West Gray Multi-Service Center Blues

This is not like the stories I usually tell. There are no monsters here, no ancient cults, no demons. There is a whole lot of city bureaucracy, however, and as some of us know, city bureaucracy can be nearly as horrifying as the worst baddies the imagination can conjure.  

This is a story about the West Gray Multi-Service Center. The Center looks like this:

Or, well, it used to look like that, anyway.

Ellen the Blue-Eyed Cowgirl Knew She Was Gay

So how this whole shit started was that Martha from my office decided I needed to go out for the Fourth of July, that my drinking alcohol all alone had become a problem and that the solution to this problem was drinking alcohol around other people.

This seemed counter-intuitive to me as, in my experience, drinking alcohol all alone was the solution to my problems and not a problem in and of itself. But Martha from my office was very insistent so right away, I suspected she had ulterior motives.

The bar on the northwest side of town was built to look like some kind of a big boat and the band played Jimmy Buffett cover songs.

Badly.

I suppose there may be no other way of playing them.  

I Am Stranded in the Future

“Temixoch.”

“Te. Mi. Xoch.”

“Teh-mih-zawk!”

The people walking by me, they do not make eye contact. I am repeating this one word, and repeating it pretty loudly now, too – over and over and over – but these people are pros. They know the rules for downtown Houston. When someone is out on the street and they are shouting nonsense, you pretend you don’t notice.

That’s the rule.

I’m being dismissed as a crazy homeless person.

This is not a new experience for me.

Some Fine Legacy

I know I can be cynical and I can be negative, but the truth is, I love this city. I love Houston and I loved the last version of it, too. I even loved the version that we had before that.

You see, every few years here in Houston, we rip down the whole town. In its place, we build a new town entirely from scratch. Nothing remains except the potholes. What stood before is gone. Forgotten.

For us, this is an exciting process. It keeps us all on our toes.

Around here, a restaurant will boast “SERVING HOUSTON SINCE 2011!!!” on its marquee in bold letters with three exclamation points. An historical preservation district will consist of two old houses up on blocks in the middle of a sea of new construction townhomes.

Why, even as I write these words, right at this very moment, Houston is engaged in what might be our most ambitious project yet: We’re bulldozing everything within fifteen miles of downtown and replacing it with $1 million, three-and-a-half story townhomes and something called “luxury apartments.”

Kim's Watermelon Gun

I am on the light rail. I am traveling to my downtown office from the Medical Center.

The trip will take eighteen minutes.

The rail cars are grey and sad and although they are not yet old, they look old. A long, dull seat runs along each side of the train, so that when there are other riders on board (which is rarely), I am able to stare at the person across from me with impunity. In my head, I write a story about each person I see.

Most of the stories involve what the person sitting across from me will do when the train crashes.

The Good Queer, Part 2

Some things you should know about me:

I have never worn my hair in a mullet.

I do not listen to the music of Tegan and Sara.

Sure, I own some flannel shirts, but I live in Houston, so they rarely get worn.

I do not view the continuing success of Ellen DeGeneres as a personal win for me in any way, shape, or form.

The Good Queer, Part 1

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, which was only a couple weeks back, the City Council in my town passed something it called the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or “H.E.R.O.”  What H.E.R.O. is supposed to do is to legally bar discrimination based on “race, color, national origin, marital status, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, [and] military service”  in employment, in public accommodations, and in housing.

I know, right? Wow!

For me, this was great news. It meant I could quit my jobs and fulfill my lifelong dream of earning my money by suing Christian bakers who refused to bake me gay wedding cakes.

I’ve Got More Tickets Than Muddy’s Got Blues

Look! Piles of them. Mountains, even. Mashed into the glove box and sticking out at the hinge.

Covering the floor like carpet, with mudprints and crumbs and Doritos stains. Down inside the seat beyond the reach of my fingers.

The date on this one reads,  “November 1, 2007,”   but I don’t even remember getting it.

It seems the city has wasted whole forests on me.

I Went to See Neutral Milk Hotel

As I write this, I am sitting on my roof and I am watching a homeless lady push a grocery cart down the street. I am timing her to see how long it takes for her to push the grocery cart from one end of the block to the other end.

It takes her twenty-two minutes.

This might seem like a very long time to you, but it is a very long block and a very slow lady.

The reason I am writing is because I have been wanting to tell you that I went to see Neutral Milk Hotel play the other night. This was at Warehouse Live, just east of downtown, back on February the 19^th.

This is Not a Suicide Note

**DISCLAIMER: I feel as though I should include a disclaimer here, but I do not know what on earth the disclaimer would say other than maybe “Don’t worry about me,”  I guess. Don’t worry about me.

_______________________________________________

I believe that I am done. Finished. I am ready to move on. Everything in this world that has ever required me to complete it has been completed now.

This is not a cry for help; I’m just done.

Fauna of East Montrose

I have known some miracle women in my life. Charismatic angels. Blazing, implausible geniuses. Women who by their mere presence in a room would make the whole world revolve around them. Without even trying. Like some accidental axis.

Some of these women have let me get to know them. A few have stuck around for long enough to get to know me. Days, months, a couple for years.

I don’t know why.

And this isn’t me being falsely modest. I really do not know why they hung around for as long as what they did. I do not know what they saw in me while they saw it in me.

I could tell you about Crank, who taught me most of what I know and had bolts of electricity shooting through her veins. Crank could stand out in the street and lean back her head and close her eyes and she could tell you everything that was going on in the whole city, and where.

There was Jeanah who radiated sex and Ruby who radiated love. Dana, who knew no fear, even in the face of my legendary freak-outs.

Perfect Charley who was so physically intimidating that I never learned to talk right when she was around. Astrid – yes, I even knew a girl named Astrid! – who had this freckle on a sensitive spot on her left hip that still haunts me after all these years.

Lisa who attracted birds and Nathalie who had a photographic memory and Cindy who possessed perfect judgment… except when it came to me. There was Diane who could fix anything with just a paperclip and some string. Barbara who always made it rain.

And Casey, well, there was Casey whose gift was that she could lift up anything. People. Cars. The corner of that trailer she lived in. There were no limits with Casey. It didn’t matter what it was, she could lift it. So whatever you might be thinking of daring Casey to lift, do not put money against her, buddy, or I can promise you you are going to be out the cash.

Sometimes I wonder what Casey is lifting now…

But now there is Belloq who is a force of nature. Belloq who is a tornado and a monsoon and a tsunami all rolled into one. Belloq who is pure energy. Belloq who jets around the globe looking for treasures. Belloq who thinks that I’m the fascinating one.

There’s Belloq who is going to hurt like a son of a bitch one day, but what a ride!

What did any these women ever believe I had to offer them?

I really wish I knew, because whatever it is, I’d like to do that some more.

Was it my crazy eyes? My hands that are always shaking? My habit of flying off the handle when staying on the handle would do just fine?

Was it my complete and utter lack of upward mobility despite some waning sense of future potential?

Was it my van?

I can tell a story. I can tell a joke.

I can talk for hours about the fauna of east Montrose. About the red-crested horny hookers of Crocker Street. The three-banded black bums of Richmond Ave. I can tell you the best spots in town to go dumpster diving and which restaurants will poison you like a rat if you ever try.

I can take you to this spot downtown at night where we can climb up a fire escape. From the top of the tower, we can look out at the cityscape from one side and we can look down at a brothel from the other. I’m good either way, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide which.

But could that – could any of that – be what keeps the miracle women around when the miracle women stick around?

I ask you: How did a spaz like me get so blessed?

Shangri-La

Right off the bat, there are a couple things that you ought to know about my friend, Bi-Po.

The first is that when it comes to bipolar people, Bi-Po is the bipoliest. His depressions are the deepest and the most depressive. His manias are the highest and the most maniacal.

One morning, we’ll find him comatose on a downtown bench, looking like he hasn’t eaten or bathed in forever. Then, only a few weeks later, he’ll come running up to us full-speed and unannounced, lecturing us – complete with charts and with graphs – about how the mayor is spying on him by means of the city’s sewer rats.

The second thing you should know about my friend, Bi-Po, is that when he tells you the thing about the sewer rats spying on him, after about a half hour, you almost start to believe it. This guy can find connections anywhere. He could have been the World Champion of the Kevin Bacon Game if only his life had turned out a little different and there was such a thing.

Sleep Deprivation

I slammed into somebody Friday while I was walking through the tunnels beneath downtown Houston.

I think I slammed into somebody, anyway.

I believe I did.

Okay, I might have slammed into somebody, or else I might have dreamed I slammed into somebody, or else I might have hallucinated I slammed into somebody, or maybe (and this seemed least likely of all) I might have just worried about slamming into somebody, only to immediately get confused and think that I had.

At any rate, I stood there, gripping my shoulder where the possible contact had occurred and looking around to try and identify the other party. My victim, for lack of a better term. The slam-ee.

“Oops, sorry!”  I said (belatedly) to no one in particular, or rather to a very particular though still unidentified individual, if in fact I had slammed into somebody after all.

And the more I thought about it, and the more I rubbed the impacted shoulder, the harder the hypothetical slam became, and the more real it became, until finally there came a point where I could no longer imagine that the slam had not occurred.

I got worried about the condition of the other person, the person whom I have previously identified as my victim or as the slam-ee. You see, I am not a large individual. You know this. Unless you are younger than eight or older than eighty – or perhaps if you are physically handicapped in some extreme way – then chances are, you do not the rank the prospect my slamming into you up among your worst fears.

But what if I had  injured somebody? Injured somebody and then, you know, hadn’t even bothered to stop? What if I’d committed an ambulatory hit and run?

I scanned the ground around me for toddlers, for the elderly, for prosthetic limbs or maybe for a cane.

Nothing.

Lots of people walked by me, but they all seemed okay. As for me… Well, each thought that I thought seemed random. Dream-like. Convoluted and-

-and… Wait! Dream-like! “Maybe this is a dream!”  I said, and I might have even said it out loud, for all I know. I walked up to a mirrored column and I tried to press my hand through as a sort of test.

No go.

It was no dream.

It was, instead, simply another moment in the surreal haze that my life has become over these past two weeks since Doctor Belloq set off my sleep paralysis.

She set it off on purpose. Well, she set it off on purpose the first night.

The next two nights, those are sort of on both of us.

Each time it happens, what happens is pretty much the same: I go to sleep sober, I go to sleep on my back, and then I find myself unable to move. I am awake but I am paralyzed, and I am being suffocated by something that stands in the corner of my room. The something in the corner orders me to “Recite!” (night #1) or “Write!”  (night #2) or “Read!”  (night #3).

And you want to know the crazy part? I want to hear what it has to say. The something in the corner. I want to know. I will recite, I will write, I will read, just like Muhammad did when this happened to him in that cave. After all, reciting, writing, and reading: These are the things I do.

But each night, the blank face, the black cloak, the suffocation thing, and the sense of terrifying doom turn out to be too much for me. Much too much. I freak out and I thrash around until I break the paralysis.

Now I am afraid to go to sleep.

It’s been two weeks and my life is a surreal haze and I might or might not be slamming into random strangers in the shopping tunnels beneath downtown Houston. I can’t be sure anymore.

On Friday, after I confirmed that I was not dreaming, I chased down a little Asian business-dude in the tunnels. At least I think I chased down a little Asian business-dude. There is a possibility that I just imagined it.

I think I stopped him and I said, “Excuse me, sir? Did I by any chance just slam into you back there?”

The little Asian business-dude, I think he looked a little scared. I think he shook his head and waved his hands and said, “Yes, but it is okay. No problem, no problem!”

I think I sighed and clasped my hands together. I think I said, “I DID slam into you?! Whew! Good! I was afraid I was going crazy…”

Then I wandered off, lost in the tunnels, trying to remember where it was I’d been going when all of this began.

I kept walking…

City of the Nephilim

What the Rail Boys say is what Rail Boys have always said: That someplace, out, out down the line, there’s a place that’s different. Better. That the tracks will lead them there, to that untouched corner or abandoned station and that they’ll know it when they see it. That when the train goes rumbling by their utopia, they’ll recognize they’ve found it and that they’re there.

When they’re there, then the Rail Boys will leap out of their traveling closets and they’ll take up a new, perhaps more sedentary life in the perfect place they’ll have found.

They say meanwhile, we’ll all still be huddled and hiding our lives away back here.

Back here, in the City of the Nephilim.

There’s No Such Thing as Brussels Sprouts

There’s no such thing as Brussels sprouts.

I know what you’ve been told and it’s just not so.  

You can take a moment to process that now.

Don’t tell me, let me guess: Now that you think about it, you’ve never actually seen a Brussels sprout, but you heard about them somewhere, sometime. And you don’t remember where or when that was, but you belie-e-e-eve-

Yeah. I know. There’s no such thing, baby. Brussels sprouts don’t exist.

I learned this from people I know. From people whom I trust. From people with the inside line to inside information that you and the rest of the world never ever get to see. I’ve been looking for this kind of people all my life.

And these people I am talking about, you see, they know. These people saw the memo. Hell, these people wrote the memo and then delivered the memo, too. These people are bike messengers, and Brussels sprouts, well, that was a practical joke made up on a Thursday afternoon when business was slow and everyone was getting high.

I know this because I am a bike messenger. Part-time, is all. Just for now, and just enough to cover internet and a hefty book addiction for the time being.

Evicting Dr. Clitoris

In my lifetime, I have stayed in all kinds of places. I have slept all sorts of ways.

Like in drain pipes & abandoned sheds. Beneath the overhang at the local Denny’s. Like curled up in a downtown alley, where your alarm clock is the morning garbage truck slamming the dumpster you’re sleeping behind. Like a begged-for three hours’ shut-eye on a friend’s loveseat just to get kicked out after two.

I’ve snoozed in homeless shelters where they’ll steal the shoes right off your feet as you sleep, so you’re best off crushing your footwear beneath the bedposts for the night. I’ve slept business hours in the reference section at the Houston Public Library, which comes with free air conditioning, a water fountain, a toilet, & a sink.

There have been the park benches & there have been the city buses – places where you hope to enter REM before they come & chase you off.

You learn to sleep on the go, eventually.

Katy Anders, Myth Buster

I found Tres Bocas today.

After all of these years! It has been right under my pierced nostrils all along.

And just like I have always suspected – as I have somehow always really known in my heart of hearts – Tres Bocas? Total sham, baby. Take my advice and do not waste any of your precious time on this one.

It was this afternoon and the weather was cool and I was walking down Travis Street when I heard them. I heard Tres Bocas, I mean. (NOTE: For those Canadians among you, “tres bocas”  means “three mouths”.)

I heard them and I knew. Immediately, I knew. How did I know? It must have been the echo or else it might have been the tone or maybe it was some ephemeral quality for which English has not developed a suitable word at all.

These are the voices which many cultures have heard and for which every culture has turned to some other language or other tongue when the time for naming has come. Sounds like these can’t be known by any designation ordinary as your mother tongue! No, you’ve gotta look elsewhere, turn to something more exotic… even if your mother tongue is otherwise pretty darn exotic in and of itself.

Will you look at this? My story has already gotten derailed somehow. Here I am, having already wasted years trying to find Tres Bocas and now it’s turned out to be an utter sham and I am not even going to salvage a decent story from it as a consolation prize.

To hell with it. Let’s keep moving.

This afternoon, then. The voices were coming from inside of a parking garage. You know, that one under the Houston Club, over there on Rusk? I tracked the voices to there – no easy feat in and of itself! – and I walked into the garage and I heard what sounded like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing… in unison.

This is what they were singing:

“DANIELLE!”

Tres Bocas
(Artist's Rendering)

At that same moment, a valet danced down a ramp right near me. He was a valet and he was old, but he was happy and he was dancing and he was, you know, snapping his fingers and what have you. Happy valet sorts of things.

I ran up to him. The valet looked surprised. He did not say anything, but his name tag read: “ARTHUR S.”

I said, “Arthur S.! What did those voices say?”

Arthur S. said, “What voices?”

I said, “The ones just now. You know: Three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing in unison? Sang ‘DANIELLE’?”

Arthur S. said, “Oh! Those voices? They said ‘DANIELLE’.”

The conversation was going nowhere. But I was not to be discouraged. After all, I was used to conversations that went nowhere. I once lived with an attorney for eight years. I said this: “And who is Danielle, Arthur S.?”

And Arthur S., why, he sort of stopped and he thought real deep-like for a moment or two. Then he smiled again. He said, “Only Danielle I ever known was my high school sweetheart, Danielle Nicole Trotter. Why, she-”…

I was already off and running. I grabbed another random passing valet. This one did not dance, but he wore a name tag that read, “LEON R.”

I pulled Leon R. to the ramp and shoved him up it. “Go on up the ramp, Leon!”  I said, “Go up the ramp and we’ll hear what the voices say!”

Now, you might think if a stranger ran up to you screaming about voices and told you to run up a car ramp that you might be hesitant to do it. You’d be wrong, though, because people tend to do what they are told to do, no matter how crazy the order might seem.

Hey, you! Yes, YOU. Keep reading!

Anyway, Leon R. ran to the top of the ramp, and he’d no sooner set foot at the top when what sounded like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs sang out in unison. They sang this:

“CLEMENTINE!”

At this, I screamed. The substance of what I screamed escapes me just now, but whatever it was was probably not very important anyway. What I do remember is that I screamed, I jumped around a lot, and I hooted and I hollered and at the very second Leon R. got back down the ramp, I said, “My turn!”  and I ran up and…

And…

Well, maybe I do need to go back a little bit further, after all. I need to go back, on the off-chance that there are those among you who are not altogether familiar with the long and rich history of Tres Bocas. I assume it is possible that not everyone knows…

Beneficiary of a scam.

Of course, the first – and still the most celebrated – account of Tres Bocas in history comes to us from the historian Nicolaus of Damascus in approximately 42 B.C. Nicolaus writes of a strange trip embarked upon by then-Roman co-consul Mark Antony to Atlantis. Although some mainstream historians consider the story to be spurious, I believe that Mark Antony actually traveled to the Texas Gulf Coast, and here is why:

Nicolaus writes that while in Atlantis, Mark Antony came to a great swamp where there were many flying bloodsuckers (Houston? Houston?), and while in the very midst of this humidity and muck, Antony heard demon voices. Furthermore, Nicolaus reports that the demon voices sang this:

“CLEOPATRA!”

Upon hearing the demons, Mark Antony immediately returned to Tarsus and summoned his future lover, Cleopatra. Something is also mentioned of the relationship ending somewhat badly later on down the line.

Now jump forward a few centuries. Now farther. Jump forward to the story of Chief White Oak’s so-called Singing Crows. Forward, to Ponce de Leon’s swamp angels (which reportedly sing out, “¡JUANA DE LOS APOSTOLES COVADONGA CONTRERAS!”

Forward, to 1968, when a very young and very drunk George Walker Bush lies semi-conscious in the streets of downtown Houston and hears God shouting the mysterious phrase, “CONDOLEEZZA!”

According to the noted Bush biography, “I Really Tried Hard,” Bush at first believes the voice to be just another alcohol-induced hallucination. Only much later does he decide he’s misheard the voice. “I thought it said ‘Condoleezza’,”  Bush is reported as saying. “Only later on, I realized what it actually said was, ‘I want you to be President!’ Those two things sound a lot alike when you’re that drunk.”

Too late, Rosario Dawson discovers
her mistake.

Now jump forward again. Forward to 2009, when the National Enquirer reports that, on a short promotional trip to Houston, actress Rosario Dawson steps out of her car at an undisclosed Houston parking garage and hears voices singing, “KATY ANDERS!”

Tragically, Dawson dismisses the voices, making the awful, awful fate that befalls her in 2015 all the less surprising, frankly, in future retrospect…

These have been my leads. I have found historical account after historical account after historical account like this. Buckets of them. All of them virtually identical: Texas Gulf Coast. Tres Bocas. Singing out the name of your true love. Your inevitable soul mate. Light of your life.

I’ve just never known where to look. Where to listen.

But that all changed today.

It changed. First there were the voices, and then there was Arthur S., and then there was Leon R., and then I myself ran up that parking garage ramp to hear…

To hear…

“Dana,”  maybe?

“Rosario”?

How about “Bella”? There are tons of girls being named Bella these days, and that would give me a few years to grow up myself while my soul mate was somewhere out there, inching towards the age of consent.

“Beth Ann”?

“Regina Pastula de las Muertos y Cigarillos?”

But no. There was nothing.

Not a sound. I was in downtown Houston on a weekday and there was nothing to be heard but the notable LACK of any sound.

And the silence made me furious. The silence made me steam. I leapt up and down like Daffy Duck on steroids. I yelled things that I dare not repeat in mixed company. I showed the pavement both of my middle fingers while Arthur S. and Leon R., stared on, rather dumbfounded, I should think.

And it was only then that I heard it.

I heard laughter.

It started off a bit like Vincent Price at the end of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” if only Vincent Price had sounded more like three Eastern European polyphonic choirs singing in unison. But it kept building. 

Tres Bocas? They were laughing at me. At me!

So you see what I mean, right? Total sham, baby. Tell me: What kind of imbecile would I have to be to give any credence at all to the opinions of some random voices singing out of the ground in the middle of downtown Houston?

I tell you, Tres Bocas is a sham. A lie repeated once too often. This myth is busted. It’s like the Loch Ness Monster or Shangri-La or Ringo Starr or the G-spot. Just a child’s fairy tale.

Bastard Bocas…

Ask anybody out there. They’ll tell you the truth: Katy Anders is not going to die unloved and alone.

Hey... Are you sure you didn’t just hear somebody singing, “ROSARIO”? Really? Are you sure? Because I thought I did…

How I Landed My New Job

It went like this: I was meditating in the gutter and I heard a motorcycle drive up. Only it was not the gutter – not really – and I did not know it was a motorcycle, either.

Here is why: Sometimes, I live in a small closet just off an abandoned freight elevator. The abandoned freight elevator is underground, under the ground of downtown Houston. So it is not really the gutter but is sort of the gutter. Dana calls it the gutter but Dana is not here.

Here is the thing about the motorcycle: I was meditating. It was sound. I did not label it “motorcycle” sound. Instead, my mind made a shape from the sound. From the texture. The texture was fuzzy but fuzzy the way metal shavings are fuzzy. Something like that.

Why Don’t Mosquitoes Like Me?

Okay, why don’t mosquitoes like me? What do y’all got that I haven’t got?

Is the blood in these veins somehow lesser blood? Less good? Less desirable? Less tasty?

Do my platelets not appeal to the discriminating palate of your upscale River Oaks blood sucker? Too cold? Needs salt? Maybe a ready-made entry wound to help with easier access?

They all say I am lucky but I just feel bad because why don’t mosquitoes ever bite me?

Dead Meat

I said, “This car is officially on fire!”  because the car was on fire.

There was nothing official about it, really. There is no process for certification of conflagration. But still, I said, “This car is officially on fire!”  because the car was on fire and also because Rufus and Ethel Bunny were too preoccupied to see it.

Rufus and Ethel Bunny wanted to frak. They were looking to hula the hoop. Probably they thought I did not notice.

I noticed.

We – I mean all of us, I mean me, Ethel Bunny, Rufus, Dummy, Star and the Glob – were supposed to be delivering the ugly sculpture that Jerry Lee had sculpted. But Dummy got called in to work and Star caught bronchitis and then the Glob wasn’t answering his phone. So then it was just me and Rufus and Ethel Bunny, and also the ugly sculpture and the car.

And I was in the back seat of the car and the sculpture was in the back seat, too, and the car was on fire, only Rufus and Ethel Bunny did not notice because they were thinking about frakking each other.

Finally I got their attention. It was nearly too late. The front seat was filled with black smoke from the ac vents. White smoke coming from under the hood made it hard to see where we were going.

We were going to deliver the sculpture that Jerry Lee had sculpted. Only we did not even make it out of downtown Houston and the car was on fire.

When Rufus pulled over and stopped the car, I said, “Help me with the sculpture.”   We had to get the sculpture out of the burning car. It weighed about the two hundred pounds. The sculpture, I mean, not the car.

The sculpture, it had a name, and the name was “A Great Moment in History.”  Which great moment was not clear. It might have been an astronaut walking upon the moon or else it might have been Washington crossing the Delaware.  I regarded the sculpture’s quality to be subpar. In this, Rufus agreed with me. Ethel Bunny said, “This sculpture, it does not speak to me.”

Jerry Lee, who sculpted the sculpture, said he would get paid two hundred thousand dollars for it. “A fool and his money are soon parted,”  Star had said when Jerry Lee told him about the two hundred thousand dollars. 

Star knows nothing about art. I know nothing about art, either. Still, I regarded the sculpture as subpar.

It was the blue time of night just after dusk. We saw flames reflecting off the pavement underneath the car. There was nothing we could do.

I said, “Rufus, let’s carry the sculpture into this empty building.”  I thought I could get us into the empty building. I could get us into the empty building, but the getting took longer than I thought.

We got in. Someone must have called the fire department. There were sirens and I said, “Rufus and Ethel Bunny, you can go back to those rooms back there,”  because Rufus and Ethel Bunny wanted to frak. They wanted to hula the hoop.

I said, “I am going up to the roof and I am going to watch the fire trucks.”

It was dark but I found some stairs. Inside the staircase, the light from my phone lit up spray-painted messages. One of the messages said this: “YOLO.”  Another one of the messages looked like a chicken. The chicken was only half done. Going up to the roof, I wondered whether the kid who painted that chicken was ever going to come back and do the other half.  

At the top of the stairs, I opened the door to the roof, but the smell up there made me want to close it again. The roof smelled of death. More than death, though, putrefaction. Death when the meat of the thing that was once alive sloughs off the bones and turns into purple liquid death. Death like the smell of the mushroom factory in Madisonville.  

“This is more interesting than fire!”  I said to myself. I covered my nose with my Mastodon t-shirt. I went looking for the death.

The death was on another part of the building. I had to climb up part of the building that stuck up farther than the rest and then come back down the other side near the birds.

In my life, I have noticed that birds do not come out at night. But here it was, night, and these birds were out and there were a lot of them. They were big birds and there were a lot of them and they were crowded around something on the roof that smelled of death.

They were eating.

I saw how one bird would come running out from the crowd with a piece of food hanging in his mouth and then another bird, who up until this point had been standing at the back watching, would chase the first bird down and try and steal his food. To steal his dead meat.

Then the first bird and the second bird, they would fight for a few moments, but it did not look to be a serious fight.

None of the birds seemed to care about me or to care about the flashing emergency lights from the street below or to care about the echo from the firemen’s radio.

I wanted to know what that dead meat used to be. I wanted to see a tail or I wanted to see a horn or a hoof or hell, I don’t know, maybe I wanted to see a tentacle. I wanted to see something that would assure me that I had not known that meat before it was dead.

“People are made out of food,” I remembered reading in a book somewhere.

“I know,”  I thought to myself on the roof. “I will come back here in the day. Maybe in three days. Maybe in four. I will come back here when it is light and when the birds have finished eating all of the meat.”

I thought to myself, “Then I will see what pieces of the thing are left, and then I will know what kind of meat it used to be.”

I went back downstairs. By that time, Rufus and Ethel Bunny had hula-ed the hoop and were standing by the front window watching the fire trucks drive away.

“Whose car was that?”  I asked them, but no one knew whose car it was.

I called Dana to come and pick up me and Rufus and Ethel Bunny and the sculpture. Dana thought the sculpture was “the ugliest fucking thing”  she had ever seen in her whole life.

A week later, I went back to the building. I went up to the roof. Where the meat had been, there was nothing left but a stain on the ground.

The spray-painting of the chicken on the staircase was still only half-done.