The Unknown: The Red Line.
 

We had given a reading at Books and Coffee, a bookstore whose title speaks of solid integrity, and, as usual, had met some interesting people. I had a headache from the heat and dehydration of the drive and took a pill I thought was ibuprofen. In the middle of my reading I started cracking up. My knees and jaw turned to rubber and I began extemporizing what I thought was a sonnet: “When I get blown in Albuquerque / Get me a Pabst and a stick of beef jerky.”

Dirk helped me offstage amid wild applause. I remember the reading he gave seemed like a film sped up. I blinked and then it was over and they were helping me to the car. I had a copy of Wuthering Heights I had either bought or stolen or received as a gift and I wasn’t sure why.

Then we were at a bar called Two Dollar Bill’s. We were with a couple who I remember as a very large man with a beard who spoke little and had a FUCK AUTHORITY t-shirt, and a tiny woman with big hair who talked excessively. She smoked like a demon and she kept giving Scott more cigarettes. They were having Long Island Iced Teas. I think someone ordered me a beer so I’d attract less attention. The place was crowded and there was tension. Dirk and Scott and our two friends went off to throw darts, I think, and I was propped at the bar watching a game on TV. I think it was hockey. I remember a great big Budweiser clock above the bar and the minute hand was moving so quickly I could watch its progression. A chipmunk next to me engaged me in conversation. I’m not sure I spoke back or acknowledged him. It didn’t matter. He may have taken my wallet. I discovered it was missing the next morning. I woke up in the back seat of the car at dawn, my face flattened against cold glass and sunrise over the Manzano Mountains. There was the remains of a campfire and a tent and Dirk in a sleeping bag on a picnic table. I climbed out of the car and rubbed my limbs, investigating for bruises and restoring circulation. Next to Dirk was a half-finished can of Pabst which cured what little hangover I had. I walked off to find water.

I found out that the couple we had partied with, whom I had taken for bikers, were also scouts for Norton. They were very impressed by me, Dirk said; I had appeared very thoughtful, and they had signed some kind of deal with me for a book-length poem. I never found out what I had signed, but we spent the advance they sent to Marla on one great skydiving and gourmet food weekend at a resort in Tahoe. We were on the road again by noon, and had broken down by six.

 

MAP BOOKSTORES PEOPLE
sickening
decadent
hypertext
novel META
fiction
al bull
shit sort of
a doc
ument
ary corr
e
spond
ence art is
cool 
look
at art live
read
ings
CONTACT PRESS ANTHOLOGY

The Unknown at Spineless Books.

?