Wooing and House Parties

Anytime I go to a party, especially a house party, I have great expectations. I have ideas. I'm on I-75 so in the time it takes to get from I-75 to Bee Ridge I've already worked out all the dialogue that will be spoken between myself and my future bride. She'll be wearing tennis shoes while everyone else wears heels. Her dress will look like a burlap sack and I'll wonder if she's washed her hair--though she will smell quite wonderful. Like squirrels on a summer night. Lily's and pomegranates, or snow. She'll smell like snow. And wild berry's. It might be a special lotion, I don't know. Her fingernails will be her own and her eyes will drift around, never settling, never sending messages. I hate codes. I never joined the navy. Everything will be perfect. The way she'll dip her head and put her hand to her mouth, trying to stifle the outburst of laughter I've caused her with another one of my brilliant digs at "things". What a girl. Doe eyes and crooked teeth. My angel.

When I arrive I soak in the size and sterility of the house. Everythings white. Chairs have yet to be broken in. Virgin beds and bath tubs. Windows lining the walls. No one dares sit down. People mill. Drinks are drunk. Cigarettes smoked. I talk to people I know, knowing in mere moments I'll stumble upon true love. This is where it happens. Here the levy breaks and my heart floods open. Choirs will sing. Poets will wax. As I go on, with my dear friend Punchy, we discuss metaphysics and loneliness in the midst of crowds. Unrelated. Unregenerate. We joke about dancing, then get a refill.

I realize, and quickly tell Punch that she isn't coming to me. Wooing is a mans work. I bid him goodbye for a moment and turn to the crowd of flesh and booze. I make my rounds, circling the large room, looking for "the one." Certainly she's here. Of course. Makes sense. I want her to be. She will be. There she is. A bag made out of an old stuffed bear. Her hair is a disaster. She's small but balanced. Her eyes are confusing and glorious. Oh Punchy, if you had only had the courage that I have. Here I go while you stand alone sucking on your beer. My pathetic friend I've ventured out into this world, this house party. While you, wait for your dreams. Oh no my beloved. A man must act.

"You changed your hair."
"Whaaat?" She turns.
"Your hair, it's magnificent."
"Howww did you knoww I chaanged it?"
"I've been spying on you."
"Whaaaat?"
"I'm joking, lets be friends."
"Okkaay. I like that."
My God this girls drunk as hell. I think about punching her in the forehead, but decide maybe still, that love is to be found.
"What's your name?" I ask her.
"Jasmine."
"Aladdin." I extend my hand.
"Nist to meet youuu Allen. I can't find my friendsss."
"I'll help you. What do they look like?"
"They look like people. They're people. Geez. I'm not out, hanging out, with like, some zoo monkey animals, I'm people with people. What did you say you were again?"
"Umm, Aladdin?"
"There she is! KERRY! FUCK YOU! I LOVE YOU!" Jasmine and Kerry hug each other for a little bit, then I punched them both in the forehead and walked back to Punchy. We talk about fastballs and sartre. After a while I went home and thought about myself.

He died in Venice

I was wandering around downton Venice the other day. I came to a set of stairs leading toward a bridge. I headed towards the steps. There was a murmur and and I saw four policemen standing at the bottom of the stairs. At their feet, and the bottom of the steps was a dead man.

He looked as if he'd been homeless and possibly blind as he had one of those red and white walking sticks. Two police filled out papers as a third one--a very large, serious-faced woman directed us to step over him one person at a time. I stepped over his body and walked up the stairs.

I thought about the dead man as I walked down Venice Ave. I wondered if perhaps maybe he wasn't quite dead, but just passed out. They didn't seem to be trying to save him though, so I figured he really must have already died.

A few moments later I went into the Subway food chain and ordered a meatball sub. I had started to feel quite nice, and was in an overall happy mood. I flirted with the middle-aged, middle-eastern counter woman while she made the sub. She kept smiling and sort of rolling her eyes. The store owner was her husband. He wore a turban.

When I got home I ate the sandwich. It made me feel terrible and I decided to try to stop eating terrible shit from fast-food chains. I thought again of the dead man and thought he probably ate alot of this shit himself. I thought he probably didn't have any friends, and probably no one was too sad about him dying. I'm sure at one point he was young, and lived with his parents or some older people and had probably at least once talked about wanting to be a cowboy or rocket man. I felt pretty awful again, and figured if no one was going to cry for him then I would. I went into my room and sat down and pictured him lying there under the steps. I waited for the tears to come but they didn't. I thought about him a little more, and tried to encourage more thoughts of him as an ambitious youth but still I couldn't cry. Eventually I decided it was none of my business anyhow, and plenty of people are dying all over the place. I just don't have to see them or step over them. I figured I can't go around crying about all of them so I probably shouldn't sit here much longer trying to cry for this guy.

After a moment I went on with my day, returning phone calls and so on.

I'm going 3rd person, so fuck you! I'm kidding you're great!

J.T. wants to be liked by you. J.T. wants to make people laugh and as he walks away, he wants to hear you say, "That J.T., that son of a bitch said it! He really just laid it out tonight!" J.T. likes to think that people admire him for his ability to be funny and sensitive. He's a great listener and he'll love you, even if only in a fictional sense, or somehow fleeting and without obligation or commitment. J.T. likes to believe he is one with Arturo Bandini, Sam Fowler, Henry Chinaski and Huckleberry Finn. A wandering soul who is looked at by his piers as an almost mythological character. He would like to think that though some of his habits are self-destructive and though he rarely uses sunscreen while playing tennis, that people will look at these traits as romantic and positive in a sort of "young and fun, screw you sick and dying world!" way. J.T. likes to project the image of a wise old sea captain with a gymnast's shoulders and gunslinger's flair. And at the end of J.T.'s potentially long and successful life, he would like to be able to hear his eulogy at his funeral, not only because he will have written it, but because he will pop out of the coffin and vomit organic fruits and spices onto the floor, if only to put a cap on what will have been one of the most daring, beautiful lives ever lived...