SF Night Cap

I pedaled towards her house through the early evening streets of San Francisco already gone dark and now alit by street lamps, and as I made my way slow and steady up the easy grade of Polk Street I noticed the police car in the derelict alleyway behind the porno strip club theater where H.S. Thompson had once been employed. It’s lights whisked silently from blue to red to white while a spotlight shone directly and without blinking on the small U-Haul truck parked in the transient hotel side lot. I could spot the officers to the side of him, their hands on their hip holsters while the man in question looking dazed and roused, more than likely rudely awakened from some bedbug infested mattress in the rooms above, pressed the key into the lock, swung open the latch and slowly pulled up the gate. I thought to tarry. Thought to wait. Something begged my curiosity. But it was getting late, and my need to snuggle tight with my lover won out over the need to scrape the dirty streets for forensic evidence of our collective destruction. If only meth was as clean and earnest as the TV made it seem. If only drugs didn’t bury you inside yourself like some inward facing ostrich. If only that metaphor could express the revulsion of what they probably found inside that trailer. Could communicate the lives chipped away at behind flimsy doors in fifty dollar a night hotels. In the shadow of the empire she tugs down her panties, sticks the needle deep and collapses in the dirty bathtub. She was once a prom queen. This is the memory that always returns to say hello after the rush but before the blackout. She wakes in the tub and immediately strips off the sodden clothes, washes the vomit from her skin and hair. Today’s another day. Another trick. Another lay. God Bless the U.S. of A.