Rescued

In this ugly, uninteresting life, there is one oasis of beauty, and that's my dear Sarah-Katherine. She'll be back in San Francisco next month, but until then she only visits in my dreams, and here's last night's dream. You don't need a degree or a deck of tarot cards to interpret it:

We were crawling across am old, rickety wooden footbridge, as a windstorm blew it apart. Everyone else had fled, leaving Sarah-Katherine and I the only two people on the bridge as it rocked and swayed, very Tacoma Narrows. The wind gusted so strong that our shoes were ripped off and blown to infinity above the clouds. 

Barely hanging on, we inched our way across the bridge, and as the storm came closer it felt more and more perilous. She was crawling ahead of me, slowly, and I remember admiring her fine butt as we tried to make our way toward land. 

Finally, she was safely off the bridge, clinging to the first streetlamp on solid ground. I was right behind her, but still on the last section of the wobbling wooden span, and I could hear lumber bending, creaking, snapping, as the bridge finally collapsed. My body began to tumble down, and about to die, I said what I knew would be my last words before death, ''Sarah-Katherine, I like you a lot," as the bridge disintegrated under me.

Like in a movie, though, she reached out, grabbed my hand, pulled me up, saved my life. And then I woke up, before the kissing, maybe the boinking that might've followed. 

Me and Sarah-Katherine, in New York City? Sure, soon as we have the money. But romance? Nah, she's made it clear that's not allowed, but — not even in a dream? Sheesh.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mid-day on the Avenue, I walked up the street to use the john in a café, and the caffeine addicts were all atwitter that Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. Condition: critical, said the radio, and by the time I'd put away my merchandise, locked up the fish cart, and walked home, the news said he's dead.

I've never met a Yitzhak that I didn't like, but Rabin was a politician, and that's strike one. His background was military, and then commanding the military, in two bloody wars, and that's strike two and then strike three. Peacemaker, the newspaper says, but I have doubts that a two-war military commander was much interested in peace. 

The news tells me his death is a heartbreaking tragedy. Any man's death is, I'd say. Is Rabin's death a bigger tragedy than a bum beaten to death in the Tenderloin, news allotted a single paragraph deep in the Chronicle a few weeks ago?

There's oil in the Middle East, so it's safe to assume that everything we're told about that part of the world is slanted toward whatever country America can get oil from. Maybe Rabin was a better politician than most, but if so, that's like saying Jeff Dahmer had good table manners.

From Pathetic Life #18
Saturday, November 4, 1995

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

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