A Place Where They Don’t Watch TV
We were walking hand in hand through the library looking for adventure stories with heart. Both Mary and I were blonde, but she was a true one and I was dirty. She turned up to look at me and asked what my favorite book was and I said On The Road even though it’s probably not true, but I was in love with Kerouac’s soul and still am. She told me without being asked that for her it was a book she used to read as a child. More accurately though, for the record, as it were, her mother would read it to her in an apartment while her father was out hot roddin’ around northern California, never to return. I gave her a flower the second time I rang their doorbell and her mom smoked pot but didn’t let her daughter.
We found a neat hardcover with a picture of a young boy riding in a canoe with a small black and white spotted dog. They were on a river in some sort of South American climate and the boy was tan and smiling; the dog looked happy too. Down the river, the 1950’s era drawing showed us ancient ruins of stone, snakes that were bigger than the boy’s dog, crocodiles and bows and arrows. The book was called Into the River that Shined and it was probably the only copy left in the world that wasn’t decomposing in a landfill and we liked it because of that.
When we found out I owed 56 dollars and 22 cents in late fees my girl gave me a beautiful punch to my arm and I loved the way she chastised me—I was warmed. She told me I was a dork and I ate it up. But since we had no way of paying the fee, the librarian made us leave the book, where it was never read again and we knew it man, we knew it was a sad fact, and said so too.
Out the door the air was warm and soft, for it was June. Nighttime is the time for me, I said, and she pinched the folds of my sweatshirt and pulled her self into me, as I was big and she was petite. A car drove by with loud mariachi music thumping the pavement. The driver wore a crisp wife-beater and he turned his head and drove by watching us together: smiling and carefree. We need to be more carefree, I preached to Mary, and I skipped a little and barked at the rows of trees lining the avenue. Then I felt like I outdid myself and jammed my hands into my pockets and shuddered while I thought about premature ejaculation and over-eager love. She asked me for a cigarette so I rolled her one and we sat on brick steps, hushed.
After years of unnecessary guilt and feeling like it’s impossible for me to be content, I almost was. And it wasn’t how I thought it should feel, but it was more like seeing a photograph after years of someone whose face you only knew from type. Like hearing your favorite British band speak educated sentences after lyrics of lust and animalistic youth. Like waking up refreshed.
Strolling. We were simply walking down shady lanes not really talking but thinking much. It was as though nothing in the world was really happening and the term news was simply a concept, a neat idea. Neat, but unimportant. Her jeans fit snug but she wore shoes that told me she was smart. Noticing this, I said I would race her to the top of the hill but I wheezed and she won.
My senses started to fail me as the night wore on; there wasn’t any source of heat but the baked sidewalk emanating Sterno-can warmness. My girl’s hair—cut sharp and shorter—was drifting in and out of my vision and the quick yellow-gold flails of her mane whipped in the wind and merged colors with the chemical light of the streetlamps above.
I reached out for my favorite spot, the clavicle, where the shoulder meets the neck, but I only glossed over her cotton T-shirt with the edge of my palm. Then it was like she fell back-words, but bounced back up again as a clown on a spring, but the spring was on wheels and she rolled out of sight and into the darkness of night. I called her name but just heard the unending sigh of the freeway and a frog in the bushes; I sat in the middle of the street and fell asleep, enshrouded.
(would love any feedback if you have any)
We were walking hand in hand through the library looking for adventure stories with heart. Both Mary and I were blonde, but she was a true one and I was dirty. She turned up to look at me and asked what my favorite book was and I said On The Road even though it’s probably not true, but I was in love with Kerouac’s soul and still am. She told me without being asked that for her it was a book she used to read as a child. More accurately though, for the record, as it were, her mother would read it to her in an apartment while her father was out hot roddin’ around northern California, never to return. I gave her a flower the second time I rang their doorbell and her mom smoked pot but didn’t let her daughter.
We found a neat hardcover with a picture of a young boy riding in a canoe with a small black and white spotted dog. They were on a river in some sort of South American climate and the boy was tan and smiling; the dog looked happy too. Down the river, the 1950’s era drawing showed us ancient ruins of stone, snakes that were bigger than the boy’s dog, crocodiles and bows and arrows. The book was called Into the River that Shined and it was probably the only copy left in the world that wasn’t decomposing in a landfill and we liked it because of that.
When we found out I owed 56 dollars and 22 cents in late fees my girl gave me a beautiful punch to my arm and I loved the way she chastised me—I was warmed. She told me I was a dork and I ate it up. But since we had no way of paying the fee, the librarian made us leave the book, where it was never read again and we knew it man, we knew it was a sad fact, and said so too.
Out the door the air was warm and soft, for it was June. Nighttime is the time for me, I said, and she pinched the folds of my sweatshirt and pulled her self into me, as I was big and she was petite. A car drove by with loud mariachi music thumping the pavement. The driver wore a crisp wife-beater and he turned his head and drove by watching us together: smiling and carefree. We need to be more carefree, I preached to Mary, and I skipped a little and barked at the rows of trees lining the avenue. Then I felt like I outdid myself and jammed my hands into my pockets and shuddered while I thought about premature ejaculation and over-eager love. She asked me for a cigarette so I rolled her one and we sat on brick steps, hushed.
After years of unnecessary guilt and feeling like it’s impossible for me to be content, I almost was. And it wasn’t how I thought it should feel, but it was more like seeing a photograph after years of someone whose face you only knew from type. Like hearing your favorite British band speak educated sentences after lyrics of lust and animalistic youth. Like waking up refreshed.
Strolling. We were simply walking down shady lanes not really talking but thinking much. It was as though nothing in the world was really happening and the term news was simply a concept, a neat idea. Neat, but unimportant. Her jeans fit snug but she wore shoes that told me she was smart. Noticing this, I said I would race her to the top of the hill but I wheezed and she won.
My senses started to fail me as the night wore on; there wasn’t any source of heat but the baked sidewalk emanating Sterno-can warmness. My girl’s hair—cut sharp and shorter—was drifting in and out of my vision and the quick yellow-gold flails of her mane whipped in the wind and merged colors with the chemical light of the streetlamps above.
I reached out for my favorite spot, the clavicle, where the shoulder meets the neck, but I only glossed over her cotton T-shirt with the edge of my palm. Then it was like she fell back-words, but bounced back up again as a clown on a spring, but the spring was on wheels and she rolled out of sight and into the darkness of night. I called her name but just heard the unending sigh of the freeway and a frog in the bushes; I sat in the middle of the street and fell asleep, enshrouded.
(would love any feedback if you have any)
