Rocking the table while he's operating

Up and writing in the middle of the night with Eminem as the soundtrack. A little more of the Noir piece:

“Hey,” he says again, and this time there is the slightest quaver of expectation in his voice. “How’s it going, beautiful? Got a minute?”

Sometimes I feel like all I have is time. Telling him this may be a bad idea.

“Sure,” I say.

Freeze this picture: two people standing on the street in the middle of downtown Berkeley, California. If you’ve been here, I hardly need to describe it to you. For the uninitiated, you need a little bit of context. Usually downtowns are the spines of a society. In the case of Berkeley, however, it’s more like the funny bone.

Ratty. Tatty. Bohemian, if you’re trying to sell something. I like to be a little direct: shithole. If I don’t have to come here, I don’t. Fact is, though, I have to a whole lot. That’s what happens when you live in central Berkeley and work in San Francisco. Eventually you wind up climbing on BART with the rest of the people trying to ignore what goes on around here.

“I got a story to tell you,” he says. They all have stories. It’s the currency of the street.

I’m not down to listen. I didn’t sleep last night. First off, Jeremy and his great disappearing act. Scares the hell out of me, if you want the God’s honest. Pushing 45 and still no real romantic commitments, just a series of stupid hookups that sometimes verge on more serious but never get all the way there. Then there’s Romeo. Cat makes it to nearly 22 years old and you know you’re going to find yourself stuffing pills down his gullet every day whether he likes it or not, but to consider the alternative is nothing I can make myself do.