The day I almost died
So my mom has this "brilliant" idea to go out and chop down our own Christmas tree. And I'm all like hello it's December like I wanna walk through the woods looking for some stupid tree. It's not like they don't sell fake ones at the store. But noooooo she insists "it will be so much fun. We never do anything as a family any more" you know the whole guilt trip. So me and my stupid brother cram in the back of the family SUV and go to some stupid tree lot. But apparently none of those pre-cut trees were good enough for my mom who wanted it to be ultra fresh. So we had trudge all the way to the back to the cut your own. What a fantastic idea - my dad with a chain saw. Anyhow, by the time we manage to get back to these stupid trees I am already freezing. Teeth chattering. Goosebumps. The whole nine yards. By the time they pick a tree, which of course looks like every other tree on the stupid lot my lips are purple and I can't feel my fingers. I told my mom I was freezing to death and My mom just laughed at me and said "oh sweetie it is 40 degrees outside. You aren't going to die. But if you are that cold I guess you should have worn that winter coat I bought you" As if, I would rather freeze to death then be seen in that thing.
Hanging moon.
Nebraska. Interstate diner. Feels like a bad song. Kid behind the counter has glasses even thicker than mine. Greasy little prick's probably the one who called the cop. I paid for my coffee. I paid. Man like me gets the dick in public no matter where I go. The beard and the age, the backpack. I get it. No point in dancing around the obvious.
The little shit pile glances at the cop then talks at me while he wipes down the counter, "Cold as a fuck out there, mister. You got a place to stay?"
"I'll be alright."
"Close in 15," the cop says. Fat piece of fuck, this one, "And we can't have you lurking around here, buddy. Jail's closed for the night, too, just so you know."
He nods at the human shit behind the counter, smiles at him, walks out. Car door closes. He sits there. He'll be sitting out there in 15, too. The kid walks in back. Out the window there's a full, crisp moon, but it ain't no moon, it's a fuckin' burden. Time blurs. I'm sick. All my people are dead. The kid flips the sign in the window around and opens the door, stares at the fuckin' floor and waits for me to go.
Shower, stone, domestic violence.
I hit the bank and got the cash, drove to the house and carried everything to the place downstairs. The hotel last night was a bitch, literally. This couple was going at it all night, yelling next door, fighting, the door slamming shut, flying open, on and on until 5 a.m. The entire motel smelled liked weed, which was fine, it was legal here now, but for someone like me, a once-a-year stoner at best, I hadn’t made friends with the smell, I couldn’t embrace the burning tire odor. Dog shit all over the back lot of the motel, garbage strewn in front of the doors.
I got us fully moved in, fed the boy and stood in the shower, the high and perfect setting on the spout cleaning my flesh, my thoughts on the last month, and last night’s voices of domestic violence running off my shoulders and into the drain:
“BITCH, YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR MONEY AT! AH PAID THE MOTHERFUCKER SO HE WOULDN'T TAKE YO ASS TO COURT!”
“OH, FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER! I’M THE ONE MAKIN’ THE FUCKIN’ MONEY FO THE ROOM! YOU SUPPOSE TO BE THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ MAN!”
The slamming door, then another one of her screams:
“WHERE MY LIGHTER AT?!”
I felt the water move down my skin, and the last year of being out in the wind moved with it. I thought about the last book tour, my Australian girl, my diamond, really, the one who flew over and traveled the coast with me down California from Washington, to Vegas, to San Diego, to her departing flight from LAX. Six weeks of happiness, six weeks of beauty slated not to last, but to be ripped and torn from me, from her. We were the ghosts of each other now, she moved on and I moved on, which was healthy, it was essential. I counted back to the year when the word first found me with its tattoo, with its permanent mark. I was a young man, a cook in Tempe, my fingers weeping into the keys of my first typewriter, the bricks of the room bringing Hell onto the page, the reckoning of worth, the strength in pure solitude. As the water covered me there, I rested my foot back on the stone, and I felt the words start to grip me again, I felt the sentences strengthen, I felt the wind of words and the wind was the world, it reached from Mombasa to Montezuma, from the depths of Mars to mirror the Moon and flow back to Earth. We were all carbon, and the universe was carbon, there was nothing separate between us. I looked down at the floor unblinking, the water falling from my brow, and I remembered everything and nothing, and I remembered the loving eyes of my angel dog, Meg, my Border Collie-Blue Heeler girl, her electric soul and her bones in the ground. It would soon be four years since she left this place, since she left Chico and me behind to sift through all the things she knew, the things she took with her. I thought about the faces of the past, the ignorant faces on the jobs, the teeth of them, the look of them because they knew I hated them, they knew I didn’t share their fears, and they pawned me off to insanity.
I shook off the thoughts and killed the water. I dried myself and let the sorrow of those days go into the towel, the anger of them. Chico nosed his way into the bathroom and looked up at me, his mouth full of food, and I laughed.
Pull me down home.
Helena, I wonder if you were flesh, what you’d be wearing. I know your hair is long coal, and I know your eyes, already, are turquoise diamond. You usually surround me with ideals. I have a hard time thinking about you sexually, not because you have no body, but because your hand moves directly through my bones and holds my heart, and your eyes stare at me like songs would. To reduce you to sex is something I can’t afford.
It’s the dawning of a raw time, Helena. I can’t tell you how important you are to me. It’s not comprehensible. I know things have to work out if I am ever going to be seated in a soft chair with my music, your solar eyes resting beneath the keys, waiting for the right feeling to trigger the right sentence, so you will awake and pull me down home.
A page for the boy.
I can’t tell you the amount of
joy you bring to me.
the mornings with you next to me
the feel of your furry spine
against mine
I reach back and scratch your
little yellow ass
and I laugh
since picking you up off the streets of Glendale
when you were no bigger than your head is now
almost 9 years ago
you’ve been there for me through a lot,
through the deaths
and jobs and hours
and poverty
publishing deals
nightmares
book tours
and even times without
a real home for both of us.
It’s been a long and weird life for you, pal
and while I wasn’t always a perfect dad,
with the perfumed bodies taking your side of the bed
with all the days of you trapped inside while I wrote
or in the car while we drove across the States for
no other reason than to keep your old man sane
I hope that you continue to remember and live for
the good times
the morning walks, the songs improvised in your honor
the kisses on your head
the scratches on my face and glasses and
sometimes even my eyeball
from your Fritos-smelling paws
you’re that beautifully impossible to find one in several million
and I love you more than a
page can say.