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 like the one I ordered
to go in front of the new building for the
accounting firm’s office 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 dancing
at the gay dance club 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 a
mix-tape 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 dance club
in downtown Little Rock, very near where
I’d reside for a couple of years later, right
after my graduation from Hendrix. It was
pre-gentrification Little Rock, very 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 night
club owned by a former winner of the drag
Miss U.S.A. pageant. This, after I’d just been
kicked out of the club and driven back home
by my friend Don. The look on Don’s face
when I showed up at the club’s door around
four a.m.
