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Mick before/after "Well, actually," Mick said, looking down at the floor like a shame-faced man-child, "Its from a transvestite friend of mine." He was being unusually evasive. We'd hung out all night and been rather frank with each other. Or rather, he'd been frank with me, and I'd listened. Now when, for the second time in the night, I brought up the obvious lip-stick stain on his collar, left in the perfect form of a ruby-red kiss, he hemmed and hawed. "Make of it what you will." he said. Which is fine. I'd called him in the late afternoon, rousing him out of bed, to take him up on an offer to jam. Mick's been around the coffeeshop a lot, listened to my poems, and we'd jammed a little bit. He's a harmonica player, kind of a meaty guy with a somber cast, dark brown hair, blue eyes, ever present 2 day old scruff. He didnt know what day it was when I woke him up, but wanted to jam. He had a friend playing solo down at the coffeeshop, a metal player with serious amounts of electrical and acoustical equipment whom he'd recently converted to blues playing. I showed up an hour late, and the two pert young girls, Hillary and Kaitland were behind the counter. Hillary is a bit slow, but is attractive. She's a lot like a pet, dog or cat, that you know is really slow but well intentioned. I always have a soft spot for girls like that, if only because I think that I could still find satisfaction if she was just one of those blindly loyal girls you run across from time to time. Like the only thing she'd ever figured out was that she wanted you, and would stay by her guy until she died. Nothing complicated about it at all. Who knows. I complimented her on matching her gum to her blouse, both aqua, and they giggled and twittered, but had nothing to say. I joined mick and aaron on the sidewalk in the early evening air, balmy and unafraid. We exchanged niceties, and I let aaron know that he could refuse to jam, that I didnt want to impose on his thing. "There's no one in there, dude. Its totally empty. Dont worry about it." he said. And we jammed a bit. The two girls orbited around us all night, being silly, being girls, doing what they could to get attention. It was cute and pretty, like fireflies. We connected ok, adjourned and went inside to jam. And then it was magical. We played a breadth of music, and really got on when I picked up my twelve string and started playing slide in a blues rythym. It was incredible, the rapport. I was devoid of self, flowing. It felt like I was flying, except in my mind. And I played well, losing all recognition of time. Mick and Aaron started out trading licks with sensitivity, me being able to fire up the action or slow it by the passion that flowed through me in jolts, like electricity. Then one would quit and go out and have a smoke, come back, start playing, and then the other would drop out, go outside and have a smoke, come back in and pick up again. And I stayed the whole time, just playing, like a conduit. I felt resonate and beautiful, like a well struck chime. It ended to applause througought the shop. It had gone from zero to largely filled. We played some more, some nirvana and stuff. I talked to Kaitland a little bit. As it came out throughout the evening, she'd been "stood up" by a guy she liked, had called once and told her that she would be at the shop. She wore nice panties and a slut top to greet him, and, of course, the guy had no idea she liked him and didnt show. She, of course, thought it impossible that he didnt know that she liked him, despite the fact that she'd never told him, nor even really complimented the guy. She waited four hours for him to show, and he never did. She pasted pictures and wrote in a scrap book while we played, and after aaron wasn't feeling it anymore, we quit, and sat around teasing her a bit to get her spirits up. My best line of the night: "You know you've really surprised a girl when you get her in bed and you find out she has granny-panties on and didnt shave her legs." "Yeah, its like 'IM A STUD!'" andrew said, a sharp kid who's heard me play and read. (people are starting to remember my reads, as well as specific poems, and bringing them up to me at much later intervals. I find it very complimentary) Which is true. A guy would typically think he crossed that threshold when he has a girl in several trite ways: in black garters and heels, for example, or anally. But the truth, if one thinks about it, is seducing a girl into bed with the granny panties and unshorn legs. Then THEN you know you finally have arrived. And not until then. And dont give me this bullshit like, "Yeah, my girlfriend is like that all the time, what's so special about that?". You either know what I mean, or you dont. Good god, Im glad Im not seventeen again. Although sometimes I get this old feeling that I cannot wait to be reborn and experience life for the first time again...the first kiss, the first jerk off, the first fuck and whatever else. The night wound down, we watched the hookers walk by, and I invited mick to go to the bar to shoot some pool, offering to buy him a beer. A beer turned into five or so. He got loquacious and started revealing more and more. Turns out that Mick is a small time coke-dealer who recently quit the trade. He was either easily plied or liked talking about himself. Started launching into this story of a crack-head that went to jail, came out, and owes him 500 dollars, and has to beat the shit out of him to get it. While this guy was in jail, Mick double-teamed his girlfriend with another guy, fucked her repeatedly, came on her face once and bought her 150 dollars in Victoria's Secret lingerie. Drama, drama, drama. And now he'd taken a drum set from the guy. "For aggravation." he'd said. "So we can use those to record, if we want." He launched into the sordid tale of "acquiring" the drumset and so on, when I finally asked him point blank about the lipstick on the collar. And NOW he got all shy. So who knows, maybe he's bi or something, and just fucks whatever gets in his way. Either way, I think I may have the beginnings of a band, or an act with a partner. Nice aggressive chemistry. Its a start.
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