Die With My Boots On

Forsaken my soul in a valley a lifetime ago,
Hail storms thunder shook the playa low.
Faced the devil a baker's dozen, a mano,
Buried a wife, child, and twelve-and-one foe.

Roamed a dusty trail since I don't know when,
Just my canteen, six-gun and a lifetime of sin.
Seen every place, still not sure where I've been,
Was bad at faith, found God in a bottle of gin.

We are rough men, and our rough ways.
No time for debts, no time to pay.

We are rough men, and our rough ways.
No time for debts, don't care to pay.

Think I hear my maker a callin' my name,
Time for a reckoning, embrace the blame.
Pay the butcher's bill, death's the end game,
I'll keep moving along, thanks just the same.

Once a boy, then a man, leaving as dust,
Lived a life without penitence, a lifetime unjust.
When the time comes in my fate I will trust,
I'll lay where I'm felled, there my spurs will rust.

We are rough men, no time for debts.
Living our rough ways, no time for regrets.

​We are rough men, no time for debts.
Living our rough ways, never regrets.

"Gillie!" he heard his mother yell from the kitchen downstairs. "Breakfast is almost ready."

He walked to his bedroom door. "Give me five minutes," he said.

After a moment, his father's voice boomed. "Get your ass down here! Last day of school, don't slack off by being late!"

Gilbert felt his jaw tighten. We wanted to shout, "Fuck you, Dad, I'll be down when I damn please." Instead, he called out, "Just getting dressed. Be down in a minute." Then he closed his bedroom door with the force just short of a slam.

He walked to his bedroom window, pulled down his underwear, and dropped them to the floor. He flicked them away with his foot. He was late to leave for school, but Carly would be walking by any moment. Last chance to see her on her morning walk to school. He reached down and held himself. He started to stiffen.

Where are you? Where are you?

He cranked his neck to look as far down the street. There she was. There was Carly.

​Time to get serious. He closed his eyes.

John called it spanking the monkey, but that seemed strange to Gilbert because the motion wasn’t spanking and his dick didn’t look like a monkey. Gilbert thought tossing dice would be more appropriate. And, he figured, if he ever went to Las Vegas he might be pretty damn good at a craps table.

I'm going to melt into you. Let our thoughts drift together, feathers on a wayward breeze. Let our bodies become one, moving in rythm. Circumstance may keep us apart. But for now, let time stand still, let the night fall upon us. Let's disappear to anywhere. and when the dawn breaks and the sun comes up, we'll face the day. And all it's conplications. Whisper your thoughts. Let desire ride along. I've waited a lifetime for you, and I'll wait another if we're true. Because time means nothing, when you'll be there at the end. Time means nothing if I can be with you once again.

A breeze whisked through the small space under the opened window. Seven floors below, taxis honked and cars rushed down the busy Manhattan avenue; the sounds of a city enjoying the end of late October. A fading sun glazed her tanned skin the kind of color you'd see a star radiate in a 1930s matinee movie, leaving her seeming to be a Egyptian princess stepping into a panoramic set along the Nile. He shivered, partially from the cool pressing against his skin, but more because her outstretched hands, and fingers, were lingering along his waist. Teasing to drift lower. Or dance along the curve of his taut abdomen towards his buttocks. She offered him a Mona Lisa smile--soft, intriguing, almost imperceptible. His hands, strong and rugged, held her at her hips. She knew she wasn't going anywhere. She didn't want to go anywhere. A stray flicker of sunlight make her green eyes sparkle. She moved closer, the heat from her body pushing away any further chill. 

It's a lonely walk down Desperation Street. In the shadow of the street lights, flesh pistons move in rhythm, and police sirens flash red and white. Shrug your jacket collar high, and let your hands be ready to get busy, stand tall, keep your eyes darting side to side. Glass shatters around the corner, voices rage then fade away, you never feel more alive then when death greets for your final day. Cigarette embers stare from the darkness, a plume of smoke lingers. Never slow down, never look back.

As his face neared her, a waft of the most delicious scent filled his head. It is sweet, yet subtle, and reminded him, oddly, of a late-August morning after a lawn had been mowed and it's signaling of high school football practice. "I love your perfume," he said. She gave him a devilish grin. "It's something special. Just for tonight."

She had soft Eastern Euopean features, bright eyes, rounded cheekbones and a lythe quality to her face that made her seem modelish, but wearing her age well.

For the second round, she held up the oyster shell before him, then brought it to his lips. "Ready?" "I'm wearing a Canali." "Then don't spill." She tilted the shell just as he opened his mouth wide and brushed a spot of lemon juice off his chin with her thumb.

It's a classic moment. Apollonia steps into the frame and turns her face, but stops abruptly as she sees Michael staring at her--mouth slightly open, eyes piercing, as if no one and nothing else exists in the world at that moment. He steps towards her. But she quickly turns to return to the group of Sicilian women and children she had been with. Before walking away, she offers him a last glance, letting him know she is intrigued.

The woman pulled her coat tight to her body, then nestled under his outstretched arm. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head, breathing in her scent, feeling her hair against his skin.

As my Millburn High contemporaries may remember, on September 27, 1980, Steve Cahn died in a motorcycle accident. Some of us lost a best friend; our soccer team lost a teammate; our junior year lost a classmate. For me, the effect of Steven's death could not be overstated. While I'd had a grandfather and an uncle pass a year or so earlier, Steven's death was a seminal moment. From that day forward, I would understand all-too-personally that life was arbitrarily unfair. That young people--kids my age--sometimes die. That my parents would not always be able to shield me from tragedy. They were painful lessons for a fifteen year old. Today, thirty-nine years later, I wonder how so much time could have passed. Those were halcyon days of my youth and, damn, did we and our friends have a good time. Steven was at the center of that. He was a special person, a loyal friend, fun-loving, physically strong, and, unfortunately, at times too much of a risk-taker. I have thought about the life he missed out on. I sometimes wonder what might have happened to our friendship (to all of our friendships) had he lived. However, grasping for answers is futile. Instead, he remains in my heart. He lives on in my memories. Surrounded by our friends, working on his moped, tools strewn about the driveway, The Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl" blaring from a cassette player. I miss you, Steven. You remain thought of, and loved, by me and others. I trust you are at peace.

Most of us, of a certain age, grew up listening to all the great music of the sixties, seventies and early eighties, yet had that one band that was "yours" -- the one whose music you'd play until the vinyl became scratched or the cassette tape tangled, whose lyrics captured every bit of the teen angst and confusion you were enduring, whose band members had the inimitable rock & roll personas that you coveted and envied. For me, that band was The Cars. In the glorious summer of '79, between ninth and tenth grade, me, Steven Cahn, Chuck, Kenny, Preston, and others worked on mopeds in Steven's driveway, living for the moment and in the moment, blithely ensconced in that teenage bubble where every issue's importance was outsized, monumental, and all-encompassing -- especially if it had anything to do with who-liked-whom among the girls we hung out with. And we listened to The Cars first album endlessly. Until I wanted to be either lead singer Benjamin Orr or Ric Ocasek, burn guitar licks like Elliott Easton, be as oddly memorable a keyboardist as Greg Hawkes, or drum as well as David Robinson. Some fifteen years later, after I had finished grad school in Los Angeles, my mother came to visit. I thought it would be a treat to take her to Spago's, a restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck, which sat on the Sunset Strip and was as famous for its chef as it was for its celebrity guests. That evening, Puck came out from the kitchen to greet every table, engaging in a brief but wonderful conversation with my mother, which sent her over the moon. A little later, I had my own celebrity sighting that still puts a smile on my face. At one point, Ric Ocasek and his super model wife Paulina Porizkova entered Spago's. Ric, at six-foot-four and as thin and uniquely-configured as you'd imagine, and Paulina, just short of six-foot and impossibly gorgeous, were easily the most unusual couple I've ever seen. They were promptly escorted towards the far side of the room by the maître d'. In LA's most famous restaurant, where celebrity sightings were ubiquitous and where most dinner guests themselves were either wealthy, famous, or in the entertainment industry, a hush came over the room and EVERY person stopped eating and talking to simply watch Ric and Paulina as they wound their way among the tables to their seats. Afterward, I tried to explain to my mother who they were, but she was still beaming from meeting Wolfgang Puck. For me, it was a moment I'll never forget. RIP Ric Ocasek & Benjamin Orr.

​I feel like a victim on that tv show, Monsters Inside Me. I'd call you a parasite, but that's so unkind. At least parasites, don't try to rob you blind. Itchy skin, scatchin' my skin, you kiss my cheek, but I don't know where your lips been. You give me a whisper and a hug, my skin starts to crawl, like I've contracted some kinda bug. You flit and flutter around, like some kinda insect. Spreading your pollen, leavin' my life wrecked. Can't ever shake you, you're a permanent flu. Seems the only answer. Is to start my life new. God, I'm tryin' to shake you. Time to do what I gotta do.

Whispering, on my cheek,
You give me a kiss.
I claw at my skin.
'cause of your wandering lips.

While is it I'm always staring out a window? Why don't a feel the rush of a breeze? Why are sounds always muffled. Why is the glass getting harder to look through?

Quaking of the battlefield,
A rumble in the distance.
Spitting a piercing shell,
Gun recoils in an instant.