Category: Bez
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The Scent of Ghosts
I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and find Juteau sleeping in the purple tub. Her hair is draped over the back of it, and it hangs in dark waves over the porcelain. She breathes softly and her eyelids twitch as I slip into the room, but she…
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The Best Anchor in an Unsettled Sea
I am in the back seat of Juteau’s car. I have the window cracked, and the smell of the ocean blows in and over me, as well as an occasional raindrop. The air very much wants to break out into a storm, but it can’t quite cross over the threshold of becoming a downpour. Juteau…
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Ill Dreams After Midnight
I wake from a dream, unsettled and shivering. In this dream, I am being persecuted and railed against by some sort of organization, something like those people who protest outside the funerals of soldiers. I am afraid to go into public, because they are always there, and I don’t stand too close to windows for…
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Juteau on the Move
Her name is Juteau, although I don’t know if it’s her first name or last. With a name like that, one would think that she was from France or Quebec or Indochina, although I’m not certain if anyone from Laos still speaks French. Not that it matters, really, since she was born in San Diego…
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Happy Birthday To Me
It is my birthday today, and it does not start off on a very high note. I wake too early, with a terrible headache that feels like the ghost of Andre the Giant is trying to crush my skull like an empty beer can. On top of this, there is a pain in my right…
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The Artistic Process
“Oh my God,” Bez says from in my kitchen. “Have you been eating anything that isn’t bad for you?” I am on the sofa, in grimy sweat pants and a T-shirt I’ve been wearing for three days straight. “I’ve been writing. Nutrition wasn’t important. Productivity was.” “You’re living like a homeless person.” “I wasn’t living…
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Fries and Shakes
“That is so absolutely not attractive,” I say. “Wait, wait,” Bez says. “I’m not finished yet.” “Doesn’t it hurt?” “Only if they’re too hot,” she says. “You don’t want to get a burn on the inside.” My phone rings and I answer it without looking, which is unlike me, given my general dislike of the…
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The Nereid
This is what I want to show you, this right here: Bez, standing barefoot in the sand, her skirt hiked up mid-thigh as the cold and ceaselessly slipping waves splash against her legs, as the sun turns more and more orange and red as it slips lower and lower below the horizon, as I sit…
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Wabbit Season
Bez and I come up the stairs from the BART station, and the first thing we see is a woman on the corner wearing a plastic rabbit mask. It’s a standard Halloween effort, with an elastic band going around the back of her head, a cartoony-Bugs Bunny rip-off. “I’m in love with her,” Bez says…
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The Return of Richard Widmark
“This is where he brought her,” Bez says, surveying the room. “They traveled light, no luggage. They weren’t here on a trip, after all.” She is dressed up tonight, tight black dress, low-cut, made up like a movie queen. She had made me do the same before we left, and I feel overdressed, but it’s…