Joey Cloudy online

Now That Is A Real Gentle Man

It is trying to rain again and I am trying to catch the bus to see you. 

I ride the metal beast drowning in the cacophonous roar of vapid  

Conversationalist ignoring the hostile little faces of the tribe  

As we all ride from Westside lead poisoned slums to the familiar

debris strewn streets of the Eastside to see you again today.  

I knock on the door, hear your footsteps across the hardwood floor, 

And you open it and smile discreetly and hug me with some lingering  

sadness. We take off  after some discussion about where to find the best coffee.

And  then where to find the best coffee on the East side   

Finally, to the best coffee we can afford.

  

The cool drizzle turns into a light rain while I wait for you  

To find your shoes and coat.  We are both wearing black  

Again and I have on my aging leather biker jacket, the same one I’ve been  

Wearing for the 10 or 12 years that we have known each other.   

You are wearing your priest frock and I pick up the black umbrella with the white  

Polka dots. The little umbrella that I left outside, on the porch upside down to drip dry, 

Not wanting to wet the floor in your house. 

 

We head north up lower Greenville walking on the wet cement of the rain slickened sidewalks

with its jagged chunks rising up as if some tectonic farce had shoved it up,

as if Lucifer were shooting the finger at the heavens.

We step over the hunks of cracked concrete slabs and around most of the holes,

like booby traps filled with rusty water,

concealing the steel rebar pongee sticks in the brackish puddles.

We splash on passing the closed shops plate glass windows,

and sleeping neon signs of the bars, tattoo shop, liquor stores and restaurants,

see the remains of the burned out hollow of buildings across the street.

We talk about men, and women and the truth about us men

and she knows that I want her

want to fuck her but

not until she’s ready and right now she is not.

So, we are getting to know each other all over again

and who we are and what we’ve each been

doing with our selves since we last hung out. 

Trying to light a smoldering fire

with our breath.

We talk about books and movies and I confess to her

that I have been playing dungeons and dragons

online, the conversation can’t go any further downhill than this I realize

and we laugh because now I sound like her old lover and my old friend. 

Before the day is over, I will say something that will make her cry

over coffee at Café Brazil as we drink outside

under the awning away from the uptown snobs

and enjoy our coffee and each other on the empty patio.   

We walk south down Greenville and decide as we walk

that we should eat at the Gold Rush Café on Skillman near the bookstore. 

We both laugh feeling a little silly for not thinking

of the Gold Rush in the first place. 

Then from the parking lot of the 7-11

Greenville Ave and Richmond I light a menthol

staring at the window of New Big Wongs

we start walking east on Richmond in the steady rain

towards the bookstore Paperbacks Plus. 

We cross Matilda where almost 10 years ago you were hit by a SUV,

driven by a rich woman, while pushing your baby across the street

in his stroller. She gave you 500 dollars and you said that she felt bad

but really she felt good, the courts would have given you a hundred times

that, and she knew that, but you didn’t. 

I tell you that you are bewtiful

and you say that it hasn’t ever gotten you anything in your life.

And I tell you that it was the reason that I first approached you

in class all of those years ago, it was because of how you looked. 

It was no consolation, but it was the truth. 

Now we are in the Gold Rush on a Sunday afternoon.  It is not too crowded

and we find our way to a crimson booth in the corner next to the window.

Where we continue our private conversation in public. 

You order the Spanish omelet and give me the sausage. 

I order the cheeseburger, fries, and coffee.  You laugh

at the amount of sugar that I put in my coffee

and you of course do not use sugar anymore. 

It is the ghost of what we both were that we are chasing isn’t it? 

We have both lost ourselves in another

and now that the other is gone,

we do not know who we are anymore. 

We made so many changes to ourselves

to accommodate the other

that now, a decade later

we are lost to ourselves

but not to each other. 

You remember me and

I remember you.

 

That is why we are walking across the street to the bookstore

to use the phone and contact a friend who has some good weed

and will smoke us out. 

But, it’s a mile to her apartment and it is a steady rain still.

You have your back pack instead of a purse

and I feel the shadow of myself gliding around behind my dark eyes. 

We both know that if we slide across each other

we can shed the dark shroud of a lost decade like a serpent’s skin. 

“Jizzus’ I might as we’ll go home, watch a porn, jack off, and go to sleep.” 

And this amuses you later when I explain that even though I have a soft

spoken voice it is in an odd key that carries across noisy restaurants

and that everyone in the place heard me say this

as they drank their cheap diner coffee and ate their pancakes. 

In the bookstore, I speak to Val for the first time in several months

since I moved out of the duplex next door. 

Buy a copy of the first comic I ever let you read

“Kill Your Boyfriend” and you confess,

that for whatever reason, you never read it.

And that while you love the writer (Grant Morrison)

you somehow missed this one

and this causes me to have to adjust

my memories of you and me then. 

We walk the wet mile to Dez and Swans apartment

and they get us high on good weed. Then, after you get too high

to function around people, we head back out into the rain. 

It’s become a heavy down pour now. And you are shivering,

the linen priest frock soaked.  So, I try to give you the umbrella

but you are too cold to hold it, keep your hands in your pockets

and I walk beside you with the small black umbrella with white dots

the size of a golf ball on it, holding it up over you

so you can stay out of the real rain now. 

Nothing romantic about this just too penniless people waking in the rain. 

It’s another mile in a half back to her house the gods know

this is the perfect time to let it rain for real

as we walk up Swiss avenue across to Live Oak

then cut down some back streets whose names I forget

until we come out at Ross onto lowest Greenville Ave. 

I am holding the umbrella up over you carful to keep it at the right angle

to keep you dry enough and not have the water draining off

from streaming into your face. 

I am walking beside you just holding it out there

but after a while my arm begins to ache

so I shift it from my left to my right as we walk

now the wind is picking up a bit

and it is just plain fucking cold and wet out here in this shit. 

The right arm is burning now and after a few more times switching hands

I decide to rest my hand on your shoulder as we walk.

  Only pinky finger caressing the shoulder while the rest held the umbrella. 

It is better now that my arm isn’t just stretched out into mid air

with the umbrella. 

I think of a Clockwork Orange and sing a little as we walk. 

I’m singing in the rain kick, kick,

I’m singing in the rain.  Kick kick

What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again.

And I am, and my arms are burning but we are almost there,

less than half a mile to your house. 

Even with my hand on her shoulder it’s just heavy as the world

and it’s only a cheap little umbrella,  I pull her next to me

wrap my arm around her shoulder

and now we are lock stepped and marching

north once more up Greenville in the rain. 

I make a joke about Driving Miss Daisy

to distract her and myself from the cold and

the burning pain in my arms it’s easier to keep the umbrella

over her this way and oddly intimate too. 

I keep it over her as we walk

and I face the rain in my leather and dreads. 

I feel like a knight, not an English knight but a gothic knight. 

A Visigoth I say laughing at my own Shakespearean reference

a joke that is lost on her

or anyone not knowing Titus Andronicus. 

You are a Goth.

No, not really, I just look good in black, more of a DIY

punk funk kind of a guy. 

And more laughter.  Almost there.

I can see the verdant lot of the nursery full of plants, just one more block.

We are laughing and making little jokes as we walk

passing several tattoo shop employees standing on the sidewalk

huddled together under the skinny viridian green awning

smoking Marlboro Reds. 

One of the guys says “Now, that’s a real gentleman.” 

And we both smile and keep walking in the cold rain.  

  

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