shot in the arm

"I included that Wilco song, 'shot in the arm,' remember that song?"
"Yes, Paul loved that song."
"Do you know the lyrics...something, um, 'something in my veins,' and then something about it being bloody, but I can't tell without the printed words," I sound like an idiot without words.
"I can't either but I know I love the first line, 'the ashtray says you were up all night.' "
"That's a fucking great line, but it isn't as sexy now that we both quit smoking, oh Jesus, I almost forget about your camels hidden in my bag..how long has it been now? Almost a month, no?"
"28 days exactly."
"Once you decide to quit--at least this is what I believe--you will stay dry."
"Didn't you quit smoking over a year ago?" she asks about my pallid past.
"Yes, but don't think your symbolic pack of Camels hiding in the side pocket of my bag isn't a tempting reminder of my American Spirited fallible fall nights, under the Ithacan city lights."
The Tennessee train moans around the elbowed tracks of her armored arms. I take another sip of my bottled beer and throttle my close-throated mouth.

---

"I can't wait to kiss you."
"Mmmm,me too...where are you?"
"The last sign I passed said twelve miles away."
"Twelve miles!! What?! How, I mean, how'd you get so close?"
"Ashley," she emphasizes the tail vowelled sounds of my name, "I told you I'd be there soon."
"Well, it's just--"
"--just what?"
"Nevermind," I un-meaningfully say.
"Honey, please," she sings in the key of fear and self-doubt. I am working on a musical mix of our mindful drought: "that calls darkness light," boasting an arcade of addictions, the ones we accept in no one but in our own likeness.
"I wanted to surprise you with a mix of the Arcade Fire and Nina Simone."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
I stare past the ABC cafe' piano, near the window where the the wind passes over a produce truck, parlaying the winnings of sound into a symphony of the locally picked & driven kale and collards. Tomorrow morning's chalkboard of free-range omelette ingredients will include today's greens, including the french spelling of "f-r-e-e-d-o-m-f-r-i-e-d-e-g-g-s," freshly local, with a touch of flamboyant flare.

---

"I'll have muffins and juice here tomorrow morning so bring coffee if you like," our weekend imago therapist says in his gay-friendly and genuinely gay voice.
"I will definitely need my daily dose of caffeine," I say, emphasizing my addictive personality.
He laughs. She's concentrating on her notebook of positive and negative parental figure traits. I finished long before she could lay down her pen.
"Let's pick up the pace, sweetie," I tease.
"I'm not as fast as you."
"How'd you ever get through the SATs?" I ask.
"I didn't. How did you?"
"I didn't take the SATs," I smile.
"Oh yeah, she says," as Dwight returns to the air-conditioned room, despite the upstate New York weather blessing, addressing me and whispering the question, "Do you have any questions?"
"No, wait, yes," I give my typically confused response, "did you want us to continue past page 23, or did you want us to stop where it says 'STOP'?"
He smiles his already infectious smile, "You can continue."
"Good, because I did," I look over at Tiffany's intensely concentrated concentration on her task at hand.
"Let's go to the other room," he whispers, pulling the leather loafer back over the navy-colored back of his heel, and we both apologize about disrupting her writing. We are apologizers. I can tell we'll get along: The leather thong-wearing therapist and his fag hag patient.

---

"She told me that she 'read every word.' "
"What does that mean?"
"Well...I guess it means she read every fucking word I wrote that night in the middle of the fucking high desert near Safford somewhere--Jesus! what the fuck was I thinking?"
"Ashley, are you taking your medication?"
"Of course I am, Linda!" I get defensive, "Do you think I'm a fucking idiot?!"
"I'm only asking because it seems that you need an adjustment, and I just need to know how often you are taking your meds and what your dosage is...when did you last see your psychiatrist?"
"Just last week, why?"
"I think there's something wrong with your medication, because you are exhibiting manic behavior, don't you think?"
"I guess."
"In that case, he may need to change the dose or even the medication."
"No, I don't want to experiment with another goddamn drug...no! fuck that!!"
She shifts in her chair, indicating her impatient impasse.

---

"And you see here," he points to the power point slide on his Dell laptop, "we reach an impasse in the relationship at that point. Any questions about imago so far?"
We nod 'no' with our heads. Later he prods 'so' with his notion of meds.
"...so I don't judge anyone who needs an anti-depressant."
"Neither do I," my chimes butt in, "and I agree with you...there's a huge social stigma attached to mental illness--god, I hate it!"
Again he nods as I prod, "I did have an aversion to medication but now I know I need lithium and adderall to survive--"
"--adderall is an anti-depressant too, you know?"
"Well, yeah, I mean, I knew it was a stimulant," my reflection mirrors the evening light of his eyes, and I lean over to look past his shaven 8:47 shadowed face to the alley above his office, where I've ridden my bike uphill, fallen face downhill on the ice, walked hand-in-hand with a lost love, driven the wrong way and...begged for forgiveness, crowned with a "please," a "love," and the, "only one I can say," name.

---

"ORIGIN French omelette, earlier amelette, alteration of alumette, variant of alumelle, from lemele ‘knife blade,’ from Latin lamella (see lamella ). The association with ‘knife blade’ is probably because of the thin flat shape of an omelet."
--Oxford American Dictionary

"Where can I put this so it won't cut anyone,"
"Oh, I don't know, Ashley, maybe in this drawer."
"Yeah, that could work but I don't want someone else to stick his hand in there and--"
"Mmmm Hmmm, um, yeah," he fidgits, I squirm. We fidgit and squirm together.
"I'll just tell Steve it's in there."
"Yeah, ok," he smiles his six-foot-tall-smile--a wicked, thin, flat smile I can't place the origin of its shape to, "or is there somewhere else instead?"
"Hm...I can't think of one," I answer him as if I were a dictionary asked to respond.

---


"Tiffany," I begin, with a lump of piano keys in my throat, "you know I love you."
"I know."
"Let me finish."
She nods. I swallow another key note down my breathless and hollow throat, "This mix is something that I've taken several days, over a week now, to finish..I don't know how to show you how much you mean to me," I sound like a fucking cliche' of broken records. I begin again. I tap my foot to help me finish...
I am not even talking to her now. I am writing to her perfectly fitting body lying on the futon in the adjacent room. The keys are stuck even harder, now that she's falling asleep and I'm falling for the song that sings in the keyed up likeness of my father. I am falling for what I cannot hear in the spell of the lyrics...
"Tiffany, the Vampire.forest fire song..it represents my dedication, no, my determination, no, my commitment, no, my 'father never meant to leave,' no, my, I don't know."
I click on the first song, Nina Simone's "Don't let me be misunderstood," and wonder if my intentions are good. I watch her move under the covers. I take cover in Nina's words: "Baby I'm just human...I try so hard so don't let me be misunderstood."
I don't know how to be misunderstood in a way she can understand. I begin again, "Tiffany, I'm so full of shit, but it's how you know you love me. The entire composition is a call and response, but there are also call and responses within the larger call...and response, make sense?"
I don't know if she nods. Her body is still, save one organ...

---

"My heart is an apple."
"That's the title?"
"I don't want to hear any cracks about cliche', ok..it's the title to the second track."
"Track?" she lowers her voice in that 'did you say?' question way
"What do you call it then?"
"A song."
"I guess we've found another dissimilarity."
"You mean difference?"
"I mean my heart is an apple and Tiffany has altered it from a knife blade to a three-egg omelette."
"What?"
"She's an addiction I can't quit," I alter my statement to an inotherwords phrase.
"Oh, you're saying--"
"--yes."
"Has she forgiven you?"
"I can't get close enough to feel a convincing pulse."


god bless the pulsing pace of itunes