dah-veed

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there's this boy i fuck sometimes [i use the term "boy" here loosely; while it applied when i met him, he's a little longer in the tooth these days, as are we all].

thing about david: he was, is and always will be his own closed book.

if he was reserved before the meth got him, that's nothing compared to where he is now that he's come out the other side.  before, i could usually use his love of languages and music to open him up; now if i can get him to talk at all, it's mostly cryptic twelve-step shit, which i put up with because it seems to be holding him together.

whatever--outta the blue he'll call and i'll drive across town to get him, bring him back to my place, work him over and then take him home.  and every time, the drive back is so bleak and silent i think, "that's it--never again."

until the next time he calls, anyway.

what differentiates this boy from all the others, you ask?

nothing really, except for those brief shining moments when his fingers dig into my back and suddenly he's not a thousand miles away anymore--he's right there, in the moment, eyes wide and laser-focused on mine--he's with me, and i have him.

until the moment ends and he pushes me off and heads for the shower.

i told him one night on the way back to his place-i said, "you'll never give it up to me, which is maybe the only reason i keep coming back for your scrawny ass,"  to which he just smiled--not at me, of course--and looked out the window, which only served to remind me how twisted and unhealthy my priorities have come to be.

it's been two months--should i call him?

a typical carefree, fun-filled mkf vacation

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saturday:  fly to austin, sandwiched between two people fatter than me fat people.  pick up the rental, drive to ma's house, commence the packing.

sunday/monday:  continue the packing (despite her best efforts to thwart me by insisting on trying on every article of unearthed clothing and looking at every picture).  find the $10 gold piece i gave her for christmas 35 years ago that she thought she'd lost.

tuesday:  supervise the movers, begin the cleaning, break for dinner with the neighbors.  try to tell 'em how much i appreciate their being there for my mother all these years until judy tears up and makes me stop.

wednesday:  attend the closing, sign the papers, kick myself one last time for not holding out for more.  wait for the thing to fund, then head north to tyler, watching ma closely in the rearview as she follows in her car.  spend the night with my cousin mike and his wife kim during which we sit out on their deck until 3am, hand-feed cheese nips to the raccoons while kim and i reminisce about our days at tyler junior college and kill two bottles of really good red wine and i marvel at how easy it is after 18 years of abstinence to smoke half a pack of mike's pall malls without even really trying.

thursday:  one last lunch before delivering ma into the clutches of my brother's perfect little world.  we drive by my grandmother's little house on fenton street and sit there a minute, each of us lost in our own remembrances of what once was.  she says, "i met your dad for the first time on that little stoop," as if she'd never told me that before.

drive the four-and-a-half hours back to austin, turn in the rental, catch the (packed) flight home, arrive at ten pm, bone-weary, debate calling an old friend when my ride flakes on me but [my birthday gift to you, noblesavage] elect instead to take the two buses necessary to reach beverly hills and cab it home from there--end of a perfect trip.

and how was your week?

quote of the week

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We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this.  Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?

wall street CEO

three memories

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i don't remember exactly, but i think the barbie got shitcanned when i hit kindergarten.

not because i'd tired of her (i hadn't), or because my friends teased me (they didn't), or because my father disapproved (he no doubt did, but never said a word).

it was none of those things--it was more like one day i opened my eyes, saw what was up, made the safe choice and never looked back.

poor linda hussey and her barbie up the street probably never knew why my barbie and i suddenly stopped returning their calls.

get over it, linda.

*     *     *     *     *

his name was mike baxter, i found out by casually asking around after spotting him on the playground that first day of fourth grade.

that afternoon, i got on his bus, got off where he did, trailed him at a safe distance and then walked home (as luck would have it, not too far).

the following saturday, i biked over to his street and rode aimlessly up and down until his sister noticed me.

"have you seen my friends?" she hadn't, but invited me over to play until they showed up.

at the end of that day, the baxter family piled into their car and headed off to dinner somewhere, with mike hanging out the left rear window, waving at his fine new friend and grinning from ear to ear until they disappeared from sight.

and i sat there astride my bicycle, waving back, thinking, "gotcha."

*     *     *     *     *

his name was ricky brock and he couldn't have been any more fey if he'd tried; ricky's saving grace was, he didn't seem to care.

we spent hours talking on the phone over the course of that eighth-grade year, although i wouldn't have been caught dead talking to him at school (he didn't seem to care about that either).

he didn't even seem to care the day i sketched that caricature which so perfectly captured his mincing walk and passed it around health class--he laughed along with everybody else.

thank god being bullied back then wasn't painful like it is today.

_______________________

this post was inspired by the story of a boy who, like ricky, didn't hide.  may his sweet young soul rest in peace.

oh, jackie

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note:  whenever reading anything mkf ever writes about any kennedy, please keep in mind it's always a conflicted collaboration between a young idealist who once viewed them as gods, and the world-weary cynic who now knows better.

*     *     *     *     *

when i first found out that (a) not only had the new widow sat down with arthur schlesinger back in early '64, sloshed some scotch over the rocks, lit a cigarette and recorded hours and hours of recollections of her white house years, but (b) choice excerpts of same were gonna be featured in their unexpurgated form in a two-hour ABC special years before she had intended their release, i sprung a lil' historical boner in spite of myself.

because this was the woman who had famously dubbed lyndon and ladybird "colonel cornpone and his little porkchop", so i was expecting some good shit.

what i shoulda remembered was, this was also the woman who had not only retroactively invented camelot, but had on very short notice managed to research, script, art direct, choreograph, stage-manage and star in the most spectacularly successful state funeral in recorded history.

in other words, i shoulda known from the get-go the whole thing would be nothing but an artful perpetuation of the kennedy myth--but still, i had high hopes.

so i DVR'd it.  and tonight, i watched.  my favorite quote [from her fevered account of the cuban missile incident her husband turned into a crisis and which is a subject for another day]:

Please don't send me away to Camp David ... Please don't send me anywhere.  If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you ... even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House ... I just want to be with you and I want to die with you.

and all i could think was, "really?  then hold still, dammit."

what a difference a decade makes

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presented for (a) all you empiricists out there who insist dollar debasement inflation isn't a problem; and (b) anyone who thinks that anything foisted upon us by anyone in power during the past 10 years was a good idea.

h/t mark mchugh at across the street

what, you were expecting hearts and flowers?

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every year at this time, as america is manipulated by its government and its media into alternating bouts of patriotic wailing and rending of garments on one hand, and scared-rabbit fear of an anniversary attack on the other, i go back and watch the video i posted on this day last year, and a cold, quiet rage reignites within me.

not, understand, at the ragtag band of allahu akbar-shrieking primitives we're told planned and pulled off all this destruction all by themselves, but at the masterminds, whoever and wherever they might be.

only this year, i find i'm far from the only architecturally-trained skeptic out there.  an organization calling itself "architects & engineers for 9/11 truth" has produced a riveting 15-minute video, which, in the three weeks of its existence, has already garnered some serious attention.

i really don't care what your views are on conspiracy theories in general or 9/11 in particular--i invite you to tear yourself away from the ground-zero circus long enough to watch something that might actually matter.