I was sleep walking through work
when I saw a face as familiar
as my own, a fraternity
brother I’d lost contact with ten years ago.

I put aside the professional
and put on the good times
mask. The one I wore in Panama City
in 1995. Back when Skerski was still alive
and he and Kohler drove that golf cart
from Spinnaker’s into the ocean
and got arrested. At least
that’s the way I tell it
and the way we still remember it.

He was eating dog food
the first time I met him.
We were at Colvin’s end of the year
graduation party in high school and my future
big brother was in a toga, on his hands
and knees, scooping Alpo
from a thick plastic, all-weather food bowl
on the back deck. It was spitting rain
and his hairy little Jewish body was stained
with sweat, beer, and fallen rain.

Pink Floyd blasted from the window screens
and the liquored up hard bodies
melted into each other on the living room floor.
I was too short to make out
and too drunk to sing. So I just watched
Epstein eat that dog food.

The night I walked into the Phi Delt house
on Digby, it was dusk
and Fall was a lie no one willed to believe.
I saw his face, leaner than before;
carved away like Superman in the crystal booth
in Superman II. It flies–
time. I mean, it flies fast
because he became my big brother for exactly nine
months.

The whole thing ended in shit, really.
I was in a bad place, a dark time–
lost and no one but me could pull me out–
you know, the same old writer bullshit.

There have been women in my life
who I could never take home
but prayed to carve a piece off
to keep them so much closer.

Am I still the same person who threatened
to blow up the universe ten years ago?

There have been women like moments
too beautiful to ingest
and trying to grip them was like poking
a tiger in a cage with a sharpened pool cue.

And there have been moments like women
bellied up to the bar and broken
down in a man’s world.
Sometimes everything needs a chaser.

It all washed away when I saw his pudgy face
no longer carved by the undertow of adolescence.
We hugged, still brothers, in the middle of my office
me in my suit and he in his. He was there to fix
something, install something, or break it down
(aren’t we all?)

I’ve reached the point in life where every embrace
is a finality, a way of saying, “If you get there
before I do…how can I help you say goodbye?”

Creative Commons License photo credit: angie.doyle

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