Escapes...

In 2007 Forbes Magazine labeled San Francisco as the Number One City in America for Singles...it honestly bears repeating their words:

Endowed with a cinematic cityscape, a magnetic economy and the most sexually tolerant population this side of Amsterdam, the City by the Bay is perfectly conducive to solo satisfaction.

I get the cityscape...tall lumbering mountains surrounding a delicate soil bereft with memories of earthquakes, fires and drama....gold rush and all that.  

I get the economy with its proximity to Silicon Valley...Apple, Facebook investors, Hewlett Packard, Cisco (god a company named for the city) and others...

But I also find intriguing the mixing bowl here...the asian influence, the gay influence...the hedonism factor.  It's not cloying or in your face.  But like a duvet cover it is revealing...but not enough to reveal the underneath.

It is a city of remarkable beauty...at every step, at every corner.  And the irony of it is in the heightened views, in the best marked places, the city gazes at a prison on a piece of rock.

Since 1933 the world's worst prisoners have loitered there, an inescapable place...and indescribable place.

Prison...handcuffs, looking bleaking outwardly to a city perched on bluffs and mountainscapes...

I know exactly how they feel, how they lament.  I know the cold water shoals that keep me from the lights.

I feel the tidal currents that splay and scurry across the shallows, portending deeper waters that are darker and pull one down in a swallow.

I've seen this before.

I've felt the rusted chain of connecting to you, feeling you, exposing and learning about you...to only find the cell door slammed closed tightly.  The loss of a connection, abruptness.

I remember a gaze to a city of lights, to a city outside my reach.

I walked the streets, the sidewalks, saw immense beauty, a constant and changing mix of ethnicity that beguiled and belabored...the stratosphere of looks and gazes, scents and smells.

But me?

I only longed for one.

I only stayed for one.

I held my cell, chained to my one wall, kept my small view of the window as just a shape...I longed for more.

I kept a picture unerasable in my mind.  It was carved with a nail into stone...it was bloody by the time it was finished.

I kept quiet and steadfast...I wasn't about to go anywhere.

Yet I encountered and engaged and discussed and dissected and I compared...

I compared the bit of you to the thousands that came and went...and in the end, I stayed locked and ensured the chains were tight.  I wasn't going anywhere.

I assume I did my crime...and now I will do my time.

And I will look out upon the mornings...and more importantly in this west coast town the evenings...where I can boast of comparing you to the colors that come each evening...and try as they may...try as God goes all impressionistic in the west with his colors and his blurrings...

he will never quite capture the image of you that I have and I hold.

That chains me forever to this rock of concrete and rusted iron.

Immersion

Like coming home to a steam...like coming home to a salty immersion in warming waters...like feeling the capillaries open as the heat glides against me and opens up pores and sends the goose-bump shiver across my entire body.

Like a weight passing away from me, like a headache that suddenly vanishes.

Like an Elton John song line that reminds me of how wonderful life is while you're in the world.

Like the squeeze and slipperiness of soap as it is clutched and slid across warm glowing skin.

Like the scent of soapy bubbles, some escaping into the air, and delicately glazing flesh. 

Like a wrinkled finger, long under water in a bath of heat.

Like a candle of some type of scent burning away in a distance, a slight scent cast that reminds me of when you used to brush by me and then were gone.

Like the feeling of being cleansed...of being nude, not naked, art...not function...delighting in the curves and slopes, the arcs and angles that are so solely unique and unmapped...exploring, thinking of exploring...discovery...fortunes.

The underwater collision of your feet against mine.

The slight sweat of you in a heat of water and proximity.

The stretch of you to reach for a glass and sip in a steam. High color in cheeks, hair pulled up in a tail.

It is the settling in, the downward slide, the slope of descent, the crave of a crush, the relaxation of my mind and my body as I let the sugars of you slowly swirl and slowly suspend as they fall as gentle rain...perhaps gentle snow...against the heat of me to melt and dissipate like rain on fire.

And cool me with the colors of you as I immerse myself in a moment...when I imagine that you might be near me.  

Floating.  

Immersed.

Brushed.  Glanced.  Touched.  

Even if only in the caverns of my imagination.

Moments in a Bubble Gum Sky

He remembered this day...probably because he had feared it in some way...partially because he had thought about it.  Not his response...God no.  That's way too unpredictable.

She was like the weather...and you couldn't dare predict that.

So when her question came out...it may have been a 100 year flood.  It might have been an asteroid hit.  Either way, it was the rarity of the reveal that he always looked back upon as his favorite part of the day.



They had been outside, a nice enough day...clouds storming past in white pastries in the shapes of bubble gum and cotton candy.  A beer here and there and while she drank her vodka/cranberry, he thought about the kind of quiet stillness that wrapped you in its shroud, made you comfortable...made you vulnerable.

Do you want to have sex with me?

Her question was positioned as nonchalantly as if she had asked him to pass the menu.  Fortunately the arc of his beer bottle in his hand was in an upward trajectory, moving towards him to join his lips in a cold and golden kiss...a taste he was craving until this little gem entered the dialogue.  He had been relishing the drink and now this was loudly on the table.

He stopped the arc, set the beer down with a quiet rattle of glass on glass and looked at her.

Whatever I say is only going to disappoint you...I'm fairly sure.

Her eyes revealed that she wasn't expecting that (something that he realized resonated greatly inside of him since she was usually the one doing the surprising).

Why do you say that? she intoned, picking up her drink and taking a long draw.  He thought about hummingbirds, fast beating wings and a delicate tongue dipped in nectar...he quickly tried to shoo that out of his mind.

Because if I say yes he started, and say it violently and gleefully like a release then it deteriorates everything to a simple act...a 40 minute act, he added that for dramatic effect but she didn't even blink and so he stopped with the wry smile...but an act.  An action.  An event.  Definitely a wonderful and probably most unbelievable event...but it would be perhaps what you were expecting to hear.

She watched him with a bit of a concern...he couldn't tell if she felt like he had said something wrong, but there was clearly a bit of letting go in the deep end that he felt was happening.  They had entered a very delicate and yet very unstructured space...and he felt very good in this moment.  He wondered what she was thinking.  But he continued...

and if I say "no" then all the entreaties, the tiny gestures and the 1-second too long stares would all seem disingenuous.  A lie.  And I am quite certain that I would never lie to you.

He remembered her stare and her blink and then her looking down....he wasn't sure if the word befuddlement was appropriate but it was clearly nearby.  And he appreciated this tension, this awkwardness.  It was getting past her comfort level, when she had thrown a haymaker at him, expecting to connect and knock down and he merely moved and tapped her on the shoulder and watched her surprise.

Well then what do you want? she had finally asked.

He fiddled with his beer bottle.  It was almost gone.  But the afternoon was bright and airy, and he realized he had nothing to lose.

I want two moments.

Moments?

Moments.

Acts?

No, not really he started to explain...because in a moment there is a spool of time but it isn't being measured.  It is being lived in.

Her brow furrowed like it always did when he made a point.  And that little nod.

Makes sense.  So what moments?

He inhaled....and wondered why she had asked, why she had pried open this dark can of paint and stuck in a wooden stick and stirred.  But then he just sort of told the truth...at least the truth that he imagined could be the truth if everything else he believed had happened as exquisitely as it had so far.

I want the moment after.

After?

After...after in the quiet moments where there is just the noise of breathing...exhaling...maybe a sheen of sweat.  Proximity.  Legs touching or intertwined.  Minds burning from what just happened and the clean clear lack of anything in my mind.  Except that you are there.

She took a sip of her drink.  Okay.  What is the second moment?

Here he was a little less guided...he could easily imagine them "afterwards"...that was an easy vision.  The next was a little more subtle...and difficult.  Primarily because of the implication.  But he moved on.

It's the next one.

The next one?

Well, it's probably a little bit longer there after...but it is a linear progression.

Okay.

He enjoyed her frame against the sky...the contrast of her against the afternoon...and here they were, wide awake, in public, drinking and talking about something that had never happened.  Something that might never happen.  So in a way, he was unencumbered.

It's when I'm asleep....but emerging from that cottony warmth...and like a sunrise of thoughts blooming in my head I realize I had had the most unbelievable experience.  The most fulsome and agonizingly gorgeous experience.   And I think I would find myself fighting to not wake up...fearing that I would emerge in a cold winter room and that the clear and crystalline memory of that experience had really been an imagining.

She was looking at him with a quiet face...not revealing...she perhaps had already revealed too much in her initial question and was now wondering where it had wandered far off the waters with no sextant to guide.  But she had a certain light in her eyes.  He continued...

So I would stifle the world from waking...I would try to stop wondering...I would debate and dare myself to even halfway hope that what had happened...and here he had the bottle in his hand and moved it back and forth like a motion of magnetism between them...and in a very careful, almost barely perceptible, barely audible effort I would slowly quietly turn to see if you were there beside me.

And in that moment...you would be.

He put the beer down and he felt excised...released.  She had asked and he had responded.  She leaned back, arms across her chest.  Muddling.  Thinking.

He knew he would never know her thoughts...but he knew in this moment she was pretty likely unsure of what she even had expected to hear...and while this moment would never be as special as the moments he described, it was at least a moment he would never forget.

He watched the sun curve rays from behind one of the passing clouds and felt its brief warmth upon his face.  He realized that this sensation was very similar to the impact that she had had upon him, and he smiled at the realization that he had nothing else to say. 


 

Everything but the Girl

And I miss you. Like the deserts miss the rain.

In the crevices of mountains, which may as well be deep in my mind, I see tiny campfires of where you etched upon me, alighted, scorched.

I see your finger-print beauty, the unique, unduplicated, unable to counterfeit countenance. Unrepeatable. But I feel the imprints left upon me.

I feel the gangnam-style hotness, which is when something gets inside your head and as much as you try you cannot get it out. It is triggered in just three notes. You identify, you amplify. And you scrabble around infinitely and absurdly in a Tasmanian dervish whirling and uncatchable.

I remember a slight bead of sweat, tiny salten water from you, not a tear but rather a pearl of liquid on your brow. From a heat from within from a heat I have ignited.

And I remember a true tear and the crush within of having brought it. And then fixed it.

But I struggle in an instant, I pause in a reflection and I ponder at the reveal of what I assume is just a mere drop of rain in a desert of you. If I splash, if I get quietly absorbed. If I get and go unnoticed. If it is forgotten as soon as it is remembered.

But I will take that, take the absorption and the evaporation and the disappearance because it will at least have allowed me to briefly and brightly and just barely touch upon a piece of you.

Intermezzo

In the universal language of a departure, there are really only two appropriate words that can be uttered...the first is a demand, and can be shouted by the local constabulary as much as it can be by a person seizing the other with a word:  "Stop"

The other word is far gentler...it can be a whisper, or perhaps even almost-sigh like...it can be uttered emphatically or reluctantly.  He heard this word barely as he strolled from the flower shop.

Wait.

In the full of falling snow and the slight wind he wasn't sure if he heard it or wanted to hear it or pretended to hear it.  So he safely didn't look back in the slight chance that he might once again be wrong.

But he stopped...watching the plumes of his breath lighten the air around him.

She darted around him, head down and held out a hand to his arm to hold him still.

Wait.  She looked at him with a curious gaze, probably (he thought) because she had never called him back.  Ever.

You...she started...smiling...yes, you do amuse me.  You make me smile.  But that is a good thing.

He took a step forward, forcing her to walk back a step.

It's not amusing to me.  It's like being a fucking cat toy.

She blinked...is that how it feels?

It is.  And it's fucking exhausting.

The snow was starting to mix with pellets of rain, and the sizzle as it hit the hard ground swirled around them.

I'm not trying to pull you along.  I'm, I'm just exposing a layer to you in my own time.

And what's underneath all of those layers.

She pulled her arm back to her and wrapped them around her.

The whole of me.

The hole of you?  

With a w...whole...the entirety...

Well I feel like I've fucking fallen into the hole of you...with an h.

She smiled slightly.

The sleet snow mix was sprinkled in her hair, dampening it down, tightening the frame around her face...the cold had brought a rouge to her cheeks and her nose, the breath plume white and her eyes very very dark.  She looked cold.  Beautifully cold.  And for a moment he realized it was because of him that she looked this way, in the cold...wet and shivering, but staying.

I feel like I'm playing a Rubik's Cube but with one tile color missing...so I will never be able to put it together perfectly.

Are you saying I have a flaw? She said it slightly irritated.

Even if you had one I doubt I'd find it...you and all your goddamn layers.

She laughed at that.

Okay...a bit true.  

He reached over and pushed some of the gathered snow from her hair, feeling the damp.

You should get going he said, playing very gently with her hair.  She nodded.

I will.  Again, that deep-end inhale...so what do we do next?

He took a step back, framed her in the day, light fading very quickly and the snow much more rain than ice.

You tell me he said.

Okay.  She took a step closer to bind the distance, and then a half step so she was clearly in his space.
Keep doing this.

Doing what? he said.

This.  The things you do...that only you do...that make you different.
With that she put her hand on his slightly and turned and walked briskly away.

He watched her disappear as the rain took over and the sidewalk matched the sky...and he realized how he didn't feel cold...but couldn't describe what he felt.

He saw some petals from the flowershop strewn nearby, moving slightly as the rain drops pelted them.  He picked up a handful, put them in his pocket and started walking in the rain, in the exact opposite direction from where she had departed.

At least this time he knew there was going to be a next time.

Disposable

When time spools by between seeing somebody the lens gets filtered, the colors soften and the ridges become less clear.  And then you see them again and it telescopes into frightening clarity...

He thought about this as he waited for what he hoped she would usually do...dart into the flower store and pick something up for the week. 

And then she was there.

Sometimes when you see something it is startling...a skidding shooting star in a midnight black coal night...a fire in the woods...a terrifyingly close lightning strike.  It felt something like that.

How are you he said, approaching her from behind.  She stood up, straightened actually, and took a second to turn around.  When she did, he did feel like her eyes widened versus narrowing...a flat-smile struggled to keep its shape.

Uhm...hey.  I'm good.  And...her hands whirled a little until they found each other and clenched them together, like in comfort.  I've been waiting, I guess...you know, since Christmas.  You didn't call me.

He let out a little abbreviated laugh.  Call?  Christ, you ruined my Christmas and definitely started off my year on a shitty note.  What would I call about?  To see if you could ruin my birthday too?  He said it with a bit of a smile, but he also knew that he wanted her to feel something...what?  Guilt?  He didn't really know.

She breathed in, a big deep right-before-I-swim-to the bottom of the pool-breath...I didn't know what to tell you.  I just figured we might..well that maybe we'd be in a neutral place and then I could explain things.

He couldn't read her at this moment.  Her guard was way up on high.

Were you waiting here for me? she asked

I was in the neighborhood.

In the neighborhood?  

Yeah.

He looked around at the fresh cut flowers, stems still so green, petals in full bloom.

Am I like these things? he asked her.

A flower?

No.  An amusement.

An amusement...I'm not sure what you're asking.

He waved his hand across the length of the room.  Everything in here is dying.  They are at their most perfect point in time, their most perfect colors...their most perfect attraction.  I wonder when it was that I was cut and started dying and left my perfect attraction from you.

She had her hand balled up and now brought it to her face.  He wasn't frustrated so much as he just wanted to know...

I don't think you...she started...pulled her hand down...I don't think WE are dying.  In a way, I don't think we have even started.

I feel like I'm decaying..I've ceased to bring to you whatever it is I brought before.

And I don't think you've even started.

Really? he asked.  I sometimes wonder if you even remember things.  

I remember things.  I just don't share them well.

I remember you told me that I would always come back...and I guess me being here is proof.  But you're here too.  I guess I'm just wondering if I'm on the downhill side now...no longer where I tried to be.

She turned her head slightly.  Like a question had been posed.  And it had been posed.

Then what if I told you I thought you were just at the foot of things...that you hadn't even started.

He stared.  Then I would say that I am definitely an amusement to you.  I'd say I'm definitely disposable.

Why would you say that?

Because that is how you make me feel...and there is no recollection in you of anything that I've tried, or said, or traveled, or communicated, or texted or struggled to fill into a thimble just so you would take even the tiniest of drinks.

He could smell the flowers, an overwhelming fresh and potent flavor.  Her being in the midst of them only heightened the effect.

I'm not trying to make you feel like that...it's not what I'm trying to do.

It's the effect.

You're not a flower.  You're not an amusement.

What am I then?

She stood there, looking at him.

You are undefined.

I'll take that.

He put a hand under her chin and held it there briefly.  He walked past her, out into an afternoon that was darkening in a winter, the sky spitting snow and the flakes just gray enough to feel like ash.

The Delicate Erosion

It might be a voice, it might be a breath.

Something so light, a barely-there breeze, but over time it carves the hardest stone, cuts the densest rock.  Hours waiting, hours plunging...hours whispering against it.

It might be a talk, it might be a sigh.

Murmured, escaped...in a day full of discussions and dialogues...and the slight slip of the tongue to emit a sound...perhaps a name...perhaps to nobody at all but to the air.

It might be an echo, it might be a return.

Snippets of times when the voice was all I could hear; knew it the moment I heard it...grasped it like a ledge in a cliff, held it.  The outpouring of noise in dulcet tones, a singular music...wearing against me, the stone of me.

It might be a sentence, it might be a hello.

Didn't matter...it was spread towards me and fell upon me in nouns and syllables...brushing past, nudging...sometimes elbowing...a conversation of warm winds and warmer words...strewing by me.

It might be an utterance, it might be snapped off.

Such economy, such little said.  Such well-chosen and careful letters...easily erasable...like a hard wind against brittle stone...no trace of being there...of being said before.

It might be noticeable...it might go unnoticed.

The music of your breath pressed warm in my ear...the slight hitch in breath...the slight inhalation before release...the slight shift in octave...the slight speed in heart rate...the slight narrowing of iris...the slight chant of you, the chance of you...the slight and constant delicate erosion of me as you breathe beside me...windswept, windtorn...and waiting.