Scully's

We went there last night. A crack whore offered to watch the truck for us as the rest of the junkies on the street corner skulked in the shadows. It's insured, I thought. This has not always been the case. The meeting was reminiscent of my humble beginnings, now so long long ago. Smoke hanging like drapes from the ceiling, a slow mottled stain dripping down the windows, adding to the anonymity of it all. They don't hold hands. They don't do the "Hi, someone" greeting. They read from the book. They acknowlege up front that most of what is said is shit.

I didn't used to care. I didn't used to be so well.

Point is, was a time I didn't notice the difference between smoke filled rooms of sick people, people whose sickness still showed, maybe always would, because of the nearness to, the similarity to, the bars in which I was so accustomed to spending my time. Like Elm St. in Medford, Scully's is no further removed from any day room in any mental hospital than the Jubilee Club was on a busy night back in the day. Now, I spend a good deal of my time in well tended rooms with well tended people who have learned to dress well, hide the soul-sickness which is our shared disease. We are so well.

We are better. Many of us are. I am.

I am struggling to stay with them, to feel like one of many, neither above or below. Even. Even is hard for me. The lack of contrast is confusing and I forget who I am, why I am there.

Last night a woman at Scully's said the thing I needed to hear. "You can see it in the birds," she said. "Big ones, long wings floating on the air, soaring around like it was so easy. And the little ones," she continued, painting another layer of chrome nail polish produced from the many distractions in her basket of toys, her purse, her portable home that was nearly unpacked beside her, "the little ones flap so hard. They really have to work to stay up there, when all they really have to do is relax and float on the breeze."

I have a wonderful life, but I've been busily flapping lately.