I’ll tell you about Dalember later; he’s an amazing dick who deserves a cell right next to me. Let’s get through Friday and the weekend...wait I owe you a story from the day... lemme think about what happened that day, that weekend, because the next five days really just flow together... a series of CUTS with some detail i am failing again...it’s late here in...wherever the hell I am. i’m tired. i am going to sleep you get the rest of the weekend in four hours i don’t remember what happened in the real world; you remember or make it up. That’s what the government did and why I’m sitting in this damn cell

***

Friday, November 18th- Tuesday, November 22

Morning. I’m back and if not quite “rested,” at least I can keep my eyes open and peck at the keys. Sorry about the mess last night; it’s the price of doing business with a guy locked up for twenty three hours a day folks. You get some craziness. So, let's move on and try not to dwell on the past. (Ha! That was funny.)

Like I said, the next five days meld together in a haze and I don’t have a good historical event to talk about. Plague Time got worse, more people were dying and the government kept testing. I think there was a slip by an HHS assistant secretary that told us the virus was a targeted weapon, but I don’t remember who or exactly when. The line, if not the center, held for a while longer and the official position was that the virus was a natural event, like Corona. Testing went on, everything started to close again... Florida refused to shut down, I remember that…. There’s a lot of cheap, uninhabited land in the Sunshine state now, I bet. I did have a good dream though. It stands out because when you are in love with a soul sucking demon, going to a dark, dusty room and being eaten, you don’t get a whole lot of happy moments.

I was in a cabin like in the one awful sleep away camp my mother sent me too- it was a Boy Scout camp and all the troops from all over the country were in their own cabins. Me and my four friends who, of course, were the only color in the camp, were part of the “provisionals.” Provisionals was an army sounding way of saying: “You ain't got a real troop, so we’re gonna stick you and everybody else who doesn’t have a real troop in this shitty cabin.” In the dream, I was in this cabin on a bright, beautiful day with people milling around. It was a party, I think Biggie was playing, and the folks around were my friends from college, except one, Shay, the Mexican Marauder. Shay was Mexican, but never marauded a thing; it was just a cool nickname he made up and used when he got high scores on video game boards. Yea, he was marauding the flash games of our youth and went on to study Physics. Great guy; good friend. In this dream, he was standing next to me on a balcony. This balcony was from another part of my life; this was the balcony from a hotel in New Orleans. I toured the country right after I graduated undergrad, in a children's theater group. Great way to get your Equity card and see the country. Early mornings and crappy money, but a good time for Curty Curt as a young man with a wanderlust. We spent two weeks in New Orleans and this was the hotel balcony I sat on, drank Hurricanes and dreamed of living a grand southern life with a beautiful woman.

From the New Orleans balcony, I saw Her across the room and looking at me with those dark ringlets and light green eyes. I looked in her eyes and saw a twinkling, fun, light. That’s how I knew it was a dream. In real life I never looked in Her eyes. Anyway, in this dream I was looking at Her in her jeans and white tee-shirt and said, with a huge, silly smile, to Shay: “I love Her.” She was supposed to hear it, like an admission of a secret that shouldn’t be said out loud but would be powerful for Her to hear. She looked awkwardly away. CUT. I was in another place at the party. Shay and I were sitting, talking and she came to sit near us. She came to be near me. She knew I loved Her, which was not a cool thing to blurt out at a house party across the room, but she came to be near me and I knew, I knew, we were going to be together. Warm, sweet, radiant love poured out of me.

I woke with a warmth in my chest and a stupid, loving smile on my face. That slightly smirky grin of: “Damn, I am all in on this woman!” I floated around the house, my body doing all the normal things without closing the deal as usual- head to the kitchen but don’t eat, move to the desk, but don’t work or check the internet, go outside to ride but just walk. Walk, without a thick coat in Pittsburgh November. Not feeling the biting cold or minding the freezing rain. Just warm inside because I love Her so damn much. Slip on the ice going up a hill on Craig street, don’t care, don’t feel the pain. Folks helping me up, looking at me with concern cause’ I’m not dressed right and I fell; but I don’t care. I float and smile and say thank you. Keep on walking, feeling no pain. Just floating through the world on the warmth of love.

Wednesday, November 23

The day I looked in Her eyes. I had been hypnotized and terrified by those eyes that first day in class. I wanted to stay as conscious as possible and feel every amazing moment of stroking, licking, petting, fondling, squeezing, tasting, eating, sliding against her thighs, I never looked at them again. Ever. I would see her coming down one of the staircases to our nest and focus on the jeans as they coated her hips or the nipples barely visible under her tee shirt. I would get brave as she got down the steps and came downtown the hall, past the torn up old lockers, and see her clavicle and porcelain white neck with a touch of the dark ringlets brushing against them. When she came through the door and into my arms without a word spoken I would stare at her lips and the slight upturn at the sides of her mouth which formed a sly, knowing smirk. But I never went any higher. I used to sit at my grandmother's house and look through the little hole in the woodstove at the fire raging inside. The heat blasted my face but I wouldn’t move and my grandmother would yell at me to move back. But I got as close as I could. I got as close to that little hole as I could. It was loud! The raging cataclysm with the popping screams of the wood being eaten by the flames. That was Her eyes.

And she saw me see Her. I think there was a moment of fear in those eyes. I was shocked; if anyone was afraid it was me. Literally, I was terrified every time I thought of Her or went to Her or lay with Her. I was the terrified one; she was the one who brought the terror. Was the terror. The flicker of fear passed very quickly though and she looked into me radiating that pure love I felt in my camp dream. “I would leave with you right now, if you want to.” Her voice was cultured, intelligent with an almost Continental accent. A bedroom eyes voice, but a little flatter. There was a slight metallic sound to it. I wasn’t sure what she meant and my face must’ve shown it because she went on with: “You wanted to take me on a sleeper train to New Orleans. We would stay in that hotel with the balcony and the split level rooms. Let’s go.” I never told her about this idea or the balcony from the children's theater tour; we didn’t have pillow talk or post sex snuggling. We met, we fucked, I came, she got dressed and I drifted away.

“I would leave with you right now if that’s what it took to keep you.” When she said this the raging furnace in her terrifying eyes became a human feeling of sadness. I was terrified, as usual, by how she knew my thoughts and memories. But wait...she was willing to leave with me? She heard my thought and said: “I would. I would go away with you right now. Just to keep you.” I saw her love for me. I felt her like she must’ve appeared to be to the rest of the world: a stunningly beautiful young woman with sad eyes who would leave Her young college life and run away with me. Leave Her whole young life and go on a grand adventure with me. Wow. She loves me. This amazing, beautiful young woman loves me so much. She smiled, full, with teeth and her eyes were totally human. “Let’s go,” she said. I looked her in the eyes, unafraid and said: “Ok.” She wiggled off me, sat cross-legged on the filthy mattress and waited. I saw the sheet I had thrown over our mattress was covered in dust, wet stains, a fleck of blood. I saw the room around us; the windows covered by grey, shredding plastic, dust from who knows when all over and black wooden boxes with splinters poking out of every edge. How could I bring this beautiful creature to this dark, dirty hole?

“It’s not so bad. You were in it, so I never saw the dirt.” She chuckled when she said this. She touched my cheek to soothe my worried mind and said: “New Orleans will be nicer though.” A little laugh. “Yea.” I said and stood up. She stood with me and flattened out her black skirt. She’s wearing a skirt? I had never seen her in anything other than faded jeans and a white tee shirt. She looked down self consciously and brushed some dust off the skirt. “I’m still learning you.” she said, “I am playing with how you like to see me. Do you like the skirt? It makes for easy access.” She laughed at her joke. Why was she laughing so much now or was she always making jokes and I never heard them before? “I have to go home and have a last Thanksgiving with my family. Then we go to New Orleans next week, right?” We were planning, I like planning. “Yes. I have to….” I drifted off my train of thought as I saw the filthy room again and felt a scratchy itch in the crease between my balls and legs. After sex juices mixed with some dust. Not pleasant. She brought me back to the plan: “You have to get the money in order.” “Yes,” I said. “Need to see how much is liquid now and how long we can…’ She finished for me: “Live on what you have. Live in New Orleans!”

***

Riding home that evening I saw things. Things that were building over the last few weeks but I hadn’t seen because I was in my haze or jones for Her. The New Orleans plan woke something up in me. I was seeing the neighborhood again, almost like I did before I met Her. I saw the bakery, Strawberry Top, that was opened by Kisha Coleman, which she grew to three locations and a national mail-order business, closed. I heard she killed herself. I saw the lines at the supermarket with a few people I would’ve thought were white wearing masks while they waited. Didn’t they know about Plague Time only getting back folks? Did everybody know that? Did I know that- then? Maybe they were white and believed they could be infected too or maybe they got the race test and found out they had some black dots on their DNA chart. I saw the Shadyside Presbyterian Church; I would go in there and sit, just to have a quiet moment and think of my mother. The doors were closed. Through the window I could see the pastor talking to a white family, him wearing a mask and the family sitting six feet away from him. The children weren’t wearing masks but mom and dad had scarfs around their faces. The little kids looked bored. Mom and dad looked scared. Coming up on my block the dark-skinned professor who is married to an Asian woman sat in his window and watched me walk up the street. He gave me a little head bob. He had a fierce look in his eye and I thought maybe he had been giving me that acknowledgment as I came up the block every night and this was the first time I responded. Or maybe he was just mad about the world.