blurring_the_edges_51_some_avenues_of_sin birdmad Thanksgiving comes and goes, you let it slip to one of your sisters that while your relationship with Teri is enjoyable, it isn't all that likely to go anywhere beyond it's current point because of the fact that Teri is quite gay. The surprised look on your sister's face buys you a few minutes of amusement, and since you aren't totally sure about the rest of the family's likely reaction, you ask her to keep it under her hat, which she agrees to. You invited Teri over for Thanksgiving with your family, but she got a last-second invite, replete with plane ticket, to spend the holiday with a more concilliatory branch of her own family that she couldn't pass up. The week ends on a reasonably high note (in more ways than one) when you hook up with a girl you've seen around at the Atomic Cafe, which is where you've started going now that The Grind has turned into a trendy top-40 waste-of-time meat-market called Empire. Neither the attitude or the "dress-to-kill" vibe of the place impress you, in fact, hving spernt so much time in Scottsdale in the last five years, you are frankly sort of sick of that whole sort of scene. Especially since you think the phrase "dress to kill" is such a misnomer when applied to outfits that in the case of both ladies and gentlemen wouldn't stand up to any significant outburst of violence by the wearer. Taking a breather from what passes for dancing on your part in a corner of the Atomic Cafe, as Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" rips through the dance floor, you chance upon Kristin, who shares a spark of recognition from casual meetings at The Grind. You buy her a drink and hang out for a while, making mostly meaningless conversation about music and the gereral suckiness that is Empire. You both realize that conversation is of only the most marginal relevance in this situation and she makes the opening gambit. You are wondering, being aware of your own aesthetic weaknesses, what her interest in you is, considering that she's attractive enough to entice ninety percent of the straight guys in the place to do, potentially whatever the hell she wantsd them to. Not wanting to jinx the situation, you decide that it is better not to ask and just to run with it. It's a strategy that pays off nicely by the time the night is over, with the exception of the bite-marks she left in your shoulders after the two of you decide that a picnic table deep in the middle of a public park a few blocks away is a perfect place to play. After all, what the hell, it was well past 1:00 AM and it's not like there was too much chance of getting caught. Even though it was chilly outside, you find you are drenched in sweat. After the two of you re-arrange your clothing and your composure, you spend some time sitting in the swings sharing a joint Feeling a little bit hazy and very malleable, you go against your better judgement when she asks you to drive her back to her car. When you get back to the Cafe parking lot and drop her at her car, you are surprised to hear her say "Let's do that again tonight." You are suprised, but you agree without any hesitation. You pick up a couple of gigantic burritos on the way home, grateful for the concept of the 24-hour drive-thru, and when you get home, It comes as a huge surprise that your late arrival finds no-one in the house awake, for once. (more later) 040330 ... birdmad Settling in to your room, you eat your burritos and down the giat soda in the styrofoam cup. When you wake up it is surprisingly early, but you seem to have snapped into consciousness without any outisde provocation, you do that sometimes, especially when trying to sleep through the early morning. You find your mom reading the paper in the kitchen and you get a glass of orange juice. You notice a strange smell, faint and indiscernible in nature, but decidedly unpleasant. You look at the newspaper to see if it isn't the weird smell that occasionaqlly comes off the newsprint, you take a focused, self-aware whiff to see if you don't still have the phereomonal evidence of recent fucking emanating from your pores, but since it was chilly and you were outside, you dismiss that possibility. You take care of a couple of chores around the house, raking up the crunchy brown leaves that have fallen finished falling off of the mulberry tree in the front yard, after that, you clean the dusty buildup of of the tops of the ceiling fan blades, surprised at how quicklly it has built up. You're in the desert, Alex, remember? Its ALWAYS dusty around here. In what you consider to be a lucky break, yuour oldes sister clls up and asks your mom if she'd like to stay the night at her house so that your sister can do mom's hair and they can babysit your great-neice, now all of seven weeks old, which means they will go to church. Your other sister takes your nephew to the movies and the mall and lets him stay the night with her and you find yourself not having to worry about going to church in the morning. After all, whaever belief you might have had has been undercut by both the things you've watched your mom going through and your own inability to bother with the concept of faith anymore. You are going through the motions anymore when you do go, and if there is a god, you can be certain that is likely to be pissing him off even more than your crime and debauchery have. With everything done, you catch an early afternoon nap and head out to the Cine Capri to catch an evening show before heading for thh Atomic Cafe again, getting wired up on large quantities of Mountain Dew and some brutally nasty herbal drink in a skinny black can. When Kristin shows up, you are more than ready to indulge yet again (more later) 040511 ... birdmad Most of the night passes in an enjoyable way, and for the sake of doing something different, you let Kristin talk you into closing out the evening in one of the seedy motels of Van_Buren. You know the ones, Alex. The ones that used to be kitschy tourist stops when the street was part of the main highway headed west for California but became flop-houses, "no-tell motels" and third-party whorehouses with hourly rates. Her choice in the matter seems decidedly unromantic, but then you do realize you are being rather silly pondering the notion of romance in all of this, don't you? You slip the desk clerk a fifty because even though the place is a dive among dives, even the worst rat-hole motels seem to charge higher rates during the winter months when there are larger numbers of tourists and snowbirds roaming the city streets. Not diverting his eyes from his book of word-search puzzles, the clerk, a short, greying "cholo" who looks like he coud ahve come from any number of neighborhoods in this part of town, (even yours) with a visible spider-web tattoo on the curve between his right thumb and index finger and a hairstyle reminiscent of a young Elvis takes your money and hands you a key from a bin somewhere under the desk. Though the night is chilly and the office is drafty, he seems unperturbed by it in his black guayabera shirt with white stitching along the seams. He never looks up even as the next couple looking to book a room show up. The tat on his hand tells you he's done time, probably down in Florence or maybe in San Quentin or out in Lompoc, it doesn't matter where. He never looks up because he knows the value of not seeing or knowing anything whose nowledge could needlessly complicate matters. As you and Kristin head around the corner to the little cottage numered on the room key and see a scummy looking man selling somethng that is most likely a vial of crack to a worn-out looking woman in an unflattering and ridiculously skimpy outfit, you understand that sometimes being observant is overrated and that there is only questionable value to being a good witness. The room, when you enter it, smells of decades of cigarette smoke with the competing scents of bleach and room deodorizer assaulting your nostrils. Even fainter, underneath that, you are almost certain you can also smell the faint traces of sex and sweat. Kristin gives you a look you haven't seen since the last time you played with Allison, but her body language seems to suggest that she wants you to be the aggressor. It's not what you're used to, so you hesitate slightly. Playfully, she leans over the dresser and looking over her shoulder asks, bluntly, "Are you gonna stand there taking in what passesd for atmosphere around here or are you going to do something?" "Hmm..." you say, cocking an eyebrow at her. "Play rough, Alex" she says, "you look like you've got it in you." You consider replying with an entendre about putting it in her, but your blood supply is moving away from the faculties that allow even the most crude attempts at witty rejoinders and is moving toward more mission-critical areas of your body. You do your best to feign self-assuredness but even through your eagerness she can tell you still have alittle hesitation and urges you on accordingly. With her encouragement, by the time the night is through, there is not one part of the room you have not left in some disarray. By the time you are getting home, much of the neighborhood is barely beginning to get up and compose themselves in time for the nine-o'clock Mass.. Your mom won't be home until the afternoon, and you don't have to be at work until tomorrow afternoon. You tidy up the house and take a shower. You go to sleep at 9 in the morning under your favorite old quilt and replay the evening in your dreams. Over the next three weeks you see Kristin a few more times, but you both concede that while it was definitely fun, neither of you is quite what the other really wants. The Edge, playing a marathon of 80's tunes sums it up when the DJ puts on the Talking Heads "once in a lifetime" Same as it ever was Same as it ever was. Although, for once, you are fine with that. 040721 ... :) Over_and_over across_the_Universe... 040721 what's it to you? who go blather from