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"...and this is where it happened. This is where crossed stars ran into crossed lines between crossed lovers. Here beneath this tree which my great-grandfather planted and my grandfather hanged himself on. Beneath this tree which runs roots beneath us both--a wound and woven and criss-crossed world where no one escapes.

And this tree will see blood again."

-from Tequila Tree, by Phillip Harrison.
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At the foot of some bed where I just fucked some girl, I check my voicemail. Over the pre-pre-party, I hear "Andy Warhol" and "Late Modern" and "6 PM."

My watch says 5:47. Too-girl says "that was soooo amazing. How did you..."

"Bye."

It's out of the house, into my car, and off to the museum.  ¶ 12:56 PM 0 comments

  "Fuck you, P."

Tom spits the words at me as he bursts through the bedroom door, the sounds of the pre-pre-Saturday night party downstairs trail in behind him. This is his bedroom, I should say. I'm back at his house and I'm curled up against the side of his bed holding a wad of crusty red paper towels to my shredded hand which is clutching a bottle of gin I stole from downstairs. Without the towels, my hand looks like a just-hung piece of meat in a butcher shop. If I were sober, I'd try to count the different shades of red - crimson to pink to to maroon to bright lipstick. Tom towers over and peels off his ski-mask. I give him the most blank look I can muster.

"What the fuck, P!?" Tom is pretty upset. After he yanked me away from the window, the shop manager--who obviously didn't witness the incident--burst on to the sidewalk. Tom and I ran, splitting up.

Naturally, the manager followed the guy in the ski mask. And I escaped back to Tom's.

"And he was fucking fast, man. Tackled me right in front of Soccer World. Look, look what that fucker did!" Tom lifts up his arm to show me the bright red abrasion on his left elbow. "This shit hurts! He let me go because, obviously, if I had done it I'd have a bloody hand. No gloves and all." Tom raises both of his nice, clean hands and shakes them jazz-style.

I look at my bloodied excuse for a hand and then switch the bottle over to my intact one.

"Here," I straighten my arm stiff and hold the bottle over my head. A tiny wash splashes over the lip and spills onto Tom's bed. Tom grabs the bottle and starts in on a long drink.

"Dude, I have herpes." Tom chokes off his sip and spits gin around the room like a damn firehose.

"What?"

"I have herpes."

Tom turns and marches out of the room, down the hall and into the bathroom.

"Dude! You can't catch it from a bottle..." I shout as I try to stand. Instinctively, I put my strong, right hand on the ground to lift myself up. My right hand is my mangled hand a sharp pain shoots up my arm, through my collarbone, up my neck and burrows right into my brain. Everything goes black for a split second. When I come to, I'm standing.

Down the hall, I push my shoulder into the bathroom door. Tom is guzzling mouthwash and has the shower running.

"Are you mental?" I ask and yank the mouthwash out of his hand. "You can't get it from gin. You can't get it from a toilet seat. You can only get it if I fuck you." I can see the information leaving the slightest impression on Tom's brain.

"You're not fucking me."

"I know."

"You serious...I can't catch it from..."

"Dead serious."

"Shit, man. That sucks. Was it Bethany?" He leans against the sink as I slump down sighing in the doorway.

She flashes across my brain, her and the coffee shop and some guy in a black sweater with idiotic facial hair. Her and our creative writing TA. Her and that random guy across the room at that mexican place downtown. That bar down the street. That guy she mentioned from class.

"No. It was Krissy."

"Krissy? No fucking way!"

"Yeah. I found out today."

"Shit. What are you going to do?"

We sit in silence for a moment before some girl, way too drunk way too early, trips over me on her way into the bathroom.

Giggling with one hand on too-narrow hips, she says "Oh...hey. Wait. What happened to your hand? That looks awful!"

"Yeah," I pull some paper back and scan the mess.

"We have to take care of that! Trust me I know First Aid." She yanks me off the ground, her chemically blonde hair cascading over the top of me. I follow too-drunk-too-early-too-narrow girl down the hall with the first smile I've had in hours.

"Hey, ah..." I turn and cut Tom's sentence short.

"Forget I said anything."

I fix my gaze back on too-girl. My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. Five times, pause, one time.

I have a voicemail.  ¶ 12:17 PM 0 comments

  Have you ever been wrestled into submission?

I mean like really, really wrestled. To the point that your entire being writhes in pain and your veins pump nuclear waste they burn so bad.

And no matter what you do, you can't get out from under it.

It's one thing to have this happen physically. Drunk or no. But, physiologically. Body and mind. And I never realized it until just now.

Just now standing in front of the coffee shop window on 27th. Just seeing her stroll up to that table the way she does. Tom peeing on a wall around the corner, she just starts in with this guy I've never seen. And just deja vu washes over me.

And I've lost. I've lost myself.

Since the day Bethany Lowe read Tequila Tree--a short story started by Philip Harrison, the once aspiring me--I've done nothing but drink, take these stupid walks, and fuck her. I never finished a final draft of that piece. I never even so much as changed a word. I turned it in the way it was, got an F on it and ended up with a C- in the class.

And I've not written a single word since. This, I realize, makes me angry.

I pull back my fist and thrust it forward fast. Right through the fucking window.

And the glass is broke. And my hand is bleeding.

And everyone is just staring.

And she stands up.  ¶ 8:12 AM 0 comments

  The first time I saw Bethany Lowe was through glass.

Sometime late in my last semester of college, I had this creative writing class. She had the same class, same TA. But she was in a different section. Tuesdays, I think. My group met Wednesdays.

Anyway.

What I remember was it was right before our final revision of our final piece that we had been working on for most of the semester and I was going to visit Bob, the TA. I wound my way through the long halls leading from building to building on campus and eventually arrived at Bob's office. Not his specifically, rather a collective office for all the TA's. Alongside the door ran a tall and thin pane of glass with that chicken-wire stuff running through it. Through the glass and chicken-wire I saw Bethany straightening her shirt and smoothing her hair in some mirror I could not see.

Suddenly, she turned as if she had been called out to. I saw her mouth "what" and then whiz around to look out the chicken-wire by the door. We made that awkward momentary eye contact thing and, to break it, I reached for the door handle. Before I could open it, Bethany was slinking out of the office.

"Hey," she said so casually.

"Umm...hi. I'm just here to..."

"Meet with Bob? Yeah. He's cancelled his office hours for the afternoon."

"Really? But I..."

"Yes, I was just here to meet with him as well. Working on your final?"

"Yeah...," trails off from my mouth as I notice Bob darting past the glass, wiping something from the crotch of his pants. Bethany notices me noticing him and casually slides in front of the chicken-wire glass.

"Well, I'd love to look at it. Wanna get out of here?" Standing there in her too-short hipster pants, her wide bright eyes peered out at me from behind sharp black bangs.

"Umm...sure. Where do..."

"My place?" She shifted her books from front to side, revealing the sliver of skin between the bottom of her torn tank-top and the waistline of her pants.

"Ok."

And we left.  ¶ 11:16 AM 0 comments

  "She laughs. She laughs when I cum," I tell Tom.

"What?"

"Sometimes she holds it back, but you can always tell she's holding back a laugh. At the very least she snickers. Every time. Every damn time."

"That's weird."

"Yeah."

I take another swig and we round another block. We're about half a mile from Tom's place now and I can't feel my face. Tom is wearing one of those black stalker hats with just the three round holes for the eyes and mouth. This way he can still see and drink. His cell phone rings and he takes the call.

"He-y-man, ye-ah, whaddyaneed?" The words are so very slurred. We are also pretty drunk at this point.

I decide to check my voicemail. I spend a minute entering passcodes and listening to pre-recorded voices. Giving information, getting information. 5437 gets me a voice informing me of my one unheard message. Then I get the message and it's so fucking like her.

"...I have a plan."

And now I'm half annoyed. And half mad. Her and her half-baked schemes. Above her head floats a lightbulb that's always flicking on and off. So fast it gives you seizures like those harcore Japanese video games give you seizures. Idea, idea, idea. But I'm still mad because I still want to know more. I know I'll probably never know more. I'll know enough to keep me strung along, but she won't ever tell me everything she's up to. Never.

But I'm totally in love with her. So yeah. Whatever.  ¶ 9:33 AM 0 comments

  Knock, knock.

My breath--wet and cold--trails away from my face. My bare left hand is about damn frozen holding my brown bag of bourbon. The second liquor store didn't have any of my shitty brands, so I'm stuck with some new shitty booze.

Knock, knock, knock.

I pound harder this time and then try the doorbell, even though I know it is broken. The sun hangs low behind me in a half-drunk, late afternoon haze. I turn to look at it and twist off bottle's top. One long swig later, the door opens behind me.

"What the fuck, Tom," I say.

"I couldn't find my warm socks, man."

Tom stands about one whole head taller than me. His cheekbones--two red ridges in the January air--are almost as sunken as his eyes. His body's scrawny framework drowns underneath three layers of shirts and an oversize parka.

"What's it this time?" Tom grabs the bottle from my hand, pulling back the back slowly. "What the hell? I've never even heard of this..." He tilts his head back for a swig.

"Yeah, its shitty."

Tom grits and shakes his head. "Gross, dude."

And we start off on our walk. Tom and I do this about once a week. Buy a bottle, go for a walk, freeze our asses off. Why? I'm still not sure.

Somewhere after a bunch of steps and a few swigs, my cell buzzes in my pocket.

It's her. Not the ex-girl but the girl with the answering machine now the girl with herpes. I roll the phone around in my hand deciding whether or not to answer. After a moment, I press down a side button to ignore the call and tuck the phone back into my pocket.

"Who was that?"

"Oh, some number I don't know."

The phone buzzes one short buzz in my pocket.

I have a voicemail.  ¶ 12:05 PM 0 comments

  The exit comes up fast on my right. Once on it, the road splits in three - I take the middle route onto Lyndale Ave South. A minute later, I'm parked and I'm walking towards the liquor store. One hour ago I was standing in a different liquor store, trying to decide which bottom-shelf whiskey would entertain me more this weekend, when my cell phone started buzzing in my pocket.

"Hey..." her voice shook like powerlines.

"Hey back...say, which is shittier? Phillips or Aristocrat? Whiskey, though. Not vodka."

"I got my results." She'd been crying. I could tell because I'd never heard her cry before.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Suddenly, I was choking on my spleen and reading labels backwards. Breaths went out but didn't come back in. I felt like I had been standing up too fast my whole life.

"OK..." I stumbled backwards all the way out of the liquor store, bumping into the checkout on the way.

I should probably point out this wasn't the same girl with the answering machine. This was my ex. My ex-girl, and she didn't have an answering machine. I've spent eternities just waiting for her to call me.

Last week, ex-girl calls and says she's got this thing and she's going in for a test. So I call this clinic, 7th Door, and I say ex-girl has this thing and I might need a test. They ask if its been more than three months since I've had sex with her. Without hesitation, I say yes. They say come in. I do and they take some of my blood.

Eight months ago ex-girl and I were supposed to go to see some shitty band play some shitty bar. I never made it. I ended up pushed up falling over an end table, hitting the floor along with girl with the answering machine's answering machine. By the time the machine was back on the table, ex-girl was officially ex.

OK, back to the liquor store. Rather, backing out of the liquor store. My phone beeps a call coming in. The caller I.D. is one I don't recognize.

"Umm, hey. I'll call you back I have to take this."

I switch calls over.

"Hello?"

It was the clinic.  ¶ 11:12 AM 1 comments