...And Stay Sweet

We treat each other so well when we're drunk, and by well and treating I mean that suddenly the things that keep us sullen and sitting on oppposite sides of the car come crumbling down and we can not I repeat can not for our individual lives remember why we ever fought, and we cling to each other in the crowd like the other one could be the livesaver we were hoping for. My hand over your hand over my hand over your hand, arms and bodies wrapped together up against the front, and I can feel it when you sing, chest reverberating and music sounding in between where we meet. This is not last night, when you left me so you could go make crack, five shifty eyed boys filing into a Plaid Pantry at five o'clock in the morning hoping for baking soda, or powder, I don't rememember. Tonight is just you and me and the shadows, baby.

Sitting downstairs before the show, stolen glasses in the basement stuffed inside your bag, we lean back in our chairs and we are, for the moment, the goddamn fucking shit. We came down waving drink tickets, already drunkish enough from the whiskey and coke (it was girl's night at the bar but your theme was the myth of the female orgasm) but the hell we'd let this slip away from us. The Mountain Goat on the right gave us the ticket, and we set it down in front of the bar keep and asked for his finest and then stole the glasses. And then I cried, but first I leaned over you in a lover's embrace pressing up close and winking while you secreted the goblets away and then. Then I sat back down and looked at you again and blinked big wide eyes and the lower lip it quivered and you said, no no darling, sweetheart, tell me what's wrong. But you were already the one that told me what was wrong, and my old tattoo plans are decimated, for instead of love, sweet love, love love love no instead of love I am having engraved on my back in a place where it hurts in deep letters that I am EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE and that's what this was all about. So I didn't answer 'cause we knew and I wasn't supposed to be the one with the fatal flaw no that was him but he feels bad. So I was up and rubbing wet mascara on your shirt. Aw, he feels bad. I am the faux pas he can't face, because he feels bad. And it wasn't her, it was never her, the whole thing was not about her as much as my personal mythology built that up into a tenet and fell down in tearful worship of the cog that broke the two backs. It was not her, it was me. And I unzipped myself as much as I could but that wasn't enough for him, and they've talked, and this is what I was. All capitals. Unavailable. Every inch of private land that was open for settlement, that wasn't enough. All I was and all I gave, was not enough. Me at my openest was not enough to match an eighteen year old and I'll be damned right here and now if I tell you why I'm crying in the basement of this shitty club in a hippy town. When you are drunk, you tell secrets, and when I am drunk, I hear them. When we are drunk, together, our worlds turn into sodden open books that we read aloud, and our mutual friends cement the deal.

The show, the show, everybody's here for the show. And the show is like a blink to me. I remember standing and the lights and the applause and then one solitary encore. I remember clutching at you when you reached back for me, and I remember singing into your shoulder when I didn't want to drown out Mr. Darnielle, and I remember clapping very loudly. He gave you so much, but on the way home I was still comforting you, rubbing my fingers through your hair as you rested the flat of your hand on my leg and swore up and down how your loyalty was broken. Palms resting hot on each other in the night air, you damned him and the dubious parentage he rode in on, and you gave them back the shirt you bought because you didn't care, didn't want it anymore. Peter tried to give your money back but you were too good for that. I'm glad I left before that stage of assholery set in, because it's always too jarring. I leaned up on a lightpole outside and made eyes at all the underage boys when they came up to network, hair cut short for summer but still hanging in their eyes, and they're oversexed and undersated, and yeah I'll check out your band when you come to town. But we got the fuck out of that town, back to the town we got the fuck out of just a few hours before. Following the big band van, then giving the fuzz the slip, doubling back on ourselves oh shit oh shit oh shit he flipped a bitch but then Mr.Oberst appears on your mix-tape and we're gonna get real fucking drunk in the moments before my driveway appears in view and Portland is home again and sooner or later we'll wish we never went or worse yet we'll wish we stayed because it seems the further away and the drunker we get (from home) the more we gravitate together and the more it tears down those walls -ha-ha- those walls we'be both got buit so high they're just toppling, toppling and I can't breathe under brick can you? So we're yelling at the top of our lungs but by the time we're home we've retreated, once more, into the four corners.