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Volume I - The Judge and I
The alley entrance leads
down a dim hallway
an old drunk
leans against a wall
staring at nothing.
The Judge and I pass
the Santa Anita old timer
and the bathrooms
and enter a dark, smoky bar
filled with gray hairs.
The stools are worn.
I get a beer.
The Judge orders
wine.
“They’ll let me drink
wine,”
he says,
“wine’s okay.”
The Judge had
some sort of a
seizure
last Thursday,
spent the weekend
in the "Queen of Something’s
Hospital."
I stopped by the hotel
where he lives
on Friday.
I was concerned.
The Judge likes to call me
his aborted son –
little incident back when
he was starting quarterback
at Cornell.
“Christ!” I tell him,
“I thought I was knocking
on the door of a dead man.”
He offers no apology,
just laughs.
I chuckle too
‘... aborted son’
I consider it a compliment
from The Judge.
He claims
he’s accepted
original sin, so
he’s nice to have around.
He buys two more
and we smoke cigarettes.
I ask him if he knows much
about wine. He goes on
about grapes, glaciers, New York
and the sand around Lake
Erie, then remembers something
awful he did back then
and begins to tell me …
The old drunk from the back
rests his elbows on the bar,
his palms slide the skin
up his face,
he sighs, and says
“oh, god,
I’m depressed
and I don’t
know
why.”
Next to him is another
old drunk –
cigarette in his mouth,
a beer, a glass, an ashtray,
and two bottles of
prescriptions on the bar
in front of him.
He can’t help.
I look around.
Nobody in here
is worth a shit.
It’s Tuesday morning
and the bar is waiting
to die.
They’re reading the paper
waiting for the track to open
and chain-smoking,
regardless of
California Law.
The Judge finishes
his traumatic story about
fucking his girlfriend’s
best friend in a vineyard
in Ithaca.
“... just ripped off her pants
and –” he throws his hands
in the air, the left one is
swollen from the IV he
yanked out on Sunday.
We both light another.
The Judge looks into his
stemmed, pussy glass
of wine, and administers
internal punishment for
something he did thirty years ago.
A Celtic’s game from the 80’s
is on the tv in the corner.
Their green shorts are
uncomfortably short.
I turn away before I see
nutsack.
‘I’m depressed
and I don’t know why.’
The old guy’s words
repeat in my head.
You are, old man!
What about me?
I’m twenty-nine years old,
sittin’ here next to you guys
turnin’ dead instead of thirty.
Something about this
morning reminds me of
Betting on the Muse.
I think of The Judge’s girlfriends:
hookers, low-rent bartenders,
ugly – no, we're all ugly –
hard luck lesbians who suck
his dick for drug money,
karaoke singers who wind up
in jail, the female dregs of
society. The Judge slams
his wine and says “ready?”
It’s not yet noon on a Tuesday
and we’re leaving.
The Judge can’t drink Scotch,
we’re out of cigarettes,
and I intend to sell more books today.
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