story from over 10 years ago when I was reading too much Bukowski (if there is such a thing)

Wake, Bake and Skate
Ray Timmins

Wake and bake. That’s what I did. 9:30 AM, I got up, smoked a joint, took a shower, got dressed and strolled on out the door. Got in the car, vroom vroom . . . gone.

Getting up that early was something new. I worked nights. Usually stayed up till 7 AM, went to sleep and got up around 2 or 3 PM. I’d read, or try to put some miserable story or poem together all night when I didn’t have to work. When I worked, I’d do the same except that I’d write when I got home. Things had been getting real dark and lonely. I was living in a Kafka-esque nightmare hell world jerking off blood every night. And I’d drink. Naturally, I had a slight hangover that day but the weed settled that right down.

So I’d decided to get up early and go rollerskating, of all things, with my buddy Kevin and his friends. Kevin’s friends were a married couple who had a couple kids and this was a kids skating session. Kevin had invited me along the day before and I figured that before I went nuts I would get up, no matter what, and go. I wasn’t much of a skater but I needed to get out of the house for a change. Kinda exhilarating to see the little rugrats laughing and having fun every once in a while.

The music in the car was just right, too. Whatever came on was perfect. I thought about getting there. I was in a good mood for a change and I wanted to entertain my friends. Carmen was going to be there. I liked her. She had style. A moxie most women didn’t have and gorgeous eyes. She was also insane. This was simple math: I was attracted to her therefore she must be insane. Always.

I got there and and Kevin was just getting out of his classic Land Cruiser. He had a magnet of Shaggy from Scooby Doo on the inside of the green, rusted vehicle which always reminded me of him. The roof threatened to fly off every time he got that thing above 50 MPH. Madness. I loved riding in it. Few times in my life had I ever felt so free. Carmen was with him, he’d picked her up. She looked good. She always did, though.

Carmen had had a crush on Kevin ever since I’d introduced them. But he was gay. Such luck, huh?

“That figures,” she told me when she’d found out. “Every guy I meet is either gay or psychotic.”

“I’m neither. I don’t think.”

“Oh, really?”

“Well, I’m not gay.”

Oh well.

We walked inside, paid and went to get our skates. The room with the skates immediately struck me as horrific. It reminded me of a barrack in a concentration camp with all the flesh-colored leather skates lined up on shelves, breathing. Damn, was I high. I told Kevin and Carmen.

“Ohmigod, Dell,” she said, “shut up! You’re gonna freak me out!”

“No, no . . . really!” These skates were made from the skins of executed Jews. This place stinks of evil. Those skates on your feet, Kevin. Probably made from the flesh of my executed Great Grandmother, you bastard!”

“Shut-up!” Carmen screamed.

Kevin laughed. So did I.

Then we were skating. Carmen had brought her own skates. They were gliitered silver. Style, like I said. She skated ahead of me. I looked around at all the people—it’s a hobby of mine. There was a scrawny little kid skating awkwardly, his arms slapping around looking like a fish jumping, gasping for breath on a river bank. I sped past him. To my left a little girl in a matching outfit flew past me at warp speed. I contemplated tripping her next time she skated past me. Of course, I didn’t.

The was a man skating with a child, probably his son. The man was no more than 25, just a little older than I. His kid was cute, chubby like a gnome with magical eyes and an innocent, beautiful smile. An angel without wings.

My attention was diverted by a beautiful woman with long brown hair and deep, mysterious eyes. Probably a Scorpio, I thought. She skated with what I presumed to be her husband and daughter. They skated next to each other, smiling. Their daughter then skated ahead of them, leaving them way behind. They continued smiling.

Carmen skated past me. She waved and I waved back. I felt depressed.

The DJ played The Hokey Pokey. I sat that one out.

All those people and their kids. And me. I hoped people didn’t look at me like some weird pervert. But maybe I was, in a way, looking at all those happy skating families and feeling envious. Looking at Carmen, feeling lonely.

The last skate was The Couples Skate. Wonderful! I sat and watched all the couples. Carmen skated with Kevin. Couldn’t blame her. He was a cool guy. If I were gay I’d probably go for him too.

I took off my skates while the couples skated holding hands. I looked back at the rink one last time before entering the skates barrack and spotted Carmen. I smiled slightly then quickly looked away.

We went to Carmen’s, I pulled out a joint and we smoked it.

Kevin had to go.

Carmen and I talked about music, a subject we could both speak extensively upon. I was charmed, as always, but remained civil. I drove her to work. We hugged good-bye.

“Thanks, see ya later, Dell. Thanks again.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

I watched her walk inside and I pulled away. I had to get to work too. I was coming down. The music on the radio began irritating me like it usually did.

events taking place around '90, written a couple years later. touched up but basically the same as originally written.

The Red Car

Ray Timmins

“I’m sick of being stuck all the time without a car . . . and hate having to ride the fucking bus to school everyday,” John said, looking directly in my eyes with a deathly serious look. “And what’s up with that fucking bus driver bitch staring at us like we’re assholes every time we get off the bus, anyway? I’m gonna talk to my parents about getting a car.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. We really needed a car. Often, we would talk about the places we would go if we had a car, like the Keys. We could cruise down US1 till we hit the Keys and camp on the land his dad kept his bee hives on and in the morning we could head down to Key West and visit Ernest Hemingway’s house and see the six-toed cats. Then go to the beach and soak up the sheer thrill of being alive and far away from home, free from our parents and daily responsibilities, the breeze from the ocean whipping and inspiring us while we stared down the horizon watching that line disappear as the day turned to night. And if things got too weird or we longed for our families, we could cruise on home and be there in no time at all. And whenever we got pissed or it seemed like everyone was taking us wrong we could hop into the old car and speed away to Mexico, drink ourselves silly and dance with the señoritas.

On impulse, we could escape to the beach at night and talk while the waves rolled in, crashing up against the jetty, the moon glowing in the corner of our eye. My parents wouldn’t even allow me to practice driving in their car so I was looking forward to John getting a car just as much as he was. We were a team up against an invisible legion of authority that had been holding us back since grade school. We had been friends for a few years since we met in Junior High. We shared a superior sense about ourselves that turned into a bitter sense of humor that seemed to entertain others. Kids in school loved to hear us rant and tell them the way things really were—they thought we were funny and we enjoyed entertaining them. John and I respected each other’s opinions and intelligence though we figured no one else really had a clue about about anything like we did. And they probably didn’t.

It was a Saturday afternoon. The night before, John had borrowed his mom’s Cadillac and we sped down I95 at top speed alongside another baby-blue de Ville driven by some other teen-aged dude and what we figured was either his sister or girlfriend. Judging from the way he was speeding and showing off, it was probably the latter, or just some date he was trying to impress. We raced from North Miami all the way down to downtown Miami where John decided to finally to end the mad contest by pulling off at the Biscayne Boulevard exit. We drove back to North Miami at a more tolerable speed and headed straight for Haulover Beach—but not before we stopped at the Vietnamese market to get some alcohol.

John spoke Mandarin fairly well for a white boy. He’d been studying it intensely for about three years. I wasn’t sure at the time why the Vietnamese owners spoke Chinese but I learned later on that there were many Vietnamese citizens of Chinese origin who had settled there but who had retained their language and culture, just as they had when these families had emigrated to the US. At the time though, John’s Chinese and goodwill was able to get us wine coolers to take the beach and drink and share conversations and forget about the rest of the world for a little while. Which was a good thing.

“Ni hao ma?” John started as soon as we entered the darkly lit store with the scent of Oriental herbs and spices filling the air. 

“Oh, John . . . ni hao ma?” the little Asian dude behind the register sang, smiling and waving his hand for John to come closer and speak with him. John did. They talked for a few minutes, John droning on in his broken Chinese, struggling with many phrases I could tell, but the man behind the register smiled and put the words together, responding in turn. I began getting impatient, just wanting John to shut the hell up so we could get our alcohol and get a move on, but the exchange was remarkable I thought even though I really had no clue what they were talking about. I stared around at all the alien products and let my mind get caught up in the exotic nature of the goods sold there and tried connecting them to similar fare offered in the average American markets. Though many things remained a mystery, the aesthetics and the colors delighted me and kept me distracted until John paid and we were on our way to get wasted and talk about the Chinese twins we’d been hounding with our innocent yet foolish affections and attention since the ninth grade and tie it all together into our teenage philosophical conclusions for the night with the moon balancing just above our heads and the waves crashing in as they did, as a rhythm to our meandering thoughts trying to make sense of the world we had no choice of being born into.

Oftentimes I felt alienated when he would start blabbering in Chinese to a server in a Chinese restaurant or we ran into someone who spoke French and he’d rattle on and on but I suppose it had more to do with the fact that I wasn’t able to join in because I hadn’t devoted much effort into learning these languages and was unable to contribute my thoughts.

Finally, John and I were picking out the two four-packs that we would need for our midnight beach excursion.

“This looks good,” I said.

“Anything but peach,” John said with his nose upturned. “Peach really sucks!”

“No shit,” I nodded.

The road was clear and we played the tunes loud. That night we opted for classic rock, as we usually did. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, Hey Jude by the Beatles. Some Van Halen (with David Lee Roth, of course) and even over to the soft rock station for Chicago and their pure mushy sentimentality. We talked about the twins we were in love with, or believed we were in love with. We spoke of them in a sarcastically macho manner to keep it light. For example, I might say: “Ya know, I saw her walking through the hall today and I said hello and I could tell by the way she said hi back and walked down the hall that she totally wanted me right then and there."

“She just doesn’t know it yet,” John would joke back and he would go on to tell a similarly absurd observation he’d made about her sister that same day. All in good humor though, we realized they didn’t want to have anything to do with us other than being our friends. But that was OK, we’d joke, they just didn’t know us well enough yet.

“I’m telling you, man, all we need to do is get that car and the babes will be all over us!” John said, that sarcastic sneer again.

“Fuck yeah!” I smiled, “All the chicks will dig us, man.”

“Almost at the beach, dude.”

I nodded and smiled: “Cool.”

We parked his mom’s car and made our way across the midnight sand to the rocks where we then walked out far enough to be close to the crashing waves and feel the sea spray on our faces. The moon was full that night. John handed me a berry wine cooler and took one out for himself and we sat on a smooth rock in the jetty looking out to the sea. There was a ship on the horizon and some blinking lights from radio towers far in the distance. A speedboat flew by and made the waves rough for a minute but then the water calmed down and was still again with just an occasional wave smacking the rocks in front of us.

“You know, the French have two different ways of referring to the ocean. When they say, “la mer” they mean it in a more . . . poetic sense. Like how the water looks now, how beautiful it looks and dark and mysterious. Right now it looks like more than just an ocean,” John said, taking a huge sip of his wine cooler.

“It looks so boundless,” I said. “It’s more like a god or a living thing than just a body of water.”

“It carries so much more meaning than just the word ocean can give.”

“The sea is a more poetic word, used in English.”

“Yeah, kinda like that.”

“Yeah.”

We were silent for a moment staring out at the water while we finished our drinks. He threw his empty bottle, it crashed against the rocks and I did the same. We reached for another.

After a couple hours, four wine coolers apiece and an exhausting conversation about God, the government, Freedom and Love and everything in between, John and I made our way to the car and drove home. I spent the night on his floor and we talked for another hour or so before falling asleep.

That Saturday night John talked to his dad about getting a car and his dad said that they couldn’t afford to buy him one. After thinking a moment he remembered that his sister had an old Impala sitting in her yard that nobody seemed to want. Not concerned with cosmetics, John and I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could get her running somehow. We figured the following morning would be a good time.

Sunday morning John and I walked to his aunt’s house, which was just a few blocks from his house. We were determined to get that car started, on way or another. His dad had told us that there was nothing really wrong with the car except that it was old and neglected and hadn’t been started up for a while. This gave John and I the initial encouragement we needed to get the car started. Our bleeding hearts for the inanimate, I suppose.

We could see the big red beast from down the street. It was, indeed, pretty old. And it was filthy. When we got closer we could see that grass had grown into the engine, showing that it had not moved from that spot in months. John got the keys from his aunt and he tried starting her up.

John got in the driver seat and I sat in the passenger side: “Here we go, dude,” he said, putting the key in the ignition. He turned it and there was no roar of the engine like we were expecting, but the air conditioning came on.

“Cool,” he laughed, “at least we have air-conditioning!”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s a good start.”

“Ah . . . the gas gauge. Look,” John said, pointing at the dash. It was on empty “No problem, dude. There’s a can of gas in the shed. He jumped out of the car and ran to the shed. He came out with a five-gallon tank.”

“How are we gonna pour the gas in the tank with no funnel?” I said.

“Shit!”

We leaned on the car and thought.

“Here, try this,” I said, picking up a section of newspaper from the back seat of the red car.

“Good idea, dude,” and he rolled up a section of the newspaper into a cone and stuck the tapered end into the car’s tank. Most of the gas poured all over his hands and onto the grass but eventually there was enough gas to start the car.

“Holy shit, dude, look: an eight-track player with a digital display!”

“I wonder if it works.”

“Let’s put some more gas in her then go to Red White & Blue and buy an eight-track tape and test it out.”

John threw the red car in reverse and backed out onto the street. We left a large patch of yellowed, moist grass in the middle of the yard where the red car had been. The car hesitated getting to the light, black smoke billowing from beneath the hood, but picked up and got smoother the farther we drove. We filled up the tank and put some oil in her and raced down to the thrift store to get an eight track tape for the red car. It was Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.

We got back in the car and I popped the tape in. The music started. John looked at me and said, “Our new car, Ray-man.”

I turned up the volume and we sped off toward the beach. The place where all our dreams began.

Happy Halloween, Xmas and New Year to Phoebe . . . and ME.

Snow and Dark Brown Eyes

Ray Timmins

Dave walked in the early evening down a quiet side road toward the mall. He was bundling up his body to shield himself from the cold; a light snow had just begun to fall and was gently covering the familiar road to the Town Square Mall where his girlfriend Phoebe worked.

When he arrived at the electronics store where she worked he waved. She saw him, smiled and put her finger up, signaling him to wait.

Dave sat down on a bench and watched the mall rats scurry past talking loudly to one another in their little nomadic cliques. No particular conversation was audible by itself, but was merely one badly tuned instrument in a cacophonous symphony of drivel and din in the key of shit. Dave hated the mall more and more every time he went there. If Phoebe hadn’t worked there he wouldn’t go on a dare. Cheesy haircuts bobbed like hollow barnacled buoys in and out of over-priced, supposedly fashionable stores. And he cringed. He reached down to tie his ragged Converse and took his black, faded denim jacket off.

Phoebe walked out with her arms spread, readying for a big hug and kiss. And he gave them to her. She smiled seductively, biting her lower lip. Her eyes brightened as she ran her delicate fingers through his messy brown hair: "How ya been?"

"OK."

She gestured with her eyes toward the door.

"Yeah."

Now they were outside, away from the zombies—all alone with the gentle snow and the quiet glow of the moon. Dave focused all his attention on sipping in every inch of her face with his eyes. Dark hair, nearly black. Her deep brown eyes glowed with optimism and a simple understanding of the joy of living that cast a spotlight on the heavens as she looked upon them. Looking at those eyes sometimes made him want to cry. Sometimes they even made him a bit envious. He knew of no such joy; he could only rationalize its existence, but not actually experience it. The contrast of her glowing white turtle-neck sweater and her black skirt looked splendid in the pale moonlight with the snowflakes meandering down in the background. The only thing paler and more aglow than her sweater—or even the snow—was her skin. Smooth and consistent from her toes up to her forehead, from her ass to her breasts. Dave would dreamily lose himself studying the landscape of her body—or just imagining it.

"Dave!"

"Wha—what?"

"Are you listening?"

"Sorry."

"What were you thinking?" She leaned her mouth in closer to his face and pecked him gently twice, using all of her full lips.

He raised an eyebrow and cast a devilish grin.

Her eyes widened seductively. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Dave smiled. He placed his hand on her milky thigh and felt deeply.

She rolled her eyes and put her hand on his cheek. "You didn't shave today, didja?"

"No, nor yesterday."

"You're so cute," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"I know," Dave said, blushing, unable to completely pull off the mock conceit.

She kissed him deeply, working her hand into his shirt and across his chest.

"You going to the pep rally tomorrow?"

"I doubt it, Phoeb’, it's during my art class and I actually like that class. I'm not much for school spirit anyway."

"Yeah, I know. You're not much for anything, are you?" She was getting serious now.

"I love you, what about that?"

"Well, what else? You're so damn cynical about everything else it seems. Everything's got to be so logical to you. Must you analyze everything?" She was getting noticeably more upset.

"I dunno. I like art class OK, I suppose. And I like thinking about things. Always have. Find it unsafe to take anything at face value."

"What about your feelings toward me? Have you thought about them?"

"No, I mean, I know I love you."

"How?"

"I just do. That's very simple for me. I'm not sure why, but it is," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Oh, and I like to read. I love just getting lost in the library. It's a great feeling."

"But you don't do any of the assigned reading in English and you read my notes when the test comes around. I know you're smart and you like to read— what's wrong?"

"I read The Catcher in the Rye. It's the only thing I could get into so far."

"And what about the ten other books? Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, Don Quixote . . ."

"Just couldn't get into them at the time and within the time limits we were given. I'd like to read them all eventually. But it's hard to keep at something like that everyday without getting distracted."

"Is it me?" Phoebe asked turning her head. "Do I distract you?"

"How? I mean, I'm no worse than before I met you. C'mon Phoeb’, let's not start this again."

"I just can't understand . . ."

"What? What Phoebe? What can't you understand?" he spoke louder, more nervously.

"That you can love me so much and do so much for me while you hate everything else. Including yourself."

He thought a moment as she began to cry.

He stared at the ground: "Well, Phoeb’, I just don't know. I mean, I don't exactly hate myself. I'm not sure much of anybody else likes me, but I do."

"Yeah, so do I," she cast a quick smile through her tears.

"Listen—don't worry about my feelings toward you. I love you, I know that. But you're right, I'm not too crazy about the rest of the world. But that's what's so great about us—we have each other. We could just run away together and forget about the rest of the world."

"But I don't want to run away. I like the world. I want you, but I want you here along with everything else."

Phoebe nestled up against him and put her arms around his waist. He ran his fingers through her silky hair and kissed her gently on the forehead.

"I really do love you," she said, the sound slightly muffled by his jacket.

"So do I."

He put his hand under her chin and brought her head up. Then he lined up his wounded eyes with her eyes. He meant to say "I love you," but instead he let one small tear fall down his cheek. Something about what she had said was right and he knew it. He still thought school spirit was bullshit, but he saw in her eyes that she was concerned about something deeper that she couldn't quite express. She was concerned. He couldn't figure it out either, not exactly, just this vague impression. Something about his ever-present feelings of alienation. Issues going back way before her.

She had become his distraction. She possessed a strength and confidence he had never known. And that's what made him cry. He thought so complexly because he wasn't satisfied with the simple truths of life. She seemed to be content with the way things were in the world—she didn’t have it in her to question things for their own sake.

"I love you, Phoebe. I really, really love you," he finally said, kissing her deeply.

"Time to go," she said softly and sweetly, looking directly into his eyes. She reassured him and put his tormented soul at ease. Gave him courage to walk, to breathe, to smile, to talk, to sleep, to get up in the morning—courage to just live.

"Break's over already?" he said, whining a bit.

She nodded and stood up, pulling on his hand to get him up.

They walked, snuggled closely together, back to the electronics store and kissed one last time. Then she turned and walked away. Dave stood staring at her legs; they hypnotized him with each step.

She turned her head and mouthed, "Call me."

Dave slowly turned around and walked away. He stopped at the bookstore and looked around. For the cold walk home he stopped in the food court and got a steaming hot basket of chili-cheese fries.

Walking outside, his breath puffing into the night air, he ate his fries and stared at the frozen trees around him. And the cars with frosted windows and the darkened store fronts with Christmas lights around their windows. He looked at the half-moon sighing restfully in the sky and pictured himself curled up at home in his blanket.

The walk was about thirty minutes; he mostly stared at the houses and delighted at the charm in the twinkling, multi-colored lights. They were dazzling in the dark, with the gently falling snow, and without a human soul or the noise of a car to distract him from the moment. And even the parked cars were beautiful in their stoic stillness and silence. Everything seemed so quaint that he wondered where all the previous anxiety had gone. The fries seemed like the most delicious things he'd ever tasted. Then he thought about Phoebe and her eyes and her smile and her love and her kisses and her naked body smooth across every rise and fall of its ivory landscape.

He closed his eyes and saw the falling snow that had reflected in her dark brown eyes. And for that night he felt as if he were seeing the world through her holy and blessed eyes. She had given them to him during that long stare when they had both cried for each other. He wondered if she felt his pain in the way that he was now experiencing her joy. And he cried again, but this only made everything seem even more wonderful.

YES, I used to fancy myself a rock journalist . . .

pidgen pidgen burning brite in the bus stations beyond the nite . . . 

Ray-Ray's Morphine Experience in NYC
by:  Ray-Ray

(reprinted with permission from ME:  Bitch Rag! c. 1995)

Morphine @ Irving Plaza, NYC
Saturday, June 3, 1995

  
So, my good buddy from high school, John, invites me to his graduation at West Point, and promised loads of fun in the City if I went up.  The only real problem was money:  $5.25 an hour just doesn't leave much for vacation expenses, you know.  I thought and thought.  I called Greyhound and Amtrak and carefully recorded all the prices and compared them to see what might be my best bet.  Finally, I got another buddy from high school, Nina, to agree to go, too.  Her boyfriend, with whom she lives, was being a real dick and didn't like the idea of her going up there with me.  He has no female friends and doesn't understand how Nina and I could be just friends.  Oh well, fuck him, I thought.
  
She was excited, always loving to go on vacation and get away from her dreary waitressing job in Miami.  I owe much adulation to the fine folks of Discover; without them, I would never have gone to New York, and would never have seen one of my favorite bands, Morphine, who played on Saturday, June 3rd at Irving Plaza.
  
The tickets were charged and Nina and I had round trip tickets for New York; we would be landing at La Guardia airport in northern Queens on June 1st at about 11 a.m.  Good timing, 'cause we had to catch a series of buses and trains in order to reach John at West Point and arriving in the evening might've been a bit intimidating.
  
Well, everything went well and we arrived at La Guardia a few minutes early and scratched our heads when we stood at the gate and wondered what to do next; I knew that our next destination was the Port Authority.  But, I couldn't remember if John had said we could walk that or if we needed to catch a cab, or what.  So we went outside, carrying our bags over our shoulders, probably looking like seriously lost tourists by the way our heads looked all around us in amazement; as if we'd stepped off a spaceship and landed on the Moon.  No, it wasn't the Moon--it was much scarier--it was New York.
  
A skinny little black guy came up to us and asked us where we were going, I said, "Port Authority," trying to sound confident, like I knew full well where I was and where I was going.  I think he saw right through me.  He pressed a few buttons on this hand-held contraption and it spit out two receipts for some chartered bus to the Port Authority.  Ten bucks, each one read:  Nina smiled and said, "No thanks."  Ten bucks--fuck that, we needed to save as much as we could; the plane tickets cost enough, and work for the both of us had been slow the last month and we didn't have much.  Also, dumb-ass me had bounced like three or four checks over the last few weeks at 29 bucks apiece:  no, things would be tight, and we knew it would be expensive once we got to explore the city.  Nina had about 80 bucks on a card, and my Visa was maxed out . . . had to save.  So, the skinny little guy crumbled the receipts up and told us we could catch the public bus--number Q33--for a buck twenty-five and it would take us where we needed to go.  OK.
  
So, we lugged our shit to the bus stop and caught the bus with a portly Asian guy who said he was going our way, too.  We caught a train--the 7--to Grand Central, and walked up the stairs to the railroad station.  It was beautiful--wood-paneled and well-lighted, clean floors and a high, high ceiling.  We got two seven dollar tickets to Garrison station, where John was to meet us at 3 o'clock.  Walking to the train, it looked just like the scene in Carlito's Way, where Al Pacino got killed:  dark, save for the long fluorescent bulbs that ran down the length of the dock.  When we sat down, I ate a granola bar and Nina read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson; a book of mine I'd just finished and told her it was the funniest book I'd ever read.  She reads any book I recommend, I've always liked that about her.
  
We got to Garrison station about forty minutes early, and just sat there enjoying the scenery:  mountains with miles of greenery; and it was pretty hot--no change from the Florida weather.  Too bad, thought:  I'd been hoping for cooler weather.  Nina was happy--just the right temperature for her.
  
John arrived late, as usual, and smiled big and hugged us outside the old green Volvo his folks had borrowed from a friend in Queens.  His little brother and sister were in the back seat; Nina squeezed in next to them.  His mom was in the front seat, passenger side.  We said all our hellos and talked the usual just arrived chit-chat--how we saw the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building from the plane, and how we almost got lost at Grand Central.
  
The next few days were pretty uneventful:  had a couple Long Island Iced Teas at the hotel lounge that John's dad bought me; went to the West Point graduation (pretty boring); got to see the campus, which was beautiful, including a graveyard where I saw Custer's tomb.  Wow.  John took us to the Church, which boasted having the world's largest pipe organ.  But there was a bunch of weddings scheduled on Graduation Day, so we got kicked out immediately.  Oh well.
  
It was June 3rd, John had graduated, moved his shit out of his room and we left for the City in the Volvo; we arrived about an hour or so later and were dropped off somewhere, none of us knew, at a subway station.  Just before descending the stairs, I heard an angry voice yelling:  "Git out, I'll kick yo fokin' ass."  Then I saw him kick the back door of a moving car and wave his hands up in the air.  The car drove on and he was apparently going down to catch a train, too.  I was a bit scared; I walked fast, bought our tokens and dropped mine in and hustled to the train which was about to leave.
  
John knew where we were going, I didn't.  I just told him and Nina that we needed to be at Irving Plaza to see Morphine.  The doors were opening at 8:30--so I figured they'd get on after ten some time.  We strolled down the streets of the West Village, passing all sorts of clubs and cafés.  John pointed out Jekyll and Hyde's, and said that he'd been there once and that it was real cool inside--like a torture chamber--but that it was expensive.  There was a long line anyway.  We walked a few more minutes, just soaking up the happening Saturday night scene of the Village--a hell of a lot more exciting than Orlando, and even Miami, in my opinion.  New York was It, all right, no doubt about it.  We stopped in the Mona Lisa Café for something to drink.  Nina and John got some fancy-ass chocolate espresso something-or-other; I got a simple "American Coffee"--the true test of any coffee shop was whether or not their coffee--just a basic, unadorned cup of java--was good.  We also bought an "Assortment of Cookies" for the low, low price of $2.95.  The drinks came, then the cookies:  five cookies.  They were OK--but something you could get at any grocery store bakery--and 3 bucks for 5 cookies; that's 60 cents a cookie!  Shit . . . oh well, I thought.  I'm on vacation, I guess; and Nina paid the tab anyway.  The coffee was bitter--not good, I put lots of sugar in it.  However, I did get a refill that was SUPERB, let me tell you--just right.  I smiled and held my cup in front of me and told John and Nina, "Now this is a good cup of coffee!"  I was in a better mood.
  
It began raining heavily, but stopped by the time we were done, and the manager gave us scarce directions to Irving Plaza, where Morphine were getting on soon, I figured.  It was about nine or so.  We walked in the direction we were told and asked a couple times along the way to make sure we were on the right track.  New Yorkers seem to pride themselves on their directions.  They walk so damn fast everywhere and seem a bit rude, but if you stop someone on the street, you'll more than likely get a smiling, confident face that'll give you directions to Hell, if you ask.
  
We got there and I could hear them playing already; the guy at the door said they'd played about three songs so far.  We bought our tickets and I rushed into the club, John and Nina tagging slowly behind; neither of them had actually even heard of Morphine.  "It's a cool, jazzy band, with a sax and no guitar player--they're pretty dark," I told them.  They didn't care--they were game for anything.  Good, 'cause I'd been  wanting to see them for a while, ever since I heard their Cure for Pain CD, a while back, and their new album which they were on tour for, Yes.  They never came to Florida, so this was my only chance.
  
The club was packed.  We stood on the side downstairs, but thought it better to go upstairs and watch from the balcony.  It was.  I got lost in the dark tones and deep growls of the baritone sax.  On a few songs, he played two saxes at once.  This turned the whole trip around for me.  It grounded me a little and made me forget about everything that was bugging me at home (financial difficulties), and erased the last few boring days surrounded by conservative, uptight West Point parents and relatives who talked about nothing but their experiences in war and how proud they were of their son or daughter for kissing enough ass for the last four years to graduate with honors and receive commissions as second lieutenants.
  
The band performed all my favorites, but one, "I'm Free Now," from Cure for Pain.  Mark Sandman, the bassist and singer was cool throughout the performance, announcing before the first and second encore that they were about to play "technically, the last song of the evening."  They didn't leave the stage till after the second "encore," and came back again for one more song.  It felt so good to be back in touch with something familiar, being so far from home; the concert raised my spirits for the remaining days.  And John and Nina said they enjoyed it, too. Good.
  
I needed a clean shirt for the next day; at least, this was the excuse I used for myself to buy a T-shirt.  But my main objective was done, I saw Morphine.  The rest of the trip was pretty laid-back; we went wherever, whenever:  walked down Times Square; strolled through the East Village and saw junk sculptures; slept on a rock in Central Park and watched ladies walk their well-groomed dogs.
  
The last day, Monday the 5th, John bought Nina and me lunch at this vegetarian joint in Chinatown.  Good meal . . . free meal . . . superb meal!  Nina got a cab in Queens, where we stayed the last few days, to La Guardia.  The cabby was probably younger than me, and spoke little English--fare was $8.50, gave him a ten, and made our way to the terminal.  We got there about 5--an hour before the plane would take off.  Nina called her asshole boyfriend in Miami to tell him she was at the airport and heading home; he told her he was glad she was finally going to be home and that he didn't want her hanging out with me anymore.  He's always hated me, anyhow.  Fuck him.  I told her he was an asshole and had no right, but she was upset and dreaded getting home from a tiring trip just to argue with him 'cause he was jealous she was having fun with two guys in New York.  Hell, she'd called him twice a day for Christ's sake!  I guess that time, drunk off her ass, with me laughing "Bob, I wuv you," from the hotel lounge, didn't make things any better.  Fuck him.  We had a great time. The City ruled, Morphine changed the whole trip around for me, and I can't wait to get back to New York real soon.

video of the very show I attended: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnGxASoXn0&feature=PlayList&p=931810529826AA88&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=100 

for Dad . . .

Swimming

Li'l Raymond

Childhood memories of my natural father are scant. But here’s one I’ll never forget:

I remember my dad made me big cheeseburgers that I could never finish and he loved to drink Mountain Dew. He also had a fondness for Native American tribes and used to tell me stories about them. Specifically, I remember him telling me about Geronimo. I can still see him sitting on that kitchen chair dizzily inhaling from his long-stemmed black pipe with a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a half-full glass sitting on the kitchen table next to him. Dad.

Mom kicked him out for good when I was six. One of my last memories of him is the day he took me and a couple friends swimming.

It was hot that day—a typical Miami summer day. And it was clear with only a few fluffy white clouds in the sky. These are the days I always hated most; they were just too damn hot and I usually sat in the house and watched TV. Mom was at work—she was always at work. I never saw her. But Dad, he was always there when he was there; that is, when he wasn’t kicked out of the house. He looked over at me from the kitchen where he was getting high and drinking Mountain Dew.

I was bored with the TV, nothing good was on. “I’m bored,” I said to my dad, “there’s nothin’ to do.”

He thought a minute, taking a long draw from his pipe: “How ‘bout we go swimmin’!” he said, smiling wide with a glazed look. Dad was so laid back.

“Yeah!” I said, excitedly.

“OK then. Gimme a few minutes. Go get ready.”

I ran to my room and changed into my bathing suit and got a towel from the closet. There was a knock at the door, it was my friends Mark and Laura; they were brother and sister.

“Me and my dad are going swimming. Wanna go?” I said.

Their eyes lit up. “Yeah!” they said at once.

Dad smiled and nodded his head ethereally. “Sure, that’s alright. Dell get ‘em some towels.”

My dad got changed and we eventually got out the door and he led us up the road to this huge condominium complex with a giant swimming pool. It even had a diving board.

“Here we are,” Dad said.

The condo seemed to house the elderly—at least that’s all I could see in or by the pool. There were a few of them dog-paddling in the pool. The old women with elaborate hairdos stroked from one side of the pool to the other, careful to keep their pink hair dry. Some of them wore swim caps.
There were no kids in the pool or anywhere near the pool for that matter. But we jumped in anyway. Dad brought us here, so it was OK. My dad got in the pool a minute later, just walking down the steps into the shallow end, swaggering and nodding his head silkily.

And my friends and I, well, we were just being kids, splashing and screeching and dunking each other underwater. Dad swam beneath the water, like an eel, toward me and grabbed me by the waist. All in one smooth move he came to the surface lifting me over his head and he tossed me a few feet, growling like a monster. My arms flailed and my legs kicked and I laughed loudly in the air till I splashed down hard into the water. I came up and he did the same to Mark and Laura. Then he threw me again.

Now that I think about it, the old ladies in the pool kept looking over at us with sour faces. But I just figured that’s how they always looked. Finally, one old woman said something aimed at our group: “I just got my hair done,” she whined, “stop all that splashing!”

I was silent. So were Mark and Laura. My dad whispered to us, “Ah, that old hag, don’t worry about her. Just stay away from her.”

Dad got out of the pool a few minutes later: “I’m gonna go lay in the sun and rest. Have fun.” Then he smiled and turned his head the other way.

At first, my friends and I were careful not to splash too much, but after a few minutes we were creating giant tidal waves of chlorinated water with our arms. We jumped from the side of the pool at each other and raced back and forth across the length of the pool with our feet making huge splashes. The old ladies cringed.

The same old hag who bitched at us before dog-paddled a little closer to us and said, “I told you kids not splash, I just got my hair done. You children don’t need to be so rough with each other.”

I wanted to unload a big splash of water right in her face, but I didn’t, of course. She was a bit intimidating. I looked over to where my dad was. He was lying down on his back on the deck with his eyes closed.

It was nearing dusk soon after, the sky was darkening and the temperature was much more tolerable. We got out of the pool; Dad was sitting up now looking at the sky. His eyes weren’t so fresh anymore, and his voice was a little deeper. And he smiled too; not as wide, but just as meaningful.

Mark, Laura and I were shivering a little when the cool breeze of early evening hit us. We wrapped the towels around our wet bodies and began walking home, our bodies bundled up to fight the chill. Dad had been dry for a while and he put his arm around me and asked me if I’d had a good time.

“Yeah, that was great,” I said.

I could see a woman walking toward us, she was frantic. Then Mark spoke, “Oh no, it’s our mom!”

As she got closer I could see that she was clearly not happy. She was downright pissed. She threw her hands up and bit her lower lip and her eyes were frightfully bugged open with heavy mascara.

She screamed from down the block: “Mark! Ooh, Laura! Where the hell have you been?!”

Mark looked as though he were about to cry, Laura just looked down at the sidewalk and kept walking.

“But Mom . . .” Mark said.

She hustled her large frame and swung those huge hips side to side, making her way right in front of us. She never looked at me or my dad.

Mark cried, “Mom, we were just swimming.” His eyes were getting swollen.

His mom screeched, “You two should’ve been home over an hour ago for dinner, like every night.”

“But we were just swimming, Mom.”

“You’re both grounded!”

They gave my dad the towels and as they started to say good-bye, their mom grabbed them each by the ear and started walking them home. They both began wailing and crying.

I stood there and watched my friends being dragged away by their ears and I felt sorry for them. I was even a little scared. But I wasn’t in trouble—it was my dad who had brought me. But I still felt bad for them and wondered when I would see them again.

My dad’s jaw was dropped. He was still looking at the beast drag her kids home and he said something I can still hear. He said, “What a bitch!” He appeared shocked a little while, but then resigned himself back to the usual cool mode, nodding his head and smiling.

The Miami sunset was behind us. It was pink in that sky and slowly turning yellow as it stretched around to the sky in front of us. The chill was subsiding a bit, but I kept the towel tightly around me. My dad and I walked slowly back to the apartment. His arm was still around my shoulder.

“What do you want for supper?” he asked.

“Cheeseburger,” I said, without hesitation.

He smiled wide and warm and shook me gently, rubbing my head with his hand:

“You got it, buddy.”

Cradle of the Wallaby

crawl up the walls, struggling

shape-shifting hyper-terrestrial

twisted-eyed amphibious energy

reversed in broken reflections

of a distant cosmic dark.

the frog, as opposed to the toad,

the Eastern man hums

inside.

in each is this like need for

acceleration, fastlane,

top-speed transcendental

upward climb.

the fourth rung in the

exponential monkey ladder is

to turn the doppelganger

part in each of us out

from burning negatively,

stewing deep inside.

to reunite the archetypal

gods and goddesses,

brothers and sisters,

create myth from illusions

that the past tries to pull

away.

tribute to days long gone but never forgotten . . .

Skipping with Helena

Ray Timmins

“Dude, your parents are outta town, huh?” Ethan said to me, excited and obviously holding back on some great idea that had just popped into his head.

“Yeah, for a few days.”

Then he unleashed the idea: “Let’s skip school tomorrow man, it’ll be great!”

I hadn’t skipped much school before that and the other times had been with him. “Yeah, I guess we could do that.”

“And I could sleep over tonight.”

“Yeah! That’d work.”

“Cool, dude, gimme about an hour—Grey Time, of course.” Grey Time, taken from his last name, meant that he’d be 20 to 30 minutes late; this adjustment was taken into account any time Ethan promised to meet me within a certain time frame.

I hung up the phone and sat and thought for a moment. I decided to call Troy, to see what he was up to. The three of us had known each other since junior high. For high school, we went to three separate schools. Ethan attended the local high school; Troy, an art school downtown; and I attended a dual enrollment program at the local community college.

Troy. He was studying drama. One day, back when he had first started art school, I saw him practicing lines from a Tennessee Williams play—rather good, he seemed serious about it and the performance was believable. May have even shook me a little. I especially liked to watch him argue with his mom—he did it with such passion, waving his arms and bugging his eyes at odd times, reaching for words with his fingers grasping the sky. It called for applause. His mom—a psychologist by profession—would stare at him, wait until he finished and say, quiet and collected, “Now, Troy . . .” and just pause. That would really get him going.

Anyway, I called him up to see how he was and to see if he wanted to hang out with Ethan and me, maybe skip with us the next day. His older brother answered. Once, his brother had convinced me to rent some videos posing as the brother of one of his friends, who had an account at the video store. Said it was a joke on his friend. I told the clerk that I didn’t have a card, but gave him the phone number and address, which Troy’s brother had briefed me on. It actually worked. I got away with like five movies. In return, he stole a computer game for me. Pool of Radiance. Come to think of it, I never even got into the game. oh well. His mom eventually found the videos and made him return them. I kept my game. He was a clever though, and strangely a nice guy—I liked him for those reasons.

He handed the phone to Troy: “Hello?”

“Hey Troy, it’s Dell.”

“Hey man.” He sounded glum. “Arguing with my mom again. I hate this shit! I’m moving out!”

“My parents are outta town man, just come over here. Ethan’ll be here in an hour or so and we can all do something.”

“Really? Cool shit, man!”

“C’mon over, dude.”

“Shit, the busses aren’t running this late. Ah, fuck it—I’ll find a way! See you tonight, alright?”

“Cool. Later.”

About an hour later, I stood outside looking at the stars, my dog Chili scampering around idiotically chasing bugs in the dull suburban night, when Ethan and his twelve speed came clicking down the street. He had his hands in the air and just said, “Hey, dude,” and jumped off the bike. He locked it against our avocado tree.

“I can’t believe your parents are gone for three days. Dude, that’s cool!”

“Yeah, I know. Hey, I called Troy. He says he’s coming, but I don’t know when or how he’s gonna get here.”

“Shit, he lives all the way on County Line Road!”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be like twenty miles. And the bus doesn’t run this late. But he said he’ll be here.”

We went inside and Ethan got a glass of ice water. The phone rang. It was Helena, another friend from junior high. She and I had been talking for a couple weeks now. After junior high, she had moved to another school district. Neither Ethan nor I had seen her since then. Every time she called, I would beam; she had a way of capturing my complete attention with just the sound of her voice. I think I did the same thing to her. Talking on the phone was our shared addiction.

Ethan got on the other line and we all joked around. Helena hit a sore spot when she asked Ethan about his girlfriend, whom he had just broken up with. He’d been skipping school a lot lately and it had a lot to do with her. Helena had also confided in me that she had been skipping school lately. We asked her if she wanted to skip with us tomorrow and she said that she would love to, her voice singing. She made me promise that I wouldn’t tell Katie, a friend of hers who went to school with me because “she just wouldn’t understand.”

We made arrangements to meet in front of the mall at eight. We were bullshitting for a bit more and teasing Ethan about his girlfriend when I heard a knock at the door. I knew it had to be Troy. We all hung up. Ethan and I ran to the door from different rooms; I opened it. A cool night breeze blew in. Troy stood there, his hair in his eyes, covered in sweat. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder. Chucks doused with a multitude of colorful paints.

“I walked,” was all he said as he stepped through the door, threw his backpack on the couch and went to the kitchen to get something to drink. See, we all had this unwritten agreement: whenever we were in one another’s houses, we had free reign on the kitchen. I liked going over Troy’s house because they always had yogurt in the fridge. Troy and his brother hated yogurt. His mother kept buying it because she thought that they were eating it when it had actually been me. And then there was always a rapid loss of peanut butter in each of our houses. It is the food of the gods.

We sat down in the living room and talked about the old times. Times at the beach and about all the people who hated us in junior high because they thought we were weird; when Nay-Nay, as he was called, had taken Troy’s skateboard and tried to ride it on the basketball court; the time Ethan got into a fight with Nay-Nay. We continued to reminisce, sure not to exclude the times Ethan had gotten jumped by like four or five guys or the time he went ape-shit and sprayed the halls with a fire extinguisher.

Then there had been Trish. Trish was this extremely persistent girl who had liked Troy back then. She wasn’t the most attractive girl; but more offensive was the fact that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—take a hint. Despite much obvious intimation that he was not interested, one time Trish snuck up behind him in the hall and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek. Troy proceeded to scream and slam his head repeatedly into a locker. She then said, “You’re so immature!” and walked away with her nose in the air. Troy began scrawling, “Trish is trash” wherever he could around the school: desks, walls, lockers, cafeteria tables. He encouraged us to look for them when we were around school and to feel free to add a few ourselves here and there.

We told Troy about us skipping the next day but he couldn’t miss school; he asked me to set the alarm for him so he could catch the bus in the morning. I did. He lay down on the couch and put a huge pair of white underwear on his head—he said they helped him sleep and that he wore them every night. He looked like a somnolent Smurf snuggling up to the pillow. It must have been an exhausting walk—he was out instantly.

Ethan and I raided the fridge then called Helena back. She was always up late. We told her Troy was asleep on the couch; we began conspiring ways to torture him in his sleep. Ethan got shaving cream from the bathroom, tip-toed over to the couch where Troy was passed out and sprayed it down the side of his face. With ninja timing, Troy leaped up with a shrieking yell that I’m sure everyone on my block could hear and did this fantastic flying jump-kick at Ethan, missing by an inch. Then, as quickly as he had leapt off the couch, he threw himself back down and fell asleep. I stared, wide-eyed, keeping Helena abreast of the action. Ethan stood for a moment in shock, his jaw dropped, the can of shaving cream dead still in his foamy hand.

“What the fuck?!” he laughed.

Ethan got back on the phone and we all talked for a few minutes before bidding Helena farewell till morning. My sister was staying at a friend’s so Ethan slept in her bed. I went to bed, listening to talk radio. Some lady was asking advice to deal with her daughter who kept skipping school. I chuckled myself to sleep.

The alarm went off and I went into the living room to wake Troy. He got right up, threw on his shirt, said good-bye and told me to have fun skipping. I followed him outside and watched him walk away. The sun was not up yet.

I had inclinations toward the arts, but hadn’t really dedicated myself to anything yet. In some ways, he was a role model. He was zealous in his ideals and deliberate in his actions; he was bold and confident in everything he did, no matter what anybody told him. He didn’t care if he made a mistake or wrinkled any fabric. His passion was the stuff of legend.

I went to the door of my sister’s room and told Ethan it was time to get up. He looked up from the pink pillows and pink sheets with a groggy, confused look—probably trying to orient himself having awoken in that strange, girlish terrain. He said OK. He put his head back down.

“Dude, time to get up!”

“I heard you! OK!”

He wasn’t a morning person, apparently. He still lay there.

Ethan was a cool guy. Everything seemed to go his way. Well, besides the multiple times he’d been jumped in junior high. I guess I envied him sometimes; he seemed cleverer than I, more aware; or, at least, more prone to action than passivity. I had never hesitated in going along with whatever scheme he’d come up with—it was something to do; it was always interesting. Fear and reluctance always melted away around him. It almost seemed as though the angels were on his side.

I decided to take a shower while Ethan woke up. I thought about meeting Helena at the mall; it had been over a year since I’d seen her last. She was pretty cute in junior high. I remembered the last day of school. She had signed my yearbook several times and it seemed as if we were getting closer up until the last day and we had to say good-bye. She told me that if I ever saw her in public to not acknowledge her. I laughed. Then, as she walked down the stairs, out of the school, I thought, I never noticed how pretty she was and how much fun she is to be around. And I had not known until that point that I might have been strangely in love with her. Then she was gone.

We had been talking a lot lately; I thought about her often and enjoyed talking to her. But this would be the first time since that last day in junior high that I would see her. I was anxious.

When I got out of the shower Ethan was watching TV in the living room. He was still bleary from sleep. He hopped in and out of the shower and it seemed to wake him right up. We grabbed some food from the fridge and started the walk to the mall. It was just a couple of miles.

We got to the mall and waited for Helena. We looked around and were amazed: “I’ve never seen the mall so dead,” I said. “There’s not a soul here, not even a car.”

“Yeah, you’re right. How weird, dude.”

We waited a few minutes and still Helena did not show.

“Dude, man, she shoulda been here by now. Where the fuck is she? The cops are gonna come by and bust us, dude.”

“I dunno. She’ll be here. She promised.”

We waited about five more minutes and I saw someone walking toward us.

“Is that her, dude?”

“I think so,” I said, squinting my eyes.

As she got closer, my heart raced. I was intensely curious to see what she looked liked after all this time. She got closer. She was beautiful. Petite, well dressed and with a beaming smile that made my head spin. I wondered how I should greet her, what to say, would she like me?

She hugged both of us. “Haven’t been waiting long, have ya?” she said, coyly—in a certain tone which drove me crazy for some reason. Without even trying, she drew me in closer and closer.

“Not too long,” I said, smiling, looking at her up and down, capturing the dreamy visage in my mind.

“Wasn’t too easy getting off campus once my mom dropped me off. Sorry.”

“Oh no. No problem. It’s good to see you again; I almost forgot what you looked like.”

“We better get going!” Ethan said, taking charge.

We walked toward the bus stop.

Usually quite the talker over the phone, Helena was now rather quiet. She just walked with us, smiled and answered our questions succinctly; occasionally she would make a short comment or giggle—her eyes and her gestures did most of the talking. I kept looking over at her and would suddenly look away; but our eyes did meet several times and it was both uncomfortable and magnetic. Her voice, as much as it had drawn me in on the phone, paled in comparison to being in her proximity. Now her voice was the counterpoint to the intoxicating melody of her image that sang out to my heart with every flutter of her lashes, every step, every smile that came to her face as we walked and talked.

We came to the bus stop and waited. Helena leaned on my shoulder. Naturally, I had no complaints. My body tingled and my heart continued to race.

“Any bus should take us to the beach,” I said.

“Cool,” Ethan said.

A bus finally came; we got on and sat in the back. Helena managed to pay the student rate; Ethan and I, not wanting to procure any unnecessary attention, paid the adult fare. I bought transfers for when we got bored with the beach and wanted to leave.

“This is my first time on a public bus,” Helena said.

Having grown up using public transportation, I was shocked. “Oh, a virgin,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” she teased back, raising an eyebrow.

We got off the bus at the beach and walked along the sand with the sun still low and pink in the chilly Miami winter morning. Ethan was wearing one of my sweaters but was still shivering. I had on a sweater and jeans. Helena told me I looked good which immediately sent my pulse soaring. I thought that she looked great, but was too embarrassed to tell her, so I just smiled and thanked her.

Ethan and I reflected on the times that we’d had on that beach over the years: talking into the night while the black water crashed into the rocks; getting drunk and stranded and sleeping on beach chairs; my slipping on the rocks and tearing my leg up; tripping and hitting my knee, drunk, and having to get stitches; sitting in the lifeguard stand at night and talking about girls. Helena sat back listening, smiling, taking it all in. I looked over every now and then just to check if she was as beautiful as my last glance, which she was.

We got to the jetty and sat on a rock near the foaming tide washing in and the conversation meandered. We talked on a variety of topics mostly centered around how the authoritarian figures in our lives didn’t understand our plight. A sense of camaraderie was building up between the three of us. At that moment it was us against the world. Ethan thought about swimming, but decided it was too cold. Helena sat in between us and still mostly listened, though she was talking a bit more now. She leaned on Ethan’s shoulder some, then on mine. I felt the warmth from her head rush through my shoulder and spread to my chest and arms.

The beach soon got old and we ran up to the street to catch the bus before our transfers expired.

“Let’s go downtown!” I said.

They agreed.

“We can take this bus to South Beach and transfer to a bus going downtown. Then we can take a bus from downtown that’ll take us a block from my house—the one Troy took this morning, but going the other way.”

“You sure know your way around on the bus, dude.”

“Years of practice, man.”

The bus arrived, we boarded and sat in the back. Eventually we were heading down Washington Avenue—familiar territory to me. I showed Ethan and Helena all the places I used to go. There was the pizza place that had the Popeye videogame, the laundromat with Mario Bros., and the movie theater where I saw The Terminator, Bronx Warriors 1999 and Krull, to name a few. We watched old ladies with big purses and big hats scratch around their change purses for fare. They would all sit up front with bags and bags of groceries, exhausted, most of them staring straight at the road in the front of the bus. I joked that they were scrutinizing the driver’s driving skills—a pack of back seat drivers. We giggled and looked back and forth at one another.

The day felt like a great escape; especially for Helena who felt like she had no friends. Every moment was golden, everything smelled of adventure. Over the phone one time she had told me how well she thought we communicated with each other. I told her I felt that way too. We talked about how nothing we did would ever be noticed; we lamented our seeming invisibility to the rest of the world. While thinking about these things—sitting there looking at her as she stared curiously out the window at the unfamiliar streets—I realized I was falling for her. I observed her every movement, studying every nuance of every gesture. She caught my eyes, smiled and looked away, blushing.

We got off at the corner of 5^th and Washington and waited for the next bus going downtown; there were two of them.

“There should be about a ten minute wait. Look for the C or the K.”

There were sections of newspaper and other pieces of trash blowing across the sidewalk against abandoned storefronts. Men in drab clothing wearing baseball caps with tired eyes walking in and out of the corner store. I could smell the Cuban coffee and the pastries. I began to feel hungry, but stifled it.

“This place is a dump!” Helena said, looking around, disgusted.

I was mildly offended, having grown up a few blocks away. I had been sorry that my parents had moved us away to the suburbs. But, I figured, she had lived in the sterile ‘burbs her whole life and didn’t know much else.

“It’s not really that bad of a place,” I said.

Ethan looked around, soaking it all in. He’d always seemed real comfortable in new places.

I looked around my old neighborhood and sighed, looking at the old sidewalks I used to bike down weaving in between old ladies with groceries (again, with the groceries) screaming at me to ride on the street before I killed someone.

The bus arrived and we headed downtown. It was full and we had to sit apart, though not far apart. We didn’t talk much. Ethan was staring blankly down the aisle of the bus most of the time. I looked over at Helena every once in a while, just to look at her, capture the image in my head.

There were all the freaks on the bus: the ragged woman mumbling to herself; the old Cuban man in a fisherman’s cap smiling yellow-toothed at the woman sitting next to him—she, well-dressed, heavily made-up, waxy red lips, probably going to work at the mall. So many characters on the bus; it had a certain sideshow appeal.

Arriving downtown, we got off the bus and decided to avoid the mall and go directly to Burger King. Ethan and I scraped up enough change to buy a couple burgers, fries and a drink. Helena bought herself a drink. We picked up the conversation again. I frequently looked over to spy Helena’s lovely lips sipping from her straw, her teeth peeking out from an occasional smile. I had to catch myself a couple times from staring too long. This is Helena? I asked myself several times, astonished. We used to make fun of each other in junior high. I had never noticed it, but perhaps our taunts were swathed in some underlying sexual tension.

“Mr. Faltman was such a dork!” Ethan was saying. “Remember the last day of school when we all threw paper balls at him?”

“And he just stood there like an idiot with that big goofy smile of his and took it,” Helena said, laughing hysterically.

“Yeah, then he said, ‘OK, OK, let’s stop now,’ trying to act all cool and shit about it.”

“Then everybody stopped,” I said, “and you stood up, Ethan, and beamed him right between the eyes.”

We laughed and laughed. When we finished we got on the bus that stopped near my house. Along the way we passed through Little Haiti and saw lanky, dark-skinned dudes strolling down battered sidewalks. Many of them wore beige pants and white shirts. There were corner stores with signs in Creole. Ethan told us how his grandparents had owned a sugar plantation in Haiti and he taught us a couple of curse words in Creole that his dad had taught him. I leaned my head against the window and watched the streets rush by and fell half asleep. I closed my eyes and saw an image Helena sipping her drink and smiling at me, her eyes not looking away for a second.

Before we knew it we were at our stop. We walked down my block and came to my house. Once inside, we plopped down on the couch, exhausted. I offered Ethan and Helena milk and cookies. Yes, I actually offered them milk and cookies. I felt like a grandma. Helena took a couple cookies and said that she would like a glass of milk. Ethan stuffed his mouth full of cookies, crumbs tumbling onto his lap and the couch. Watching Ethan eat had always been a sight to behold. I recall a time that he was eating a cheeseburger loaded with supple amounts of ketchup, mustard and mayo. He took a huge bite, giggling like an idiot while he chewed; the toxic mixture of condiments ran from his burger, down his arm, almost to his elbow. He swallowed his bite then licked the length of his arm clean. Then he looked up at me and giggled again.

I poured three tall glasses of milk and set them down on the coffee table.

“Geez,” Helena said, “this is a big glass!”

“These are the glasses we use.”

“No wonder you’re so big!”

The phone rang. I leaped up and answered it: “Hello?”

“Yes, this is Ms. Eastman from Dell’s school.”

“Hi, Ms. Eastman, this is Dell.”

“Oh Dell,” she said, sounding sympathetic, “how are you feeling?”

Just play it off, I told myself. “Oh, OK, I suppose. Just a little cough and a sore throat. My headache and nausea are gone.”

“Alright then, just checking. Hope you feel better.” She said it in such a dear tone. I almost felt bad for lying. Almost.

We finished our milk and cookies and headed back to Helena’s school to drop her off before her mother arrived. We had just enough time to get there.

At her school we sat in the spot where she said she waited every afternoon. Ethan and I blended in easily, as if we were students there as well. Her mom came and Helena said good-bye.

“I’ll call you tonight,” I said.

“OK,” she smiled and turned away; she disappeared into the car and drove away.

Ethan and I started walking back to my place.

Ethan looked at me and said, “Helena got pretty cute, huh?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, staring at the sidewalk.

“Dude, you should ask her out.”

“Ah, she don’t like me like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

There was a brief silence. I thought about Helena in junior high when she was so girlish. We’d insult each other just to see how much the other could take. Push each other’s limits constantly. She was one of the first friends I had made upon transferring to the school in the middle of the seventh grade. And now she was turning into a beautiful young woman. We were now confiding in each other over the phone, like soldiers in a foxhole. She told me how she hated her father and how she thought about killing herself; how she hated the snobs at her school. And she told me about the time she had skipped school and talked to a store clerk all day.

Then I thought about Troy and how much time we used to spend together that summer we took Driver’s Ed—the summer before he went to art school. Now it was just Ethan and me. We did just about everything together: journeyed by bus, bike or foot around the city; drank wine coolers under the moon at the beach at midnight talking about God or love or history or whatever came to mind—just spontaneous free-form discussions that went well into the night till we passed out; skipped school during lunch and walked to the beach where he broke his hackey-sack record; saw bad movies and bitched about them while walking down dark suburban streets with dogs growling behind tall fences. And how long would it all last? I wondered. When would we grow apart and move on to different things and different people. I felt alone for the moment, unable to see past my presumed future and enjoy the present.

I knew that every step forward would bring me further and further away from them both.

“Dude,” Ethan broke the silence, “you should ask her out. Or at least just tell her how you feel.”

“Yeah . . . I will, Ethan. And thanks for always listening and being there for me, man.”

"Not a problem, brother."