“So, how’s it.”

She looked at him hunched forward in the seat, forearms on the counter. He hadn’t taken his coat off and it was bunched up around his upper arms.

“Eh hey. It goes, yeah.”

“You’ve been better.”

He heaved himself back against the stool back and looked up at the ceiling tiles.

“It’s like, it’s like everything else. I got some stuff going on. I have to get my stuff together.”

“You and everybody else.”

She walked along the counter straightening bottles: ketchup against mustard, salt against pepper. She replaced an empty bottle of Tabasco and tossed the empty in her left hand a few times, and hefted it, reflectively and slowly.

“You always have some girl you’re after. That’s what this is, right?”

“Well sure.”

“So she doesn’t like you? Or what.”

“I quote: emotionally or otherwise unavailable. What she says she is. Her deal, her explanation.”

The waitress backed up in mid step, setting down the ketchup to lift a plate from the cook’s hand and slide it down a few spots.

“Chicken-fried steak, mash potato, what else can I get you huh? Okay, you just holler.”

Turning back to him, left hand on her cheek:

“So that just means no? Or what does that mean.”

“I am not the authority, ma’am. That’s her words and then basically we didn’t talk any more that night.”

“I’ve never said that to anyone. I’m available or I ain’t, or I don’t like you.”

He picked the coffee cup in both hands and rolled it back and forth, and didn’t talk for a minute or so. Up above the tiles, somewhere, there was Boz Scaggs going on.

“People get into the psychology talk when they don’t want you and they don’t know why,” he said. “If you’re going to let someone down easy? You know? Like the nice way. You just use a little psychology talk.”

“Sure. I’m not into psychology, though. It’s just talking for money. You want a warm up.”

“Yeah.”

A relaxed evening at home was followed by good conversation with realitylost at her animal-filled home. Who needs TV when you have a big chocolate lab, a smaller dog, and two ferrets going at it? Then to Diedrichs where I chatted with nickjb and Don, who was unexpectedly interesting. The rain had washed away all the rest of my friends, however; the place was dead. Nicotine, caffeine, and arguments about music and books; a good time had by all.

I wasn’t done so off to Ruba, where I ran into Jared and also the world’s most dangerous 15-year-old girl, with whom I had a good yakfest about Dickens versus Jane Austen as high school literary material. Also watched people play pool for an hour or so, which I enjoy tremendously.

Capped off the evening with a dram of Macallan Cask Strength.

Where the hell was everybody, though?

He came out of the bathroom and said “that’s heroin” and then he hit me on the back of the head. It’s the last thing you’d expect from someone who was raised that strictly. My dad was always very practical; he was a test engineer. What’s an hour north of Sacramento? She is the most dangerous girl. All along I said: sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. But I was wrong. She went back to Kansas because she said everyone here was trying to get something out of her. What do you have back there that will really put hair on my chest?

He said he was just working really hard, and tell you what, that guy has never, ever, in our entire relationship, ever lied to me. Period. I think I’m that geek in black that she keeps around for when she’s sick of the pretty people. I told him it was understandable he wanted to go back to his comfort zone but unfortunately his comfort zone is fucking alcoholism.

If it weren’t for books I’d of been a goner. I can’t do that. All I can do is spend time with people I like and try to be close to them. Thing is, she told me she’s always obsessive about something or other, so I wrote it off.

Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me too, but she denies it.

unrequited; damnable; charismatic; spiritual; inexplicable; undesirable; narcoleptic; posttraumatic

Tell me, what is the bane of your life?

THE PANTHER
Jardin des Plantes, Paris

The bars go by, and watching them his sight
grows tired and fails to grasp what eyes are for.
There are a thousand bars, it seems to him;
behind the thousand bars there’s nothing more.

The supple gait of swift and powerful steps
pacing out its circle on the ground
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which a great bewildered mind is bound.
Yet now and then the curtain of the pupil
silently parts: a picture goes inside,
slips through the tightened limbs, and in the heart
ceases to be, like something that has died.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by my father from the German in 1967, overnight, after a request from a colleague.

“The Brass Rail in Kansas and the Rusty Nail in Iowa were two of the many bars which witnessed the flipping of bottles, cocktail style.”

Have another beer with Chewie, Jimmy.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040102_632.html

“The names of six passengers were similar to those of terrorist suspects provided by the FBI, prompting the French government to halt the flights, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Pierre Debue, director of the French border police, said one name on the list turned out to be that of a 5-year-old child. The Wall Street Journal on Friday said two other suspected terrorists turned out to be an elderly Chinese woman and a Welsh insurance agent.”

Tuttle? Buttle?

Courtesy acb: A russian expat journal presents the darkest shade of black humor. Enjoy the bitters: http://exile.ru/181/181010100.html