The Heat.

The other night. I sit out on the front porch with Violet in my arms. I'm almost crying. I'm pretty much crying. I'm crying a little in front of the cops and I think to myself that this must be so boring and routine for them. For me: it's already Alcatraz.

Cops are big on eye contact but here today: our eyes don't meet much. I can feel Little Leader's beams shining right through my face, but I don't look at him really. He's too into being in charge for me to just hand it all over to him. I don't want to be watching him watch me be brittle .

Violet, on the other hand....oh Violet, she stares and stares. She smiles. I see the officer at the bottom of the steps when he gets Tomahawked by my baby's sweet toothless gums. He wants to wave, the kind bastard. I can feel it coming off him. I know when people wanna wave at my kid; I feel them feel. He so obviously wants to wave but I think he is embarrassed in front of Little Leader. It doesn't matter. Violet loves these guys for now: their squawky radios and their shiny badges. The guns don't register for her.

Little Leader asks me some stuff and I stagger through it the best I can. Snot is backing up in my pipes and I know if I try to answer with too many words, lava bubbles are gonna gurble out my nose. And that's when I reckon I could likely lose this little biting my tongue battle. The thing is though that these guys think I'm crying because I'm afraid to go jail or something. Afraid of the squad car, and the bright lights in the dull rooms where they finger-print you and take your photo with your hair all fucked up from bittersweet night living. They are wrong though.

I'm more sad because of all this. This bullshit. Cops in our driveway: standing next to my eggplants and bell peppers and writing things on their Cop-Pads and being somewhat gentle when I need them to be assholes. I keep kissing the very tip-top of Violet's head. It occupies me/my mind. I don't think about the impression it might be giving off at the time, but looking back, it can't hurt to be kissing a smooth-tempered baby when you're surrounded by The Heat.

Across the street I see people walking their dogs. Pushing strollers. Soft summer evening rolls up and over all the neighborhood houses and down into the yards. It oozes under the cars parked at the curbs. Robins hop though green grass picking up bugs and worm chunks. I picture some of the people across the street peering though their Venetians. I hear the flimsy aluminum bend and pop as they use their fingertips to pry them apart so they can see through and across. So they can see Over There.

Something is going on Over There, one of them will say.

Over where?, asks the other, crowding in and popping some blinds with his fingers too.

There. The people with baby. There's the husband on the chair on the porch. The cops are talking to him.

Oh yeah, I see him. Hmph. Little Bitch is all ready to cry. Look at him, you can see it from here.

Well, I'd cry too, I suppose. I wonder what he did.

Maybe he killed her?

Killed who? His wife? I doubt it. Maybe though.

He has the baby on his lap.

Oh yeah. Wave at her.

Then they go back to their dinners, their corn-on-the-cobs and bottled water.

Eventually, it all winds down. I tell the cops I don't have anywhere else to go. Any friends or family here? I tell him no. I bite into my lip and stammer and escape into Violet's wonderful hair.

I just want them to fucking leave. I want Monica to finish talking to her cop inside the house. I want her to go back to work. I want to just be me and Violet here in the air conditioning. I wanna slice some supermarket cheese off the brick in the fridge and put my daughter to sleep.

I wanna stop picturing stuff. I wanna stop thinking about lines in the sand and the price you pay. Nothing happened here that hasn't happened before. No one lost it all. No one's drunk and screeching on the front yard. There's no gauze wrapped around anyone's palm. There are no defensive knife gashes. No welts on cheeks. Nothing you can see really. Nothing much went down that the paramedics could get behind.

Even the cops seem a little dazed. Bummed. There's some paperbacks on the floor and that's it. They need shattered glass/the baby bawling/the dogs upset. All they get is some dude with glassy eyes with an angel on his lap.

Anyways life happened if that's what you're wondering. And you are.

Life happened and sometimes that means we're having pizza and beer and sometimes it means someone calls 911. Some words got jabbed into some hearts is all. Happens all the time in our rugged West. Jagged cut bone sentences. Smashed whiskey bottle phrases. Shoved hard and fast with Old Saloon Power into each others faces with just a click of our teeth.

Big Bad Feelings. With nowhere to run to baby. No place to hide.

Wonderwall/ Laser Gun City.

My mind plays tricks on me constantly. It makes me believe things that are basically the opposite of truth. What is that?! My own mind telling me lies. Isn't there a name for that? Isn't that name....uhhh...CRAZY?

I tell myself that I am handsome.

I converse with myself at a little outdoor bistro by the fountain where pigeons frolic and shit pretty purple patterns on the cobblestones. It's a Euro-place tucked back deep down the alleys, in the Square of Serge's Imagination. I look across the table at Violet's Pop and I see a dashing fellow. He sips a thin glass of dark blood wine. His face shows some wear, some years. But still. He smokes a long cigarette with a gentleman's grace: deliberately/savoring the flavors...the chocolate tones and the nutty hints and the spices of islands no one has ever visited. He exhales and the smoke isn't an annoyance or a bother to the other patrons, but rather it has become a healthy mist born down in the damp darkness of his lungs. Formerly a toxin, and still a toxin laced through any other lips, it is somehow released from his pensive face with good health all swirled within its cloud.

If you breathed in every cigarette this man ever smoked, you would live forever. Simple as that.

So, I sit and I admire him. Our conversations are dalliances in and out of forums. Politics, sport, art, and love. We listen intently to the other, we ask questions for we are genuinely interested. Waiters come and go. Shifts change. We have small plates of octopus and lemon. We talk of Heaven. We pick at olives. We speak of God. We down liquers: we talk about literature, the purity of music, how childred are born knowing the secrets to the universe but forget them by the time they can finally speak. I greatly admire this man.

Mind Serge.

He is like a George Clooney dipped in JFK. But even cooler. And he. Is. Me.

Well, that's what my mind tells me. Fucking liar.

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In the mirror after a full beard shave I see Don Knotts dipped in chicken fat. Dear Christ. I see chinless Eric Clapton without the legendary life's work. I wipe a bit of condensation off of the mirror/my mind and I am staring at what? A younger Tom Bosley maybe? Fifties face. A face from the Fifties when American people main-lined Peanut Butter Malteds into their necks with a turkey baster. Here I stand. I've had a few beers over the last couple nights, a few ice cream sandwiches. And now this. The lie is unfolded overtop the sink and I pop out. The real me.

I don't smoke classy. I smoke like a meth head. I lick the cig and try and get my grubby tongue up into the filter so that I can actually eat the flakes of nicotine in there. They are the Reeses Pieces down in the folds of Satan's car seats and I want them so fucking bad that I crawl up into the butt and curl up in there like a baby bear cub in his winter cave. It's pathetic for certain and it damn sure isn't classy or cosmopolitan.

So, my mind lied all over this thing.

I don't sip my wine. I try to. I swish it around in my gob once or twice. But then that's that and ninety-seven seconds later I'm almost done with my second glass. I'm feeling loose, ya'll. Loose as a goose.

But, there is no elegance involved. No sippy-sippy sommelier refined enjoyment. I guzzle the shit like The Pimple Party Kid suckling up to a bottle of orange Mad Dog in a night field. I suck the juice from the juice. I turn wine to dust I hit it so fast, so hard. Eight dollar empty bottles line the dusty road to where they find my bloated body. The maggots get so drunk they die under the sizzling sun and dry up in minutes; Pringles crumbs laid out in the shadows of holding pattern buzzards

I can converse about stuff, but the older I get I think I'm becoming less and less intelligent. More stupid. Sometimes I hit a groove and roll with it and maybe a person or two thinks I'm a thinker/NPR donor/intelligentsia. But I'm not. Even when I'm talking to you I'm probably thinking about something completely different that has nothing to do with whatever it is I'm saying to you at that moment. The real conversations are going on backstage at the festival in my face. Witty bantering and comments galore on rich velvety topics like American Idol and trout fishing and hot dog mustards. I converse with some weird Norman Rockwell-ish echo.

And lastly, I haven't been to any European squares in awhile. Or any bistros for that matter. I haven't been out to eat in over three months, and even then it was to the buffet, so there really wasn't much conversation going down if you know what I mean. Time is money and all that. I haven't even been to a coffee shop in over a year. I pop into the 7-11, put the shit in the styrofoam, and jet. No conversation. No goddamn little plates of squid or whatever. Good Morning/$1.68/Credit or Debit/Enter Your Pin/Get Out Of Here.

I just lie and lie and lie to myself. It's a survival mechanism.

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The thing is: who cares? I'm happy without most of what I lie to me about. I'm no intellectual cafe Clooney. I'm Tom Bosley. And that's cool. You know why? I have my ladies. One of which is stuck with me forever: Violet. The other one: Monica, she is in my cement pretty good too, but not like a kid. The kid cannot escape. No matter what...she and I are one blood/one vein. I like that a lot. A whole lot.

In my mind: I die someday. It's a sunny day. Sun streaming through the hospital blinds. The ladies see me off and yes there's tears and crap but it's all good. We said our goodbyes and we'll see each other in Heaven and I will watch over you both in the form of a small Oriole or a lightning bug or something.

The credits begin to roll. The bio-pic wraps up. The first notes of an acoustic guitar are heard and it is a familiar chill to anyone watching. "Wonderwall" begins. People sit for a minute or two, their laps flaked with popcorn dust. Tears come to some eyes. Dudes on dates bite into their tongues and pray to Jesus Christ the Savior not to cry.

"Today is gonna be the day they're gonna throw it back to you"...Liam starts singing.

"By now you shoulda somehow realized what you gotta do"....people stand up slowly as the dim lights come on.

No one looks anyone in the eye. They think of me. My passing. The ending they just watched. They pick up their things, their pocketbooks.

"I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now."

They file out of the theater, through the lobby, out into the hot night lot. They go to their cars and start them and roll away.

They remember me even hours later when they lay down to sleep.

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I know that this is bullshit, but that's ok. In fact, that's kinda the point. It's all dumb-ass lies we tell ourselves and bother ourselves with. We spend so much time at fake cafes instead of real ones. That's just the way it goes. But Violet cuts through all that for me like Laser Gun City. Without her, I'd be lost before long. Dudes like me need absolute bonds. We need a kid to call us Daddy someday and never stop loving us no matter how ridiculous we get.

And she always will love me, I just know it. She'll love me with everything she's got, right up until the end when "Wonderwall" does not play because freakin' old-ass Monica forgot to bring the boombox to the hospital on the damn day I die.

Whatever.

Pass That August 11th, 2004 And Lemme Get High.

So much can happen over the course of one summer night. Tiny beetles in moonlit gardens crawl up tomato vines. Satellites twinkle slowly along the midnight ceiling. Vodka hits orange juice in a host of lonesome apartment kitchens; ice clinks in a spotted tumbler. A raccoon dines on rib bones in a strip-mall dumpster while a patrol car orbits the parking lot at a crawl. Laughter spills out of tap rooms, dies in the street. Pizzeria phones ring. Babies dream. Air conditioners rattle beneath elms of sleeping birds.

People meet.

Huddled beneath the plywood platform in the back of our van, I was buzzed and whirling from the few drunken kisses this girl, Monica, had let me give her inside the bar. People were handing me amps and cymbal cases and stuff and I was heaving it around like I did every night. Every night out front some different bar, I'd climb back in the hole like a miner and work my organizing magic through a beery haze of streaky streetlight. But there was never an audience for me. There was never someone watching, someone waiting.

So, my occasional glances over to see that Monica, the really sexy/dark-humored/bitingly sharp girl I'd just downed three or four shots of Jagermeister with, were as much to keep proving to myself that she did in fact exist as they were to make certain she didn't get a whiff of some practical wind and split while I was back between drum cases. She talked to me a little while I did my job. And she made small chat with the other guys in the band as they hauled the gear out of the bar and piled it at the curb. I kept hearing her voice and I kept wondering why she was still out there? She couldn't be physically attracted to me...she was way above my Single A looks. But she had let me kiss her. Like four times. Maybe she'd swallowed some Ecstasy? Who knew? I figured I just needed to run with it; I needed to see where she would lead me.

A lot happened. There is a Super 8 motel in downtown Salt Lake City, across from a gas station. It's was the band's home for the night. I vividly remember standing at the window of an upper level room at dusk, after sound-check/before the show. I looked out at this town I'd never seen before. Mountains off to the east in a dazzling sunset. I looked down and there was my brother, Dave, standing in the parking lot below making faces at me up there in the window. He was smoking a cigarette. I gave him the finger and made some faces back. I was wishing the window would open so we could holler at each other, but I guess people jump out of cheap motel windows if given half a chance, so there was none of that to be had. The images are all burned into my memory with scorched detail. These were the last few hours before I met her. The old life was winding down, but I had no idea.

We hung out in her truck in the motel parking lot. We talked, laughed. Music/books/movies. She had a genuine interest in the places I'd seen, my travels. I asked her about being from Utah. She told about her Mormon childhood. There was more kissing and stuff. I walked with her when she went inside to use the bathroom by the front desk. I stood outside the WOMEN door waiting for her. I smiled when late-night lobby crawlers would appear silently out of stairwells and drift by me like sunburnt ghosts with ice buckets. When she came out again, we grinned madly at each other. Why? I dunno. It was happening, I guess.

Summer nights have always bred a little magic. It's just the way it goes.

Elderly whales staring at the stars in the middle of the sea.

Night shift workers in factories wrap candy canes in tight plastic like minimum wage elves.

Minor League umps in motels sip cold High Life from brown bagged 40s, stare at SportsCenter and dream.

Muscle cars thunder down Main Streets as McDonald's lights kick off for the night.

Tomorrow's gasoline lies in wait in dark caverns beneath Mini-Mart pumps.

Crickets fuck. Teenagers smoke dope on swings in parks. Hot peppers grow bigger.

The moon circles the Earth while the withered handbones of Long Ago Lovers smash out from their dirt and entwine with their partner's for just those few precious hours before dawn breaks.

She pulled out of the lot by herself not long before the sun crawled up over those mountains. I walked through the lobby and went up to The Tobacco Suite where Dave was snoring and the TV was on low. I didn't really try and get any rest.

I wouldn't have rested. She was everywhere I looked: behind me in the mirror, under the lumpy sheets, just beyond that double-locked door. Rest? You gotta be kidding.

A night like that. And she's still mine/sometimes barely.

I'll never rest again, man.