An open letter to the lady that threw up on my jacket at the Jake Johannsen show last night at Helium . . .

"Well, why did you do it? Are you some kind of jerk or something?"

It was my favorite jacket. And why did you leave? Did you think I would have put my jacket on and maybe, MAYBE, put my arm down on the table and suddenly think to myself, "Well, I just put my forearm down on some puddle of vomit that was apparently on my table the whole night which I didn't even notice. Shame on me for my obliviousness." Or maybe you were hoping I'd simply go to some other bar and think, "Gee. Someone else threw up on my arm. It couldn't have been the comedy club"

But you also got it on my friend's jacket. Much more of it, too. What's worse is, you just left. And neither you nor anyone else who sat at your table of ill-manners apologized for such a disgusting action. And you used the good natured sounds of a room full of riotous laughter to disguise your quiet call of the walrus. Deception, in its foulest of forms.

We heard you laughing kinda funny all night. Something was amiss. A little screwey. Strange even. But who are we, as other people, to judge another person's laugh? Some people guffaw. Some chortle. Yours was a wheezing hysterical laugh. Some people wheeze and some people are hysterical. Had we known it was the international warning sound for an oncoming projectile of sick, guess who would have moved their seats?

But why didn't you acknowledge it? You remind me of the man I once saw at a Border's who calmly bent over and threw up by the magazine section as he held his cup of coffee, stood up, and slowly walked over to the Dvd section where he did the same thing, just as calmly. And then he did it again. And again. Do you two belong to some sort of secret shameless spewers club? Was George H.W. Bush it's founder? Did it all start one January back in '92 at a formal dinner in Japan. "What a rush! I have to find some more people who know the joys of a good barf and bolt. If only I could have cloaked the evacuation of all I ate in secrecy. That's where I went wrong. Skull & Bones be damned! These are my people and this, THIS, is my society."

Next time review your menu in the bathroom. They have them in the club, I know. Two, even. One for men, one for women. Maybe you could have asked for sawdust from a utility closet or even, I don't know, made your way out onto the street. Walking in someone's unswallow is a lot less gross than wearing it.

"Well, well, what were you thinking? JERK!"

"Do the trees bend down, fold their limbs around you"

The still wet asphalt, daubed black in spots from the rain, still shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Her long auburn hair still fluttering in the wind reached the door before she did. She grabbed tight her application, now a wrinkled and dog eared curriculum vitae of fast food restaurants and video stores.
"This job is so mine," she thought as she entered the side entrance of the red brick building.

Yeah . . . I wrote another little snapshot of something I saw (then elaborated on). I promise I'll throw a picture up in a few days. One of these days, I'll throw it together for a story. Perhaps a novella (I really adore that word and would really like to tell people that I am working on my "novella").

Last night I had dinner at Jones, a trendy restaurant in Philly on Chestnut Street. It always makes me happy to eat there but our table was pretty drafty. Seems to be an analogy for life anymore. The good moments consitently tempered with the not-so-good. Ying-yang for the hopeless.