Austin Nights

Kerouac’s prose, I resort to popular knowledge for finding his last house, and instead come to know what it means to be unknown and under-recognized despite persistent efforts and contemporary successes.

  His house, as it turns out, is right across the street.

  0

  Rainclouds overhead, I open the sliding glass door, let Honeyed Cat back inside, and begin to remember something Abe told me:

  If your pictures aren’t coming out how you want them to – get closer.

  That’s the way I want to write, using the same principle of closeness, of sidling right next to my subject and writing as I see it from there. While it’s true sweeping panoramas have a beauty of their own, life in close proximity is cosmic.

  Lightning happens, thunder follows, and Bridget asks if I want another Lone Star.

  “Why not?” I say.

  She takes the last sip from her sixteen-ounce can and fetches our last two beers from the fridge. Before these are finished, we’re in the closet unpeeling shirts and pants. It’s the storm outside that raises the barometric pressure of our libidos. We burst out of the closet and onto our queen-size bed. The ceiling fan cools our skin. More lightning, more thunder, and rains quench fledgling shoots of grass.

  Tonight, we’re having pork chops for dinner.

  9

  I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this, but our place in Austin is small. Around 523 square feet, not including the balcony and utility room. It also has very little in the way of character. Apart from the green wall separating our living area from our bathroom, everything is painted sterile white and coated with popcorn to make the walls and ceiling appear smoother.

  There are no arched thresholds, no old wooden floors that give some with each step, no columns, no tiled shower, no custom cabinetry, no lofty windows, the effect being an emphasis on the green wall, which isn’t coated with popcorn but painted thickly and smoothly, and it’s not even drywall but vertical slats of wood.

  Bridget doesn’t like this wall on our first walk through. The color is too dark for her. We get to our new place, find the key underneath the doormat, like Holly promised she’d do, open the front door, and Bridget sees this green dividing wall staring at her like a cesspool that has the gall to stand upright.

  Since we managed to sell all our furniture in Miami Beach in four days thanks to the wonders of craigslist, we were able to use a portion of that money to make sure our place in Austin is furnished with a sofa, dining room table, two chairs, coffee and end tables, queen-size mattress on box spring, and two tray tables.

  As far as logistics are concerned, I can’t think of a better setup. Apart from the 4,000 miles we have to drive, this move is as hassle-free and frugal as it gets, and I’ll gladly make another move like this in the future.

  But the green wall is destabilizing. Neither of us comments on this oddity. I’m not as disturbed as Bridget, who immediately says we should move the pearl white micro-fiber sofa to the other side of our living area, that is to say, in front of the green wall.

  “There, that’s better,” enthusiastically remarks Bridget, “it makes the sofa pop.”

  An unexpected change of heart for Bridget. A simple reconfiguration like this is all it takes for her to appreciate the splash of color in our new home, and the sofa is much better situated in terms of aesthetics. Even I notice.

  In this way, our green wall takes its first step toward becoming Wall of Awesome. The next step, much larger in size, happens two weeks later, when Bridget pulls out hammer and nail and hangs seven pieces of artwork, four of them her creation.

  Highest on our Wall of Awesome, an inch from the popcorn ceiling, is her watercolor of Granddad.

  7

  Today, on the bus to UT, I realize why Mexican Spanish is difficult to understand.

  It isn’t that they cut off the ends of words, like Michael thinks, but that they say each syllable.

  Mexican Spanish is more syllabic than, say, Colombian Spanish.

  Where Colombians are smooth, compressing the highs and lows of their speech until it all sounds digitally mastered, Mexicans are staccato.

  When I get off at my stop, I walk north to Dean Keeton St. My lab is having its weekly meeting today. I also have to tell my mentor whether I want a PC or Mac in my office. I can’t believe I’m going to have an office, and my own brand new Mac.

  “Vagina necklace?”

  I stop in my tracks and face this wimpy kid wearing tie-dye. He doesn’t act like he asked me if I wanted a vagina necklace, but I’m pretty sure he’s selling necklaces with a clay vagina pendant. They kind of look like a swirl, or even a conch shell. The same labial shape is painted on the face of his skateboard.

  “What,” I say, “are you a feminist?”

  He shrugs and says, “I love women.”

  After my lab meeting, on my way to the 1M bus stop, I spot the same wimpy kid. He’s standing next to a cart of food with a sign on it that says:

  THIS FOOD IS FREE TO TAKE FOR THE HOMELESS

  He sees me and snatches a plate. Then he skateboards downhill. He’s carrying food in one hand, and his box of vagina necklaces in the other.

  I read the sign again, to make sure I read it right the first time.

  4

  We have the projector shining D.A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back on our screen. I’ve seen it once before, but Bridget hasn’t had the privilege.

  Somewhere near the middle, a TIME reporter is sitting down with Dylan, and Dylan is reaming this guy with a waterfall of words. He’s like a font of nonsensical wisdom, punishing this TIME reporter for having the gall to interview him when he’s totally incapable of understanding Bob Dylan and everything related to Bob Dylan.

  The TIME reporter has teeth like a rabbit. Pennebaker is merciless with his camera, filling the frame with this reporter’s ugly mug. There’s no doubt Dylan is in control, talking ceaselessly to this media man, trying in vain to enlighten him:

  “No, I was saying that you’re gonna die and are gonna go off the earth, you’re gonna be dead, and it could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, any time, so am I. We’re just gonna be gone, the world’s gonna go on without us. Now, you do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself, you know, you decide for yourself.”

  Dylan’s words, no matter how thoughtless, resonate for me. It’s clear, whether it’s true or not, that Dylan does his thing fully aware of his mortality. Now think about this. Think long and good about this, but not too long because then you’ll make yourself pointless. In this life, we live knowing very well that someday we’ll be gone. Poof! Does it make sense, if you already know this, to go about your life seriously?

  Dylan is Dylan because he can’t possibly take himself seriously. There’s a little bolt inside him that’s always slightly loose. He does what he does and he does it well, but he doesn’t do it seriously.

  At the end of the film, his manager at the time, Albert Grossman, tells Dylan that the newspapers are calling Bob Dylan an anarchist. Dylan laughs, smears his hand into his cheeks, and asks for a cancer stick. Grossman goes on to tell him that they think he’s an anarchist because Bob Dylan doesn’t offer any solutions.

  9

  “Drogas,” I sing to Honeyed Cat, “drooogas.”

  Drogas, in case you don’t know Spanish, translates most accurately into drugs. It carries all the same connotations carried in the word drugs.

  Whenever we can, we try to ease Honeyed Cat into becoming bilingual. It’ll make her more desirable in the marketplace.

  That’s a joke. We have no intention of putting Honeyed Cat to work. Lord knows her tiny soul is put upon enough having to deal with the likes of me every day.

  “Drogas,” I sing, “drooogas.”

  Honeyed Cat juts her rear toward heaven, extends her tiny padded forepaws in front of her, and crooks her tail like a candy cane. Her jade eyes squint a little, her whiskers pull back with her triangular ears. Honeyed Cat is a drug fiend, and it’s Friday night. Time fo
r her weekly wind down.

  She struts toward me in the kitchen, from brown carpet to linoleum. She rubs

  silky around my shin and calve. She licks my anklebone and looks up at me, “Miaow.”

  “You want drogas, Honey?” I ask. Her tongue tickles like sandpaper. I ask, “You like drogas?”

  “Miaow.”

  I fish out a wine cork from her catnip baggy. She knows this aromatized cork means getting high and frisky. It means temporary bliss. I twirl it with my index finger and thumb. I hurl it into our bedroom. She scurries. “Get it!” I say. Her claws grip the carpet as she tears around the corner and pounces. That cork never has a chance. She somersaults with it and does her kill move with her hind claws. Sometimes she misses the cork and kicks her tiny chin. She flips onto her honeyed belly, ripples a wave along her spine, darts her tiny head in every direction, and is back at the cork, chewing on it and coveting it.

  I toss the cork around a couple more times so she can enjoy being Super Cat.

  “You love her,” says Bridget. She’s inside the bathroom, on the other side of our Wall of Awesome, getting ready for our night moves.

  I don’t see her until she appears dressed in a summer dress. Her reddish gold hair is in the embrace of a green ribbon. She’s an Irish nymph. Her lips are bare. I take her hand, and we walk to the door. I turn off the lights, and we say goodbye to Honeyed Cat.

  The moon is low and full in the night sky, directly in front of us.

  I say, “It’s brown