Seu Jorge Presents "The Life Aquatic" a Tribute to David Bowie, a recap of events as I recall them.

Tonight, we saw Seu Jorge play his Bowie tribute at the Ace Hotel in Downtown LA. I want to take a moment to write about the experience before it fades from memory, before the implanted one takes hold as he promised it would.

Born in Rio, Seu Jorge is the guy who does all the Bowie covers in Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic," is what I told Brendan when a friend offered us the tickets. He’s much more than that, of course. A talented guitarist, songwriter, actor and singer, Anderson offered him the role after seeing him in “City of God.” In Aquaitc, Jorge plays a sailor who serenades the occupants of the Belafonte with early David Bowie covers performed in Portuguese. The movie sparked a cult following that is still very much alive; the theatre was dotted with hipster heads in red beanies as worn by the ships crew in the movie. Some were there for Jorge, some for “The Life Aquatic,” and some – like me, the traumatized – were there for Bowie.

David Jones died on January 10^th, 2016 in what some would say was the first crappy event in the downward spiral that has been this awful, awful year. Seu Jorge and his guitar alone on the stage, his strong, rich voice and Bossanova interpretations of familiar melodies paid a loving tribute to the man himself. They never met, but Bowie said of Jorge after hearing film’s soundtrack, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese, I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.” 

I guess that’s why he chose him.

Jorge opened with “Ziggy Stardust”. He was alone on stage surrounded only by a few nautical props and a second guitar that he never played. After the song, and in broken English, he told the story of the day Wes Anderson called his house and asked him if he knew any Bowie songs. “Let’s Dance,” he said it reminded him of “black music.” But Anderson wanted early Bowie so Jorge learned it. After a few more songs, his haunting version of “Changes” and “Oh! You Pretty Things,” he put his guitar down and took a long sip of water. He told a story about how his father had passed away the day after Bowie did and how he was unable to untangle the two events in his mind. After a moment of silence, he took up his guitar again. In his thick Portuguese accent he said he had special guest he’d like to bring out. I looked over and noticed the ushers padlocking the exit doors. Jorge informed the audience that anyone who wanted to go was free to leave now, but those who stayed would have to commit to an hour without leaving the theatre. No bathroom, no bar, and we would have to remain in our seats no matter what.

It was an odd twist to the evening but clearly part of the performance. And while around fifteen percent of the audience filed out annoyed, Brendan and I stayed put, curious. There was some movement, some shuffling, so we took the opportunity to move down a few rows for a better view. The theatre, if I may note, is a Spanish Gothic masterpiece, which opened to the public in 1927 as The United Artists Theater, first of its name. The ceiling looks like a cathedral as imagined by H.R. Giger complete with inverted alien birthing pool. I stared at it, as the crowd grew silent. On stage, Jorge fiddled nervously with his mic stand and when all eyes were on him, he mumbled something in Portuguese that sounded like a prayer and abruptly left the stage. The lights went out.

That’s when it started. All the air was sucked out of the theatre and replaced with new, different air -- that’s the only way I can explain it. And gravity seemed to loosen its hold on us ever so slightly causing us to rise in our seats. The alien birthing pool illuminated, casting us in a deep purple light that seemed alive. A woman screamed, which set off a chain reaction of anxiety like popping flashbulbs through the crowd. Then it stopped. A lone spotlight came up on the stage. The nautical props were gone. All that remained was the mic stand, the stool and the guitar. Then, as real as the nose on my face, he appeared.

The first thing I noticed was the long black coat, shiny and floor length -- long, like an opera cape. His head was down, hair short in the back, long in the front, a kind of ashy brown. He looked gaunt, but not much more then usual, and his skin was translucent like clear plastic containing a fog, containing a universe. He walked to the center of the stage, tuned to face us, head still down, and pressed his lips to the mic.

“Hello,” said David Bowie.

Spontaneous weeping followed a collective gasp from the audience. There was no doubt it was him. This wasn’t a trick (if it was it defied reality). Not once did it cross our minds that what we were seeing was a robot, a hologram, or an impersonator. No. This was Ziggy. This was the Starman. This was Aladdin Sane. This was Thomas Jerome Newton. He took off his coat to reveal a fitted suit in the same shiny black as the jacket. A girl in the front row fell to the floor and covered her head with her hands. “That’s quite a welcome. Jorge said I could pick it up from here.” People were hugging and crying, yelling and praying. Bowie lit a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?” He flipped his hair and flashed a smile that cut like a scalpel to the heart. He seemed genuinely amused by our reaction to him. I looked at my boyfriend. His eyes were swimming with tears but he was smiling. I grabbed his leg, which was floating two inches above the seat. Then Bowie picked up his guitar and started playing “Starman”.

Halfway through the song, acceptance set in. I mean, time was shattered in pieces on the floor, so by the time he got to the guitar solo it felt like we had had a few decades to process what was happening. It made perfect sense that David Bowie had decided to come back from the dead on a Sunday night and play for us in a locked theatre in Downtown LA. Oh, and the alien birthing pool was actually a porthole to another galaxy. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. I wondered what else I hadn’t noticed as he went into “Lady Stardust”. His suit was white now and his hair bright orange. It rained rainbow glitter that melted like snow when it hit your skin and there was a choir and a piano off stage somewhere, or so it seemed.

As he tore through his repertoire, he (and by that I mean the entity that was formerly encased in the man known as David Bowie) began to show us things. At one point I found myself sandwiched in an audience in London. It was 1972. Bowie was on stage with Mick Ronson, on his knees, fellating a guitar in head to toe Yamamoto. I was in a smoky dressing room hanging up sweat-drenched costumes while he wiped a golden orb from his forehead. It may have been the actual sun. I was in a ball gown, waltzing with the Goblin King’s stand in. Someone yelled, “Cut, clear the stand-ins” and I brushed past him as he took his place with Jennifer Connelly. I was floating in the vacuum of space in a suit tethered to nothing as he floated before me, God-like and alone, tugging lazily on space-time, brow furrowed in somber reflection. “In the villa of Ormen stands a solitary candle, at the center of it all, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes…”

Several lifetimes later we were all back in the theatre. Gravity returned, heavier this time. Bowie stood on stage in the white light, translucent once more in his black suit. Maybe he looked dead, but by that point we were all dead. It had been years. Decades, right? No... The 2016 of it all returned and we were struck with the feeling that what had always been was coming to a close. He was going to leave us -- again. The hourglass was almost out of sand. “I know things haven’t been easy,” he said, “but I want you all to know... Life is the best thing there is, even when it’s hard. Even when it’s cruel and upside-down and the inmates are running the asylum. Try to have a nice time. When I’m gone, all of this will fall into a dream. I’m like a bluebird, you know.”

He picked up the guitar one final time and performed “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide”. This was not the entity anymore -- this was the dead man. Tired in voice and decaying before us like John Baylock, he held on to assure us one final time, “Oh no love! You’re not alone. No matter what or who you’ve been, no matter when or where you’ve seen, all the knives seem to lacerate your brain, I’ve had my share I’ll help you with the pain. You’re not alone.”

Give me your hands cause you’re wonderful.

Give me your hands cause you’re wonderful.

Oh gimmie your hands.

Then he was gone. He blew away like smoke in the wind. The lights went out and the air changed from charged to static. When we woke up it was as if the whole thing hadn’t happened. The doors weren’t locked, they never had been. Seu Jorge was on stage finishing his set. I ran to the bathroom and took notes on paper towels. If all of this was to fall into a dream I had to try and remember. When I got back to my seat, Brendan had no memory of what we had been through. I think maybe they did something to the crowd while I was scribbling this in a stall; it’s hard to say. 

Outside the November air was crisp and cool. People didn’t go to their cars right away. We all kind of stood around in the marquee light. There wasn’t much talking. An older woman remarked that it really felt like Bowie was with us in there. Did she remember? I told Brendan I had an idea for a short story and I wanted to get home to write it before I forgot. So we walked hand in hand to the car. Racing the clock before the moment passed, before it all faded into a dream.

Wolf Moon

Wolf moon,
Peering through the trees,
Stalking my senses,
Pulling at my belly
And blurring my eyesight,
As I fumble through the park
Like drunken prey.

Low to the horizon
But lazy in her approach,
She knows she has me.
I am wounded,
She can smell my blood,
My blended insides,
My seesaw heart.

On the night I fell in love with you
The moon was two days old.
A sliver, a crescent,
Tucked into her celestial cradle
Under a blanket of late autumn clouds.
I thought I was safe
For she was young and toothless.

You were leaning against the wall
When I got off the train.
We walked through the mist
Over the wet leaves,
The smell of embers,
And for twenty minutes
We were immortal.

Wolf moon.
She pulls me to her now,
Into her solitude.
On this clear night,
Her teeth at my throat,
She knows she has me,
For she is the one I feed.

Notes from Paris

In 48 hours I'll be in Paris. I feel something monumental on the wind, like love without a love, a swoon without a reason, me and me against the world. Maybe beauty is enough, a tattered, tussled aging Lolita of a city, a Hepburn of a city -- and I think the NY fall foliage is pretty... I'm afraid for my poor heart, skipping beats as it is, drifting down the path, towards the path to the Gray Garden. I don't know from love, but Paris may kill me. Killed by beauty is a noble death. Oh god, let it be red and bloody. Let all the unrequiteds let loose their hold and burn me in a sunset over the city leaving red streaks on the cobblestones. And if I do come back, to the blue and the palms and the wide concrete, let this me remain, locked to a fence on a bridge or washing up on the banks of the Seine, in the shadow of Notre Dame.

A middle aged French woman just erupted in hysterics in the Air France terminal at JFK. Crying out, flailing, weeping. She does not seem crazy. Something awful happened in her world. I can't tell what, but her reaction was on the heels of the airline woman announcing over the loud speaker that the plane would begin boarding fifteen minutes late. Exactly at midnight.

My anxiety about going to Paris alone has dissolved. I am lying in my temporary loft bed in my temporary small plaster and wood beam flat atop five flights of stairs which spiral, steepen, and narrow with the climb. Down a pitch black hall with low ceilings and only the most subtle disconcerting signs of life, a toilet in a closet, the light sometimes on, sometimes off. Behind a green door, bolted and locked, up a glorified ladder to here. My temporary nest. I'm 6000 miles from my own slightly less temporary (in the scheme of things) bed, not afraid or lonely, any more or less then usual. Paris alone, is LA alone, is NY alone. No wolves at the door. No one at the door, and I sleep soundly.

For this travel diary I think I'm gonna go with dark, poetic and painful. Just know that I'm actually having an amazing time and eating cheesy potatoes whenever possible. I mean, I could write about how I had the best duck confit of my life tonight and got driven in a car along the banks of the Seine by a native Parisian, who when I asked, "is this legal? To, you know, be driving on what is clearly a walking path," just kind of shrugged and continued pointing out landmarks while letting the car drift backwards in neutral regardless of the river, or the drunken teens, couples, and night prowlers.

Big props to me today for ordering breakfast and speaking to everyone in the cafe only in French. I can order and ask for the check like a pro now. I think people keep thinking I'm French because I blend well with the natives. I wear their traditional garb, boots (not sneakers, EVER) tight dark pants or jeans, a huge scarf and a leather jacket. When I have my camera I tend to get addressed in English, but without it I'm flying by the seat of my pantalons. Let's see what else, went to Notre Dame today. It was all clouds and wind when I started out, belly full of cheese (Croque Monsieur at Favorite), but the sun started to come out after my tour around the Cathedral. I took many more pictures on my real camera, but remembered to take a few iPhone ones for Le Instagram. I am going to a show tonight that is part of the Paris Burlesque Festival. A friend is performing and was kind enough to put me on the list. And even though burlesque is to me now what cheese will be in two weeks, I can't stay away. The chance to meet people is high and I am not so good at that in general. I realize this post isn't dark poetic, or sardonic. Sorry. I will try harder later. Oh, fun fact? When my bat-shit crazy ex drunk texts me from LA it's like 10am Paris time. I'm sending him the bill for the message fees. Au revior!

Fuck a duck. Is this jet lag or drunk lag? Lets call it both. I'm still up. Can't sleep tonight for some reason. I noticed this knot in one of the wooden beams above my little loft bed. It's a one inch hole that seems to go straight through the wood. OF COURSE, I am now convinced there is a camera in there. There must be. If this were a movie it would be a series of shots getting closer and closer to the hole, and closer and closer on my face as the horror set in. I mean, it's fucking aiming right at the bed. I was considering masturbating tonight for good measure just so the pervs who ARE CLEARLY WATCHING ME can get their money's worth. I'll take a picture of it and show you guys when it gets light. The hole. In the wall! Not that... Anyway, I woke up feeling like pond scum on Saturday morning around 11am. It's not that didn't deserve it, I was drinking like a teenager with nothing in my stomach but cheese. My friend and guide, let's call him Monsieur F___, was also running a bit behind but finally arrived at my place on the Rue du Roi de Sicile. I was hungover and wanted a fucking Stabucks. I told Monsieur F___ this and he agreed, doing his very best to suppress his disgust at having to stand in line with me as I made excuses. "Sorry, but if I don't get my Starcrack, you won't want to be around me today." As it turns out, calling attention to your American-ness and laughing at it, does not help in situations like this. They still think you're a classless bell end. There was this whole cluster fuck regarding the definition of simple syrup, it's boring, anyway... Unsweetened coffee in hand Monsieur F___ and I headed off to browse the kinky sex shops of La Marais. As you may have guessed, Monsieur F___ is a man of certain tastes and I always appreciate a good pervert when I meet one. I was introduced to him through a friend, Mistress A____, who assured me that being a native Parisian, Monsieur F___ would be a great resource. (He was the one who drove us down by the Seine on my first night, a wild ride on a pedestrian path.) He's a bit older, very sweet, very kind, and has a love of cats and photography, namely Helmut Newton, which resulted in that picture of me posing in the same spot as his model on a side street. (Instagram: adriabomb) We visited two places, the first being my favorite by far. Phylea, amazing corsetry and fetish wear, and a second spot just up the block that felt a little more Hollywood Blvd then Paris. The Phylea stuff was amazing. As was its owner, the most fabulous, punk rock, old gay dude I have ever met. Finger tattoos and gold and black silk patterned suit, just fucking cool as shit and an old friend of M. F___, so he was nice to me. The dresses were over a thousand dollars. All of them. Most way over. I suppose I could have tried a few on, but I could feel the alcohol seeping out of my pores and decide to skip the embarrassment of not being able to fit into couture samples. There was this one dress that I was sure would fit me (still dreaming about it), but instead I took pictures and drank my bitter coffee like a champ. Monsieur F____ and I had lunch and got our tickets for the fetish party -- OH YEAH, so like, a couple of weeks before I came to Paris M.F. and I were writing, and planning and shit and he saw this picture of me on the internet in, you know, a German Police Officers hat corset, and black gloves, smoking a cigarette on a chain spiderweb. As you do, no bigs. It was then that he asked if I would care to join him at said fetish party, to which I replied, "why not?" I mean, again, I am as sick of fetish parties as I will be of cheese by the end of this holiday, but I figured it would be a good way to connect with an international and generally likeminded crowd, AND it was on a boat! A boat, you ask? Yes. A boat. On the Seine River. A stationary boat, mind you, but still... Look, most of my Facebook friends are having babies, but none of them, NONE, are going to fetish parties on boats. This is clearly a good idea. To be continued...

PS--There is a charming detail to this first part of the story I forgot to mention. When Monsieur F____ was checking me out on the Interwebs, as you do (?) he found a rando picture of myself and my dear friend Heather Domhoff. It was captioned, "me and my wifey". For the past 10 or so years Heather and I have been referring to one another as "wife" or "wifey" a term of endearment that was born out of a crazy trip to New Orleans. Monsieur F____ naturally assumed after seeing this, and "many cat pictures" that I was a lesbian and kindly compiled a list of girl bars, all written out on a sheet of paper that he handed to me in the street. He had actually gone out of his way to enquire with a lesbian coworker who pointed out the hottest spots. I told him I wasn't gay, not exactly, but that part didn't seem to sink in. I still have the list. Maybe I'll check some of them out. You would love that post wouldn't you?

I'm way over due for a maudlin update, but I've been too busy adventuring. This weekend was one long crazy party, I am looking forward to a week of culture and solitude. Friday night was the Paris Burlesque Festival and although I am as sick of burlesque as I will be of cheese come the 30th, I figured it would be a good way to connect with an international and generally likeminded crowd. The invite was courtesy of German bombshell Xarah Von Den Vielenregen and her consort Herr Dokter who I had only just met while performing in Jamaica. While waiting in the bar I was lucky enough to meet and get to know the lovely Stephanie May a vixen photographer and performer from Nashville who is friendly with Kisa von Teasa another darling performer I met in the caribbean. We caught the late show and I will admit to being somewhat entertained (wink). Especially fantastic were the Murakami Babydolls, a troupe from Japan who do choreographed dance numbers in pastel wigs. And the French Burlesque girls sure can shake it. So very Hot Club of France. Not boring. I was having fun in spite of myself and I missed the last Metro accidentally on purpose with adventure in my heart and decided I would make friends. You know, that rely on the kindness of strangers, Joie de vivre horse shit. This kind of experiment, fueled by alcohol, is never a good idea for me. I am terrible at small talk and never come off right when meeting new people for some reason. I ended up leaving the club annoyed (why do the French keep asking me how old I am? Fuck you, that's how old I am). I started down the street having no idea where I was, with no wi-fi, in the middle of the night in a short dress and heels. About two blocks from the club I started to realize how fucked I was. Paris, unlike NY, isn't big on taxis. I walked another block or so when a few French rastafarians started to shout at me. I feigned a smile, maybe, if things went south, I could explain how much I love Jamaica and they wouldn't like, rob me or whatever. I picked up the pace, stumbled on a cobblestone and almost fell. I steadied myself and looked down the street towards the light of the next intersection where more shady characters were lurking, a group of drunk dudes. Not cool. Okay. I would go back to the club, I decided. I would wait it out in a corner somewhere till the Metro started running again, and accept that this fucking terrible end to a fine night was all my fault and that I was an idiot for not taking the train, and that I'm FAR to old to for this shit, and that the best laid plans, and so on and so fourth and downward fucking spiral. But then, by some kind of magic, a cab pulled up right in front of me. The door opened and a couple got out. I could hardly believe my luck. I got in and gave my address to the driver who got me home for around ten euros. Tragedy avoided, lesson learned--okay fine, tragedy avoided. And here's the part where I go off the rails on a crazy train. Earlier, that day, I had lit a candle in Notre Dame for the soul of my beloved Nonnie who died in 2009. I know she sent that damn cab. I'm going to bed now. Maybe if you leave nice encouraging comments, I will post about the fetish party I went to the following night on a boat. What has been seen can not be unseen... xoxo

So, a fetish party on a boat, could be, theoretically, a cool and exciting thing. For one, the boat really ought to be moving. Maybe off shore somewhere on the brink of international waters. And, said boat should be large enough to capacitate its guests as well as having proper ventilation. I'm thinking a yacht, multi-levels, various rooms, various themes, black tie till midnight when all hell breaks loose... This was not that party. Imagine, if you will, a narrow barge with an upper deck. These types of boats regularly line the Seine, some of them are tricked out residences, some restaurants, but they're fairly small, max capacity being maybe 50 to 75 people, if that. I could smell trouble as soon as we arrived, and by trouble I mean pee. The walkway down to the river reeked of hobo urine, and not stale hobo urine like NY, this was like, a lot of fresh hobo urine right under our feet. Monsieur F___ laughed at me for being so grossed out. Apparently it smells like this often. I imagined for a second that it was 300 years earlier... the whole city must have smelled this way all the time. (Note to self* Scratch and Sniff history books.) Anyway, as we approached the water the smell of pee lifted away with the night breeze. The boat, the Henti, was docked right past The Pont des Arts, the bridge with all the little love locks on it. This is a major tourist spot, day and night. And while the event organizers were smart enough to put up dividers blocking the antics on the boat from the riverside, there was little they could do to stop tourists on the bridge from leering down on the S.S. Freakshow. I was feeling apprehensive from the beginning. We boarded the boat and entered the fray. There was a coat check and white plastic tarps set up as dividers so people could change. In France many people chose to change into their outfits after they arrive so as not to offend on the street. I wore my latex dress with a coat over it, but Monsieur F___ had to change into his NYPD uniform there. As I waited, I watched as people showed up and the one thing I realized, is that kids, there is no such thing as an amazing fetish party on a yacht. There just isn't. And if there is, please, someone clue me in because no matter how far I've roamed all these things are exactly the fucking same. Same cast of characters, almost to the tee, as NY, LA, Prague, Berlin... okay maybe not Berlin, but you get the idea. Middle-aged guy in a shitty french maid outfit? Check! Perfectly quaffed bitchy pro-Dommes? Check! Oddly attractive young D/s couple who seem too hipster to be there at all? Check! Super Dom dude flogging away at a parade of hot women whilst simultaneously whacking passers by with his whips? Check! Guy offering to massage my feet? Completely hooded mystery gimp? Dude with blow-up tits? Check, check, and... check. So not much new there, but what was bat-shit crazy (a term I taught Monsieur F___), was that it was all happening in a space the size of my living room. The hull of the boat was 30ft wide and maybe 150ft long, fucking TINY. And there was no ventilation--at all. I pictured myself on a ship 300 years ago it must have smelled exactly like this! Oh, and I think they had a smoke machine, um, really? It was FOGGY in there from the sheer mass of people, not to mention the natural humidity that comes from being half submerged. The place was a sauna of nasty and they had a SMOKE MACHINE. The music was the usual fare, dark, electronic, loud as shit, and people were dancing hard. I kept imagining the next days headline, "300 Perverts Drowned in Kinky River Disaster!" After about ten minutes, Monsieur F___ and I decided to flee and take our chances with the gawking tourists on the upper deck, at least there was air. We stayed for another little while then pulled an Irish exit, another new term for Monsieur F___. We wrapped up the night at Au pied de Cochon, where I had the best onion soup in the world and tried a pigs foot stuffed with foie gras as Monsieur F___ regaled me with stories of the cities many districts. Oh, and lots of wine. Sublime. Next installment, the Paris Flea, a hail storm and my hunt for real French bread. Tomorrow I see the Eiffel Tower. Bon Nuit!

Rain on my skylight. I'm so tired. I must have walked 20 miles today, at least. Versailles was a dream. Tomorrow's agenda consists of NOTHING except maybe evening plans. And a possible Metro ride to Saint Germain for cafe writing and inspiration. I'll post a proper update then!

Just woke from a terrible nightmare. I had killed a bunch of people some who, in the dream, were family. Then, remorseless, I sat down and watched a movie.

Hit a wall today. Weariness has set in. I'm longing for flowing communication and the company of friends and family--not to mention salad, normal size showers, and coffee that doesn't cost $8. Also, I'm PMS-ing my tits off and would really like to kill somebody.

A scooter ride around Paris with Francois, lunch at the Cafe du Flore--for all you Midnight in Paris fans--a walk in Le Jardin de Loxembourg, and wine by the Bastille. All in all a perfect day. Out of slump, I love Paris again! Nothing kills the homesick blues like splitting lanes on the back of an Italian bike while holding on to a Frenchman for dear life, Paris a blur all around, shimmering in the mid-day sun.

Eating at Chartier tonight, Monsieur F___ told me that Lou Reed died. Rest in peace you wild, wild heart.

Au Revoir, Paris... Merci

Missed Connections

Fourth of July, 2013, Silverlake Coffee, Los Angeles, early afternoon. I was writing at a small table near the wall stress eating a bagel while frantically trying to meet a deadline. My hair was wet and I was wearing camo-green. I imagine I looked a bit like The Swamp Thing. You were in workout clothes… I think. I don’t know as I never made direct visual contact with you, but I seem to remember the peripheral outline of a tennis shoe. You disturbed the air when you walked in. It caused me to raise my head. I think I must have looked right through you, because it wasn’t until you gave your order to the cashier and I heard your voice that I knew it was you. I glanced over, your back to me now. You seemed smaller and no offence, hairier, then I remember. It’s been several years. And I was oddly comforted by the fact that you had aged with me, like you had done me a favor. You ordered your drink (I didn’t hear what) and took a seat at the table beside me. I was staring intently at my computer screen. Just beyond it, your distinct profile branded its shape into my aura. I’m pretty sure you saw me. You must have. You were close enough to touch, leaning on a crossed knee, tapping away at your phone. Perhaps you were waiting for me to speak first, too look up, to acknowledge you. Or maybe you didn’t see me at all. Either way, I stayed silent and raised the psychic shields. What other choice did I have? You have been my unwitting muse for just over nine years now, and over that time, (since we met and you rejected me, all within the space of about ten hours -- or five years depending on how you look at it) I have been crafting and tending to your fictional golem. You are doing fine by the way, the “you” that I created, so why would I need to force awkward, terrible small talk in a shitty coffee shop on a national holiday? I have instilled “my you” with so much poetry, why force a trite, vaguely pleasant, slightly dismissive conversation about nothing? Why open the door for regret? It was bad enough that you had to see me like that. Fifteen pounds over weight, yet gaunt. The bags under my eyes packed and ready to go, poppy seeds in my teeth. The you I care for is judgmental and the women you admire are rare, ethereal beauties with far more to offer then myself. I would never presume. I don’t even touch you in my dreams. I keep a sane, safe distance, lest my imaginary you think less of me. I understand how crazy that must sound. On the surface I concede that it totally is. “Love” is insane in any form. Upon deeper inspection though I suppose it’s horribly sad. A woman, childbearing years approaching their end, unable (or unwilling) to find/catch/reel in/club a man of substance, of flesh and blood, obsessed with perfection, mired in fiction, in childish infatuation and daydreams… She doesn’t know what it means to really love, with its sacrifices, and its compromises, and its passive aggressive tolerations, its disappointments, its entitlements, and its false, false pride. Sad, miserable, lonely, no better then a death row groupie (who also, admirably, takes a kind of Mad-libs approach to love, the like I have perfected with you). So pity me or mock me, for like a death row darling, a fanatical fan, a tragic lover, or a suburban cannibal, I am cursed with a connoisseurs tongue. I don’t seek you out though, not anymore; I am content with the morsels handed to me by fate. A concerto here, a capriccioso there… There was a time when seeing you in a coffee shop would have been cause for much upheaval in my house of broken mirrors, but breathing the same air as you made me realize that who you are, who you really are, is irrelevant. A few weeks ago, you wished me a happy birthday on everyone’s favorite social networking site. A few weeks after that you invited me to a reading of a play you wrote. Well, I don’t want your salutations and I don’t want to see your play. I know that it’s sublime and surprising and well penned. I know that it's probably pulsing just beneath the surface with something that is unquantifiably beautiful. And if it isn’t -- if it’s shit -- it wouldn’t matter. I’d probably love it more if it were flawed. But I don’t engage in the emotional acrobatics of my youth, not anymore. Masochism is hard work, and the real you cuts me. I’m too tired to keep punishing myself, to keep destroying actual people in favor of ones I’ve made up. My only indulgence was to wonder if you wondered why I ignored you. I asked the golem version of you, but you stayed silent. Sick to death of my offerings. All the words, words I shove in your mouth, down your throat, for days, months, years. A play, two novels, three screenplays, hundreds of thousands of words for you, for aspects of you, for elements of you, imposed upon you, and dragged from you. I have versions of you sculpted in clay on every surface, in every nook of my mind. So how, I ask, how do I go about speaking to you in a fucking coffee shop on the fourth of fucking July? You are the only being, fictional though you may be, who has ever exceeded my expectations. How could I look at you? And would I not be a fool to disturb that placid perfection by saying the most common of common, “hello”'s? So anyway, that’s why I ignored you. Eventually your drink was ready and you left without looking back. Hope you had a nice holiday.

Rant in Gm

No one will ever love you like I do. This is not a threat. Nor is it a statement meant to be read with malice. It is simply a fact. One of the few simple truths that I know in the core of my being filed away between “The sky is blue” and “the world is round.” Isn’t it funny that you hate me for it? We hurt the ones we love. But isn’t it more of a universal truth that we really end up hurting the ones who love us? What better target than an easy one? Sure, you could aim for cans on a fence but why not first shoot at the twenty-foot, bleeding, heart shaped, balloon right beside them? I would be hard to miss. But what do you care about love? For you it’s a fucked up social construct invented by greeting card companies. It’s a tool for you to get what you want. You think me weak for loving you. And I am, I am. But I reiterate, no one will ever love you like I do. Sure, in the future after I’m long gone, others will come along. Who knows, maybe you have them lining up already. Are you auditioning potential lovers? Testing them, seeing how far they will go for you? I went to California. Now what? Now that you’ve tossed aside that shriveled orange called Yul, the one you sucked all the juice out of, who’s next? Will it be Top Hat? One of the perverts? No. Someone new? Well, whoever it is, I can guarantee they will never love you like I do. They will lack my panache. In my eyes you are everything you’ve always wanted to be and more. Once you kick that to the curb you will have to deal with expectations. You will have to deal with guys who would think it nice if you lost ten pounds. I don’t only love you for those ten pounds; I love how you feel about them. I love your insecurities and how you “despise” everything. I love your bunions and your ruthless disregard for anything that falls under the heading of normal. I love the way you laugh at your own jokes even when they aren’t funny. How nothing is taboo and how no topic, no matter how inappropriate, is ever inappropriate. I have never tried to change you or make you better or hold you back. I observe you. I prop you up and keep you comfortable so that you can perform for me. So you can hurt me, surprise me, make my life interesting. If I had a million dollars I’d give it all to you. I’d love nothing more than to watch you piss it away. To bask in the joy and pain it would bring you. My idol, my monster. I’ve fucked you every color of the rainbow, on every surface and in every hole as you have me; but now, as it comes to a close, as your tornado makes its way to other farms, as you remove your tit from my mouth, the pale world takes over. The crystals unglue and fall to the floor, the costumes get packed away, the pasties get sealed back into their Zip-lock bags and thrown into the bottom of the make-up case and all of it gets taken away by a stranger with his tail wagging, his confidence temporarily intact, proud, like he’s won a prize. And he will love you for a while, maybe forever, and your flaws will charm him, and your duplicity will torture him but I know, from the depths of the filing cabinet of truth, that he will never love you like I do.

~In Constant Care of Beautiful Monsters

West

Sometime West is the only answer. But how long can you keep moving till you end up back where you started? Our perspective is distant. When I think of you, it's all snake skin boots, and homemade tattoos, and broken bones, and innocence lost to colorful teenage rebellion. It's the cold north of home. Family secrets forged in alcohol, a death, a stroke, you in a dress, in some nocturnal, bloody, Gothic frenzy. Late night at Denny's, an orgy, or out on the Strip in the lost hours between 9pm and nowhere. A slip of a girl on your hip, a gamine, a Gisele, an ideal prop; a depository. Your powdered wig tucked into your back pocket, searching for Mozart on the sly. It's fun to break windows. To smash the crystal and have them put it on your tab. We may have nothing, but we rejoice in that -- dancing barefoot around the lead vault that is our indestructible, undeniable id. Our fingers on the keys -- ivory, plastic, notes, letters -- not a birthright exactly, something stolen from the primordial sandbox, the genetic lottery won. I accept that it's mine now. It's always been yours. So I look in the mirror, take a deep breath, and righteously declare to myself to "shut the fuck up." Good advice from a friend. Stubborn pragmatist. Renaissance fuck. I am the .04% and tonight I run West. Maybe just a block or two, but never unaware of who we are and what we aren't. Maybe I'll run West till I find myself on your back porch again, having traversed the globe, the physical pain dropping off somewhere around Jerusalem. Wouldn't that be something? I'd be covered in customs stamps -- not pretty. We would laugh about it, have a beer, and then you would walk me to my car.

The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 4

It started months ago, during a hail storm. But first, picture this. It's Christmas and there hasn't been any snow. The sky is a teasing, slate-gray and the air is perfectly still and freezing cold. Imagine yourself sitting by the window in a perfectly ordinary suburban home. It's quiet. You are alone. You watch the sky but your focus keeps shifting from the outside to the glass where you can see the reflection of Christmas tree lights blinking on and off at a tiresome pace. All the lights on the tree are blue, which feels more cold then festive, and the ticking of the clock refuses to match their silent beat. Nothing about this scene is warm. You shiver. The house is empty and the emptiness sucks at you. It presses against every object in the room like it's fighting for more space, more emptiness. Then it starts to get dark. You consider moving but what would be the point? To relocate ones self in the emptiness would only serve to reset the awareness meter. For a moment things might seem different, lighter, but once your bulk settles again, the process would begin again and there you would be, still taking up the same amount of space within the emptiness. So you stay by the window and watch it get dark. You watch the street below. It must be cold. Freezing even. The kind of cold that is void of life. A clean cold. It would be mad to open the window but that's what you do. You like the idea of a clean cold. You want to feel it just for a moment, because, well, you are closer to it now then you are to anything warm. To make it to something warm would take energy and effort, but the cold is so close so cleansing. You open the window.

It all started months ago. During a hail storm. I was at church. I go to church sometimes, not for any reason other then to be there, which up until recently I felt made me a bad person, a liar. But on the day of the hail storm, I saw something new. The church I go to, went to anyway, was very much like the one I grew up going to. Built in the seventies, drywall mixed with stained glass, a wholly unsatisfying attempt at churchiness encased within what essentially amounted to a cardboard box. There's a mural I like, and some pleasing sconces, but the pale peach walls take me out of character. Much like an actor in a period theme park or a shoddily put together Renaissance Fair, no matter how hard you blur your eyes, it just doesn't cut the mustard because it can't. There will always be an electrical outlet, or a kiosk, or a plastic rock formation to take you out of it. And of course, the tourists. I like my churches to be churches, I would find myself musing through the reading from Saint Paul according to John. I want my senses to be enveloped fully in the atmosphere of what it was selling, not put off or distracted by crappy carpeting, fluorescent lighting, or puckered ceiling tiles. It's a wonder the church doesn't think more about these things. We could wear costumes. Robes. In lieu of the authentic, an art director might just be a worthy investment to dial up the needed intimidation factor as bit. Add a smoke machine, candle light, but hey-ho, I just missed the whole reading thinking about interior design. A thought that led to the original thought about me not deserving to be there. But this day was different. People seemed different. No they weren't wearing robes, quite the opposite. They were regular people, just like me. And somehow I knew that while they might not have been thinking about turning the place into one of the set pieces from "The Bells of Saint Mary", they were thinking that they didn't belong. I immediately chalked this up to the hail. You could hear it tap, tap, tapping against the stained glass, against the roof. It must have been God pelting handfuls of frozen tears at our unrepentant souls, giving us a little scare. It felt dark outside even though it was mid-afternoon and when the time came for Communion, a practice I have sat out of since the eighth grade, something compelled me to rise and get in line with everyone else, for everyone in that church on that unusually dark afternoon, took Communion. Every last wide-eyed, embarrassed cynic from the bowels of Hollywood. We all rose and systematically ingested the body of Christ. Amen.

So you wanna hear the fantasy? It's like this. I go up to the priest and hold out my tongue. He places the Communion wafer in my mouth and says, "Body of Christ", to which I reply, "Amen". I drink the wine, and presumably the backwash of my fellow absolved, and as I'm walking back to my pew, I'm overtaken with a feeling of intense nausea. My body starts to wretch and I can feel my gut sucking at my entrails like a vacuum cleaner, pulling the sin from my body, all the infection, all the years of self abuse, all the pollutants, all the disease, all the weight, all the evil from wicked thoughts, to bad memories, to bad decisions, all the shit from life, either manifested by me or imposed on to me, into a black ball of writhing slime that forms in my stomach. I fall to the ground and feel the cool of the tiles on the side of my face and open my mouth. I'm like a fish gasping for air. My mind holds a single thought, mercy, and I wonder if I deserve it. I wonder as I feel the blackness descending, and then, I cough. Several more times as my face turns crimson, as someone has run off to call an ambulance, as the priest looks on in knowing horror, as mothers hide their children's eyes from the sight of me. I cough and out it comes. I breathe and look down. On the cheap mismatched tiles is everything wretched, everything impure everything that has weighed me down and now, I am free. I am light. I am with God. For now, I believe.

This is what it would take. The hail was not enough. For any of us.

I think I go to church for this fantasy. It's also why I like a church to be a church. Such a scene deserves a great setting. I took the Communion and felt queasy. I hadn't eaten yet that day and the wine was cheap, probably from a box. It made me sick and for a moment, just a moment...

You open the window. It's still outside but the cold hits you like a stone wall. You can't remember a time when you felt such cold. It almost makes you giddy. How insane. How fortunate that we live in a time where such elements can be controlled and kept at bay by a thin pane of polished sand. It's humbling. We ascribe so much power to things that don't exist and walk around ignoring, and often disrespecting, the power that holds our lives in its very hands everyday. The cold is that kind of power. The cold is right there, you can feel it. This cold can kill you, but it can also, maybe, absolve you. You stand and go to the door. You open it. In just your slippers and a nightgown you make your way through what feels like needles across the frozen lawn to the blacktop of the deserted street. You can no longer feel your face. You lie down. The warm soft parts of you are instantly grabbed by the dead cold ground, which seems to suck at what warmth you have left, a devilish purification, but nonetheless, what is happening is real. It's as real as that cardboard church is not. You open your mouth. Nothing comes out but steam and perhaps a Rhinemaiden or two, maybe a laugh, and as the process intensifies, you look up and notice that the blue lights of the coldest Christmas tree in creation are still blinking in the empty house, and you promise yourself to add some red ones next year.

The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 3

Oh where, oh where can my Bobo be? Oh where, oh where can he be?

Sometimes levity can be found in desperation. A little song, a little dance. Is the pain in my foot fading or increasing? Is life getting harder, here in the land between, or is the place itself rendering such questions mute? I was having a hard time. I see that now. It bubbled to the surface like the black goo of the La Brea tar pits. My God. It's a sad day when you realize that life has snared you. That you have become all the things that you swore to yourself you would never be. That your inner child has gotten old and that you are still ten years behind. And other sad cliches. But then, one day you find yourself wrapped in a particularly lucid dream. A dream where the tree bark is made of fine flaky chocolate, and you say to yourself, at least I have this. At least the trees are made of chocolate, because if they weren't, I might be tempted to jump off this cliff.

She was confused. That's my eulogy. It's also in the eye of the beholder. And I agree. For most of it, before it ended, before the walls came crushing in, I was confused. And as I sat there, sit here, (I forget what tense I was/am in), I could see quite clearly the confused person I had grown into. What does confusion do? Nothing. It does nothing. It gets by. It sits still. Afraid to move in any direction for fear that it might be the wrong one. It lets things happen to it, instead of doing things, anythings, for itself. It builds a prison with pretty walls, and good smells, and old chairs, and comfy blankets, and it keeps out the world. It observes. And inevitably, it longs. (Oh God, does it long...) And inevitably, it dies.

I sat on the precipice, feet dangling into the abyss and had this thought -- I have too much blood. I could feel it pounding in my ears, in my veins, and pulsing, not in my heart, but in my foot. Without Bobo, I was sure the end was near so I comforted myself with thoughts of proposals past. I had been proposed to seven times. Of the seven, one was in person, two were in writing, one was by phone, and three were by text. I accepted the first, but never made it to the wedding. Confusion saw to that. Confusion is a death sentence. I inched a bit closer to the edge, attempting to see through the fog. It sparkled. Who tempts sirens to their end, I wondered? The ghosts of dead sailors coaxing them onto land? Do they shimmy on their fish tales, into taverns and sushi joints looking for love, only to find they have gone too far inland? Have I shimmied in too far? Are my gills drying out?

"Tell me what to do," I said to the sparkling abyss, "lead me now, out of confusion and deliver me from evil, or into evil, anywhere. Just deliver me. Just lead me. Give me a rule. Something to follow."

It is a dangerous thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Oh, God...

"You're pathetic."

I turned so quickly that I almost killed myself by accident, but his strong, gloved hand saved me. Saint Peter. How I envied his clarity. He had gotten a jump on life. They all had, all the Saint Peters I had known.

"Bobo is missing. Please..."

I was tearing up looking at him. He was standing over me in his dirty suit, lies drying on the pant legs. He told me so many times that I was his one and only. And I probably was, in my universe anyway.

"Bobo's fine. He went after a squassum."

"A what?"

"Body of a possum, tail of a squirrel. Or is it the other way around?"

"Why?"

"They're irresistible to cats." Fey, nonchalant, sexy, as if he was smoking, but not.

"No, why did you do this to me?"

"Dulcinea..."

He called me that from time to time. Dulcinea. The princess of La Mancha. 'Her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare.' But he said it with sadness and a tinge of irony, making the slice in my leg hurt less by comparison. His feet crunched over the blades of sugared grass. He sat, elbows resting on his knees, on a tortoise shell, sans tortoise.

"You betrayed me, and it took the clarity of pain to show you just how much. There is a lesson here. You can stay and learn it or you can go back to your prison. Your choice. But remember, when your time ends and your body is planted in the ground, when your marble bosoms fall away and turns to mulch, you will stand in judgment before Me. The abyss that tempted you will become your new prison. You will fall. And you will never stop falling."

"You loved me once. How could you be so cruel?"

Saint Peter helped me to my knees and pulled me close. With his ever-gloved hands he traced the lines of my face and neck, mumbling Cervantes under his breath. I could feel him falling into me, his passions rising, his breath quickening.

"Dulcinea..."

I put my hands on his chest, strong and elusive, with no sign of a heartbeat. I could feel the pulsing in my heel and imagined it was coming from him. I inched my fingers toward his collar and the perfectly placed tie, both spotted with trace stains of lipstick, saliva, and the faint commingling scent of hundreds, upon hundreds, of different perfumes, post coital cigarettes, and late night hotel menu items. My fingers slid to his neck and made contact, flesh on flesh, for the first time. But before the touch could become a feel, he seized my wrists and pried them off, holding me at arms length, a fire in his eyes. For a moment I was sure I had just kissed my other Achilles heel goodbye. But he didn't harm me. He spoke.

"I never said I loved you."

And with that he returned me to the sticky ground and vanished.

I dozed. I licked at the grass, which tasted like lime soda. A drooled a little and languished in my thoughts. Ah, sweet confusion. Could I perhaps make a little decision? One to trick myself into thinking I was on an upward path? A psychiatrist once told me to imagine a ladder in the desert. What did it look like? How may rungs did it have? Mine was made of aluminum. It had six, no seven, rungs. It magically stood at a forty-five degree angle though there was nothing holding it up. What did it mean? But my hour was up. My hour was up. Lick, lime soda. My hour was up. Lick, lime soda.

"What the hell? Did you go retard?"

"Monkey?!"

Oh God, he was back. I couldn't help myself, I grabbed him and cuddled his fur. I cuddled it like it was going out of style. My monkey. My chicken. My little love.

"Okay. OKAY." He jumped down and shook me off, and I could tell he had a little cock in his walk.

"Never. Never. Never do that again. You scared the crap out of me, Bobo."

"It was worth it though. Look at this, mom."

He hopped over the tortoise shell like a baby lamb, and after a bit of a scramble, dragged the ugliest amalgamation of possum and squirrel that had ever been set upon with human eyes.

"Oh... Bobo... You caught yourself a squassum. Good boy."

"I caught it for you. You appreciate it, right? You're gonna eat it, right?"

In our past life, the one in which I did all the talking, Bobo would bring me gifts from time to time. I never had the heart to tell him that what he found to be the purest gesture of love and respect, I found to be completely nauseating. And looking into his two-tone eyes, so full of pride, I knew that I would have to afford taking Bobo the same courtsey.

"I love it. And I'm really gonna enjoy eating it later on."

Bobo straightened up and gave his front paws a satisfied licking. I decided to let him have his moment and revel in it before telling him about my little talk with Saint Peter. I wanted him to be in a good mood when I told him that I'd passed up a one way ticket home in favor of a quest.

The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 2

In my dream, my foot was stuck in a crusher. I was on a conveyor belt with hundreds of beekless chicks. My foot, the bad foot, had jammed the machine but the conveyor was still operational, delivering a seemingly endless amount of fuzzy, yellow, baby chickens my way, and then, for some reason, doughnuts. I remember being happy as I watched in excruciating pain while the chicks nibbled on the doughnuts rather then meeting their violent end, ground up into God knows what, until I had the horrible realization that the doughnuts were made from the ground up chicks. Soilent Doughnut. It made no sense. It was pure horror, not reason. But terrifying nonetheless. I retched. I woke up. The purple sky was gone.

My heel still throbbed. It would for some time, I imagined. I tried to recall all I had learned about pain management from my days as an erotic pain management consultant, but nothing prepared me for this. This was not the kind of pain that could be managed. There would be no channeling this through my Kundalini. No pushing it down through my core into the pubic knot. No using it as an outlet for stifled emotions. No crying it out. No orgasming through it. No. This was the kind of pain that required the good drugs. This was a war injury. I was afraid to look at it. It felt as if the bottom of my calf muscle had begun to roll up towards my knee. I was sure that's what was happening, and expected to see a chambered nautilus made of muscle crawling slowly up the back of my leg, bone exposed in it's wake, a lost heel dangling somewhere below. But when I did look, all I saw was a foot, poorly wrapped in blood soaked paper towels, resting on a small hill of sand.

Where the hell was that cat? How had we gotten to a beach? I lifted my head again and scanned the sand for paw prints. There were several. And one fresh set leading towards the water. Bobo. I scanned the coastline for signs of him. Nothing. The mother in me worried. My baby pie, where was he? Then I saw something pink. He ran towards me at an alarming speed, shaking and cursing as he came.

"What's wrong with that water? Damn it. Damn it to hell."

Bobo sat in the sand and started licking himself, then he cursed again and made a funny cat-who-has-mistakenly-licked-the-peanut-butter face. He was pink, wet, and covered in sand. He looked hilariously adorable.

"What happened, Monks?"

"I was trying to wash the blood out of my fur, okay?"

I could see why he was tempted to try. The water was a crystal blue azure and calm as a mirror. If I hadn't been so thoroughly fucked, I would have run for it myself. The beach was hot, the sand scorching.

"But cat's hate water. Why didn't you just clean yourself like normal?"

"I thought I'd try something new. Is that such a crime?"

He was being pissy.

"Nope. Not a crime at all. I'm proud of you."

"Well, that water tastes terrible."

"It's salt water, Boo."

"Why the hell did they put salt in it? Jeez..."

He kept on with the licking and spitting. I guess talking Bobo, much like regular Bobo, hadn't ever been to the ocean.

"Listen, Monkey, how did we get here?"

"You passed out again. That little girl, the one in the party dress, she and her evil cohorts ran out of things to fling with that catapult and decided on us. I was too small to stop her, but gave her a few nice scratches for her effort before she counted down from three and sent us sailing. Look around."

The beach was indeed spotted with all my worldly possessions. My dresser, or parts of my dresser, was being gently lapped by the surf, and the ugly chair bobbed about thirty yards out to sea. My lamp had gotten tangled in a bright blue banana tree, and books, scripts, and papers occupied a fifty yard radius up the beach a ways like a an emergency library drop gone horribly awry.

"We fell from the sky?"

Bobo the independent, allowed me to wipe down his fur with my sweater, which I had taken off due to the increasing heat. He pretended not to enjoy it.

"That was the strange thing. We sailed through the air for a long while, but didn't quite land. The altitude knocked me out too, and when I came around, we were here. I found the kitchen stuff. There are cans, and some of your food seems to have made it too. I suggest you pull it together and pack a bag so we can get out of here."

"And go where?"

"To confront your lover, mother. Wherever he may be."

We needed a plan. The sun was rising in the sky making it next to impossible to think, but I managed to make a list of all the things I needed Bobo to find, the first being a small bottle of Vicodin. It took him at least a half an hour of nasty metaphors, but eventually he did find the pink striped bag in which I kept all my toiletries. The pill bottle was there, and though it only contained three precious Vicodin, it would be enough to get me through the day. I disinfected my wound with some peroxide and wrapped it up tightly with gauze. Bobo had to bite my arm to keep me from passing out again, but once the clean bandage was in place, and the drugs started to take hold, I felt ready to move, or wade rather, through the cottony haze of pharmaceutical bliss.

We packed a bag with cat food cans, power bars, water bottles, and bruised-by-catapult fruit. I took along a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, a book I had promised myself I'd finish reading before dying, which, by the looks of things could be sooner then I thought, a few more first aid supplies, and a half-empty bottle of vodka for when the Vicodin ran out. I threw in a tin of cat nip in case Bobo really started to get on my nerves, a few clean pairs of underwear, and a blanket with a poem about daughters knitted into it that my mother had given me for Christmas. A piece of drift wood served as a walking stick, and slowly, Bobo and I made for the wall of blue banana tress separating the beach from the technicolor jungle.

We walked for a while through a Dr. Seuss fantasy. A spongy, hot-pink ground sprouted with blue and orange trees, some of which grew upside down. Bobo, being color blind and not particularly interested in flora, couldn't care less, but I was on painkillers and found it all terribly entertaining.

"It makes so much sense now," I said to Bobo as we navigated a clearing of green flowers with yellow stems, "Saint Peter hid his whimsy. He didn't even bother to undress when he fucked me, remember that?"

"You think I'm watching, but I'm not," Bobo quipped in a tone that implied pity for my inebriated state.

"He didn't!" I could sense I was revealing too much, but felt helpless to stop myself. "He would let himself in while I was sleeping, pull back the covers, whip it out, and do me. It was that way every time, remember?"

"Nope."

"It was so sad. I mean it was hot, I found it hot, but now that I think about it, it was so... sad."

"LALALALALA..."

"I never felt his hands on my flesh. Or mine on his. He wore gloves, and had that dirty suit of his buttoned all the way up to his collar. I never dared touch his face. That would have been too intimate. I felt him inside me, but I never touched him. Isn't that sad? Then, when he was done (he was always so quiet when he came, like thunder rolling over a neighboring town when the afternoon is deathly still and humid), he would rumble, rumble above me while he shot into me. I know it wasn't normal. It didn't feel normal. It felt like knowledge. Like a liquid thought that had the ability to pass through the usual fleshy barriers and make its way to my spinal fluid. Then it would travel up into my brain and deposit a thought. 'You're mine', it would say, 'my possession, my property, my easy earth girl.' And I see it now. He did it all for me. What if all this weird beauty is really him and he was too afraid to show it? What if he appeared to me the way he did, all leathery and cool, because he wanted to make me happy? Bobo?"

I stopped under a blood red tree with Swarovski crystal leaves and scanned the area.

"Bobo!"

Ahead there was what looked to be another clearing and I made my way towards it screaming his name at the top of my lungs. What a mess, I thought. Just like me to spread my damage and confusion over a situation like spicy jalapeno jelly and alienate everyone I touch. But not Bobo. Not my pure little man. My sweet little guy, my innocent. The only living proof that I'm not a complete fuck up. Bobo; well behaved independent, polite, sweet, and gone.

I limped my way over fallen crystal leaves, which crushed under foot like thin panes of sugar towards the white hot sky. But it wasn't a clearing I found when I got there. It was a cliff. And below, for miles, there was nothing.

The Bobo and Margarita -- Part 1

In vile confirmation of all my worst fears, I seem to find myself, once again, in purgatory. This is not a metaphor. It is a whole truth that spans eons and stops only when the very basic parts of the thing start to break down. The cell walls of all involved would have to crack and spill their atoms and protons and neurons all over the floorboards in order to erase the truth of what I'm about to tell you. So bare with me as I relate to you this horror story with the fear and reverence it deserves, lest I shatter anymore bones, lest I pop my other Achilles' heel, for contrary to popular belief, pain and purgatory are not mutually exclusive. In fact, pain is increased seven-hundred fold in the land between. The moment of inception repeats over and over again, stuck mercilessly in a groove. Imagine stubbing your toe every five seconds for a billion years. Imagine drowning one-hundred times a day, forever. Imagine that while you listen to my tale.

I was sitting in my room in a large decorative chair that I bought for twenty-five dollars at the Salvation Army. When you enter my room, the smell is familiar. It smells of burnt corn tortilla shells and floral perfume. It smells of a leaky gas oven and of cigarette smoke, and occasionally of sex, cat hair, and basement. This conglomerate of smells gives it a sort of character. It's not the kind of place you'd want to spend any significant amount of time in due to its low ceiling and its oppressive, postage-stamp size. Sad that we found it charming once. Like a tomb of ancient Egypt it is stocked floor to oppressive ceiling, with cheap, worthless belongings. Neglect coats them in much the way that a greasy head leaning against a train window coats the glass with oil and sebum. In some cultures the objects inhabiting this room would be burnt for fuel or used to test catapults. The chair for example. The chair is a monstrosity. Probably liberated from a funeral home or the lobby of a motel or gentleman's club, half of its weight is most likey sweat and dust mites alone. And that was before the blood.

In it I sat, smoking a cigarette, blowing my exhale past the African Violets and out the window. That's where I was the night I got my last visit from Saint Peter. I can't exactly say I was happy to see him, or him me. Contrary to popular belief, Saint Peter isn't a kindly old man in a white robe with a ledger, he usually wears a black suit spotted with suspicious stains. His nose looks as if it has been broken several times over, and his skin is all leathery and scared. Still, he has a kind of animallistic charm that makes my heart flutter ever so slightly in it's ribby cage when he shows up in my room. This, in turn, makes my breasts swell and all the other pertinent parts of me light up like a ping-pong machine after a perfectly deployed ball. Sometimes we make love. He likes to talk dirty. But tonight he came by to snap my Achilles' tendon and send me to purgatory.

I knew it was coming. Usually, when acts of such intentional violence are coming at you with a scythe, you can narrow them down to a specific set of circumstances that put the whole bloody thing into motion. I was thinking about my transgressions as he leaned into me and reached down, grabbed me between the legs, and lifted my whole body onto the bed. For a second I thought he might want to be intimate, but with one quick move he grabbed my right leg out of its sock monkey slipper, hugged it to his chest and with a small, curved, silver blade, pressed with all his might against the rubbery tendon. I felt it sever and snap, and blacked out immediately from the pain. When I woke up he would be gone.

Bobo roused me what must have been just a few minutes later, because I was still bleeding profusely. He was doing his best to wrap my foot with paper towels, but without opposeable thumbs he's pretty much useless when it comes to first aid. His white fur was soaked with blood and the mother in me was immediately worried. What if Saint Peter had hurt him after I passed out.

"Monkey, are you okay?" I gasped through the most intense pain I have ever felt.

"I'm fine. Jesus. Why didn't you call me?"

"You're a cat. You never come when I call."

"Yes, not usually, because all you want to do is fuss over me. When it's important I know." He shook the bloody paper towel from his paw and wiped it on the bed. "This is madness, you know that right?"

"Maybe you should go get help. I'll be okay."

"Go where exactly?"

"I don't know, Giselle's house. Remember that time I sent you over to help her change that light bulb?"

Bobo rolled his eyes, jumped down off the bed, and pulled back the curtains using the top of his head.

"We're not in Echo Park anymore, ma."

I lifted my head and looked out the window. He was right. We weren't in Echo Park anymore. We were somewhere else. We were in a place that over the past few weeks Bobo and I have dubbed "Limbo."

"It looks like a Salvador Dail painting out there," I said, but I was just being pretentious. It looked more like Palm Springs. Or Mars.

Bobo jumped down and started pacing, leaving little bloody foot prints on the floor. I was going to tell him to watch the rug, but what did it matter now? The bed and the chair were soaked through and the pain in my leg was starting to send me off again into the soothing nothingness of the unconscious.

"Don't you pass out on me," Bobo snapped, "you know I can't open those cans myself."

"I'm bleeding to death and all you can think about is your stomach?"

He jumped up onto the kitchen counter.

"I can't turn the faucet on either and I'll be damned if I have to drink from that bowl, I swear to..."

He got all quiet for a moment.

"Are you thirsty?"

"I wasn't. I was just proving a point. But now that I'm up here... Yes. Sorta."

"I'm sorry, kid."

"Well, you should be. I knew you shouldn't have gotten mixed up with that guy. He was bad news from the start. You had me fixed when I was a kitten, maybe you should have taken some of your own genius advice and tied that mess up before it was too late."

"I didn't declaw you."

"If you had, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"We've never had a conversation. You're a cat. I'm assuming this is all a pain related hallucination."

He jumped down from the kitchen counter like a flash, up onto the bed, and perched on my chest.

"Listen to me and listen good. I'm all you got right now and I think we can get out of this but I need you to do exactly as I say, okay?"

"Sure."

"Don't be sarcastic."

"Yes. Sure. Okay," I said with enough conviction to get him off my case. "Why don't you ever sleep on my lap like a normal cat?"

"You smell weird."

"Fair enough."

"Now get your laptop out. I need you to set the cursor on scroll so I can go through all the emails you exchanged with Saint Peter just by pressing my paw on the mouse."

"You can read?"

"Just do it. Then do your best to wrap that foot as tight as you can. We're gonna have to leave here eventually and I need you mobile."

I did as I was told. I assumed without saying that the pain had caused my personality to split in two. The rational leader in me had taken refuge away from the pain and manifested itself in my cat Bobo, while the passive part of me stayed put and took orders. It sort of made sense. Now if I could only figure out why the sky outside was dripping purple, I would be one step closer to figuring a way out of this.

Bobo stared at the screen, pressing his little paw down every few seconds as months of emails with Saintpeter_101 went scrolling by.

"People amaze me," he mused as I carefully wrapped my foot, "he told you who he was. He told you what he would do to you if you told, but you did anyway. Why?"

"Um, I don't know Bobo, because there is no Angel of Death and cat's can't talk, maybe?"

"Maybe. He says here, that if you ever tell anyone what you know about him he will 'come to your house, hobble you,' which I assume is what has happened here, 'and throw you into the land between, which is neither death or living, just a sock hanging on a clothes line in the unfathomable infinite.'"

"I thought he was putting me on."

"How about when he says, 'this is real. I'm not putting you on. You don't know how lonely it can get being immortal, I have a hard time finding someone I can trust,' etc, etc, how about that?"

"Whatever. Now what?"

"Well, it's his realm and I don't think you can die... we have to go find him and you have to beg for forgiveness."

"He practically cut my foot off! And I have to beg forgiveness?"

Just then the walls started to shake and rattle like an earthquake. Glass began to break and plaster to crumble.

"Come on, we have to get out of here!"

Bobo lept out the bathroom window just as it collapsed in a pile of rubble. I dragged myself to the door and hopped up on my good leg to open it. The rush of blood to my foot sent my head reeling and I almost passed out again.

"Come on, mom! You can do it!" I looked out the glass panel in the door to see Bobo sitting on his hind legs waving me over. He looked so cute I wanted to wear his little face as a hat, so I reached my arm through the broken glass and opened the door from the outside, swinging my body around and hopping 10 or so feet to safety. I looked back and saw my room standing crypt-like sans the house it once was part of. It was being demolished by huge yellow trucks being operated by little girls in party dresses. One of them saw Bobo and approached with eager trepidation.

"Is he friendly," the little girl asked?

Bobo instinctively rolled onto his back, a move which seemed vulgar now that he could talk. The little girl took his cue and rubbed him to the point of purring.

"What's her name?"

"Bobo. He's a boy. Why are you and your friends destroying my house?"

"Uncle Peter told us to," Bobo was drooling now, off somewhere in kitty euphoria, the girl's words were lost on him. "And we need more stuff to test the catapult."