I ain’t askin for much.

I always liked the word gendarme so I looked it up.  Big disappointment.

I’ve long since recognized the appeal of wealth.  I admit, I like shiny things.  Actually, I like handsome objects.  Artful globes to leviathan machinery.

Used to be I coveted wealth.  Then I made a little money and indulged myself a little.  Bought a nice car.  Developed a taste for caviar and champagne.  Good wine.  A ridiculously expensive stereo.  A house.  Vacations.

It all kinda fell apart, slow enough so the way down wasn’t crazy in my face but just enough to make me puke now and then.

There are magazines still reasonably popular, devoted to things most of us can’t afford or wouldn’t, even if we had the scratch.

I don’t covet the pretty things so much as the freedom.  A nice lunch.  Healthy food is more expensive.  I like tomatoes.  Sauces.  Appetizers and good wine.

I want a condo in the sky above the dirty streets.  My life’s trajectory has been odd at best.  One of the things we’re supposed to do here is distinguish ourselves.  I feel I’ve done that but would like to continue.  Cook up some pork maple sausages, dip them in Big Bob’s Bleu and you’re courting intestinal methane pressure.  The antithesis of fiber and nature’s broom but still an efficient evacuator of the colon with many a loud report.

My two biggest questions are why are we here?

And are we really here?

I often think one’s life is either a good mosaic or a bad one.  Subject to trends and popular opinion.  All of us beholding to what is vogue  What is not.

I’m trying to point to how closely we dance with chaos.  A true economic implosion would have families and entire clans grouping and sharing resources.  There’s a chance that’s not a bad idea.  It could just be the most important skill my mother can pass to me is how to grow and preserve produce.  Agriculture is about to become more important.  Dad taught me to shoot but I need a refresher.

Imagine a world without glutinous salad dressings.

I want to talk about bars now.

I feel obligated to start with the Whitehorse.  Dark and sinister.  Late eighties, early nineties.  Just north of Sunset on Western, east side of the street across from an OSH.

Pretty crazy neighborhood, rather insane clientele.  Pimps, prostitutes, trannies and drunks.  Drug dealers, criminals and musicians.  Not odd at all for a cockroach to skitter down the bar dodging the cheesy candlelit, white plastic net wrapped red glass candle holders.  I figured it was the light they feared, not the heat.  “There goes another cola nut”, I’d say.  Diane, the lovely but flawed bartendress who always wore rosewater perfume, would smile and bat her eyes while protesting she hadn’t seen it.  Had never in fact, seen a single bug on the bar or anywhere else ever.

D.S. Morey.  Adorable.  Lying to me for sport.

She was gorgeous.  Blue pools for eyes.  Voluptuous.  Serious tits and a Coop Girl frame.  Smart clever and vulnerable.  Gorgeous tattoos on pale skin.  Blond with a yellow tooth at the very front of her head.  She was a reformed meth addict from Traverse City, Michigan.  We got very close.  She put my records on the jukebox.  I believe we were afraid of each other.  She was fragile and I was timid.  We went on a few actual dates.  The first one, she watched me get drunk and I took her to Denny’s, the second I took her to see Naked Lunch and tried to kiss her.  She resisted my overture and politely insisted that I not embarrass myself.

I was crushed.

A few weeks later she took a lover and told me I just wasn’t mean enough.

I wondered a long time before I understood what she meant.  I drank cheap whiskey in those days.  Long neck Budweisers.  I recorded punk rock.

There was a framed picture on an end table in her apartment from her days as an addict.  She and another woman on a rooftop at dawn.  The sun breaking behind them as they celebrated how fucked up they were.  Her hair in braids and colorful ornaments.  Christmas on a summer morning.  Huge awesome smiles.  A light blue sky and clouds pink and orange.  I asked about it and she had nothing to say.  She was ashamed of it and that’s probably why it was there.

It was so very sublime to me.  Finally, I actually asked for it.  She told me no way could I have it.  Not long after, her apartment late at night, the photo in the same place but the glass was broken and the picture torn.

The Whitehorse was completely destroyed in the ’94 earthquake.  It had been my bar of choice because the bartender was lovely and fascinating and the bars in my neighborhood were no place for a big long haired white boy.

Oh Diane Morey.

Drinks for my friends.

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