last year, this time

Last year, this time…

Well, you may not want to know. Life was really messed up. I was acting a cougar for the first time ever. I was coming off a painful separation from a chick I loved and who loved me, too. Today we call each other best friends.  I was deeply devoted to the study of chemicals. Let’s just say I had my PhD in pharmacology. Nothing could be closer to the truth.

So I gave myself to a punk from LA, last year, this time. A skater kid who had been taken to his knees by black, and was just now crawling back into the world and hoping to stand up again. Just the kind of guy for me.  We met one otherwise endless night of my same old repeated impoverished kinda lifestyle, at the vending machine in a board & care in Oakland, California. On Telegraph Avenue. 

I was trying to decide on the best runner up for Famous Amos’ chocolate chip cookies. In the hallway, by the office. I wanted to make my decision quickly, and get the hell back to my room. I did not get out much. i was studying chemicals as they moved through my bloodstream. I was no less than a fine mess.

I was paranoid and suffering from various mental illness. The office was behind me, and I knew the matriarch of the Indian family who ran the place, was gonna ask me about my cat again. I was still hiding her in my room. My cat Drama. Weeks ago I agreed to take her somewhere else, when I realized that cats were not allowed. They kept asking. I kept lying. But they knew. And I knew. And I knew I wanted to get back to my room as quickly as meow. 

Inflexibility is a real key to success in the board & care industry, in Oakland. No cats, no exceptions. I had to get back to my room, cause I never liked lying. 

Anyway, I had settled on a pack of sugar wafers, when I noticed in the reflection of the vending machine glass, the kid. The Latin kid with the skateboard and the unshaven face. And the dirt punk get up. He really looked like a catch. So said the chemicals I was studying, by way of digestion. The one I would eventually hook up with, live with, share knowledge of chemical reactions with. Last time, this year. The one who would eventually abuse me and throw half my belongings out the window, over misplaced jealousies. The one who would hold me hostage by cutting up his arms when I got caught trying to leave him.

Last time, this year? I really knew how to pick them. 

He had taken the metal tops of Bic lighters. and clasped them all up and down the tore up black denim of his jacket. Poor-man studs. I called it creativity. My kind of guy…last year, this time. Guess who snatched up the last of the Famos Amos cookies, and continually sold the vending machine out of them, week after week? My punk Latin kid from LA. The one who I started dating for almost no other reason than aimless compulsion; and an affinity toward all things punk, recipes of chemical romance… and crap vending machine cookies.