[run2pee]

Just three nights from now and he will lose one of his eyes. It will come right out of his head. Which one? His left one. His left one will be gouged out with the narrow end of a beer bottle. A beer bottle sitting upright on a coffee table, his neighbor’s coffee table, and he’s going to lose his balance and pitch forward suddenly toward it, and the lip of that bottle is going to land right smack in his left eye and him coming down with all his weight. There will be blood and screaming and a lot to think about after that, but such is life, right? From start to finish, that’s really what it is sometimes. Some blood and screaming and a lot of time to think in between.

For now, Twinkletoes has both of his eyes and he’s turning on the tape recorder and grinning and he says: “There was One Good Thing we all used to do and we used to love to do it. But we forgot it somewhere. Some old playground game that’s buried in the collective memory. Was there running? We kicked a ball, that was part of it, right? The ball—or was it water guns?
“And some of us can remember bits of it and we carry these bits around everyday and we just can’t get them out of our heads. Which is how you explain someone like me. Or someone like my dad. That’s all it is, that’s all, when you boil it down deep enough. Something I can almost remember—the name of someone whose face I can see, the syllables of their name I can taste, but I just can’t...fucking say it.

“So out of frustration we did things. We protested. We went out and we got mixed up in these chemicals. Because one of the best good old things we used to do to forget was get all stirred up. You had the drinks and the other guys had the smokes and the pot or the mushrooms. And we would just get these chemicals all stirred up Betty Crocker style—the perfect proportions, the proper sprinklings, to make it feel like heaven should feel if there’s any fairness in the world. We would get all stirred, our brains full of drink and our bellies full of smoke and ash. Our arms and our legs practically flying off. Then when the other fellas wanted to go riding make a point of how you sure couldn’t drive for Godsakes. Unless they all wanted to die in a fiery crash and mushroom cloud. So one of the other ones would groan for awhile and pace (hem n haw) and then car keys would be jingling outside in the parking lot and then car doors slam and you’d be off zooming here and there. You’d hear friendly sloppy voices talking all around you. Someone talking about some psychedelic movie they heard about in the indie paper and they want to see. Or a new song, this new record that will blast you right off. Now and then someone would look at you, peer in enormous and twisted across the fisheye lens of the world. They would look and see your upper lip curl your left knee raise up slowly slowly slowly—then snap back down again. They would say “Man…are you OK then?” And you would just roll your head away and look out the window. And all of a sudden your buddy’s piloting a space ship. A lonely warm shuttle in the big dark empty rainy solar system. Blurry stars and murky planets streaking past. Feeling all urban. Feeling all warm with the only humans in this part of the Universe. Safe passage through space in this sailing metal box behind the gentle glow of dials, buttons, colored stacks of lines on the display that climb or shrink to the music which sounds like your limbs growing and stretching—out through the ceiling and floor of the car like it was wet paper—your shins stretched out and your feet dragging against the concrete, high-fiving trees, light poles, road signs. Then a waitress is asking you what to drink and someone says for you the name of your favorite tropical drink the one you have when you are at the sea. Everyone laughs and she looks at you and you nod. So you’re crunching into something for a minute and gulping down salty stinging oceans. Part of you is in Mexico where you can feel the waves up against you. Then the waves are overtaking you, up over your neck. A little bit unpleasant. But this doesn’t last too long because somehow we wake up in our beds on top of the sheets in our clothes and it’s still 2:00 am so we sit up and smoke something and lie back flat and listen to records until the sun comes up.