GLOBAL WARMING

GLOBAL WARMING

A Novel

Antonio Hopson

53,000 words

______________________

. . .Even now

My eyes that hurry to see no more are painting, painting

Faces of my lost girl. O golden rings

That tap against cheeks of small magnolia-leaves,

O whitest so soft parchment where

My poor divorced lips have written excellent

Stanzas of kisses, and will write no more. . .

'Black Marigolds', as translated from the Sanskrit by E. Powys Mathers

_____________________________________

Introduction animal cookies

'Isotopes are chemically identical forms of the same element but with different atomic weights.'

--John Houghton, Global Warming, The Complete Briefing.

I REMEMBER ONE DAY AS WE sat outside of a small bohemian type café engaged in one of our many conversations. It was a sunny day, and we were sitting at opposite ends of a small oval table, she gazing at me over the top of my double-tall hazelnut latte. The two of us would talk for hours about most anything: schoolwork, her father, traveling, music, art –and while she spoke to me, I would blithely peer over her shoulder and reflect on my alternate life, as it too slipped over the horizon with the setting sun.

On the day I am thinking of she wore a floppy blue shirt un-tucked over a pair of dark Levi’s with a hole in one knee. On her feet she donned a pair of open toed sandals displaying toenails painted metallic blue. Whenever she spoke, she could not keep her fingers out of her hair, and it never failed to drive me wild. I don’t believe I could ever explain this to her without sounding peculiar –but, while watching her play in her hair, it reminded me of dancing with mops as a child. I loved to dance with them, spinning them around as if they were sassy lovers on a dance floor. I engaged in such behavior not only because it made my clumsy efforts seem lithe and right, but also because I loved to twist the handle and make the “hair” whirl. Now, whenever I see a woman with uncontrollable hair, fashioned in the style of one of my long lost mops, my heart begins to leap.

I quickly ran out of anything witty to say so, in a pause, I watched her eat an animal cookie. It was an amazing thing. Her movements seemed to come from another dimension where a thousand puppeteers orchestrated each action laid out before the world around us. First, a willowy dip of her slender fingers into the bag, then, looking at me through deep gingerbread eyes --the kind that lead you deep into some sublime, yet exhilarating place --she would feel around for the proper animal to consume. The bag would go: “crumple, crumple, crumple”, and while she muffled around, a wonderful little look of delight would appear in her eyes --a mild sort of benediction which announced she had found what she desired. Dear God! It was enough to drive any man crazy. How many pleasurable sensations did she derive from running her fingers all over the tops of those frosted up, bumpy-smooth cookies with little candies pasted on them? Of course, to make it more difficult, she could do this while listening to whatever nonsense I spluttered. We discussed the problematic paradigms of climate models, and the albedo effect locked in cloud layers, as she parted her lips, brought the cookie to her face, and placed the lucky morsel in her mouth.

Ever so gently. . .

Ever so gently. . ..

“Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch” the cookie would go, no doubt in bliss. The very idea of being eaten alive became sexy and inviting. Perhaps someday I will offer my body to a tiger in the same benign way those animal cookies offered their bodies to her.

I recall she daintily ate a whole bag of them, sitting there with me, and I remember the puppeteers conducted an excellent performance, for she retired each without once miscalculating a move, a blink, sensuous glance, or even a breath.

So there I was, watching her and thinking of what other parcels of food I might bring in the future: Strawberries? Bananas? Watermelons? and suddenly realized there were words falling from those smacking lips. She was speaking of Paris –how wonderful it would be in the spring --the city of love, romance, and passion. She painted, rich, visual pictures for me to ponder, little captions of imagery that floated from her lips like ripples on a lake --pictures of little cafés, a Van Gogh Café, hidden in a back-street alleyway glowing orange and blood-red from the candles on the tables. Sitting at one of the tables were the two of them, embraced quietly in a loving kiss. Chin in my palm, I listened as her words became one big haze –fading into the next sentence like soft light in a sunset –her ruby lips fluttering in ease.

“Jules?”

“Yes?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.” I answered.

“Well, did you?”

“Did I what, Allison?” I loved to say her name and said it when ever I could.

“Did you ever eat animal cookies when you were a little boy?”

“No, I don’t remember at this moment if I ever did.”

“Then you must have when you were a teenager?”

“Still drawing a blank, Allison,” I smiled.

“You must have liked them at one time or another.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because, you have a bag of them with you every time I see you.”

“I love them,” I told her, “because you love them.” And here again, without looking, Allison dipped her hand into the bag of waiting cookies.

“You’re a craven, romantic fool, aren’t you, Jules?”

“Is that disappointing?”

“Not really,” she said, “My father was a romantic. A painter --painting the world the way he wanted it to be, and he broke his own heart.”

“Only a true romantic,” I admitted, “could break his own heart.”

I peered over her shoulder, into the sun disappearing quietly over the horizon. It was week seven in the quarter, with one more to go.

I was running out of time. . .

week one

the american robin

'Can anything be said about likely changes in frequency or intensity of climate extremes in the future?'

-John Houghton, Global Warming, The Complete Briefing.

ONE FINE AND ROMANTIC afternoon, I spied a robin. It had taken a break from its normal routine, and instead of foraging about for things to eat, or squawking out territorial calls, it rested neatly in a sunny spot of greenery. The day was fair, not a typical event for Seattle in late March. A mild ocean breeze had blown from the south-west over the western Olympic mountains and everyone on campus could smell the easy freshness of the tropical air, a scent washing into the lowlands with the subtle force of a lover’s sigh.

I truly believe the robin had recognized the beauty of the day and consciously paused its preparation for spring in a moment of appreciation. When I am smitten like this, and the day has somehow arranged itself into a positive experience, I will normally find something to worry about. I decided this day to dwell on something abstract, and elusive, that could not possibly bear down on my fine, sunny mood. I began to think about the dire predictions of global warming –a future in which I have no stake until it arrives, like the bird’s promise of an Indian summer. I traded omens and theories of doom for a happy saunter, even as I walked through campus to discuss and learn about such things.

My formal training is in the sciences and I am not prone to metaphysical thinking, yet I do admire the possibility of animal spirit guides. This Native American credo has been borrowed and revised by popular culture over the years and has now been twisted into something romantic and turned into a cliché. It is a tragedy that we have simplified Native Americans beliefs the way we have, for the practice of deciphering their paradigms is really more subtle. Animals do not talk to us like Mr Ed does in the movies, nor do they bark twice to indicate which direction Billy is caught under a log. These “guides” do nonetheless act out their individual roles according to nature in a way that our stubborn conscious minds do not always notice or accept. The animal mind is, in a sense, the most naive, yet it is not so dumb as to miss the opportunity of basking in the sun, playing in the waves, or singing for no apparent reason at all but for the joy and entertainment of the action.

I chose long ago to watch the American Robin. I admire its adaptability and work ethic. Its perseverance and curiosity. The robin is a specialist in any environment, exploiting thread, earthworms, twigs and a song for lovemaking. In an urban junkyard, or a forested paradise –it is amusing to think of it entangling in the act of propagation with the same urgency as teenagers in a car. In this regard, the robin is an optimist --always looking into the direction of a prevailing wind, catching hope - perfumed as a scent - cast from some far and distant shore.

I N A MANNER OF SPEAKING my lifestyle can easily be dissected by simply examining the contents of my bag. If suddenly a fissure opened at my feet, swallowing me up in an earth-shattering crash, then hundreds of years in the future an archaeologist might discover my bones, gently remove my phalanges from the shoulder strap of the ancient bag, and begin to scrutinize the belongings. The scientist would find: a notebook computer, three text books on global warming, a collection of philosophical writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, student papers and report cards, a black leather wallet, a computer word speller, a deck of cards, a toothbrush, a whistle, coffee thermos, perhaps two uneaten apples –dried to stone, a box of chalk, two “Cup o' Noodles” packages and a pack of smokes. Certainly, if the fissure had opened up the day before I would kiss Allison, the archaeologist would have found a bag of animal cookies. He’d open the package and find that the frosted-sugar coated cookies look very much like the eloquent, hieroglyphic jewelry that decorate the shriveled bodies of departed pharaohs.

I am a science teacher at a nearby elementary school and teach three classes daily to eager fifth graders. I teach these classes before arriving at the University of Washington to be taught myself, and believe me, I can appreciate the irony. In maintaining my teaching certificate, it is required that I take five college credits every two years. I suppose that in a Machiavellian way, this bureaucracy is a healthy reminder of what it feels like to sit in a classroom as a helpless student.

Late, I sat down between two students, one of which was a clueless young person. I noticed her doodling flowers in her notebook. I wondered how she would fare at the end of eight weeks.

This is not to say that every young person in college was not in some way intelligent, but more to say that because they were eighteen-to-twenty year-olds, they lacked experience. I was unimpressed by the things they had to say. It’s one thing to stand up and state an opinion in a college classroom, and another to be so bold in the real world. The latter has a way of stamping out flashes of individuality once it has spotted a non-conformist. As a teacher, I am acutely aware of this injustice. During our grade school years, most of us are taught to stand in line, to wait our turn, to not stand out and draw attention to ourselves. In high school, our teachers no longer need to moderate our liberal spirit, our peers take their place. If we are normal adolescents, by our senior year we know exactly what clothes to wear, what music to listen to, and most importantly, which social class to admire, and which to dismiss. Just when we have mastered this hierarchical system, a system that saturates our need for self-discovery in an oily film of rules and regulations, it’s time for college.

The university environment is different altogether. We are surprised to discover that the rules of conformity have flip-flopped. In order to “conform” to a college atmosphere, one must stand out. This is true in every facet of the system –whether it’s a college fraternity, sorority or even in the astronomy’s graduate program.

The fact is, in college, the climb up each group’s hierarchy is spearheaded by the individual’s success at setting themselves apart from it. Just ask any college student you know if they would respect a peer who follows every rule established by their peer group to the letter –then ask a grade school student the same question. The potential disaster here is that once the student is released into the “real world” of workaday life, our general society reverts back to grade school conformity. It is my chagrined opinion that at the university level, there should be a general exit course named “Ass Kissing 101", or “How to look like the Joneses” or a course titled “Back‑Stabbing Nonconformist” to calibrate the student. Professors of these courses would be required to teach that the “real world” only accepts deviation in an individual if it stays within the rules governed by that group. An individual can choose to reject these rules --but only after they have first sold their soul to conformity. Perhaps, someday, they will be able to acquire enough money to buy themselves out of indentured servitude. Of course, to avoid all of this, the easiest option is to become an unpublished writer, like myself.

Eventually I settled into my chair, and, classically, at the head of the room was the professor; he stood behind a glaring white overhead projector casting a gargantuan shadow of him against the wall. It was so big you could count out the few untamed hairs on his short, neatly trimmed beard. His movements were jerky, unassured actions. Here and there he would fumble with the lid of his pen, drop it, pick it up, look into the darkness, stammer through a sentence, or jot out a word on the screen in glowing, blood red ink.

Our professor fit the cliché of an expert in his field, but was an absolute failure in front of a classroom. Every crinkle of paper, or shuffle of feet, yawn, cough, sigh, or creaking chair aggravated him. Even in the dark he would look off into the void of mostly silent bodies to find the distraction. I saw him look my way, and even after the tedious effort of slipping silently into my chair, a chair made for one type of body, the body of a nine year old, he shot me a condescending glance. I sighed in a breath, staring back at him with a look I have practiced for many years. I call it “the look of equality”. I have practiced this look with many people, including drunks, fishermen, snobby waiters, arrogant professionals and one solicitous prostitute scorned by my rejection. Whenever I am involved in one of these ad hoc power struggles, I attempt to slow down time. This may seem impossible, but with the help of Miles Davis it is actually quite easy to do. I have practiced over the years by listening to his music for hours at a time, letting my heart slow to a thumping crawl, heavy and slow, comfortable. If Einstein said “it’s all relative” –then, Miles said “it’s all proportional.” In the real world, when a situation comes before me that requires “the look of equality”, I casually dissect the passing segments of time and watch them go by me like leaves passing in a stream.

When I am confronted with an uncomfortable moment, I remember that, like the music, there are different players at work. When the good professor gave me a look of aggravation in front of his class, I simply acknowledged that he was a nervous person who needs no distractions in front of a group. I did this with a nod and a fey smile which said: “ I know that you have anxiety about your performance here today, and this look of yours is a maneuver to mask it. I accept this.”

This works with anyone in any circumstance. Look around you, take in the moment and do not let the aggressor force you into a hasty judgment. Once you figure out what the small pieces are, the ones that are syncopating themselves into a moment of conflict like a grandmother’s neatly-stitched hem, try giving a slight but knowing smile then a nod of acknowledgment. When you’ve practiced this enough, perhaps you will be able to do it without “really” knowing what’s going on, but it will get you to the next moment, which may lead to a more desirable outcome of your choosing.

I don’t think he was prepared for my smile because he stammered a moment, pausing his garrulous sermon, and cocked his head at me. He was trying to take note of who’d dared think of themselves as an equal, perhaps to adjust the poser’s grade accordingly. But then he seemed to decide that in a class filled with more than a hundred students, it might not be worth the effort to rebuke my behavior.

The thick smell of the room had now begun clogging my nostrils. The compaction of bodies metabolizing in a closed bunker of bricks gave off the heavy odor of a Greyhound bus station in some backwater town.

As I sat there smelling the pimps and bums, vomit and despair in my little bus station --a new smell began to arouse my senses. Soft and sweet, the subtle hint of freshness --a breeze that catches you by surprise and casts a quick spell of enchantment. The smell of this reality had taken me away from my little bus station, putting me in the same tame state of introspection my robin had done only a few minutes earlier. I could smell the gentle scent as clearly as I could see the great red letters on the screen before me.

What smell could elicit such an emotional response? Why had my heart begun to palpitate? Why did I feel sweat collecting at the backs of my knees? This fragrance was not a manufactured one –not in the commercial sense anyway –but rather the frank and honest smell of a clean body without the aid of soap or perfume.

Here, right at the moment of my weakness, the good professor had decided to act out his revenge upon me –a possibility that I had been too busy to consider.

“Would the gentleman who arrived late care to answer?”

I looked about rather sheepishly and noticed that the ceiling lights had been turned on. A bright wash of neon that can only be found in the thermonuclear, reactive core of a star.

“Yes, you. The one with the big blue bag.” His students snickered accordingly.

Still distracted by the mysterious scent, I found that I could not juggle both situations at once. I began to slowly stand. Perhaps my motor-cortex had done so on its own –deciding that if it’s precious ego were to be assaulted, right here in front of everyone, it would take it standing like a man.

“Professor, I was a bit distracted,” I apologized. “Would you mind repeating the question?”

He could sense my anxiety, even though I spoke in a crystal clear voice.

“The question,” he said after a heavy sigh, “was in regard to our climate model.”

“Yes,” I responded.

“What do you think are the necessary numerical approximations needed by a forecaster when considering atmospheric weather models?”

Someone in the back of the room coughed. A chair creaked, and for the first time I could actually hear the cooling fan of the overhead projector. I calmly cleared my throat

And I told him that I am but a writer, only thinly veiled as a scientist and a teacher! An analyst with a heart. An investigator of quintessence. I explained to him slowly –to be sure that he understood --that what truly interests me is romance of the deepest kind –a thing that numbers cannot measure –not with the smallest dividend of the smallest micro-meter, not with a machine so finely tuned that it can detect and count electrons. I am interested in whole things: love, happiness, and a perfect sum so large and so far away from your ability to dissect are these things, that not even with the Hubble space telescope itself will you stand a chance to see even a glimmering, pulsing afterthought of its physical existence!

While these phantom words mingled through me, and still with the mysterious smell filling my senses, the words had come out instead as: “There are many”, I told him in the same crystal clear voice, “but even with the best computer models, the chaotic patterns cannot accurately be predicted by even the best forecasters.”

“Yes.” he said in a vain attempt of thoughtfulness. “That answer aggressively approaches the average.”

To emphasize his disappointment, the professor then turned off the projector.

“But wouldn’t you agree that even if we cannot fully understand its chaotic nature, we can nevertheless make some basic assumptions?”

“I suppose that’s accurate.”

“Yes,” he said snidely, “I suppose it is.”

And his revenge was complete. While standing there, I cursed my animal spirit guide, and planned out future days where I was never tardy again.

“Perhaps,” he said, “the young lady next to you can answer the question a bit more specific to our success in these matter of climate models?”

“Yes,” said the creature while standing. “While Julian touched on the problematic nature of forecasting, the Houghton reading points out some factors which can be combined to produce upwards to an 80 percent success rate.” She batted her gingerbread eyes, then smacked her lips. “ Newton’s law of thermodynamics suggests bla bla bla bla . . . ”

There have been times in my life when I have seen time and space collide in dancing displays of perfection --casting light like sunlight through clouds –sending emotions swelling within me, coursing through my veins like nicotine. I have witnessed vistas looking over this most wonderful planet which induce me to marvel at how wonderfully small I am, how enormously large I am. When these feelings arise, I feel as though I could disappear, fade, melt into the moment and become whatever it is I adore.

After sitting there without so much as soliciting a glance in my direction, Allison, in slow motion rose, like fine smoke into the ether. Today, even as I write this line, I realize that every preceding action in my life now revolves around this one moment, the moment this lean and tall creature suddenly made me feel cool, and new.

When the sound I recognized as my name came dripping, yes!, dripping off her lips, deep inside of that labyrinth of rotting bricks and metal, after having been cattle-driven into a room that smelled of crowded bodies and dust, I began to listen to her speak with the same sublime calmness I have witnessed in a tree. While she stood there, talking to the professor, I could comprehend the powerful roots underneath her body sinking into unfathomable depths. These roots held her slender trunk and blossoming crown of rich dark hair in an apical pose of sassiness. Yes! When one studies a tree, the eyes dismiss the roots because they cannot be seen. Somewhere inside of us we know that there is a vast slow moving network of brawny fabric flowing through a hard stony environment seeking nourishment and ballast. A tree has subtle magic, and so to did this young woman standing next to me.

As she finished her discourse on Newtonian physics, my gaze approached her the way a naturalist approaches a view. I told her : “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How did you know my name?”

“It’s on your paper, Mr Close.”

Ouch! I thought. She called me mister.

O UTSIDE OF BAGLEY HALL there is a marvelous rose garden with flowers that advertise in perfumes and colors to attract new pollinators every spring. Underneath each green leaf, shady spots allow trickles of filtered sunlight to dance in a glimmering splendor, as if cast from a mirrored ball from a dance hall. Inside this little paradise, I noticed, not one, but two robins engaged in a dance of courtship.

Allison had been gathering her schoolwork while I discretely slipped out of the room. In a daze, a fine and glorious stagger, I contemplated ways to approach her. Inspired by the robins, I decided to wait for her by this little patch of greenery, and ask if she would enjoy being walked to class on this beautiful, sunny day. It was a simple plan, aggressive, but not infirm.

A flood of bodies spilled from the doors, and I waited patiently, forgoing my after class smoke. The robins continued to frolic, and a gentle, fresh breeze excited the male into song.

Cheerooo. . .

Cheeee –rooo. . .

Then Allison opened the doors, walking through them in slow motion, her gait secure, her body lithe.

Cheeerooooo!

As she moved my way, I noticed a simple chain hanging around her neck. It held on to a handsome ring, and glimmering sunlight shown off of it. The pretty little trinket burnt silver shadows in my retinas.

T HE TOWERS OF RED SQUARE do not have a name. They are huddled together in a loose group –as if shielding one another from the sun, and the hot, roasted smell of red bricks in the Square. Once I eavesdropped on a tour given by a couple of sparky seniors to incoming freshmen. They explained to the group that originally there had been only one tower, which, surprisingly, existed as a means of ventilating the exhaust from the underground parking lot beneath the square. Nearly a thousand cars a day can drive right into the heart of the university without polluting the promenade. The original tower expelled the cloud nearly fifty meters into the sky. Despite its functional success, the lone statue of bricks seemed marooned, and must have looked like a big middle finger welcoming visitors to the campus. In response to this aesthetic dilemma, highly paid university “trustees” hired architects to design two more towers to balance the “piece”.

Over the course of the quarter, for some reason or another, I had always noted two structures and not three. I suppose this is due to the fact that the third tower had been built to blend in so naturally with the taller ones. I never noticed until one day –when the reality of my situation had appeared before me just as substantial as the bricks and mortar of which the towers had been constructed.

I caught up to Allison just as she was settling down to smoke a cigarette in the tall, flat shade of the towers. I fumbled through my pockets to find my lighter.

“Hello there,” I said as if our meeting had been by chance.

“Oh, hi,” she greeted me carefully. It seemed I had caught her off guard, for a look of surprise and cool providence had crossed her eyes. Perhaps in that moment, she had figured out that I had been stalking her since she’d left Bagley Hall.

“It’s a beautiful day” I said looking around.

“Yes,” she agreed cautiously, “I suppose it is, for March.” And here I took out the lighter I had been fumbling with. I had wanted to take it out on cue the moment I saw her spawn a cigarette from a pocket on the side of her lumpy nylon backpack, and managed to light it smoothly, the flame appearing with a cool “snap”. The grin on my face revealed my intentions. All women of the world can see instantly through a man’s charlatan deliberations, deciding in the time it takes for a flame to appear if his advances are welcome.

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” I said, hoping to not cause any alarm.

Perhaps she was confused by my age. Why would this older fellow be interested in someone ten years his junior? It was a fair question, since at the university, the older students avoided talking to the younger ones –most likely because they are terrified to discover an eighteen-year-old-pimple-factory might be smarter.

I had not armed myself with a logical excuse to talk with her, and the impulse of sexual attraction was hanging there between us as subtle as the smoke from her cigarette. So I went for broke –I rolled the dice, and instead of awkwardly hacking through the threat of small talk, I asked her point blank:

“Will you have coffee with me?” I shot.

“No, I won’t,” Allison said.

“Then perhaps another time,” I said in a voice not announcing my defeat.

“Perhaps,” she said taking a drag from her cigarette.

I nodded my head in a little bow of respectful acceptance.

Allison turned, dropped her cigarette, and sauntered away. I don’t remember if her feet touched the ground. This was the first time I imagined the master puppeteers --the mustached men veiled behind a hazy and remote dimension unseen by their audience of mortals. I saw them composing the stanzas of movements –the steps that carried her svelte and wispy body into the wavy-wanton currents of air roasting in the warmth of early spring.

Yes, I thought, it is a beautiful day, for March.

T HAT NIGHT I HAD A DREAM.

As far as the eye could see, tall grass, bleached yellow by the sun, ran miles into an inky, indigo horizon. Waves of motion rolled through the grass, and from all directions a blue-hue blanketed the earth. The desolation of this place, the openness of it, left me yearning for contact with my senses –a visual clue --perhaps a hill, a cloud or something to anchor my wondering sagacity. I was a lost traveler without direction. Naked. I wanted to sink down into the bleached grass, covering myself.

There was a tree. A proud thing, a tall green, Douglas Fir centering the world, firmly fixing the vastness around me as if to hold on to the very universe. It was just in the distance before me, in the mist of all this desolation, with all my senses running wild.

I could hear my heart begin to beat hard in my chest, swelling with hope as I managed heavy, eager steps in its direction. What else was I supposed to do? There was nothing around me for miles, and the purpose of my presence here seemed suggestive --that I should go to the tree –visit it, touch it, fill my senses. As I moved, each plodding step kicked up dirt and ruffled the tall stems of dried prairie grass, agitating their dusty stamens as I passed.

In the tree, I witnessed a bird. A black, dark thing. Wild. Untamed. It did not forgive my eagerness, for at the very moment I noticed it, silently, it took flight. Impotent, I watched it disappear into the inky, unlimited hues.

T HIS IS WHY I LOVE Paradise. He is a logical man, bent on quixotic destruction. He loves drugs, but hates anything resembling the fantastic. To Paradise, a wishful thought is as weak as a breeze floating through the trees. He tells me that “hope is dope,” and yet, he frequently sends inebriated patrons off to drive through the glistening, slick streets of Seattle after a March rain: insentient drunks maneuvering through the lives of strangers, guided only by the abstract influence of his own wishful thinking. What power!

Paradise is a straight man, tall and broad shouldered. A neat cut beard compensates nicely for a weak chin –though, this hidden fault of aesthetic appearance is the only evidence that suggests him as a god living amongst mortals. With his powers “locked and loaded” on his tongue, Paradise has intimidated the flood of drunks and punks in his bar like a .357 magnum sends chills down your spine. What he wants, he takes, violently, if necessary., perhaps with a lie, a subtle glance, or a bony fist to the jaw. When you come up against him, you sense that he is willing to die on the hill you have serendipitously found yourself fighting for –a shoddy hill with but a few dandelions poking up from it.

The good news about Paradise is he has never wanted much.

On “Monday Nights Live”, I usually visited Paradise down at the bar called “The Alki”. On these nights, the people in the neighborhood who did not want to watch football came down to listen to live music –usually a band of amateurs at the pinnacle of their careers. I would normally sit at the bar and grade papers, or wrestle my way through a short story I was writing.

The rough-hewn walls of the Alki were perfect for soaking up background noises –the clinking glasses, the cheers, the exploding racks of billiard balls. These distractions were absorbed into the building’s tired, old wood, like sin into a priest. I long ago deemed this dusty little bar as a place of “inspiration,” and found that, if I was left alone, my most creative work could be accomplished.

The first pint I would always have to pay for, but then Paradise would fill my glass for free, stopping when our argument had bored him. Once he had stopped filling my glass, it meant that it was time for me to go home and be by myself to reflect upon his last rebuke, which Paradise would inevitably make.

The band was taking “five” when he came over.

“Oh Jesus, Jules!”

“What!?”

“That look in your eye!”

“What look?”

“That one. It kills me to see it. It sucks the life right out of me.”

“This look?”

“Yeah. That look.” He pointed at the bridge of my nose, making me go slightly cross-eyed. “That look of dreamy infatuation.”

“You don’t know any looks of mine, Paradise. And besides, you’ve seen too many looks, and now you’re cynical.” Paradise had once called me delusional, and coming from the man who after a Phish concert tried to convince me he’d heard fairies whispering to him: “Come with us to the land of plenty and nothingness” –the insult seemed more like an affirmation.

“Man,” he meddled, “you really march to the beat of a different drummer. But it’s not your normal drummer –it’s a drummer on speed and he’s playing the bongos!”

“No,” I declared, “I don’t want to play tonight Paradise. I have work to do.”

“That is exactly my point.” He began playing the bongos on the bar in front of me, bap-bap-be-bap, the rhythm went. “You love to play, Jules. And you’ll play tonight.”

Paradise suddenly engaged in his feigned look of deep thought, stared off to the ceiling, then at his feet. Of course he had come to whatever conclusion he was about to make before this little act of his began.

“Oh, let me see. Is it that girl you met? Yes? Bingo! I win a prize! The prize is you admitting to your master that he knows you like he knows lagered amber! That is why you’re here tonight. To nurse this sophomoric crush of yours, like you are nursing that beer in front of you! This college girl’s willowy frame couldn’t carry an ounce of your obese perception of love anymore than a gnat could carry a sack of cement.”

I touched my nose, but only so I didn’t have to hear another dreadful metaphor.

“That look. Do you know what it does to me? It kills me. A handsome man like you, green-eyes, tall, gruff but not rough,” he said, handling me. “You got that Chocolate Sundae thing going ya’ –a light skinned black dude. A little bit jungle in ya’, and a little bit Johnny Cash!”

“Look! ” I said dryly, “I’m not ashamed of the fact that I like Johnny Cash.”

“Sure you’re not! He’s got soul, Man. Sure he does. But Jules, you could have most any girl you want with all that personality and charm. So why do you go for the goddesses? The ones with that ‘I’m too sexy’ chip on their shoulders?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” I said, “but I haven’t thought much about her in days.”

Paradise poured me another beer from the tap. The foam rose right to the top, growing like a little soufflé. It is amazing that he can do this without looking.

“What a cop out!” He said, “When’s the last time you got some tail, Jules?”

“With or without the use of my imagination?”

“That’s you, Jules. Joke your way out of your own coffin, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s me,” I said, desperate to get out of this conversation. “What did the mortician say to the corpse when it wouldn’t speak?”

“Jules,” he winked, “you don’t have to do this. I can scare something up for you right now. Ever thought about Patty over there with the hips?” He nodded toward the back of the room by the kitchen.

“What’s the matter?” I said looking up from my papers, “clamps got your tongue?”

“What?”

“Clamps got your tongue? Cat? Clamps?” I said.

“Jules, I think you go for the goddess every time because you enjoy having limited control.”

“Come again?” I said.

“I am but a humble bartender,” he suggested, “a server of libation and a perceiver of reality.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Its my job, Jules. People put tips in this little jar and pay me for the service. So you see, I am privy to that look you are wearing. I see it everyday.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. It’s the look of a victim, and you, Brother, like being one, don’t you? Like a stone being rumbled around in the surf. It’s no secret Jules. We can’t all have what we want. If the world were different, the pleasure of perseverance could not exist. Rejection is a good thing, you know, it is the subtle, shadow outlining fruition. The yin to yang. The happy to sad. The pleasure to pain.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What the hell does that mean?

“It means that people need to accept rejection as the dialectical opposite to acceptance, man! On one end of the spectrum is desire, and on the other end, perseverance.”

“They are the same thing to me.”

“Small little teacher man!” he accused. “They are as different as the razor's cutting edge from its blunt end!”

“Yeah?” I said looking back at my papers.

“Yeah!” He said. “Which side do you grab first?”

“Well, I use scissors.”

“See there!” He blasted. “With the razor comes the possibility of rejection, failure. We can’t stand that idea. We are taught to succeed no matter what, come hell or high water, to keep cutting ourselves. But hey man, sometimes the universe says hell no!”

“And,” I asked, “What do I want?”

“That’s simple,” he said with a pleasant little smile. “You want too much.”

“ Paradise, I hate to disappoint you again –but I haven’t even talked to her since she declined having coffee with me. That was nearly a week ago, so this discussion is rather academic, isn’t it?”

Paradise polished the counter in front of me, and spoke in a low tone.

“You know what you need? You need to get laid! Just go out and get some pussy! It will make you feel better –like a man. If you want, use that overactive imagination and picture yourself nailing...”

“Allison.”

He stopped pushing the rag around.

“Perfect,” he said. “ Alice In Wonderland.”

“And me, the Mad Hatter, right?”

Paradise frowned.

“What a world you live in,” he alleged. “Even the pretend is pretend.”

“Pretty cocky statement coming from a person with a nickname like ' Paradise'.”

“Ummmm,” he said unbeaten. “What’s that you’re working on?”

“Nothing.” I lied.

“Another short story?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Really,” he said jovially, “then you don’t mind if I read it?”

“Nope,” I dared him.

Paradise took the papers in his hand, scanned over them quickly, then suddenly jumped over the bar.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I whined, “I meant you could read it, not the whole god-damned bar!”

“It’s time for you to stop using scissors.”

In a flash, Paradise was up on stage.

“Ladies and Drunks,” he said into the microphone. “I have an announcement.” And suddenly, the quiet warble in the tavern came to an end, all eyes turning to their familiar M.C.

“As you are sure to know, this night was created as an alternative to the casual violence, and testosterone-fueled televised event called “Monday Night Football”. At this point, I laid my head on the bar, trying to remember why it was we were friends. He went on: “Yes! My bohemian friends! Up at the Rock Sport Bar, the fanatics are confined to their end zones and grid irons, while we are adrift in the imaginative segue of music and word. Yes! This absolute shit hole you are sitting in –this dive, this smoky black shack of rotting bricks entombed in rotting plaster –is the Mecca of West Seattle, the holy lands –with beer to baptize us, and wine to heal us.”

I could hear a few of the faux-bohemians clap and cheer. My head was still down on the bar, wishing I were sitting in front of my window watching the moon go by.

“You would think,” exclaimed Paradise in grand fashion, “that no one person could find the words to describe this place, but, an artist, who is with us tonight --wishes you to consider The Alki this way: romantically. He is a sappy friend of mine who would describe the stench of dogshit as poignant, and the color of bile as smooth. He is a truer romantic than Romeo. As fine a liar as Hemingway. So I ask you tonight, to indulge me in reading out what he has to say about the dump you are sitting in.”

And here, Paradise read in to my story:

The stinking dilapidated mess called the Alki Tavern blushes with a fluttered ease found only in the deepest of romantic attractions. Its patrons have come to love this dusty charlatan of a tavern, naive to its psychic power."To see her is to love her," says Roberts Burns, "And love but her forever; For nature made her what she is, And never made anither.” So attracted by its charm are the people of West Seattle, many of them have walked into the tavern with secrets to share, but leave with new ones to bare. How is it, they muse, that a man can come into this goddamned watering hole to escape trouble, but leave with twice as much? Such is the delicate mystery of the Alki; arranging evil as if it were a decorative second chance: sex, money, wine and beer, suspicious persons of questionable character, music, dancing, fishnet stockings, cigarette smoke, hot peppers, and salted, fried-in-animal-grease-vinegar-flavored potato chips –become as tempting to a patron as a shadow is to light, as apples are to Eve.

HUSH! They say to the leaking ceiling, and I promise to stop this destructive behavior.

But . . .

If it is true that all things in the universe, from quasars to quarks, from supernovas to explosions measured in the magnitude of “cosmic occurrences” will someday be sucked into the selfsame dark hole --then it is also true that everything the Alki has ever seen will someday be neatly disposed of. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the moment of creation will someday find itself snuggled up right next to the time Darrel The Drunk pissed on this author's shoe.

And what has the Alki seen? Stabbings? It's seen those, and gun play too. It has seen boys turned to men, and virgin-girls deflowered by them. It has seen jump shots and double-talk-honky-tonks, cheap feels and cheaper thrills, wishes and dirty dishes. It has seen more blood than burgundy, it has poured more milk than sympathy, spilled more tears than beer. Through its port-holed window, it has seen rainy day people waiting for the sun: their phantom dreams, and shim-shined schemes, walking on rays of barely anything at all. It has seen love at first sight. It has witnessed rejection of the worst kind.

The Alki Tavern will never go away.

On its bathroom walls, three generations of vandals have scratched philosophy: 'If fishes were wishes, we'd all have riches', reads one. Another desperately tells the world: 'Brian Fisher is God of the little universe inside of his head'. Also, one romantic was so inspired by love as to write: 'James + Stan = true love.' And carved in big-lettered scratch marks is the mysterious word: 'IGUANA'.

The stench of the urinal is only slightly perfumed by deodorizing pucks which vainly attempt to hide the less delicate smell of sewage and soggy cigarette butts, gum and chewing tobacco, sunflower seeds and peanut shells. The lone toilet stall has no door. Only the bikers are brave enough to use it; their black, pointy, animal-skinned boots poking out from behind the wall like snakes in ambush. Sometimes the boots go 'tip-tap' to the song 'Margaritaville'.

Apathy?

The Alki Tavern has been used as a place to meet friends, or avoid enemies, or to 'stand crowded next to beautiful women in tight red skirts while swilling large amounts of beer'. Loving and hating, singing and preening, moaning and groaning, quick dashes and mad prances –each a triumph of life lived for better or worse –is watched by the Alki with a divine-like apathy as our lives roll through its hearth of rotting plaster like a river to sea.

And for those who would never stray into such a place, never wander into its path, their lives are complacent like the life of a mummified pharaoh, locked in his tomb, watching greedily as the cold dust of time slowly settles on his sarcophagus. But for those of who do stray --with the help of a golden amber, pint or pitcher --the dust in the tomb appears to settle a little faster than it really does.

The Alki Tavern should never go away.

And, to my surprise, the faux-beatniks snapped their fingers in delight. I found myself doing the same. It was as if the author were some other person sitting inside the smoke filled room.