It Can't Rain All The Time...

Wally is wearing his glasses today. That usually means he is going to be a bit more pressing than usual. And by 'pressing', I obviously mean 'annoying'. As I sit in silence, I can feel him looking over me. It makes my already crackling nerves twinge with anxiety. My heart begins to beat faster, trying to out run the uncomfortable silence. Finally, he speaks.

"You look tired," he states.

"I am, Wally. I am." I reply.

"Have you been sleeping?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I try, I really do. I lie down, seemingly exhausted, then my mind just starts racing. I can't turn it off. It just goes and goes." 

"What do you think about?"

"I don't know. Different things. Just depends on the day, I suppose."

"Is there anything in particular troubling you?"

"I don't think so."

"Would you consider yourself an anxious person?"

Here we go...

"Spare me, Wally. I know I have anxiety issues."

"What are you so anxious about?"

My heart beats faster at the question.

"What do you mean?"

"You seem to have a general anxiety. I just wanted to know if you had any insight as to what may be making you anxious?"

"What's making me anxious? Are you kidding me right now, Wally? What's making me anxious!?"

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"Actually, Wally, since you asked, yes, I would care to elaborate. What's making me anxious? Well, let's see. For starters, we live in a fallen world full of chaos, corruption, hatred, injustice, intolerance, suffering and pain. We have no clue how we got here, nor do we have any idea as to WHY we are here. The only thing we know for certain in life is that someday we are going to die and it won't be pleasant. We're considered lucky if it's a full seventy or eighty years before we die, but realistically, it can happen at any given moment and in any given way. Even if one does live a long life, it is guaranteed to be filled with hardships, difficulties, illnesses, loss, suffering, physical pain, emotional pain and abuse. and those are just the everyday occurrences of a GOOD life. That doesn't even include massive atrocities such as poverty, murder, rape, child molestation, war, genocide, famine, natural disasters, holocausts, corporate corruption, secret societies, police brutality, the media, the Kardashians and an entire host of other evil throughout the world." 

"I see."

"And that's not even scratching the surface of all of the problems OUT THERE. That's not even getting to all of the problems IN HERE, which, let's face it, are probably just as vast and far-reaching...though, admittedly, far less important." 

"That is a rather bleak worldview, but I won't deny that, yes, those things do in fact exist. However, I can't do anything about those worldly problems within this room. But, I can try to help you with the 'in here' problems that you referenced. The problems within yourself." 

"But, what if they're not separate? What if the world and everyone in it is all just tiny microcosms of one giant consciousness. What if in every human being, billions the world over, lies as many problems as are in the outside world? Every human being contains within themselves enough problems...emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually...to match the number of problems in the outside physical world. We're all walking around, day after day, festering in the same globally unified and tragically flawed conscious existence."

"Perhaps we're getting a bit heady, here," Wally replied. "Do you ever give thought to your own perspective?"

"Of course I do. Did you not here what I just said?"

"No, I mean the root of your perspective."

"How so?"

"For every action the is a reaction. For every heads there is a tails. So, yes, these things you mentioned certainly do exist. However, you can't ignore the fact that they're opposites also exist. Goodness. Beauty. There is war, but in every war there are heroes. People who sacrifice their very lives everyday for other human beings. In times of natural disasters, people instinctively come together to donate their time, money and efforts to helping those in need. There is genocide and mass murder. On nine eleven, many people died in those towers and many others ran away from them as they collapsed. But, a lot of people ran toward them, too. Many people sifted through the rubble and clawed through the chaos to help, save and protect. We do live in a world of pain and suffering, but it is also a world of wonder and healing. Someone dies, a baby is born. Someone in despair falls down, someone enlightened holds out their hand and offers hope. We grow old and sick and hopefully our children return the love and care once given to them. There are dictators, murderers, rapists, liars, thieves and every assortment of wrongdoers. There are also doctors and nurses, caregivers, volunteers, missionaries, artists, charity workers, firemen and an entire host of people striving to make the world a better place." 

A large part of me sat there wanting to intellectually combat everything he was saying. I certainly could have. But, I didn't. I just sat there. I suppose some part of me wanted to believe him in that moment, in that room. I suppose the part of me that sat there and wanted to believe him was the same part of me that knew that as soon as I left his office, that black cloud would follow me home, casting out all of those golden California sunbeams, the way that it does.

"I want you to try something for me this week," Wally continued. "Every time something in your life happens or something you see or feel, anytime negative thoughts or feelings begin to come over you, I want you to pause and take a few moments and really make a conscience effort to see whatever it may be, from a positive aspect. From the most mundane observations to the most dramatic actions...anytime you feel negativity creeping in, just take a moment and breath, then try to see the situation from a positive light."

"Like the glass half full rather than half empty type of thing."

"Yes, I suppose, if you want to look at it that way.  I'm not saying it will be easy. It won't be and it certainly won't happen over night. But like any muscle, our own perspectives need to be worked and exercised constantly in order to be developed. It's hard work, but we can never underestimate the power of positive thinking in our lives."

I thought about Wally's words as I walked the bustling, lonely streets home. I looked all around. There are so many people, so many stories, so much pain, so much poverty and loneliness. How could anyone if make sense out of all this mess, let alone think positively about it?

As I walked the streets, the concrete essence and it's inhabitants tip-toed in and made their impressions, the way that they often do.  

Directly across the street, a man sat, presumably homeless. I use the word presumably because in Los Angeles, a beggar on the street could be absolutely destitute, or they could drive their sports car back to their condo in the hills, or it could be a kid from the mid-west, trying to prepare his 'homeless guy' characterization for his over-priced acting class.

This man sat on the sidewalk and watched the people passing by with a glaze in his eyes. Not glazed over from substances, but the kind of glaze that hard worn years produces in the soul when you just don't have enough heart to care anymore. Underneath a baseball cap, his hair was matted from weeks of neglect. His face was chapped under a beard full grown. Shoes untied, laces shredded. He held a sign that read: 'Wife got the better lawyer'. I guess she got the car and the condo. I certainly give him points for originality and sense of humor. 

I cut south a couple of blocks to hike up Fountain. On Wilcox, I passed an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She was across the street and after I passes, a low grumble made me turn to look back toward her. One of the wheels of her chair was caught in a rut in the crumbling sidewalk. Tattered, her clothes hung from her skeletal frame as her frail hands reached downward. She fumbled with the wheel with the only might she could muster, but it wasn't enough to make a bulge. Back and forth, she began to shift her weight in the chair, but the chair only slightly tilted. She couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds soaking wet. Hopeless, she looked around to find someone from the neighborhood, perhaps someone that she knew, that could come help her. There was no one. An older gentlemen stood in his yard, watering a brown patch of dirt with a water hose. Three teenagers walked by laughing loudly and bouncing a basketball. They approached her on the sidewalk and even split to move around her, like she were some jaggedly annoying pebble in the smooth and effortless flow of their stream. They divided and walked around her, without breaking in conversation, without skipping a beat. They divided and walked around her. 

After a break in traffic, I made my way across the street. As I approached her, she looked frightened. I assured her, then grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and gently rocked it from the wedge.  

"Do you need some help getting somewhere," I asked her.

"No, I'm fine," she grumbled, almost under her breath as her frail hands began wheeling the chair down the broken sidewalk, yet again. As I watched her roll away, I silently wondered how many times that scenario had happened in her life and what event was the final straw that soured her gratitude. 

As the sun was setting I headed up Fountain. Nearing my apartment, I noticed a man tucked only slightly in an alleyway. He was more than noticeably inebriated on one or more substances as was evident by his swaying and the slurring of his speech as he rambled to himself or possibly the brick wall adjacent from him. Trying to urinate on the wall, he stumbled and cursed as his pants slid down around his ankles. Like the horrific car accident, everything in my being screamed turn and run, but I just couldn't look away. As he finally began to urinate, he apparently lost control as excrement fell from him and he stumbled downward, downward until he hit the ground and garbled incoherently to himself. There was a part of me that wanted to go over and help him, but the larger and more disgusted part of me simply could not bear the thought. I turned and walked steadily in the direction of my studio.

It was nearly dark by the time I reached my front stoop. The evening air was crisp and asked me to sit for a moment. I sat down on the steps and lit up a smoke. As I sat there, smoke drifting up into the nearly night sky, I couldn't help but reflect on Wally's words. They say when it rains it pours. I had absolutely nothing positive to think or say about my walk home. Exercise number one, failure. Baby steps, I suppose. It can't rain all the time, Wally says. Funny, we live in southern California, a desert. A place where it rains less than fifteen inches per year. We live in Los Angeles, a place that is so known for its perpetual sunshine that people have written songs about it. We live in a barren landscape drying up more everyday and thirsting for rainfall, yet here in the City of Angels, it pours. It pours every single day.

Somewhere In Between

"In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three a.m., day after day." 

                                                                                         ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

        Three a.m. jolts the body and mind awake, electric, like a live wire firing with nerves. I take a few deep breaths and try to remind myself that I am safe, knowing this to be untrue. As an unknown melody flows through the firing synapses of my brain, I count backwards from twenty, wondering where my cigarettes are.

Turning my head in the black night, I make out the figure of my bed mate who lies curled up and dead to the night air. Her name is Stardust, though I suspect that is not her real name. She is a 'dancer' at Jumbo's Clown Room, a joint I frequent when I need to get out of my apartment and out of my head. We struck up a friendship over the course of my nights slumped over her booze stained bar stools. Eventually, our conversations led to drinks and other treats resulting in an openness that I haven't shared with anyone in quite sometime...maybe ever.

Our late night talk sessions led us to the bedroom, on occasion, where we would try our best to satisfy one another physically and try to ignore the fact that we so desperately longed for genuine connection. Last night, she fed me cocaine from her fingernail as she chuckled saying that I was one of the funniest people she had ever met. Oh Stardust...you legend...I appreciate the effort anyhow.

The melody circulating my mind waves grows louder and I decide to seize inspiration. I grab a beer from the fridge and search Stardust's pockets the the last of her baggie. Just enough. I take it over to my desk and light up a smoke as I chop down a quick bump and swig my beer. Pulling out my notebook, I jot down a few bars and some of the lyrics flowing through me. The combination of the beer, cocaine and nicotine set me straight on and I begin to write furiously.

Before I know it, an hour has passed. The darkness of the room begins to ease as I realize that I've written a new song.  I sit back, slightly satisfied and take a pull from my beer. As I read over my lyrics, I see that my song is about the quiet chaos of anxious reflection. It pins me to my chair as my gaze searches the room around me.

Stardust sleeps comfortably in my bed, slightly snoring. This girl...man...such character, such presence. It's baffling to me how she can still convey that through the darkness of her life. She wasn't some cliche mid-western girl that moved to the City of Angels to become a 'star'. She was just a girl from East Los Angeles, who grew up poor in a family that didn't love her. At the age of eighteen she was raped...by a drunken neanderthal that laughed at her afterwards as she lay curled, crying, in a pool of shame. At twenty one, she aborted a fetus that she secretly wanted to keep because the other half responsible said he would leave her if she didn't. He did anyway...a month after.

She's just a girl, trying each day to find a way to smile. She's just a girl, clinging to a hope that was never promised her. She's just a girl, trying to find someone to love her...that part of her that no one ever sees. She's just a girl, somewhere in between, these city streets of broken dreams and the dying hope of those golden shores of heaven. She's just a girl, broken...and battered...and bruised...and a part of me loves her for that.

I take out a cigarette and light it. The smoke glimmers and fades across the peaking daybreak of tomorrow. I can almost feel the gentle clash of the dawning daylight against the steely cold, lonely darkness engulfing the room. In my mind's eye, Stardust rises and looks to me. She whispers the words '...this too...shall pass...' and smiles coyly before evaporating into the lingering haze of my smoke cloud.

Two lost souls, passing one another and trying to hold on to lifeline limbs in this swirling, chaotic mess. Looking over her, I am filled with the sudden desire to hold her...to crawl inside of her and die for a moment...because I am her. Just as she is me. The way we are all one another, unsure and uncertain, beaten and broken, confused and enlightened, defeated yet hopeful...floating uncontrollably, arms outstretched in desperation, down these filthy, sullen streets.

My heart yearns to wipe the memory stained teardrops from her past. To wash away all of the hurt, her pain and her longing. I have a pleasant fantasy that maybe she's lying there, dreaming of doing the same to me...far away on those golden shores where we fly upwards smiling into that great eternal netherworld. A place where she could crawl inside of me and die for a moment and the indescribable feeling of comfort I give her makes our singular souls burst into rays of miraculous moonbeams. A place where by the sheer glow of her frail skin she would be made pure...and tell me to simply take her hand and not to be afraid anymore...there's hope yet...

I know that this new dawning day before me, filling up the night of my lair, will soon be no longer. I know that someday ashes will turn to ashes and the dust of these forlorn memories will scatter infinitely into that ethereal wanderlust where time has no second hand. I know that someday, children will no longer cry to the world they cannot understand and the sounds of their laughter will banish the burning barriers of those pearly gates. I know that someday we will all fall to our knees and weep at the knowledge of all existence and the purity of our passions.

And I know that Stardust is right....this too...shall pass.

But until that day...

.... I know...that I'm somewhere in between...the gripping darkness of reality...and the healing light of a dream...

Midnight Lullaby

"Outside by your doorstep
In a worn out suit and tie
I'll wait
For you to come down
Where you'll find me
Where we'll shine..."

The light floated above me and hung momentarily in the darkness before descending slowly down to me. At first, it was just a small, shapeless mass. However, as it drew nearer to me, the mass began to twist and warp, contorting itself into some meaningful form. Down it came, effortlessly down. Drawing nearer to me. The closer it came, the brighter it grew in its hypnotic illumination. 

As the light brightened, the shape began to solidify its form. It grooved and melded into the soft shape of a being. It drew nearer. The light intensified. I began to notice the rhythms of my heartbeat clicking louder, louder. My blood started to sizzle in its fueling flow. My heart, accelerating, clicking stronger, stronger. With every inch the figure neared, my heart beat faster, faster.  

Nearly right above me, the light defined its shape. The shape of a being. The shape of a human being. As I stared at it, eyes wide, heart pumping, pumping...the being defined itself. The hair grew long, the face delicate, the breasts enlarged, the belly sacred, the legs sleek. Female. The female form.  

The second I recognized the form as female, my heart raced into hyper-drive, thundering loudly and drowning out all other noise. It beat ferociously until the figure outstretched its illuminated arm. The arm stretched to me and every fiber of my being craved it. I leaned forward and examined the body. Perfection. Every inch of it, every trace, a perfect physical specimen. I felt myself getting aroused. My eyes traced the perfect landscape making their way up to the face. Every detail was there. Every detail was perfect. Then, the face. I searched for the face. Who is this descending upon me?

My eyes looked to the face, searching, but it was not there. This perfect body, a most well defined female form, remained faceless. It's not that it wasn't there, but that it was there...hidden. A thin, white veil, like that of a wedding, draped over everything that was missing. This figure, this light, shrouded beneath a thin veil of unrelenting white light.

The faceless female figure, curled the fingers of its outstretched hand and softly whispered "come with me". The hand disintegrated into a thousand tiny fragments as a voice whispered 'Follow me'. As the last syllable lingered, the figure ascended and all that was bright, bright and full of light, dimmed back into the cold darkness. I stared out into the darkness, searching for the light that was...just a moment ago. Throughout the infinite darkness, the soft voice echoed, "I'm coming for you".   

Cutting through the darkness, the flowing figure of a hand came down, down until it threatened to touch me. It cautiously patted and tapped through the black and the faint echo of a voice could be heard.

"Excuse me".

A gentle rub.

"Hello". 

A fragile shake.

"Hey, wake up." 

My eyes fluttered and flitted, quietly letting in the rays of the easy morning sun. The light crept in softly, filling my being with the weight of the world. 

"Good Morning." 

The voice from my dreamscape. I turned to find a young Hispanic lady standing next to me on the stoop. Her eyes were filled with light and with purpose. She smiled, a bright fluorescent smile. She was quite lovely.

"Are you okay"?

"Huh?", was all that I could mutter. 

"I was just walking with my son and I noticed you sitting here and...well..."

She motioned down to the rumpled mess that was me. It quickly jolted me back into reality. I remembered the previous evenings events, though if given the chance, I would rather not.

"Um...yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."

"Are you sure? You don't look fin-"

"I'm okay, really. Thanks for asking. And for waking me up. I just had a long night. Really. Thank you." 

"Okay then, we just saw you sitting here and thought...well, I don't know..."

"I understand. And I thank you. Really. I'm going to go inside and clean up now. Thank you."

She looked at me hesitantly, the look only a woman with children of her own could ever give. 

"Okay...well...take care of yourself and have a great day."

"Sure...you too...and thanks again." 

She nodded with a worried look in her eyes, then quietly turned and joined her young son back on the sidewalk. As the new sun grew brighter and hotter, I watched them, the boy and his mother. 

They walked slowly down the sidewalk, not appearing to be in any particular hurry or even having a particular destination. They were just there, on the sidewalk, in the sun, in the day, in the moment, with each other. Just there. The little boy roamed about, not watching himself in accordance with foot traffic or crowd patterns. No, he was in his own element. In this world, but of his own point of view. His eyes were wide with curiosity as he took in all of the life and stimuli around him. They scattered and buzzed, searching wildly all of the questions and the mysteries that the street had to offer. He was curious. He was contemplative and a thirst for knowledge and a penchant for the imaginative sprang from a well deep inside of him that he will never probably understand. I like this boy. 

His mother looks after him in the way only a mother with children can look. It is pure love. It is the purest, most primal, yet most powerful force on the entire planet: a mother's love for her child. I'm sitting here watching it. I am sitting here, in the morning sun, caked in blood, mud and shame...witnessing the most powerful force on the entire planet. My heart begins to swell up and grow tightly in my chest. I'm not even sure that I was still breathing. The swelling in my chest threatened to burst into tiny tears, but it suddenly deflated in a feat of melancholy. I look at the mother and child, and the black cloud descends.  

He ran about, playing and questioning. She watched her little boy. They were in this moment and in this day. Someday she'll drop him off at school for the first time and she'll weep uncontrollably. Someday he'll be sent home from school and she'll question herself as a mother. Someday he would grow taller than her and she would garner wrinkles in her brown skin. Someday, they would fight and both would walk away wounded, but still full of love. Someday, he'll fall down...he'll make mistakes, he'll mess up his life, he'll break the rules, he'll hurt people's feelings, he fall hard. The way teenagers do. She'll pick him up because she has no choice, she is his mother. Someday, a darkness that resides in him will show itself. Someday, he will break his mother's heart. Someday, she'll lash out at him in ways she didn't think possible. Someday, she'll cry when she remembers it and cannot take it back. Someday she will have to watch him leave, she will have to watch her little boy leave, to go out into a world that does not love him and will not take care of him. Someday, she will try her best not to cry as her little boy walks out into the unknown to try and become a man. Someday, he will come home and tell her that he has met someone and she will see in his eyes that she is no longer his only love. Someday, she may go to a hospital and witness an event that first brought the two of them together, only now he is sharing that experience with someone else. Now, he has one of his own and his entire life will be forever changed. Someday, the three of them will walk down this street together and as she watches his little one twirl about the sidewalk with curiosity, she will remember this day, this moment and tell him that the child is just like the father when he was that age. She will cry. She will cry because she is his mother. Someday, she will grow old and frail and he will have to take care of her, the way she took care of him. Someday, she will have to say goodbye to him. Her child, her baby boy that, in this moment, is so innocently playing on these wayward streets. Someday, she will look at him and know that it will be the last time she ever sees her son. Someday, he will look at her, the woman who birthed him...who raised him...who forgave him...who loved him. He will look at her for the last time and he will tell her though she may not be his only love, she will always be his first love. She will tell him that though she may be going, her love for him will never come to pass, for it is the greatest force on earth. A mother's love for her child. Someday, these things will come to pass, in one form or another. Someday. But today, she is his mother and he is her baby boy and they are out in the sun and he is learning about the world around him while she watches over him with love and hope.  

As I fade out of my daydream, the mother and child begin to fade from my vision. She will go on about her day and she will never know how her mere presence touched a complete strangers life and how much he appreciated her taking a moment away from her own son to ask if he was okay. She would never admit that once she saw a strange young mess of a man, crumbled and rumpled under his own trespasses and that when she saw him it broke her heart, it terrified her into compassion knowing that it could so easily be her own son one day. She'll never know that someone was secretly watching her and would later cry, hoping that she would always love her son and raise him to be a good man. She'll never know that. 

My thoughts were disrupted once again by opening of my apartment building door. My building manager, Brutus, stepped outside,

"What the hell are you doing out here so early?" he asked, taking a cigarette from his pocket. His name was actually Harold, but most people called him Brutus because he was six foot five and weighed about three hundred pounds. Some of it was muscle and some of it was fat, but it was all intimidating. I turn around and look up at him. He startles slightly at my appearance.

"Holy shit, looks like you had a rough one last night."

"No, man, unfortunately it was just par for the course."

"Jesus. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Eh tu, Brute?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. I lost my key, can you let me in and let me borrow the spare key so I can make a copy?"

He nods. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"

"Yes, Brutus, I do. I do indeed." 

Finally, I see the inside of my apartment. No one in the history of the world had ever been so excited to see a four hundred square foot, bug infested studio. I grab a beer from the refrigerator and put on a Band of Horses album. 

Bed. It's such a lousy bed, but it feels so good as my battered body sprawls across it. I don't even bother removing the worn out, suit. I lie there, sipping my beer and staring at the ceiling as the melodies of a band of horses carry me off to somewhere different. 

I look up at the white ceiling and it reminds me of the light, the light and the female figure beaming from my dreams. I snicker ironically at the silliness of my own subconscious. As I lie there, drinking beer and listening to music, I begin to fade out of consciousness. As I drift from this world to the dreamland, one phrase keeps echoing over and over in my mind. Over and over in my mind, like the darkest midnight lullaby it rings:

No one is coming for you, kid.

No one is coming for you...

Drinking: Pabst Blue Ribbon

Listening to: I Go To The Barn Because I Like The

By: Band of Horses

Wretched Heathen: Or, the Time I Drank Whiskey and Attended a Southern White Christian Megachurch Dressed as a Homeless Man.

Long ago, during a stretch of midnight dreary, I visited the booze-soaked delights of my dear lady friend’s Super Bowl afterparty. Things were going swimmingly until an obnoxious buddy of mine reminded me that we had drunkenly placed a bet on the game. This was, of course, a bet that I did not recall making in the slightest (thanks whiskey) and apparently one in which I now found myself on the losing end of (thanks San Fran). The bet, however, was not in currency, but more like the ‘dare’ option of the truth or dare game. The dare, according to my porky little bastard friend, was to attend his parent’s megachurch the following Sunday. Not too bad, right? Ah, but there’s more.

I had to attend the first service (traditional, old, white, nearly dead) not the afternoon service and I had to go dressed completely as a homeless person. My buddies wasted no time. Filthy fourth hand rags, dirt on the hands, fingernails and face. Soles ripped from the shoes. Olive oil into unkept hair. They even splashed some whiskey around my neckline, like gutter-soaked cologne.

The entrance into Blood of the Lamb Assembly was ecstatically bright and colorful. A huge banner loomed over the driveway reading ‘Welcome Home, Everybody!’. My buddies let me out far enough from the front door that no one saw. They went in ahead of me and awaited my arrival.

A friendly old man in a maroon jacket stood at the door shaking hands with the widest smile plastered across his wrinkled face. That smile faded as he turned to me. He instinctually withdrew his hand before correcting himself, rapidly shoving it into his pocket as if that were his intention to begin with. He looked me up and down and managed to put half of the smile back. He kept his eyes low and mouth closed as I entered through the door.

Walking through the funeral home-styled lobby, you would have thought I had the coronavirus. Noses turned up. Faces twisted in a disapproving gnarl. The scathing glares and turned, hushed whispers as I slinked my way to the main sanctuary door. One lady tossed her empty Chick-Fil-A bag at my head. A small, balding fellow held his fingers in a cross and hissed like he had seen in some old vampire movie. My, it felt good to be in the Lord’s house! Inside the temple doors, a choir of the walking dead clapped as they sang “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” from Toy Story while a youth pastor dressed like Jesus chased the kiddos around the stage pelting them with Jolly Ranchers whilst screaming ‘Repent! Repent you, abominable sinners! For you know not the day nor the hour of my return on the warhorse to cast my fiery eternal judgment on thee!”. A little girl spontaneously burst into tears as the boy next to her tiptoed to the corner of the stage and proceeded to quietly shit himself.

Not wanting to miss a beat, I took a seat near the front as the nearly four hundred pound preacher arrived at the podium to announce his new message series ‘Adam and Steve, Or: Biblical Proof as to Why God Hates Certain People and Why You Should Too!’. I tried to sit in the front row, but a white-haired saint moved her purse to my chosen spot in the pew before I could take it.

Moving back a few rows, I tried yet again only to have a younger male tell me only ‘leadership’ could sit in that row. I scanned the rows for an open seat, not wanting to miss a single word of the preacher’s sure to be dynamite sermon. Alas, turning I spotted an usher in a maroon blazer coming toward me. “Praise God, help has arrived!” I thought to myself.

A pleasant fellow, he cheerfully informed me that the ‘colored’ section was in the balcony, the last row of the far left to be precise. I looked to the area he had spoken of only to find it empty. Surely, he was mistaken as I wouldn’t be able to converse with my brothers and sisters from such a far distance. Politely thanking him for his recommendation, I took a seat a few rows back and wouldn’t you know it, a nice older gentleman in a suit and tie grabbed his things and took a different seat a few rows ahead. ‘How wonderful,’ I thought. ‘The kind man gave me an entire row all to myself!’

The sermon raged as pure fire, while the audience lifted their hands in rapturous solidarity. They shouted ‘Yes Fuhrer!’, I mean ‘Yes Pastor’ as the man on the stage revved them up into a passionate political frenzy that called for the liberation of fetuses and the monthly town center stoning of anyone displaying same-sex tendencies.

The congregation foamed at the mouth as one pulled a pistol from his hip and began randomly firing rounds into the air. Oh, what a riot! The pastor went out on a high note and the worship team erupted into a fiery rendition of ‘We Are The Champions’.

It was upon the chorus, somewhere during the ’no time for losers’ lyric, that I found myself wrapped on each side by two, rather hefty, security guards carrying AR-15 rifles. Repeatedly, they asked me to exit the premises, despite my insisting that I was indeed a Child of God. They asked for proof via a record of my being a regular tithing member of the congregation. When I could not provide such documentation, I was immediately jabbed in the stomach with the butt of an AR-15 and embarrassingly drudged through the aisles.

Over my incessant cries and pleas, I could hear the congregation break from their unified worship and instead began to shout ’SHAME!’ Seemingly in my direction. Apparently, angels were not coming to my aid. My two rifle-wielding friends kicked open the front doors and tossed me onto the outside walk just like my father used to toss me into the deep end of the pool before I knew how to swim.

I thought to myself that this episode could possibly trigger some past traumas, but lucky for me, my porky little bastard friend had seen the commotion and rushed to my side. After picking me up and dusting me off, my buddies wanted to know if I had met the Lord Jesus Christ and come into the glorious family of God and become the literal light of the world. As we made our way to the car all I could think was:

‘Damn, I guess Jesus was waiting for the second service. Maybe we can catch him at brunch over mimosas’.

Moonlight Memories

Moonlight glows on my skin
The stars fill up the sky
Remember how we watched them
When you were still alive?

Stumble through the back roads
With anger in our eyes
The secret lives in my soul
I wish you were alive,
I can't wish you back to life

You found no point in staying
No future in this place
I heard what you were saying,
We burn out like a flame
It seems like such a shame
We fade out like a flame   

Lying on my back atop my apartment building, I gaze up at this Los Feliz limelight we sometimes refer to as the moon. With its effervescent glimmer, it glides me and the whiskey I'm holding to that place of forlorn remembrance. I light a cigarette and out of the smoke ring I puff emerges a face that frequently haunts me at this witching hour.

I was sixteen years old the first time I fell in love. Like an ephemeral sunbeam she burst into my heart and set ablaze all of the darkness that had settled in. Damaged souls both, we used to go out into the country side after midnight and walk side by side along the hardened dirt pathways glowing in the moonlight. We would smoke forbidden cigarettes and talk about...everything...and nothing...and for that short time, the chaotic world around us would pause to let us dance effortlessly in the eye of it's storm. It was on these paths that I shared my first kiss with her. Not my first physical kiss, mind you, but my first real kiss. The kiss where your lips touch and you know that time sort of stops and allows that part of you that no one ever sees to come out and connect with another. We didn't talk after...we didn't need to. The cascading moonlight said everything. 

I don't know how may nights we spent on those well worn dirt pathways of adolescence, but I do know how brightly those memories flare up and sear the very fabric of my melancholy nostalgia. 

The way those beams bounced off of her hair and radiated out into the dark unknown that we were so readily terrified of. The way my arms felt wrapped around her when her frantic and fragile figure slowly melted into mine. 

The way the stars sparkled promises of a tomorrow we would never know. The way how, when you're young, everything seems like forever, but feels like yesterday. The way that, out where the trees swayed gently in that pale moonlight, we didn't have to worry about what was awaiting us on the other side of paradise, but only how our hands fit together like the pieces of a cosmic puzzle. 

The way she glanced up at me with her soulful eyes, searching endlessly for a connection that was never meant for this world after telling me her most intimate secrets...secrets that my soul will bear until it embarks on that ultimate journey that will re-unite us in the pale moon prairies of paradise.  

I finish my rooftop cigarette and take a strong pull from the whiskey glass. I can't wish the memory of what I was doing the night they called and said the pills you were taking were just a few too many. I can't wish you next to me to heal the harsh blood moon bruises that cripple me. I can't wish for one more night on that moon soaked path where I could knot up the frayed fragments of our faith.  

I can't wish you...back to life.