ROTATIONS
Chapter One: OCEANS
Blake became Roman on March 26, 2005.
“Hi, Row man,” greets Max, the barkeep at Oceans.
Blake had painted over the B and the N of a BROWN sweatshirt in retaliation for the university rejecting him into their precious graduate school. He regrets buying the thing before the admittance decision. Row this, fuckers. Now the brown pullover features white letters R O W across the chest. He enjoys the way it alludes to row row row your boat… merrily merrily…life is but a dream. A good drinking song.
Max’s christening of “Row Man” and the ensuing explanation of the sweatshirt is the kind of expected unexpected informal entertainment you get in a neighborhood bar. I had been Max-branded myself a few weeks earlier when I entered wearing a Brady jersey. Now I’m Brady while at Oceans, which Max points out when introducing us. Within an hour the renaming experience has induced Roman and me into a budding friendship, built around beers, sports, and disappointment.
“She’s married,” I repeat his announcement, pondering it, a swizzle stick of information to stir into our buddy brew.
“You can’t control who you fall in love with,” he says, “She’s poetry and kindness.”
“You mean -- poetry and blindness.” The sarcasm pops out like a giant soap bubble.
“Wait, let me get this down,” says Roman, graduate school writing prospect. He grabs a napkin from beneath his pale ale, mutters and scribbles, “you are poetry and kindness; woe is me in blindness.”
“Funny, huh?” he admits, “The words and the situation.”
“Blindness—that’s overused,” Max says while delivering the next round, “-- sight impairment doesn’t mean you can’t see the truth.” Max, the politically correct, bi-focal barkeep and literary traffic cop.
“True, true. But he’s dealing with metaphors, Max,” I say, then turn to Roman, “Do you have your poetic license? Show Max your license.”
Roman gives Max a five. “That should do it.”
Max, who’s not in a particularly good mood tonight, takes the money and Roman continues writing, absorbed, “She is metaphor, she is perfect metaphor, to the…,” he stares out, blankly, “What’s a word for, word for something to pass off...”
“Like a password?” I say craning toward the work-in-progress.
“Password, yes … she is perfect metaphor, a password to...”
“…the door, ignore, the shore,” I rattle on, then take a good gulp.
“Core! A password to the core. She is perfect metaphor, a password to the core.” Roman slides the pen to the side, picks up the napkin with its fragile, almost sacred text, pauses, and then reads in a soft voice filled with unrequited queasiness.
she is poetry and kindness;
woe-is-me in blindness.
she is perfect metaphor,
a password to the core.
We raise our glasses, salute each other, and down the remainder of the cool drafts. Our twelve year age difference has made no difference in our understanding of each other. But now I feel obliged to slide some advice his way. Writing to an apparition has its limits. “Roman, just tell it to her straight.”
“What?” he says without acknowledging the obvious.
“Why are you writing this?”
“No way. She’s married. We’re friends, co-workers, that’s all.”
“So?” I’m waving two fingers at Max. Saloon sign language.
“I’m avoiding her.”
“Avoiding?” The newly arrived mugs drool with foam. The glass is salivating and sweating and making me thirsty. “Avoiding what?”
“I’m avoiding the knowing, avoiding the disappointment. Distance. I don’t want to be just friends anymore.”
“You can never have enough friends,” I say to my new Saturday friend.
He stops in the middle of a macho chug, “I’m too nice around her.”
“Too nice?”
“Yeah – I give her a smile, a nod, a passing glance, something to mirror feelings. But she’s a taker, a receiver, you know, not a giver. So I know. She’s got this picture of friendship, and that’s it. Nothing else to develop.”
“Friends beyond the lens,” I say, inspired, “… write that down.” I had been in a poetry contest in first grade – flower is pretty, so is kitty. Mommie still has it on her wall.
“Friends , lens… good. I keep having this fantasy she’ll walk into Ocean’s and that will be that.”
We both take a cursory glance through the murky waters of Oceans. There’s about twenty people here -- a few barstool guys watching a basketball game, a booth filled with women engrossed in relationship chatter (surprise?). Three couples murmuring to each other in their separate booths. Roman and I occupy the end of the bar inhaling beers.
“She’s not here, Roman. Not many fish tonight.”
“Some don’t want to get caught,” he says, drinks, and adds, “Some are already caught.”
Max is nearby making a margarita, “Now,” he says, “the ocean – that’s a metaphor. It may appear calm and serene, wavy and beautiful and colorful, but who knows what’s going on below.”
We click our empty glasses, saluting Max the muse and the one-step behind barkeep. He raises an index finger (saloon sign for be right there).
Roman has resumed writing. “beautiful, wavy, serene,…I can’t take this game.”
“Which one?”
“The friendship game -- it means I have to lie, cover-up, be dishonest with the very person who’s inspiring me to open up wholly. Love is honesty, truth.”
“It sure is,” says Max hearing Roman’s last line while dropping off our replacements, then scooping the $5 bill and empty glasses in one sweeping move.
“Roman, experience tells me,” I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but “ -- romance is fantasy, flights of fancy, and it’s not real unless it’s shared.” I left the comforts of my steady girlfriend of three years for what I thought was a better, more passionate relationship, and ended up with nothing, except this steady Saturday evening date with Oceans.
“I love the way I feel when I’m around her. I feel at home, relaxed, lucky…” he says. “Can you die from desire?”
“Maybe you need to get laid.”
“It’s not that. I have casual sex with an ex once in awhile. But that makes me feel like crap because I know what I want and I can’t get it. It’s like substituting the Expos for the Red Sox.”
“Or the Bills for the Patriots.”
“Here, here!” we say in unison and toast our splendid success. We’re knocking ‘em down quickly tonight. This off-season has been a drag. It’ll never be as good as last year.
I’m feeling bloated, but empty. To know what you want but you can’t get it. Heartache. Shards of heart are breaking loose from their temporary moorings, spreading unevenly inside my head. My version of the R O W sweatshirt: L O V E across the chest has been reduced to just O. Suddenly I’m hurting and the beer isn’t working. Boarded up feelings have broken out, the kind that haunt you down in dreams. To desire someone so much and not be able to connect. I feel it necessary to order a couple of shots of tequila. Max complies instantly.
“To love and loss.” I say bravely.
“You said it bro!” salutes Roman.
And down the liquid heat goes. It reminds me of Listerine. This crap loosens the emotional plaque.
Roman sets us up with double shots of tequila. We toast and down the shots swiftly, followed immediately by deep cooling breaths. It’s like getting CPR from a dragon. As I head to the restroom there’s a transformation going on, a coming-to-life, rumblings, a crack in the thick brick wall of restraint. How quickly gravity changes, scars open, words loosen. Retarded heart. Dyslexic desire.
Roman greets me upon my return: “I warm in her smile, am kissed by her eyes, am hooked beyond reason, reeled by and by.” He knows he’s jotted down something worthwhile. He winks reassuringly. There’s another tequila double waiting.
“Retarded heart. Dyslexic desire. Write it down.” I command.
“You’re falling behind, pal,” he says pointing to his empty shot glass.
I salute the gesture and force the killer liquid down again.
“Let’s look…” I hear myself say in a wounded voice as I reread his scrawling of repressed feelings. There’s a weird sound and light distortion that makes me both anxious and incredibly sad.
Roman says, “What started out as a little monkeying around, some flirty-flirty – then – now I feel like an or-rang-a-tang is trapped in my chest-all-mighty.” He’s slurring.
“Got it. King Kong clobbered me last time out.” The confession feels good. But poor Roman is looking pathetic, so I say, “Suppose she does have equal feelings for you…”
His face lights up as if offering a dying man his last wish.
“And suppose she acts on it. What then? Sneaking around, lying, sex in the shadows. Then she confronts her separated-from husband, she’s got real love, for a change. And change it is. Divorce? Kids in crisis, kids hating you for spoiling their home. Lawyers and lawsuits…”
“Kids? What kids?”
“Never you mind. After the love blast recedes, she’ll see the destructive path –poetry and blindness won’t seem so beautiful, and when romance sinks that serene ocean will pull you under into a very scary cesspool. I know!”
“Sorry to hear that.” He’s not so sorry because he starts laughing suddenly. Again says, “Sorry, sorry…” He pounds the counter as if nailing down some great thought.
“What?” It’s amazing how you can never know anyone.
“I’ve just realized. Sex comes first. Then truth.”
“Don’t forget about food,” says Max who has appeared without a signal.
“Food, sex, then truth. Food and sex are natural urges and necessities. Truth is a man-made thing-a-ma-jig. But sex comes before truth.”
“What?”
“Sex comes before truth – that’s why people lie about it all the time!”
“Good point,” says Max, the refill man and truth-seeking cheerleader, “You guys are getting a little loud, okay?”
Roman’s gone off to another world, another dimension. “Maria. Maria Leone,” I say softly, well, quieter than Roman’s outburst, “I thought we had it, the real thing. Then the reality of her divorce arrived. She couldn’t go through with it. A mother’s basic instinct is to protect her children, two kids, two adorable kiddos. And I loved her and them – that’s all -- her almost-ex husband’s a decent father, but no lover. That’s why affairs are so powerful -- living with someone tends to kill off romance.” I’m getting uncontrollably animated, “Romance is mystery, intrigue, the unknown, not sameness and comfort. Fuck. Motherfuck!”
This calls for triple tequila. Wow. Now we’re germ free with third degree burns in the mouth, throat and guts.
“How come you never talk about it?” he blurts.
“Because,” I say with intoxicated intensity, “the Sox and the Patriots are doing better… than me.”
“So, what’s going on with--”
Alcohol is a depressant. Add Maria... there’ll be a heartbroken drunkard soon. “I love her.” The word comes out so passion perfect I sense I’ve wasted such a zinger on Roman.
“Really?” he says sloppily.
“Let me give you an accurate picture -- the Scream, you know that distorted scream, the painting, that’s me. Mona Lisa – the painting -- that’s she.”
“Lisa, Pisa,” his says, writing, “lean, leans…”
“Linger no longer, my friend.”
“At least you know she loves you, or did have feelings,” he says with a bit of sympathy that’s pissing me off, “I’d at least like to know that.”
“Maybe it’s better not to know. It keeps things more pure and more passionate,” I say with the wisdom of heartbreak and tequila, “You can’t lose what you never had.”
Roman finishes his $2 house draft special and points to, and heads toward, the men’s room. Men need room, you know. Too bad there’s only a sink and toilet in there. Should have a desire machine -- put your money in, get what you need, then move on…
Maria. God damn it. My glass is suddenly empty. I signal Max-a-million-in-one and notice that there’s a dirty-jawed unshaven Red Sox capped creature staring out from behind the rows of lined up whiskey. It’s a shooting gallery and the main target looks to be a pathetic caricature of a wasted loser. It is me. Me in the mirror. Me is joined by another like-minded cap-crowned patron embossed with W O backward R.
I turn dizzily to see ROW man looking buoyant as he attempts to mount the rotating bar stool. The urination went well.
“Suppose she does have mutual feelings,” he says dreamily, giving up on mounting the unstable stool, “I love her and her kids, I would do anything for them – our kids -- I would have no trouble being a parent to them. I’ve thought about this and it shows to me how much I really care about Brenda, about wanting to be with her. All – the- way!” That was a little bit loud.
“You make it seem so simple,” I whisper, “it’s not. …Brenda, huh?”
He’s one full beer behind but does a great job in immediately evening the score. Now I need to piss and can’t remember if I have or haven’t.
The room is warping in wondrous ways and I have to hold the edge of the sticky bar. Roman’s sad scribbles are screaming for attention. Suddenly I’m screaming, “Hey! You want a poem??”
There is polite feigned excitement coming from the gaggle of women hunched over in the nearby swaying booth. I grab Roman’s script before his outstretched claw can undermine my performance. He looks embarrassed, drunk, and optimistic. A boozer.
“It’s not finished,” he says, as if anyone in this joint gives a holy hootin' holler.
I announce, “Friends, Roman, and country Max, Listen up:
Ode to Love
Oh retarded heart, oh dyslexic desire,
Bring it on!
I warm in her smile, am kissed by her eyes,
am hooked beyond reason, reeled by and by.
Bring it on!
Someone else is shouting “Bring it on!” as I grab the next napkin.
The Scream meets Mona Lisa; love lean leans like Pisa,
From fire to freeze; flat tired and calloused knees.
Bring it on!
More echoes of “Bring it On!”
She is ocean, beautiful wavy, serene,
An unfathomable mystery floating dreams.
Bring it on!
“Bring it On! Bring it On!” rings out across the rumbling room.
She’s poetry and kindness; woe-is-me in blindness.
She is perfect metaphor, a password to the core.
Bring it on! Bring it on!
I can linger no longer; I must sing her this song’er.
I’m true and tried, titillated and tongue-tied,
Even if it makes me suicide.
Bring it on!
room : Bring it on!
me: Bring it on!
room: Bring it on!
room: Bring nit the fuck on! Yeah!!
room : Yeah!!
Hoots and hollers. Everyone’s in-synch and on cue with the last Bring it On! Success. Evangelistic success. I fumbled a bit with the stupid napkins and had to adlib here and there and the Bring it on! chorus part – it’s just what the damn thing needed... This is easy shit. Impounded profanities are barking for attention.
“I’ve another,” I’m shouting, “-- shards of heart breaking apart – MARIA-MISERIA! -- FUCK IT ALL GOD DAMN IT TO HELL FELLA-la-la-la!”
My screams have unleashed Max like a mad dog who has come around the bar bend and is escort-dragging me out the door. He won’t allow tourette-like outbursts of swearing or demeaning debauchery. Oceans is not a vomitorium for obscenities.
Roman and I will need to surf the wavy streets toward our respective residences through thick gray gauze of what appears to be fog or alcohol poisoning. But first I steady and relieve myself against a telephone pole while Roman tumbles overboard off the curb, says something about living in Frisco and earthquakes and 1989 World Series. This launches another round of prolific profanities -- I go right into that motherfuckin’ magnificent come from three games down to annihilate the asshole Yankees and that series sweet suckin’ sweep! And those super Pats! – what powerful potent pricks! Fuck! We are winners!!! …
“Ahhh!” Roman screams at a whooshing car, a near-death experience which he pauses to muse over --
There was an approaching wave-like roar,
a great white light
a sudden sickening thud,
then Roman, no more.
Not!
You missed me you stupid sonovabitch!
“I think it was Maria.” My zipper’s stuck. There’s no mistaking those Voyager taillights.
“Nah, no way!” he says and manages to hoist himself with his jiggling joints.
“See where it turned over there. She lives on that street. Swear to god.”
“Well – let’s go visit!” he shouts. He wobbles, mumbles something about being seasick, takes two steps, and then starts throwing-up. This makes me parrot puke. Dueling wretched gags, tracer bullet barfs that can be heard as far away as Maria’s place. It’s the vomiting of poison, and a bonus heave-ho to love.
“That’s it,” he says using his infamous sweatshirt to wipe the mucous raunch, alien drool, from the corners of his mouth, “No more. I’m heading home.”
“Yeah.”
It’s raining.
ROTATIONS, Chapter One: OCEANS © 2005 by John Kirkmire, © 2013 KIRKWORKSHOP, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Chapter One: OCEANS
Blake became Roman on March 26, 2005.
“Hi, Row man,” greets Max, the barkeep at Oceans.
Blake had painted over the B and the N of a BROWN sweatshirt in retaliation for the university rejecting him into their precious graduate school. He regrets buying the thing before the admittance decision. Row this, fuckers. Now the brown pullover features white letters R O W across the chest. He enjoys the way it alludes to row row row your boat… merrily merrily…life is but a dream. A good drinking song.
Max’s christening of “Row Man” and the ensuing explanation of the sweatshirt is the kind of expected unexpected informal entertainment you get in a neighborhood bar. I had been Max-branded myself a few weeks earlier when I entered wearing a Brady jersey. Now I’m Brady while at Oceans, which Max points out when introducing us. Within an hour the renaming experience has induced Roman and me into a budding friendship, built around beers, sports, and disappointment.
“She’s married,” I repeat his announcement, pondering it, a swizzle stick of information to stir into our buddy brew.
“You can’t control who you fall in love with,” he says, “She’s poetry and kindness.”
“You mean -- poetry and blindness.” The sarcasm pops out like a giant soap bubble.
“Wait, let me get this down,” says Roman, graduate school writing prospect. He grabs a napkin from beneath his pale ale, mutters and scribbles, “you are poetry and kindness; woe is me in blindness.”
“Funny, huh?” he admits, “The words and the situation.”
“Blindness—that’s overused,” Max says while delivering the next round, “-- sight impairment doesn’t mean you can’t see the truth.” Max, the politically correct, bi-focal barkeep and literary traffic cop.
“True, true. But he’s dealing with metaphors, Max,” I say, then turn to Roman, “Do you have your poetic license? Show Max your license.”
Roman gives Max a five. “That should do it.”
Max, who’s not in a particularly good mood tonight, takes the money and Roman continues writing, absorbed, “She is metaphor, she is perfect metaphor, to the…,” he stares out, blankly, “What’s a word for, word for something to pass off...”
“Like a password?” I say craning toward the work-in-progress.
“Password, yes … she is perfect metaphor, a password to...”
“…the door, ignore, the shore,” I rattle on, then take a good gulp.
“Core! A password to the core. She is perfect metaphor, a password to the core.” Roman slides the pen to the side, picks up the napkin with its fragile, almost sacred text, pauses, and then reads in a soft voice filled with unrequited queasiness.
she is poetry and kindness;
woe-is-me in blindness.
she is perfect metaphor,
a password to the core.
We raise our glasses, salute each other, and down the remainder of the cool drafts. Our twelve year age difference has made no difference in our understanding of each other. But now I feel obliged to slide some advice his way. Writing to an apparition has its limits. “Roman, just tell it to her straight.”
“What?” he says without acknowledging the obvious.
“Why are you writing this?”
“No way. She’s married. We’re friends, co-workers, that’s all.”
“So?” I’m waving two fingers at Max. Saloon sign language.
“I’m avoiding her.”
“Avoiding?” The newly arrived mugs drool with foam. The glass is salivating and sweating and making me thirsty. “Avoiding what?”
“I’m avoiding the knowing, avoiding the disappointment. Distance. I don’t want to be just friends anymore.”
“You can never have enough friends,” I say to my new Saturday friend.
He stops in the middle of a macho chug, “I’m too nice around her.”
“Too nice?”
“Yeah – I give her a smile, a nod, a passing glance, something to mirror feelings. But she’s a taker, a receiver, you know, not a giver. So I know. She’s got this picture of friendship, and that’s it. Nothing else to develop.”
“Friends beyond the lens,” I say, inspired, “… write that down.” I had been in a poetry contest in first grade – flower is pretty, so is kitty. Mommie still has it on her wall.
“Friends , lens… good. I keep having this fantasy she’ll walk into Ocean’s and that will be that.”
We both take a cursory glance through the murky waters of Oceans. There’s about twenty people here -- a few barstool guys watching a basketball game, a booth filled with women engrossed in relationship chatter (surprise?). Three couples murmuring to each other in their separate booths. Roman and I occupy the end of the bar inhaling beers.
“She’s not here, Roman. Not many fish tonight.”
“Some don’t want to get caught,” he says, drinks, and adds, “Some are already caught.”
Max is nearby making a margarita, “Now,” he says, “the ocean – that’s a metaphor. It may appear calm and serene, wavy and beautiful and colorful, but who knows what’s going on below.”
We click our empty glasses, saluting Max the muse and the one-step behind barkeep. He raises an index finger (saloon sign for be right there).
Roman has resumed writing. “beautiful, wavy, serene,…I can’t take this game.”
“Which one?”
“The friendship game -- it means I have to lie, cover-up, be dishonest with the very person who’s inspiring me to open up wholly. Love is honesty, truth.”
“It sure is,” says Max hearing Roman’s last line while dropping off our replacements, then scooping the $5 bill and empty glasses in one sweeping move.
“Roman, experience tells me,” I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but “ -- romance is fantasy, flights of fancy, and it’s not real unless it’s shared.” I left the comforts of my steady girlfriend of three years for what I thought was a better, more passionate relationship, and ended up with nothing, except this steady Saturday evening date with Oceans.
“I love the way I feel when I’m around her. I feel at home, relaxed, lucky…” he says. “Can you die from desire?”
“Maybe you need to get laid.”
“It’s not that. I have casual sex with an ex once in awhile. But that makes me feel like crap because I know what I want and I can’t get it. It’s like substituting the Expos for the Red Sox.”
“Or the Bills for the Patriots.”
“Here, here!” we say in unison and toast our splendid success. We’re knocking ‘em down quickly tonight. This off-season has been a drag. It’ll never be as good as last year.
I’m feeling bloated, but empty. To know what you want but you can’t get it. Heartache. Shards of heart are breaking loose from their temporary moorings, spreading unevenly inside my head. My version of the R O W sweatshirt: L O V E across the chest has been reduced to just O. Suddenly I’m hurting and the beer isn’t working. Boarded up feelings have broken out, the kind that haunt you down in dreams. To desire someone so much and not be able to connect. I feel it necessary to order a couple of shots of tequila. Max complies instantly.
“To love and loss.” I say bravely.
“You said it bro!” salutes Roman.
And down the liquid heat goes. It reminds me of Listerine. This crap loosens the emotional plaque.
Roman sets us up with double shots of tequila. We toast and down the shots swiftly, followed immediately by deep cooling breaths. It’s like getting CPR from a dragon. As I head to the restroom there’s a transformation going on, a coming-to-life, rumblings, a crack in the thick brick wall of restraint. How quickly gravity changes, scars open, words loosen. Retarded heart. Dyslexic desire.
Roman greets me upon my return: “I warm in her smile, am kissed by her eyes, am hooked beyond reason, reeled by and by.” He knows he’s jotted down something worthwhile. He winks reassuringly. There’s another tequila double waiting.
“Retarded heart. Dyslexic desire. Write it down.” I command.
“You’re falling behind, pal,” he says pointing to his empty shot glass.
I salute the gesture and force the killer liquid down again.
“Let’s look…” I hear myself say in a wounded voice as I reread his scrawling of repressed feelings. There’s a weird sound and light distortion that makes me both anxious and incredibly sad.
Roman says, “What started out as a little monkeying around, some flirty-flirty – then – now I feel like an or-rang-a-tang is trapped in my chest-all-mighty.” He’s slurring.
“Got it. King Kong clobbered me last time out.” The confession feels good. But poor Roman is looking pathetic, so I say, “Suppose she does have equal feelings for you…”
His face lights up as if offering a dying man his last wish.
“And suppose she acts on it. What then? Sneaking around, lying, sex in the shadows. Then she confronts her separated-from husband, she’s got real love, for a change. And change it is. Divorce? Kids in crisis, kids hating you for spoiling their home. Lawyers and lawsuits…”
“Kids? What kids?”
“Never you mind. After the love blast recedes, she’ll see the destructive path –poetry and blindness won’t seem so beautiful, and when romance sinks that serene ocean will pull you under into a very scary cesspool. I know!”
“Sorry to hear that.” He’s not so sorry because he starts laughing suddenly. Again says, “Sorry, sorry…” He pounds the counter as if nailing down some great thought.
“What?” It’s amazing how you can never know anyone.
“I’ve just realized. Sex comes first. Then truth.”
“Don’t forget about food,” says Max who has appeared without a signal.
“Food, sex, then truth. Food and sex are natural urges and necessities. Truth is a man-made thing-a-ma-jig. But sex comes before truth.”
“What?”
“Sex comes before truth – that’s why people lie about it all the time!”
“Good point,” says Max, the refill man and truth-seeking cheerleader, “You guys are getting a little loud, okay?”
Roman’s gone off to another world, another dimension. “Maria. Maria Leone,” I say softly, well, quieter than Roman’s outburst, “I thought we had it, the real thing. Then the reality of her divorce arrived. She couldn’t go through with it. A mother’s basic instinct is to protect her children, two kids, two adorable kiddos. And I loved her and them – that’s all -- her almost-ex husband’s a decent father, but no lover. That’s why affairs are so powerful -- living with someone tends to kill off romance.” I’m getting uncontrollably animated, “Romance is mystery, intrigue, the unknown, not sameness and comfort. Fuck. Motherfuck!”
This calls for triple tequila. Wow. Now we’re germ free with third degree burns in the mouth, throat and guts.
“How come you never talk about it?” he blurts.
“Because,” I say with intoxicated intensity, “the Sox and the Patriots are doing better… than me.”
“So, what’s going on with--”
Alcohol is a depressant. Add Maria... there’ll be a heartbroken drunkard soon. “I love her.” The word comes out so passion perfect I sense I’ve wasted such a zinger on Roman.
“Really?” he says sloppily.
“Let me give you an accurate picture -- the Scream, you know that distorted scream, the painting, that’s me. Mona Lisa – the painting -- that’s she.”
“Lisa, Pisa,” his says, writing, “lean, leans…”
“Linger no longer, my friend.”
“At least you know she loves you, or did have feelings,” he says with a bit of sympathy that’s pissing me off, “I’d at least like to know that.”
“Maybe it’s better not to know. It keeps things more pure and more passionate,” I say with the wisdom of heartbreak and tequila, “You can’t lose what you never had.”
Roman finishes his $2 house draft special and points to, and heads toward, the men’s room. Men need room, you know. Too bad there’s only a sink and toilet in there. Should have a desire machine -- put your money in, get what you need, then move on…
Maria. God damn it. My glass is suddenly empty. I signal Max-a-million-in-one and notice that there’s a dirty-jawed unshaven Red Sox capped creature staring out from behind the rows of lined up whiskey. It’s a shooting gallery and the main target looks to be a pathetic caricature of a wasted loser. It is me. Me in the mirror. Me is joined by another like-minded cap-crowned patron embossed with W O backward R.
I turn dizzily to see ROW man looking buoyant as he attempts to mount the rotating bar stool. The urination went well.
“Suppose she does have mutual feelings,” he says dreamily, giving up on mounting the unstable stool, “I love her and her kids, I would do anything for them – our kids -- I would have no trouble being a parent to them. I’ve thought about this and it shows to me how much I really care about Brenda, about wanting to be with her. All – the- way!” That was a little bit loud.
“You make it seem so simple,” I whisper, “it’s not. …Brenda, huh?”
He’s one full beer behind but does a great job in immediately evening the score. Now I need to piss and can’t remember if I have or haven’t.
The room is warping in wondrous ways and I have to hold the edge of the sticky bar. Roman’s sad scribbles are screaming for attention. Suddenly I’m screaming, “Hey! You want a poem??”
There is polite feigned excitement coming from the gaggle of women hunched over in the nearby swaying booth. I grab Roman’s script before his outstretched claw can undermine my performance. He looks embarrassed, drunk, and optimistic. A boozer.
“It’s not finished,” he says, as if anyone in this joint gives a holy hootin' holler.
I announce, “Friends, Roman, and country Max, Listen up:
Ode to Love
Oh retarded heart, oh dyslexic desire,
Bring it on!
I warm in her smile, am kissed by her eyes,
am hooked beyond reason, reeled by and by.
Bring it on!
Someone else is shouting “Bring it on!” as I grab the next napkin.
The Scream meets Mona Lisa; love lean leans like Pisa,
From fire to freeze; flat tired and calloused knees.
Bring it on!
More echoes of “Bring it On!”
She is ocean, beautiful wavy, serene,
An unfathomable mystery floating dreams.
Bring it on!
“Bring it On! Bring it On!” rings out across the rumbling room.
She’s poetry and kindness; woe-is-me in blindness.
She is perfect metaphor, a password to the core.
Bring it on! Bring it on!
I can linger no longer; I must sing her this song’er.
I’m true and tried, titillated and tongue-tied,
Even if it makes me suicide.
Bring it on!
room : Bring it on!
me: Bring it on!
room: Bring it on!
room: Bring nit the fuck on! Yeah!!
room : Yeah!!
Hoots and hollers. Everyone’s in-synch and on cue with the last Bring it On! Success. Evangelistic success. I fumbled a bit with the stupid napkins and had to adlib here and there and the Bring it on! chorus part – it’s just what the damn thing needed... This is easy shit. Impounded profanities are barking for attention.
“I’ve another,” I’m shouting, “-- shards of heart breaking apart – MARIA-MISERIA! -- FUCK IT ALL GOD DAMN IT TO HELL FELLA-la-la-la!”
My screams have unleashed Max like a mad dog who has come around the bar bend and is escort-dragging me out the door. He won’t allow tourette-like outbursts of swearing or demeaning debauchery. Oceans is not a vomitorium for obscenities.
Roman and I will need to surf the wavy streets toward our respective residences through thick gray gauze of what appears to be fog or alcohol poisoning. But first I steady and relieve myself against a telephone pole while Roman tumbles overboard off the curb, says something about living in Frisco and earthquakes and 1989 World Series. This launches another round of prolific profanities -- I go right into that motherfuckin’ magnificent come from three games down to annihilate the asshole Yankees and that series sweet suckin’ sweep! And those super Pats! – what powerful potent pricks! Fuck! We are winners!!! …
“Ahhh!” Roman screams at a whooshing car, a near-death experience which he pauses to muse over --
There was an approaching wave-like roar,
a great white light
a sudden sickening thud,
then Roman, no more.
Not!
You missed me you stupid sonovabitch!
“I think it was Maria.” My zipper’s stuck. There’s no mistaking those Voyager taillights.
“Nah, no way!” he says and manages to hoist himself with his jiggling joints.
“See where it turned over there. She lives on that street. Swear to god.”
“Well – let’s go visit!” he shouts. He wobbles, mumbles something about being seasick, takes two steps, and then starts throwing-up. This makes me parrot puke. Dueling wretched gags, tracer bullet barfs that can be heard as far away as Maria’s place. It’s the vomiting of poison, and a bonus heave-ho to love.
“That’s it,” he says using his infamous sweatshirt to wipe the mucous raunch, alien drool, from the corners of his mouth, “No more. I’m heading home.”
“Yeah.”
It’s raining.
ROTATIONS, Chapter One: OCEANS © 2005 by John Kirkmire, © 2013 KIRKWORKSHOP, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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