dreams 1

I had this dream that I was in this play. The play got such good notices that the Queen of England came to see it.

After the performance that she saw, she came up to me and told me it was the best performance she had ever seen.

I said, "Aw, thank you, your Majesty."

She said, "You must call me Betsy."

I said, "Thank you Betsy."

She said, "You must come over to my place and have lunch sometimes. We'll have filet mignon." then she reached into her purse and pulled out a gold airline ticket. She said, "This is good anytime for British airways, just call first. " And then she handed me the airline ticket. "How's Tuesday?" She asked.

I told her that would be fine. Then we shook hands.

Okay.

It was a daydream.

wolves

Janet and Mommagirl drove past the steaming chemical plants, careening down the wet highway at breakneck speed. The plants always blew out extra steam during the rains. People always wondered why that seemed to be.

They careened, veered, swerved, lurched and reeled in the ancient Galaxy 500 over puddles and past ditches and down roads on which the paving was more hoped for than found.

Janet bracing herself on the dashboard at all times. Mommagirl holding the steering wheel at ten and two, elbows high.

They pulled into the Woolworths parking lot at five 'till nine. "They have to let us in because it ain't closin' time yet." Mommagirl insisted.

Janet just glared at her as she heaved herself out the passenger door. Janet did not usually speak. Janet looked at her feet mostly, and smoked Newports. And glared at Mommagirl and Tina Louise.

But now she spoke. "Why we gotta go to the Woolsworth in the middle of the goddammed night in the goddam rain, Mommagirl?"

Mommagirl walked around the front of the car and back handed Janet across the mouth just as she stood up from the seat balancing her heft on the door frame, making the car tilt a bit starboard. "Don't you ever take the name of the lord in vain in my goddammed Ford little missy!"

"I could call child protective services on you!" Janet shrieked.

"You're thirty-two years old Janet. Child protective services don't give a shit about you."

"Well, there's some protective agency that helps people who have to live with their parents and then their parents slap them around."

"Yeah Janet it's called the poh-leece. You gonna call the poh-leece on your momma and say she assaulted you? You gonna have me arrested Janet?"

"I jus' might, you keep on slappin' me around like that. I just might."

"Shut the hell up Janet. We gonna miss the Woolsworth. Now move your ass in the store before they lock the doors."

Janet shut up and glared at the back of Mommagirls head. She lit a cigarette and followed the old fat woman inside.

"I want to get Tina Louie something nice. She's getting her 90 day chip tonight at the alcoholics meeting and I want to get her something nice. Oh, Janet, look at that sweatshirt! You think she'd like it?"

"I thought you said something nice."

"Well, it is nice. It's got all them flowers and beads on it. I think it's pretty."

"I don't know why we got to get her something nice just for being a drunk."

"It's not for being a drunk, goddammit, Janet. It's for getting sober."

"She had to be a drunk before she had to get sober. That's all I'm saying. Now she's sober and working like millions of people do everyday all their lives, but since she's been doing it for three months, we gotta go down to the Woolsworth in the middle of the night in the rain to get her a goddam present."

"What I tell you about taking the lords name in vain missy?"

"You told me not to do it in your goddam Ford."

"You sure you hate the sweatshirt?"

"I don't give a shit about the sweatshirt"

"Well, maybe you should start giving a shit, Janet."

"Maybe I should Mommagirl. But I don't."

Mommagirl bought the sweatshirt. They drove home in silence. Going home much more slowly on the slick roads. Janet staring at her feet and chain smoking in the passenger seat and Mommagirl holding the wheel at ten and two, elbows high.

Over the half paved roads and onto the highway, past the steaming chemical plants. "You think that's really just steam?" Janet asked.

"What else could it be?"

"Chemicals. Poison. God."

"Shut the hell up Janet."

Janet lit another cigarette.

They pulled up into the driveway. They ran across the rain spattered front yard into the front door. Mommagirl put the sweatshirt into a nice box for Tina Louise and started dinner.

Janet rummaged around some drawers in the den and found some old construction paper and colored pencils and sat with them at the kitchen table.

"What are you doing Janet?"

"I'm making a card for Tina Louise."

"Well that's real sweet of you, Janet. I'm gonna go pick her up from her meeting in a few minutes. You want to go with me?"

"No." She began drawing flowers on the paper.

Dinner prepared, Mommagirl kissed Janet on the head, "I think it's sweet, you making your sister a card. She's trying real hard."

"I know Mommagirl."

Mommagirl went back out into the rain, out to the Galaxy 500 to drive across Clute to get her youngest daughter, the one they always thought was the smart one, and haul her back from her court-appointed alcoholics anonymous meeting.

After the car was out of the driveway and safely down the road, Janet finished her card. The inside was all flowers and bees and birds. She folded it and on the front she wrote, "Little sister, I do give a shit. Love Janet."

She went and found the box Mommagirl had put the sweatshirt in. She taped the card to the top of the box. Then she took off the top of the box and set the box on the floor. She took off all her clothes and shit into the box. She put the top back on the box, put the box back where Mommagirl had left it, picked up her clothes, and went to bed.

Matagorda 1965

They did this to me every fucking Easter until the old man died.

Goat Ropers Make Better Lovers

They were driving past the feed store on highway 35 when they decided they could live without the kids. And they figured, what with Charlie being 16 and able to work and Michael not far behind, the kids would be just fine too.

So they drove out to the county line and bought some more Gordons vodka and all the "Goat Ropers Make Better Lovers" and "I'd Rather Be a Roper Than a Doper" bumper stickers the liquor store had in stock and plastered them all over their Royal Dodge Monaco. Plastered them onto the trunk and the hood, the doors and side panels and fenders and windows. Even some on the windshield. Drove off through Matagorda county and toward Mexico when last seen.

I saw them at a Jack in the Box in Brownsville just by chance. They didn't recognize me at all. She came up to me and asked me if I'd had an accident outside her house once and come to her door and asked to use the sink to wash the blood from my face. I told her, "No ma'am, I grew up with your young 'uns. Y'all lived acros the alley from us, behind old man Bailey's."

She drew back and her friendly face changed and she said, "I ain't knowing no old man Bailey and I ain't got no kids."

But I knew it was her. I remembered her letting me into the living room lots of times. Asking me if I wanted a fried egg sandwich

Months later I asked Charlie why Michael didn't talk any more. Charlie told me he stopped talking when their parents left. He told me all about them leaving a note telling him to take care of everybody and make sure the youger ones stayed out of trouble.

I told him I had seen them in Brownsville. I told him how crazy his mom had acted. And about all the bumper stickers on the car.

Charlie didn't seem too mad about it. I suppose he was maybe too simple minded to linger too much in thought on the philosophical and psychological issues regarding parents abandoning a whole passel of kids to the charge of a sweet but stupid teenager.

Michael was not simple. He had been a sweet boy who always smiled and chattered beautifully the beautiful chatter of childhood bliss. A joy to be near and a joy to think of. He could never get his head around the thought that they had left him. Had left all of them.

He never spoke again. He never smiled. He followed Charlie around sometimes; and stayed on the periphery of any crowd. He threw rocks.

He walked highways late at night and looked for the chocolate brown Royal Dodge Monaco. He never saw it.

One night, near the feed store on highway 35, a truck driver went off the road and ran him over and kept going. The driver was never found. Neither were the parents.

yep, it's me

One of my favorite things is schadenfreude.

this old house

She had lived in one of those big houses on the bayou when her parents were still together so she knew the road well enough to guide me through with my headlights off and just the moon for light.

We found a spot without stars over it and it was cold and she hated it. We kept driving by her old house. Where she was happy once but now going near it brought her to hysterics. We would go away for a while but we kept coming back. She liked crying and I guess the crying she did for that house was about the best crying she got these days.

She said it made her feel good for me to come out there too and be part of this ritual. I was always worried that the people who now inhabited the house would come outside and see to the car, idling outside, with the wailing woman inside.

Sometimes, after we had been doing this for a few months, I would go home to her apartment with her and just hold her. She would always ask me not to try to make any moves on her because she was vulnerable and that it would be just rotten of me to pull something like that on someone so vulnerable.

I would just lay next to her and hold her and stroke her hair until she was asleep. It never took long.

One night, I told her I didn't want to drive by her old house and watch her cry anymore. She cried about that for a little while but I just sat in the drivers seat and looked straight ahead. Wouldn't put in drive. Wouldn't go.

She stopped crying after a while and asked me what I wanted to do.

It was warm now and I wanted to be under warm stars in warm wind that smelled like barnicles and spilled oil and sea gulls. I wanted to be near the river where I had been happy once.

Near the river where we could drink beer and smoke cigarettes and watch the water in the dying light.

Near the river where we could talk about ourselves and the river and the stars and the smell of oil. Or is it diesel?

Near the river where we could sing down by the river, down by the river.

We finished a twelve pack. Looking at the water throught the dying of the light and it's burial into the pitch. Side by side, her head on my shoulder. "You're sure a sweet guy."

"Am I?"

"You sure are," her voice had taken on a husky, tumescent quality. Her hand ran toward my crotch.

I started crying.

She tried to get my interest but I just stared forward. Stared at the river and cried.

After a few minutes she saw the tears and stopped what she was doing with her hands.

We looked at each other right in the eyes for a few minutes. My tears rolling down my cheeks.

"You want to go drive by my old house?" she asked me.

I nodded in assent.

When I told her I was gay, after we had cried in the car in front of her old house for about two hours, she took my hand and kissed it.

"Thank god!"

She had really been worried about my ability to restrain myself around her.

Marys. June 1988

I watched him sitting at the dark corner of the bar. Away from the jukebox and the bathrooms. In an area people seldom walked by.

I was nodding. Waiting for a connection. Everybody was nodding. Nodding off. Nodding at one another. Nodding at invisible demons. We were all waiting too. I had the luxury of knowing what I was waiting for. Not everybody in this bar at this time of night had that luxury.

I watched him sitting at the dark corner of the bar. Occasionally, when someone left the bar, he would dart out of the dark corner and pour the dregs of the abandoned glass into his maw. Then he would retreat back to his corner and gnaw on cocktail napkins.

God I wanted to go home. God I wanted a fix. God I wanted to stop watching this little rat faced man drinking the dregs of the glasses of strangers and eating cocktail napkins.

I could not. Not one of these things was possible at this moment in time. I couldn't have my fix without I connected.

I could not connect if I left the bar.

If I was at the bar the little ratfaced man in the dark corner drinking the dregs of the glasses of strangers and eating cocktail napkins held me transfixed.

My heart began to swell. My hands began to sweat. I teared up. Why was he eating the cocktail napkins?. Was he hungry? I pondered, for a while, what to do.

I sent a beer over to him. The bartender looked at me like I was crazy. I sent the guy a Budweiser.

When the bartender set the bottle in front of the rat faced man he asked him who sent it. The bartender pointed to me. The rat faced man looked over and raised the bottle to me. I raised mine to him. We both nodded.

He started to get up and walk over to me. To talk. There were about ten of us in that bar and we were all sitting apart. Nodding. In our own little worlds. Sitting apart and not talking to each other. Not being people. Just professional drunks. (That's why we go there.) He was going to connect.

I panicked. I had teared up and I was kind of enjoying the melancholy.

He just walked past me and into the bathroom.

Never even looked at me.

Perfect.