Drunk People are Unpredictable

Noemi:
     What happened to your knuckles?

don Carlos:
     Oh shit, yeah, that. So last night I'm walking home from the library--or was it the bar? both really--and I see this chick stumbling around on Durocher, obviously drunk as hell and all alone. What with that story about the serial rapist last month, I get concerned.
     "Hell," I say to myself, "that's no good. Rape booty for shore."
     So I walk over to her cautiously, like you do when approaching a wild animal. Drunk people are unpredictable. She's this little gal, though, Asian, maybe Korean or Mongolian. I get up close, she's kinda huddled up, leaning against the wall of some apartment building, and I put my hand on her shoulder--bit stupid, looking back. And she fuckin' whirls! comes at poor ol' me like a tornado. So I'm duckin' and weavin', getting the gist of her grit, yelling at her that I'm trying to help get her home safe but she won't listen, she's fallen off the sanity cruise ship.
     Anyway, I end up near knocking her out, but it was just self defence. No need to speak of criminal charges! I'm no goddamned rapist! I'm no menace! I'm just a nice guy; why does this shit always happen to me?

Mitch:
     Because you enjoy it so, silly man. You thrive in it and in the end you'll come out for the better.

don Carlos:
     Yeah, I s'pose you're right. I helped her up, walked her home and, you know, she invited me in.

Cafe la Roux

On Thanksgiving, neither of us had anywhere to go. I presume Mitch the Cat could’ve gone home to his family, the Karmichaels (oh how little I knew then!), but he didn’t, and he didn’t say anything about it, either.

I of course never have anywhere to go to escape the loneliness of life, holiday or not. Mitch is my only salvation, and a bitter and unpredictable one at that.

“Everybody just wants to be liked!” he hisses vehemently, at me, tears already in his eyes.

Now perhaps you find me over-dramatic in the frequency to which I describe Mitch the Cat weeping. Firstly, I remember it true: he was such a beautiful, delicate snowflake of a flower, coupled with his personal courage and determination to absolutely be himself and express his emotion and thought, that he cried openly to myself and others on multiple occasions: dozens and even hundreds. In those days, he would cry only to me; but to my lasting jealousy and melancholy, he expanded his circle of helpless victims, those poor broken souls he ensnared like an anglerfish. I call it like a disease, and, as you shall see, there is no doubting that it was toxic.

We had slept in, tea for breakfast and boxed black bean soup for lunch and finally coffee for dinner. In the afternoon, Mitch the Cat became quite excited with the prediction that the streets will be dead quiet around dinner time.

“Like a ghost,” he said. “We can be like ghosts. Imagine all the homes, all the grand houses and dinghy basement apartments, at this time yesterday empty and silent; all the stressed out people at work--in offices and bagel shops, classrooms and airplanes--sullenly and eagerly awaiting today. All those sad empty homes now filled by those needing an excuse to enjoy life. And then the streets will be empty, and we can wander them in peace.”

I had not the heart to contradict him. I cared more for his present excitement than his future happiness. “Blind love,” he says later, after I admit to it.

the Burning Bush

I remember it all so well.

He takes my face in his hands and stares into my eyes. I become self-conscious and I begin to envision what he is looking at but in that moment I cannot even remember my own eye color. I cannot imagine what he sees, I am so lost in his gaze. This is love at its purest: not romantic, not sweet; desperate and pathetic and inexcusable. His eyes are an incredibly fresh, intoxicating green, as brilliantly green as a young blade of grass in the sun. They radiate light from within; the light of his soul is greater than any light he could ever take in, and so I drink and I drink of the fountain of his youth long after my stream he has drank dry. I think: he gives so much, he must open himself for even more, his longing must be unquenchable. I shutter at the deep, communal sadness I see in his sight. I study the lines of black and white emanating from the pupil; they are dancing and swirling, a soft spring stream pooling, flowing about an island of infinitely dense blackness that holds the entire emptiness of the universe; in his eyes I find the black hole that created the Big Bang that created Earth from whose bosom sprung man who created God in an effort to explain one's infinite love of oneself.

I wonder if it is the drugs or the pure life of we together there then, or both. I am so lost I cannot remember where I began. I cannot remember who I am: Ari Karmichael, Mitch the Cat, or sad and simple Leo. I don't care.

My face is cradled in his soft hands. He is shorter than I, so I look down. It's like being held by Mother Teresa, or by Ghandi, or by God. I want to melt into his unabashed, unrestricted, careless love. He begins caressing my temples with his forefingers. I wonder if it is the drugs. I wonder if I am imagining all this. I wonder if any of this is real, if I am real. I hope not.

I haven't noticed the tears yet, but I do when he says: