O ROTTEN GOTHAM, interlude

it happened to me first. "fuck a porch cat." verily. putting that food there is only encouraging the raccoons to do their dance. and up my leg. i wish i'd flagged down that cruiser to have the cops put it down, but then they would have found me drinking in the street.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 15

it wasn't the afternoon that i spent in the upstairs office of the cat palace trying to take glamor shots of the cats (the three of the four whose fur matched the wig) that caused me to realize that i might need some time outside. it was the night that i started texting the photos. nearly alone and nearly disconnected, having eschewed all but the most necessary of the internet's nonsenses, i had somehow become the internet itself. say you wanna get in, and you're gonna get out... but don't. it's a trap. then, curiouser and curiouser, i leave, and i leave the keys behind me, but then i'm driving north on 71 into downtown later in the day, and somewhere in the rain near lou berliner park i'm overcome by an unquestionably happy wistfulness at the sight of the skyline. catch that outbound plane before love starts flying of its own free will. bah. "love? not much. trickery, yes, some." and those cats aren't going to use what they make from those photos to refund my ticket. lolz. greetings from everywhere and nowhere. regards, the internet.

SUMMER FUN SUN BUZZWORD BEACH COCONUT

"squirrel! ...don't eat THAT!" she bolted up from her chair beside the paper press and was screaming as she ran out of the house. but after she'd made it out the front door and onto the porch she might have been screaming mixed messages. "that isn't FOOD!" she shreiked as she pelted the squirrel in the mimosa tree with squirrel food. but there was the desired effect, and the beast dropped the rose. a neighbor tried to pass unnoticed along the sidewalk on the other side of the hedges, but i could see her through the big bay window that frames the rose bush under the mimosa tree as she quickened her pace. summertime, and the living is...distracted. and it tries to go unnoticed. meanwhile, all kinds of things are passing the cat palace by, but i haven't been paying much attention, whether i notice or not. i guess that robbie rogers can expect me in l.a. now. and i guess that everyone else can't expect much. distracted, i can't read books, because the theft of these stolen magazines needs justification. which happens in a chair on the lawn, on the opposite side of the walkway from the mimosa tree. i get sweaty, so i take off my pants. photographs. the neighborhood. later i'll get the pants back out of the freezer and press them so that they're perfect. i'll walk to the door of the bar imagining the looks, then i'll turn around, walk back to the palace, and carefully put my pants away. maybe i'll pick up a book. me, one hand, and the other one for anaïs nin. artists and models... goodbye, world! hello summer. pick me up at lax so that i don't have to take the bus to hollywood.

THE LOST WEEKEND

every room of the cat palace is filled with top notch stuff that i could pawn, including, in fact, a veritable visual chronology of the development of the typewriter. plus, the big old house with the big old everything and the precipitate servants' staircase that shoots you straight up from the cats' bowls in the kitchen to the hallway that gives onto their four second floor rooms, well, the block it's on has been run back up in the past several years, but it's only several blocks' walk to the pawn shops on main. not so far to have to carry, say, an old underwood. still working, friend! but i'm saved that ignominy and the more daunting excusing of it that there's no way i'd be able to excuse when the time came later, because the kroger in the brewery district has six packs of keystone light on sale for three ninety-nine through june two. that's four twenty-six with tax, which i know because that's the number on all the receipts in the pile. after night number three there's a man in the alley digging for cans, and he saves me another uncomfortable excuse by accepting my pile of those. the cat palace is haunted by an insomnia ghost, and the alley is haunted by her attendant early morning trysts. there's a line of variable thickness that winds its way around exultance, reverie and concentration, and its unpredictable course makes it difficult for me to make progress with foucault. luckily, i'm saved by the shelf of violette leduc in one of the cases in the room with the canopy bed. she comes with me when i'm chased by the ghost to the bath, then she attends the trysts. the cats get morphine or bathwater. i get more keystone light. on thursday evening it felt almost like fall was setting in early, but by tuesday morning the stick of summer had come back heavy over the rose bushes in the front garden. when was their scent more rarified? amber and lavender. the to the right, across the highway, there's the inviting ramshackle of what's still left run down in olde towne, which would be nice for a ramble, but not at night. take a book in the afternoon, maybe. to the left, the junior league grows peonies for all the vases on the block. past that, the topiary garden and the main library. frustratingly, they don't have a copy of charles jackson's book, and hindsight is making that look like the perfect read. hindsight, pathetically would-be. a typewriter through the window. no excuse, but i've got time until i'll have to make one, and i'll save it.