Too Late For Words

a fading, gibbous moon

holding stubbornly to its grasp on the sky

as if daring the sun

to rise any higher

holding on

like i cling to my memories

another time and place

a fault line paradigm

no use for a thin dime

too late for words

too early to start drinking

Midnight Cowboy

I never cared for the taste of strong liquor until the day Lorna introduced me to the aqua vitae.

She of the exquisite face and form.

She with hair the color of burnished copper catching the reflection of the setting sun.

She of the jade-green eyes...jaded.

Gone now.

Long gone.

Good and gone.

But if it’s good, why do I feel so bad?

By, "introduced," I mean to say that she was the cause of my foray into the nether regions of the liquorous palliative.

Although, I dare say that given the speed with which I hit the skids—one of her kinder descriptives of my, shall we say, unfortunate situation—one could argue a certain inevitability at work.

Thirty-eight last month!

I’m thirty-eight, and everyone I know thinks I look ten years older.

No, strike that.

Everyone I know who will be honest thinks I look a good fifteen years older than that!

The bar is kind of quiet tonight.

It’s funny, you know, but everyone in here is looking for something, even if it’s just a place where you can escape inside a bottle; even if only for a little while.

The jukebox squawks out a tired, old tune.

A tired, old tune that, to this day can still tear my heart out.

I hate it that she still has that power over me.

You probably wonder why she left, me being the prize catch that I am.

It’s simple, really, she was beautiful and headed for an amazing career in film, while I, well, can we just say that I’m not beautiful, and leave it at that?

That skinny woman sitting at the back table keeps looking over at me. If you want to know the truth, she looks over at me about every ten seconds.

I wonder if she expects me to go over and stand there while she pretends interest long enough to get a drink out of me? Or whatever.

Not tonight, sweetie.

“You want another round?” this from Ralphie, the bartender, apparently, my new best friend.

With a slight motion of my hand, I indicate that he should keep them coming.

It occurs to me that I sit at the end of the bar every night, which is fitting because, to be completely honest with you, I’m at the end of my rope.

“The Midnight Cowboy is having another round!” I shout out, apropos of nothing or anyone.

If I keep this up, it will definitely be “last call” for the Midnight Cowboy.

Not that anyone would care one way or another.

That’s what they call me around here, you know.

The Midnight Cowboy.

I’m really drunk.

It’s a good thing I lost my license...no, really, because if I hadn’t, I know for sure I’d try to drive home...probably with the skinny chick in tow.

No...come to think of it, I’m not quite that drunk, although ten minutes ago I tried to buy a drink for my reflection in the mirror on the way to the head.

I turned me down, of course.

That was funny...man, that was really, really funny.

I mean, wasn’t that funny?

Against my better judgment, I dig my iPhone out of my pocket, spilling close to a hundred dollars in loose bills on the filthy, sticky floor, scroll to Lorna’s name and proceed to dial her up.

She isn’t home, of course.

I may be drunk, but I’m not crazy!

I just wanted to hear her voice on the answering machine.

Yes, she still has one of those.

“Hey, cowboy,” says a husky, feminine voice behind me. “Want some company? You look like you want some company. I can usually tell the guys who want some company.”

I turn to dismiss the unwelcome intruder...and look right into those jade-green eyes.

“Lorna?” I manage to croak out before the tears blurred my eyes. “Lorna, I...”

“Shhh,” she said, while wrapping her arms around me.

“You really smell good,” I said after breathing in her oh-so-familiar scent.

“Well, you don’t,” she said with a soft laugh. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

I open my mouth to utter the first of about a billion questions, but she just covered it with her hand and said, “We’ll just take it slow, all right?”

I was walking with her toward the exit; unsteadily, but walking nonetheless.

I waved what I believed to be a final good-bye to my reflection as we passed the mirror and walked out into a night that was much warmer than I had remembered.

Conversations With Eddie

 Preview From Snapshots At St. Arbuck's Vol 2

"It's been awhile." This from Eddie as we sat on the patio of St. Arbuck's, sipping our brews and enjoying the brief period of time that exists between days when there is a thirty mph wind and one hundred-ten degree temperatures, and days where there is a thirty mph wind and fifty degree temperatures.

It's normally called "October," but this year it started a week early.

"Yes, it has," I agreed. "I feel like I haven't seen you for a month."

"Six weeks," he corrected, tipping his chair and balancing on the back legs.

"No! That long?"

"Yeah, Jack. And don't forget, I was the one who had to call you or else we wouldn't be here."

"You did not!”

"Did too!" he wrinkled his brow. "Matter of fact, if I didn't call you on a regular basis, we'd never get together."

"What are you talking about?" I stammered. "I call you!"

"Oh? When?"

"Well, I called you..." I paused because suddenly I couldn't remember. "...you know, that time."

"That time? That's it? That's the best you can come up with?"

"Give me a minute," I stalled, hoping to buy some time.

"Dude, if you got to think that hard, then you have already made my point for me."

All right...he had me, but I had a secret weapon.

I got it from my wife.

She pulls it out during arguments such as this and I am helpless, yea, all men bow in helpless surrender before its power.

I felt the power rise as the word formed on my lips. "So?"

He rocked back in his chair as if he'd been smacked in the face.

"What did you just say?"

"I said, 'So?'"

He stared at me in a blank-faced stupor for about ten seconds before saying, "Oh no you did not."

"Yes, I did."

"Dude..." he said, stretching it out, the tiny vocal tremor at the end betraying his surfer roots. "Oh, dude..."

I smiled triumphantly.

He shook his head slowly. "I can't believe you actually stooped to use that on me. Me!"

"I don't see what the big deal is."

"You don't see what the big deal is?"

Eddie has a habit of repeating everything you say when he starts getting a little worked up.

"No, I don't."

"You don't?"

"You know, if you're going to repeat everything I say, we're going to be here a long time."

He threw his hands up in the air and let his chair come forward with a bang.

"You're not supposed to say things like that."

"And why not?"

"Because, it's not...it's not, well, manly."

I laughed sharply.

"That's silly."

"For the record, saying 'silly,' isn't real manly either."

I wadded up the bag in which my chocolate chip banana coffee cake had come and arced it toward the waste basket where it fell cleanly through the opening.

"How about that?" I said petulantly. "Is that manly?"

"You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

"You know...why it's a problem," he continued quickly. "You wanna' know why it's a problem?"

"Is there anything I can do to stop you from telling me?"

"No! Now listen to me. If we—guys that is—start resorting to girl strategies in order to win arguments, our entire gender will be set back centuries in our evolution."

"I thought you didn't believe in evolution."

He rolled his eyes and let his head fall backward with his mouth hanging open.

"I give up."

"You two arguing again?" The friendly, albeit nosy store manager appeared at our table.

"No!" we said in unison.

With a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" motion of her elbow, she moved on to clean another table.

I looked at Eddie, "I have no idea what we were talking about."

"Now that's more like it! That right there is a manly thing to say."

"I'm not sure I..."

"Yeah, man. When the little woman is in the heat of the moment, you pull that out and, bam! Argument over."

The realization of how profound this really was spread over me like warm butter on a sticky-bun as we fist-bumped across the table.

"Isn't communication great?"

One Fine Day

I have a theory—any phone call before six o’clock AM can’t possibly be good news. I received such a call on the morning of May 1, 2009. On the other end of the line was Chip Lightman, Danny Gans’ good friend and manager of eighteen years.

Chip said, “RG, I have something to tell you and I didn’t want you to see it on the news.”

Immediately several images and thoughts battled for preeminence in my mind, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

“Danny died in his sleep.”

Suddenly the air had been sucked out of the room and I felt as if my body had been transported onto one of those old Tilt-a-Wheel carnival rides. Vertigo kicked in, a total loss of spatial reference.

To be honest with you, I’m not sure what I said next but I remember very clearly what Chip said.

“Danny really cared about you, RG,” a fact of which I was well aware, but it was good to hear it anyway.

We chatted for a few more minutes before he had to end the call, as there were dozens of people to notify about the death and a limited amount of time in which to beat the news reports. After he hung up I must confess that I fell completely apart. Explaining to my worried spouse what had happened came in short bursts, as I was unable to control the emotion longer than a few seconds at a time.

The whole thing was so surreal we had to turn on the news just to see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears that our dear friend had, indeed, passed away.

Gone.

He was gone.

How was that even possible? We had talked the day before about getting together that very afternoon, and now...

It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can wake up thinking that it’s just another day—just another in a long string of fine days only to learn that it is anything but.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur as we tried vainly to make sense of the tragedy. Details were spotty and mainly speculative.

“What now?” my wife asked, her red-rimmed eyes a mirror of my own.

What now, indeed? It was a question certain to be on the lips of family, friends, band members and crew who were suddenly unemployed, business associates. It would be a long, long while before any of us found a suitable answer.

I had the uncommon privilege of being Danny’s friend for a little over twelve years. During that time we had many, many conversations about his life, his career, his faith, his passions, the joys and pain and his singular focus on being the best entertainer the world had ever known.

Mainly, though, it was just two friends talking over a set of bench presses at the gym, an afternoon coffee at Starbucks or lunch at one of his favorite restaurants.

Given his fondness for interjecting one of his patented vocal impressions into our talks, I used to tease him about it feeling like I was having a conversation with, “two hundred people.”

It has been said that we are born at sunrise and we die at sunset, and in between we spend our days and years chasing daylight. Danny Gans pursued and caught the sun, swallowing it whole and turning it outward to an adoring public who basked in its light for a season...a season foreshortened by his untimely death.

I miss you, my brother, my friend.

Barkley

“Barkley, no! No! Come here right this second!”

The woman’s strident voice cut through the ambient sound of passing cars, reaching our ears as we sat on the patio of St. Arbuck’s.

It was one of those rare Las Vegas spring mornings about which you’ve heard me speak several times before: Temperature...a balmy seventy degrees; wind...non-existent.

We only get a handful of those mornings each year so my wife and I have dedicated ourselves to a fierce pursuit of enjoying the heck out of each one that comes along.

Barkley turned out to be a yellow Labrador Retriever whose owner, a distraught woman of uncertain age, had lost her grip on the leash and was trying, with little success, to coax him away from his current quest—the tracking down of a delectable scent.

From where we sat, Barkley’s scent trail led directly away from his owner and toward a park across the street.

It was the “across the street” part that, no doubt, had the woman concerned, for it was a quite busy street.

“Barkley! Come here! Here!” she shouted.

Nothing.

Glancing at the onrushing block of cars just released from waiting at a stoplight up the road a ways, and then at her dog’s single-minded obsession with whatever he was tracking, she cupped both hands around her mouth and screamed, “Barkley! Barkley! I’m not going to call you again!”

My wife and I gave each other a wink-wink, nudge-nudge look, knowing full well that the anxious dog owner would, indeed, call him again, because that’s what parents and dog owners do.

I’m pretty sure Barkley knew it as well, for he kept on going, his trail leading him ever closer to the street.

“Barkley!” she wailed.

For reasons unknown to anyone but himself, Barkley suddenly turned and bounded back toward his owner, his doggy face bearing an expression that said, “Aw, I was only kiddin’!”

“Oh, you’re a good b...” she started to say only to watch the spirited canine scamper past her position and commence frolicking around the parking area, dragging the leash behind him.

While safe by comparison, there were still plenty of ways an untended dog could be injured...especially one as bold and full of life as Barkley.

By then she had apparently “had it,” so to speak, and did something that I still have trouble believing, and I was there to see it.

“Okay, Mister!” she said sternly. “Get over here right now. One...”

My wife looked at me in stunned disbelief. “Oh, no she didn’t.”

“I’m afraid so,” I replied.

“...two...”

Meanwhile, Barkley had found a couple of college-aged girls upon whom he was bestowing the full measure of his affection, and having it returned enthusiastically, by the way.

“This is your last chance,” the woman said as if addressing a misbehaving five year-old.

One of the girls noticed Barkley’s owner and asked brightly, “Is this your dog?”

“Yes!” the woman said sharply. “And he’s a bad boy!”

The two led Barkley in the direction of his owner growing progressively somber as it became apparent that she was, shall we say, put out.

They handed the leash over, remarking, “He’s such a beautiful dog,” at which point Barkley dropped to the ground, rolled over onto his back—legs splayed immodestly—and fixed his owner with a pair of deep, brown eyes that seemed to say, “Come on, mom, you know you love me.”

The woman held out for a good ten seconds before her resolve disintegrated under the onslaught of Barkley’s charm.

“Oh, you’re a good boy. Yes you are,” she said in that high-pitched, ridiculous falsetto vocalization known to dog lovers worldwide. Bending over to rub his belly she continued, “You just love to tease your mom, don’t you?”

The girl asked excitedly, “Can we get a picture with your dog?”

Acting as if it were a request she was used to hearing the woman said, “Oh, sure. He loves to have his picture taken.”

The girls handed the woman an iPhone and knelt on either side of Barkley, at which point he sat up, offered his right paw to be shaken and smiled for the camera.

After the girls had gone inside St. Arbuck’s the woman stared at Barkley with a, “What am I going to do with you,” expression, which he met by dipping his head and adopting a posture of genuine contrition.

Shaking her head, the woman dug into her purse muttering, “Now where are those keys?” and dropping the leash in the process.

Barkley took that as his cue to go bounding across the lot to greet another new arrival, holding his leash in his mouth and offering it to an elderly woman who seemed to think it was the most precious thing ever.

“Barkley!” his owner hollered. “One...”

My wife rolled her eyes and texted me a, “Just shoot me!” icon. 

Now, it could have been my overactive imagination, but I could swear that as he trotted up to his owner with the elderly lady in tow, he turned and winked at me.

I haven't Been Myself

I haven't been myself lately, and it's really getting to me as witnessed by the following:
There we were earlier this morning...my beloved and I, at our usual table in our usual Saint Arbuck’s.

She, blazing through the Monday sudoku.

Me, contentedly sipping my coffee and not so contentedly reading of the Lakers' collapse in the second half of yesterday's playoff game versus the much hated, yet secretly admired New Orleans Hornets.

To gain a more comfortable reading position, I crossed my legs.

I do that a lot.

Crossing my legs.

I don't know why.

Maybe it’s a guy thing.

Anyway, as my eyes scanned down the newspaper column an object appeared in the periphery of my vision that struck pure terror in my soul.

A slipper.

I saw a slipper.

Attached to my foot!

I glanced surreptitiously around our immediate area and said to my wife in a whisper, "Hey! I have slippers on."

She looked up from her calculations, spotted the humiliating footwear, and as a smile eased its way onto her quite lovely face said, "Why, yes you do."

"We have to go," said I.

"Why?"

"Why?" I repeated and then gestured silently at my feet.

She waved me off and said, "No one will even notice. Besides, all that means is that you are so comfortable at Saint Arbuck’s that coming here for you is just like walking into another room of the house."

I thought about that for a minute and concluded that while she was probably right, the fact remained that I, RG—a very manly man—was out in public wearing my slippers.

She glanced down at my feet, which were, by this time, tucked tightly up underneath my chair and said, "Well, at least you didn't wear the furry ones."

So I had that going for me.

Which was nice.

Conversations With Eddie

Recently Eddie and I went on a road trip to Newport Beach.

Why?

Listen, going to Newport Beach does not require a reason...okay?

Anyway...

In a cost saving measure, we decided to share a room.

Two double beds.

Not a good idea.

Not a good idea at all.

Because, well, because he, uh, snores.

I mean I do too, but in Eddie's case we're talkin'

the big leagues of snoring.

Prehistoric-dinosaur-in-the-throes-of-death snoring.

One might even say he was a bront-a-snorus.

(Sorry...I had to go for it.)

Snorr-est Whitaker.

(Okay, I'll stop.)

We went out for our nightly Saint Arbuck’s fix and then back to the room with the idea in mind of retiring early

because we had a lot to accomplish the following day.

And, besides that, I was really tired from several

nights of insomnia.

Don't ask.

So, the lights go out.

Eddie says, "Think you can go to sleep?"

"Yeah," I said, "as long as someone doesn't keep me

awake."

"Oh, I'm not planning on talking."

"That's not what I mean."

He sat up and turned on the light.

"Oh? And just what do you mean?"

I turned to face him and said, "Dude, do I have to

spell it out for you?"

He thought for a minute and then said, "You implying

that I snore?"

I laughed.

"No, I'm not implying it, I'm flat out saying it."

His face arranged itself into a familiar pout.

"You just bein' mean spirited now."

And with that, he turned out the light, laid his head on the pillow and within five minutes was snoring with great vigor.

I reached for my shaving kit, inside of which I keep

ear plugs, and to my horror...they weren't there.

Panic stitched a pattern across my sleep-starved consciousness.

What was I going to do?

I knew.

The gift shop in the hotel lobby.

It was my only hope.

I threw on a combination of clothes one would never want to be seen wearing in public.

I didn't care.

Down the elevator into the lobby where I was greeted by the oh-so-cheerful Asian night clerk.

I said, "Do you have any ear plugs?"

To which he replied with much smiling and head nodding.

Then he just stood there.

I repeated my question this time with a pronounced and dramatic snore.

Immediately his face brightened and he said something like, "Ahhhhhh."

With that he walked over to a rack of pamphlets where he selected one for the San Diego Zoo—one which featured a picture of elephants.

By then I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere with my happy host, so I simply said, "Thank-you," and went back to the room where I fantasized killing my feloniously resonating roommate.

I knew that it wasn't really an option—at least not yet—so I secured some toilet paper from the bathroom and proceeded to cram it tightly into my ears.

It did no good whatsoever!

My mind strayed to my original idea of murder.

I mean, who would blame me.

I could just see the investigating officers coming onto the scene.

I am cuffed and led downstairs into the lobby while the crime scene technicians examine the room.

Just as the arresting officer is ushering me out to a waiting squad car a stern-faced Detective Sergeant stops me, looks at my ears and says, "Oh, for cryin' out loud, Barney. Look at his ears...there's toilet paper stuffed in there. The vic was a snorer. Let him go, the bum deserved what he got."

I woke up to a sonorous serenade and our neighbor in the room next door pounding out his complaint on the adjoining wall. Maybe I could actually get away with it...

Film at eleven.