April 26, 2006

Because I Can (part 3)...

And if this is silently the best time of my life…sweet. It’s a beautiful thing, not having the capability to refrain from Tommy Topping this ride from one stretch of years to the next. It means that when this kid hits 94, I will be the most accomplished being on the face of this planet…a galaxical ambassador to systems of worlds we have yet to discover. Yes, it’s a good thing we’re tight now. I’ll come in handy down the road.

Too filled with internal banter…waiting to be. I would have dropped quotes if it didn’t make my sentences look sloppy and ill. The point from which I lay sarcasm should be obvious. Should. Be. Obvious. Then again…what a waste of time, the circles I spin you. No, you love it.

I’m leaving to find a bar…sometime in the relatively near future. Though, my specifics lend difficulty to what would otherwise be a simple journey. A small town where bottled Budweiser is all that’s served and the boys fight nightly, hourly, quarter hourly…

My ladies would be lined up at the bar…

A place where painted jeans opt for deferral to cowboy boots below the knee.

Where flannel shirts tie into little knots below the bottom rib.

Where hair pulls up, nothing short of disaster.

Their home lives would be sheltered, their freedom stunted, their raging souls imprisoned. Their thirst could only be quenched by pulling me out onto that floor. To tame, breath by breath, their unbridled need to fly feet...to dance.

The town would be ruled by an iron fist Reverend with a misplaced heart. I’d fall for a girl named Rusty and never need to ask for her name a second time. Ever.

I’m leaving tonight. Starting in New Mexico and working my way to Tennessee.

...

So irrelevant that my spin teach practically rolled the ENTIRE Footloose soundtrack in class tonight. So irrelevant.

Smith out.

April 25, 2006

Because I Can (part 2)...

Chronology is over rated. Picking up where you left off, over rated.

Do you ever hear a word and repeat it back to yourself? Strange, how letters make words. Words make something else. Ideas, feelings. Nepal. It’s a strange word, Nepal. Sounds strange, feels strange when you say it out loud. Nepal. An attack on the senses so confounding, I beg we speak with closed eyes for fear of exertion, cardiac style.

Be never fooled. Five little letters cast a mighty shadow. A grey cloud waiting to be melted away. It’s a word that claims siblings of equal fascination in the eyes of a distant dreamer. Brothers and sisters eager to tell their endless and remarkable tales, all within arms reach.

Close enough to tell secrets, trade smiles, blow kisses. Good stuff.

So incomplete do the mad children feel after 24 years…the weight of hands yet shook, every day become increasingly unbearable. The pull, every day forever on, life is only just beginning.



No one tells the birds when it’s time to fly, they know.

April 24, 2006

Because I Can (part 1)...

It scares me to think about it, symbolically or otherwise…the human heart. It scares me that it has the power to evolve. It has the power to change, to adapt to meet the needs of its ever-changing carrier. You, me, everyone.

Theory of evolution…



Where exactly is the point we change? Where we stop believing in “once upon a time” and commit to a world of brick and stone? I’m worried, concerned about the collective condition of the human heart. Symbolically AND otherwise.

I know there was a time. It wasn’t so far off where my heart was a big, bloody, beating mess. I wonder where it has gone. Is it still around or has it grown accustomed to these spurts? Has boredom conquered my pulsing red friend?

No. Come now. You think I would ever let that happen? It’s something else. Something that even my words alone cannot subside.

When I speak of my heart, now…I make no reference from which you can find familiarity. How can one understand the unknown of another? This is not a story of love, lust. Neither makes this life sweet. At least not today.

Tomorrow, well, different story.

April 18, 2006

I Ooze Sex...

Yeah, no…that’s worth repeating…

I Ooze Sex.



I was working this party Friday night. A little place tucked outside the slums of Chinatown. Way back in the day, it used to be the city’s first car showroom. Now, it’s arguably one of the coolest living spaces in Los Angeles. Then again, Chinatown slum outskirts + coolest living space in Los Angles = debate.

Actually, you can check out the site. Nice visuals…www.marvimon.com

It’s known as Los Angeles’ “secret restaurant.” The owners invite chefs from the great restaurants of LA to cook for 50-125 people. Last time it was A.O.C, Providence, and Grace. This time…well, it was a Friday night instead of a Sunday. The lineup was distantly stellar.

Everyone tries to be someone in this city…which was the unfolding scenario on this fateful night. Not everyone can pull it off. It does, however, always help when you’re surrounded by a company of the like, where survival rests on your sleight of hand talents. It’s not like all of these people were stretching THAT far…but sure as hell, some were. When you’re pouring wine, you let slide the urge to throw, “Excuse me, who the fuck do you think you are? I’m endlessly curious,” for the sake of a smooth evening and a pocket of cash.



Halfway through, a trio sitting on a far couch asked for my contact info. They were cool, and not for the direction this post is headed. Judgment immunity cannot be purchased, even through showers of praise. Since the trio will emerge from this post scathe free, certainly, they must have checked out. Why did they ask for my stats? Allow me to re-direct you to the title of this piece…

Welcome back. I gave it, we talked, we met...I got a call time for Monday, six hours ago…

Where I found myself driving South on San Vicente, trying to gauge whether or not the forthcoming photo shoot would hold aspects of sketch.

To my pleasant relief, it didn’t. Actually, I was the sketchiest dime in the shoot…certainly, no foreign territory would be tread. I came in scrappy style and rolled out of hair and make up into 50’s Hollywood. Right town, wrong decade. I shot with a dame made to look old school Lois Lane in front of a projection backdrop of Hitchcock’s, “Birds.” I clenched my jaw, wrapped Lois tight and tried valiantly to fuck that camera.







I worry…that I listen to songs, read words, feel ideas where my mind implies that it owns understanding. But in reality, reality is something I’ve yet to understand.

It hurts, this ache. To own feet screaming a need to walk foreign lands. Like a craving that has never been met, never satisfied. And this heart…this heart that keeps asking the same question over and over…

Soon enough I’ll figure the response, where silence follows…

At least for a little while.

April 09, 2006

Still...

There was certainly a point from which it began, going out vicious Thursday night. But that doesn’t paint it, not in the appropriate shade…Vicious.

The turnaround was blistering. Down at 3, up by 6. First thing at work Friday morning, I sat down at the bar with my bowl of Raisin Bran and stared, starry eyed at the bottle of Patron that was aching to tango all over my face, again. It would be healing, comforting, mind numbing…

No. This would be a battle fought straight…

Hitting a fastball without Winstrol. Bedding a beauty without Viagra. Ashlee Simpson without a guide track. I would do this with dignity, with a dizzying grace.

That morning I dropped plates with distant eyes…knuckle scabs from boxing sans gloves…gangrenous slashes from jumping construction lot fences…parfum de Corona, Silver, and Walker Blue…and wondered why I wasn’t sent home.

I don’t do this often. Truth be told, I am one of the more responsible and count-on gentlemen west of the Mississippi…but sometimes, simply put, shit flies when cows cough.

I got off around 3 in the afternoon and slept on my face for three hours. I don’t know what it is about day/recovery sleeping, but those three hours…my, oh my.



I met her on a stairwell. It stretched high and wide…reaching…pulling in every direction. I remember seeing her and smiling, noting nothing initially spellbinding in her distant appearance…

Until I fell, curb-kicked into hypnotic eyes. And let us dance with clarity for a moment…

There’s a difference, tabbing eyes hypnotic to win over a wavering soul for a midnight two-step, and this…eyes that lend shudder and sigh. The sort that cynics believe only exist in a dream.

These fucking eyes…

Anything more than an empty space between us hurt with a physical pain so great, I woke and checked for bruises, convinced I’d be the first to bring back reality from a dream.

I don’t remember kissing her, just that I couldn’t stop. I remember paralysis. I remember wondering how she could have known, the hang of my ear. That light bite and something too shooting and sense electric to put into words.

In my dreams, perfection lasts brief. She would pull back and walk away, standing no more than 10 feet. She’d wait with her eyes and smile, knowing I’d do anything to get close...if only for a second. It didn’t take me 24 years to know I was a fool…this epiphany came in days long gone.

I could have kissed her for the entire three hours. It would have likely picked up a little steam, but not for a while. I would have gone slow…if only the plot kept thin.

As she pulled back and stood off, a man approached. The feeling hit quick, we were about to battle. He shot me between the ribs…likely a symbolic roadmap that when translated in my after life, will contain the secrets to our existence. I’ve learned, by the age of 24, to manipulate my sleeping conscience with rare inferiority. And because of it, in my dreams, few stand a chance.

We wrestled for a moment before I choked him and threw him over the ledge. 50 flights up, I was back on her lips by the time he crossed 37.

It lasted for a couple minutes until she pulled back and walked away, tempting me to follow. We walked the hall until it gave way. Open air…another ledge. She stepped back and waited while two men approached. They fired multiple shots, all running straight through my upper torso but missing my heart. This, I remember checking. I threw them over the ledge and met her lips, again and again. I never stopped to ask why. Fool, remember?

And that’s how it went. I didn’t care that the intervals became shorter and shorter. I didn’t wonder why the challenges increased. It didn’t bug me that I rode to the statistical zenith amongst competing mass murderers. I needed her lips. I would do anything to get them.



I woke, walked to the bathroom and met my reflection. Heavy, so heavy. There was a line running between my eyes, down my nose and splitting my chin. When I told you I fell asleep flat on my face, I meant it. It’s called ill lack of rest.

There are only two ways to wake from a dream. You either want to go back or stay away forever…depending on the flavor shit you get mixed up in.

I knew the feeling as I looked in the mirror. There was no relief…knowing I was no murderer…knowing the infinite bullet wounds didn’t exist. They weren’t real, none of it was. And the part that stung…

I lost my girl.