*chicago

On off weekends, I'd make my way down the street. Like a neighborhood jump, down I-75 towards Atlanta where they say the kids like the overused adjectives or they're attention spans will break. Colors like new pink and letters with no caps. Usually I travel without bags. Sometimes with one extra pair of shoes loosely thrown in the backseat. No umbrella, a green trench coat and lip gloss the shade of raspberry sorbet.

Before I leave, I dream of chain smoking in the backseat. Exchanging ashes with a black haired boy, eyes like burnt coal as he moves his fingers down my crotch. Who says, "See, there's us, and there's them" as he nods his head towards blond haired girls in faux chinese sandals. Who raises one eyebrow when you pass him the street, with smallish glasses, dirt embedded jean, and skin tight shirts with collars on a thin, flat chest. And as I smoke, he talks about religion. How we never really agree. And he is the markman of all the clich?s that slowly dissolved themselves into my head.

But see, the catch was this poem about Godzilla where he proclaimed to an old professor that he was going to be the next Kurt V. I read before I saw, and by then it was too late.

As I swerve to avoid a two day old possum carcus, these things come to mind. I hope I do not see Mr. Godzilla bearing down on humid sidewalks in the Atlanta rain. That's the chance you take these days. In confidence she once said "he likes the girls with the overdone short hairdos. Who kiss girls in their off hours. Who really never grow out of a seventeen year old body." Small tits. And straight boxy legs.

And that reminds me, how bubble sheets were going to be the wave of the future. And, at seventeen we sat at graffiti laden tables in sometimes over talked silence. Where she said "I'm going to transfer to Stanford after community college." I remember she dropped off eggs from her chicken farm to her current crush wave every afternoon at 4. And he would pass small notes to me in class telling me of their quantity and size with a smirk on his face. Her natural red hair always curled in the heat with just the right amount of fizz for us to share smiles across in the deepest of confidence.

And me, I moved through the empty tables at 'middle lunch' with the special ed class and overzealous student government kids who thought they looked hot in plaid. I would sit across the table from no one in particular. Each afternoon I pulled a tiny Ziplock bag from my locker, counting the calories as I unwrapped the plastic. 45 per bread slice. 100 for fat free cheese and meat. 0 for highly caffeinated drink of choice.

Always avoiding the black haired girl who liked to place the term president before her name in under read announcement papers. That same year the red haired girl dropped off eggs, we parted. And, in the interim years we did not meet. Just once, after we had already guzzled cheap alcohol in separate cities with the same lights, we saw each other. In front of pink striped wallpaper, I fingered overpriced panties made of 100% cotton with an emblem near the crotch. My name passed across my head, and there she stood wearing a black robe with a water bra hanging from the breast. "Hi" she squeezes between her newly bleached teeth. So I say, "How have you been." Minor twitches. Smiles the size of tiny cavities and the way your lips creep down on the corners. "The five year reunion! It's coming so soon---What type of theme would you like?" To which I reply, "No, I don't live here." And away we went, panties and bra not in hand.

That is not the way these things end. Just the way they fall apart.

But I never successfully completed a chance meeting. Or a new meeting. Or an overly rehearsed meeting. See at age four they sat me down with images of hearts and stars in mind. Told me a stranger would approach me with cute stickers featuring said images in an alluring magic that would bring me to joy. Such joy I would plaster them all over my body in great ecstasy and I would pass out and die from the evil chemicals that penetrated my skin.

So, I reduced myself to an apathetic calmness around these strangers. Just the way we practiced it at four. Yes and no, only without the sir and ma'am. This is the way I like it.

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