“It’s disgusting,” the man in the barber’s chair said.  “I wish they’d stayed in the closet.”  Bob the barber agreed with him, just as he’d have agreed with him if he’d said there’s no reason a bisexual man can’t marry a nice… Read full post »

When I read the account of Mitt Romney’s leading a “posse” to go after a kid because he’d bleached his hair, it brought to mind a similar incident in my high school during my senior year.  A kid from Southern California had come to Kingman, Arizona, and he didn’t lo… Read full post »

It’s not often that Dr. Zeker gets in a mood like this.   “Do you think you’re the Dude?” I asked him.  “The yukata was bad enough, but at least it was a statement of your intention to become Japanese.   This is just ...”  my voice tra… Read full post »

“Melissa?”  Dr. Zeker lightly stroked his chin between his right thumb and the crook of the forefinger.  Brugh Joy told me that gesture invokes the Sage, with his wisp of white beard on the chin, which he pulls in contemplation.   “She gave you the good review?&n… Read full post »

“I need to get out more,” Dr. Zeker said.  “The longer I work by myself the more essential it is that we take these walks on Sundays.  Neither of us are church going men but we both appreciate the importance of ritual.”  I had planned to write, but put the proje… Read full post »

I almost didn’t recognize Mr. Hobbles when he came into Cody’s.  The last time I’d seen him he was about six-two and two hundred twenty pounds.  He was still six-two, but he’d lost a lot of weight.  He was a bean pole.   He spotted me right away. … Read full post »

He drove his fist just below my solar plexus.  I folded forward, my shoulders hunched and my mouth wide open to let the air expel from my lungs.  In the bar mirror my aging face stared back at me,  stricken through with a roused stupidity,  the face of a steer in… Read full post »

In an elevator of this quality you have no sensation of falling.  Dr. Zeker told me that the interior of these elevators were designed by the same people who did the interior of his Lear Jet.  There are colors and patterns that expand the sense of space, and which make it… Read full post »

There is a round, brass padlock on one of the doors in Dr. Zeker’s office.  The door is set into the exterior wall,  so I assume it’s an art object, because it can’t open to anywhere but empty space.  “That door always looks dangerous,” I said.

&ldq… Read full post »

Dr. Zeker was standing in the sweet spot of a three panel department store mirror, admiring himself in a dark gray suit.   I’ve mentioned before that I’m normally a broad minded person, but Dr. Zeker in a yukata had become the kind of excess that gives seekers of light a bad… Read full post »

“Enzyme baths,” Dr. Zeker repeated.  “They cover you with sawdust in which the enzymes are resident, and they suck out all the impurities through the pores.  Then you go into a little room, like a monk’s cell, and listen to mediation music and drink green tea if you… Read full post »

“They call me the Zeker,” he said, stepping onto the scale he keeps in his office.  Actually, he sang it out in a falsetto imitation of Dolly Parton.  “A poor sinful creature; there’s nobody weaker than I am.” 

Zekerman is obsessive about his weight… Read full post »

Sometimes I feel like I should be a good man in the traditional sense, which is to say, that I should conform to some moral ideal.  I can feel my body swell upward toward that idealized man, who welcomes me with a fey smile and wants to cook me dinner.  I… Read full post »

Today I was talking to a young man who is going to be married soon.  “Are you ready for the Big Casino?” I asked.  What did I think “The Big Casino” meant?  I thought it was death, and I thought I was being funny by analogizing it to marriage.  Turns, out,… Read full post »

I see that Ry Cooder has a new album, “Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down.” He’s an L.A. man whose family history traces him back to colonial times.  But in a recent BBC interview, when asked about his views on anti-immigrant sentiment, he said: &/… Read full post »

She asked me to post it as my status. It seemed harmless enough. "Will you be there for me?" she asked. "Repost this if you will, but I know you won't."   I thought about her short blonde hair teased up into electric impulses, her black lipstick, her stiletto heels with… Read full post »

A tiny little bite, hardly noticeable.  Uncle Sam felt it as a slight sting with no known origin.  He brushed his right hand across his neck but encountered nothing.   The spider was gone before he knew he was bitten.  It rappelled down a thread of gossamer and moved unnoticed alo… Read full post »

William S. Burroughs is the patron saint of the tech geeks and cutting edge artists not because he's a queer addict wife killing mangy dog who wrote Naked Lunch, but because he was the intellectual force of his generation, on which at least some of them are building. 

If a… Read full post »

I was looking through some of the songs I wrote during the past few years, and this one caught my ear.  It was during the Bush Administration, and I was thinking about how it was going to feel when the bill came due for the darkness that enveloped Reason and compassion.… Read full post »

 (A short excerpt from the novel:  Indian Shadow) 

There wasn’t a Defense contractor around that didn’t distribute white papers on the company at every opportunity, arguing that the company is necessary to national security and that the only legitimate expenditure of… Read full post »

Texas governor Rick Perry Preys on the prayerful.  The rest of us look with dread at the prospect of another regression into darkness. 

Anybody who cannot, at this point, see that He is the patriarchy, and that the only real social issue from the right is blocking the rising power of… Read full post »

 (A selection from the eBook novel:  Indian Shadow)

He knew when he touched the stairs that he was not the lone wanderer in the night. Another who was without priority chip control was moving about. The records showed most of the spooks don’t return from the experience. They we… Read full post »

Blue Mesa was obsolete, a string of information beginning to lose attraction to a center.  Only one person was left alive, once Indian Shadow had left the mesa, a stranger, outside the story. The stranger was holding his knees and rocking back and forth, chanting nonsense.  He was not part… Read full post »

The waitress was talking to a man when they came in.  She looked up and said, “Sit anyplace you want to.”  The man she was talking to inspected them and scowled.  He was  powerfully built with a shaved head.  They were speaking confidentially.  He handed the… Read full post »

Wish I could be at my old friend Brad Smith's memorial today in San Francisco.  It's at a cafe on Cole Street, in the garden out back.  On the other side of the fence is a small park where Brad and I used to juggle.  He taught me how to juggle. … Read full post »