This short man, Ernesto, he met this guy one day, Jennifer, out in the plaza. Though it wasn’t a meeting, it was oblivion arrived at but by convenience. Jennifer walked out in the sun with a bag of boots of beaten ostrich, good money spent good, and Ernesto tried. He came down from a plaza pony wall, Ernesto did, with a beam and a fat, and in his walk out of the beaten boot bag farm, Jennifer too came down to this meeting so to say as it seemed. And as it seemed, or as this short man tried, Ernesto was nice, friendly. Sincere, insincere--Jennifer was not a gooey goo man, never was; did not appreciate gestures; looked through people to floors and red impassive walls; he busted his chin over Ernesto in the empty. Ernesto tried again; he’d been trying with guys there for a lot of the day. The sun shot down on their necks in orange movie violence. Why Jennifer gave that guy the time, why men wanted men: both had the same answer to him. So Ernesto had tried in Jennifer’s silence in two part nicity, and so Ernesto had became an alien baby man all bottled up and worried looking; it became foreign war fast, true to its confusion and misunderstandings. What had he, Ernesto, done wrong, he was just being nice and friendly; why did this guy mock him in such deafening silence, in such catatonic maybe-overtorture. Jennifer gave way, gave in, opened up his box of secrets and burning rocks; he told Ernesto, his head hanging from a sigh, “I don’t wanna talk to you, that’s why I held my tongue, I told you in that way that I don’t want to speak. I’m not interested, I don’t want what you have for sale, I don’t want your cock, I don’t want to talk man, it’s not supposed to be so hard. I was kind enough to tell you this, to sit here and wait for something different, something else maybe, but you’re just not getting it. Maybe I don’t get it, I don’t know, I just want to go to my car and go home. I’m sorry, just, please.” With a bat Ernesto sent himself out of his head to that faraway place where realities extinguish from their burning passions and make way for trains and boats and drifting boxes filled with things, good things, bad things, things to replace things of ash. But underground coal fires burn long and impossibly intense. They sometimes burn red anger coals in their mouths when confronted with extinguishing genuine telling, and thus Ernesto spat up molten iron curses while slowly shrinking into a short man there yelling nonsense intertwined with things like how hard it is for nice people to be nice in this world and how people’re going to die alone because of people like him.

That was the truth of it, truly--that Ernesto was going to die alone because of people like him. It happens like that, far past the point where anyone cares, and few people cared about Ernesto aside from his mother. Truly true to the capital T of it, and that meant Ernesto awared himself of such true truths; he clawed at the cliff he slid down. For death is True, and Ernesto believed in no God. Renounced Him in fact.
He went home that night of oblivion day to these town-behind adobe hut hills, and they messified themselves, piney in their maze bosoms, looking from the bird it all looked like pine tree covered pitcher’s mounds where whose old gods would rock baseballs on the other god’s head trying to clear some room to throw a curve to the batter--the crop circle town box. As a brown and baron men town, down in the box meant for Ernesto to be away from his pitcher’s crack hut, the out of the way, sometimes-mud road, little taxed mire-dom where he grew weed plants in compartmental greenhouse enclosures; the dominion of beed doorways leading to other beed doorways which lended themselves to cushy couches and ceiling fans; the dominion of mire, of dirt and adobe, it made itself central in the god pitcher’s fields in that the women would come up from down in the box to make purchase and get high, but they did not care for Ernesto. He would roll paper and talk to talk about his problems, namely men, who purchased their plants elsewhere, and the women would nod and toke at his lengthy complainative ways. Then in fashioned yard hang outs, in salonistic desert mud-people attitude, Ernesto ripped alone, lonely--there without the women, with a green bar-glass, lung burner bong--Fag Hater. Gay in his lack of gay activity, not old gay though, not never really after some whatever-man type event he brushed off when mystery words made their way into complainations, he, with Fag Hater still talking about this guy who'd he met at the plaza, woke up alone, outside, on a couch too cushy to get indaca’d on. The morning after was a blue dirt cold, and a yellow pale goblin.

The gas station god white in a dirt cold blue morning halo striped Jennifer down his face, the blue polo also, and he yawned in deep walrus longevity that no one heard, no one saw, as the waves of morning lab men had no time yet to drink their coffee or drive their cars. He checked a pump; jerked the nozzle handle from the socket, put it back, did it again, looking straight ahead at yesterday’s boots and tonight’s prospects and a short man in the corner. Little guy aw, looked at him for a second, the no good weirdo, fucker, and Jennifer in the polo, nametag appendage--Jennifer “I love feeding the human spirit”, the grey sad pants three weeks unwashed, Jennifer in morning nothing aloneness closed the world for a sec to make union with this man, to meet in unoblivion rendezvous and give him a chance maybe. His head opened up and peeled back in quadrants starting from the center of the parietal and revealing the builders, tendrils that wrapped around the gas pump in god light and disappeared it away. Builders are thin and grey and of lateral millipede construction. They then, there on the concrete slab, built him a room of steel, rubber, plastic--borrowed pump parts that they slicked oil black and gave  ample interior space and two school concert chairs where upon one he took his seat. From the gas station inside window next to the register the pump oil room had no door, no orifice anywhere in its running mesmerism, and inside sat the short man and builders and Jennifer at his rendezvous. Short man asked for some coffee--black pleased to which they built the coffee poured cup and thrusted it upon his wafer cup hands in quarter dropped jive ring ring. He sipped placid and like a rat. The table between them in the oil black ooze room whose walls slid up weight and whose ceilings moved waves and looked all lit from a black held-candle table in between builders and short men, it rung quarters and leaned back into the chair where short man sat in lotus applesauce.

“It’ll play loud so watch it.”
--YES, I WOULD LIKE ANOTHER, SIR. YES, PLEASE, ANOTHER. SKIN YEAH. YEAH- -laughing- -THE SKIN IS VERY NICE. THIS ONE LOOKS LASAGNA NOODLE. AND THIS ONE WOOD. YEAH. I APPRECIATE THAT, SIR.
There was an image of a bed
Didn’t wanna go way back around on the trail I came in on. It was getting dark, and the trail is you know--anyways so I cut over the hill through all that gravel and bramble and yucca up there. Over the first lip, I hadn’t gone far at all, and I see the start of a roof. Which was weird to begin with like as if you wouldn’t get cap rock in your window every week. So I go up and around, reconnoitery I guess is a good word,  and it’s a whole three story house there on that lip that’s all brick and straight out of--I don’t know. The mortaring, you know. I’m behind the house just looking at this thing, I mean it was perfect and fine somehow as far as I could tell, and even had those fancy windows you see in some places. I go around and try ringing the doorbell cause what the hell, and this is where I wanted to tell you about this. The door opens and my Dad, my Dad who, you know, I haven’t seen in twenty some years, he opens the door. And just I just stood there, Dad stands there, and it just set me back a few feet like am I dreaming you know. I mean I had to be dreaming then. He says to me standing there that don’t just stand there, come in my God, how’re you doing kid, and I says nothing to him I’m so struck with sort of you know fear. Cause I had a feeling that this was real, you know, that something was going on here. So I walk in saying nothing and he’s in front of me there catching me in the corner of his eye as he does did, and the whole house is this beautiful wood floors and carpet and dark green walls and big entranceway with stairs and kitchen and a living room and anyways. Sorry. He says that I must’ve seen big gater on my way in, and I had no idea what he was talking about and must’ve looked something cause he looked at me and says nevermind. Then he asks like a anyways if I want anything like a glass of water or something, and I nod--I mean I didn’t bring any water to drink on the hike so. I follow him into the kitchen there something like a dog like I mean that's really what I was. Didn't know what to say. It's been some time he says to me and I was looking down I think but his eyes grabbed me up. And he had this smirk about him that I didn’t get and I don’t know; it just looked wrong and he was showing his teeth you know. He never does that. Did that. He started washing dishes after a bit of us just standing there and me looking at my glass, and says to me he needs to get these done before the woman gets home you know how she can be.