The Movie

"This Movie reminds me of my friend James...

...he's one of two people I have ever met and known to be genuine geniuses...

They're both dead.

Fucking heroin man..."

Its really polite to be sorry for someone's loss

to get quiet

look at your feet

avoid that wild fire of rage and grief.

Like all wildfires it can spread on the wind of breath

and if you look a mourner in the eye long enough

you're liable to go up in flames yourself.

He was polite.

I ran in to James in his mother’s kitchen.

God he hated her,

because she didn't love him,

because she saw him

exactly as he was.

He drank like thirty cups of strong black coffee a day

with at least as many cigarettes

Camel Silvers when he could get them.

I remember telling him to eat a sandwich

because I could see his ribs through his button up wool sweater vest.

I told him it was obscene to walk around so exposed

his skeleton on display for all to see.

who said I would love this movie.

It is clear to anyone that bothers looking

he is in the latter stages of being eaten

by something ravenous

and persistent.

He has all but surrendered.

He does not know me

but he knows this story, I can see,

with other actors

and perhaps a slightly different plot.

He will not tell me his version.

James always carried around a copy of Ulysses

he said Joyce was a mad man and brilliant and super gay.

He thought everyone was secretly super gay.

He's probably right.

What is amazing to me is that he carried Ulysses around like a security blanket

for like three months and read it

at least three or four times cover to cover.

He never bent it

or spilled his infamous black coffee on it

or ashed on it,

because I think in a way it was scripture to him.

When he gave it to me for Christmas

--unwrapped because he didn't believe in that shit--

it was like being given his blessing

or perhaps an initiation.

You know I'm afraid to open it

to let his breath escape from the pages

to let myself step into his mind

and Joyce’s mind

of madness

and brilliance

and homoeroticism.

Maybe I’m a coward

James was never afraid to step in to my mind.

He got sick of my panic attacks one day.

I has having a lot of them as memories of past evils started to trickle back.

He was a rip off the band aid kind of guy.

He would sign his life over to God and the habit one day flying to the sackcloth arms of the monastic life

Then throw himself into speed, motels, and strange men's cocks the next.

He didn't care for middle grounds or pussyfooting around.

He wasn't afraid of anybody but himself.

and he's the only man that was never afraid of me.

He gave me ecstasy in a sparkly pink pill

and sat with me on the bench behind my dad’s house

and told me to tell him everything that happened to me

every detail. To absolve myself in telling it.

He was not afraid

or sorry for my loss

or polite.

He was a psychoanalyst at heart

or maybe a witch

or an angel

or a demigod

The man left.

We never finished the movie.

It was the first night we’d spent together and not had sex.

Does that mean were dating? or at least friends?

Maybe its just not super sexy listening to some chick

you barely know

laugh and cry and shout about her dead friend

when you just wanted to watch a fucking movie.

Maybe it’s not that important to you

the nights he spent on the phone with her in a Tennessee Waffle House

His hand poked odd ball tattoos

His brilliance

and heroin