Tyler Knight

Lady: Did you model for him?
Me: I’m sorry?
Lady: Oh, I mean your shirt. It’s Gianni Versace, is it not?
Me: Haha, uh…yeah…I mean no. I’m not a model, but yeah, it’s Versace. His last season I think.
Lady: Well, it’s beautiful.

She reaches out and runs the fabric of my sleeve between her fingers, tracing her well-lived hand on my arm. I am aware of what an odd pair we must look like to passers-by who slow to gawk at us, no doubt trying to figure out the context of our interracial and cross-generational relationship. Enough to permit such open pawing in public. I wonder the same myself and I know the answer. I shift from foot to foot until enough time passes that the touch would be uncomfortable to most, yet, within the bounds of not seeming to revile the touch of a total stranger, lest I offend her. I set my carry on bag down between us, reestablishing the unseen boundary most strangers instinctively know and respect.

Me: Thank you. It looked a lot better in the store I think.
Lady: It’s very sad what has happened to him. What on Earth would posses someone to do something like that? To be so obsessed with someone that you want to destroy them? I must say, I can not understand this at all.
Me: Yeah.

A waist-high burst of primary colors zips between us, followed straight away by a chest level squeal, “Mom said you haf-ta shaaare!” I follow the path of where ‘Mom’ should be. Nothing.

Lady: Do you live in San Francisco?
Me: No, but I used to. My girlfriend lives there, and I’m flying there to surprise her. Haven’t seen her in a month.
Lady: Oh, it’s very difficult living in separate cities. My husband and I tried that to no avail. Him in DC, I residing in Manhattan. We had our troubles without the distance mind you, but it added a tremendous strain. One day, we had to face the facts, live our lives apart, and a divorce was simply a formality of our reality.
Me: Yeah.
Lady: Well, I’ll bet she will be delighted to see you.
Me: I don’t know. We have our share of problems too. I don’t like how our conversation ended last night. She doesn’t know I’m coming. Kind of an impulse trip.
Lady: How is your communication?
Me: Could be better I guess.

A female voice over the PA: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin boarding the first class section shortly. Please have your boarding passes ready…”

Lady: I owe my sanity to my girlfriends. I don’t know what I would do without them.

Who do I confide in? Certainly not business partner or the guys at the office.
I take inventory of my friends.
Nothing.

Me: I’m not big on sharing my feelings. I can usually work things out for myself.
Lady: Oh don’t be silly! You sound like my husband Larry, I could spank you! We all need somebody sometimes, even if it is just to listen. “No man is an island.”

She reaches out across the void inhabited by my invisible bulwark and takes my hand. People do their best to pretend not to stare at us. This time, I do not care. I have alienated all of my friends. I have not seen a blood relative in over five years. And this is the most love I have received in equally as long, coming from a total stranger whom did not even give the respect of caring what her name was. My throat tightens.

Lady: They are boarding my section. I must bid you farewell young man.

I wrangle control of my voice, but not enough to risk more than a word just yet.

Me: Okay.
Lady: May I suggest flowers? They are nature’s Great Ambassador.
Me:Haha, you’re assuming the argument was my fault!
Lady: Isn’t it always the man’s fault?

San Francisco

I wish I had the foresight to bring a jacket. It’s not like I have never been to this city before, so I know better.

It’s fucking July. Where is the Goddamn Sun?

No doubt I look like a fool in a bright silk shirt among the demure business suit clad denizens shoving past me along the Embarcadero center, but I am too focused to care. My mission is to find some flowers, surprise my girlfriend at work, and after that… well, I have not thought that out yet. It’s almost 5pm, so I don’t have a lot of time.I settle on the first bouquet with the least amount of dead flowers I see from a street vendor and make my way to BART. I am trotting along Sacramento Street when…

Motherfucker…

I see a familiar looking car parked on the side of the street.

Is that Ann’s car?

I jog up to the rear of the car to see the plates. My heart thrums in my chest.

It is her car!

The hood is warm to the touch. She was just here! Ann does not work anywhere near here so I focus to think of where she could possibly be.
I recall the time when we lived together on the border of the Tenderloin District.

………………………….

Like every morning on my way to work in the financial district’s gilded Montgomery Street, I walk through the cesspool of the Tenderloin district. Past emaciated young women battling with dealers. The men dressed as women locked in carnal embrace with men dressed as men. Street peacock trannies strutting their wares, while business men slink about incognito, buying souls and selling sorrow wholesale. The birds don’t nest here. They know what’s up. Only a sucker waits for the sun to come scrub the drek away. It never does. Instead the ubiquitous rain turns everything into shit-soup so deep I have to keep my mouth closed wading through.

What is waiting for me at the office is worse. Gabriel singlehandedly shatters the myth that all fat people are jolly. Whatever humanity I have left after each predawn expedition through the Second Circle of Lust, by the time I make it to the trading pit, Gabriel is be there to snuff it out. Gabriel presides as lord of the Fourth and Eighth Circles; Avarice and Fraud. He does not have to work hard at it. I want to be rich and I do not give a fuck about the toll for entry the trip would exact on me. Truth be told, I fucking hate Gabe and he hates me, I always threaten to quit and he promises to fire me, but our unholy alliance is mutually beneficial. Today, Gabe is in a black suit with a light purple dress shirt, looking like a fat, corporate Grimace.

I don’t schlep stock. I tell stories, and sell dreams. Nobody gives a fuck about some laser teeth-whitening company in New Brunswick, NJ. You gotta make that shit sexy! Paint the picture of a company sitting at stage 3 FDA trials, poised to fucking explode onto the market. Make the client the protagonist in his own Goddamn story. Not a love story. A lust story.

You gotta thread the narrative so that our hero sees himself sitting on a yacht with a drink in his hand with an umbrella in it, while two girls swap spit on his cock. I turn the company whose stock I’m slinging into a beautiful red-head at the end of the bar that you never have the stones to buy a drink. Except this time, I’m there to tell you to get off the fucking stool. Push that fucking greed button, because if you don’t, the kid at the firm across the street will. And you know this guy has other kids whispering all kinds of sexy shit into this his ear, so your story better be porno-fucking-graphic. “A series seven is a license to steal,” the ex-fratboy told me after passing my exam with a 94% “so congrats Negro, you’re now street legal!” Pf-ft. Sales managers. No matter what school they went to, they are all the same. The only difference between “Fratboy” and Gabriel was Gabe made a million fucking dollars. This year.

Today’s story is a $5 dollar stock with a stick in the middle. That is, for every $5 share of stock I sell, I made a buck…before the commission markup. I move 20,000 shares, I make $20,000 in gross commissions on a mere $100,000 raised. Half goes to the firm and I toss some crumbs to my slave (sales assistant)… ~$8,000 net-net to me motherfuckers. I jerk off to stocks with sexy stories with a dollar between the bid (what the firm gets the stock wholesale for) and the ask (What you the consumer pays retail for) price. This my friend is called “chop”, and it is all perfectly legal. There was a time when I could have gone to any firm I wanted to.

The big boys offered me front money to move my assets under control (clients and cash) to their firms. Some took me to fancy Beverly Hills lunches while they told me weak ass stories…all tell, no show, and no satisfactory resolution. They preached the virtues of “character development” and “restraint.” Run on sentences about the “style” that Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith would flow on my business card.

I tried their prose for a spell until I got bored and went back to that hardboiled, noir page turner. I, like the kid sitting next to me from Bear Stearns, and the kid across from me from Solomon Bros. chose the Chop Shop. I never went outside of the NASD rules or the law, but I destroyed futures, and life savings all the same. “Hey, these were legit companies I am selling,” I tell myself “they are real businesses making real product. Anybody can look at their 10Q or 10K reports, and my clients are all accredited. Not my problem management of these companies tend to be B-school’s D-students. I’m not an anal-lyst. I’m a closer” Some of the stories do come true. Some end up fables.

One thing I know for sure, I am fly trapped in amber, sinking into my own Goddamn allegory. I sit at their dinner tables. Meet their grandkids. Tour the companies they had in the families for generations. Fly across the country to charm them. And I don’t give a fuck. I don’t schlep just one stock. With a briefcase full ACAT (account transfer) forms, I take their entire fucking accounts away from another broker. And when shit goes bad they will call you. All of them, relentlessly. I still hear their voices and the Carters won’t leave me the fuck alone no matter how many Ambien I chug.

I am sitting across the dining room table from children of the Depression. The couple slaved away to the System, beating their upbringings to become very wealthy. They have beat the Depression but they won’t beat me. I see my hand slide the ACAT form across the table.

Kill yourself!

I know that voice nagging at me, and it is no friend of mine. It is the voice of my worst enemy. Me.

Do it!

I attribute my volatility to not seeing the Sun for days on end. I am in denial of the fucking albatross chained to my neck.

I have to get the fuck out of here!

If I stay, there is a special circle reserved just for me.

Coming home from the joyous day at the firm, I see Ann wearing a classic black slip dress, putting on her finishing touches on in the bathroom mirror. I hate when she covers her freckles. That’s what I used to find beautiful about her. I still haven’t gotten used to her shearing off her hair, and damn it, I shouldn’t have to. Always did whatever the hell she pleased. Fucking gingers.

Me: I just got home and you’re going out again?
Ann: Yep. I’m not even going to bother to ask you if you want to come because I know you won’t.
Me: I don’t drink and you know I hate your whore friends. All they do is smoke, scam drinks, and swallow cock.

She is finishes her lips, and inspects herself in the mirror.

Christ, even the light fixtures glow dimer in this cesspit of a city. I fucking hate this town.

Ann: You like Jennifer.
Me: Yeah, because she is stable and has a boyfriend. Mario is a good guy.

Ann hikes up her dress, and sits on the toilet.

When did she stop caring about me watching her pee?

Me: Why don’t we go eat something at Pasta Pomodoro or something? I feel like gnocchi.
Ann: Nah, I feel like drinking.

Somethings not right. She never turns down that place.

Ann: Well Jen and Mario are coming out tonight. Want us to come get you when we go to the End Up?
Me: I won’t be up. Have fun.
Ann: I will. We’re gonna be at a bar near Embarcadero Center.

Ann snatches her keys off the table and heads for the door.

Me: Hey, where are you gonna be?

I see Ann’s mouth. Her lips shaping the words:

Royal Exchange

Getting to the door is easy. I only have to turn around and walk a few yards behind me. For me, opening that door requires considerable motivation and tests my mettle.

Flickering flames bathe the right cheekbone orange,
while casting the left in shadow.
Her eye is an emerald burning deep
into me.

Half of me wants to turn away and run,
the other is the rock we rest on.
There sits my soul
hewn down the middle.

The other kids skipping in the surf.
Scent of foam spraying off the long traveled wave.
Next to me, my dreams
wrapped in a quilt of chiaroscuro.

This is not ours because
moments like these belong to no one.
A sketch in wet sand re claimed
by the hoary tide.

I step inside. Desperation hangs in the air so thick my lungs work twice as hard to filter the desperation and woe. Royal Exchange serves up happy hour whores and cheap pussy on tap to the lethargic losers chasing them. I don’t see women. I see lease options. In place of the men I see their ghosts in hock, scraping their marrow together like spare change for the down payment. In here, everybody pays. I ask some patrons if anyone matching Ann’s description has been in today. Eyes flashing derision then disinterest are attached to corporate undead who can not be bothered to answer. Flowers in my hand grow heavy. I make my escape.

How can her car be outside and she is nowhere in sight?

I repeat the scene several times over in yuppie bars. Although the name of the establishment varies, the morose futility inside never does. Each time I leave a bar with no success. My original plan of wanting to find her has changed to;

I have to find her!

Yet another den of ill repute with no resolution of the mystery, I suppress a welling in my eyes. Comming out of the last bar, I back track to Royal Exchange. Her car is gone.

GODDAMN IT! WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?

Continued…

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Tagged: Creative Memoir