For You, The Stars
Chapter Ten: And I Ran
Installment 1
“i get it. You were not cool.”
“No, that’s not the point.”
“Stop telling me your pathetic college and high school stories. I don’t care. They’re boring. And I’ve heard them all before.”
“Shut up, faggot.”
We both laughed. We were on x again, at new club in downtown San Francisco. Somehow the combination of bonghits before we rode down to the city in Sheena’s convertible with INXS cranking on the stereo, the ecstasy starting to kick in as we were whisked past the losers waiting outside the velvet rope, me with two pretty girls flanking me, and a beer an irish whiskey and then another beer at the bar had put us, well me at least, into literally the perfect mood.
Suddenly I understood Cecilia perfectly, and it seemed to be the same way for her. We looked each other in the eye without flinching or glancing away. We knew we were never getting married. We probably wouldn’t last out the year. It didn’t matter. We were together right then, in the now. We were perfect together in this one perfect moment and there was no point not being honest about everything.
The club was playing the Pet Shop Boys’ cover/remix of the Willie Nelson song and as it came around to the last repeat of the chorus, just after the last “you were always on my mind,” the dj added, in the same tone of voice, maybe a little flatter, “you were always in my car.” This cracked us up.
There were videos playing over the bar. Now it was Duran Duran. Suddenly I didn’t see them as a bunch of poofy British wankers with hair that was just wrong. Now they were the early Beatles, writing silly love songs but with all kinds of potential to evolve into something more profound. I explained my theory to Cecilia and she was into it. She wanted me to respect her favorite music, the popular music of this very moment.
At two when the club closed we were nowhere near ready to wind it down. Sheena and I deferred to Cecilia who always knew where to go next. She gave directions to an unmarked late night basement bar down some nondescript steps off of 10th or 11 street south of Market. It wouldn’t be able to start serving drinks again until 5 am but it looked like people had loaded up at last call and I don’t think we were the only enhanced people there. We were able to keep dancing, which was the main thing. If anything we needed rehydration then and not more liquor, at least not for a while.
Cecilia always knew where to go next. When we went to loft parties and raves cool black dudes in velvet would walk up to us, ignore me, and hand little 3 x 5 colored flyers invited us, well her, to the afterparty. Then there’d be another more exclusive after after party. This chain could go on and on until you were literally in someone’s tiny apartment in the inner sunset, three block from the Gomer homestead with a bunch of wasted hipsters and a fire eater or someone trying to convince you to try crack for the irony of it.
This night, though, we made it just barely past five, had a few cermonial drinks when the bar reopened, and then drove back up to Marin as the sun was coming up. Back in Cecilia’s little room, after Sheena dropped us off, ignoring my tease-y suggestions that we all three of us get it on, we still felt the pure honesty buzz. We talked about it. We realized it was a rare moment of grace. Not only wasn’t our relationship going to last and we could talk about that freely and be ok with it, we even knew that this moment of purity was going to last and that we’d be getting on each other’s nerves probably as soon as we had a good night’s sleep and got caught up on our seratonin reuptake. It didn’t matter though, this feeling was as real as any other.
We showered the sweat off our bodies and put on one of my favorite bootlegs, a Dead show from the last year with a really nice melodic piano solo of all things in the middle of a “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” encore. We started making love - seriously, not fucking - but fell asleep before really getting it going, and we slept like babies until the middle of the afternoon.