Rent a Coma. Why Me? Borderline Truths. Dixie Tavern ReRedux. Firewood.

I’ve got a wonderful business idea.
Rent a Coma. The ultimate vacation.

You need beds, the kinds of machines that feed people and monitor their hearts and lungs and brains and you need machines that exercise the muscles.

A person comes in and pays x dollars and is given a very heavy sedative, something that sends one into a deep deep sleep. For one week.

Hooked up to the machines, taking that near death rest.

You go on your cruises, your trips to the mountains, your flights abroad, you come home tired. Not vacated. Just exhausted.

Rent a coma, the real vacation. You wake up ready for the world again.

…Typically, what a girl wants to know at first, it’s why me?
She’ll ask you that in a number of ways.
What I haven’t got a hold of, it’s what’s behind that question in all it guises.

Is it a simple search for compliment?
Is it the symptom of a type of insecurity?
Is it a manifestation of the desire to be recognized as absolutely unique?

And men, maybe I’m wrong, they don’t do they often, do they?
This is, isn’t it, more of a gender issues than a species issue?

If so, if men don’t ask that question, why don't they?

Is it because men take things for granted?

...I hear from a friend in Beirut. The assination of Hairi. The tension in that country.
Suddenly, the US is best friends with Lebanon.

If you think the US wants Syria out of Lebanon for the sake of the Lebanese, think again. The US wants Syria out of Lebanon because Syria backs the Hezbollah who have arms all along the border and can continually put pressure on Israel with them.

And why our interest in Israel, beyond the strong Israeli lobby in this country?
We need that very solid ally in the Middle East. We need a country that needs us.
We need place on which the other Arab countries will focus. A place that will keep them slightly unstable, not fully united, a continual thorn against which they will burn resources and energy.

Protecting Israel = protecting the safety of our oil.
It means keeping one foot solidly down in the Middle East.

Getting Syria out of Lebanon would be good for the Lebanese, if it can be done without sparking another civil war, just as getting Saddam out of Iraq was good for the bulk of the Iraqi people--but that doesn’t mean it’s why the US did it.

We’ve always got our best interests in mind.

Wait until they find huge oil reserves in Africa. Then we’ll really begin liberating people there, too.

…Another night at the Dixie.
I stop for drink somewhere else first. The bartender, an ex student from two years ago. She introduces me to the regulars. They have their names on little brass plaques all around the bar.

It's not fully awkward, that association seemingly so old.

Then forward, onward, not upward.

The truth is, I’m not even in the mood.
This story I keep telling you, it’s getting old even for me.

…You go here out of habit.

As if what you’ve drawn around you isn’t a cocoon.
As if you don’t want to be a butterfly.

Or maybe it is the opposite.

Maybe this is what you are.

Overly solemn either way at the Dixie Tavern.

And the woman whose husband has your name, he’s a loud man, unlike you, they’ve been to a wedding, perhaps it was a long day, for though her makeup seems in place, her hair perfect, her teeth as white as her blouse, she’s got the odor of sweat coming off of her.

It a rare thing to pick up off of a woman.
And it makes me worry that it’s not her at all but me reflected.
(Don’t let me be one of those people that sniffs himself in bars).

The smell, it comes and goes as she leans toward you and away. She owns it. You get used to it.

All this flesh, the girls who show their bellies and their shoulders, the top of the line that divides their asses.

In the right light, everything looks perfect.

You could take almost any girl in here and find her, coming out of a stream, in the deep country in which you are hiding, the deep forest meant to keep you from the law, in this Bonnie and Clyde, this Kit and Holly fantasy, almost holy in her beauty, the water on her shoulder blades, the sun coming down. The two of you against the world and what you like best about her ass is that it is hers. See her in the light, the droplets in her hair, look at the way she smiles.

Or perhaps it is an Eden; you and her imprisoned alone together, beneath the falling fruit, above the growing grass, not quite beyond the eyes of an imagined God.

In all that wild, against your primal sense of the aesthetic, you could find her just …so.

The way arranged marriages work better because people come in knowing they have to make them work. The way in the absence of choice you marry yourself to the present.

And the woman, the one with the odor, she’s got eyes the color of root beer.

There’s a girl here who resents you. And you should be resented. That old and familiar feeling of someone in a room who has something against you. The memory of the girl in LA who was rumored to have you hanging in effigy in her room. This girl at the Dixie Tavern, she positions herself with her friend by the door.

You’re tired and can talk with her or sneak out.

(Eventually, you’ll wait until boys are standing in front of those girls and glide by.
So that she’ll call you at four and on the phone call you out, Why did you just sneak out?

Not just of the pub.

In that late night, from that slumber, you’ll wake and tell her the truth. That she’s right. That it was long ago. That she deserved better.

If we lived long enough, we receive all the absolution we need).

…And the woman with the teeth and the eyes and the odor, at first you think that she and her husband, they must be swingers. That she is working you and he is hoping to be that special kind of witness.

You’ve seen those kind of transactions at the Dixie Tavern before.

And your slightly cold. The night is cold. You’re under-connected, here out of habit, a habit that is not at this moment pleasing you.

Staked out by the door is a girl that resents you.
A student from last semester has come in. At first you can’t be sure but then her two friends are staring at you and then all three come over.

It doesn’t have to be awkward but it is. The things that you bring to bear.

…That couple, it’s not some odd seduction. You realize it is just an attention thing.

He needs it on her and she needs it on her.

…You’re ready to go home long before you go.

And the ride home, that drive, you pass the gas station, see the bundles of wood for sale, want to buy one, not because you have a fireplace, not because you want some flame, but because they are for sale and to buy them, it would make you feel like you belong more.

The way in the late night, when the world is more quite, we all feel everything has gone too much asleep.