online a bunch. and we have email. i try to write when i can, but i just don't want to bother him much. it's so tempting to visit his website, how we found out he was gay oh those years ago. but i know he doesn't want us to read that; he never gave us the link to it. he said he would, but he didn't, which i know, in my heart of hearts, that he doesn't want us to go there.

i had to go to the store and buy some groceries because gerrie was out golfing today. some buns and some juice. got in the car, adjusted the seat. i hope my knee gets better. i was thinking about when we had princess, oh years ago, how she would jump right in the station wagon, on that little carpet we had in the back for her. such a pretty dog. this car is much nicer, we wouldn't let princess in the good car. we haven't had the old car in oh, about ten years.

seems like i've always got something wrong with me. nervous as a girl. then that car accident when gerrie and i were going out, i was almost killed. i still have the scar on my head. i hit my head on the seats. they made cars different back then, you could hurt yourself.

at the grocery store, i overheard a woman say something to her daughter. it's been so long since i said those things to anyone. i wish i could say them to our great-grandchildren. in line, i saw the enquirer, which read 'boy george has love child', which is so awful. it must run in the family.

at home, i was making sweet tea just like my son paul likes it.

then i was watching television. one of the grandchildren used to have a fit if he couldn't watch the show he wanted, some space show. now he barely turns it on. he must be really busy, i hope he doesn't work too much. i am going to get on the email to him tomorrow and tell him i hope he doesn't work too hard. a young boy like that needs to have some fun. but some safe fun, i worry about him so much being in new york. but he's a big boy, a young man, he can take care of himself now. i never feel like that though, i still remember him here.

4.7.2001

9:57 PM *
list of things to do today

scrape car. i thought i was scraping ice off the hood yesterday, but it was paint. my car is white. the heater won't work. my ass gets so cold when i drive, it hurts by the time i arrive.

drive to the gehry building see it happen, structure overlapping, emerging inspiration from the bones that get covered. bones look clumsy even though the skin won't. on the way run into a bunch of kids drawing on the sidewalk, free and overlapping, all looking like each other, no style yet. i love no style. when did i stop drawing like that?

enter gym. steel machines, moving bars, twisted cables, twisted muscle around forearms and chest. it's chest day. gym machines are only beautiful when you're using them. personal prosthesis. see a guy the my friend would like, see him every time i'm here, and i like him too, green mesh shorts with yellow stripe, tattoos on calves and forearms, stubbly hair, looks tough and straight. remember to write my friend and tell him what this guy's wearing today.

work out. chest. push ups to max out, out to a point where it's like i'm not there, my body has learned the action and i can think without it, slim, you could do it, you could be it...you gotta be like a rock-and-roll jesus with a cowboy mouth.

shower and smell clean. like soap, of all the things to smell like, one is irish spring like i wouldnt know to go to l'occitaine de provence and get something. but i'm not in paris, i'm in ohio, near the lake, taking a long hot shower till the cold goes away from my butt and feet. taking shower, washing off, quickly or slowly, is envigorating because i can do it, no loss of washing powers here!, always getting dirty and clean the same ways during winter.

drive home. on way to car unravel conversation passing between three people unpacking a car, woman saying "bear", man one saying "she doesn't like to let out the bear, so...", man two says "...bear, gone!".

write in blog. nothing to write this week, from my room, post commentary on art links. people will write me anyway, no matter what! check other blogs, nothing happens this early. up to other room.

struggle with the drawing, the painting, the structure, smell, blurry smell of what i'm trying to do. it's not beautiful because it's not ugly enough yet. too much in one painting. why haven't i yet learned to separate my thoughts? save some for later? kids can't do this either, i think.

reporter: "don't you think pop art is getting a little repetitive?" warhol: "um, yes."

paint, shower, paint.

twenty minute drive. even the paint on this fuckin 1984 corolla, rusting and patinaed, is doing a better job at ugliness, paint chipping at the corner of the door, the hood is blotchy and matte where the carbeurator is. plastic inside chipped and handles broken, corners of the dash missing, merged with unopened straws and napkins. composed clutter, mobile work of art.

library research for paper. when did i learn to write this stuff?!

check out books. libraries are old. gray computers in libraries are old, green CRTs are so old they seem liquid and like a movie background with one color that is invisible to the eye. keyboard dirty but with clean taped notes from the librarian, preserved felt tip ink stained underneath protective tape by dried water stain, on the keyboard. ink making visible the invisible tape glue lines, fissures in the desert, where everything is also brown, but the sun is out, it's not winter, there's no lake effect, your car will never rust or get stained by salt. if i could bury myself, it would be under earth, warm but at a constant temperature at a certain depth, cool to the touch, than be buried in this cold air until may. room of earth is quiet. or

fly to the sky. into the western blue, which i really believe isn't just an effect in pictures but is something you see, swim in blue air, flap my arms in the fluid hard till i get higher and warmer. warmest when i get to space, where it's not warm, where my car will never rust, and i'll be the most beautiful thing from earth, drawing.

drawing anything, redrawing constellations, a kids drawing with the stars, but no one up there will know, they will think i'm a genius and i'll be hailed as the king, queen, and prince of creativity, white on black and shining. kids on earth will know better. wait, who will be watching? is there blue or green? and how did water get on a library keyboard, anyway?

drive home get gas. watch for ice.

dinner with the folks. when did i move back in? mom says "how was your day, muffin?" and body keeps talking while i think mom! i'm not a muffin. unless you mean banana muffin and think about someone online who will get this joke. too bad they can't get it now, while i'm thinking it. don't write it down.

read books. books about art make making it worse and more difficult. i hate this shit. add hate this shit: two minutes of this.

read text. read all the blogs. read the new york times and village voice to take me there. read about paris.

remember favorite french words. coeur. cuir. mauvais. marais. gaultier. geronime.

read email. write email. use favorite words. never really sure what to say to these people; love them, but never get to relay to them what happened today; i split it up between all their different messages. no one reads them together. want to connect emails, connect the thoughts for them, but i think they get it, get what i'm doing. they talk to each other enough about it, sometimes.

write to-do list for tomorrow. next time on a bigger sheet of paper.