(primer dial)

bars unknown 


My brain is parts unknown, wining in lieu of reservation when there are dreams of paris roaming around the day.

I've never been.

I've really never been much of anywhere and, to be fair, never really much cared to despite cosmopolitan claims. i'm a rat, you see, immersed in this city's concrete as much as last winter's shit (but hopefully, somehow, fairing far better for the well-being of the world in some long lost adolescent way of thinking everything will be all right no matter what the right's laid in store for god and country). but since i've realized again that i've a best friend roaming across the pond i've gone back to thinking of that lighted city the way it was described to me when i was a kid, doomed and out in la for what seemed like a long haul but only turned into half my living years (as such).

The only place i ever had to see.

It was billy, my dead uncle's friend who told me that. we were riding in the dinosaur of a truck he'd picked up (much to his unabashed glee) to see his stunning wife and child. listen to some "johnny was a queen from brooklyn" like we always did in those days remembering mark in our own way (i would later don stained jackets in latent emulation).

He was an actor. a musician. a friend who i've lost to everything but 30 second spots now and then.

We jammed with beck once. he, mark and i at the onyx (a dead scene in la now, but the first place i ever really wanted to be welcome...and was) on the lazy piano in the side room just down the street from my old school.

I only vaguely remember the day.

But i remember paris. i remember stories about smoking to jazz and illicit liquors. beautiful women. architecture. romance in every moment. art in every glance.

And goddamnit i have to be there, just once, to know the truth. it won't matter if it's a disappointment so long as it's miles away from the cave.

That fucking place...