The Pact

We were just kids. We said when we were 15 that if we weren't married by 30, we would marry one another. And now, there you are - and here I am - in two completely different places in life. We're just as distant as we ever were, even when your face was on my chest. I haven't seen you in years, but I feel your security. If you're not there in marriage already, you're getting there; you were always very determined to be with someone special.

I have no idea where you are on the road of life, but my guess is you're even more complex and becoming more like your Dad by the day. I'll always care about you, no matter how crazy I acted over the years while I was still using. You never loved me because you knew I was batshit. Smart man.

Sometimes, I look over my shoulder when I'm riding in the bike lane and I imagine you and your girl pulling up next to me without recognizing me. I hide behind my sunnies and helmet, and I move on to the next daydream of the man in my life who will be more inspiring and cooler than you were back then. I will feel that muse come alive again. It's been far, far too long. 10 years of fog lifting now...watch me grow.

Missed Connections

We used to think human connections were being thwarted by the age of iPods and cell phone time-wastage (reading a book doesn't have as much clout with that idea because someone can always strike up a conversation about how good a Calvino novel is). Aren't moments of fleeting glances, temporary wanton lust and what-might-have-been questionable in the age of technology turning people into ants?

The Missed Connections section on Craigslist marries use of personal technology with getting lost in the human moment. It actually requires true effort to type and post something like, "I saw you in the Trader Joe's yesterday with a Broken Social Scene shirt and you had a lot of strawberries in your cart...I wonder if you were making pies..." This means those moments are still alive and very real. Missed Connections reminds us that people still fall in love for 45 seconds and then watch that world-within-a-world step off the train and walk in the opposite direction of a stranger's captivation. We love it, too.

It's a girl!

She used to be somebody. She used to walk into a room and people would look to her to find out what was going to happen next. She was loved by everyone who knew her and she was the prettiest and smartest person in the place. The sincerity of her importance would make you look twice at her deep painted face and three times at her clever droll jokes. She could stare you down and drag you around for days. She was the last person up with a bottle of warm straight in one hand and a long ashy cigarette in the other inviting whoever and whatever to early morning parties where we hated when those birds would chirp.

And then her brain exploded and colorful bits of flesh splattered all over the walls of her tiny universe leaving trinkets of suicide for everyone to remember fondly like ski trips and beach vacations on mantles all over the Norman Rockwell nation. She died at the end of the summer when people were still wiping sweat from their brows and their balls and hanging on to Indian days like it was the last season of life on Earth. For her, it was the last season of death.

She came flying out of the vagina of stark raving sobriety like a blue baby without crying or gasping for air. The doctor with the head mirror and the cigar held her by her feet, slapped her on the ass and said this one’s gonna take a minute to catch up with the rest of us. She coughed up the blood of her mother and took a breath, screaming into the night for hours, days, weeks, months. She woke up from the nightmare of being the center of the universe and something clicked. Click.