August 27: Austin diary (25 minutes)

In a diary entry that's already written, Randy leaves the Waco motel shortly after the Branch Davidian Compound goes up in flames. He catches the first bus out of town a little freaked out; it takes him to Austin.

I have decided to stop running and settle down. I have decided to identify what I've been doing as running and stop doing it. I have decided to die in Texas. It's better than Florida, and well, can we just stop talking about San Francisco...? I thought I would come here and get a job, but come to find out I'm not hirable. Anita works at The New Yorker now and she says she can get me some freelance work, but I don't know if I even need that now. I met with a counselor at the AIDS Services office and things are turning around. I'm gonna sell my life insurance policy that Charles bought for me years ago; I can get on Disability and draw a small check from Social Security every month; and I even got a little money from Mona for life insurance she had through the motel cleaning company she worked for for most of her life. It's enough to pay off most of my credit cards, so she didn't make me rich but she did make me thankful.

I found a small apartment, furnished and bills paid, a garage apartment, a few block from the motel I was in when I first arrived, so it was an easy walk to my new home. Four walls, a double bed, a desk and two chairs, a small kitchen and bathroom, two window unit air conditioners, red gingham curtains on the other ones, even a book shelf with books that I don't think I would ever read -- self-help books, historical romance novels -- and a couple by Stephen King that I already did read in tenth grade.

There are windows on three walls. The A side wall is across from the front door. The desk and closet are on that wall, the window over the desk faces the street, 15th Street. I have a good view of the two-story house across the street. There are two front doors, so I'm assuming there are two apartments downstairs, and the metal staircase up the right side makes me think the house has three apartments. I saw one man going into one of the front doors but no other life so far, but I've only been here two days.

The B side wall looks down over a one-story house, which must have lots of bedrooms because there are always lots of kids going in and out. College kids, boys and girls paired up, naturally, making lots of noise, naturally. The window on that wall is at the foot of my bed. They stay up later than I can, running around half-naked, laughing, making me wish I could stay up later. Maybe with time I'll be able to get more on their schedule.

The C wall is technically the front of my apartment because that is where the staircase and front door are, but it's on the back side of the garage, facing a small yard of weeds, a pecan tree, the alley and the back yard of the house across the way. It's a tiny little house, painted purple with black trim. The yard is decorated with colorful flags, small square flags (blue, white, red, green, yellow), not like state or country flags, more like boating flags, I guess, several strings of them, some smaller, some larger, attached from the house to the tree or to the clothesline pole. It's like a carnival.

The clothesline seems to have different laundry on it every day, one day white, the next day tie-dyed dresses. There are several bird feeders hanging from poles and from the spindly tree limbs, and bowls of cat food and water around the back door. It looks to me like a tragedy waiting to happen. Unfortunately, I guess, I can't see this view very well because the C wall window has one of the air conditioners in it, blocking my view except for the top of the rusty tin roof and the sky. There is a window in the top half of the front door, but I don't think I'll be drawn to stand there waiting to see the tenant -- the dresses on the line, not to mention the unmentionables, make me think it is a woman living there, a crazy old lesbian hippie!

The rest of the C wall is the bathroom. There is a small wrinkled-glass window over the shower-tub, but it has been painted shut. It's just as well, I guess. The bathrooms in the motels I've been living in lately have all been nicer than this one. Even the bathroom in the trailerhome I grew up in was nicer, cleaner, more organized, but this one is mine and that makes it better in my mind.

The D wall is windowless. The bathroom takes up half of that wall, the kitchen takes up the other half, and that's where the builder decided to put the kitchen cabinets and the nook for the refrigerator. The house that originally claimed this garage is on the other side of the D wall. Maybe it was intentional, the solid wall, to give a bit of privacy for the house dwellers from the garage apartment tenant.

The rest of the A wall has a smaller window over the kitchen sink, giving another perspective of the house across the street and the smaller, nicer one next door to it. But this window is out of the way and will probably prove useless in my upcoming peeping-tom habit.

The kitchen is fine. Four-burner stove, large refrigerator, smaller a/c built into the wall in the top front corner; double sink, extra deep, lots of cabinets which are mostly empty and will probably remain so. I think I would probably use the kitchen more if it had a microwave oven, but for $325 bills paid I've got no complaints. Anita shit her britches when I told her that! She wanted to know if there are gangs or sofas on front porches or cars on blocks or pit bulls roaming the neighborhood with their teats dragging the pavement. The long-term residents of this neighborhood seem to be poor and black, but I believe it's safer here than Hell's Kitchen, or even the fancy parts of Park Slope -- and a helluva lot cheaper!

There's a huge cemetery half a block from me, and I guess that might be a deterrent to some, but it's huge and ancient and beautiful. I think I'll be spending some time there soon. And I mean before I kick the bucket!

The only thing missing from my home sweet home is paper and pen. I've only got a half dozen pages left in this notebook, so I reckon I'll have to find my way to an office supply store or a Kmart or something like that soon.

August 26: Waco diary (20 minutes)

This is work for august chagrin, a journal entry by Randy Reardon (the narrator), after he has left the hospital in Waco and is trying to figure out what to do next, camping out in a motel room, watching lots of TV. This is around the time of the Branch Davidian/FBI conflict, so that's all he's finding on television...

I'm in prison. It's like A Clockwork Orange in here, nothing but bad news, cult shit, every channel, or Places In The Heart on the only movie channel. King-size bed, tasteful striped bedspread, tan berber carpet, credenza, mirror, TV, bedside lights attached to the walls over wood panel nightstands, Motel 6 info folder, notepad, personalized ballpoint pen, alarm clock, telephone with a big red button to be lit up if I get a message, phone book, and yep, a Gideon's Bible; something to thumb through as I await execution.

No, this isn't anything like a prison. I have plastic wrapped plastic cups with Motel 6 logos on them! I have an ice bucket, a faux marble sink and counter, a toilet, a shower-tub, clean white towels and washcloths, complementary shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and two kinds of bar soap: one for the hands, one for the body. I've never been in a prison, but I know the worst motel is better than the best prison. There's a table by the window, two chairs, and on the other side of that curtain a swimming pool, cool blue and glimmering around the clock. But I feel trapped, like I'm locked in a cage, four white walls and a popcorn ceiling, overhead light.

I know. I could turn off the TV. I could walk out the door, walk the streets, go out for a drink. I could check out and go somewhere else. But where? A bus ride to San Francisco is out of the question. My leg would kill me. If I get more spots, people might be able to see them, people would stare at me.

People stare at me anyway. I spend too much time in front of the mirror, I know what I look like. I look like shit. I look sick. I am sick. Plenty of people leave San Francisco looking like this, but I don't know if anybody goes to San Francisco looking like this. Maybe they won't let me in. Maybe they only let you die there if you got sick there.

I'm gonna be in a little white box soon. Who will come get me? My big sister Rona won't. Ha!

Nedra won't.

Brenda won't, and I wouldn't want her to.

Anita would, but I wouldn't want her to either, but for different reasons. Who would? I don't know anybody.

Would august? Does he really still love me like he said he always would? Not like a lover. Of course not. I wouldn't expect that. I wouldn't want that. I can't imagine what a pain in the ass it would be to have a boyfriend right now, hovering over me, pushing pills down my throat four times a day, fretting over me, worrying -- give me a break!

I guess that's why I think of the women in my life. I'm like David Koresh. I've surrounded myself with women. I don't want to fuck them! But it seems like the best companions I've had have been women, or girls. No, scratch that. The only companions I've ever had have been women or girls. I don't understand men. I don't have to understand females, and so they've always been easier to take.

Rich doesn't count. Rich was something different. Rich came before anything else, emotion-wise. I'd already had females in my life -- Mona, Rona, Brenda -- who were already doing their damage to my emotion well-being. But I had no idea. Not until after the affair with Rich.

Affair! That's a funny way to put it. How old was I? Seventh grade. But Rich did change everything. I know he didn't care anything about me. He didn't expect anything of me except that I be willing. And I was. Even when he hurt my feelings or treated me like shit, I was willing. Even after he stopped needing me, I still needed him and I was still willing. Even after he died, I was still willing.

And I found him in restrooms and bookstores and porn theaters. I let him know I was willing, and he gave it to me. And he gave IT to me. And I willingly took it.

David Koresh is like a savior to these people trapped in this building, this big house, this Compound. He's the Second Coming. If he looked anything like Rich White, I would be right there. I would be knocking on the door. I would be excusing myself past the ATF soldiers and knocking on the front door saying, "David, let me in! Savior!"

So I can understand how these people, these "surprisingly intelligent" people could fall for the likes of him. If he looked like Salvation to me, I would be right there, doing whatever he told me to do, drinking the Kool-Aid, having his babies, I would be willing.

He's trapped there and I'm trapped here, not far away. He doesn't know what to do next and neither do I. He is surrounded by all the people in the world who love him (except his grandmother), but he is all alone. I am just alone.

What are my options?
What are my options?
What are my options? What are my options? What are my options?

August 25: testing, testing

I did this video a while ago, but I'm curious to see if it'll work.

August 25: Becky & Jesus (13 + 10 minutes)

Becky couldn't think of another excuse to leave the house, couldn't think of another good reason to walk the 2.37 miles to the Bay Plaza Shopping Center, to the Piggly Wiggly. She could stop in at Beall's or maybe the 5 & Dime, it was getting toward the end of summer, getting time to start shopping for school clothes and school supplies. But her mama was busy and had said they would do that on the Saturday before the Monday when school started, when Bay Plaza had their annual sidewalk sale. She didn't have any money of her own, enough for a canned soda maybe. But how long could she busy herself in the Piggly Wiggly? That's really where she wanted to go. How long could she linger at the front of the store before someone got suspicious, before they asked questions, before they made a phone call, to her house or to the police?

Becky was in love with the sacker. Over the course of the previous seven weeks she had realized that there was no other boy for her. He was two years older than her, an eighth grader at Horace Mann, and she would have to make her move this year -- this summer, if possible -- before he was off to high school, never to think of her again. She worried at first about the age difference, but then she found out that her father was three-and-a-half years older than her mama, so she relaxed about that.

But he was Mexican -- or Hispanic is the correct way to say it -- but Mexican in her family. They weren't hardcore racists, no more than any other mid-size Texas town was in the late 70s; the Mexicans had their neighborhood with the White Trash, and the Black people, well, you never even saw them except at school, where they couldn't be avoided.

Not that Becky was interested in avoiding the Black kids, or any of the kids, but that was what she had to live with, and she had come to a sort of understanding about it. That was before she went into the Piggly Wiggly for the first time that summer. She was accidentally pretty that day, wearing her brand new blue sunflower sun dress her grandma had just bought for her at Beall's -- a splurge. She wished later that she hadn't worn it that day, that she had worked up to wearing it in front of him because now she had nothing as nice to wear and no money to get anything new on her own -- and school clothes were so far away.

He smiled at her as he sacked their groceries.

----------------------------------

His teeth were so white in the middle of his tanned face, his hair so black. Becky smiled at him and quickly glanced back at her mama, for some kind of okay, or to make sure she wasn't being spied on. Becky was all alone with her sacker, just the two of them eye-to-eye as he carefully and expertly put her family's week's worth of meals into paper bags. Her mother was busy writing the check, taking her time as she always did, making the letters as fancy as possible, as if the manager of the store might send it off to Mr. Piggly Wiggly himself, so beautiful it was, and they would frame it to show other customers just how beautiful the name Piggly Wiggly could really be, the P and the W both with so many lacy squiggles as to appear drawn by a professional calligrapher.

Becky looked to the chest of the sacker, past the collar of his maroon polyester shirt (also a good color for his skin tone), the top button undone, to the Piggly Wiggly logo plainly embroidered over his heart, and his gold plastic name tag beneath it. It took her breath away -- not just the shiny gold tag, the black trim and black letters in the middle -- but the sacker's name: JESUS. Of course, she knew that wasn't the way he pronounced it, but she had seen it so many times in the Bible and at church, she couldn't help reading it like that, couldn't help smiling, blushing, as she mouthed the name in full view of the sacker: Jee-sus. He smiled again, a dimple flaring up and making her tingle.

This time she got nudged by her mama, pen in hand, "Becky."

"What."

"Get the potatoes." There was a five-pound bag of potatoes on the bottom rack of the shopping cart waiting to be rung up. Becky hated her mama in that moment, wanted to bring up the idea of her needing to be lady-like in a dress.

But then Jesus came to her rescue. He saw the exchange between mother and daughter, stopped what he was doing and jumped to the task. "I'll do it, ma'am," he said, and that was that.

Becky wanted to thank him, but it wasn't her place. Her mama did it. "That's nice! Thank you," she said. Becky could see out of the corner of her eye her mama unsnapping the bill compartment of her checkbook wallet, slipping a dollar-bill out and wadding it into her fist. A tip for the sacker.

Sometimes, her mama made Becky tip the sacker at the car. Becky hated to do that, she felt so silly ("It's not my dollar.") but this time she prayed that her mama would give it to her, whisper, "Give this to him." She prayed to Jesus, the real one.

August 20: inspiration... (10 minutes)

...strikes,

after feeling like nothing would come,
after nothing came,
it came,
like a rusty old plane
with sticky propellers,
nothing propelling me but sheer determination,
beer germination,
and too many smokes of two different kinds,
I push forward and find
after several attempts, with a sputtering pause
and no other cause
but to get something down,
stop my clowning around
and pushing along the hands of the clock--
time taking too long--
it came like a song,
first a line and then more,
three and four, like before,
but this time I kept on
with ink trailing along
behind pen held in hand, turn the page and keep going,
now the story is flowing.

I pause for a moment, a short hesitation
then comes yet another wave of inspiration,
my shoulder is bunched up and pain will set in
but I cannot turn in,
for from within it comes out;
once again I'm a spout
from whence characters live.
The research that I did
makes my mind like a sieve,
thoughts burning on air
and on my arm hair
like the ash from a cigarette, like something forgotten
just now rebegotten.

This inspiring moment is crashing again on the shore
on the floor
with the discarded pages, the copy pulled out
and the new going in.

Thank you trees for the paper and the light from within,
I had stopped for a while but henceforth I begin.

August 15: august... (20 minutes)

...is full of energy,

playful,
bored,
creative,
kind of crazy.

Randy doesn't know what he's getting himself into.
No smoking in the apartment!
August smokes a lot,
steaming,
heated,
burning red,
easily embarrassed.

Spider wants some kind of revenge,
even though he still loves August.
He feels stupid,
put down;
he said so much to so many people,
he has to save face.
He had to take August back
he had no choice;
he has to get August back.
Take/get.

Across the street from Randy's garage apartment a man sits on his front porch smoking a cigarette,
deep in thought,
perplexed by the images going through his head.
He looks around to see if anyone can see him,
but he doesn't see Randy upstairs,
a chair pulled up to the window,
the futon couch pushed out of the way,
watching,
spying,
looking for signs of life,
investigating the life going on around him as the life inside him fades away.

That man doesn't do much but think and smoke;
he's like August without any energy,
the rundown version,
dreams unrealized,
hopes dried up.
Alone.

Next door a couple fucks in their bedroom,
the front room,
a curtain pulled slightly aside,
another threadbare and illuminated by the orange glow of a flickering candle flame playing off of the bodies,
sweaty skin,
shiny,
legs moving against legs,
nothing more to see.

A loud house next door,
college kids,
noisy,
usually shirtless,
often in nothing but boxers,
occasionally naked through the hallway,
past the doorway,
maybe a quick dip into the kitchen for a glass of water or to toss a beer can into the trashcan.
Heart thumping;
Randy can't take it,
can't help it,
can't get it out of his head,
his withering body stiffening once more,
asking for a candle flame.

Behind him,
across the alley,
the hippie lady,
frumpy,
muumuued,
moocow,
hanging her laundry,
tie-dye and linen,
hemp even;
hair frantic in the wind,
humidity sticking it across her face,
she tangles with it,
laughs with the Elements,
smiles to be alive.
So alive as Randy dies,
sits at the top of his apartment stairs and stares,
spies in the night when there's no one else to spy on.
Loneliness makes you do crazy things.
She's probably nice,
probably annoying.
She seems alone but not lonely,
capable,
content.

She smiles at her cats meowing at the back door,
tails twitching at the sound of the can opener cranking on the top of any can.
Of course she has cats!
She's probably a lesbian.
There's probably a big old Rainbow American flag hanging from the front porch.
She probably drives a sensible car--
or, no, a bicycle.
A bicycle-built-for-two so she can offer someone a ride,
with great big baskets in the front and back full of flowers to give the old widow across the street from her.
Or her groceries from the hippie grocery store.
But she would empty them all out to pick up a stray animal,
a sickly cat,
take it home,
nurse it to health.

Randy sits on his bed and writes notes,
imagines himself a writer again,
comes up with a series of short stories about his neighbors,
but he never finishes them because he's too busy spying on them.

August 13, part two: blue bus... (8 minutes)

...full of tourists.

A woman makes her way through the script provided to her, but she adds a few flares because she is an actress.

This is only temporary.

She'll audition again tomorrow, if she can get someone to cover her shift.

Maybe even if she can't, maybe she'll just quit this stupid job; it barely pays the bills, and that's only because she lives three trains, an hour-and-a-half away.

If she could get a soap job -- just another temporary stepping stone in her "career" -- she'd be able to move closer in, be able to live the life she came here to live.

A life of fame, a life that affords her every sparkle and gem that she instills in these tourists about this capital "C" City.

Somebody like her will stand at the front of a tour bus and point out her apartment there in a high rise on Park Avenue South.

"She used to stand in this very spot," the guide will say, "and then she made it big, and now she lives there."

A job on a soap opera could get her closer to that reality.

Yeah, she'll have it all.

But for now she's just another of the million-plus losers eeking out a living in this magical town.

August 13: postcard (10 minutes)

There's a postcard tacked to my wall at home that makes me think of you. Every time I glance at it, I think of you. A man sitting on the floor of a gallery, his head bent down toward the book in his folded legs, deep in his reading. There's a picture of a gorilla above him.

If I spend more than a moment looking at it, I can tell that the man looks nothing at all like you, I wouldn't be able to convince anyone who knows you that it looks anything like you. Perhaps it's the way his head is bent, or the way he's so comfortable in that position -- a position I can't hold for long without my knees aching -- or maybe it's his glasses, the fact that he's wearing glasses.

It gets me every time. A melancholy remembrance of you.

Where are you right now? Bending, stretching, teaching someone a new yoga position; eating healthfood, crunching an apple; throwing a stick for your three-legged dog to fetch?

August 11: Stephanie, part two (15 minutes)

lessons for the day.
leave me alone!
truancy, trouble, trials.
send me packing.
down the halls.
up and down.
kaleidoscope.
ferris wheel.
funny monkey.
party time.
sick puppy.
feed the fist.
take a bite of happiness.
You must be out of your head.
she has a funny accent.
last time I saw you.
let go of my hand.
this is riveting.
steadfast, held fast.
speeding down the road.
are you in trouble?
did you get caught?
then what are you doing here?
after school program.
whose time is this?
what did she tell you?
are we having a party?
I don't know whether to sing or cry,
shout or mumble,
kick up my heels or dig my nails into my skull,
sink or swim,
true or false,
delivery boy waiting at the door.
cookie delivery!
quiet.
Sit quiet in your seats and don't let anyone in.
this is a test.
I've failed the test,
flunked the exam,
skipped out,
blown it off.
listen to that quiet.
stark ticking, a pencil on paper,
chalk on a chalkboard,
ruler on a desk,
high heels on a linoleum tile floor.
multicolored tiles, mismatched, bought on sale at the floor store.
should I be writing this down, keeping a record?
Stand in the corner.
I love to hear those words,
anything to get me out of the Napoleonic Era,
Shakespeare,
geometry,
Texas history,
Pride & Prejudice.
rattle them bones.
make some change, jingling in your pocket;
a little pocket pool for fools.
Raise your hand and don't speak until you're called upon.
What's so funny?
Is this something you can share with the rest of us?
Either that or march right out of here.
You know where you're going.
There is no salvation.
There is only judgment and eternal damnation, which begins at three-fifteen.
be there or be square.
I don't want to see you smiling.
teacher's lounge three doors down.
they're drinkin' and smokin' and havin' a party...

August 9: Stephanie, part one (15 minutes)

I made a new friend in New York in July. Her name is Stephanie Diamond and she is a photographer. I love her work and am going to do some writing exercises inspired by some of the work on her website (see sidebar for link). This is the first one, as stream-of-conscious as it can be.

I've got nowhere to go. Pity me. A walk through this tattered landscape, paint peeling from walls, my mind, memories lost, even from a week ago.

Slinking through the streets, up one block and down the next, kids playing. Someone is hiding behind the handball wall, a stolen kiss, a fallen line, electricity on the ground. I can't help myself: I reach for it.

I'm fighting for my breath. I see people looking but nobody offers a hand. Flying heels over head; not love. Something as big as that but different because I'm all alone.

I think I'll write him a letter, while I recover. He'll wonder why he hasn't seen me at the deli, why I don't smile and bite an apple at the same time, an act, a near-obscene gesture, bis head red as a Washington State; I'd meant to take a bite out of that, but not today, I'm dying.

Would he come visit me on my sickbed? I bet he would if only he knew. Why else would he stand so far away watching me stretch, my methodical, ridiculous moves I call yoga. But there's no outcome; I'm not making my posture better so I can meditate longer. My thoughts are only of him, and I don't even know his name, so it is a lesson in futility, trying to clear my mind of him.

Apple-head, that's what I'll call him. In my letter. Dear Apple-head, I am missing. Are you missing me? Please bring me an apple to eat, if not your head! Signed, a Silly girl. Very silly.

I light on the boardwalk railing like a butterfly, arms flapping like a newborn, freshly out of its cocoon. Concentration, everything is about this moment; there is nothing but this. If I don't get past this -- to an unfurled state, a damp dryness, a stretch, outstretched to the wind, let go! Let go! Flying -- I'll never make it.

I can't think of anything but Frito's. Apple-head is in there, but the crunching is so loud, I can't think of anything else. I'm chewing, slowly, the salty sweet good for my painkiller drugged up suicidal feeling. I can't take my own life; it's not mine to take. I belong to you, Apple-head.

I'm going to get a book, get it right, take a class or something. Something to impress. Something to impress that special someone. A flirtatious crunch of an apple. A giggle, an exchange, I take flight and he'll have to catch me.

And he does! By the last toe to the ground, as it floats up, makes its escape with the rest of me, into the clouds, the numbered clouds, and there's a special one up there for me. Me and him. It's mine but I'll share. Oh, happily. That's why I'm here, Apple-head, it's all because of you.

And I will fly, and he will soar beside me, and the world will be right, down there on my silly city streets, my ransacked little neighborhood, the gruff super not bothering to say hello back even when its sung to him in the newest morning's freshest sunlight, crisp and special. Edible sun.

We hold hands when we're together. And we're always together. Except for now, in my apartment with my fold-out couch up against the window, my head peering over the sill, making believe with the shapes that pass by three floors below, reflected in not-so-harsh shadows on the theatre wall across the street.