11. Scratching at the door

"To feel as an animal does, again, that's so appealing. Everything defined by sensuality, I mean that most particularly. The old reminisce about sensation and look hard to re-live it. Mmmmmmm, animanimanimality. Without these feelings we're all like wrung fruit."

Such is the energy surrounding this monster that his archetype, for me, becomes a figure from our animal past. His kingdom: smells and sounds, from which mortals are excluded as from some damned eden.

"The eden of the damned -- why yes, you're right -- seek your heaven in the body. It's so much quicker that way. No lines, no waiting. No problems here, no sir. And hell, while you're at it, no shoes no shirt no service... no shoes? aaaarrgh watch where you step. It's wet along the streets tonight and the rising river is driving its vermin upshore and into the city...

"But it's a beautiful summer night for a walk so don't hesssssssitate too long."

-----
In the morning of course I search around, like an idiot, to see if my shoes are anywhere to be seen.

12. Intermission

The roses, god the roses. Satin acres of yellow white red. Here in the test gardens high above Rain City, they glistened with dew, glowed in the evening light, caressed his etched cheeks as he buried his face among them. I giggled to think he might intend to eat them, his thorns and theirs mingling in a crunchy bloody gulp. The sight was stranger than that. I watched dark greasy locks fall forward as he bent to each blossom in turn along the manicured paths, hair that tangled like cobwebs in the foliage. Trousers streaked with ancient grime now green-scuffed like a child's from crawling in the mulched beds. I think I heard him sigh.

"Aaaaaahhhhhhh..."

My idea, this walk in the park. Soon the flowers seemed colorless, stripped of hue by falling night. Sounds: much much too early for crickets, and the highways below just a distant dull hiss. Peace. Peeeeeeace. Entranced by humid perfume and fragile vegetal skin, I wanted to whisper, to beg -- no more cruelty, no more no more, I won't watch it, I won't taste it, no more no more, I won't I won't I won't follow it won't imagine it I won't touch it won't kiss it won't breath it won't steal it drink it eat it live it.

Kneeling before me a murderer smeared his dead lips with bruised pink petals and anything ah anything seemed possible.

Wrong again.

13. Getting there is half the fun.

Well yes I do spend a lot of time in my car. I like to drive with the stereo cranked. One of the rare occasions I can listen to what I want, played as loud as I want.

"You cannot go against nature, because when you do, to go against nature is part of nature too."

Plus, I figure on the road I can be places where things can't find me. Or sometimes, where they can.

"Our little lives get complicated, it's a simple thing. Simple as a flower, and that's a complicated thing."

I was grooving on Love and Rockets so much that I missed my exit. Ended up downtown in the area we here call The Ditch, a maze of overpasses that slices the city in two.

"When you're down, it's a long way up. When you're up, it's a long way down."

Why does dirty concrete attract the sourness of our lives? Or do we simply distinguish desperation more easily when it flickers there against a cold grey surface, the boundaries between light and dark plain at last.

"It's all the same thing, no new tale to tell."

I pulled over into the shadow of rumbling semitrailers and logging trucks, glyph-like tags and discarded works, and into still more shadows, and the thing that whispered there . I left the motor running. After a while I couldn't tell the difference between the abrading grit of the wall and of his eternally unshavened chin.

"It's all the same thing..."

When I wanted it to taste like strawberries, it did. When I wanted it to taste like wine, it did.

I must have wanted vinegar, because in fact, it was.

"No new tale to tell."

14. On an empty stomach.

Always best to stay unseen whenever possible but sometimes, well, it just can't be helped. So in this Old Town alley the kid stared, as if the scarves I wore might really hide an awfulness. Everywhere the smell of living water, green and raw nearby, rising like the gnats it breeds, to spoil his wind-fluffed hair. He straightened at last and grinned: "Whatever it is you gotta cover up like that, hon, dontcha worry. I can get, uh, enthusiastic for most anything."

I watched him watching me watching the things gathering at his back. Pale things, dark things, things in leathers and brocades, things with hair like flame and feathers, things silent and slick and moving closer.

What the hell.

I pulled patterned cotton down off my lips and chin, away from shoulders and fingertips.

"Heh-heh, good girl -- see hon, that weren't so bad... now c'mon over, nothing to be afraid of, mmm..."

Oh yes. Nothing.

15. Looking up.

I guess, I guess I wasn't the first to wonder, "why?"

He was meditative, relaxed, picking his teeth. "I don't believe I even caught a glimpse of another path. This one opened up before me like a canyon between skyscrapers and I dropped, passing penthouse floors that might have been the windowed tiers of hell. Here now the suicides, there now the murderers. Sweet, sweet descent of mine."

"I hated that broken down feeling, afterwards. Crack, crack. The same way plexiglass shatters, with the squeaky snap of stressed synthetics. Ah synthetics. Chemistry. And physics, ssssso sexy. You know: what goes up must come down. For every force, something gives. Well, something gave, alright."

"It happens when your heart changes over. That's when I saw eternity unroll before me. You have to be frozen yourself to be able to see the stone, stone cold of time."

"So let me tell you this about that. The ones who preach what they know about death? -- well they won't be there with you when your moment comes. But I will. And whether I lick the blood from your face or from the pavement where you fell, why, it all tastes the same."

Ask a silly question.

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