Pomona

There's an elderly couple embracing in the parking lot. We are parked outside of a drug store in California. We are driving to Pomona to visit my girlfriend's Aunt and Uncle. It's only an hour trip but it feels like an eternity.

Rachel and I in that little car of hers. Late July. Her dog running back and forth between us, alternating which window he sticks his head out of. To make conversation I ask her if she wants to stop and get a bite to eat.

"We'd better not. My Aunt is making us dinner"

Her Aunt was a woman named Sue. Her Mother's Sister. She was a mildly cold woman. Judgemental. Angry. Rachel knew this. She didn't pretend to like her. But family is family. You love them even if you don't like them.

"We do need gas though", she declares.

We head out of the drug store parking lot and leave the elderly couple to their firm embrace. Perhaps they haven't seen each other in a while. The woman is stroking the man's arm with her wrinkled fingers. Her mouth is open with a smile.

We pull into a Shell station and she orders me to stay in the car while she pumps the gas. The smell of gasoline enters my nose and it takes me back to childhood. Summer road trips with my Mom, smoking stolen cigarettes on the curb in front of the filling station on Cornwall Street, day drives up to the mountains with lost loves to sneak kisses. I loved that gasoline smell. It reminded me of home.

Cake In Virginia

I'll never understand this but for some reason Mom booked me a first class ticket to and from the funeral. Burial costs, food for the wake, morticians...they all cost money. Why make it worse? But that was Mom for you. She always knew how to spend money.

"Do you want some almonds?" she asks. We are in American Airlines Terminal 13B.

"Mom, you know I'm allergic to almonds. They make my throat itch. Christ!" I say this with more anger than it deserves. I realize how silly it sounds as the words leave my mouth.

"Bruce, watch your mouth!" she pauses and comes back in more tenderly with an "I'm sorry" and "I didn't mean to snap".

We sit there in silence. I think about how this time last year I was vacationing at my old girlfriend's house in the country. How we would take a couple of bikes down to the river with some sandwiches and swim in the sun.

Ladies and Gentlemen. We are now boarding for Flight 1322. Non-Stop from Richmond to Washington D.C.

Mom rises instantly to hug me goodbye. "I guess this is you, Bruce"

"Yeah"

I rise and hug her. She feels different than she did before it happened. She's lost weight. Since William collapsed. She's a little more bitter, a bit angier maybe. She runs her hands through the back of my hair as she pulls away from me. She smiles slightly. She wants to cry right now, I can see it on her face.

"Bye, Mom"

"Call me when you get in. You know I don't trust these planes"

"I know"

"And it wouldn't kill you to call to just say hello every once in a while. It gets lonely in that house"

"I know"

She gathers her things and begins to walk away. She drops an almond from one of her little plastic bags full of snacks, she picks it off the floor and puts it in her mouth.

"3 second rule!" she shouts and laughs. William hated almonds too. I remember this as I board Flight 1322 for home.

Cake

He was 27 years old. He was a mountain climber. Saturday he was alive, today he wasn't. It was as simple as that.

He died on a mountain but not in the way you would expect. He had a brain aneurysm and collapsed. He had barely gotten out of his car, before the trail up had even started. That was on Sunday. Today is Monday. The funeral is on Thursday. My birthday is on Saturday.

His name was William Wilson. His Brother, Bruce Wilson, was my best friend. Still is, I suppose. We have never qualified it like that but I was the first person he told about losing his virginity, he was the guy I called when my 8 year relationship came tumbling down. And I was the one he called after he heard about William. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him cry but it was a rare occurrence. Before he even said the words “William is dead”, I knew it was coming. You could just sense it. This wasn’t being stood up for a date or getting your wallet stolen. This was something big. This was a different kind of heartbreak.

I cried to be empathetic but I had barely known William. He had stayed out in Virginia when the rest of us moved to D.C. He didn’t make the leap to the big city. He said he had panic attacks in the city. He said that he liked living in the country. He married young and had chickens and a station wagon. He was the youngest out of all of us. It made me jealous. I wanted comfort and security. I wanted cage free eggs and a farmer tan. I wanted to wear a cowboy hat earnestly, not as part of some sort of ironic costume. I had bags of pasta piled in a dirty cabinet and a photo book of all my old girlfriends. I had cable TV and video game systems and old movies to pass the time. My eggs weren’t cage free, damn it. And I was the oldest out of everybody. It wasn’t fair. It is pointless to complain about all of this now, obviously. He’s dead for Christ’s sake. He has a widow. I imagine her having to drive down to the morgue, in the car he probably died less than 5 feet away from, to identify the body. I instantly never want any of that. I want to spare an innocent woman the pain of seeing her lover lifeless and naked on a cold, metal table. Suddenly, my bachelor lifestyle doesn’t seem so bad. I’m willing to trade companionship and comfort for a tearless funeral.

“Of course I’ll be there for the funeral!” I say to Bruce, almost angrily. Why would he even have to ask? Bruce had a problem with not trusting people to do what was expected of them. He was almost shocked to find that you’d remembered to keep a lunch date or to come to his birthday party.

Now it was my party I was worried about him coming to. You only turn 30 once, people stay dead forever. I realize how much of an asshole I am for saying this. There will be other birthdays, I suppose. I should just cancel the whole thing. Spare myself the agony of nobody showing up. Or worse, a bunch of glum mourners in party hats putting on happy faces just because some asshole is having a birthday. I’ll just turn 30 next year. It will be easier that way.


* * * * *

After the funeral came and went, time sort of stood still. Days seemed to last forever. I got a few days off work and spent them lying in bed and listening to records, watching TV. I didn’t think about William except for when I felt guilty for not thinking about him. I worried about Bruce, back at home in Virginia. Having to deal with life insurance and wills and headstones. I thought some about how the next day I would have to go back to work and how it would be my birthday after that. I thought about the irony of celebrating life so soon after honoring death. I wondered who I knew well enough to bring a present or if anybody would take the responsibility to bring cake and candles. At around 3pm I gave up on thinking and fell asleep for a while. Before I nodded off I thought “death is this but only forever”.

Sitting Cross Legged on Ryan Burlingame's Floor

Anna and I are standing outside of the house with a Tupperware container full of casserole and a bottle of some sort of red wine. Something cheap, I'm sure. Then, out of nowhere, Anna declares "this house reminds me of California".

Normally I would say something like "Yeah, I know what you mean". Cause it reminded me of California too. A house meant to be seen in the sunshine. With little lights dotting the path from the sidewalk to the porch so that your guests can see their way to their cars after summer get-togethers, the cars with their sweaters left in them because there's no need for anything but short sleeves in weather like that. Or maybe it was the stucco exterior? Stucco reminds me of my Mom's house and she lives in California. So that might be it. Or the color? It was this awful dingy brown. Like what you would get if brown and yellow had an ugly baby that didn't quite resemble either of its parents. The point is…yes, it did remind me of California too but I was in a foul mood and certainly not game for the 5 minute conversation that my comments would lead to. So I simply just responded with "Huh? How can a house remind you of a whole state?" And I looked at her in such a way to indicate that I didn't want to talk about this anymore. We have this routine down pat by now so she knows the drill. Roll her eyes and go "Well, sorry!" She knows I don't want to be here. At this house with these people. I mean, it's her ex-boyfriend's house for Christ's sake! She's probably had sex in there. Maybe even on the kitchen table. The one we are about to eat on.

"Can we just try and have a good night tonight?"

When did my life turn into a hackneyed sitcom? How did I become the big dope who needs to be scolded into acceptable behavior? When did my girlfriend start speaking in lines right out of an after-school special about divorce? If there's one thing I can't stand more than eating tuna noodle casserole and drinking cheap red wine on a table my girlfriend probably once had hot, sweaty sex on…it is speaking in clichés. So instead of resorting to name calling or something equally typically male of me, I simply said "Alright" and smiled at her. She took my hand and we finally made our way down the tiki light lined path to 2423 Dearborn Street, the home of Ryan Burlingame, Dave Clusky and Travis Lembecke. Ryan is the first one to greet us.

"Hey, guys!" He kisses Anna on the cheek. "Come on in!"

"Where's my kiss, Ryan?" I joke.

He laughs and half ass attempts a homophobic peck on a spot on my cheek so far away from anywhere resembling my lips that he might as well have kissed the back of my head. He laughs again, harder this time as if to say "I can't believe I went that far for a joke. Aren't I great?"

I give him a pity chuckle and we continue inside. Others are already gathered around the living room, some of them I recognize and some I don't. Most of them look out of place off of their fixed gear bicycles or uncomfortable sitting crossed legged on a cheap Egyptian rug instead of sweating buckets on stage with a microphone in front of them. I glance at all of them, never really making eye contact with anyone for more than a second.

"So…", Ryan grabs our coats and drapes them over an old futon in the corner, "….pull up some real estate in the living room there and dig in. Food's in the kitchen"

We head into the kitchen and put our paltry dish down on a table full of appetizers and pasta dishes, bread and chips, salads and cookies. And wine. A shit load of wine. A very short girl with a pixie haircut creeps up behind us and grabs a roll from a space between Anna and I.

"Is that vegan?" she asks and points to our casserole.

"Um…no. It isn't", Anna has a worried look on her face.

"Oh!" she replies, "Thank god!" I laugh and she blushes slightly. "I'm sorry. I just wasn't sure if you guys…." She trails off.

"It's ok". Anna smiles.

"I'm Heather"

"Anna"

She looks towards me and sticks out her hand.

"James"

"Nice to meet you both", she pauses, "Well, I'll see you two out there". She nods towards the massive living room.

I silently admire her use of language. It was nice to meet us "both" not "you guys". "I'll see you two out there" not "see you guys out there". Greetings had gotten too gender specific with this generation. It irked me.

"Christ, I read too many of Anna's Bust magazines", I think.

Anna is already eating, plate in hand and she hasn't even finished serving herself yet. I always liked that about her, she knows how to eat. I follow suit and dig in. My options were about a 50/50 split between something that looked like it was pulled out of the back of Jerry Garcia's fridge and actual, real food.

One thing that's good about Ryan is that he doesn't discriminate when it comes to his social circle. Carnivore, herbivore, vegan, slave to corporate fast food juggernaut…as long as you could stand being in his presence for more than 10 consecutive minutes then you were his friend. I was not one of these people. He was an unpleasant guy to be around. The kind of man who seemed to have a hidden agenda at all times. Like he was acting for you. Maybe I was just better at spotting this or maybe other people knew it too but preferred that to being alone so they just put up with it. I'm not scared to be alone. I never have been. I suppose that's one upside of being an only child. Movies, dinners, concerts…I've conquered all of them solo. The idea of this scares the shit out of Anna. She can barely brush her teeth without trying to talk to me at the same time. Pushing complaints and observations through a mouthful of toothpaste and nylon and plastic. As if her thoughts weren't real until they were shared with someone else.

Instantly, as I turn to pour myself some wine I find myself thinking "I wonder if that girl is single? The one who asked about the vegan thing? Heather". This could be trouble. I don't know why I do this to myself. I sigh and move on, pouring a relatively small amount of 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon. I've never been much of a drinker, at least not of wine anyway. I think it was my Catholic upbringing. I don't want to wash down my meal with the blood of Christ. It just seems unsettling.

"You want to sit over there? By the window?" asks Anna.

"Sure", I answer without even looking. At least there will be no eating off of the sex table tonight.

We sit down in a spot of sunlight radiating through the window on to a patch of hardwood floor. The way we are concentrated into one pocket of light like that reminds me of a cat stretching into the daylight to take a nap.

"These deviled eggs are really good", I hear from somewhere in the corner.

"Can you believe he did that? I was stunned", comes from somewhere behind me.

Some one, in some area of space to my right asks "What time is that show? Is it all ages?"

Anna and I are content to remain silent in our patch of light.

I feel a shifting of weight behind me and sense a body hovering above my shoulder. Travis Lembecke, house resident and casual acquaintance sits down next to me.

"Hey, man"

"Hey, Travis"

"How you guys doing?" he vaguely directs to Anna instead of me.

"Oh. Hi there, Travis", she replies, "We are good. How are you doing?"

"Good. Good. Hey, you try those salmon puff pastry things yet? I made those"

I skewer one from my plate and hold it up with my fork. "One of these guys?"

"Yeah. Those are mine. Let me know what you think. I saw some guy make it on the Food Network"

"Oh! They are really good, Travis", Anna chimes in.

I take a bite and it is pretty good. I let Travis know this and after a few seconds of silence he adjusts from crouching above us to sitting cross legged on the floor next to me.

"Hey, have you ever heard anybody call sitting like this sitting 'Indian style'?" He points to his criss crossed legs.

"Yeah. They said shit like that at Sunday school when I was a kid"

"I didn't know you were religious?"

"I'm not. My family was though"

"Were you brought up religious?" he asks Anna…sensing her boredom.

"Oh, me? No. My parents were hippies. We never had to go to church or anything".

Anna's "hippie parents" consisted of her Dad named Mike whose only claim to hippiedom was a ponytail and her Mom, Karen, who I think saw wear a tie-dye shirt to a family picnic once and maybe told us that once in college she smoked pot out of an apple. Anna has a very loose interpretation of what makes a hippy. It was one of the things that endeared her to me. It was oddly cute in a way, her innocence. She also classified anybody who wore any sort of black leather jacket a "metal head" and wrote off half of the male population that wore any sort of pastel colored shirt as "fruity". It was strange for someone so liberal to be so closed-minded about stuff like that but she didn't hold any of that against anybody, she just used it as a labeling system.

Out of the corner of my eye I notice that girl Heather. She's not normally my type but she's got an allure. She seemed genuinely interesting to talk to. With Anna it was like we were both battling over one steering wheel, trying to drive the conversation towards ourselves. Even something as simple as "how are you doing?" was loaded with a longing for the other person to hurry up with their answer so that we could talk about how we were doing. What was bothering us, why we felt so good, how we thought our new jeans made our ass look, how what we ate for lunch was effecting our stomach. Travis was still rambling on about something to Anna. Something about how they bought Trivial Pursuit as a house and they all play it almost every night.

I was busy imagining a date with this Heather girl. Where would we go? What would we do? She seems like an Italian restaurant and live theatre type of girl. I liked that. No burgers and bowling for that one. She seemed too classy. I could use some class for once. I imagine her emerging from her bedroom in a simple but elegant little black dress. For once I don't look over dressed wearing a suit to dinner. She probably shares my admiration for Cary Grant or old film noirs. This girl could be my soulmate. We could watch "Arsenic and Old Lace" and eat pumpkin and ginger soup on Halloween instead of going to some mediocre party with burnouts and wannabe rock stars. Heather would do things like bring an expensive present for my parents the first time she meets them, like a crystal vase and some flowers to put in it or a set of wine glasses from Williams-Sonoma. My parents didn't drink wine but they would appreciate it and play along because it came from the heart and indicated a genuine desire to be accepted. She would subscribe to the New Yorker and make Anthony Bourdain recipes. She would make martinis just for the hell of it, no special occasion. She wouldn't make fun of me for eating quiche. She would be fascinated by it, by my contrasts. She would label me as a complicated man. She would encourage me to nurture my masculine side. She would insist I go fishing with the boys on the weekend or the strip club for my best friend's bachelor party. But she wouldn't laugh at the fact that I use moisturizer.

"James? James? JAMES?!"

"Huh. What?"

"Travis asked you a question!" Anna yells at me.

"Oh, sorry. What's up, Travis?"

"Oh. I just asked if you've heard that new James Chance re-issue yet?"

"Oh, no. Not yet"

"It's really good. You want me to burn it for you? How long you guys sticking around?"

"A little longer probably" replies Anna.

"O.k. Well, come get me before you leave. I'll hook you up"

"Alright. Thanks, Travis"

Travis rises and vanishes off to somewhere in that big old house. He leaves Anna and I to our awkward, usual silence. The sun we are sitting in is fading quickly. It is overcast now.

"James, can you get me my jacket from the hall? I'm getting chilly"

Without even answering her, I stand up and walk over towards the coats. As I reach down to grab her blue windbreaker, I hear the words "Hey, I liked your casserole". I turn around and there is Heather. She smiles as we make eye contact.

"Oh. Yeah. Thank you", I smile back.

I like how she compliments me personally. She can sense that I am the cook between Anna and I. She sees me as more than the dopey boyfriend who simply put a dish on the table.

"So…you like to cook?" she asks.

"Yeah. You too?"

"Oh, me? Not really", she laughs, "I mean, I do. I can. But it stresses me out. All that stirring and chopping and watching for things to boil. It's a lot of work"

"Yeah," I laugh nervously, "I know what you mean, I guess"

"And I'm afraid I'm going to accidentally poison everybody somehow"

I laugh. "Just make sure and use the poison sparingly. You only need a dash".

She doesn't think this is funny at all.

After a batch of silence, I ask, "So…how do you know Ryan?"

"Oh. Well, um…we used to date"

Jesus Christ, that dude gets around.

"Man, I think I'm probably the only person here who hasn't slept with that dude"

She doesn't find this very funny either. Maybe things didn't end well? Maybe he gave her a sexually transmitted disease or she is raising his child in secret? Whatever the reason, there is no polite laughter. Just a simple "Yeah" and an awkward silence.

After what feels like an eternity she asks "So…where's that girl you came with?"

"Oh. She's around here somewhere. Anna"

"How do you know her?"

"We…also used to date". I have no idea why I said this. I am a jackass, a complete and utter jackass.

"Oh", she smiles.

She asks if I want to get some wine with her in the kitchen. I can't believe she still wants to be in my presence after 2 unfunny jokes, one of which seemed to actually offend her. She must be desperate. This is strangely appealing. What is wrong with me? I accompany her to the kitchen, Anna's windbreaker in hand.

She pours herself a large glass of wine and then informs me that she is going out on to the porch to smoke. I decide to accompany her even though I don't smoke and am actually severely allergic to it. Anna has to be wondering where the hell I am by now. I will use Travis as an excuse. Some album he wanted to show me.

We sit on the steps of the house, her smoking and me trying to breathe in pockets of fresh air between her drags. She asks me about the usual icebreaker subjects like what kinds of music I listen to, what do I for a living, where am I from. There is nothing extraordinary about this girl in the least but she is still appealing. Because she isn't Anna. Because I haven't dated her for the last 3 and a half years. Because we don't live together. Because she is different. She's more talkative, more open, more wild. As we are sitting there, making conversation I blurt out "this house reminds me of California". She smiles and blows smoke up into the air.

The Stars Collect

You left the comfort of a broken but familiar home for a life with me. Standing by the railroad tracks, looking back to the past you left behind in Detroit, you smile at me. You grab the super 8 camera and roll some more Kodachrome on the passing trains.

"Are you excited for our first collaboration?", you ask. "It will be the defining document of hobo culture". You smile.

You spit into on to a spike in the track, supposedly driven there by a pioneering mechanical man back in the days even old folks can’t remember.

“Do you think humans will eventually evolve into robots?” you ask me. Your voice is obscured by the whir of the camera motor.

“I don’t know.” I never know how to respond to you.

“Here. Take this”. You hand me the camera while you light a cigarette for yourself. I turn the camera on and roll film on you and the smoke trailing out of your mouth. You smile shyly and turn your head down towards your chin. Your smile makes me remember what my life was like before it was a regular sight. Pathetic microwave dinners after an 8-hour day working at a boring temp job, television and books the only things to keep me company in the late evenings. Your lips and tongue and teeth were the parole out of my self-made prison, your hair and eyes and soft fingers were the keys out of a holding cell of my own design.

“Put the camera away,” you laugh, “it’s getting dark out anyway”

The darkness creeps in like a film around us. The stars collect in the reflection of your eyes and that collection of light forms a projector. It radiates from you to me. It projects the most abstract and beautiful film imaginable. It burns so bright that it burns a hole through the film and everything collapses.

You take my hand into yours and we walk home.