What he felt in his body couldn’t be called hunger because whatever it was, was attacking him—was telling him to cry. He had no money—and no hope of anything other than his pain.

And then, on a dust-dream street, he saw a five-dollar bill floating in a leafy wind. Turning quick, he chased the money as it blew at a building across the street—and into its open door.

I followed feet unconscious into a once grand, baroque, gold and silver hotel. Ahead, a skinny wrinkle innkeeper was about to grab for the five-dollar bill that was wind pressed to the entrance mat—as I jumped for it too. To the floor we appeared—his half and my half in each other’s hand. We argued and fought with our bodies and motions—but I with more desperation than him. And he knew in his eyes I was about to win the match.

“Let me have the money,” he spoke, “and I’ll give you a night’s stay for free.”

Knowing the value of the deal—I couldn’t stay anywhere else for five dollars—I uttered a quick “Yes.”

Leading me high up to my intended room, he cackled about how important the five dollar bill was to him and his business, as he schluffed through the hall before me. I didn’t pretend to understand what he was saying—I just wanted a place to sleep. And with one last cackle, he pointed the way into and down a hall, and said, “Room 591.”

Down the hall I walked towards my room thinking my luck must be up and coming—as the hall turned into a fiberglass, amusement-park-shiny tube of orange, brown, and shades of pink red.

Somehow I was trapped in the attic I feared as a youth. The attic didn’t have a trapdoor. And the only way in would have been through a hinged window above the backdoor. And no one in our family had ever been in there because the attic was sealed behind the painted-over seams of the window. My dad had tried to open the attic window once, but because getting into the attic wasn’t all that important, and because the job of opening the window would’ve taken a lot of work, he let the attic remain off-limits. Which was good because I had known that if I ever looked up in there, a disembodied face would grin at me from some other space.

Only here in the hotel hall, the possible disembodied face became a wax mask mounted to the wall. A wax mask of an unknown order—marked by a glyph of chaos. And the face spoke about apes in a language I could only understand in my sleep. It spoke of being held prisoner in a vault where cheetahs and greyhounds ran among pyramids and cylinder artifacts of another reality.

Here in this tube of memories and reality I found the door to room 591. Key quick-shake-out and in the lock—I entered.

Light switch on.

When I was the youngest boy there ever was—things took a turn for the worse. Granted directions never confused me, but that is when I know where I might be going. Anyway, in life, sometimes things just get lost and forgotten—and he had just found it.

In my childhood, I used to ride from town to town on a bike me and my dad had rebuilt, through forests that no longer thrive. Ghosts didn’t attend my birthdays at that early age because my genetic database was still growing at the time—not evolving upon itself, as it is today. And even though these memories are the same as it never was—they seem a clear, purified idealism. (This is before my pet ferret of idealism bit me on my neck and transformed me into the somewhat rabid state of today. Before I was locked to a lifeboat with handcuffs and forced to ration myself everyday. Before I had to learn that what you are in the dark insides with the lights out—is what you are.) But anyway, I hope when I was an earlier person, I knew the moment—not the past and future like now. I hope I received the love of the world with smiles and laughs and profound grimaces. I hope the moment was my best friend—my only friend—because I remember climbing Douglas Fir trees all day long, all year long. And even though, I haven’t climbed a tree in years—it seems like I am climbing down a tree again.

And there I stood before my bed—nite light brite eyes eager to close. And it should have been just another night of sleeping quiet, slowly warm under the covers. But as I became sheet encompassed, I felt the warmth of others’ breathe into my every side—as I became aware of new surroundings.

And I walked high on crumbling, sliding cliffs above a sea filled with purples and reds and oranges, and I climbed down to the water level with my diving gear, and I swam and dove into an inexpressible fear, and little creatures—anemones squids fish urchins slugs snails corals—brushed against my legs and other parts of myself with their soft squishy touch, and I dreamt of deep diving into indigo depths while I was seduced by waves of hair flowing through the water, and as they hovered around me, they found a box with a cylinder within,  and they performed an new, never-known-before ritual with me, and I remember that one of these had fish hooks pierced into her eyelids under turquoise metallic eye liner, and her love was painful to bear—but even more painful to leave—but I had to come up for air.

And he awoke alone once again. 

And he remembered her face, and he said to her—do you understand that I really loved you?, and do you understand that a man like me loves very rare like this!, I am me!—an individual extreme, and he wondered was love a compromise essential, or could he love without compromise because he wanted a love of passion, and because he wanted to surrender his entire entity to a woman whose surrender would be equal, and because he wanted this person, woman, partner in synesthesia of three—himself herself and themselves—and as he explored the world, he needed to know if he could do what his ideal required or was he a lone wanderer who loved whomever he might be able to touch—or maybe not touch—at the moment when he yearned to hold her and look in her eyes and tickle against her touch.

And he cried about his passions unfulfilled and about the

pains he and others must bear. And he cried for the people who couldn’t accept their pains and lived a life of out-of-control discontent. And he cried for the world—even though the world was much more painful than even his admittance to pain could bear.

Morning up and check-out-time. Backpack heavy, weary back on his back—part of his back. And the innkeeper was no where near the counter where he left the key to the room. And he headed away from there towards his next night’s stay.