everyone is a creature

You two come to pick me up at 8 o'clock and I crawl into the backseat of the newest, fastest, smoothest car I have ever been in and we cruise down the road looking for a place to happen. Listening to Don Henley's Boys of Summer and we only know just that one line, "I can see you..." but we are psyched to hear the song and to be driving in such a smooth ride in the evening when it is becoming springtime and we have nothing on the go. You, you are like a mixture of two of my uncles, one when your face is serious, the other when it crinkles into a smile. We park that baby and emerge into the busy, modern streets where everyone clutches shopping bags and has a funny look about them. Us three are like sore thumbs and we duck into one of those Irish pubs and begin our guzzling. We are stuffed to the brim with food and we are downing beers even though they hurt. Let us find out a little bit about you. Dock worker, no hobbies, well maybe moose hunting (and you didn't get a moose the last time because you didn't feel like it). You still have some frozen moose meat in your freezer, you gave some to your landlord and you gotta use up the rest real soon before six months has gone by. The band begins with the Pan flutist and the smiling fiddler and the other. I am too quiet to make my request (until two beers later) and it's I'se the B'y! You appease me and I know all of the words from my grade five choir practices. Bouncing our knees to this whimsical music and the searchlight outside keeps time with it. Looking at everything on the walls when you two are outside and the paper jammed into a light socket, rolled up but unravelling like a rose and then the executive men at the table next to us are trying to hook us in but we just laugh and point out the facts about everything, thinking how great it would be to get paid to be an observer who just points things out, when that sometimes seems like our only calling. Later, you leave us there to see Cookie the trainwreck on a shipwreck on a planewreck, and you make sure we are settled with one last beer and we are never ready to call it a night and so we stay and the music doesn't end either, so we keep bouncing our limbs and taking it in. The fellow who resembles a young Steve Martin is taken with my teeth and his friend thinks I look like Miley Cyrus, trying to convince everyone with a pocketsized image on his phone. They are here for the playoffs, and don't I know that you always wear suits during the playoffs? and okay sure you can buy us some beers but that's just because we are broke and we don't want to see the end yet, but that bar does close eventually. Let us go next door and so we enter down into the dingy disco where maybe five people are dancing real close and dirty on the floor. I feel like I am in a circus mad house and yeah you're right, it's probably better upstairs and yeah I dropped a beer but no I don't really need another, in fact I really ought to be going home. It seems the only time that I practice my French these days is when I am drunk and heading home, charming all of the Haitian cabbies, and dear Moozimah, you are the greatest greeter with your tumble roll over soft belly offering and oh my! Threethirtya.m. and it's going to be a hazy day. The sunniest morning arrives promptly and I am hobbling through the streets, feeling that loopiness but also feeling wonderful and humming 'where is my mind?' and looking at the sky and taking in the man on the corner. He is like a smurf, with his bright blue tshirt stretched over his giant Santa Clause belly and he has one of those jolly round faces, framed by the wildest beard I've seen in weeks. Also, the young woman sitting on the sidewalk, sandals kicked off and picking at her toe, an open can of Old Milwaukee on the ground beside her. The daisy chain of tiny children, tethered together and speaking French as they are guided along by the leashholder through these dirty sidewalks. Oh my goodness, gracious, goshness! Everyone is a creature.