I listened to Emmylou Harris’ cover of Pancho and Lefty about a million times on my way from Virginia to Tennessee . . .
pancho needs your prayers it’s true
but save a few for lefty too
he just did what he had to do
and now he’s growing old
yeah man [cigarette emoji]
My grandmother died on Friday. She would have been 93 years old in November and mad as hell about it. She’d seen enough, and in the last few years had become a prisoner inside her own body. Who could blame her for wanting to pass on to the other world? I certainly don’t.
And so on Saturday afternoon I rented a car and drove 400 miles to see my father, who, in the span of exactly one month, has lost both his son and his mother. My brother is a true tragedy . . . the guy was too young, and who wants to bury their own child? My grandmother lived a long, full life and died without pain and surrounded by her children. I don’t know what more anyone could ask for. Still, she is gone, and I miss her. I’m staying with my dad in her house, which is about 500 feet away from his house. And when he is away during the day, I am alone in her house and I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever been alone here. Other than her many musical clocks that chime every hour, it is utterly quiet.
Though, I’m not totally alone . . . I am here with her cat Abby, who follows me around everywhere and rubs against my leg. What is a true sadness is that she is clearly confused that my grandma is gone, and naps in her recliner and wheelchair, or else on her folded blanket on the hospice bed in the living room where my grandma died.
At night, she sleeps in the upstairs bed with me:
She gets angry when I leave!
My dad says he is going to slowly move into my grandma’s house. He has already done something which is very much My Dad: after collecting a ton of Americana antiques, he has for whatever reason built a replica Shell gas station office in the basement garage here. I need to take more pictures because honestly it’s pretty impressive. He has a payphone and a vintage candy machine and everything.
And all of this is mere feet away from his 60s Ford F-100, which predates seatbelts, and thus is a little terrifying to drive around in:
Last time I was here, we ran some errands in it, and everywhere we went, women hit on him. I couldn’t believe it. He had once mentioned to me that this happens, and I thought, “Yeah, OK.” Sure enough, we were the most popular dudes in town for a few hours. Women were batting their eyes at him! This man is almost 70. On the way back home, he said, “Gee, I wish I’d had this truck when I was 20 years old.”
Though yeah: I am here to help out my dad, and to commit my grandmother to the deep. Tomorrow I will be one of her pallbearers. On Saturday I will fly out of Knoxville to Brooklyn and stick around for probably ten days. And then I will make my way into Canada, through Montreal and Toronto and Windsor, and cross the border back into the US via Detroit. I did this drive in reverse back in November on my way to Rochester (where uhh . . . I had a strange experience with a girl I know (I don’t know if I should write about this)). The big bummer of course is that driving through that side of Canada is extremely boring and the highway speed limit is literally 60 mph the entire way. Give me a break.
. . . Abby wants to go to sleep, so I reckon it’s time. I remember a long time ago, my dad said he slept the deepest when he was at his parents’ house. Maybe because in the back of your mind you know that someone you have known your entire life will keep you safe if anything happens. There is a comfort there. It is true for me here. IN DREAMS I GO TO THAT LANDLESS LATITUDE, sleeping the sleep of a newborn baby, knowing that my dad is asleep down the hall. And on the nightstand next to him is a Glock .45 loaded with hollow point rounds, ready to shoot dead any menace real or imagined. How about that!
Sweet dreams!!! ☆彡
today is mikaylah’s birthday, which means i have known her for eight of her birthdays. wow! i guess when you know someone for that long, they can say things like this to you and you know they know what they’re talking about. well, what i said was true! and what was the context for my sentimentalism? i reckon you’ll just have to use your imagination~
One weekend back in 2018, my roommate and spirit-brother Matt and I rented a Cadillac (that we didn’t pay for) and drove up to Portland to go to see our friends and visit the same two or three bars and restaurants we frequented back when we were still trapped there. We used to do this every six months . . . we’d wait for a three-day weekend and then PACK UP and grab some drugs and drive ten hours north up I-5 through Northern California all the way to Portland. Man, it’s a real good drive. I think I’ve done it probably 20 times now, there and back again. It’s 630 miles of mostly wilderness and you pass through a bunch of weird little towns. When Matt and I did these trips, it was mostly about The Drive . . . we’d play Townes Van Zandt and chug coffee and talk about g-g-girls. When we felt like stopping to look at trees and rivers and shit, we’d stop. Taken altogether, this was certainly more interesting than the entire city of Portland.
Anyway: I asked my good friend Kelsey if she could stay at our place and watch Dante, who despite trying to sometimes mask it with a cool indifference, was actually an emotionally needy and vulnerable guy (just like me (lol)). He had to have someone stay with him at the house or else he got too lonely, so I never left him alone. You know? I wanted him to have a friend with him. And so Kelsey kindly spent all weekend with Dante while Matt and I slept in a Cadillac next to a cemetery in Portland after a long day of helping some strange dude deliver Xanax door to door.
Sometime later, Kelsey told me she had gotten a roll of film developed and gave me the photos she had taken of Dante that weekend, mostly of him sitting in his chair (he had his own chair):
Two nights ago, I was going through the containers I have stored in my grandma’s condo, which I will soon ship across the sea. And I found a little cigar box where I keep all my photos. And inside I came across those pictures Kelsey had given me and I immediately started crying. It was one of those cries that comes on suddenly and forcefully, like I could not have anticipated it, and probably needed it. I sat down on the carpet and spread these photos out and looked at them all for the first time in years.
Dante’s face was so expressive and photogenic. The guy was soulful! You can tell even in photos that he was intelligent and complicated. I miss him every day. It has been a year and my life still feels so empty without him. Well, it’s just true that my life was much better with him in it. I don’t suppose that ever goes away. Eventually you just make terms with it. I just wonder what happens if that never comes to pass for me.
Last year when Dante died, Kelsey sent me this picture of him from that weekend. I had never seen it before. For nearly sixteen years, Dante woke me up every morning by standing on my chest and gazing into my eyes while gently pawing at my face. When I was away, he transferred this gesture to whomever he was reliant on for food. Anyone who ever watched Dante told me he had done this. Dante was always sweetest in the morning. I would give anything to wake up to him again.
They say I am going to New York City this weekend. They say I will take the northbound regional train at noon from the Old Dominion all the way up to Penn Station, getting in round about five-thirty, where maybe at least one of my friends will be waiting for me there. And then they say I will stay with dear Cecelia that night, sharing her bed as she has no other furniture, the two of us sleeping beneath the ever-growing crack in her ceiling which is both driving her mad and out of the place for good. Maybe it will burst open while I am there and the whole thing will finally come crashing down on us—the upper floors and the city of New York itself the outer cosmos and everything beyond. In some sense I know such a thing would come as a big relief to the two of us . . . but if it is not to be so, then I will be glad just as well to live on a little longer, as least as long as the eight or nine days I plan to spend up there in ol New York where so many of my good friends live. Are you one of them? Well, all you gotta do is let me know, and then I’ll come see you too. Dig it??
