Brian's Pet

        So I hit OKCupid and hop on a plane to Seattle. Cheaper than Portland, as I'm suicidal and lonely again, headed cross country.

        I met Rebecca through the couch surfing website. Their dilapidated Portland Victorian, windows out, covered in a plastic flap on the 2^nd floor. She just settled in after living in a camper for 5 years, traveling the states. Meeting Seren on OkCupid and dating in Vegas. A hot tub love affair they move to Portland. His ex the psychiatrist; a role playing reversal – from boy toy to dream guy taking the lead. Sauerkraut in jars; shes canning and growing, jars and jars of kraut, some veggies, made her own toothpaste and plants to sell. Dehydrating leaves. She offers me a red couch and blankets.

        Her Winnebago ventures, wine, and the bat's bridge. The thousands of free-tailed bats that take flight from beneath the bridges of Austin and Houston at dawn. The hole next to the basement and copper wires. A whale weather vane on the roof creaking with each gust of wind.

        Christmas trees growing out of the side of the mountains.

        Mount Hood.

        Mount Rainier.

        Seren's shoes and jackets create walls in the room. They snuggle in bed all morning. Rocks in the buckets outside the house. They had to break up the concrete for more yard.

        We met at Floyd's coffee shop and I could hear them tell you not to let me out of your sight. I knew when you walked in, outside of the character role playing – knew I would latch on to you – height, weight, cheekbones, eyes; the lean, the steady, the shifty and anxious. Like hold me, subway rush will part us, like left behind on the trail, lost in the woods as the sun sets, knife fights on dirty Paris streets. My barrio; my love affair with death. If your hand slips away – one of us will lose.

        Bearded men and bears, Portland politics and underground newspapers. Hiking, smoking, and the tech industry. Your mechanical nature keeps your hands working; oily cement and foreign vehicles you trade for a living. I call the life coach, call my sister to wish her a Happy Birthday. She tells me how she's getting laid more than me. Then I'm in your rental car, driving steel bridges, stopping occasionally for a photo opportunity. Slight fascinations; I'm instantly in love with you. The mountainous landscape, snow peaked. The roads leer and the drive is long. I find myself staring at your hands, your face. The blur of piney woods outside the window, trying to get the blue tooth in the car to play the songs we need.

        Something about the Honeymooners and the moon.

        “How'd you get this gig?” the cos-play, character.

        “Just happened into it.” The mid-life Leonard Neemoy look alike, from bright blue jumpsuit in an orange Volvo, turning the wrench beneath the hood; re-wiring, re-assembling. I'd take you down on that cement floor, roll you in oil.

        “Too cold,” you say.

        November. Northwest. 40 degrees. We are driving to Seattle, the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum for you to don your Spock costume and be overwhelmed with photos for all the Sci-Fi fantasy fans.

        They have dispensaries. A storefront visage where anyone can legally purchase bags, joints, and brownies. Its drizzly, bright blue, and chilly out. People dressed in dark colors. The big guy at the hotel walking out to take pot breaks. A joint every couple of hours. At the Museum, you play sci-fi and I play punk rock, in my Docs and zipper pants.

        “That's as far as I go,” I say, wait for you to take me further.

        If only you could build a rocket ship... It's horror movies, scream flicks, and a dead Gizmo encased in glass. Star Trek, a guitar collection – punk rock memorabilia and cupcakes. Kids everywhere. I go back to the room to eat and drink wine; wait for you to come back to me.

The Space needle like a ship in the clouds, a Hindenburg on stilts. The line to the restaurant wraps around twice. We head to the jazz club for drinks. Tonight, I think to myself. And it was like that – 'take your clothes off'... the next day just a blur of Puget Sound, the pier, and Bar B Cue. You blame the pot and I blame life.

         All these long distance games between us. Selling cars to buy cars, dental and arcades. That living I'm required to make – that I must spend 40 hours a week cleaning pine wooden deck of new restaurants on the river. Past the dam, across the street from secret beach.

        “I used to go there to swim, I guess it's no longer a secret,” she sips her wine, trying out the new east end restaurant. Gentrified and renovated. Been in Austin over 30 years, aging and remembering. A couple of younger kids are fishing as she racks up a 50 dollar tab, sipping wine, knowing she has no lover. Your scientology will not save me.

I watch videos from 1995/6 San Francisco, a time of metamorphosis for me, my affair with warehouse parties and art co-ops; never knowing love until I wandered in.

In 1987, my family moved to the edge of Houston, a newly developed suburb along an outer lying bayou and a friend and I found a crop of marijuana growing in between the pines. So Brian and I microwaved it, bagged it and had our secret couple stash, sharing with closest of friends, leaving bag gifts in back packs, lunch kits, or lockers – stuffing trench coat pockets while passing in the hall.

        Secret letters folded into frogs, cubes, stars, turtles, birds – back before the big Origami craze – when we had to hit card catalogs at libraries and search shelves for large picture books with step by step photos or diagrams. Before the digital take over and Hoopla, online library books. Back when libraries – be it public or university multi-level with security and censors at the entrance were masterpieces and/or museums not homeless shelters or sex offender hangouts.

        Happened so fast... The concept of aging, plastering posters on electrical boxes. A late night festival of digital installations. Midnight, the freeze is drifting away. 2 days later it's warm again like 8^th grade, sweaty skinny legs in the back of the truck, we are old and stupid again, like a lack of sex is being added to the status quo, the credit score – the savings, social security and real estate comparisons.

        I have the need to feed you beef and wine in the nude, in motels, in the back of my Jeep, in tents on the mountainside, a highway gas station, a truck stop shower, the Carousel Bar. The mile high club, someone elses hotel room, the scumbag music studio, the backstage, your moms bed, my best friends bed. We should have been that annoying couple always invited to parties and having sex in the kitchen by 2 am. Everyone elses kitchen but ours, in Houston at John's bar and James dining room, Rebecca's spare bedroom and the Black Hole bathroom. In Austin at Book People, Barton Springs, Riverside coffee shop has this amazing outdoor and upstairs loft, video games from the 80's and vintage couches beneath shelves of books, god knows how long they've been there; philosophical bullshit and chronicles of the search for god for meaning and distraction.

        Fiction, fiction, non, fiction, fiction, horror story. I think the only praying I can stand is that we are at it again – naked, lonely, cold, in a different city.

        “I spent years in my twenties searching for meaning, tried every religion known to man from Mormon to Muslim to yoga to meditation and karate. Social circles of punk rockers to hippie moms to the engineers wives and the techies who sold pot the side to hang out on yachts.”

        You find it humorous.

        Think back to the hotel room, when I said 'take your clothes off' and maybe we were both timid and nervous but you were the only one showing it.

        “What are you like 5?”

        Our stupid joke.

        “A girl I had a crush on in high school who looked like Princess Leah passed away,” you tell me.

        “Well, I guess I don't have to worry about the competition.”

        Much like in retirement communities where the competition drops every couple of weeks or month. And I'd hit you up there, saying -

        “looks like I'm all you have to choose from now sweet cheeks.”

        “I'm thinking about Vodka. We should go cold turkey.”

        “Not until we are living together and hitting it all the time.”

        “Trade one vice for another.”

        “Hell yea, I'm too old to not have a vice.”