mmmmdcccxcvi

Stories of Previous Lives

I’m so on fire, I’m burning bridges!  Then,
with an older voice, No, Uno is not code for
anything.  It’s a card game, like Skip-bo.
And I like card games.  I also fancy creative

ice-breakers.  Bummed at the beach as
the water’s too cold to dip into.  Even a toe.
Back at the hotel there’s a tall awkward-
looking but gorgeous orange bloom that

sways back and forth in front of the low
hotel signage – it’s one of those signs carved
out of wood and then painted, like the one I 

ordered to go in front of the new building for 

the accounting firm’s office I worked for in the 

mid-1990’s.  I built a 17-station network from 

scratch with the help of a dapper gentleman 

with whom I went home one night after danc

ing at the gay nightclub in Toledo, Ohio.  He
had a snake and beautiful lips and seemed
nearly twice my height.  Later that week,
I received in my Bowling Green mailbox 

several mix-tapes with lots of Skinny Puppy 

and Nitzer Ebb songs.  There were a few 

by Depeche Mode, of course, as I’d pro

claimed my stance on their music quite

repetitively, I’m sure.  Five years or so
previous to that, I was dancing with
Tammy and her friends to many of those
industrial bangers at a goth club at the edge

of downtown Little Rock, very near where
I’d reside for a couple of years later, right
after my graduation from Hendrix.  My time
in downtown was pre-gentrification, very quiet,

creepy on weekends, about two blocks from 

the state capitol.  I remember one rainy night,
stubbornly, drunkenly walking through rain
and mud to Discovery, a fantastic gay club

owned by a former winner of the Miss U.S.A. 

drag pageant.  This, after I’d just been kicked
out of the place for falling asleep and driven 

home and dragged up the stairs into my dark

and lonely apartment by my friend Don. The 

look on Don’s face when I showed up at the 

club’s door again around four a.m. was a 

combination of humor, shock and disbelief.