Our studio is above a liquor store. On many mornings I go in to buy a Coke Zero, my well known vice, and I am rarely alone. Usually there is a man or woman shuffling in alongside me at 8 AM, often looking like this has been a routine of decades, to purchase a fifth or a handful of nips. A man with pomade-slicked hair and ragged coat, a woman whose face was scarred like a boxer, once a man I patrolled with in the Guardian Angels who looked sheepishly away as he told me how he had fallen in recent years and paid for his clear fuel in coins. All of them ready to retreat into whatever place of solace theyve maintained with their glass friend, their brick-bat tonic. I wonder if any of them sleep under a bridge now, hiding from the wind and human eyes, thanks to that friend. Houses, families, friends, in the past. Memories that should be pleasant become shadows that inspire shame. Our grasp on this side is tenuous, the pull from theirs is frightening, even more so because there is no clear line of demarcation.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:28:18 +0000
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