Eleta, Eleta, Eleta 8:48

I miss you. I know I haven’t written much, but I think of you so often I always feel as if you know what’s been going on with me. Well, it was you who first heard me babble on about this place, and now here I am below sea level boogying with the skeletons, tending bar at a place I just know you’d make your living room. And my heart is full-board overblown steaming away as I work days at a shelter for the homeless, earning my bread by passing it out. Unfortunately, all that shit from the morals class we had is rising up in me like bile as it’s me who decides, oh, basically, who lives and dies. I hate that. "I hate that." God, I sound like J. Dove. "I hate that."

The last time I saw him I was listening to him tell me how he was going away just to see how far it was, come back and say how close it is. That was the first night I ever prayed for him. Luck was his, the memory was mine, and I knew that it would never heal enough so I could just use it as good conversation. And, Christ, did I pick him apart. But, all I wanted him to do was prove me wrong. Make me watch him fly laps around me and get a gold filling where his baby tooth had decayed for twenty-odd years.

Yeah, the most foolish man I’ve ever known also has the biggest fucking heart. And, naturally, I became a fool as well, and fell for his bucolic bumming days.

Do you hear from him much? Anything stuck under your pillow? I thought I’d mention to you that there are some things that you just don’t talk about with him, but everything else is a rhapsody in silver, black and red that he wraps around your bed, dangling grape leaves above your forehead.

I’ve been trying to bring it up so matter-of-factly for so long, but, what happened before J. Dove left for South America didn’t bother me at all. He’s a great fuck, but he’s not a fucker like other guys who don’t realize they’re men. There’s a boy in him I just can’t leave behind no matter how helpless he gets. He never made me be anyone else than who I am, and who I was then.... Then I was vicious, then I was dreaming, and anything worth dealing with was worth a nod at the dealer as he passed out the Aass Bock, Salvator and the best of the winter brew. That winter blew winds around me that have never settled. J. Dove leaving was left for any spare minute I wasn’t running, cycling, reading or forgetting. And you having to return to your parents just b/c he got you pregnant. As if he would ever do that to you. My best pal and my best gal. That was hard.

The midnight’s in the arboretum, the morning’s along the waterfront, the coffee afternoons and black port nights of talking about things that drive the tourist away, like the profit ratio of ratatouille if it simmers at just the right hear. Late summer heat. Life is for those who learn how to simmer, after the turn of the dial has torched the bottom of the pan with the crusty black flakes cracking over that serial number code in the corner, and washing their soapy legs down.

I’m so unafraid of him, it scares me. My heart, when I can find it, is always off somewhere else trying to argue love to anyone who will listen. Either that or needing to get drilled up by an oilman’s smile. The hard pieces are the one’s that will never fit together: Family, childhood and children. To have a man to come home to, and a child I bore (and I just know I’ll bore the wee thing dizzy talking about Krishnamurti all the time), more than important, these things are just me. A group of people I can talk to who are also my red-rosy fingered blood? I’ll take that over Saturday night television any night of the week. A game of Michigan Rummy with an ashtray in the middle of five beers, getting ready for Angel to get here from Los Angeles on United.

Is it just me or is this place breaking apart? From Washington to Louisiana via Poverty, Indecision and Doubt. Federal funding for depression can not be that far off. They make us dream a nightmare and then they refuse to even wake us up. Under however bright a Panamanian night you need, let them know that it’s all been cut loose up here. Milk and honey were the first things looted. I’m just lucky that what was stolen from he has been replaceable, even my meandering Magritte skies. Singing in the bath is the hinge of my day. That and going to the postbox, ever getting letters from roads I keep meaning to get to, roads I even know the names of that I tease myself with. Like teasing myself that the guy at the end of the bar is tearing apart his matchbook over me. And I just know he has a friend in Wogga Wogga.

SO, I’m sitting here waiting for Jo-Jo, a Peruvian boy I’ve befriended, to get out of the bathroom with his clothes of so I can photograph him. He needs cheering up b/c the court is trying to put he and his girlfriend, Bianca, with some foster parents who have certain, uh, "opinions" about what to do with Blanca, who got pregnant. The worst mistake she could make right now. If she carries it to term, they’ll make her keep it. After all, this may be New Orleans, but it’s also Louisiana. I’d see a life die as soon as it’s born, the poor thing. Imagine coming back just for a couple of years, not even getting to be old enough to climb a tree, just so you can bring the parents closer together, or else put them on the line to find a scarlet pimpernel who can get them a cheap vacuum, a foot basin and a face sink.

So, here I am having kiwi fruit and dark chocolate for my birthday lunch, clicking and whirring my Pentax.

I love Bianca’s nape and asked her to sit for me so I could try and paint it. She said that her vagina is much prettier, but I persuaded her otherwise.

"You’ll probably want to not be too accurate."

"Why?," I asked.

"The scruff of my neck is still tender. See that?"

"Shall I massage it for you?"

"No. Just draw it. Do it justice."

See, I didn’t know this, but Blanca told me as I drew her, that she met Jo-Jo in Corpus Christi, Texas. He had just escaped from Peru after his family has been slaughtered. She spent some time with him, and he said that he was going back to get revenge. She said, "If he needs me, I will be with him." Just as Jo-Jo was crouched in the masters bathroom of his killer as they slept he was clutched by the log arm of vengeance and into the ranks of the gang he was choked. They shoved a third-hand Kalashnikov into his guts and said "Here. You’re one of us now. You don’t need the woman." They came up behind Blanca as she was washing the dishes, listening to her radio, and motioned to Jo-Jo. As they grabbed her neck, ripping open her coat, he cut the pirate chief down as soon as his pants were on the floor, roared "WHO’S NEXT?", and they fled into the night.

They hitchhiked back up here by coming across the gulf, which is strange b/c I never think of Nawlins as a port. Story of my life.

My boss at the shelter gave me today off, but I have to close Mad Mick’s tonight, which is fine. She’s taking me out to dinner late to a place called the Tap Root that’s supposed to have really good jambalaya. A white tablecloth night. She’s coming by at 6:00 bringing me a book on growing roses that her husband has.

It’s open mike night tonight, too, and Jo-Jo is going to sign up to play his guitar, he says. He plays flamenco, he says, but he never plays for me. He just looks down at his shoes.

The house band plays a hot version of "Do you Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?" that I might attempt to butcher on stage. What the hell. It’s my birthday and I’ll sing if I want to.

Later Tonight at Mick’s

Well, the joint was just loud enough for me to inconspicuously climb up on stage as the band was tuning up, and I cleared my throat with the backwash of my second pint of the night, sorely needed after having to throw out Louie, who was getting irascible with the help. Yeah, I helped him right out the front door all right, after he tried slipping his hands down Theresa’s ass. My boss and I were just talking about that shit over dinner. She told me of the night she was put in jail for crushing some guy’s face with the busted end of a beer bottle. We bonded.

So, there I was, roiling inside and thinking of the songs I was about to do, and thinking "How’s about "Love In Vain" instead, with a backbeat the size of a baseball, and I’ll clean up with a magnesium bat.

Everyone was in the right mood after John Lee Hooker had some cat poking his cherry to "Crawlin’ Kingsnake," so I put my lips to the microphone and said, "There’s a story my grandfather used to tell: Boy meets girl. Boy jilts girl. Girl eggs his house. Girl blows his mailbox up with an M-80. Girl sends the engine of his 1959 Chrysler Futura ripping through the garage...Boy goes back to girl. Valentines of the world, unite and take over." The band kicked up and I dove into "Do You Know What It Means..." as Heckle and Jeckle in the back blurted out "Miss New Orleans? You Miss New Orleans?" I almost lost it, obviously. But, I kept thinking of Viva, my best friend, when I was ten, who was shitty with her dancing steps as I was a natural. If she had the guts to do it (and now she’s a chorus girl in NYC) then what was my excuse, besides a bad case of assumed testicularity? "That girl’s got balls," I heard some guy whisper, which made the bridge that much easier.

It went well, I dare say, and then we plunged into "Give Me A Kiss To Build A Dream On" and I got the guts to unwrap the microphone from the stand and begin serenading the strangers at the tables at my feet. And with the right band, I thought, this would be better than sex.

I looked at the dancefloor begin to fill up and who should be asking a girl out onto the floor, who should offer her his hand, who should begin dancing to a song that I was singing, but J. Dove. The man himself was right in front of me, complete with a Latin love. Latin love? It was Elysia, is Elysia, the infamous Elysia you’ve told me about for years. The logical extension of you, I think, four years younger, but just as wise. One year into college, but not yet streetwise.

The first thing he said to me was that you’re gone. As I write this, you’ll never read it.

Eleta, you’ve been taken away. No, you left. You left b/c you knew the guerrillas would be after you first demanding ransom from your parents and worse. Well, you were probably right, as usual. Point, Eleta.

The baby blanket I made for you that J. Dove returned to me was used as a tourniquet for Jo-Jo as they hitched through Mexico. I think the blood’s too old to come out in the wash. And

Late, next day

Zeda, this letter is to you now. For you. I wish like hell you were here, and I’m glad you were home last night when I called. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.

She meant as much to me as you do, especially when we’re too far apart, and every time she’d fix her carburetor I’d think of you.

You worry me in the morning, sis, even though I know you’re not taking little Zach’s death as hard as I think you are. Second guess number one daughter? Dare I try? Keep making jewelry, it’ll happen one day. There’s so much shitty stuff out there, it can’t help but find a market of it’s own. And ain’t it all just supply and demand anyway? Damn their supplies that no one demands.

Death came into my room tonight, and made himself at home on my bed with the candlelight asking me if there’s anyone I forgot. He talked of the time I met Eleta, he reminded me she saved my life more than once, by tearing me away from the scissors and the cardboard to go bother the butcher and his wife.

"Look," he said, "think of all that she saw. A Molotov for a mazel tov, and days of blood and thorns and martial law."

He opened my door, and Zach walked in as happy as the summers he lit for those few days before he was hit from the ricochet of a drive-by shooting that cut him down through the eye. And you say the car was the same kind that Dad had? That chocolate brown sweating guzzler of a boat?

I looked into the eyes of death, he got uncomfortable and started smoothing the edge as I asked him why he came so soon and he said "What’s it to ya?"

I reached for my cardigan he was sitting upon, scooted his buns and asked what the matter was, and he got my shirt all wet but I learned he’d been to Pittsburgh. Of course, he knew I’d been to Davenport twice, Tijuana once and Jupiter thrice as I rolled him a fag and lit it with a silver-tipped match of his.

"Shall I see you?", he asked.

"Not now. Not while my heart is so busy. It may seem like hell from just down the road, but it’s just the burned-out sign of a hotel screaming ‘Hello, Young Lovers’. I’m tired of this bed never squeaking, I want to sleep at the edge of the world. Just leave me a loan for the debt that I owe for making you laugh at all your assets and arrears." I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me out of pity or confusion.

I confused Death. Great. Is there bonus points for that, or what?

Zeda, I tried, and you always hoped I would see what can happen with a tireswing rope when the bolt tears away from the tree and leaves you hanging. But, no teeter-totter tricks are these, my eyes are wet, my breath is about to freeze and a honeysuckle scent swept in just as Death was about to leave. My bed is now smooth, my hand-me-downs I tossed on the pillows he threw all around, and I climbed in naked and nude and warmed my self.

Eleta, I’d curse if I thought it would help.

And Zeda, your silence is as stiff as the belt you wore when you were seeing the guy who dealt canasta, five card stud, hearts and pelts.

Take a bright new night, both of you, and pray for Spokane rain, and Panamanian waves and just how much we are all the same. And I’ll still dream of the speed of the heat of the heart, the moan of the road and the creak of the dark and a touch on my shoulder is how I’ll know it’s you.

Zachariah. Oh, Eleta.

Do you hear me, Zeda?

-Your little sistah,

*Estrelica*