savors smoke

through
dark-grey mesh blinds
out into
the dull sky over
Parma

I stare at great clouds
of pearl
and slate

and time peels and smells and
savors another mandarin orange
while I watch,
reclined back-beyond-horizontal
in the dentist's chair
the clouds swooning slightly

her hand
crosses my face
her other hovers
over my mouth

I reach for my mantra,
an addict
a smoker reaching for a pack
I draw the words into my chest
with my breath

time savors smoke now,
smells drill on bone

my gaze is riveted
I repeat my mantra harder
a bird, blurred by speed,
crosses the upper left corner of the window
and is received
by the sky

China -- coffeeshop therapy

Nearly a year later, we stepped through the threshold into the Forbidden City. One minute, it was a vast square with hundreds of bicycles, rickshaws, cars and walkers, the looming banner portrait of Chairman Mao presiding over one of the most iconic scenes in the world – and the next minute, Joy and I were talking in a quiet garden of concrete walks and statues.
We were in China with the Singing Angels. Their 1983 summer tour included Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai in China and Tokyo in Japan. We were breaking the ice in the centuries old home of Japanese emperors, now deserted and left as a tourist site.
The trip was no-doubt exciting, one of the high-points of my life. But the promise of a new romance upped the ante even more.
The most memorable events of the journey were not the performances in front of appreciative Chinese crowds, the tours of schools with fantastic child performers showing off for the state or the site-seeing in Taoist and Buddhist temples and the Tokyo Disneyland, but bonding with Joy and the other Angels and a couple of new Chinese and Japanese friends. Visiting a middle-of-the-night trip to a Tokyo disco after sneaking out of our hotel with Joy and three of her friends; slow-dancing with Joy to bad American-pop; taking a drunken midnight swim in the hotel pool when we got back – definitely one of my all-time best memories.
We survived our misbehaving and the boredom of rehearsals and adults and their rules. And when we got back to the United States, to Cleveland, Joy and Tom (who had missed out on the trip), Joy’s brother and some other friends drove to Edgewater Park for a day of swimming in the then-polluted Lake Erie.
And some time during that day, Joy and I snuck off into the high grasses on the hill leading down to the beach. We picked grass and talked, and then shared our first kiss.

coffeeshop therapy -- sophomore summer, high school

I was looking through his pictures distractedly. It wasn’t my idea to try out for the Singing Angels. I flipped picture after picture of their trip to Mexico last summer, a lot of dorky kids in uniforms smiling in exotic locales.
I did like the idea of my learning to play bass guitar. That was Tom’s plan – for me to learn the instrument and join him in the Singing Angels’ back-up band. They had had a great time that last summer, and he went on and on about his friends from the group. There was a story behind every picture.
I got to one photo, of three girls laughing hysterically. The middle one – my God, she was beautiful. “Who’s that?” I asked Tom.
“That’s Joy. She’s really cool.”
I was still stewing about Kim. A little hurt and a little angry, I wasn’t letting go of her too well.
But I began to practice on Tom’s Dad’s bass. As I took off on the thing; as my birthday and the beginning of school approached and my parents bought me a cheap starter bass and the Singing Angels try-out came upon me and I “made it”, my heart re-attached to other diversions.
I also tried out for our high school Jazz Ensemble (Tom’s idea as well). Mr. Roytz was touched by how much work I put into learning the parts, so I’d be trading off the duty of bass-player with another kid.
I was enjoying the present and my expectations of the coming school year, more so than any other time in my life. I was excelling at something that was my own goal (well, maybe a bit of my friend Tom’s goal, too), that had nothing to do with my parents’ desires for me. And I was looking forward to meeting that strawberry-blonde girl from Tom’s photo.
In study hall one day, I printed out a note to Kim, apologizing to her for having pushed her away with my clinging. It was the first time I’d ever made a serious amends. A rock fell off my heart, and I was free to enjoy my Junior year in high school.