Competing with the Dead in 20 Degrees Fahrenheit

You and me with the apples and they with the sticks to put them on.

The last thing I wrote was about a dead friend who I loved very deeply. It's been months and every time I return to the typer I felt like I couldn't compete with that piece. We never can compete with the dead. In fact, that piece felt so important to me I didn't even want to push it further down the page. I wanted it to be a pinnacle of my work, because it meant that much to me. He meant that much to me.

I tell old stories. It's what I do. It's what we all do. Who doesn't have all those people in their lives that repeat themselves? Grandparents telling you about potatoes from 1785. Fathers telling you about that one time in 'Nam. I just happen to live like Salvador Dali and make the stories a little bit more tolerable. Thankfully for you I don't need drugs, because I am drugs, too!

I still do all the crazy things I did, do, done. I still dance under red lights on other people's balconies and make some sort of love under warm blankets after nights of spiked apple ciders. My nostalgia is throttled by the adult need for moderation. Careful, careful or it'll kill you quick! We can't take all the drugs, but we can take some of them. We can't drink the whole bottle of two-buck-chuck, but we can still throw back a few. I still dream of the dead while I dance with the living. The buzz may not be as strong but it does the trick, quick!

I recently found myself sitting with an astrophotographer. We sat out in the 20 degree fahrenheit weather for a few hours. For as long as I could take it, because trust me he could take it a lot longer than I could. He had a star map in his head. He pointed out things that I never knew were floating up there in the sky, trapped in milky ether-looking substances like the Universe's cum stain. Beautiful.

After that, we roasted small apples on a fire and it felt like Christmas to me. Not the Christmas of Catholic relatives raving about cards Scotch-taped to stairways or how many onions were in the fucking stuffing. No, more like Christmas under my little light tree while I talked to Angie on my corded neon-green see-through telephone. Was that in nineteen ninety something, something, something? Whispering sweet nothings that meant nothing late at night so my parents couldn't hear my grown-up conversations.

We're all here under these stars. The dead I'm now competing with are up there or down here or, by now, growing out of the ground that we've been photographing on this 20 degree fahrenheit night. Me and this astrophotographer whom I assume is just a travel buddy, because he hasn’t made a move in two whole nights.

They looked like Native Americans on that night by the fire. Our sudden companions from the local village. They came to drink and laugh and eat our apples. You and me with the apples and they with the sticks to put them on. I think they would appreciate this kind of Christmas. You and me without the white man and their crucifixion of whoever underneath the whatever with those gifts from Bergdorf Goodman. Surely those wise men were gay as a two dollar steak. If they were wise they'd know the best shops all along Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York. There we were with a midnight exchange of hearts and the constellation of Leo lurking right over the horizon. I see it, damn it I do finally see it!

If I knew what I was doing I'd be doing it by now. I asked the Universe for "love or better" and it fulfilled my every wish by giving me each and every person to satisfy my every desire. (I hope I satisfied all of theirs. Not like the Leo staring up at the Leo constellation gives a rip about that, but I do get chuffed knowing I’ve satisfied. Slut.) No one person suits all the things, so here we are in some sort of personal Secret Santa gift exchange orgy while Andromeda eats us all alive. "Yeah, I guess so," you mumbled between 30-second shots while I rambled on.