deuxieme novel, in summary

drugs. make your heart beat faster, harder, more productive. you can be sad but still get through a day. (i hug her tight, it's nice to see you, been a while i say, she says i can feel your heart... beating. i nod into her hair and respond it does that. she finds that funny and laughs). my sister cries, she's in her chair between me and dad, who have our feet planted on opposite sides of her chair but our noses are touching. i see red and am pretty sure he does too. she cries and mom eventually pushes me back out into the hallway. then they hold hands. there is a description of several trees. also trees in the nighttime which are an entirely different breed.
___you need to learn to sleep naked she tells me. she likes it better that way. so i do, and shiver all night. and have nightmares that terrify me about things i cannot remember. in the morning she says can you possibly get any farther from me? she's right. there's a pillow on the floor, i'm hanging over the edge. after not touching the piano for months i finally play and for 12 minutes forget i'm alive and feel happier than i have in a long time and then someone speaks and everything starts(stops) again. you're quiet tonight i just nod and keep sucking on my cough-drop.
___i'm freezing i have a jacket on and pants unzipped and half down my legs, sand everywhere, my head pushing back into sand the wind from the beach occasionally lifts her skirt and i grip her hair too tight and wake in the morning and can't remember dream from reality until i put shoes on and feel sand and my hands in my pockets sand and take off my pajamas and there's sand every goddamn where ; on the plane i sit with the reading light on staring at nothing and an old lady stares at me - with a shocked look as though i'd seen something that i wasn't meant to see yet. 30 years too soon perhaps. i smile back but she scowls at me. (a generation of apostates i want to say to her, but she is too far in too many ways to hear me). red eyes from the rum bottle, and unslept night after unslept night i sit at this one cafe reading every(noth)ing, i go in my PJs and sit there and the girls bring me coffee and sometimes talk to me about what i can't remember. i can't make sense of it. she wants to know of what? and i can't answer her. later i sit on a too-comfortable couch and nearly cry for no reason. in my head i hear the phrase 'theater of the absurd' over and over.
___there's a fictional character. Peggy. Suzie. Jakarta. i don't know, who cares. she drinks RedBull for breakfast and sneers at people at the bus-stop, and a nice boy took her to a movie once and they kissed in the line to get frozen-cokes on their way out. (having confessed she loved them, and being too late to stop at the candybar on the way in, he thought it'd be a nice idea to get one as they left). and he kissed her and she squealed a voice she'd never made before. 3 years later she would prize that memory most highly and never tell anyone. she lies in the fetal position in bed and can't sleep and writes a different word in large letters on every page of her notebook (COLLAPSE. EQUESTRIAN. DELIRIUM. DAISY. BALLAST. TROPICAL. VIRGO.) and once burst into tears during an orgasm and once sat with her feet in the pool for 2 hours before someone finally said hey, you ok? and she looked up and smiled soo strangely the man was spooked a whole week and said f*ck knows buddy.
___i don't get it what's the point she says. the point is projection. it's the opposite of people relating to something. people are not relating. they're projecting. they're fantasizing. they're wishing themselves into something they do not relate to. i'm the opposite of that. she corrects me: you hope. yes. very true.
___we walk. i put an arm around her out of the need to touch somebody asexually. she trembles a little. (i drive home, the whole way terrified. arrive. leave the car on and sit inside it in my driveway. pretend i'm waiting for the song to finish. take my phone and send a text. another. another. another. sit, and consider what might happen if i reverse, drive north or south, and just go for a while. it's soo cliche. soo overdone. fiction is soo dull when it's based on reality).
___there are streets. the dusty beige painted homes in the poor parts of the valley. i drive with sun always glaring in my eyes i wince. my rash is terrible from sweating all the time. Mexicans on every street corner in dusty overalls and paint-stained jeans. heavy boots. basketball caps stained with sweat. selling fruit out of eskies in the backs of trucks. families huddled together wordlessly. a bottle of water passed around. i drive by. Lattes and large fries that stain your fingers with a film of oil and your lips cut. popcorn and darklit cinemas. Ashley's hand rubs my back lightly. my sister in the crazy-house. a portal out of Tuesday 1:07am. Mona tells me. this is what we do Mona tells me. 'this' i guess means life.
___in LAX i sit and colour in pages of my notebook all black. 45 minutes it takes per page (on average). i sit at the departure lounge and color my page. the woman sitting next to me moves a row over. i wish she had asked: what are you doing. if she had, i would have told her: writing down everything i understand about the word_ h o m e. _i look the other way and she stares at me. 'my tortured artist' she says. and i like it when she says it it has humor to it. i like it to have humor. all i ever wanted in life was a bookshelf and now i'm looking at one. this must be what happiness is. (that and your tiny feet you always kick and yelp when i kiss them). and falling asleep in her lap sshh, sleep baby; sleep. whatever universe that was.
___there's a description of my grandfather's tie. my dad's plaid shirt. second-hand Salvatore Ferragamo half-boots i found in a thrift store in Santa Monica for $28. six polaroids on my wall. when did you last eat? he asks, not sure. (her eyes light up, i push in and her eyes grow soo wide i hope to fall in them and live there it seems nicer). she drops me off and looks at me seriously, you need to get out more ok? she says. i nod. i want to tell her about Ralphie. he's a disabled man i bought lunch for once, on father's day. Subway. i want to tell her about the Starbucks on Santa Monica and Pontius. about having my car towed on Sunset, Mona driving me three times around LA trying to get it back. about sneaking into clubs. about getting drunk in Canberra and not kissing the girl last minute chickening-out and her getting mad at me and leaving me to stumble home by myself i had no idea where i was it took hours. it was soo cold.

all i have left of my life are ties and polaraoids and pages of notebooks.
i can't fit them all into books.

(i was promised a dream of tulip petals and mustard seeds.

these words are graveyards. cluttered closets. vacated first-kisses. ghosts.

(she likes it when i kiss her clavicle. i rub my hand across her chest. her neck. kiss her clavicle. she leans her head back into the pillow. softly says i hate you.)

words live in silent spaces. look at them, even now, sitting here silently. speechless. like trees.

(geranium red from Haifa. the smell of jasmine in summer. i ran away from Vanessa and physics and mom's fibroid and dad's everything and a not-subtle suggestion of my failures and walked in the desert. woke up at 5am and walked to the ocean. we sat on rooftops and watched rockets land in the bay. there were sirens and our friends, families back home worried watching CNN. we rolled fake-grass onto rooftops and hungup white sheets and projected Pirates of the Caribbean and lay on my bright yellow couch. Mona drives down Hollywood Blvd. i look out the window. stores. stores. those may have been the greatest days of our lives i say. i don't know how it happened. or why. or what the f*ck we thought we were doing out in the middle of nowhere like that... but... there must have been something to it.

she nods quietly. the car rolls on.

[i left something on Mar's front porch. for the life of me i can't remember what.]

this is the only way it could have been Q. that's what she said on the phone to me. when i cried.
this is the only way it could have been Q.
there's nothing you could have done. this is the only way it could have been Q.
the only way it could be.

this is the only way it could have been Q.

this is the only way it could have been Q.

this is the only way it could have been Q.
this is the only way it could have been Q.