how_i_became_a_drunk werewolf Just wanted to sit somewhere out of the hot sun, in Chinatown, noon, on a Sunday. Feel some benediction that made me nostalgic for church, without wrecking the nostalgia by actually being church. Stepped into a bar called the Buddha lounge. Another of the multi-verses of Buddhas I didn’t know about I guess. As I was sitting, drinking a Coke, which they told me was Coke, but tasted more like Pepsi, a man came in, tall, handsome, dressed in Brooks Brothers, and carrying a suitcase, which he carried with such solemnity I wouldn’t be surprised if it contained papers that named the true assassin of JFK. He ordered something that the bartender, an old Chinese man, who had to look up from his papers, had to check on. The man knew it was there, however, and pointed to it, way up on the top. One of those old bottles, so expensive, and pure, the devil himself probably crafted it, before his fall. Michael probably took a belt before he helped the devil down. I looked at the man’s face, a bit wan, but it would pass for simply exhausted, had his eyes not seemed so sad, like swirling pools of light blue stagnant water, where mosquitoes might lay eggs at the corners. He seemed like he needed a song with some reference to travel and rest. I looked at his face, we made brief eye contact, and I silently went to the jukebox. Moonlit Mile by the Stones was available, a rarity, I can tell you, having put money into many jukeboxes since then. When it came on, I raised my Coke to the man and said cheers. The man looked at me confused, and thanked me politely, as one might a child who had happened upon some adult word that provided what must seem accidental solace. He looked at me again then, and he was just noticeably crying, and some of the stagnancy left. He finished his drink, a double, looked at me again, his eyes resettling, and left. Every time thereafter, I wanted to recreate that strange moment. I would walk in and order the purest I could afford, and wait for another man. In the time it would take a celestial object to plummet, I was soon that man, waiting for someone to put just one song on the jukebox that I would recognize. 080826 ... unhinged living_in_a_karmic_hell 080826 ... jane perhaps moonlight_mile was his funeral march too.. 090730 what's it to you? who go blather from