Brian Cummings

You left town about sixteen years ago. One Tuesday in March you were sitting in front of me in a science class. Then you weren't. But I heard you were doing pretty good for yourself.  A new pair of boots showed up in time for the first snow. And your second son is saying his first words. The car starts every morning and no one mentions that night at Ray's anymore. I wonder what you think about every night in that second just before you fall asleep and dream of the old boulevard and that house on the corner you told your mother you would buy for her when she retired. Does the sting of no one clapping when your name was called during graduation from eighth grade return? Does the smell of Kristen after your first kiss at my birthday party bring back the chill of November desert nights? Or do you hope this is the last night away from home?

third time is the charm

Your mother called tonight. I couldn't care to drag myself out of bed. So I just rolled my naked body over and answered the phone. These calls always start out the same. She is bragging about some party, some man, or some place she went with her friends. They used to be my friends. But now it's just me in some room with a box full of dishes she was supposed to take last Christmas and a bed I bought to forget her. There are pictures and postcards for her in some drawer; I keep them there so I have an excuse to see her. But I never take them. And she never asks for them.

I didn't mean to laugh when we decided to kill you. If you read this then we didn't. Maybe we had a change of heart. Maybe we didn't have enough money. Maybe we sold you to the highest bidder.

I don't even know why I am telling you this. You don't exist. Or you do. But I don't care.

Because yesterday I walked out of work and it smelled like summer. It smelled like last year when I spent nights with either a beautiful artist, a soul sucking mother figure, or someone else. It was calm, still, warm, happy; the things I hadn't been until recently.

So I sucked in the smell and remembered how it felt to be in love, in awe, and in the grip of drugs.

And today it was sucked back out of me. Someone spun circles and crashed into a wall and as I drove by I saw the clouds of smoke leave their car.

And I knew I would die. And you would die. And me, and your mother, and those other women, and her friends, and my coworkers, and every other relationship I worked on for so long, they would all die too.

Texas Plates

Another long day. Nothing to mull over, or try to fix, just a long day. The sun set hours ago and nothing will be better today then this tall can I am holding.

I can see your skin between your shirt and your jeans; enough to put my hands on, to push them up towards your breasts if we are pressed full against each other in the corner of a dirty club/bar/parking lot/bed.

But I'm behind you in line at AM/PM. You almost drop your H&M sweater three times while trying to pay for your cigarettes. Camel Crushes... You say them like you've never bought them, like some poor kid outside has enough money for them but not the dignity to get Newports and save the difference for booze.

But you never drop the sweater. Because if you did I would totally pick it up. And you look briefly at me; me and my can of beer. I smile. You don't. Or might.

I'd ask your name but forget and the whole non-exchange would be ruined.

So take your Texas plates and drive out of my life.

This hasn't gone where it was supposed to. Parts are true. Parts are lies. Parts are shit. I'm just working on getting things out of my head. I need space for new things. Let us try this again. From somewhere else.

Your clutch purse holds very little space for

the 8 quarters

I am going to use to buy this beer that will just put me more into the spot in my head where

I

forget to tell you that

I would have probably thought that

you were beautiful had

I not been so concerned with if

you were going to drop that sweater and if

I was going to pick it up.

There. That is a little better.

death and my feet still on the carpet.

1.

Two weeks late the phone rings and I think I hear

tears or mine just start to fill that spot in sound

where you know there should be sound but something involved just cannot hold their end

of the bargin that is grief

and news

and condolences

and a map to someplace where it makes sense.

I fall back on the shit couch made to a bed and let me feet hang from the end and they didn't quite touch.

2.

Me.

Bill.

Smirnoff.

Tonic.

This is what you drank.

This is what you had me make you.

When I couldn't have a voice.

When I couldn't have a space.

When I had to wrap my own presents.

Those fucking overalls never fit and it wasn't your fault and that was how it had to be.

That wasn't your fault.

This wasn't your fault.

But I sat there with my best friend and toasted and drank to a man fifteen years gone.

I let my feet hang from the end of the barstool and they didn't quite touch.

3.

Random bathroom before a set of songs I felt I had to rip my skin open to get out, I'm pissing and breaking pills in half for time and chasing with beer and I get in front of a mic and sing about how all of this won't ever fucking work and you smile from wherever you are. You always smiled from that chair that you needed help out of and you fell from and yelled and screamed and cried and lost something that you could never get back. I could map that room. All I wanted was that fireplace to burn. Something. It never happened. I walked out on the deck and looked into yards of families that were what television said families were and I hated them and now I know my family was it. My family was life. Me wedged in one of those chairs, feet hanging from the edge, not quite touching.

4.

Fuck

your

middle

name

if all you ever need is

pussy

pills

and booze.

5.

You were the ultimate Booth.

Your son and grandson rolled into some sort of superhuman with shaky steps and strong opinions.

I admire your taste

I admire your swing

I admire your contentment.

But that was after the clubs, the cigarettes, the pussy, the booze, the service, the wives, the crazy secret foreign country marriages, the surveys, the second (first) family, the lies, the damage and then finally the three times I saw you a year.

What I really admire was the way you pointed, while holding your vodka drink, at whatever was wrong.

You always meant those points.

And I always mean to keep my feet where they reach.

They are mostly gone. 1 & 2.

1.

Some television with knobs

two

sits in the corner and protects me

from the poodle that is going to attack while

I dig my nails into a carpet that runs

under a wall and into a house where

I

Alone

decide I need pink chalk bullshit medicine for my tummy

and the oozy insides of some long prickly leaf to dull the burn on my skin from being outside

chasing cars

little girls in skirts

and this boy who has a toy I want

and a nest of wasps that some poor kid would die from fucking with in the movies.

Don't make fucking eye contact with the poodle.

Steal the soap from under the sink and pour it into the gas tank of my lawnmower

cuz we all need some goddamn bubbles

and that girl in the blue skirt will only look at me then.

Blonde hair.

Big grin.

Boy muscles.

Pushes that lawnmower so fast the bubbles don't even fucking show up.

The blue skirt girl doesn't either.

She is mostly gone.

They are mostly gone.

2.

"What about your frustration levels?"

Buy a lunch you can't afford and steal

french fries from a guy you admire for reasons you will never

admit or understand but appreciate that his plan is a plan and your plan is not dying.

"Or you'll have an emotional breakdown..."

Let tears well up enough that if you didn't have glasses on someone would ask about them.

The glasses, of course. Not the tears.

Keep the glasses.

Avoid the questions.

"We're good on trips, right"

There was a video of a river from really high up with no sound.

Be that river.

Be that video.

Be that answer to the question that says which person you know will be the mostly like to..

"You call at the worst times."

You can count on your arm the things left from that very first

house,

You.

Some combination of money, love, cat poison, personal safety, old age, the environment, social improvement systems and your own bullshit ideals leave just you.

That house is mostly gone.

You are mostly gone.

1225 or 7994

I used to fuck this guy. We met outside of this club a mutual friend was dancing at. He had an Altoids tin full of various pills. He told me to take what I wanted; I only took one. I was pretty fucked up on vodka sodas and key bumps. I remember I wouldn't shut up about how I wanted to be a writer. He just listened. At the end of the night we exchanged email address so I could send him some work. Two days later he made me breakfast in bed.

I had just gotten out of this pretty intense thing that I was way to conservative in expressing my opinions about and led to me just getting destroyed. In hindsight I probably overreacted, jumping from barstool to stall to cab to bed, but it was the only thing that felt right. Sometimes I would be floating out of my body, watching and trying to figure out what exactly was happening in these dark corners I was spending so much time. This guy tried his best to pull me out of it. And he did pretty well. I still had some intense self destructive tendencies that would come out. There was a night in his apartment when I cut my feet up pretty bad walking on some wine glasses I had broken in an argument. I bled and bled on his hardwood floor while he begged me to let him help me. I just kept drinking vodka.

He was no boy scout either. He always had pills. All sort of things. Some nights we would pick a color pill based on how well it matched what I was wearing and we'd snort as many of them as we could. Sometimes my entire face would go numb and we would fuck and take shots of irish whiskey till I blacked out or wasn't numb.

And I heard about some of the things he did when I wasn't around. There were always whispers about one of his exes and what they did together when he was supposed to be working. After the third or fourth time I heard this I took one of his friends home to show him that I wasn't waiting around, that I didn't need him.

But I did. I wouldn't hear from him for a day or two and be convinced he was finally gone. Someone else would get his breakfasts. Someone else would get his text messages. Someone else would get him. I would sit around my place with a couple bottles of wine and whatever sad bastard music I could find and just fucking cry.

In the morning he would always show up. Everything was fine. There was work. Or a friend needed him. Or he got to drunk at happy hour after work and took a cab home and left his phone at the bar. I believed him every time.

Until the last time.

He didn't come over.

He didn't give a reason.

He didn't call.

He was gone.

I spent two weeks stuck in my apartment. I would go out for fruit and wine. I had a friend drop off pills. I broke all my light bulbs. I threw out the shirts he had left over. I took bath after bath after bath. I watched war movies and cried the whole time.

Then one morning it hit me. He was just a fuck. He gave me drugs and booze. He bought me dinner. He'd say nice things. But I wasn't the only one. I knew that. So I stopped caring. I stopped giving two shits about running into him, hearing about him at bars or seeing him move on.

That night I went back out. I made out with some nameless stranger in a corner booth. I bought myself shots. I danced with some friends. And I went home alone.

one

The first time I met your mother it was overcast. She was sitting alone on a swing set. I was walking around the park, the one across the street from the middle school, thinking about picking up smoking again. It was never really a habit up to that point, but I was giving a series of other things in my life a serious push and cigarettes were about to join them. I had on that red flannel, the one you used to wear to bed in the winter, and some hand-me-down jeans. When I stopped to light that first smoke I noticed her. She had her feet crossed in front of her and was using the heels of her boots to make circles in the sand. Her hair was covering her face and when she tried to pull it back some of it stuck to the corner of her mouth. She smiled and pulled a small bottle of schnapps from her inside vest pocket.

There was a day when I was half your age that I was at the same park. My great-grandmother and I were there. Some middle school kids sat at the top of this rocket ship that stood in the middle of the park. You would climb ladders to the different levels, the second highest had a metal slide that burnt your skin in the summer. Those kids were on the top level, drinking schnapps and smoking cigarettes. My great-grandmother kept muttering under her breath about them as we walked around the park. At one point she bent down to my ear, and pointing at the rocket said "Don't you ever be like those kids".

continued...

This is your regret, backwards

Exhale.

Turn the key.

Turn some song up about someone else louder than you can bear.

Scratch at your skin.

Get in your car.

Walk outside.

Pound your drink.

Eye fuck gently those blue eyes over there.

Sip.

Practice makes perfect.

Eye fuck the shit out of the painting on the wall.

Sip.

Inhale.

(fuck. you accidentally exhaled. you weren't ready. the room wasn't ready. this isn't how it was supposed to be. it is ok. no one noticed. sneak this one in.)

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh.

Sip.

Fix your bangs.

Scratch your nose.

Sip.

Count ex-lovers on your phone.

Count ex-lovers in the pool.

Sip.

Pick at the shit in your teeth.

Pick apart the man leaning next to the fireplace.

Pick apart the woman in that short dress.

Sip.

Dart your eyes around the room.

Inhale.

Coffee mugs for the damned

A couple of old men were knocking at the door. I was looking through the lower peephole that had been recently installed in the front door. I thought it was there because I was short. Actually it was there so I could be left home alone and people would feel better about it. I opened the door. It was Saturday and I had no shirt on. They were from a church I had attended a few weeks earlier on a whim. I filled out a visitor card and put in in the offering basket. No money though. I didn't have any cash on me and they hadn't earned it yet. The old men asked if I had been back since the first time. Then they asked why I hadn't. Then they asked if I liked coffee. And if I would take their gift. And if I would come back, or at least think about it. I said No, I was busy, No, I would, I might, I will. I closed the door while they walked back to their station wagon. The coffee mug they gave had old man candy in it. The wrappers made to look like fruit so you would feel better about sticking hard candy in your mouth that tasted like shit. I unwrapped one, put it my mouth, and promptly spit it into the trash can. I did this to every peace of candy. My mouth felt sugary and rotten. Maybe that is what Eve tasted so long ago; maybe that is what they wanted me to think. I put the mug on the proper shelf in the corner cabinet and got something to wash the overwhelming taste of sin out of my mouth. A little later I made some coffee to drink from the church mug.

I moved that coffee mug from house to house to house to apartment to house to apartment to apartment to house for a few years. I used to wrap it in this old t-shirt and toss it into the suitcase full of things I almost forgot. I never saw those men or the inside of their church again. I kept drinking coffee from their mug though. One morning in a kitchen that wasn't mine for very long the handle broke off. It was full of fresh coffee and a sugar cube. I was staring out the window at a yard like one of those robed fathers on Christmas morning in a coffee commercial when the business end of it crashed to the floor. It wasn't Christmas. I wasn't a father. I was naked.

Two Weeks...

I've been busy. The time goes to impressing bank workers with my knowledge of salad dressings, classmates with my ability to destroy my own life, and friends with fragments of a meaningful life. Most days don't count anymore. No fire in my head, no fire in my heart, no fire in bed. I'm relying on things I did weeks and months ago. No one can keep track of what I contribute. I'm as stagnate as the beer in glasses scattered around the room. But they grow mold. I grow nothing. It is all empty bottles, residue and religious candles. I make calls I shouldn't and neglect the ones I need. I pray for familiar faces and voices, if praying is a pattern you repeat on most Tuesdays and the occasion Monday and Friday. I don't bathe. I don't clean. I don't wash clothes. I don't care.

Someone told me a bill needed to be my top priority. Above eating? Above drinking? Above fucking? Above writing? Above the band? Above my heart? Above all the bullshit I put here trying to look smarter/more attractive/more interesting/more together/more anything?

There are less then two months before I hit twenty eight.

The damn cannot hold.

Apartment 108

Randy is 28. He lives in apartment 108. His building is small, enough. The other residents only know his name from the mailboxes out front. His is the only one with both a first and last name. The tag is also not centered like the rest of the tags. The color is worn. It has been like that for 10 months.

Every Thursday Randy takes a late lunch. He walks around the corner from his office to his favorite pupuseria. It not his favorite for the food, the food was fine. It is his favorite because it is the closest place by his office to get the new issue of L.A.WEEKLY. He brings back whatever random thing he orders to his office and opens the L.A. WEEKLY. He goes straight to the personal ads and spends the rest of his time at work on the phone with various agencies, working out the specifics of his reservations. It is the same every week.

Friday night he gets home at 6:05. Every week, 6:05. He takes two side streets and rolls one stop sign to pull into his space at the same time. Randy carries his lunch bag and avoids contact with any neighbors that might be out.

Thursday is the only day he doesn’t bring his lunch to work.

6:25, his phone rings. “Randy?” “Yeah, let me buzz you in”.

There are two quick knocks on apartment 108. Randy lets the young women in. Her hair is long, a couple of inches below her bra strap, or where it would be, and dark. Usually he likes it longer, but this will work. He locks the door behind her, which startles the woman, but she sees the money sitting on the coffee table. Her quick counts makes out a few bills adding up to 275 dollars, a little more than what was agreed, and that makes her slightly more comfortable.

Randy leads her to the bedroom. The bed is made, the floor is clean, there are a couple framed posters hanging on the wall and one picture on the nightstand, Randy and a women with dark hair.

The conversation is short and specific. “I must have music playing”, “Your hands must be here”, “Please be quiet” and “Please don’t smile”. She follows every order, though typically that is not her specialty.

Randy pushes play on tape deck. The first song starts slow. Kick drum, then cymbals, then some bass. Funky, but not funky enough. Randy stands behind the women and spends a very short time exploring her body. The songs keep playing, he doesn’t say a word, and neither does she. Each song is getting louder, each song is picking up pace, but Randy’s mood does not change. The seventh song, she’s been counting, slows dramatically. This doesn’t affect him at all. The last song fades out and Randy gets off of the bed. He slides open closet door, puts on a yellow robe, and gives the women a twenty-dollar bill. “The rest is on the coffee table in the living room. Thank you.”

The woman says nothing. She gets off of the bed and starts to put her clothes on. She looks at Randy, but he is in the bathroom and has just turned the shower on. She finishes getting dressed and grabs her money as she leaves apartment 108.

Randy takes off his yellow robe and steps into the shower. He faces the showerhead and puts his head down, letting the water stream down his face. He holds his hands around his eyes, making a scuba mask, the way she showed him that day in the hills. A few tears mix with the water. He turns around and tries to finish his shower. He can’t. It has been 10 months.